The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Paying For Protestors – Your Tax Dollars At Work

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Is it really “grassroots” when you advertise to hire and to pay people to attend protests? 

Los Angeles area and Capital Hill:

We’re fighting for health care that will protect families’ financial health, lay out a clear path for all Americans to afford health care, and improve patient safety and quality care.

You can work for change.

Join motivated staff around the country working to make change happen. You can make great friends and money along the way. Earn $400-$600 a week.

To apply for a job, visit our website—www.JobsThatMatter.org

Sacramento:

Build the public support it is going to take to pass health care reform this summer with the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG). Go out in your community and make change happen. And make friends and money along the way.

Earn $350-500 per week. To apply for a job, visit our website or call Chris at (916) 455-5000.

Apply now at www.JobsThatMatter.org.

The Fund for the Public Interest has been working for over 25 years with organizations such as Sierra Club, Environment America, Human Rights Campaign, Progressive Future and U.S. PIRG to win concrete victories for the public interest. We are the nation’s premier nonprofit for raising money, building membership and winning grassroots campaigns.

We are also hiring college graduates to run our campaign offices across the country. Competitive salary and benefits available. For more information visit, www.FundJobs.org.

 

If you follow the money, you’ll soon find that it’s not only donations by left-wingnuts providing this protest money, but your tax dollars.  So even if you don’t agree with them, you’re helping to fund them.

The Big HR 3200 Lie: Coverage Of Pre-Existing Conditions

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One of the biggest complaints about health insurance is that many companies deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.  If you think about it, this is like asking someone to insure that your car can get you from point A to point B when it doesn’t have an engine.  Doesn’t make much sense, does it?  Certainly, you can see it’s a losing proposition for the insurer, who knows full-well they’ve given you the right to demand they drop in an engine for you.

But coverage for pre-existing conditions is one of the rallying points being used by the administration to sell health care reform, and it’s a rallying point to which the remaining Kool-Aid drinkers cling like conservatives cling to their guns and religion.  President Obama is now saying it like it’s a magic mantra, and the Congress critters are repeating it like proper little parrots.  Just the other day, in New Hampshire, Obama opined,

“This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health insurance decisions except you and your doctor.

“I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling but I don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling.”

And right on the administration’s own website, they state their plans for health care reform will:

Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums.

Sweet!  No idea how we’ll pay for it but the problem’s solved, right?

Not so fast, Weedhopper.  They are all lying.

HR 3200 contains the following:

Section 111.  PROHIBITING PRE-EXISTING CONDITION EXCLUSIONS. 

A qualified health benefits plan may not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion (as defined in section 2701(b)(1)(A) of the Public Health Service Act) or otherwise impose any limit or condition on the coverage under the plan with respect to an individual or dependent based on any health status-related factors (as defined in section 2791(d)(9) of the Public Health Service Act) in relation to the individual or dependent.

In order to understand what this really means, it’s necessary to go look up the dependencies.  This is a very important point because those dependencies are being included, not specifically excluded.

PHSA section 2701(b)(1)(A):

IN GENERAL.-The term “preexisting condition exclusion” means, with respect to coverage, a limitation or exclusion of benefits relating to a condition based on the fact that the condition was present before the date of enrollment for such coverage, whether or not any medical advice, diagnosis, care, or treatment was recommended or received before such date.

PHSA Section 2701(d)(9):  The term “health status-related factor” means any of the factors described in section 2702(a)(1).

Section 2702 (a)(1) of the PHSA says:

(a) INELIGIBILITY TO ENROLL.-

(1) IN GENERAL.-Subject to paragraph (2), …a group health plan, and a health insurance issuer offering group health insurance coverage in connection with a group health plan, may not establish rules for eligibility (including continued eligibility) of any individual to enroll under the terms of the plan based on any of the following health status-related factors in relation to the individual or a dependent of the individual:

(A) Health status.
(B) Medical condition (including both physical and mental illnesses).
(C) Claims experience.
(D) Receipt of health care.
(E) Medical history.
(F) Genetic information.
(G) Evidence of insurability (including conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence).
(H) Disability.

