How does it make you feel?

Hugo Chavez says to the U.N. that it doesn't "smell like sulphur here anymore. It smells like something else. It smells like hope."

For those of you that don't remember, Chavez was referring to his 2006 speech at the U.N. when he said it smelled like sulphur after Bush had spoken there.

I wonder how that makes some of you on the left feel? When this socialist dictator sees Bush as the devil, but Obama as "hope." How does it make you feel when you are on the side of this man? When you agree with him?

I would wonder, as an American, if it might may you think about your positions.

Controlling The Message

Has anyone wondered why Obama is so quick to throw his buddies under the bus? Some might think that Glenn Beck has magical powers or something. All he has to do is mention a controversy on his show surrounding one of Obama's minions and *poof,* that person is gone.

The latest to go is the National Endowment for the Arts's (NEA) Yosi Sergant, who Beck featured on one of his shows, who was shown to be involved in a conference call basically calling out the arts community to promote Obama's pet issues through art (some might call it propaganda) and our tax dollars.

Before that, Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar resigned, and then ACORN was relieved of it's Census duties. And then when Obama was asked about ACORN, who he has long been associated with, he hardly knew much about them, but thought that given the videotapes, they should be investigated.

There's almost as many people under Obama's bus as there are on it.

Now, why would Obama throw in the towel on these loyal supporters so quickly? Without even so much as a kiss goodbye, much less a hearty defense?

Well, it's the same reason they instructed the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to investigate a mailer sent by the Humana healthcare company to senior citizens that it insures.

It seems Humana was warning that the health care reform that Democrats were pushing could result in cuts to their benefits. So a letter was sent to Humana imposing an industry-wide "gag order" and ordering them to halt to any additional mailings.

How dare Humana inform their customers about healthcare reform legislation and how it would affect them!

You see, when Pres. Obama says that seniors will not see their Medicare benefits cut under his healthcare plan, we are just supposed to trust him on that. Never mind that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that the bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plan by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

How dare Humana let their customers know this!

Now, what does all this have to do with the people Obama has thrown under the bus?

One thing.

The American people hearing about it.

This is how the Obama administration handles these things. As soon as Washington discovers a controversy, the news barely covers it, and then it's gone....gone...gone.

You and I, we know about it, because we read the news every day. We are "plugged in." But MOST Americans are too busy to even notice these things. Go ask your non political neighbor who Van Jones is. He will not be able to tell you. All they will know about about ACORN is something about hookers (that kind of thing always catches our attention) and that Obama is hardly aware of them.

What the Obama administration is doing is making sure no controversey gets more than a few days news play. They kick the offender out quicker than a loud drunk a their daughter's wedding.

They know that if it only gets a few days of news play, then most of America will probably never hear about it, and they are right.

What Humana did was send letters out to seniors about the truth of this health care bill, that the Obama adminstration hoped they would NEVER hear otherwise. Obama knows he can keep saying one thing, and the sound bites comfort the seniors. But a letter from their own insurer stating the truth??? Unacceptable. They can't control that. Thus, the gag order.

It's all about controlling the message, and Obama's campaign showed us that they are brilliant at it.

It's why Obama ignores the millions of Americans at the Tea Parties. It's why when the CBO's numbers came out contradicting Obama's claim regarding Medicare, the White House quietly releases a statement on a Tuesday night defending its approach. No need to go blabbing about, defending yourself to all the news organizations. That would bring too much attention to it.

So..sshhhhhh........ They know if they can keep enough of the truth about this health care bill on the down low, then they will pass it.

And the controversies? What controversies?

On behalf of the Jewish people I say, "have you no shame?"

Benjamin Netanyahu calls out the U.N.

Thanks Goodness the United States was one of the countries who DID walk out on Iran's President Ahmadinejad.

via HotAir

Different Visions

Sarah Palin's speech in Asia and Obama's speech to the U.N. could not have been more different.

Palin's speech was about the strength of our nation, and Obama's speech was about how he makes our country so much better.

Interesting commentary n Obama's speech:

John Bolton: “It was all extremely naïve. The president did everything he could to say: ‘Can’t we all just get along?’”

Nile Gardiner: "Overall this was a staggeringly naïve speech by President Obama, with Woodstock-style utterances like “I will not waver in my pursuit of peace” or “the interests of peoples and nations are shared.” All that was missing was a conga of hippies dancing through the aisles with a rousing rendition of “Kumbaya."

