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To: Jim S who wrote (36029)7/28/2009 7:35:26 PM
From: Peter Dierks  Respond to of 71588
 
That is the misperception that liberals choose to have. Realists realize that power corrupts. It didn't take more than a moment to corrupt Michelle. See my last post.



To: Jim S who wrote (36029)9/9/2009 12:31:23 PM
From: Peter Dierks2 Recommendations  Respond to of 71588
 
Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care

The president's proposals would give unelected officials life-and-death rationing powers.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2009, 7:45 P.M. ET

By SARAH PALIN

Writing in the New York Times last month, President Barack Obama asked that Americans "talk with one another, and not over one another" as our health-care debate moves forward.
I couldn't agree more. Let's engage the other side's arguments, and let's allow Americans to decide for themselves whether the Democrats' health-care proposals should become governing law.

Some 45 years ago Ronald Reagan said that "no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds." Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us.

We also know that our current health-care system too often burdens individuals and businesses—particularly small businesses—with crippling expenses. And we know that allowing government health-care spending to continue at current rates will only add to our ever-expanding deficit.

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."

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it's a promise Washington can't keep.

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? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through "normal political channels," they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.

Speaking of government overreaching, how will the Democrats' proposals affect the deficit? The CBO estimates that the current House proposal not only won't reduce the deficit but will actually increase it by $239 billion over 10 years. Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure.

The economic effects won't be limited to abstract deficit numbers; they'll reach the wallets of everyday Americans. Should the Democrats' proposals expand health-care coverage while failing to curb health-care inflation rates, smaller paychecks will result. A new study for Watson Wyatt Worldwide by Steven Nyce and Syl Schieber concludes that if the government expands health-care coverage while health-care inflation continues to rise "the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers." Lower wages are the last thing Americans need in these difficult economic times.

Finally, President Obama argues in his op-ed that Democrats' proposals "will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable." Of course consumer protection sounds like a good idea. And it's true that insurance companies can be unaccountable and unresponsive institutions—much like the federal government. That similarity makes this shift in focus seem like nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention away from the details of the Democrats' proposals—proposals that will increase our deficit, decrease our paychecks, and increase the power of unaccountable government technocrats.

Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don't need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats' proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not "provide more stability and security to every American."

We often hear such overblown promises from Washington. With first principles in mind and with the facts in hand, tell them that this time we're not buying it.

Ms. Palin, Sen. John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, was governor of Alaska from December 2006 to July 2009.

online.wsj.com



To: Jim S who wrote (36029)10/26/2009 5:42:36 PM
From: Peter Dierks2 Recommendations  Respond to of 71588
 
In Praise of Sarah

By Bob Beers Thursday, October 22, 2009

For the life of me I cannot see any logical reason for the intense hatred the left has for Sarah Palin. As I wrote yesterday, not one of the members of the mushy-brained sect has seen her in person, much less had enough time with her to form a reasonable opinion of her character, but still they manage to place her into the same category as a Simon Legree or worse.

For you lefties, Mr. Legree was the brutal slave owner and taskmaster in Harriet Beecher’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Try reading something other than eastern philosophy sometime; you’ll open up your mind.

What did Mrs. Palin do that made her number one on the liberals’ enemies list? Let’s see, she does outshine lefty women like Mrs. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Maureen Dowd by a huge margin. Not one of them can hold a candle to her in the looks department. So I can see how the liberals can be upset there. They do not take to being upstaged at all well. What about decorum, the ability to present oneself in debate?

No contest again. She wiped the stage with Biden. The good senior senator thought he had himself an easy target and instead found himself on the wrong end of a knowledgeable verbal pit bull with a sense of humor.

Again, for you liberals that means being able to see the funny side of things.

Yes, I can see where being able to mop the floor with a Biden would set some liberals on edge. People like a Sarah Palin, especially one on the junior portion of the ticket are supposed to lie down and take whatever drubbing is dealt them without complaint, especially if that drubbing comes from an old liberal hand that has been gorging at the public trough as long as Biden has.

What about accomplishments? What has Sarah done to generate such enmity? From the level of vitriol the left throws out whenever just her name is mentioned she must have committed some pretty heinous crimes.

The following is taken from a blog entitled “Unbalanced Libra”. Here’s the link, It is comprehensive enough to be pasted in without comment:

“Firstly, there is no government closer to the people than at the municipal level. Palin spent eight years in city government, winning a seat on the Wasilla City Council in 1992 mostly thanks to her opposition to tax increases. She went on to serve two council terms from 1992 to 1996. She was elected mayor of the fast-growing Anchorage suburb in 1996 and again in 1999. Mayor Palin had a record of reducing property tax levels, increasing municipal services and attracting new industry to her town. During her tenure in Wasilla, she was elected chair of Alaska’s conference of mayors.
Next for Sarah Palin was service as chair of the Alaska Conservation Committee, a board which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. In this appointive position she began to gain what would become extensive and valuable knowledge and experience in the area of one of America’s most pressing issues - energy. It was in this job where Palin first really demonstrated the toughness, political courage and maverick spirit that would years later so impress presidential candidate John McCain.