(2) NO APPLICATION TO BENEFITS OR EXCLUSIONS.-To the extent consistent with section 701,…paragraph (1) shall not be construed–

(A) to require a group health plan, or group health insurance coverage, to provide particular benefits other than those provided under the terms of such plan or coverage, or

(B) to prevent such a plan or coverage from establishing limitations or restrictions on the amount, level, extent, or nature of the benefits or overage for similarly situated individuals enrolled in the plan or coverage.

SEC. 701. INCREASED <<NOTE: 29 USC 1181.>> PORTABILITY THROUGH LIMITATION ON PREEXISTING CONDITION EXCLUSIONS.

(a) Limitation on Preexisting Condition Exclusion Period; Crediting for Periods of Previous Coverage.–Subject to subsection (d), a group health plan, and a health insurance issuer offering group health insurance coverage, may, with respect to a participant or beneficiary, impose a preexisting condition exclusion only if– (1) such exclusion relates to a condition (whether physical or mental), regardless of the cause of the condition, for which medical advice, diagnosis, care, or treatment was recommended or received within the 6-month period ending on the enrollment date; (2) such exclusion extends for a period of not more than 12 months (or 18 months in the case of a late enrollee) after the enrollment date; and (3) the period of any such preexisting condition exclusion is reduced by the aggregate of the periods of creditable coverage (if any, as defined in subsection (c)(1)) applicable to the participant or beneficiary as of the enrollment date.

Not a whole lot of change when all is said and done, is there?  This is what will give the federal government, through its numerous “advisory” committees, the right to decide when and what kinds of care will be provided.  In exactly the same way that insurance companies today decide the risks they will take when insuring someone’s health.

Which makes the federal government no better than the “evil” insurance companies they are subtly and not-so-subtly villifying to get you to buy their snake oil.

No, Mr. President, I Will Not Shut Up

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The left wingnuts have been doing a lot of chest-beating these days about regular Americans daring to speak out against the administration’s continuing plans to flush the country down its personal, gold-plated toilet.  While groups like the SEIU, ACORN, and President Obama’s campaign arm, Organizing For America (aka Moveon.org) send out millions of emails and even put up help-wanted ads to pay people to attend townhalls to make it look like socializing America’s health care system is really and truly the medicine America wants to take, sensible, worried conservatives are also extending feelers and finding they aren’t alone with their grave concerns.  And they are setting aside their inherent independent streak to meet up with one another and go to tea parties and townhall meetings with one, single purpose:  to tell their unrepresenting representatives face-to-face and in no uncertain terms that it’s high time they do their job.

As the media continues to show us day after day, they are met with scorn and ridicule at best (the mainstream media being equally juvenile as the administration); with a beating from SEUI members at worst.

And all President Obama can do is to tell concerned Americans to just shut up and let him fix the mess.  The so-called mess he helped create as one of the majority Democrats in the Senate of the previous administration, but atruth conveniently shed as quickly as the time it took to pull up his Superman Underoos and hit the eternal campaign trail.  The very same Senate that allowed the self-proclaimed “best and brightest” like Tim (“tax cheat”) Geithner to take down Wall Street, with a little help from irresponsible who-cares-if-they-can’t-afford-to-pay-back-the-loan types like Barney Frank.

To this I say:  get over yourself, Barry.  There is no “health care crisis” in America.  No one is denied health care, unless perhaps they happen to be unfortunate enough to show up at the Chicago hospital where your wife put in place that clever little plan to divert less-than-wealthy folks to other hospitals.

Unlike Canada and Great Britain, America’s medical machine continues to roll out great and wondrous things and our free market economy benefits from Canada’s rationing when their patients are sent to New York and Michigan for treatments.  And let’s not forget the money that comes in from all those American sperm donors who are filling in the gaps in Canada’s socialized infertility program, eh?

No, Barry, there is no “crisis” here at all.  Grow some real cajones, poke your head out of your little bubble, and understand that you’ve driven this country into unimaginable debt and we, the American people, aren’t buying your spin any more.  We know your hands are just as bloody as anyone in any previous administration, and we know you want nothing more than to wallow knee-deep in the blood of hard-working Americans based on some unnatural view of “fairness” sown into your psyche by the radicals and entitlement-derangement syndrome types with whom you have spent your life.  All your theories are nothing but.  Read your history.  None of your ideas are new and history shows us they don’t work.

