This is a new USA Today/Gallup poll out there that shows something very interesting. When asked, Americans chose both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton as the two women they admire the most.
Lets take a look at this, as I think it says some very interesting things about America. First, without a doubt, both Sarah and Hillary are feminist icons. They are both hard core, successful women. Both tough as nails.
No surprises in the way the polling shakes out, either. Gallup asked 1025 adult Americans to rate their most admired. These two came out on top in basically a dead heat, considering the +/- 4 point margin of error.
What woman living today do you admire the most?
Hillary Clinton......................16%
Sarah Palin...........................15%
Oprah Winfrey...............8%
Michelle Obama.............7%
Condoleezza Rice.......2%
Queen Elizabeth..........2%
Margaret Thatcher...1%
Maya Angelou.........1%
Of course, this was pretty partisan, as both ladies got the bulk of their support from their particular political parties, which is why this poll fascinates me. It’s a good look at how both liberals and conservatives look at the world.
It should be noted too, that more Republicans were apt to admire Hillary Clinton than democrats were to admire Sarah Palin. Roughly 6 percent of the Republicans asked admired Hillary, while only 1 percent of the democrats admired Sarah. Again, several things come into play here, at least in my mind. One, Conservatives, and Republicans are generally more open minded, and democrats are more apt to follow the party line, no matter what. One also has to factor in education and how informed Conservatives generally are vs democrats.
Frankly, you can count me in the list of those that has at least some admiration for Hillary Clinton. I blame our friends at HillBuzz.org for this! (Just kidding, these are some of the best folks out there. They honestly do have me looking at Clinton in a different light!)
I don’t agree with her on many issues, and sometimes have my doubts about her competency, but compared to most democrat/communist party members, she comes out looking pretty good. She’s by far the most competent member of the Obama administration.
One thing that fascinates me, especially considering both of these women truly are feminist icons, is how they got there. I also think it says a bit about Conservatives and liberals. And what matters to them.
First lets look at Hillary. Frankly, you know you are an icon, when you only need a first name, something both Hillary and Sarah pull off well! Mention either one, and people know who you are talking about, though, I give Hillary the edge here, as she’s enjoyed this status longer.
Hillary took a rather conventional path to her place in the world, even for a feminist. She met Bill in college, got married and started a family. Hillary has a degree in law, and was a practicing attorney. Of course, Bill was the politician and star of the family from the start. As he worked his way through Arkansas politics, she worked and raised their daughter. Then of course, she became First Lady of Arkansas, and then, of course, First Lady of the United States. And, no doubt, she was one of the more outspoken and active presidential spouses. Of course, like in any family, the wife is most certainly a husband’s strongest, most trusted adviser.
After Bill’s time in office was over, Hillary certainly made the most of her opportunity. She was able to use her time as First Lady to make a successful bid for the United States Senate, using that time honored tradition of trading on her successful husband’s name to get her foot in the door, and then her own ability to cross over the threshold.
This is not to take anything away from her either, it just is what it is. Hillary worked hard in the Senate, and proved that she hard earned a shot at the presidency, at least to those who support her. And she was considered the front runner. If not for Obama, she might indeed be the one sitting in the Oval Office right now. Personally, I think we’d be better off!
But she still did well, and while Obama didn’t choose her as Vice President, probably out of fear of being overshadowed, she was chosen as Secretary of State, not exactly a bad thing.
Sarah’s life and path was a little different. She was more of an athlete, and dreamed of being a sportscaster at ESPN. She was a leader even then, and as team captain, led her high school team to a state championship.
She met and married her high school sweetheart. A hard working, ruggedly handsome guy with whom she has five beautiful children. He would go one to be her trusted adviser, Sarah also put herself through school, working several jobs, as well as earning some scholarships. This, of course, is why it took her longer than many of her peers in politics. She has a degree in journalism.
Like most of us, she went to work. Among other things, she worked as a commercial fisherman, with Todd. A tough, physical, but rewarding profession. She’s the complete outdoorsman who hunts, fishes, and loves to run every chance she gets.
Finding a need to serve, she became interested in politics, and steadily went from a seat on the city council to Mayor, then made an unsuccessful run at Lt Governor, which led to a position as the state’s chief energy and environmental regulator, and that of course, led her to becoming one of America’s most successful Governors, which found her in the 2008 presidential race, as the VP nominee. Her path was that of a self made woman who really had no family or spousal name to trade on. Of course, she did enjoy the support of her entire family, all along the way.
Oh, and she got to be a sportscaster, as well. At least at the local level.
Two different paths, by two different feminine and feminist icons. That’s what makes this such an interesting poll, one that is interesting to contemplate.
This of course, brings both Hillary and Sarah to 2008 and the presidential election. Neither were successful in the respective bids, but both have endured.
Like Sarah Palin, Hillary was savaged by Barack Obama and his Chicago street thug tactics. They went after both her and Bill, America’s "first black President" as he was lovingly called by the dems until Obama showed up on the scene. With a new golden boy though, the Clintons, once the most powerful force in democrat politics, were now racists, "straight up", as Janeane Garofalo would say.
Of course, that wasn’t even a good warm up for what the Obama slime machine had ready to go after Sarah with. Frankly, you would have thought Sarah was the Presidential candidate, and John McCain didn’t even exist. Throughout the campaign, the real contest was between Obama and Palin. Those were the two who were always compared, McCain was almost an afterthought. And frankly, considering just how poorly McCain’s "all-star" campaign performed, and how severely they restricted Palin, never allowing Sarah to just be Sarah, It was a smart strategy by Obama and his team.
Other than that one odd breakdown though where Hillary cried a bit, maybe for effect, maybe just out of sheer frustration, she endured the hate piled on her by the Obama campaign, the ultra-left wing radicals that now make up the party’s base, as well as the entire media.
