posted July 05, 2011 11:47 PM            

Austrians speak German.. they just have slight differences in the language."

posted July 08, 2011 09:30 AM            

We’ve known for some time now that Governor Palin lives rent free in Obama’s head.

Whether she is calling him out on his inept response to the Gulf oil spill, incomprehensible energy policies, deficit spending, border security, or the inevitable rationing contained in Obamacare which she brilliantly termed “death panels”, she has a unique ability to get under his decidedly thin skin. As it turns out, his obsession with Governor Palin also extends to her use of Twitter, and yesterday’s “Twitter Town Hall“ was at least partly an attempt to emulate the Governor’s success with the social medium. Via Kenneth R. Bazinet:

"President Obama’s decision to hold a Twitter Town Hall was an about-face for the commander-in-chief who only months ago in private conversations with aides would scoff at the 140-character social media format for its lack of depth and sophistication, according to sources with knowledge of those conversations."

In particular, Obama would get miffed at the news media for picking up the Twitter comments made by ex-GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. “He complained that ‘They hang on her every word and report it without even questioning her directly,’” one informed source said this morning, quoting the President.

This is not surprising, of course, as Obama has long been miffed by the effectiveness of Governor Palin’s Facebook Notes:

posted July 10, 2011 08:30 AM            

The Sugar Daddy Has Run Out of Sugar; Now We Need New Leaders
by Sarah Palin on Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 3:22pm

Barack Obama’s big government policies continue to fail. He should put a link to the national debt clock on his BlackBerry. The gears on that clock have nearly exploded during his administration. Yesterday’s terrible job numbers should not be a surprise because it all goes back to our debt. Our dangerously unsustainable debt is wiping out our jobs, crippling our economic growth, and jeopardizing our position in the global economy as the leader of the free world.

As a governor, I had to deal with facts, even unpleasant ones. I dealt with the world as it is, not as I wished it to be. The “elite” political class in this country with their heads in the sand had better face some unpleasant facts about the world as it is. They’ve run out of money and no amount of accounting gimmicks or happy talk will change this reality. Those of us who live in the real world could see this day coming.

Back in January 2009, as governor of Alaska, I announced: “We also have to be mindful about the effect of the stimulus package on the national debt and the future economic health of the country. We won’t achieve long-term stability if we continue borrowing massive sums from foreign countries and remain dependent on foreign sources of oil and gas.” Then I urged President Obama to veto the stimulus bill because it was loaded with absolutely useless pork and unfunded mandates. Everyone knows my early and vocal opposition to that mother of all unfunded mandates known as Obamacare starting back in August 2009, and many recall my objections to the Federal Reserves’ inflationary games with our currency known as QE2 from November 2010. It’s a matter of public record that I did not go to Harvard Law School, but I can add.

The same “experts” who got us into this mess are now telling us that the only way out of our debt crisis is to “increase revenue,” but not by creating more jobs and therefore a larger tax base; no, they want to “increase revenue” by raising taxes on job creators who are taxed enough already! As Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” That’s where we are now. Hard working taxpayers have been big government’s Sugar Daddy for far too long, and now we’re out of sugar. We don’t want big government, we can’t afford it, and we are unwilling to pay for it.

This debt ceiling debate is the perfect time to do what must be done. We must cut. Yes, I’m for a balanced budget amendment and for enforceable spending caps. But first and foremost we must cut spending, not “strike a deal” that allows politicians to raise more debt! See, Washington is addicted to OPM – Other People’s Money. And like any junkie, they will lie, steal, and cheat to fund their addiction. We must cut them off and cut government down to size.

To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We’ve been slowly going broke for years, but now it’s happening all at once as the world’s capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we'll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone’s door anymore. And we don’t have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We’ll be Greece before these D.C. politicians’ false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does.

We can’t close our $1.5 trillion deficit overnight, but we must get as close as we can as soon as we can. Little nibbles here and there over 10 years (spun to sound like they’re huge budget cuts) aren’t anywhere near enough. I know from experience that cutting government spending isn’t easy. As governor, I made the largest veto cuts in my state’s history, and I didn’t make many friends doing it. But we will never recover, we will never get free of devastating debt, unless we make tough choices now. We don’t hear talk like this from leaders in D.C. or from those running for office because they say what they think we want to hear rather than what must be said.