Michael Barone: "But on foreign policy as his record emerges -- as he reverses himself on missile defense and perhaps on Afghanistan -- his motivating principle seems rooted in an analysis, common in his formative university years, that America has too often been on the side of the bad guys. The response has been to disrespect those who have been our friends and to bow to our enemies."

Here are some important excerpts from Sarah Palin's speech.

Some interesting commentary on Palin's speech:

Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners: "The speech was wide-ranging, very balanced, and she beat all expectations,”

Rich Lowry: "Palin is an authentic, powerful voice of the populist right and in the speech she implicitly connects its call for limited government and sensible fiscal policy with America's role as a world power. Palin can play a very important role in channeling the inchoate populist anger out there in a responsible direction, which makes it all the more important that she engage on the issues in a serious way and avoid rhetorical over-kill. The speech, judging from what we've seen of it so far, is a big step in the right direction."

"I Own Me"

Libertarian rap. It's actually pretty good. Language warning!

Obama and The Politics and Money of Offshore Drilling

Here is an excellent article that describes the United State's incoherent national energy policy perfectly.

For over three decades, we’ve heard endless rhetoric from politicians lamenting our dependence on foreign oil— yet over that same time span, Congress has enacted legislation that has resulted in a 25% decline in domestic oil production while our oil consumption has increased 20%. The statistics are clear— we’ve failed in our stated intentions to become less dependent on foreign oil, and our domestic production margins have only gotten worse.

One would think that the rationale behind not drilling more here in the U.S. was environmental. If that's true, then doesn't the environment of the rest of the world count?

We certainly can’t look to the Obama Administration for any rational leadership on energy policy. Brazil recently discovered a huge underwater oil field off its coast— now known as the Tupi Oil Field— and is wasting no time extracting the oil off its own coastline. But in an act that betrays the national interest— as well as his own self proclaimed environmentalist rhetoric— President Obama is lending billions of dollars to Petrobras, Brazil's state-owned oil company, for offshore oil development within that same oil field.
............

Is the preservation of the coastline of Brazil somehow less important than the coastlines of Florida? Petrobras and the Brazilian people understand that they can responsibly drill for oil off their coastline, and they are moving ahead affirmatively— with our full financial backing. It is beyond outrageous hypocrisy that we, the American people, are denied the right by our own Congress and President to further utilize the energy resources right under our own feet, while at the same time we assist countries such as Brazil in exploiting their own energy resources. This must change.

So we lend billions for offshore development, but deny our own interests in the U.S. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Except of course, if you follow the money. What people in the oil industry say is that people in the Obama administration have interest in the offshore development in Brazil. Who has the biggest interest? None other than the Democrat's own sugar daddy, George Soros. The Soros Fund Management, LLC sold 22 million shares of Petrobras common stock in exchange for nearly 6 million shares of Petrobras preferred stock a few days before the Ex-Im Bank announced the loan guarantee from the U.S. Now, it makes perfect sense, right? It's always all about the money. Obama sure didn't bring change that way.

One of the first things the Obama administration did regarding oil exploration here in the U.S. is put a six-month halt on oil and natural gas exploration off the Alaska coast(so they could study the local wildlife). The most promising location was the Chukchi Sea, which was bringing lease revenues worth $2.1 billion to the US Treasury. The Chukchi Sea is believed to hold reserves of over 15 billion barrels of oil and over 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, almost the amount of oil and natural gas removed from the Gulf of Mexico since the late 1940s.

Yet we shut that down to please the environmental lobby, and give billions to Brazil so Soros can make a fortune, which he will in turn, share with the Democrats politically. I think this is called Party before country.

I'll wait here while you find a place to scream.


And while the Obama administration pretends to cater to the environmental lobby, China and Japan are having none of it:

China and Japan recently reached a bilateral agreement to drill and share the natural gas fields located under the international waters between their countries. In Europe, 40 new large-scale coal plants are set to be built within the next five years. India has very ambitious plans for coal production in the near term as well as in the coming decades.


What we have in the Obama administration is what we have wanted to avoid; a continuing dependency on foreign oil. But now we do it at the expense of the United States and the profit of other other nations.

This was the "change" we voted in. It doesn't seem to be working out, does it?

E-mail From Michael Yon:

"If General McChrystal were to resign, that would be the clearest statement imaginable that the top General in the Afghan war believes this is unwinnable using the resources made available. That would mean ending the war and giving Afghanistan back to the Taliban or anyone else who can take it. If McChrystal were to resign due to poor resourcing, we should stop fighting and start bringing our people home."