Then she went to work for Obama, becoming Secretary of State, third in line to the presidency. Not too shabby.
Sarah also endured. Frankly though, and I’ve said this before, and surely will say again, in the 50 years I wandered this planet I have never seen the effort to destroy someone that I have seen thrown at Sarah Palin. You had everything Obama and his weasels could throw together, the most vile, ugly, dirtiest Chicago style hate and slime they could muster, followed by an over the top assault by the dishonest media, and of course, the recruitment, by the campaign, and then continued coordination from the White House after the election, of the Alaska Mafia., the radical bloggers and serial ethics charge filers.
Sarah of course, after watching Obama and the Mafia make her job in Alaska totally undoable, as they stole millions in taxpayer dollars, famously stepped down from office, in what is turning out to not only be an incredibly smart and self sacrificing move for Alaska, but also the shrewdest political move most of us have ever seen. This truly shows that Sarah has incredible political instincts.
Since stepping down, Sarah has become a record setting, best selling author, who is in her fifth straight week atop the New York Times Best Seller List, the spot she debuted in.
Sarah has also become the most popular Conservative in America, hit the talk show circuit, even doing a gag with Conan and Bill Shatner, and is now considered the absolute favorite to win the 2012 GOP nomination, as well as the presidency.
More importantly though, is the fact that just as the Obama campaign never let up on her, even after the election, she never let up on Obama. Unrestrained by the McCain campaign, and just being herself, Sarah has been on the attack ever since. No quarter is given to Obama, Congress or any of their insane ideas.
Sarah has turned a social network into her personal domain, and her every note to her over 1 million Facebook supporters is picked up by all of the news media and quoted world-wide. She has shown a knack for condensing relatively complicated issues down to their rawest, simplest forms for maximum impact.
Her first comment on ObamaCare and the inevitable rationing of health care, especially to the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill, birthed what might be the most important phrase of the year, if not the decade. "Death panels" will forever be the phrase most associated with ObamaCare.
Of course, as with everything Sarah, "death panels" stirred incredible controversy. (Hint: it was supposed to) Those on the left called her every name in the book, some even printable. So strong was the attempt to discredit her, the President actually felt he had to single her out, little Sarah from Wasilla, a private citizen, in his joint session in front of Congress. The dog and pony festival of lies he put on back in the summer that prompted Congressman Joe Wilson to actually call him on it, giving us the decade’s second best phrase "you lie!" This one is used often now after Obama says anything more complicated and involved than "good morning" or "hello."
Anyhow, not only did she drive the democrat/communists crazy with this incredible succinct and accurate description of health care rationing, she also embarrassed the Rockefeller, country club, RINO wing of the Republican Party. Of course, embarrassing milquetoast moderates is fairly simple.
Now some tried to make it complicated, or were just dumb, or maybe they were trying to muddy the waters, by claiming it was all about "end of life counseling, which is certainly a troubling issue, but not where she was going.
In the end, two things have happened, the far left St Petersburg, Florida newspaper proclaimed "death panels" the "lie of the year" while simaltaniously Senate Majority Leader, and hack, Harry Reid placed a questionable provision in his version of ObamaCare that would make it nearly impossible to take the "death panels" out of the picture...ever!
Funny how liberals always try and have it both ways! "There’s no such thing as ‘death panels’ and oh, by the way, it is now impossible (and illegal) to take the ‘death panels’ out of ObamaCare!"
For her part, where most people would have backed down, Sarah managed to mention death panels every chance she got! In her latest, she mentioned them no less than four times, shoving those "death panels" right up their...... well......you know where!
Long story short, Sarah has shown she is not afraid to fight what she believes in. To put it all out there, not hold back, or play it safe. She has proven she is politically courageous where others are incredibly timid. These are not the times for timidity and political cowardice.
We have seen some really interesting turns too. The media is acting a little different, treating her more seriously, even somewhat complementary. And not just the conservative media. A lot of this is because people are realizing what a complete and total disaster Obama is. He has managed to not only further anger conservatives, and totally alienate the so-called independents, he’s even got many of the far left slingin’ snot!
You really, really have to work hard to completely and absolutely piss everyone off , so congratulations Obama, you’ve not only found your true calling, you’ve managed to unite the country, just not in the way you imagined!
Again, what we are witnessing, with Sarah, is two fold. Part of this is her finally being able to be herself, and make her case to the American people, on her terms. Turns out, she incredibly good at that.
Second is all of those drunk on hopenchange are now sobering up and have one hell of a hang over. They are realizing that every single prediction Sarah made at her RNC speech, as well as on the stump, has come to pass. Now is the time for the big "I told ya so!"
This is leading to wild editorials from liberals such as David Michael Green, a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York, where he says things like this:
You know, I've really been trying not to write an article every other week about all the things I don't like about Barack Obama.
But the little prick is making it very hard.
Like any good progressive, I've gone from admiration to hope to disappointment to anger when it comes to this president. Now I'm fast getting to rage.
How much rage? I find myself thinking that the thing I want most from the 2010 elections is for his party to get absolutely clobbered, even if that means a repeat of 1994. And that what I most want from 2012 is for him to be utterly humiliated, even if that means President Palin at the helm. That much rage.
Think this guy would have said something like that a year ago? You can read it all here, it’s worth it!
Of course, among Conservatives, Sarah has become the absolute favorite. She is the defacto leader of the movement.
Politico, which leans left, just ended a reader poll. Out of nearly 17,000 votes, Sarah was chosen by 47 % of the readers as the biggest winner of 2009. Number two was Obama at 19%. "Someone Else" was third!
In the People's Republic Of San Francisco, Sarah's book, Going Rogue, is number three in sales! This in a town were many booksellers were proud to proclaim they would not even offer it for sale!
Even far left Ed Schultz over at Obama Central, MSNBC proclaimed her the biggest winner, going so far as to say "Show me what she has done wrong!"
This is pretty strong language.
By anyone’s measure, whatever negative feelings that have been out there about Sarah Palin, slowly, methodically, and most assuredly, she is turning those around.
So let me end by saying this. Both Sarah and Hillary deserved to be called the most admired women in America. They earned it!
These two are both the biggest winners of 2009, by far.
Hillary is a big winner, because she’s managed to avoid the absolute taint that has hung over the Obama administration since day one. She might be the only one to walk away from this fiasco with something that resembles a career.
Of course, I’m incredibly biased and in my mind, Sarah Palin is the biggest winner of not only 2009, but of the entire decade. Absolutely everyone, but her strongest fans wrote her off when McCain lost the election in 2008.
This became a weekly ritual, anytime her name was mentioned. "X" was going to end her career, no matter what "X" was!
Then she "quit" as Governor. Oh my, political suicide. Yeah, right. Incredibly savvy move that completely changed the game on Obama and his Chicago street thug strategy of trying to stop her before she ever had a chance to come after him. This, it seems, has turned out to be a flawed strategy. There’s a reason why "they" say "let sleeping dogs lie" or "let well enough alone."
Up until midway through her book tour, we were told Sarah’s career was over. Then something happened. I don’t know if it was the big crowds, the great interviews, yucking it up with Shatner, or just the realization that this is one sharp woman, who is right more than she is wrong. One thing is for sure, there has been an incredible shift in the way most of the nation looks at Sarah Palin, and that’s not only a good thing for Sarah Palin, but a good thing for America.
America needs strong, fearless, and ethical leadership. That describes Sarah to a tee.
As we prepare to start a new year, and a new decade, America has found a true leader we can all get behind, and believe in. Someone who has the courage and ability to bring this nation away from the brink of destruction, and get it back on track.
America’s brightest and most exciting days are ahead of us, and Sarah Palin will be playing a major roll, bringing us not only energy and excitement, but the common sense and leadership we need to see this happen.
Not only was Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab on several watch lists, and from a real hotbed of al Qaeda terrorist activity, the guy’s own father warned the embassy that his son had become radicalized by militant Islamic fanatics. Never mind Abdul showed up with no luggage, tried to board with no passport, and paid for the one-way ticket to Detroit in cash. Who goes to Detroit without a ticket out of there anyway?
As bad as all of this is though, and this is a serious indictment on our entire terror fighting process, it also highlights another issue, energy independence.
Long before Sarah Palin made "death panels" a household word, long before she was even picked as the John McCain’s running mate, Sarah made energy independence a centerpiece of her message, her career. Sarah didn’t just talk the talk either, within hours of stepping into her new office as the Governor of Alaska, she began working on making the decades long dream of a natural gas pipeline to the lower 48 a reality.
It was Sarah’s dream to get Alaska’s 100's of trillions of cubic feet of clean burning natural gas out of the ground and into use. She was able to work out all of the issues and now the pipeline is on track to become a reality.
Of course, Sarah’s message on energy independence isn’t just an economic one. Now it’s true, we send between $700 billion and $1 trillion dollars annually overseas. The problem is many times it’s to nations that not only hate us, but use our own dollars to fund efforts to undermine us as a nation. In other words, they use our dollars to fund terror, world wide, against the United States, and our allies.
Even worse, we are forced to act gingerly, even timidly, on many issues, lest we cause major problems with big oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia. We make those guys mad, and they can shut us off, or raise prices to the moon, destroying our already devastated economy. (That is if Obama and the rest of the democrat/communists don’t beat them to it!)
Brian Ross, from ABC News, has this little gem on two of the planners of the Christmas Day attack:
Two al Qaeda Leaders Behind Northwest Flight 253 Terror Plot Were Released by U.S.
Former Guantanamo Prisoners Believed Behind Northwest Airlines Bomb Plot; Sent to Saudi Arabia in 2007:
Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.
American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.
Art therapy rehabilitation program. Really? Who’s running our war on terror efforts, Pee Wee Herman? This of course, just points out the absurdity of our entire approach to this issue. It should also be the final nail in Obama’s grand scheme to move Gitmo to Chicagoland, and make his corrupt buddies richer off of tax payer dollars that it will take to basically convert an unused prison into a "supermax" job.
There are issues with much of the Middle East, for sure, but by far, Saudi Arabia is the biggest problem, and a hot bed for radicals. Well funded radicals. But we are powerless, because we need them for the oil they have, so we must "play nice" with them.
There are other nations, such as Venezuela, who are teaming up with bad actors like Iran, and Russia, forming alliances that will further weaken the United States, and her allies. These relationships will also allow Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to exert power over weaker South American states, thus spreading communism and further destroying what freedoms people in that region have. It will be a disaster.
I know Obama and his group of thugs, along with Al Gore, the Bernie Madoff of the climate change hoaxers, are doing their level best to keep Americans from using their own God given natural resources, all in an effort to enrich themselves, and their friends, by lying to the American people.
First they create a "crisis" in the name of the totally laughable claim of "global warming," then, they just so happen to have ready made solutions, and the promises of completely non-existent "green jobs" that will "grow the economy," if only we will allow them to destroy the one we have now.
These are really just schemes to enrich themselves, and their closest friends. We’ve already written about the Chicago Climate Exchange an already in place carbon credit trading scheme, where billions of dollars worth of carbon credits will be traded on the open market. Owing to the fact this thing is in Chicago, does one even need to ask if there is any corruption, or "friends of Obama" involved in this deal?
Al Gore has already made millions off of his hoax, and stands to make billion through the cap and trade schemes. Past that, big Obama supporters like General Electric, which owns NBC/Universal, will also clean up, so to speak, as they make many of the implements of the global warming scam.