In what can only now be seen as a sort of madness you keep beating the dead horse.  Too bad for you that there is only a very small, niche market in America for British comfort food.  We want no part of what you’re putting on our menu; indeed, we’d like nothing more than for you and all your communists and radicals to shut up and get out of OUR way.

The truth is we don’t need you, Barry.  Never have.  Never will.  Maybe because you really didn’t grow up amongst us you don’t realize that we, the average American, are tough, we are resilient, and we are brave.  You misread our silence as acceptance, Barry, and that is your big mistake.  We are also a patient lot.  Administrations come and administrations go and that includes yours.  The slim minority of us who didn’t vote for your flowery rhetoric hoped you were just another wacked Carteresque blip on the political radar, but as these first few months find this country being usurpped by unaccountable, radicalist czars and our unrepresenting representatives – which includes you, Barry – are no longer even pretending to listen to the voices of those who sent them to Washington to represent them, we will no longer remain silent.

This is your real Waterloo, Barry.  The boy who would be president, now the man with a messiah complex who would be king, must finally come face-to-face with the American people.  A people who aren’t stupid and who know full well that when all is said and done there is a difference between wants and needs, and will only tolerate for so long petty crises manufactured solely for the gain of a few fools.

In your snobbish, childish, and decidedly classless derision and dismissal of us you’ve now crossed the line.  Yes, the sleeping dragon has awakened and this enemy within – Congress, you, and your administration – will be cut out like the cancer you have become.  We, the people, will do this cleanly and without remorse. 

You have failed, President Obama.  Should you have had even the slightest shred of decency to wince or to make the briefest pause as the figurative torches and pitchforks come towards you and those of ill-intentioned like minds with whom you surround yourself, we, the American people, might perhaps have once forgiven you and allowed you to claim your immaturity as an excuse.  But you are the audacious one, aren’t you?  Go ahead and cling to your dreams, sir, but we, the American people, will cling to our guns and our religion as the symbols of our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms, and we will continue to shout it out for all the world to hear. 

For it is there that rests America’s great faith and the real, most true hope of all.

Men Of America – Canada Needs YOU!

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As Mark Steyn so aptly put it at The Corner:   “The ultimate outsourcing” is occurring here in the United States.   That model of socialized medicine perfection, Canada, made it illegal to pay men for their sperm back in 2004, so today there are all of 33 legal (and, need we add, extremely busy) donors available for the whole country.  (The situation is similar in Great Britain, too.)

But wait!  Even if you are a minority couple looking for help, there is still choice.  One is South Asian!

Instead of the Mounties, following that most proper course of political hypocrisies, Canadians have called upon the American free-market economy to come to their rescue:

Doctors and patients have had little choice but to use sperm and eggs from south of the border.

One of the biggest suppliers of donor sperm is Outreach Health Services which imports and distributes semen for assisted reproduction clinics across Canada. The company imports sperm from an agency that collects primarily from men in Georgia and northern Florida, where donors are paid about $100 per visit.

With so much sperm coming from the States, some estimate that up to 80 per cent of babies conceived in Canada through donor sperm have American DNA.

This gives a whole ‘nother meaning to the term, “neighbor”.  Not to mention the potential DNA problems as cousins grow up and start marrying their cousins.  But then, that assures more patients needing government-provided medical care, doesn’t it?

Any wonder President Obama reassured Canadians that while their system works for them, it’s not necessarily what Americans want?

Professional-Grade Astroturf

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Stupid is not the failure of average Americans to believe the lies of the left, but that the left still believes Americans don’t see right through them.  Witness the latest marching orders from the White House:

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression:  Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

We’ll provide everything you need:  the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit.

Click here to find your representatives’ local offices.

As you’ve probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it’s getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats. We can’t let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand.

Office Visits for Health Reform are our chance to show that the vast majority of American voters know that the cost of inaction is too high to bear, and strongly support passing health reform in 2009.

Don’t worry if you’ve never done anything like this before. The congressional staff is there to listen, and your opinion as a constituent matters a lot. And if you bring a friend, you’ll have more fun and make an even greater impact.

