How can this be?

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

I hope the RNC, GOP, NRSC, NRCC, etc. are paying attention to this.

As I have noted repeatedly, data from the 2008 exit polling showed that more people considered themselves “conservative” than “liberal.” This new Gallup poll is in accord with that.

This goes straight to NY-23, where both the DCCC and NRCC are attacking Doug Hoffman, the conservative candidate. Apparently, unlike the NRCC, the DCCC sees a path to victory for Doug Hoffman.

When the GOP paints a clearly distinct picture of ideas and issues from the Democrats, they win. Voters do not want to vote for Democrat-lite when they get have the real thing. The GOP should offer competing ideas, not just repacked Democrat ideas that have lower price tags.

The DailyKos is reporting that out of the 83 signatories to the we will vote no if there is no public option pledge, only 46 remain standing firm. The rest of the progressives have caved. For these 46 liberal Members, a robust public plan means a Medicare plus 5 percent reimbursement rate for providers. However, the Blue Dogs are pushing a rival “negotiated provider reimbursement rate” which the progressives say effectively kills the public option.

Progressives are being squeezed by two fronts, one is their dropping numbers of Members who will stand firm on the public plan or they will vote no pledge, and two, on the negotiated Medicare reimbursement rates which they believe will gut the public option. So, 46 Democrats signed a letter to the Speaker demanding no negotiated rates or we vote no because it will kill the public option.

The Progressives are losing the battle, however, according to the DailyKos, because the direction of the bill is clearly moving to negotiated rates.

But 46 liberals are still more than enough to kill the bill with their votes alone. These 46 votes likely does not account for the other Dem NO votes because of any of the following issues: taxes, spending, abortion, immigration or other bill-killing issues. According to pro-life Democrats, there are 40 NO Dem votes against ObamaCare solely on the issue of abortion, for example.

Curiouser and curiouser said Alice as she went down the rabbit hole…

MSNBC’s First Read reported last night that the Obama Administration is now saying that illegal immigrants will be specifically prevented from obtaining coverage under the president’s health care proposal.  The chage comes on the heels of Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) “You lie!” outburst during Obama’s health care address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.  Although the president denied from the rostrum of the House chamber that illegals would be covered by the plan, the Administration thought it necessary to make changes to the existing proposal in order to clarify the issue.

But the bigger story the MSNBC missed with its focus on the Wilson flap is found in the second bullet point sent out by the White House last night.  The Obama Administration inadvertently confirmed that the president’s plan will begin a slow take over of the health care system by the federal government.  How else could this be interpreted?

“Undocumented immigrants would be able to buy insurance in the non-exchange private market, just as they do today. That market will shrink as the exchange takes hold, but it will still exist and will be subject to reforms such as the bans on pre-existing conditions and caps.”

In other words, as the federal exchange takes hold, plans not complying with the federal government’s standards will start to disappear.  Eventually, it won’t make any sense for any company to offer health insurance as the federal requirements will make the business of providing health insurance far too expensive, and the premiums far too expensive for the insured.

The result will be that everyone will wind up with no other “choice” than the so-called public option, just as the Administration has planned all along.  It took Wilson “calling out” the president’s “misinformation” and “lies” to finally get the Administration to admit it.

Mark it down.  President Obama’s “make or break” speech, as the media is portraying it, will be widely viewed as a success among the chattering class.  It will be groundbreaking, visionary, full of clarity, and a “game changer,” as CNN has already labeled it.

But sit tight, that’s just for a while.  Patrick Rufini had it right on Twitter last night.

Tmrw’s speech will be widely praised for resetting the debate on #hcr. And then everything will go back to exactly how it was within 96 hrs

Exactly.  What Patrick realizes, that the MSM does not, is that short term gain is all the president’s speech is intended to do.  If the speech was to be anything like what the media is previewing, the White House would not be making it known that Obama does not plan to offer any real specifics, and plans to be “non-committal” on the central question of the whole debate, the so-called “public option.”

No, the speech is nothing more than an “operational pause,” to borrow a military term of art.  The aftermath is meant to be the calm before the storm.  Next week, the real advance begins.

So as you read the headlines tomorrow, and watch the tingling commentators tonight, remember that it’s all just part of the plan.  And steel yourself for the coming fight.

Most of us here on Red State, regardless of our religious convictions or lack of them, are familiar with the contempt with which secular liberals say they regard Creationism and those who profess it. To hear them tell it, only yahoos from the all-white, all-male, rural South could possibly believe such a thing. Well, they and Sarah Palin.