We are in desperate need of real leadership, but President Obama’s solution to everything is to grow government by borrowing more money, spending more money, printing more money, and taxing our job creators. He once said that he “believes in American Exceptionalism…just as the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.” Well, the path he has us on will make us just as “exceptional” as Greece – debt crisis, stagnation, permanent high unemployment, and all.

As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant's heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.

But let me tell you where real hope lies. It’s not the hopey-changey stuff we heard about in 2008. Real hope comes from realizing how God has blessed our exceptional nation, and then doing something about it. We have been blessed with natural resources, hardworking entrepreneurs, and a Constitution that preserves the greatest form of government ever devised by man. If we develop those natural resources, allow our entrepreneurs to keep and invest more of what they earn, and adhere to the time-tested truths of our Constitution, we will prosper and endure.

But first and foremost we must tackle our debt. We don’t have the luxury of playing politics as usual. We need real leaders who will put aside their own political self-interest to do what is right for the nation. And if they don’t emerge… well, America has a do-over in November 2012.

posted July 10, 2011 12:00 PM              

the fact that murdoch is a US citizen because it is financially profitable to be so, and very little other reason, is an indication that we are far from broke. we have just reached a crisis point in the distribution of that wealth, and the murdochs of this world will automate those of us still working right out of existence if it means THEY have more power.

and that 1.5 trill deficit is largely inflated by the fact that the cost of bush's wars has now been put on the books for all to see instead of sitting under the table where they were before.

posted July 13, 2011 01:50 PM            

Give Sarah Palin high marks for having caught on first...and spread the word far and wide.

Give fact check and other so called experts a for their terminal ignorance...or outright lying.

Congressional Democrats Agree with Governor Palin in Opposition to “Death Panels”
Posted on July 13 2011 - 1:30 PM - Posted by: Whitney Pitcher

It looks like some Congressional Democrats have finally begun to listen to what Governor Palin has been saying the past two years when it comes to health care rationing and cost control by supposedly independent government boards. Seven Congressional Democrats have joined in co-sponsoring legislation that would repeal the Independent Payments Advisory Board. As Michelle Malkin writes:

A rising chorus of repeal-mongers, outraged at the Obama administration’s federal health care power grab, took over Washington this week. Nope, it’s not the tea party. It’s Democrats Against the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Yes, Democrats.

According to Politico, “New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, of the Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, has zero interest in defending the board. ‘I’ve never supported it, and I would certainly be in favor of abolishing it.’” If that’s not clear enough, Pallone added that he’s “opposed to independent commissions or outside groups playing a role other than on a recommendatory basis.” Period.

Another House Democrat, Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania, is one of seven Democratic IPAB repeal co-sponsors and is scheduled to testify Wednesday at a second House hearing blasting the board. And former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt channeled the tea party in a recent op-ed when he decried IPAB as “an unelected and unaccountable group whose sole charge is to reduce Medicare spending based on an arbitrary target growth rate.”
Over the past two years, Governor Palin has been a consistent voice of opposition against such panels or boards who may play a role in health care decision making that would ultimately lead to rationing of care. In August of 2009, she warned against rationing of care by an unelected “death panel”:

"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, 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. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

In September of 2009, Governor Palin wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal warning of the government overreach of such a panel:

"Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”"

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through “normal political channels,” they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats’ proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we’ve come to expect from this administration."

Likely largely due to Governor Palin’s warning, the End of Life counseling provision in the health care reform bill was dropped in the summer of 2009. Additionally, the final passage of the advisory board was re-named the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB). This board is made up of 15 individuals appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, which hardly makes them independent. If anything, the only thing they are independent of is accountability to the electorate. A policy analyst for the Independent Women’s Foundation writes of IPAB at Townhall:

Each year, the CMS director will submit to IPAB the per-capita growth rate in Medicare and the target per-capita growth rate. Undoubtedly, as health care costs continue on their upward spiral (fueled by government regulations), the growth rate will be higher than the target rate. The mission of IPAB will be to make the two rates match, by drafting a proposal for changes to the Medicare program. This proposal will become law unless Congress, by supermajority in both houses, votes to stop the proposal and comes up with its own plan to match IPAB’s savings.