Click here to sign up for an Office Visit for Health Reform.

Wherever you live, these visits matter:  Many representatives are pushing hard toward reform, and they are taking a lot of heat from special interests. They deserve our thanks and need our support to continue the fight. But those who are still putting insurance companies and partisan point-scoring ahead of their constituents must know that voters are watching — and that we expect better.

Earlier this week, the President wrote that “this is the moment our movement was built for” and asked us all to commit to join at least one event this month. This is the way to answer that call, and rise to the challenge of this moment together.

Thank you for going the extra mile when it matters the most,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

 

In case you aren’t aware, “Organizing For America” is a partner of the Democratic National Committee.

“…Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe introduced Mitch Stewart, who will serve as Director of Organizing for America.

Organizing for America will work in partnership with the DNC to continue to build, engage and strengthen the unprecedented organization that was built during the campaign and the grassroots network built over the past four years at the DNC. The joint partnership signifies the ongoing commitment to both building and strengthening the grassroots movement, and reaching out to people in all 50 states to engage Americans in this movement for change.

“I’m extremely pleased that Organizing for America will be housed here at the DNC.  Working in partnership, we will seek to engage people in new ways, and to broaden what President Obama calls the ‘Coalition for Change’ in America ,” said Governor Tim Kaine. “I know first-hand how important it is to reach out and engage the grassroots all across a state and all across our country.”

In addition to Mitch Stewart, the DNC also announced that Jeremy Bird will serve as [OFA] Deputy Director.

Mitch Stewart served as Iowa Caucus director, Indiana state director and Virginia state director for the Obama campaign. Before joining Obama’s campaign, Stewart was the coordinated campaign manager for the Democratic Farm Labor party in Minnesota in 2006, when Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) won her race. In 2004, Stewart served as former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle’s field director. He was also a regional field director in Iowa for former senator John Edwards’ during his presidential bid in 2004.

Jeremy Bird served as Obama campaign field director in South Carolina during the primaries and general election director in Ohio .”

Quote Of The Day

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Courtesty of Ron Hart:

“If Obama has his way, his health care plan will be funded by his Treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by his Surgeon General who is obese, signed by a president who smokes and financed by a country that is just about broke. What possibly could go wrong?”

Quote Of The Day

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“While discussing the upcoming Universal Health Care Program with my friend the other day, I think we have found the solution.  I am sure you have heard the ideas that if you’re a senior you need to suck it up and give up the idea that you need any health care.  A new hip?  Unheard of.  We simply can’t afford to take care of you anymore.  You don’t need any medications for your high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, etc.

“So here is the solution.  When you turn 70, you get a gun and 4 bullets.  You are allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives.  Of course, you will be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head and all the health care you need.  New teeth, great!!!  Need glasses, no problem.  New hip, knee, kidney, lung, heart?  Well bring it on.
 
“Who will be paying for all of this?  The same government that just told you that you are too old for health care.
 
“And, since you are a prisoner, you don’t have to pay any income tax.”

How The News Should Be Covered

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Here is an interesting and informative piece about what would elsewhere be termed a “confrontation” at Douglasville, Georgia meeting with Representative David Scott:

It is interesting because the reporter, Atlanta 11-Alive’s Duffie Dixon, does not editorialize the event; nowhere in her piece do we hear her opine the words “mob” or “teabag”.

It is informative because it simply presents the incident in question and provides both sides an opportunity to share a little more detail.  Properly leaving it up to the viewers to form their own opinions.

Hats off, Duffie.  You put the rest of the mainstream media to shame.

I Am The Mob

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On the one hand, it’s delicious fun – in that train wreck kind of way – to watch leftwing heads spinning like nuts being tightened by a master mechanic in an overweight, Burkenstocked version of “The Exorcist” as average Americans catch on to the monstrous devastation being heaped upon our beloved country, but on the other, I’ve had more than my fill of suits and lemmings drunk on Kool-Aid endlessly bleating their psychobabble about why I’m angry and speaking out against the policies of this administration. 