She resigned in January 2004 as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after complaining to the office of Governor Frank Murkowski and to state Attorney General Gregg Renkes about ethical violations by another commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, who was also Republican state chairman.

State law barred Palin from speaking out publicly about ethical violations and corruption. However, she was vindicated later in 2004 when Ruedrich, who’d been reconfirmed as state chairman, agreed to pay a $12,000 fine for breaking state ethics laws. She became a hero in the eyes of the public and the press, and the bane of Republican leaders.

In 2005, she continued to take on the Republican establishment by joining Eric Croft, a Democrat, in lodging an ethics complaint against Renkes, who was not only attorney general but also a long-time adviser and campaign manager for Murkowski. The governor reprimanded Renkes and said the case was closed. It wasn’t. Renkes resigned a few weeks later, and Palin was again hailed as a hero.

In 2006, Palin ran for governor and was elected in a landslide. According to Fred Barnes: With her emphasis on ethics and openness in government, “it turned out Palin caught the temper of the times perfectly,” wrote Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News. She was also lucky. News broke of an FBI investigation of corruption by legislators between the primary and general elections. So far, three legislators have been indicted.
In the roughly three years since she quit as the state’s chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the “body count” of Palin’s rivals.
“The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah,” says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called “Voice of the Times,” which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.

As governor, Sarah Palin’s list of accomplishments lengthened rapidly. She used her line-item veto to cut $268 million from Alaska’s state budget.

She stood up to some of Alaska’s most entrenched interests, including three big oil companies (BP, ConocoPhilips, and ExxonMobil) who hold the lease rights to much of Alaska’s oil and gas wealth:

Once in office, Palin took an aggressive stance toward the oil companies. Her nickname from high-school basketball, “Sarah Barracuda,” was resurrected in the press. Early in her term, she shocked oil lobbyists when she was so bold as to not show up when Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson came to Juneau to meet with her. Palin, after scrapping Murkowski’s deal, would not give Big Oil the terms they wanted, yet insisted that the companies still had an obligation under their lease to deliver gas to whatever pipeline Alaska built. She invited the oil companies to place open bids to build a pipeline, but they refused. A bid by TransCanada, North America’s largest pipeline builder, was approved by the legislature in August.

Palin also raised taxes on oil companies after Murkowski’s previous tax regime produced falling revenues in 2007, despite skyrocketing oil prices. Alaska now has some of the highest resource taxes in the world. Alaska’s oil tax revenues are expected to be about $10 billion in 2008, twice those of previous year. BP says about half its oil revenues now go to taxes, when royalty payments to the state are included. Recently, Palin approved gas tax relief for Alaskans, and paid every resident $1,200 to help ease their fuel-price burden.

Some other Palin accomplishments include supporting and signing an ethics bill passed by the Alaska legislature and creating the Alaska Health Strategies Planning Council to find innovative solutions to effectively provide access to, and help reduce the costs of, healthcare.

As governor, Palin is commander of her state’s National Guard. Not content to merely sit on the title, she traveled to Kuwait to learn about her troops’ mission there. On the return trip to Alaska, she stopped in Germany to visit wounded soldiers in the hospital, an activity that Barack Obama did not see fit to engage in during his own overseas venture, blaming the Pentagon for his snubbing of the wounded.

More accomplishments: Gov. Palin signed a resolution in opposition to the FAA’s plan to increase taxes on aviation fuel, impose user fees and slash airport funding. Also, before Palin became governor, her predecessor Frank Murkowski had purchased a Westwind Two business jet for the governor’s use at a $2.5 million price tag, despite the objections from the state legislature and the public. Her first order of business after taking office was to put the jet up for sale.

Palin did keep the governor’s state-owned Chevy Suburban, but she got rid of the driver, saying it was wasteful for the state to pay someone to drive her around, since she was perfectly capable of driving herself. The governor’s gourmet chef also got changed from a full-time to a seasonal-only basis because Palin considered it a luxury she didn’t think Alaskans should be paying for. Her political enemies called all this “superficial pandering.”

Alaska is the only one of America’s states which borders on two foreign countries. Sarah Palin is chief executive of our most important energy state, one which lies only a few miles from Russian territory. She has negotiated sensitive agreements on fishing rights and other matters to keep the peace up there. She’s also worked on important trade deals with other countries. She has received foreign heads of state and had discussions with them.”

As you can see, accomplishment is the least of Mrs. Palin’s problems. Quite frankly she has a bigger wealth of accomplishment than Obama and his entire cabinet combined. There will probably be screams of outrage from the left on that one, but honestly, based on what this woman has done in the face of intense opposition from both sides of the aisle, Barack Hussein Obama is a rank amateur compared to her All Star performance.

So here is my estimation as to why she is so hated by the left. She is an accomplished, well-spoken housewife and mother; faithful to her God, husband, her children and to her constituents. She has a proven record of honesty and self sacrifice for the good of those who elected her. No wonder the left considers her such an incredible danger. She would be someone who could sit in the oval office with the complete confidence of the majority of Americans behind her. She had to be stopped at all costs because her record is truly unassailable outside of the realm of lies the liberals live in.

