Dollar Is Funny Money In Push For World Currency: Kevin Hassett 

Originally Posted At Bloomberg
By Kevin Hassett
August 31, 2009

Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Like the Chinese, the folks at Disney World peg their currency to the dollar. Hand them $1 U.S. and you receive one Disney dollar, complete with a picture of Mickey Mouse or his friends, plus the signature of Disney’s official treasurer, Scrooge McDuck.
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Obamacare: The Only Exit Strategy
Hook us with government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage.

Originally Posted At National Review Online
By Charles Krauthammer
August 28, 2009

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The Medicare Tsunami
Facing a flood of cascading costs

Originally Posted At The Washington Times
By Jeffrey H. Anderson
August 26, 2009

In a recent news conference, President Obama said: "The biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid. So let me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficits." He is absolutely right. The truth of the president's words, however, is lost in the falsehoods implied in his proposed solution -- to dramatically expand Medicaid, create a Medicare-like "public option" and heavily regulate private insurers.
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Why The Gang Of Six Is Deciding Health Care For Three Hundred Million Of Us

Originally Posted At The Huffington Post
By Robert Reich
August 21, 2009

Last night, the so-called "gang of six" -- three Republican and three Democratic senators on the Senate Finance Committee -- met by conference call and, according to Senator Max Baucus, the committee's chair, reaffirmed their commitment "toward a bipartisan health-care reform bill" (read: less coverage and no public insurance option). The Washington Post reports that the senators shared tales from their home states, where some have been besieged by protesters angry about a potential government takeover of the nation's health care system.
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Pull The Plug On ObamaCare
It's the best cure for what ails the Obama presidency.

Originally Posted At Wall Street Journal
By Peggy Noonan
August 21, 2009

Looking back, this must have been the White House health-care strategy:

 

Health care as a subject is extraordinarily sticky, messy and confusing. It's inherently complicated, and it's personal. There are land mines all over the place. Don't make the mistake the Clintons made and create a plan that gets picked apart, shot down, and injures the standing of the president. Instead, push it off on Congress. Let them come up with a dozen plans.
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Time For Budgetary Truth

Originally Posted At The Washington Times
By Joseph J. DioGuardi
August 24, 2009

According to recent CBS/New York Times and NBC/Wall Street Journal polls, public concerns over super-sized federal deficits and the increasing national debt are overtaking concerns over our failing economy.

In 1980, our national debt stood at about $800 billion, accumulated over 200 years. In less than three decades, that debt has increased twelvefold. The national debt will exceed $11 trillion in 2010, and is projected to exceed $20 trillion by 2020.
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Health 'Co-Ops' Are Government Care

Originally Posted At Wall Street Journal
By MICHAEL O. LEAVITT
August 20, 2009

Responding to a building wave of opposition to the "public option," the Obama administration is now signaling that it may dress up government health care in yet another set of clothes. This time, it will be called a health insurance "co-op." Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) is floating the idea, Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) has offered his initial support, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has listed three conditions it needs to meet.
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ObamaCare Is All About Rationing

Originally Posted At The Wall Street Journal
By MARTIN FELDSTEIN
August 18, 2009

Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama's health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive. The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration's goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades.
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Americans: Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs

Originally Posted At Foreign Policy Journal
By Paul Craig Roberts
August 19, 2009 

Americans think that they have “freedom and democracy” and that politicians are held accountable by elections. The fact of the matter is that the US is ruled by powerful interest groups who control politicians with campaign contributions. Our real rulers are an oligarchy of financial and military/security interests and AIPAC, which influences US foreign policy for the benefit of Israel.
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Health Care Socialism, Fascism, Or Freedom?

Originally Posted At Human Events
By Phil Kerpen 
August 14, 2009

The so-called “public plan option” -- the part of Obamacare that would create a new government healthcare insurance entity at enormous cost and under bureaucratic control --  has been unmasked as a means to a single-payer end.  The plan’s supporters have said so, from public plan option architect Jacob Hacker to President Barack Obama himself.
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Obamacare's Backroom Deal
So much for transparency in government health care

By The Washington Times 
August 14, 2009

President Obama promised that all health care negotiations would be public. Over the course of a year, at campaign appearances, on national TV shows and to newspaper editorial boards, he said that he wanted to "shame" politicians and lobbyists who might otherwise give good deals to drug or insurance companies. It hasn't worked out that way.
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What To Do About Pre-Existing Conditions

Originally Posted At Wall Street Journal
By JOHN H. COCHRANE
August 14, 2009

Even if you don't like the massive health-care package being considered in Congress, you have to admit that health insurance and health care in this country are not working well. There are two basic problems: First, if you get sick and then lose your job or get divorced, you lose your health insurance. With a pre-existing condition, new insurance will be ruinously expensive, if you can get it at all.
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Medicare For All Isn't The Answer
My company ran a hospital in London. We don't want to go the government route.

