During an interview on "FOX News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked former Vice President Dick Cheney if he thinks Democrats are soft on national security? Cheney responded affirmatively, then added that in recent years the Democrats
didn't have as strong of advocates on national defense or national security as they used to have -- the pro defense
wing of the Democratic party isn't as strong as it once
was.
The video and transcript of the interview are available below.
A "Terrible, Terrible Precedent"
This was Cheney's first interview since the Obama justice Department named a prosecutor to investigate possible CIA abuses of terror detainees. Asked about that action against CIA personnel, Cheney called it a terrible, terrible precedent:
In today's weekly Republican address, Senator Senator Mike Enzi, who is part of a bipartisan group of six Senators working on health care reform, calls for common sense reform that will actually cut heath care costs and not increase the deficit:
We need health care reform - but more importantly, we need to get it
right. We need reforms that will actually lower health care costs for working Americans and we need to make sure we do not increase the deficit and add to the record debt we’re already passing on to our children and grandchildren.
[. . .]
According to the non-partisan and independent Congressional Budget Office, the House and Senate bills will actually drive up heath care costs. The Congressional Budget Office also says that the Democrats’ bill will significantly increase our nation's deficit.
[. . .]
The Democrats are trying to rush a bill through the process that will actually make our nation’s finances sicker without saving you money. The American people are growing increasingly concerned about out of control spending in Washington that’s leaving us with trillions of dollars of debt.
Senator Enzi also takes the Democrats to task for the Obamacare raid of Medicare funds to create new government
programs and for the expansion of comparative effectiveness research:
These bills also raid Medicare. This will result in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the elderly to create new government programs. Savings from Medicare should only be used to strengthen Medicare.
The bills would expand comparative effectiveness research that would be used to limit or deny care based on age or disability of patients. Republican amendments in the HELP [Health, Education, Labor and Pensions] Committee would have protected Americans by prohibiting the rationing of their health care. The Democrats showed their true intent by voting every amendment down and leaving these unacceptable provisions in the bill. This intrusion of a Washington bureaucrat in the relationship between a doctor and a patient is not the kind of reform that Americans are seeking.
People across America are telling Congress that current health care bills are the wrong approach and that there should be a course correction on health care reform. They’ve said we need to scrap these flawed bills and take the time to develop the real solutions that the American people want and need.
Prior to Sunday, the number who strongly approved of the President’s
performance in the tracking Poll never fell below 29%. Some of the decline has come
from Democrats -- only 49% of Democrats strongly approved of Obama's performance.
Rasmussen Reports presidential job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters, rather than samples of all adults. Obama’s numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters because some of Obama's most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote.
As we have said before, the more likely voters find out President Obama, the less they care for him and his extremely liberal policies.
There he goes again. President Obama bears "false witness" as he complains about others bearing "false witness" against Obamacare.
A "scripted" online discussion about Obamacare conducted with a "friendly audience" of religious voters and pastors Wednesday, ended with Obama "bemoaning those who bear 'false witness' against his plans — and then making a claim of his own that's been widely shown to be false":
"There's been a lot of misinformation," Obama said, complaining about people who are "bearing false witness."
He said the first thing he wanted to correct was the idea that the proposed overhaul would force some people into different health care plans. "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan," he said, repeating one of his stock lines.
Unfortunately, that Obama "stock line" is not true.
That's not true, however, according to FactCheck.org, an independent truth squad run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
These facts don't bother Obama. He continues to make his now debunked promise.
We have seen such misrepresentation from Obama before. Presidential candidate Obama's distortion of McCain's "one hundred years" statement about the Iraq war is the most egregious example. Even as fact checker after fact checker found that Obama misrepresented what McCain said, Obama continued the distortions for weeks.
How long will Obama continue to bear false witness about Obamacare?
In that article, Novak is described as a reporter on the opinion page:
While Novak’s fame primarily resulted from his on-screen work, his real vocation was the written word. And although his work was found exclusively on the opinion pages for the last 45 years of his career, he was a political reporter more than anything else. Sure, he has always had his opinions—and over his life, he has become progressively more pro-life, more pro-market and more anti-interventionist— but so do all reporters. Novak was different from the news-page reporters because he didn’t hide his opinions.
But the commentary in his columns was usually secondary. His aim in each column was to include at least one previously unreported fact. Sometimes it was a trivial tidbit. Sometimes it was a major scoop.
[. . .]
Making people talk, listening well, remembering everything and following up were Novak’s real skills.
How did he do it? For one thing, he left the tape recorder in the office and the notepad in his back pocket. This sets your interlocutor at ease, making the meeting feel less like an interview and more like a conversation. For another thing, he operated, at almost all times, on background.
In journalism, there’s “on the record” and “off the record.” If you’re talking “on the record,” you can be named and quoted. “Off the record” information cannot be reported at all, unless the reporter gets an on-the-record source. “On background” is the large grey spectrum in between.