Sarah Palin’s character rests upon a rock-solid foundation of achievement.

canadafreepress.com

See this poll and vote:
npr.org



To: Jim S who wrote (36029)11/13/2009 8:46:53 AM
From: Peter Dierks  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 71588
 
Can Sarah Palin Make a Comeback?
Her poll numbers among independents are strong enough to give her a chance.
NOVEMBER 13, 2009, 12:19 A.M. ET.

By MATTHEW CONTINETTI
I don't typically watch Oprah. But I won't miss Monday's interview with Sarah Palin. The appearance is supposed to be about Ms. Palin's new memoir, but a lot more will be riding on the encounter than book sales.

After last year's brutal presidential campaign, Ms. Palin is now reintroducing herself to the American public. Nothing less than her future in American politics—and a possible run for the White House in 2012—hangs in the balance.

Ms. Palin has two problems. The first is that she's become one of the most polarizing figures in the country. The second is that voters continue to worry about her qualifications for the presidency, a concern that her abrupt resignation from office last July intensified.

Lucky for her, both problems are solvable. Since Ms. Palin appeared on the national stage, the left has unfairly demonized her. Blockbuster interviews and book tours will humanize her.

More important than these public appearances is Ms. Palin's message. She needs to adopt a market-friendly populist agenda to strengthen her policy credentials and make her seem less partisan to independent voters. A bipartisan, center-right approach should come easily to her. That's how she won her race for governor in 2006.

Ms. Palin's unpopularity—the result of horrendous media coverage and her role as the McCain campaign's pitbull—is a major political obstacle. Her unfavorable rating hovers around 50%, the point at which most politicians would reach for the Valium.

An October Gallup poll put Ms. Palin's favorable number at 40%, her lowest rating to date. In a November Gallup survey, 63% of all voters said they wouldn't seriously consider supporting her for the presidency.

Yet Ms. Palin isn't as unpopular as John Edwards, and she has a higher approval rating than Nancy Pelosi. As Hillary Clinton's career shows, public perception changes over time. Ms. Palin remains highly popular among Republicans (69% favorable). But the Democrats' striking antipathy to the former governor—she has a 72% unfavorable rating among them—drives down her overall approval.

Independents are a different story. These are the folks who decide presidential elections, and they are divided on Ms. Palin. In last month's Gallup poll, Ms. Palin had a 48% unfavorable and 41% favorable rating among independents. Not good, but not insurmountable. Flip those percentages, and they could be serving moose burgers in the White House in 2013.

What drives independents' uncertainty is their feeling that Ms. Palin isn't up to the job. Independents blanch at her perceived lack of expertise on issues unrelated to energy or abortion. They look at Ms. Palin's disappointing interview with Katie Couric last year, or laugh at Tina Fey's impression on "Saturday Night Live." Her resignation—still not fully explained—stokes their worst fears.

However, other Republican politicians have profited when they exposed received wisdom about them as false. In 1980, Democrats portrayed Ronald Reagan as a dim-witted ideologue bent on starting a nuclear war.

Then Reagan debated President Jimmy Carter. The public watched as a conservative pragmatist with a puckish wit unmanned a self-important, humorless liberal. Suddenly, Reagan was no longer the "dangerous" choice. He won handily.

Could Ms. Palin follow Reagan's example? Maybe. She'd need to return to her 2006 playbook.

In Alaska, Ms. Palin didn't run as a culture warrior. She focused on issues with overwhelming public support: ethics reform, a revised oil tax, and more competition and transparency in the effort to build a natural gas pipeline. She took the conservative vote for granted and focused on winning independents and even some Democrats.

The 2006 Palin model looks a lot like the approach that Virginia's next governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, used to win his election last week. It means applying conservative principles to problems like the economy, health care, and out-of-control federal spending. It means addressing voter concern that big government and big business are in cahoots, heaping expensive burdens on small businesses and individual entrepreneurs.

During her book tour, Ms. Palin is sure to mention that the Obama administration's opposition to offshore drilling and domestic nuclear power, and its support for an onerous cap-and-trade scheme, will raise energy prices across the board. But she also might spend less time discussing campaign intrigue and Alaska trivia, and more time outlining how to spur job creation through tax reform.

She might mention, too, that the Democrats' health-care plan would hike taxes, raise the cost of doing business, and lead to rationing down the line. She might point out that, on top of health care, the stimulus and bailouts, President Obama's 2010 budget will further bury the United States in debt. Every time the media try to shift the conversation to personal gossip or past mistakes, Ms. Palin should pull it right back to how the Obama agenda will hurt the middle class.

Oprah will be aghast. The Democrats will be outraged. But independents will be listening. And the rehabilitation of Sarah Palin will have begun.

Mr. Continetti is the associate editor of The Weekly Standard and the author of "The Persecution of Sarah Palin," out this week from Penguin Sentinel.

online.wsj.com