Free Republic

FReepers...now here's the twist to the former "report suspicious emails to the White House" email addy of a few months ago. We all knew they would come up with another way to get email addresses of those who oppose anything this administration does or wants to do. On FaceBook, in the right sidebar, there sometimes appears an ad, actually a survey question that states "You are against Obama care, please take a minute to respond to our survey." So, I clicked on the ad. It showed a picture of a very stern nurse, with her arms folded, and the caption...

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

Alert: Dangerous amendment found. Max Baucus is still interested in pushing his plan forward as it offers a more moderate compromise to the House bill by excluding the public option and relaxing mandates. However steep taxes to 'cadillac' insurance plans and major reductions to Medicare spending has people concerned. I am still confused how Democrats can reduce spending on Medicare and claim that no rationing will take place. Anyone? Read the bill here: America's Healthy Future Act. (Catchy title, no?) Reading through a bill of this particular size can be daunting, so let's focus on the amendments as they are...

According to theHill.com it appears that the last vestige of Republican support has melted away in the form of Olympia Snowe who expressed concerns over the budgetary constraints the health reform bill poses. When a woman who voted for the 787 Stimulus package is concerned over price, you got a problem! Max Baucus feels will address some of the concerns put forth by critics of the reform, specifically the ability to pay for the program. In the speech to Congress, Obama suggested that Democrat's bill will not add one cent to the deficit and instead will match every expenditure with...

There was at least one hard truth about the Barack Obama presidency that should have become painfully evident the day after his hoped-for "game changing" address to a joint session of Congress. For sure, it's now a certainty that we're going to be looking at years of government by bumper sticker sloganeering. As if we didn't get enough of such stuff during last year's "historic" campaign (actually, the history of the country has been marked by a ton of dishonest, empty and vapid political campaigns almost exactly like Mr. Obama's), we're now being forced to sit through it all over...

A group of physicians have organized a protest march opposing Obama's health reform. They are looking for as many people as possible to join them. http://www.millionmedmarch.com/index.html

I have to admit that I'm curious to hear Barack Obama's plea for health care reform to both houses of the Congress tonight, though I really don't think we're going to hear much of anything new. Rather, I think he's going to try to present the same old soup that's just been heated up in a different bowl when it comes to his views on what he terms health insurance reform but which most Americans who have even a passing interest in the subject really know is an attempt to sneak through a nationalized health system similar to what the...

I'm no political scientist (well, I'm not the kind that gets paid to "do" such science at some university) but I'm fairly certain this last Labor Day holiday weekend -- where he could stand in front of adoring labor unions and bask in their adulation all day -- was one that Barack Obama wished could have gone on for, say, 2 or 3 years. I say this because it's my guess the man in the Oval Office most likely isn't looking forward to the return of the silly season (otherwise known as Congress going back into session) and all that...

OK, Here's what the GOP should do. Introduce their Health Care Reform Bill and rename it in Ted Kennedy's honor. After all, what Teddy said is not nearly important as what he did. After all, he had private health care (not public), could go to any doctor he wanted (not forced into being given a doctor), could use experimental treatment (and wasn't told that society couldn't afford his expensive treatment), and hung on for over a year after his diagnosis, (and wasn't told by Dr. Obama to just take a pill a year ago, do society a favor and die...

Monday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dT4gppEKg8&feature=channel 08/24 A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=485Sgua0Tlg&feature=channel 08/24 B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erhv3lh3EAs&feature=channel 08/24 C http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBv3q4ZXVng&feature=channel 08/24 D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXO83wnGJzs&feature=channel 08/24 E Tuesday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCriEiWLAhA&feature=channel 08/25 A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOu7AVIxE_o&feature=channel 08/25 B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPrBesgmxtU&feature=channel 08/25 C http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G757lgO-z84&feature=channel 08/25 D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP-lOaNpXk8&feature=channel 08/25E Wednsday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4O2_OuRBKo&feature=channel 08/26 A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrvPrSD0U0o&feature=channel 08/26 B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asvIeaDhDgc&feature=channel 08/26C http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuh6dzgUn0w&feature=channel 08/26 D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCT72hxFfSc&feature=channel 08/26 E

I sit here this morning, news feeds scrolling across my magic aggregator (the death of Ted Kennedy, of course, being today's top news story...more on him later today) pondering on the implications of what successful passage of something closely resembling H.R. 3200 ("ObamaCare") might mean to the most vulnerable among us. … Now that Sarah Palin has stuck a pushpin into the section of H.R. 3200 that for all intents and purposes was a camel's nose under the tent when it comes to encouraging or actively abetting Grandma to take her blue pill and get out of the way as...

I've been going through my correspondence and answering some of the inevitable pieces that always result when you call a President of the United States on his cynical ploy to bring the power of (his version of) God to his side in recruiting what the White House says are "thousands of religious leaders" who support what we popularly call "ObamaCare." Honestly, I never knew there were so many religion experts among the agnostic and atheist Left who’ve been sending me all these emails. … In the case of our president -- who all of a sudden has felt it necessary...

Today (August 22nd) is the day when a nationwide series of "Recess Rallies" are supposed to be held with the aim of convincing our elected leaders that maybe they might want to reconsider going off on another wild spending binge with money we don't even have and which we'll have to borrow in order to have that spending binge. Talk about a real-life "Confessions of a Shopoholic." If you have the time today, and you feel like you want to get involved, just go over to the link provided above or in the email below and see if there's a...

It appears, based upon the increasingly frenetic pronouncements from Congress (such as from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and from The Annointed One Himself), it appears that the juggernaut towards socialized health care has -- at least for now -- been stopped. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one has been unbridled arrogance of Congress and of Obama, based on decades of being able to lie through their teeth about virtually anything, and never get called on it, simply because they are Democrats. They are simply shell-shocked when they are confronted with a public who not only...

In a classic late-Friday afternoon leak -- in an attempt to stay below the media radar -- the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget plans to say next week that the 10-year budget deficit projection will increase by 2 trillion dollars from the previous 7 trillion dollar estimate. Undaunted by such a cataclysmic figure (it's only 2,ooo BILLION more dollars, after all), Barack Obama continued to press the case for a health care, uh...I mean, health insurance reform package that promises to add at least 1 trillion more dollars to that already impressive estimate. Now, how many here believe...

Combined with the overall lack of adult supervision in the Congress, I can pretty much say with a great deal of confidence (at least as much as Barack Obama has when he says he can deliver health care at lower cost, and with greater access and no change in your doctor) that what we’ve been seeing since last January is a concerted effort to yoke Americans even more to a dependency on their government that is not only ill-advised but also ultimately tragic. I say ”tragic” because programs like Cash for Clunkers and ObamaCare — both of which are nothing...

We note with some interest the new tack U.S. President Barack Obama is taking in trying to sell the American public on the idea of state-run health care, which is just the latest in a seemingly unending series of programs that have all the traits of yet another campaign by the President, though we don't know yet what he's running for this time. We suppose that Mr. Obama's religion-centered argument --in incorrectly trying to draw a moral imperative that practically demands government step in and do all those things citizens of charitable goodwill have been doing themselves for hundreds of...

A top Obama ally predicted Wednesday in an interview with ABC News that Democrats will lose their congressional majority in next year's midterm elections if they fail to put a health-care reform bill on President Obama's desk. "I think we're talking losing control of Congress," said Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union. "[The failure of health-care reform] would totally empower Republicans to kill all change." "It's hard to imagine the Democrats convincing the public that Republicans are to blame for health-care reform going down when the Democrats have such large majorities," he added. "After last year's...

I’ve been sitting around today — mainly because I can — like Alfred E. Neuman, and I’m ruminating on the follies surrounding the government’s heralded “Cash for Clunkers” effort to slide a little free cheese to auto dealers and their customers. Seems that more than a few of the sellers are now sitting around, drumming their fingers on their desks and desperately waiting for Uncle Sam to pay up what’s it’s promised to, in the form of up to 4500 dollars in reimbursement for each qualifying vehicle. Naturally enough — and surprising absolutely no one — there have been serious...

How do the party leadership and the president square this circle? They can't entirely, but they can go a long way toward doing so by using the so-called "reconciliation" procedure in the Senate, a budget-related mechanism that would allow the Democrats to pass much, though not all, of Obama's shifting wish list with a mere 50-vote simple majority. With that as the operative target, Senate leaders could move considerably leftward, while allowing butt-covering Senate Blue Dogs to shout "no" in the crowded theater. The leadership couldn't get the "public option," but they could sweeten the pot with generously-defined expansions of...