That’s right. In approving IPAB by voting for Obamacare, Congress essentially ceded their power to a board of unelected bureaucrats as an attempt to control health care costs by way of rationing. However, as Governor Palin referenced in her “death panel” Facebook post, this does not control costs, it only means that the federal government is refusing to the pay the cost. There is no doubt that this sort of backwards thinking by those who support such boards contributed to Governor Palin’s support for Congressman Paul Ryan’s roadmap, as Governor Palin wrote this past December:

"It [President Obama’s deficit commission] also implicitly endorses the use of “death panel”-like rationing by way of the new Independent Payments Advisory Board—making bureaucrats, not medical professionals, the ultimate arbiters of what types of treatment will (and especially will not) be reimbursed under Medicare.

On health care, it [Congressman Ryan’s Roadmap] would replace ObamaCare with a new system in which people are given greater control over their own health-care spending. It achieves this partly through creating medical savings accounts and a new health-care tax credit—the only tax credit that would be left in a radically simplified new income tax system that people can opt into if they wish."

Here is Congressman Paul Ryan discussing IPAB’s overreach of bureaucratic power, price controls, lack of choice, and health care rationing–the very things Governor Palin has also objected to– yesterday at the House Budget Committee meeting:

In Governor Palin’s objection to rationing, health care panels, she has shown her consistent conservatism on two levels–sanctity of life and smaller government. In her objection to “death panels”, she had shown that the concept of sanctity of life not only applies to opposition to abortion, but also applies to ensuring that life is valued after one is born for seniors and those with special needs, regardless of what Obama administration health care advisers like Ezekiel Emmanuel deem appropriate via what they call “distributive justice”. Governor Palin also has stood firmly against increased federal power in making health care decisions.The Obama administration should not be engaging in continuing twisting of the branches of government where executive branch boards are undertaking the role of Congress in managing Medicare funds, nor the role of patients and doctors in managing one’s health care. Just as there should not be redistribution of wealth, there should not be redistribution of health as well. It is high time the Democrats realize this too."
http://conservatives4palin.com/2011/07/congressional-democrats-agree-with-governor-palin-on-death-panels.html

posted July 13, 2011 06:01 PM            

Just because you're not sharp enough to connect the dots between unelected bureaucrats making medical decisions on what kind of treatments are going to be available and to whom they may be administered doesn't mean those bureaucratic "death panels" don't exist in O'BomberCare.

posted July 13, 2011 11:14 PM              

In 2003, Brian Roseboro, assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial markets, explained it best: “The plain truth is that the debt limit does not affect the deficits or surpluses. The critical revenue and spending decisions are made during the congressional budget process.”

The debt ceiling is a cap on the amount of securities the Treasury can issue, something it does to raise money to pay for government expenses. These expenses, and the deficit they’ve wrought, are a result of past actions by Congress to create entitlement programs, make appropriations and cut taxes. In that sense, raising the debt limit is about paying for past expenses, not controlling future ones. For Congress to refuse to let Treasury raise the cash to pay the bills that Congress itself has run up simply makes no sense.

this piece makes the point that the debt ceiling is all about politics and little to do with finance. they point out that obama voted against raising the debt ceiling during his time in the senate...however it needs to be pointed out that at THAT time we were in an expansion, and paying down our debt with available surplus SHOULD have been the right thing to do, not raise MORE debt when we were in a strong financial position...

posted July 14, 2011 10:19 AM            

"I know that such committees are at work in every major insurance company across the nation"

You don't know any such thing acoustic...because it's not true.

Insurance policies are contracts to do such and such in return for premium payments.

Got that acoustic?

The terms and conditions in insurance policies are clearly spelled out as to what is covered and for how much it's covered.

Almost no policy or insurance company is going to pay for experimental treatments or experimental drug therapies. But, what's covered is covered as a "Matter of Contract".

When unelected non doctor bureaucrats are making medical decisions on what treatment options are going to be administered to patients who will die without proper treatment...that panel of unelected bureaucrats IS A DEATH PANEL. In O'BomberCare, there is NO appeal from O'Bomber's bureaucratic Death Panel verdict.

Sarah Palin has it right...and she always did have it right...in spite of all the caterwauling from O'Bomber and his merry little band of leftist Socialist Kool-Aid drinkers.

Why do you think O'Bomber hired not one (1) Dr Death, but 2 Dr Deaths?

One, the thoroughly disgusting, contemptible, immoral and unethical Zeke Emanuel and the other, Donald Berwick, a man so corrupt, so adverse to proper medical treatments for senior citizens he couldn't get confirmed by THE DEMOSCAT CONTROLLED SENATE.

Oh yeah, one last thing.

It was O'Bomber himself who told a woman he thought people like her mother...who needed a pacemaker should be sent home without the pacemaker..but with a prescription for painkillers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-dQfb8WQvo

posted July 14, 2011 10:41 AM            

"In 2003, Brian Roseboro, assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial markets, explained it best: “The plain truth is that the debt limit does not affect the deficits or surpluses"

Anyone with 2 braincells to rub together would immediately spot the absurdity of this statement. Were I President and my asst. Sec Treasury made this comment in public, I'd fire his stupid ass before the sun went down.

Which leaves me wondering about you katatonic.

Sarah Palin is right...again. Our Socialist demoscats...including O'Bomber are addicted to other people's money.

posted July 14, 2011 10:56 AM            

Who said this?

posted July 14, 2011 01:28 PM              

as i also said, whoever is in "opposition" seems to think raising the debt ceiling is criminal, even when it is to pay debts they created themselves.

but sarah is quite happy to continue playing the same old partisan game. from her lofty viewpoint in the sticks, she may think she will do differently but she's just the same old same old, and were she in the hot seat she would be pushing for a raise in the debt ceiling too.

but she's not, is she? she's working for FOX and playing the economy for all the entertainment value in it.

posted July 14, 2011 03:10 PM            

No more tax, spend and borrow.

The statement you chose to post here is absurd on it's face...in any economic setting.

“The plain truth is that the debt limit does not affect the deficits or surpluses"

Did you take the "Test" katatonic?

I doubt the pittance Palin gets from Fox News influences...in any way...her opinions or options or lifestyle.

She strikes me as a lady who would tell Murdock or anyone else who suggested she toe the party line...To Stuff It. In fact, that's what she did with the Republican establishment in Alaska...and Washington too.

I don't know if Bush fired Roseboro or not. I would have...in a nano-second.

posted July 14, 2011 07:18 PM              

she may not get much MONEY from murdoch, but she is getting the big push from his outlets, without whom, face it, she would have little presence in the media...

and she may think it's because she truly is the bees knees, but watch what happens if she does tell him to stuff it...or ask any of a plateful of politicians who only NOW are getting the strength-in-numbers to come out against his wheelings and dealings, having been treated to the power of a more and more monopolized press for decades now...

posted July 14, 2011 11:46 PM            

Sometimes I think you don't know what you're talking about. Other times, I'm certain about it.

The brain dead O'Bomber press hangs on Palin's every word in every speech, in every interview and on Twitter. Palin doesn't need Murdock or Fox News to draw attention to what she says.

posted July 14, 2011 11:52 PM            

Who said this?

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

posted July 15, 2011 09:13 AM            

"Sarah Palin hasn’t jumped into the race for the White House (yet), but she believes the prize is there for the taking. In a conversation with Peter J. Boyer, Palin warns Boehner not to raise the debt ceiling, proclaims that Obama is beatable—and says the 2012 field is far from settled."

"I believe that I can win a national election," Sarah Palin declared one recent evening, sitting in the private dining room of a hotel in rural Iowa. The occasion for her visit to quintessential small-town America was a gathering of the faithful that would have instantaneously erupted into a fervent campaign rally had she but given the word. Instead, it had been another day on the non–campaign trail, this one capped by a sweet victory: she had just attended the premiere of a glowingly positive documentary about her titled The Undefeated.

“The people of America are desperate for positive change, and deserving of positive change, to get us off of this wrong track,” she told me during a conversation that lasted late into the night and, inevitably, kept returning to the subject that has titillated the media and spooked Republican presidential contenders for months: her political intentions. “I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around,” she said. “But I do believe that I can win.”
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/10/palin-plots-her-next-move.html

“I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around,” she said. “But I do believe that I can win."

Unlike O'Bomber who declared himself THE ONE and said...:

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal"