harmonicminer

As Congress takes break, Obama names 15 recess appointments

President Barack Obama reignited a partisan fight over appointments Saturday when he announced his intention to fill 15 key vacant administration positions — that normally require Senate approval — while Congress is adjourned for vacation.

Saying he was tired of obstructionist Republican senators blocking his nominees for political purposes, Obama said he would resort to recess appointments to fill the jobs.

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees,” Obama said Saturday. “At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of the government.”

It’s just so HARD to be President when you have a Senate that won’t confirm your nominees.  Especially when you really, really need to pay back your political cronies by appointing a highly partisan pay-back candidate, and those wascally weepublicans just won’t let you have your way.  And it’s so embarrassing to have to do what you rabidly criticized your predecessor for doing, but darn it, when YOU have a really, really good reason for appointing a payback candidate, you wish those right-wing lunatics would remember who won the election.

Maybe you should remind them who won the election.

Again.

While you still can.

Herewith, famous sayings of pinball players of my misspent youth and early adulthood.

* “It’s hard to play pinball when you have both hands wrapped around your neck.”  (An obvious reference to “choking” while trying to flip.)

*  “Hey, another Lazzie ball!”  (So named in honor of Lazarus being raised from the dead, in reference to the relatively rare phenomena of missing with both flippers up the middle, and the ball hitting the back wall and bouncing back into play anyway.)

*  “Another pin-ball related fatality.”  (Don’t ask.  I won’t tell.)

*  “Wow!  A double match, a special and two wins on points!”

*  “I had the high score on Highway Patrol for three weeks running!”  (Pull over, buddy.)

*  “Life isn’t fair.  HE got extra ball, double multi-ball on the same turn, a special and a round the world bonus.  I got bumpkus.”  (Live with it.  You could have been playing Alien Invasion or something.)

*  “I usually try to catch it on the flipper.”  (Nothing to do with dolphins.)

*  “You’re not holding your jaw right.”  (That’s pure mythology.  The set of the jaw has nothing to do with the ballistics involved.  However, the angle of your left knee certainly does matter.)

*  (After a TILT and lost ball)  “Hey, I hardly touched it!”

Obama’s friends in the media continue in campaign mode for him. Test question: can you find an article like the one quoted below that debunks, in USNews and World Report, the myth of 47 million “uninsured” that the Democrats keep bandying about?

5 Overblown Fears About Healthcare Reform

In Washington, everybody knows about unintended consequences: the outcomes you fail to anticipate when you change the way something works. But there’s another phenomenon that works somewhat in reverse: Preregulatory paranoia, or the fear that new rules meant to make the system better will instead produce mayhem and disaster.

It will be a long time before we know whether the historic healthcare reform finally passed by Congress will make the system better or worse. But the rhetoric surrounding the yearlong ordeal has already set new standards for overwrought fearmongering.

Hmm.. I would say that’s true, but the fearmongering and overblown rhetoric, not to mention simply lies, is mostly on the side of those promoting a much larger federal role in healthcare.

And the reason why it will be a “long time before we know whether the historic healthcare reform finally passed by Congress will make the system better or worse” is because the bill was deliberately designed NOT to do much of anything until this congress and president are no longer up for re-election, or at least are far distant from it. Not that much changes in the short term… which was done deliberately to dissociate the pernicious effects that are coming from the language of the bill, or simply to delay the electoral consequences.

The government will <not> take over one sixth of the economy. ………. In fact, it’s hard to identify any part of the private-sector healthcare industry that stands to lose under reform.

Which is why, of course, the private-sector big-pharma, big-law, big-insurance and big-med were more than happy for the government to take money from the people and give it them. The fact is that under the new plan, the total amount of healthcare spending in the USA will RISE to about 1/6 of the total economy, and instead of the about 1/2 that is currently under direct federal control, ALL of it will be in one way or another.

The federal debt will <not> explode. It might, but not because of healthcare reform.

No one with a lick of sense believes the CBO numbers. The author of this article needs to sit down with Paul Ryan and have a talk.  It is beyond incredible that anyone believes it’s possible to add tens of millions of new people to the rolls and not balloon the deficit.

Socalized medicine is <not> on the way. ……. Those who fear the advent of “socialized medicine” mainly seem to worry that the current set of reforms is just Phase 1, to be followed by bigger changes that will replace doctors with bureaucrats and render individual patients even more powerless than they are now.

Well, yes.

This is supposed to happen despite the likelihood that the Democrats who supported reform will lose seats in the November elections, while Republicans who opposed reform will gain seats.

Obvious this author doesn’t know a thing about the history of entitlement programs in the USA. Or worse, is simply concealing the facts for some political purpose. But everyone who can read knows that entitlement programs of this kind GROW, that government control always GROWS, and that the cost of this mess is going to multiply hugely beyond the Left’s predictions.

It seems much more likely that after surviving the battles of the last year, the current for-profit healthcare industry will be with us for the foreseeable future.

And costing us all a LOT more.

Read the history of the Medicare program and the rhetoric surrounding it at its passage, the predictions of what it would cost and what it would control, and the facts of what it now costs and what it controls.  And consider that it’s getting worse all the time, and that everyone who knows anything about it, and will tell the truth, admits it will not be able to keep its promises, made by the Leftists in government to buy votes, so that the baby boomers aren’t going to begin to get the benefit from it that the current senior generation has gotten while the boomers were funding it.

This will be worse. Far worse.

Of course, at the time Medicare was passed, there were plenty of “feel good articles” like the one quoted here, too.

But this is quack medicine and quack journalism.

Why America Hates Universal Health Care: The Real Reason
You should click the link and read the whole thing, but here’s the gist:  (warning…  at the link there are a couple of photos you may find obscene, but they make crucial points)

Not all ailments are equal.

• Blame: the final taboo

A built-in false assumption with the health-care debate is that sickness is always no-fault sickness. It’s never socially acceptable to assign blame for people’s medical problems, especially blame on the patient.

But I’m not afraid to confess that I’m a judgmental person. And I’m pretty confident that most Americans who oppose socialized medicine share this same judgment: that some people are partly or entirely to blame for their unwellness.

I’m perfectly willing to provide subsidized health care to people who are suffering due to no fault of their own. But in those cases, which, unfortunately, constitute perhaps a majority of all cases, where the unwellness is a consequence of the patient’s own misdeeds, bad habits, or stupid choices, I feel a deep-seated resentment that the rest of us should pick up the tab to fix medical problems that never should have happened in the first place.

I’m speaking specifically of medical problems caused by:

• Obesity
• Cigarette smoking
• Alcohol abuse
• Reckless behavior
• Criminal activity
• Unprotected promiscuous sex
• Use of illicit drugs
• Cultural traditions
• Bad diets

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.

This article is worth reading completely (click the link above). It will challenge anyone who thinks we should just “spread the cost” among all of us for the medical care of all of us… and in particular, why this is a uniquely un-American idea (and ideal, for that matter).

So take the risk, if you’re a universal health-care true believer, and read it all.

Then keep in mind that I’m going to have my nose at LEAST as deep in your business as yours will be in mine, if universal health care really does become a reality in the USA.

Think you wouldn’t like living under Sharia law?  Just wait until every decision you make involving recreation, diet, transportation, you name it, is being second-guessed by self-important bureaucratic functionaries watching the bottom line cost of your healthcare.