Frankly, my dears, I am just your average American citizen.  I go to work, I pay my bills (including my taxes – hint, hint, Obamabuds), I care for my family and my friends, and I care deeply about the freedoms we have in this country.  I care so deeply about those freedoms that I take the time to read the pork-laced swill spewed hastily by Congress and labelled as legislation.  I take the time to listen to the words coming out of lips both painted and unpainted and I pay attention to the actions that follow.  Actions that, inevitably, do something different.

I have never been one to tolerate fools easily and now the attacks being perpetuated on me, a plain, old, hard-working American citizen, through the continuing onslaught against my Constitutional freedoms, have set my teeth on edge and prodded me to the point that I get up out of my chair and march on the street.  As an American citizen it is my right to do this.  And there I find thousands of others who are thinking exactly the same thing.

This government is out of control.  And we, the people, want that control back.

Because I dare to choose to exercise my Constitutional right to assemble or my Constitutional right to voice my opinion, I am labelled any of the following:

  • Bitter
  • Right-wing extremist
  • Mob member
  • Destructive
  • Ringer
  • Astroturf
  • Racist
  • Redneck
  • Teabagger

What is frightening is that these labels are not placed on me (or on any of the other millions of Americans who now find themselves unexpected participants in our process of government) only by those with whom I disagree.  These labels are placed by our Community Organizer in Chief, that Great Divider of the United States, President Obama, and by members of his administration.  Most recently, campaigning at a rally for Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, President Obama said:

“I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I’m the president.  But I don’t want the folks who created the mess doing a lot of talking. I want them to just get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.”

Yo, Barry.  You ARE being held responsible.  But the only “mess” here is the one created by you peeing on my leg and then having the audacity to tell me it’s raining.  You are responsible for creating the most enormous deficit this country has ever seen, and doing it in only six short month’s time.  And we, the American people who hold down real jobs in the real world, something about which you haven’t a clue, we aren’t buying your excuses and your “oopses” any more and we certainly aren’t buying your exortions to “spend more to save money”.  The truth is that the current economic “recovery” you’re so quick to claim would have happened had you done absolutely NOTHING.  We see through your rhetoric and we aren’t buying what you have for sale, especially not your takeover of American medicine.  And we are not going to get out of your way.

Encouraged by the President’s childish attention to matters that ought not concern him, such as his “friend” Professor Gate’s recent idiotic behavior, his administration gleefully casts stones as well and is now doing everything they can to marginalize and demonize the American people.  Attempting to divide their precious left from right, blacks and Hispanics from white, they are calling on their unions and the Obama campaign astroturf (including government-funded – read:  our hard-earned tax-dollar-funded – ACORN) to bully people like me and you who take the time to attend a townhall.  They are paying people – with our hard-earned tax dollars – to collect information from snitches about people who disagree with the facts set down in black and white in their draft health care reform legislation and are using the Secret Service to contact those people as a way to intimidate and silence them.

Listen.  Do you hear that sound?  It’s those stones hitting the walls of their glass houses, and it’s growing louder every day.  For the truth is that any argument is lost once one side begins calling the other names.

Mobs may shout.

But anger votes.

Warning: Oxymorons In Motion (Heavy Emphasis On “Moron”)

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Every day provides more evidence that President Obama knows he is fast losing his grip on the American people and he is ever more openly and actively encouraging divisiveness.  Moveon.org, the Obama campaign machine, is now hiring people to organize others to support the administration’s scheme for socialized medicine.

In an email to their supporters, they are begging for money to pay for “using new technology to implement rapid response town hall turnout, organizing personal phone calls from small business leaders and donors to their representatives, running new ads, and activating an energized network of on-the-ground organizers and volunteers.”

And they are hiring “skilled grassroots organizers”.

Are they so stupid that they don’t think the rest of us can’t see that this is exactly what they are accusing regular Americans of doing when they decide to go out and freely participate in the processes of government?

Are they so stupid that they don’t understand that normal Americans don’t need to pay someone else to organize them to voice their displeasure with the dangerous thefts of freedoms proposed by this administration?

If nothing else, this tells us that they have no valid argument and must resort to paying people to play, thinking that simply large numbers of brainless bodies will be enough to convince those who have actually read the legislation and who understand how it will affect each and every American that it’s not pure Orwellian evil.

They are so very, very wrong.