We are therefore greatly indebted to Mr. James Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, for his observation during the recent MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Referring to the BBC, Murdoch noted that "the UK broadcasting sector is wrongly governed by ‘creationism’ — the belief in a process managed by a single omniscient authority." He argued that it needs to be more ‘evolutionary.’

I dare say we’ve seen the same thing on this side of the pond. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that liberals in the United States argue that market processes, i.e. incremental changes made seemingly at random in response to forces in the environment, cannot possibly produce a health care system that functions. Instead, these same secular liberals tell us that a health care system that works can only come into existence fully-formed, from the mind of a single omniscient authority, whose name is Government. Say what?

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Facing growing public skepticism and falling approval ratings as a result of his push for nationalized health care, President Obama told a group in Virginia last week that he didn’t want, “the folks who had created the [health care] mess to do a lot of talking, I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.”  It was a remark meant to rally the base to Obama’s side, and shore up his flagging poll numbers on the issue.  Obama may have thought he was chiding Republicans in making the comment.  But even a cursory look at the “mess” in the American health care system shows that on the issue of who is responsible, the president’s remark is as wrong as it was arrogant.

Health care experts across the spectrum can agree that there are three main problems with the health insurance industry in America today:  community rating, which forbids insurance companies from charging premiums based on an individual consumer’s health status; the practice of defensive medicine, under which doctors order numerous costly and often unnecessary tests to cover themselves against the possibility of malpractice lawsuits; and employer-based coverage.  Each of these problems, which together contribute most to the “mess” in health care delivery, were all either brought into existence, or are perpetuated by Democrats.

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The debate over health care reform — what constitutes it and what public opinion of such reform really is — has become more polarizing as the summer has gone on. Below are five key liberal talking points about health care “reform” and an accompanying dose of truth their peddlers so desperately need to hear.

1. Republicans, who either believe the health care status quo is perfectly acceptable or are in the pockets of lobbyists who pay them to say so, are opposed to the very idea of reform and want to block any effort to fix our health care system.

This is, of course, entirely untrue. Anybody can look at the American health care system — which is and continues to be the best in the world — and spot areas that are in need of improvement. Left and right differ in their views of what those problems are and how they are best dealt with. Republicans and conservatives only oppose “reform” outright if the term is limited to meaning the government-centric overhaul that the president and congressional Democrats are pushing.

Actual reform — a reduction in the dependence on third-party payers, increase in patient choice, reduction of costs, increase in personal freedom and control of health care dollars, added portability of health coverage, and reduced governmental interference — is almost universally supported on the right.

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From: “Seth Rossignol” rossignol72@gmail.com
Subject: healthcare
Date: August 6, 2009 1:00:41 AM EDT
To: contact@redstate.com

F**k off you pieces of s**t health insurance shills! You hate mongering f**ks!

I bet he watches MSNBC. And I bet when ACORN blocks entrances to banks he applauds.

There’s a revealing quote buried inside Politico’s account of a revolt by liberal members of the House Democratic caucus over the deal between Rep. Henry Waxmam (D-CA) and four members of the Blue Dog Caucus. Liberals are upset that the deal effectively guts the public option in President Obama’s healthcare takeover. And as is usually the case, when liberals get upset, the truth about the contempt that they harbor for their core constituencies begins to show. How else can this comment by Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick be explained?

At one point, Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), a former Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman, expressed outrage that conservatives would insist on significant cuts and a weakening of the public option, arguing that many of the Blue Dogs were letting down their black constituents, who make up 25 percent to 40 percent of their voters, in some instances.”

Yeah, that’s right. Opposing the public options on cost grounds betrays blacks. Because, you know, all blacks are destined to be on the public dole, right Congresswoman?

We are speeding headlong toward a time when our Congress will have become just like Mad King George’s Parliament, that body from which in 1776 the American colonists separated with the rallying cry of “no taxation without representation.” Our national government is fast becoming just as unrepresentative of the people as far off Briton was when we went to war to become the United States of America.

Does that seem like a hyperbolic statement to you? At first blush, it might. But a considered look at the direction in which we are quickly heading will prove that, compared to the British Parliament that raised the ire of our forefathers so long ago, today’s Congress shows many signs of the same, oppressive, haughty, disinterested politicians that considered their national government more important than the local’s interests and needs.

Representation is the key word, here. What does it mean? What did it mean then? Of course, the problem was that it meant two different things to the opposing sides of the Revolutionary era, hence the conflict. In England, representation meant that Parliament “represented” the whole of the country and that each member of that body was elected from their home to go forth and become a member of the whole. British politicians generally did not imagine that they were representing their hometown when they went to Parliament.

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President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has been deservedly criticized for her stated belief that minority judges make better decisions than “white males” because of their race, gender, ethnicity, and life experiences. The remark, repeated by Sotomayor in near identical form in speech after speech, has raised questions about her ability to be fair and impartial on the bench.

Surprisingly less criticized has been Sotomayor’s defense of her membership in an exclusive women’s club, The Belizean Grove.  A little over two weeks ago, Sotomayor responded to questions from Senators about the group with an answer that made even her champions at the New York Times blush.  Sotomayor said that her membership in the all-female group was appropriate because the group did not “invidiously discriminate” against men.

“I am a member of the Belizean Grove, a private organization of female professionals from the profit, nonprofit and social sectors.  The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex. Men are involved in its activities — they participate in trips, host events and speak at functions — but to the best of my knowledge, a man has never asked to be considered for membership.”

The Times pointed out that the group’s own website does not agree with Sotomayor’s characterization, describing the group as a, “constellation of influential women,” and seemingly containing no mention of any roles for men.  Like her explanation of her racial comments, Sotomayor’s defense of her membership raises more questions than answers.

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There is no mistaking that I stand against a single payer, government controlled healthcare system. The last thing I want is a person with the same attitude as a DMV worker in charge of my health! By now, everyone here has noticed what direction I lean, I’m sure. Nonetheless, I do like to check out what the other side says about what they want, too. This is a report on one of those voices, that of the folks at OpenLeft.com.

Suffice to say, they want socialized healthcare with no private aspect to the system at all. They want all hospitals run by government, all doctors working for government, all research facilities funded and controlled by government. And, if Mike Lux of OpenLeft can be believed, they also want the Republicans to butt out of the whole debate.

This disinterest in the American system of debate, compromise and governance is a typical aspect of the goals of the authoritarian left that is coming on like gangbusters in this healthcare debate. They want socialist healthcare and that is that. They are not interested in capitalism, not interested in freedom, not interested in debate or compromise, not interested in any sort of bi-partisanship… in essence they want a tyranny of the minority. They want the whole cake and they want to eat it, too.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has come under fire for the following controversial comment that she made in prepared remarks at the University of California-Berkeley.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Both the Obama Administration and the nominee herself have said that the comments would have been better “restated.”  If by “restated” the Administration meant “repeated,” then the revelation that Sotomayor made nearly the exact same remark twice before and twice after the 2001 Berkeley speech would not be a surprise.  As it is, however, Sotomayor’s views on the role of gender and ethnicity in her judicial decision making process has never been in more doubt.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made the rounds on Capitol Hill today, meeting with Senators of both parties. According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), Sotomayor addressed her controversial “wise Latina” remarks from 2001 during their meeting. Leahy would not say whether the nominee acknowledged that she misspoke when she made the comments, but her attempt to explain them only adds more confusion.

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From the time the Warren Commission report cited it for fostering the assassination of JFK up through the recent murder of an abortionist in Kansas, the left loves to writes about and decry what they refer to as a “climate of hate.”

Lately little more than code for “conservatives are talking,” the phrase “climate of hate” is ubiquitous, both in traditional media and on the left side of the internet. Each and every time a figure on the left is murdered, threatened, jostled on the subway, slips in the shower and gets a boo boo, or is just feeling a little blue, there is a blog and media blitz blaming Rush, Hannity, Coulter, and company for creating a “climate” of hate. Democrat blogging mothership DailyKos warns stridently and often of the murder and mayhem daily unleashed by the festering madness of conservative talk radio. Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo never miss the chance to sell the notion that rhetoric begets violence. The criticism of Obama paints a target on his back just as surely as Bill O’Reilly’s prolife position was directly responsible for the Kansas murder.

One can only conclude, therefore, that the left is trying to kill you.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is an advocate of allowing felons to vote. “Advocate” is a loaded word when referring to a judge, and with good reason. Judges are not supposed to allow their personal preferences influence their interpretation of the law and the facts at issue in a given case. But their really is no other way to describe Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in Hayden v. Pataki, a case brought by inmates in New York State under the federal Voting Rights Act.

The inmates were suing the State of New York for the right to vote, alleging New York’s prohibition of felon voting was discriminatory based on race and ethnicity. Sotomayor sided with the inmates in a four-paragraph long opinion, holding that the Voting Rights Act prohibited states from disenfranchising felons because the majority are black, Hispanic, and other minorities.