Energy: Earlier this year, Congress approved a scheme to pour $80 billion — on top of the tens of billions already spent — into renewables. A government report released last week indicates the money will be wasted.
Renewable energy is the shiny gem that everyone wants but no one can have. Not even a president. Campaigning last year in Lansing, Mich., President Barack Obama said that it was his goal for the U.S. to generate 10% of its electric power from renewable sources by 2012 and 25% by 2025. But he cannot, by the force of will or executive order, change the laws of physics and economics.
America has long relied on fossil fuels to power its economy. Oil, natural gas and coal provide about 84% of the nation's energy.
And for good reason. They are plentiful and typically easy to retrieve, and, consequently, cheap.
At the other end of the spectrum are renewable sources such as solar, wind, biomass and geothermal. They supply only about 4% of our energy, the remainder coming from hydro and nuclear power.
An axis of environmentalists and Democrats want to change this ratio, because, according to the usual complaint, we depend too heavily on the fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide.
Trouble is, the market for renewables is poor. Few want to use the inefficient, unreliable and expensive sources. But that hasn't slowed the renewable energy campaign, which has succeeded in persuading the public that renewables are a sensible energy source and convincing Congress to fund supporters' daydreams.
The government can continue to "invest" in renewables, and the dreamers will keep using public money to find the magic formula. But little will change over the next 25 years.
The federal Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook says in 2035, demand for liquid fuels will increase by almost 10% over 2008 levels, natural gas by nearly 7% and coal by 12%.
While use of renewables will increase as well — by 81%, including hydropower — they will still be unable to unseat our dominant energy source. Fossil fuels' share of consumption will fall by only six percentage points, from 84% to 78% by 2035. Renewables will provide about 8%.
It's clear that renewables, which have benefited from government subsidies far in excess of what fossil fuels have received, can't compete in today's market and won't be faring much better a quarter century from now, according to the government's own reckoning.
It's just as clear that throwing taxpayers' dollars at renewables has produced little progress.
Spain provides perhaps the best lesson. The government there has spent $43 billion on solar energy projects, yet solar provides less than 1% of the country's electric power. It was a bad investment.
Chasing the wind is just as ineffective. When Congress temporarily eliminated wind power credits in 1999, 2001 and 2003, the number of new turbine projects fell sharply. The Texas Public Policy Foundation says that providing a modest level of wind power in that state would cost taxpayers at least $60 billion through 2025.
Biomass is also a poor substitute. It's both primitive — its sources are wood and trash — and an environmental nightmare, devouring in some cases as much as 10 times the land mass than needed to create a wind farm. And wind farms themselves are big land eaters.
Geothermal energy, considered "free" energy from the earth, is also a space eater that requires heavy capital investment, which is often hard to recoup. In California earlier this month, a geothermal project was abandoned, despite a $6 million grant from the Energy Department and roughly $30 million in venture capital.
Geothermal has, as well, some environmental drawbacks. The day before the California project was closed, Swiss government officials permanently shut down a geothermal project in Basel because, the New York Times reports, "of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007."
Maybe some of these renewables will one day be cheap and reliable. Technological advances will help. But today they are neither cheap nor reliable, and, based on the government's report, won't be for another generation.
Until they can compete, the country has to rely on proven sources: fossil fuels and nuclear power. To force cutbacks on these so that renewables can get a bigger market share, and to continue to fund projects with public money, is foolish and irresponsible.
This is a huge waste of tax payer dollars, something that Congress is very good at. Spain, by the way, promised millions of "green jobs" but instead saw only increases in the unemployed, once again proving that if one listens very closely to what the liberals recommend, and then does the exact opposite, things will usually work out much better. Spain’s quest to be "green" has destroyed their economy. Cap and trade schemes have crippled the entire European Union, as well.
It would be one thing if the United States wasn’t sitting on massive oil reserves, reserves that rival the biggest oil producing nations, as well as a century’s worth of natural gas, and several hundred years worth of coal. But we are, and it’s criminal that we aren’t using these resources.
As a practical matter, anyone care to guess what the effect of keeping an extra $700 billion to $1 trillion in the American economy would do for the American people? How about how it would effect state sponsors of terror, who rely on American dollars to fund these efforts?
But of course, there is major corruption going on in these industries, and, as usual, you can trace this back to Barack Obama and his puppet master, former Nazi collaborator, and multi-billionaire, George Soros. Soros, the self proclaimed "owner of the democrat party," funds many of the left wing organizations that drive the democrat/communist party machine. They are truly too many to mention, but groups like MoveOn.org, and even ACORN benefit from his billions. Suffice it to say, if there is a prominent democrat/communist cause, or group, you will find Soros involved.
With that kind of money comes power and influence. And Soros wields incredible influence over his hand picked puppet, Barack Obama. Back in August the big talk was Petrobas, and the huge deal Obama made with the Brazilian Oil Giant. Obama "loaned" Petrobas $10 billion American tax payer dollars so they could drill offshore, something Obama and his thugs fight tooth and nail against in our own country.
America is rich in oil, right off our own coast line, but we are told we will literally destroy the world, and all of mankind, plus all of the fishes in the sea, and the polar bears, of course, if we dare to drill for that oil.
This made me wonder why, if drilling for our oil would be such a disaster, could one drill off the coast of Brazil without such harmful effects. Are the waters magical down there? Is there some sort of fairy dust that floats in the air that keeps the evil oil companies from destroying everything? Nope, turns out the answer is a lot simpler, and well, a lot more predictable.
You see literally just days before our most corrupt president in the nation’s history was so generous with our money, his boss, George Soros, became the major stockholder in Petrobas! In fact, it became Soros’ largest holding. Funny how having Soros involved made all of the environmental concerns go away, huh? You can read more, including a statement from Sarah, here.