Originally Posted At The Wall Street Journal
By Alan B. Miller
August 12, 2009

With Congress now in recess, the debate over health-care reform has moved to each member's home district. The American people have rightly been asking elected officials many probing questions. While few Americans deny we need health-insurance reform (too many people lack adequate coverage), most believe we receive the best quality health care in the world and do not want to see it compromised.
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Public Spending's Day Of Reckoning

Originally Posted At Forbes
By Desmond Lachman
August 12, 2009

History is littered with examples of major economic and financial crises in countries that have engaged in profligate public spending. These sad experiences should be raising red flags in the U.S. Public finances suggest that the country could very well be on the path to either a destructive burst of inflation or an outrightgovernment debt default.
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Addicted To War: America's Brutal Pipe Dream In Afghanistan

Originally Posted At Chris-Floyd.com
By. Chris Floyd
August 11, 2009

Looks like the "Good War" in Afghanistan is morphing even more directly into the "Drug War" that the U.S. government has been waging all over the world -- and especially against its own people -- for almost 40 years now, with all the attendant aggrandizement of authoritarian powers and degradation of civil liberties and human rights. 
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Double-Dip Recession?
Dire prospects rise along with borrowing

Originally Posted At The Washington Times
By Richard Rahn
August 11, 2009

We are likely to have a double-dip recession, and this is why. Your Uncle Sam has been having a hard time because he spends more than he makes. He engages in much unproductive behavior and wastes a lot of money on things that he doesn't really need. He is easily influenced by his irresponsible children, Nancy and Harry, whose mantra is: "Spend, Sam, spend." Sam is also sloppy with his finances. His record keeping is poor, and he is frequently ripped off by people who claim to be his friends.
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‘You Are Terrifying Us’

Originally Posted At The Wall Street Journal
By Peggy Noonan
August 7, 2009

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.

 

 

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision.
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How House Bill Runs Over Grandma

Originally Posted At IBD Editorials

At a town hall meeting at AARP headquarters in Washington, D.C., President Obama was asked by a woman from North Carolina if it was true "that everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die." At first, the president joked that not enough government workers existed to ask the elderly how they wanted to die.
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RHINOCare: A U.S. Chamber Of Horrors

Originally Posted At The American Spectator
By Lawrence A. Hunter
August 6, 2009

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are back home under siege from angry constituents terrified over the House version of ObamaCare. (View the videos here.) Meanwhile, a few Republican Senators remain huddled with Democrats on Capitol Hill trying to construct a legislative Trojan RHINO with ObamaCare hiding inside disguised as a bipartisan compromise. Call it RHINOCare -- Republican Healthcare In Name Only -- and it is nothing but a ploy to deceive people into inviting government-run healthcare into America.
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How To Fix The Health-Care ‘Wedge’

Originally Posted At The Wall Street Journal
By ARTHUR B. LAFFER
August 5, 2009

President Barack Obama is correct when he says that “soaring health-care costs make our current course unsustainable.” Many Americans agree: 55% of respondents to a recent CNN poll think the U.S. health-care system needs a great deal of reform. Yet 70% of Americans are satisfied with their current health-care arrangements, and for good reason—they work.
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How We Can Achieve Bipartisan Health Reform
Here comes the Trojan RHINO, ObamaCare skinned to look like a "bipartisan compromise."

Originally Posted At The Washington Post
By Ron Wyden and Robert F. Bennett
August 5, 2009

We refuse to let partisanship kill health reform -- and we are proof that it doesn't have to. As 12 U.S. senators from both sides of the aisle who have widely varying philosophies, we offer a concrete demonstration that it is possible to find common ground and pass real health reform this year. The process has been rocky, and slower than many had hoped. But the reports of the death of bipartisan health reform have been greatly exaggerated. Now is the time to resuscitate it, before the best opportunity in years is wasted.
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Corn Power

Originally Posted At The Washington Post
August 5, 2009

PRESIDENT Obama's nominee as ambassador to Brazil, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., is a longtime diplomat trained to speak honestly without giving unnecessary offense. So when Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) asked Mr. Shannon during his July 8 confirmation hearing about lifting the 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol, most of which comes from Brazil, the State Department veteran responded carefully. "I personally believe that it would be beneficial, sir," Mr. Shannon remarked, "but I recognize that, especially in the U.S. Congress, there are different views at this point in time." In other words: It might be a good idea, but Congress sets policy, not ambassadors.
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Happiness Is Finding Magic In The Everyday

Originally Posted At the Boston Globe
By Beverly Beckham
August 2, 2009

We were on vacation at Rock Harbor waiting for the sun to set - my grown children and their young children, all of us way out on a jetty, the sky pink, the night clear, the bugs, for the moment, somewhere else. A steel band was playing, calypso music; not Old Cape Cod, but it was nice, festive. The little kids didn’t stay still for long, though.
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