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Naturally from our vantage point, Barack Obama is a left-wing terror as president. To name just a few things, he is turning our system from one of capitalism to one of socialism, he is attempting to undermine the Constitution by placing an activist on the Supreme Court, he is weakening our national security by frittering away the gains of the previous administration and by bending over backwards for our enemies while constantly flipping off our allies, he is looking to destroy our national healthcare system by introducing a disastrous single payer system, and he is attempting to give anti-business unions the power to destroy what is left of the business community that he himself hasn’t gotten around to crushing as of yet. We on the right are alarmed by his trip down the ruinous road that Europe has already well traveled to rueful results.

One would think that the American left (or the anti-American left as the case may be) would be thrilled that their most fantasized about social, political, and economic sledgehammers were being wielded by their Obammessiah. But, one might be surprised to see that the extremists on the left are beginning to rumble in seething anger over the fact that, to date, Obama hasn’t gone fast enough or far enough to the extreme left to suit them. One of these wild-eyed, bomb-throwers has even just called for his resignation.

So, are we beginning to see waning the far left’s love affair with The One? Might this disappointment turn into the sort of lefty outrage that it did with Lyndon Baines Johnson? Will Barack Obama’s left wing flap him to death?

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been deservedly criticized for two of her public statements: one in which she labels herself a “wise Latina” and declares that her judgement is necessarily better than a “white male” judge because of her gender, ethnicity, and life experience; and another in which she says that “policy” is made in the courts. As shocking as the first sentiment is, at least it is honest. Likely, Judge Sotomayor really believes that her ability to judge cases is better than a man’s. Her entry in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary says that lawyers who have worked with and argued before believe Sotomayor has an “inflated opinion of herself.”

Most of the criticism of her second statement has focused on the notion that courts should not make policy, as the nominee believes. But it is what Sotomayor said immediately after that reveals her to be a perfect liberal activist judge. Worse, she displays a willingness to be dishonest about what she believes a justice’s role in the system should be for the sake of protecting her judicial future.

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That’s one of the questions being debated over at Politico’s “Arena” blog. Here’s my take, in a nutshell, on Sotormayor’s statement at Berkley in 2001 that the “richness of experience” of a “wise Latina woman” makes her more fit to judge (or more likely to “reach a better conclusion”) “than a white male”:

This is a whole bunch of nothing to most liberals, who accept as the natural order of things that empathy and common ethnic experience are more important in Constitutional law than dispassionate review and application of an objective standard. To conservatives, on the other hand, Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” statement is a something — if not necessarily a “big deal” — because it injects subjectivity into an objective process, and because it reflects an adoption of the race-and-gender-obsessed liberal worldview that denies any objective good outside of “diversity” for its own sake.

Given that Sotomayor’s speech from which the “wise Latina” quote was pulled was part of a symposium entitled “Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation,” it’s not surprising or offensive in the least that she discussed race as a topic. However, rather than using that pulpit to acknowledge that neither minority status nor an impoverished upbringing was the sine qua non of effectively interpreting legal texts and applying them to cases (her job as an appellate judge), Sotomayor chose to declare that, in her estimation, a white male simply isn’t as fit to render legal judgment as a “wise Latina woman.”

There’s a very clear reason why this statement has half of the nation up in arms. Ironically, the other half, which is brushing this aside and saying it’s no big deal, would be calling for the head of any white male who said his race and gender made him more qualified to judge than any “Latina woman.” The difference in that situation is that, had a white male said such a thing, conservatives would be condemning it as well — something race-and-gender-obsessed liberals simply can’t bring themselves to do with regard to Sotomayor’s statement, despite the obviousness of the double standard.

As the scandal over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s and other top Congressional Democrats’ bald-faced lies to the American people about what and when they knew of enhanced interrogation techniques enters its second week, questions are beginning to be raised about the Obama Administration’s role in the release of information contradicting Pelosi’s account of briefings she received.  Specifically, inquiring minds are wondering whether the White House signed off on CIA Director Leon Panetta’s internal agency memo responding to Pelosi’s accusation that the CIA had misled Congress in its briefings on the techniques.

That question has been answered.  The White House knew about the memo, and alerted Pelosi that it was going public.

“The Central Intelligence Agency gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., advanced warning before CIA Chief Leon Panetta sent a memo to employees at the spy agency that countered Pelosi’s claim that the agency lied to Congress about waterboarding.

A CIA official, but not Panetta, made the call to Pelosi. [...]

The aide said Pelosi protested Panetta’s memo on the call to no avail.”

Now, new questions are raised.  Pelosi must surely be wondering why a president of her own party is allowing the release of information that will make her look bad in the press; why he is remaining silent on the issue; and why he is taking no action to try and stem the feeding frenzy surrounding her.

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