But wait, there’s more! Remember the Copenhagen sham of a conference? Well, our buddy George was over there as well, causing all sorts of problems for those who wish to bring clean, and dare I say "green" natural gas to market. Under the guise of "saving the planet" Soros, and his enablers, sought to block all efforts.
Energy: An oil company wants to invest its profits in clean-burning American natural gas. A Hungarian billionaire and a "green" politician want to stop it. This is the real Climate-gate scandal.
While the greenies of the world united in Copenhagen to talk about the weather, emitting a Third World-country-size chunk of greenhouse gases to gather there, the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil, was doing something about it.
On Dec. 14, Exxon agreed to buy XTO Energy, a natural gas firm, in a deal valued at $41 billion. XTO is one of the leaders in something called "fracking" technology, in which water, sand and additives are pumped into the ground to unlock trillions of feet of natural gas previously thought to be unobtainable.
This is what energy companies really do with their profits. They find more energy, then sell it to you.
While the technique is not new, the technology exploiting it is.
XTO has helped develop new technologies that let it drill a single well 9,000 feet and then bore horizontally through shale formations to unlock the natural gas trapped in the porous rock. The rock is fractured and the gas is pushed into accessible pockets whence it can be extracted with a minimal surface footprint.
Because of these new technologies, it is estimated that the U.S. sits on 83% more recoverable natural gas than was thought in 1990.
The Barnett Shale rock formations of Texas and Louisiana, the Bakken Shale formation in Montana and North Dakota, and the Marcellus Shale formation running through New York and Pennsylvania and other states may hold as much as 2,000 trillion cubic feet of this clean-burning, domestically produced fuel.
We are the Saudi Arabia of shale.
At current use, we have an estimated 90-year supply, if we are allowed to get at it.
Slam dunk? Hardly. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., one of the sponsors of the job- and economy-killing Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and no fan of domestic energy, wants to hold hearings on the alleged environmental dangers of the new technology.
There's been an organized campaign to discredit fracking as an environmental danger to the nation's water supply. Ed Lasky at American Thinker has traced a tangled web of deception that rivals the "hide the decline" campaign by the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.
A media group called Pro Publica has done what it calls "investigative journalism" and exposed the alleged dangers of fracking in a series of stories it has provided free to cash-starved media outlets and newspapers. The first expose was an attack on energy companies developing the Marcellus Shale.
Pro Publica was started by billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler, who, along with billionaire George Soros, funded the left-wing Center for American Progress, run by John Podesta and touted as the Obama administration's "idea factory."
Soros owns a major stake in a company called InterOil, a company that has discovered a large natural gas field in Papua, New Guinea, with which American shale resources would compete.
Soros would rather have us import his liquefied natural gas than develop our own. His allies in the media, the environmental movement and the Democratic caucus are all too eager to exploit public fears to do it.
Roger Willis owns a hydraulic fracturing company in the Pennsylvania town of Meadville. He says thousands of frack jobs have been done in rock formations above and below the Marcellus Shale in New York state with no aquifer damage.
"This 60-year-old technique has been responsible for 7 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," according to Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. "In hydraulic fracturing's 60-year history, there has not been a single documented case of contamination."
Whether some are trying to hide the decline in global temperatures or the abundance of clean-burning domestic natural gas, it's a scandal. If we're serious about both carbon emissions and energy independence, let's stop this nonsense and get the fracking gas.
Another story, another corrupt democrat/communist, and another case for severely limiting the amount of time one can "serve their country" in Washington. Let’s face it, crooks and usurpers like Gore, Obama, and Soros would have a harder time influencing policy if Congress worked as the founders intended, and actual citizens served a term or two, and then went home, forced to live under the laws, and conditions, they help to create. But that’s another story for another day.
I know this started out as a discussion of energy and national security, but as one sees, all of this is intertwined. As they say, "it’s complicated!"
Doesn’t have to be though, that’s for damned sure! First, we must get rid of the corruption in Washington, no matter how hard it is, how much time and effort it takes. We all know this entire global warming scam is nothing more than a way for a select few to enrich themselves on the backs of normal hard working people world wide. Greed and corruption has been with us since the beginning of time, but the current president and Congress have certainly set the bar at a whole new level for future politicians to shoot for.
Heads need to roll and jail cells need to be filled. Say,.... maybe we CAN buy that prison in Chicagoland after all. That way Obama will feel at home while he serves out his sentence after he is convicted of his High Crimes and Misdemeanors. He will have a lot of company there if we do this right! Gore could be his cell mate!
Next we need to look at the suggestions that Sarah Palin has been making for years now. Sarah has an incredible commonsensical approach to the whole problem that will work. Obviously, we need an "all of the above" approach to the energy issues at hand. And well, we also would like to have clean energy, please.
We are now spending not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars, amounts of money that are so large that no one can really comprehend fully them. Obama and his corrupt Congress have spent more money in one year than all of our previous presidents and congresses have in the nation’s 233 year history, COMBINED! For what? For failed programs that do little but put us further in debt, and cost more jobs. Nothing is created, we might as well just pile the money up and burn it. At least it would keep us warm this winter!
For what we are throwing away on all of these idiotic programs we could start a crash program that would guarantee energy independence, and our national security for the foreseeable future. We need a program similar to the one that saw us go from small rockets that blew up more often than not, to walking on the surface of the moon, in less than a decade. We need a serious "all of the above" approach.
We have the oil, and we know how to get it. Stop the bureaucratic nonsense and "drill baby drill" make it a matter of national security, and tell all of the crazed groups who would try and stop it through law suits, and what have you, to go take a powder.