[. . .]
Novak’s exhortation to “never trust your government” is not just a
free-market rallying cry or a libertarian mantra. It’s also a pragmatic
conclusion after years of witnessing in action the men and women who make our
laws and regulations.
People who knew Novak in the 1960s—when he voted for Lyndon Johnson over
Barry Goldwater, fearing Goldwater would move the Republican Party too far to
the right—point out that he hasn’t always been as conservative as he is now. On
the social issues, Novak’s late-life conversion to Catholicism helps explain his
rightward shift. On economic issues and the size of government, his increasing
conservatism is partly the result of his having a front-row seat at the sausage
factories that are Capitol Hill and the executive branch.
There is much more, including a different perspective on the Plame affair. You should read the whole thing.
In December 2008, the American Spectator Foundation awarded Novak the Barbara Olson Award for Excellence & Independence in Journalism.
Robert Novak will be missed. May he rest in peace.
Unhappy with the AARP position on healthcare, as many as 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1.
Many are switching to the more Conservative American Seniors Association, which opposes Obamacare. The AARP is widely viewed as supporting the President.
The AARP's waffling response to questions about its position on Obamacare is remarkably similar to Obama's constant obfuscation and attempts to appear to be on both sides of many issues. No wonder members are quitting.
In an article entitled, "President's Coverage Promise Is No Keeper," the Washington Post makes it clear that President Obama's promise that you can "keep your health-care plan," is just another Obama promise you can't believe in.
According to the Post, under the Obamacare legislation written by Democrats, Obama's promise that you can keep your healthcare plan "would not necessarily be true."
The Democrats' Obamacare legislation could cause some employers to drop coverage.
That conclusion is based in part on estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation that in 2016, about three million people (including spouses and
dependents of workers) who are covered by an employer-provided plan "would not have an offer of coverage" under Obamacare.
In other words, the Democrats' Obamacare legislation could cause some employers to drop coverage.
These facts don't bother Obama. He continues to make his now questionable promise.
Fox News legal analyst, Peter J. Johnson, Jr., fact checks Obama's you can "keep your healthcare plan" promise in the following video:
On Meet the Press, when Dick Armey called the Moveon.org ad comparing President Bush with Hitler despicable, MSNBC blowhard Rachel Maddow interrupted Armey so she could falsely claim Moveon.org never ran an ad comparing President Bush to Hitler.
As to whether Maddow is lying or just ignorant, here's a hint. Maddow has a doctorate in political science and she was a Rhodes Scholar.
You can watch Maddow interrupt Armey at about the 3:55 mark in this MSNBC video. You can watch the horrible moveon.org comparing President Bush to Hitler by following the first link.
In the following video you can listen to what Obama's Press Secretary has to say about some of the "Nazi imagery" being used in the Obamacare debate. Gibbs says, "I think anytime you make references to what happened in Germany in the '30's and '40's... I think you're talking about an event that has no equivalent... and I think anytime anyone ventures to compare anything to that... they're on thin ice":
Funny how the Democrats' perspective about the use of Nazi comparisons has changed now that they have regained control of the entire federal government.
Today the Department of Health and Human Services announced the
members of the "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative
Effectiveness Research" ("CER"), which was stealthily included in the Obama boondoggle stimulus -- one of those bills the Democrats passed without anyone having a chance to read it.
According to George Will, the draft report on the so-called stimulus bill states the CER will identify medical "items, procedures, and interventions" that it deems insufficiently effective or excessively expensive. They "will no longer be prescribed" by federal health programs.
Tom Daschle, advocated a "Federal Health Board" similar to the CER, whose recommendations "would have teeth": Congress could restrict the tax exclusion for private health insurance to "insurance that complies with the Board's recommendation."
Will tried to warn us in January:
The CER, which would dramatically advance government control -- and rationing -- of health care, should be thoroughly debated, not stealthily created in the name of "stimulus."
This is Obamacare -- government-controlled healthcare stealthily enacted. Is it even worse? Is the CER a stalking horse for the so-called "death panels." With more than a quarter of Medicare expenses spent on the last year of life, one has to wonder. One has to wonder even more when the controversial Ezekiel J. Emanuel, one of those "deadly doctors," is included as a member.
On Thursday, after Obama adviser David Axelrod sent out a "chain" email
trying to rebut criticism of Obamacare, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs got into a heated exchange with FOX News' Major Garrett over unsolicited White House email.
Sean Hannity discusses the issue with Tony Blankley in the following video:
The White House must be worried. On Friday the Obama administration was looking over a list of names of people who say they received unsolicited emails on health care from the White House, Obama's presidential campaign or his political organization, Organizing for America.
FOX News reports it obtained permission from some of those who complained about the unsolicited emails to and forwarded the names to the White House.
The Obama presidency is starting to resemble the Nixon presidency and its infamous enemies list.
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