I'll be shocked if more troops are sent in as Gen. McChrystal requested. Retreat is what liberals do. The "good war," as Pres. Obama referred to it, was always just a way to slam Bush and look hawkish. It was never sincere.

Have to add Krauthammer's excellent take (via NRO) on Obama’s lack of response to the McChrystal memo on Afghanistan:

Well, I think what's really important here are two dates. The first is August 30. That's when the McChrystal report was sent to Washington. That is three weeks ago. Obama has had a single meeting [on that report] since then.

He says he hasn't reached a conclusion — I suppose because he is spending all his time preparing for Letterman and speeches to schoolchildren — to focus on a war in which our soldiers are in the field getting shot at and, as the president himself is saying, without a strategy.

Now, the other date is the 27th of March, when Obama gave a speech in the White House flanked by his Secretaries of Defense and State, in which he said, and I will read you this, because it is as if it never happened, "Today I'm announcing a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan."

So we for six months have been living under the new Obama strategy, of which he says today we have none. And his next sentence is, again in March, "This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review" — not the beginning, the end of the policy review.

So it has been his policy, and now he tells us we don't have a cart and we don't have a horse.

What's happening here is he announced the strategy of counterinsurgency in March. He said at the time that we “cannot afford” an “Afghanistan that slides [back] into chaos.”

He said "My message to the terrorists who oppose us — We will defeat you," And now he's not sure he wants to defeat them.

The blogger is not in today...

My internet is out (I'm at Starbucks right now). So I will be offline today!

Introducing "The Americano"!!!!

Gingrich Communications, owned by Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has launched a bilingual site for American Hispanics with a different take on news and opinion. "The Americano" offers a more balanced view on all the issues that concern American Hispanics today. It is a site for Hispanics to read and discuss similar traditional principles. News Hispanics can use!

Libertad Digital, a Spanish free market oriented center-right political website, advertises on the new site. I would encourage everyone to check out both sites!

Sylvia Garcia, Editor in Chief of The Americano, had this to say about the new website:

"Whether you are first, second, third or fourth generation American Hispanic -- or whether you speak English or Spanish or both -- our content is catered to what unites us all, which is our American Hispanic Heritage. We offer content as diverse as our culture by covering health, education, government, politics, international issues, and even sports."

I'm actually not a big fan of Newt, but he seems to be one of the few Republicans who understand the necessity of reaching out more effectivetly to the Hispanic community. This website is a fantastic beginning.

Sharing our traditional values and goals is critical. So be sure and check it out!

"45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul"

When the Obama administration put it out there that most doctors supported their health care plan, I thought there is simply no way that is true.

Turns out, it isn't.

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

Can you imagine if even 10 or 20% quit while at the same time insuring another supposedly 30-47 million? It would be a unmitigated disaster.

Which is what this health care bill is anyway.

I think it's important to look at how two different studies could say such opposing things. The survey touted by the White House and every leftwing and media outlet out there was published online in the New England Journal of Medicine. It was conducted by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a pro-Obamacare organization, so it really is like the Health insurance industry conducting a poll.

But probably the most important thing to know about the Robert Wood Johnson foundation poll is that it collected data from 2,130 physicians from the American Medical Association’s Masterfile.*While the AMA masterfile does include data on all doctors, not those just those in the AMA, in recent years there has been angry controversy regarding the AMA disclosing information in its Masterfile to pharmaceutical companies, enraging doctors who are not members of the AMA, who feel the AMA has abused their rights to privacy by selling data about doctors without their consent for commercial and marketing purposes. In other words, even though there is no way to determine whether only doctors who are a members of the AMA were polled, it would seem obvious that those who are not members would not want to be included in the AMA polling. The AMA only represents 18% of doctors nationwide. The AMA also has come out for Obamacare. This is hardly a true sampling of doctors. In addition, only 43% of those doctors in the AMA masterfile responded to the survey. And even given all that, in this survey doctors who own their own practices were less likely than non-owners to support a public plan (58% versus 67%). It's also important to note that the biggest majority of support came from those practicing in the Northeast (70%).


So we are supposed to believe that out of a survey of 18% of doctors, where less than half of those responded represent the majority of doctors?

I think you can see why a survey done of a random selection of doctors across the country better represents how doctors really feel.

*Corrected statement about the AMA masterfiles

Mark Levin interviews Stephen A. Smith

This is an audio interview, and I usually don't post these because they are a bit boring. But here is a respected professional famous black man, who voted for Obama, who sums up how it all went wrong for him, so well, that it is a MUST listen to.

via Ace