Next, get that natural gas to market, and instead of wasting efforts on silly things like electric cars, work on converting the fleet to natural gas. I could write a book on why natural gas is the right solution for much of our automotive needs, but will save that for later. Suffice it to say, for now, that this is well proven technology. The Big 3 automakers, Ford, GM, and Chrysler, have made cars, trucks, and buses that run on compressed natural gas (CNG) for decades. With today’s engine management technology, coupled with exciting new things like direct injection for gasoline engines, the time is right to move from using gasoline exclusively for motorfuel. As a bonus, diesel engines can be converted to run, and run well, on CNG too. Natural gas burns very cleanly and would reduce (actual) harmful emissions greatly as well as extending engine life.
What people forget about electric cars is the fact that the have been around since the invention of the automobile. They were actually relatively popular in the early years, especially among women, as the first Model T Fords were a serious pain to drive, and maintain. By the 1920's though, the manufacturers,, and the public, came to realize they just weren’t the practical solution to transportation needs. Ever since, a dedicated few have sought to prove the consensus wrong. The results:
After billions spent, and Lord knows how many attempts, the mechanics of it all, and the results are really no different than the were 100 years ago. An all electric vehicle is still no more practical. It still has a very limited range of travel, top speed, and driveability. Oh, and they cost a lot of money, and since they must be plugged in to the existing electrical grid, they use the same "dirty" electricity that all of the greens are losing their minds over today!
Oh sure, you can buy a hybrid, but they are underpowered, overpriced, and only work because they also have a gasoline engine for when you actually want to drive them somewhere. Other than making yourself feel better, and lightened your bank account unnecessarily, you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing. Oh, and those batteries? Major environmental hazzards. Wait till the landfills start filling up with those deals. Talk about pollution!
Natural gas fixes this problem. It’s proven technology that’s been with us for decades. It works, and would take minimal effort to get the infrastructure in place to make it happen. Many larger municipalities already run most of their city owned fleet on CNG, and other countries have retail outlets that dispense the product, such as this one in the Czech Republic:
Of course, any discussion that talks energy, must talk nuclear. We must do it. France gets nearly 80 percent of it’s electricity from nuclear energy. France! If France can do it, the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, most certainly can.
It always amuses me: We actually aid rouge nations, nations who want to develop nuclear weapons to destroy the world, by helping them set up civilian nuclear plants "to generate electricity," and yet, we are absolutely verboten from building our own cheap, safe, and really clean sources of nuclear power. It is the very definition of insanity.
Again, move the enviro-nuts out of the way and start expediting the process. Instead of wasting billions on "cash for clunkers" or trillions trying to destroy the best health care system on the planet, lets make it our goal to get 80 percent of our electricity from nuclear power, in say, a decade!
In the mean time, it is said that we have several hundreds of years worth of coal. It is actually our most plentiful source of energy in this country. It goes without saying that we need to develop clean coal technology to it’s fullest.
Now, while all of this is going on, we absolutely should look at other ways to generate energy, and power our cars and trucks. That quest should never stop. But we need better ideas than what we have now, because so far, we don’t have true workable solutions, solutions that can work in a free market. In other words, solutions that will work without billions, or trillions in tax payer funded subsidies.
Now the other benefit from all of this is Joe Biden’s favorite three letter word "J-O-B-S." And I’m not talking the Barack Obama style temporary jobs, or jobs in government. I’m talking quality, durable jobs. Jobs that will pay Americans a good wage for a good days work, the kind of jobs that built America in the first place.
Energy is the single most important issue to society in general, and the United States in particular. The entire world runs on energy. We simply can’t function without it. Even more important, something that most folks overlook, even if we stopped using oil today, as a source of fuel, almost every product you use, every medicine you take, has some form of petroleum in it’s base. Oil isn’t going away!
We need to get serious for many reasons. A realistic energy policy, one like Sarah Palin has been touting for years, will not only give us economic security, but security from terrorism, as well. It will make America independent and able to look out for her own interests rather than having to bow before ruthless dictators world wide, just to keep the flow of our economy’s lifeblood coming. We will no longer fund terror, and we will no longer have to be gentle with nation states who continue to sponsor terror.
A coherent and comprehensive energy policy will create millions upon millions of well paying, durable jobs, for generations to come. The push to attain this goal will stimulate our economy right now, and create real jobs, right now.
It’s time to "Drill Baby, Drill" and do "all of the above" as well.
Came across this wonderful Christmas message the Great Ronald Reagan gave to the nation. This was 1981, The Reagan family's first Christmas in the White House. For those that remember, this was of great comfort to the nation during some rough times, I find it of great comfort in these times as well.
The times are tough, and the Republic in grave danger, but we are indeed an nation built on faith and freedom. Reagan's words serve to remind us that the American spirit, along with divine providence, shall always prevail.
Sarah Palin also has an inspirational message to us all:
Merry Christmas!
Todd and I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! The Palin family is blessed to all be together among family and friends this Holiday – and that is one of the greatest gifts of all. But while this is a beautiful time of the year for families and friends around the world, we recognize that it is a difficult time of the year for so many others – especially this year. May we remember all those who are lonely or in need on this blessed night, and please join us in saying a special prayer for those away from their loved ones in the service of a grateful nation. May God bless you all and continue to bless our great country.
- Sarah Palin
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)
May everyone have a Merry Christmas and may everyone be blessed with all of the love and joy this time brings to our lives. May God bless you all.
More like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with this bunch!
At what should be the happiest, most wonderfully magical time of the year, a great evil has gripped the nation. The most corrupt Congress in our nation’s history in lockstep with the most corrupt and evil man to ever step foot in the Oval Office are committing acts that amount to no less than treason.
As we wrote earlier, in a piece entitled Death of the Republic, some serious maneuvering by Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid slipped some language into the already grossly unconstitutional Obamacare fiasco that would prohibit future Congresses from making changes or repealing key measures of this legislation.
As you can imagine, the outrage over this is through the roof nationwide.
Ironically, and well...even laughably, this provision that Reid and the other communists want to make sure is never, ever modified, or repealed, is the very death panel that the communists and their lap dogs in the corrupt, Obamacentric media have been working night and day, with almost superhuman effort, to convince the public that it never existed!!
It was even deemed "lie of the year" by the radical left wing media!
Sarah has now weighed in on the subject:
Midnight Votes, Backroom Deals, and a Death Panel
Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid’s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what’s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing. Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. Senator DeMint said:
"This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law. I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates. I mean, we want to bind future congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future congresses."
In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing "death panel" from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to "bend the cost curve" and keep health care spending down?
The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:
"It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care."
Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call "death panels" the "lie of the year," this type of rationing – what the CBO calls "reduc[ed] access to care" and "diminish[ed] quality of care" – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.
This health care bill is one of the most far-reaching and expensive expansions of the role of government into our lives. We’re talking about putting one-seventh of our economy under the government’s thumb. We’re also talking about something as intimate to our personal well-being as medical care.
This bill is so unpopular that people on the right and the left hate it. So why go through with it? The Senate is planning to vote on this on Christmas Eve. Why the rush? Though we will begin paying for this bill immediately, we will see no benefits for years. (That’s the trick that allowed the CBO to state that the bill won’t grow the deficit for the next ten years.)
The administration’s promises of transparency and bipartisanship have been broken one by one. This entire process has been defined by midnight votes on weekends, closed-door meetings with industry lobbyists, and payoffs to politicians willing to sell their principles for sweetheart deals. Is it any wonder that Americans are so disillusioned with their leaders in Washington?
This is about politics, not health care. Americans don’t want this bill. Americans don’t like this bill. Washington has stopped listening to us. But we’re paying attention, and 2010 is coming.
I love this woman! The radical communist scumbags in the media, Congress, and the White House keep saying she's crazy with the death panel talk, trying to intimidate her, and she comes right back and shoves it up their asses!
BOOM, taste my nightstick!
Sarah, of course, is correct here. This is all about politics and nothing about health care. This is an evil, wicked thing that is being visited on the American people as we get ready to celebrate the birth of Christ, our Lord and Savior.
At the end of her note, Sarah references an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal that must be read:
Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve. And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.
Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.
Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.
The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.
***
• Health costs. From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.
The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.
These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like "community rating" because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.
As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed "waste," even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. "The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice," the Stanford professor wrote.
• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.
This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they'll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.
Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so "substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance" that companies like WellPoint might need to "be considered part of the federal budget."
With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington's hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, "our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all," as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.
"The Senate isn't hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day," Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they're allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will "destroy over 200 of America's best and safest hospitals."
• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare's unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost "only" $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.
Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid's final machinations. Job creation, here we come.
Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn't start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won't happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association's priority was eliminating this "sustainable growth rate" but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.
The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run "exchanges" that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses.
As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.
For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also "a new welfare and tax system" that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into "contractors" or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into "free" health care, taxpayer costs will explode.
• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as "ideologues" by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn't be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration's own Medicare actuaries.
Others got hush money, namely Nebraska's Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare's unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that "will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees," as he put it in a letter to his state's junior Senator.
So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don't have a Senator who's the 60th vote for ObamaCare?
***
"After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality in the United States of America," Mr. Obama said on Saturday. He's forced to claim the mandate of "history" because he can't claim the mandate of voters. Some 51% of the public is now opposed, according to National Journal's composite of all health polling. The more people know about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes.
The tragedy is that Mr. Obama inherited a consensus that the health-care status quo needs serious reform, and a popular President might have crafted a durable compromise that blended the best ideas from both parties. A more honest and more thoughtful approach might have even done some good. But as Mr. Obama suggested, the Democratic old guard sees this plan as the culmination of 20th-century liberalism.
So instead we have this vast expansion of federal control. Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.
These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.
This health care bill is a complete and total disaster for the nation. It destroys the Republic forever. In this writer’s opinion, anyone who puts their name to this legislation is guilty of treason and deserves the harshest penalties allowed by law.
One last thing, as both Sarah and myself mentioned death panels here, I just got an e-mail linking to a nice piece from the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, that backs up what we’ve been writing about here, and Sarah has been saying from the start:
Death Panels? Sarah Palin Was Right
Posted by Alan Reynolds
PolitiFact.com gave Sarah Palin their "Lie of the Year" award for warning on August 7 that the Democrat’s idea of "cost containment" implied rationing by "death panels."
The self-described fact-checking web site of the St. Petersburg Times claimed Palin was criticizing a provision in the House bill under which "Medicare would pay for doctors’ appointments for patients to discuss living wills, health care directives and other end-of-life issues."
The claim that Governor Palin confused one-on-one counseling between doctors and patients with any sort of "panel" was always ridiculous on its face. Indeed, that claim should itself have been a leading candidate for "Lie of the Year." Yet Palin’s critics kept on equating death panels with counseling throughout the year, as though they could not even begin to understand plain English.
In a column called "Reporting the Lies," Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein wrote, "Before Sarah Palin talked about death panels, no one knew about Sen. Johnny Isakson’s quiet crusade to persuade Medicare beneficiaries to adopt living wills."
Adopting a living will requires a lawyer, not a doctor, so there must have been more to the crusade than just that. There is some reason to wonder if the crusaders intended to promote penny-pinching advice like President Obama’s famous suggestion that perhaps grandma should skip the expensive operation and take a cheap pain pill instead (generic, of course).
In any case, no single physician’s advice involves any panel, deathly or otherwise. Palin was clearly worried about rationing by some government-appointed group, panel or board of experts — such the (currently) powerless panel that recently suggested fewer and later breast exams, or the Senate bill’s potentially more lethal Independent Payment Advisory Board
The shameless hoax that Palin had confused individual consulting with rationing by a panel was repeated endlessly. By November, the Washington Post was treating this obvious canard as an established fact: "Proposed health-care reform legislation includes a provision that allows Medicare to pay for "end-of-life" counseling for seniors and their families who request it. The provision — which Sarah Palin erroneously described as "death panels" for seniors — nearly derailed President Obama’s health-care initiative."
How could anyone believe Palin’s sensible comment about rationing was, in reality, a senseless fear of counseling? To say so was no mistake; it was an oft-repeated big lie.
Rather than even mentioning the House bill, Palin linked to an interesting speech by "Rep. Michele Bachmann [which] highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff."
Dr. Emmanuel’s varied and murky remarks about using panels of experts (like himself) to ration health care are less clear or less candid than those of another bioethicist, Peter Singer of Princeton. Singer’s article, "Why We Must Ration Health Care," was a cover feature in The New York Times Magazine on July 15 — shortly before Palin took the opposing side of this issue.
Singer’s argument (about an expensive anti-cancer drug) is that, "If there is any point at which you say, ‘No, an extra six months [of life] isn’t worth that much,’ then you think that health care should be rationed." But the question itself is rhetorical trickery, sophistry. Even if there was certain knowledge about life expectancy with or without some treatment (which is never true), Singer has no right to any opinion about how much an extra six months of my life is worth (and vice-versa) unless he’s paying the bills.
But that, of course, is what makes the proposed expansion of insurance subsidies and Medicaid so ominous. Just as federal politicians imagine that a small minority stake in some bank entitles them to override all other stockholders when it comes to executive pay, federal politicians would surely claim that even small subsidies for anyone’s health insurance entitle them to, as Singer put it, set "limits on which treatments should be paid for." And those politicians would surely appoint panels of experts as cover when some life-saving procedure, device or drug was ruled-out for those with insufficient quality-adjusted years left to live.
Singer wrote, quite correctly, that in "Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits. . . [and] low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients." [emphasis added]
Pending health care bills would make such government-mandated scarcity of health care much worse. There would be massive shifting of money away from Medicare toward Medicaid. But the extra Medicaid money would be spread around more thinly. States would cut benefits to the poor in order to accommodate millions of new, less-poor people lured into Medicaid, at least half of whom (7 or 8 million by my estimate) currently have employer-provided health insurance.
The Senate health bill supposedly intends to slash Medicare payment rates for physicians by 21% next year and more in future years, with permanent reductions in payments to other medical services too. It would also establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board which would be empowered to make deeper cuts which Congress could reject only with considerable difficulty. If that’s not quite a "death panel" it would surely not be pro-life in its impact.
Actually, it’s clear enough that the proposed Medicare cuts won’t be achieved, but that efforts in that direction will nonetheless reduce access to care and diminish its quality. The government can’t boost demand and cut prices without creating excess demand. And that, in turn, means rationing by longer waiting lines and by panels (rationing boards) making life-or death decisions for other people.
As Sarah Palin predicted, "Government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course."
As the CATO Institute points out so well, Sarah is right, as usual. The chronically ill, old folks, and, of course, the disabled are royally screwed here. Evil men like Dr Ezekiel Emanuel have already written the book on these death panels, and it's all based on who is deemed "productive to society." This is as evil as it gets. This is a few psychopaths playing God with Americans' lives.
Below is the original poster the modified one above came from. In Nazi Germany, the government worked overtime to convince it's people that some lives just weren't worth living and should be extinguished. They even went so far as to point out how much keeping what they termed "useless eaters" alive cost each and every German. They got this thinking from the American "progressive" movement, by the way.
Sarah Palin brings this home to me, through her beautiful son Trig. Thanks to the American "progressive" (liberal) movement and immoral groups like Planned Parenthood, a group started by Klu Klux Klanner Margaret Sanger, as a way of Negro population control...she called blacks "human weeds"...,we now abort fully 90 percent of all Downs Syndrome babies.
As our friend Adrienne Ross points out: "Trig is a testimony to the beauty and value of all God's children." There is simply no way you can look at this beautiful boy and not see that he is a blessing and a true gift. He brings much joy to his family, and inspiration to other families with Downs Syndrome children.
It breaks one's heart that so many children like Trig never are allowed to experience life because the "progressives" are carrying out a jihad against all children with disabilities. They are attempting to desensitize and dehumanize all of mankind.
Sorry to be so long winded here, but lets face it, this is the most sweeping, and the most dangerous legislation ever proposed by Congress and a President. This is pure and absolute evil. Nothing less. The men and women who have signed on to this destruction of America, and her peoples need to be dealt with in the harshest manner humanly possible. They are all traitors.
There was one bit of sanity in Congress though as freshman Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith did something very rare, he switched parties. From Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air:
Usually one does not see Congressmen or Senators flipping parties to join the minority. However, Politico’s Josh Kraushaar has a scoop that Blue Dog Democrat Parker Griffith of Alabama, a freshman in Congress, has seen enough of Nancy Pelosi’s leadership. He will join Republicans in a move that has far more symbolic than substantive impact — for now.
This is a fascinating story. It is rare to see folks switch parties, and switching to the minority party is virtually unheard of. This is a very strong statement about the state of the democrat/communist party.
Congressman Griffith is a doctor BTW. I imagine that had a lot to do with his switching parties and fighting so hard against all of this. I know from speaking with my doctors and their staff, that this pending evil is not wanted in any way, shape, or form.
Sarah was quick to welcome Congressman Griffith aboard via Twitter:
Congratulations Alabama!And all Americans concerned about Capitol Hill's current agenda;Rep Parker Griffith just did the right thing.Welcome
We are proud to welcome him to the fight as well.
I want to leave everyone with this reminder from the Great Ronald Reagan on the dangers of allowing government to take over health care and what their real end game is:
