Pasco County News | Breaking News

Kerry: Kill economy, save planet

Posted Oct 7, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 7, 2009 at 04:41 PM

From James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today,” a chillingly on-the-button assessment of Sen. John Kerry’s enthusiasm for emission controls:

John Kerry, the former junior senator from Massachusetts who by the way served in Vietnam, is leading the effort in the Senate to pass Cap’n Trade, a measure to combat so-called global warming by imposing massive taxes on energy. Blogger Dan Calabrese notes a revealing Kerry quote from last week:

“Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6% reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14%.”

Wow. To accomplish Kerry’s environmental goals, all we need to do is shrink the economy even more and keep it shrunken—in other words, for the recession to turn into a permanent depression. If you think that’s a good idea, call your senator and urge him to vote “yes” on Cap’n Trade!

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Gus shoots ... he scores!

Posted Oct 7, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 7, 2009 at 04:16 PM

For the record, from the communications staff of U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis:

WASHINGTON (7 October) - U.S. Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Fla.), Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight, today issued the following statement after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decided to halt a $1 million grant it awarded to ACORN in New Orleans as part of FEMA’s Fire Prevention and Safety Grants program:

“ACORN has demonstrated it is not worthy of the public’s trust, and I am pleased that FEMA has agreed with me and others in Congress who believe we should not be funding this corrupt enterprise.

“Taxpayer’s money should not be going to an organization which has engaged in unlawful behavior. ACORN employees were recently caught on tape encouraging prostitution, tax fraud, and human trafficking. This is not the type of activity that should be rewarded with scarce homeland security resources.”

Bilirakis has a right to crow a little bit.  As his office points out:

On September 17, Bilirakis sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asking the agency to repeal a nearly $1 million grant it awarded to ACORN earlier [in the] month.

 

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Redefining ‘rights’

Posted Oct 7, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 7, 2009 at 02:20 PM

Just when you thought the fight over health care/insurance reform couldn’t rage any hotter, along comes our pal John Russell, the acute care nurse practitioner and perpetual candidate for congress from Dade City, to dial it up a notch.

Russell alerts us to a demonstration organized by worldly University of South Florida students and planned for Friday drive time somewhere along Dale Mabry Highway (you have to call for the specific location, possibly to weed out the nutters). From Russell’s thoughtful description, it promises to be a performance full of wisdom, grace and goodwill.

Consider:

USF students and a host of other groups have decided that they have “HAD IT” with all of the endemic corruption, lies and obfuscation coming out of Washington on the issue of Health Care Policy.

Have you become disheartened as the so-called “debate” on Health Reform has unfolded in Washington and elsewhere?  Well here is YOUR opportunity to have YOUR thoughts heard!  Show these jackasses that “THIS Dog Don’t Hunt” and WE ARE Through with their shenanigans!”

The message goes on (and on, and on; Russell is never at a loss for words):

Join USF students, activists and other people … in an event that will demonstrate to “the establishment” that we are NOT the suckers that they take us for! …

So ... Show up ... Give a speech, get your views heard on YOUTube!  Maybe you will be lucky enough to vent your spleen on the evening news??? … Show our duly elected “puppets” of BOTH major political parties what you’re made of.

THIS event will be videotaped and made available to venues that will spread our very civil, but straight forward message far and wide. Due to the nature and veracity of the scheduled participants, it is not likely that mainstream press will be in attendance.

And then there’s this, in which Russell elevates health care to the level of speech, assembly, access to due process, the presumption of innocence, being secure in our papers and persons and, yes, even possession of firearms:

If you support health care for everyone, and are like me of the opinion that access to comprehensive Health Care is a Fundamental Right, then PLEASE come show it! (Emphasis added.)

In other words, Friday’s demonstrators will be supporting the idea that providing universal medical care is not simply a worthy, possibly even reasonable policy – if we can just figure out the details – but that it is an obligation. Which also means that if it can be achieved only by subordinating individual freedom – taking from those who have achieved – then that would be the government’s duty, no less than providing for trial by jury, and, quaintly, making sure soldiers are not quartered in private homes.

And, if you arrive empty-handed, don’t fret: “Signs will be provided if anyone needs them.”  Because you have a right to a preprinted message.

Of course, it’s the the town hall protests and tea party demonstrations that were Astroturf.

 

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Will SNL blink?

Posted Oct 6, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 6, 2009 at 06:26 PM

I can’t remember the last time I watched “Saturday Night Live,” but even if I have to remember to set up the DVR (must avoid conflicting with the late-ending Florida-LSU showdown in Death Valley – aka, John Brantley’s coming-out party), I’m definitely catching the next episode.

No, silly, not because the last show opened with a spoof of President Obama.

Others may think this was a history-shaping, chasm-opening moment – lampooning The One, the hero of the left, for being insufficiently vigorous in enacting liberalism – but me, not so much.

But the Saturday upcoming will reveal just how dedicated the SNLers are to their craft.  To wit: CNN’s deadly serious “fact-checking” of the Obama skit – an instant classic, courtesy of Wolf Blitzer’s routinely absurd “Situation Room” – begs for skewering.

If they do it, it ought to be great TV.  Not worth missing the final minutes of the Gators finishing off a Bengal Tiger snack while the Greatest Player of This or Any Other Century observes from the sidelines, of course.  When the only blitzer I’ll be remotely interested in is a guy named Brandon Spikes.  But great even when savored later through the miracle of digital preservation.

And if they don’t, when the opportunity is so desperately ripe, that will be even more revelatory than the parody that sent the elite-left media into apoplectic, hyperventilating paroxysms.

They wouldn’t duck … would they?  Nah.  But if they do, it’ll be evidence they’ve got more wrong with their brains than Tim Tebow, America’s most famous concussion-survivor.

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Dern near a shootin’ war

Posted Oct 6, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 6, 2009 at 01:45 PM

Lots of heat—waiting on the light—in the ongoing showdown over the wayward conduct of some members and staff of the Public Service Commission.  Responding to the letter from state Sen. Mike Fasano (below), heavyweight lobbyist Barney Bishop, head of Allied Industries of Florida, said in part:

“Associated Industries of Florida cannot idly sit by and watch the further deterioration of the Public Service Commission—a body that has a quasi-judicial status—and one that is tasked with making impartial decisions about Florida’s regulatory industry based on evidence and information brought before them.

“When emotions are allowed to overrule rational thought it creates a very dangerous situation, which is what we are starting to see at the PSC. ...

“In a letter released today, Senator Mike Fasano is calling for the resignation of Commissioner Lisa Edgar who was just recently confirmed by the Florida Senate.

“Political interference by any elected official who may pre-judge what the outcome may be of any case before the PSC only undermines the quasi-judicial process set forth by law.  Any attempt by anyone to influence ‘due process,’ whether they are an elected official or not, is inappropriate.  What everybody needs to be focused on is the process and not the outcomes.”

Responding to Bishop’s response, Fasano released the following:

“Barney Bishop is a highly paid representative for utility companies throughout Florida.  Mr. Bishop states that I am interfering in the due process that Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light are entitled to as the Florida Public Service Commission considers billion dollar rate increase requests.  As anyone versed in the most elemental aspects of law should know, due process entitles one to face his or her accuser.  Since Mr. Bishop, and Associated Industries of Florida, has stated that my involvement in this case is inappropriate, I challenge Mr. Bishop to publicly debate me on this issue.

“The consumers of Florida are entitled to be served by a Public Service Commission that is impartial and able to weigh the facts of any case before them. Recent disclosures of ex parte communications between members and staff at the Commission and the utilities they regulate bring into question the impartiality of some of the sitting commissioners.  Mr. Bishop, as a spokesman and advocate for the utilities, is hardly an unbiased witness.  This fact begs the question; what is his own standing to accuse me of interfering in this process?

“I look forward to the opportunity to debate Mr. Bishop and AIF at any time that is mutually convenient on the merits of his position on this issue and mine. The people of Florida deserve no less than the opportunity to hear why Mr. Bishop and AIF, believe that the consumers do not need someone such as myself, or any other elected official, speaking out on behalf of utility customers from all corners of the state.”

This is starting to get good.

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Don’t mess with Mike

Posted Oct 5, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 5, 2009 at 05:39 PM

Regarding the disgraced Public Service Commission, state Sen. Mike Fasano has been and continues to be, properly, a pit bull on a soup bone.

In a letter issued Monday, he asks Commissioner Lisa Edgar to tumble on her bureaucratic sword.  Let’s have a peek.

Dear Commissioner Edgar:

With Commissioner McMurrian’s decision to resign prior to the expiration of her term I believe the governor’s desire to clean house at the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) has begun in earnest.  Based upon the fact that there continues to be ongoing investigations into activities of individual commissioners and staff by the Attorney General and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the integrity of the PSC has been sullied.  As you know I have asked the Senate president to authorize the Senate Ethics & Elections Committee to hold a hearing to look into these activities as well.

As a sitting commissioner who has been privy to the ongoing day-to-day operations of the PSC, you know better than anyone that the PSC lacks leadership in this time of turmoil and crisis.  With the governor’s appointment of two new commissioners he has sent a clear signal that the time has come for a top-down rebuilding of the PSC.

I was a vocal opponent of your reappointment to the PSC and believe that time and subsequent events have only bolstered the reasons why I opposed your continued service on the Commission.  I respectfully request that you follow Commissioner McMurrian’s lead and resign your seat as well.  The PSC and its mission is far more important than any single individual’s continued employment.

To truly bring change to the PSC the time has come for you to do the honorable thing and allow the governor to continue the process he has begun; to return the term “public service” to the Florida Public Service Commission.

Yours truly,

Mike Fasano
State Senator, District 112

We have reached the no-quarter portion of this war, and Fasano is deadly accurate: Anyone who was remotely cozy with, or forgiving of, PSC members’ and/or staff’s improper contacts with the folks they’re paid to regulate must pack it in.  It is not only the right thing to do; it is the necessary thing to do.

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Prof. Darwin, call your office

Posted Oct 1, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 1, 2009 at 11:36 AM

Seems scientific discovery has turned up yet another problem for evolutionists. First the teeny T-rex, a miniature blueprint of his famous descendant, blows a hole in the idea that the planet’s most famous prehistoric predator emerged from simpler, less sophisticated and less specialized creatures. Now a discovery of ancient human fossils suggests our ancestors of more than 4 million years ago—substantially older than primitive Lucy, the previously presumed mother of modern humankind—were remarkably modern in their makeup.

From the Wall Street Journal:

After 15 years of rumors, researchers in the U.S. and Ethiopia on Thursday made public fossils from a 4.4-million-year-old human fore-bearer they say reveals that our earliest ancestors were more modern than scholars assumed and deepens the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from today’s apes and chimpanzees.

The highlight of the extensive fossil trove is a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind’s beginnings.

An international research team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, unveiled remains from 36 males, females and young of an ancient prehuman species called Ardipithecus ramidus, unearthed in the Awash region of Ethiopia since 1994. The creatures take their scientific name from the word for root in the local Afar language.

“It is not a chimp and it is not human,” said Dr. White. “It gives us a new perspective on our origins.”

Already, the discoveries have experts reworking the human pedigree. “They are extraordinary fossils,” said anthropologist Alan Walker at Pennsylvania State University, who wasn’t part of the project. They undoubtedly will shape debates about human origins for years to come, as scholars argue whether these creatures should be counted among our most ancient direct ancestors or cataloged as an intriguing dead-end.

And furthermore:

Indeed, unlike apes and chimps, they had supple wrists, strong thumbs, flexible fingers and power-grip palms shaped to grasp objects like sticks and stones firmly. They were primed for tool use, even though it would be another two million years or so before our ancestors began to fashion the first stone blades, choppers and axes.

But they were still evolving the ability to walk upright, with a big toe better suited for grasping branches than stepping smartly along, an analysis of their anatomy shows. They made their home in the woods, not on the open savannah grasslands long considered the main arena of human development. Yet their upright posture, distinctive pelvis and other toes suggest they walked easily enough. Most importantly, they showed no sign they walked on their knuckles, as contemporary chimps and apes do.

“They are not what one would have predicted,” said anthropologist Bernard Wood at George Washington University. Although the differences between humans, apes and chimps today are legion, we all shared a common ancestor six million years or so ago. These fossils suggest that creature–still undiscovered—resembled a chimp much less than researchers have always believed.

In fact, so many traits in chimps and apes today are missing in these early hominids that researchers now question the notion that modern chimps and apes embody vestiges of our primate past, retaining primitive traits once shared by our ancestors. “We all thought the ancestral animal would look more like a chimp,” explained Yale University anthropologist Andrew Hill.

Clearly, this find scarcely settles the debate. Instead, what it does is reaffirm what scientists themselves often declare, and that is the more we discover, the more we reaffirm the extent of our ignorance.

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If you can fake it there ...

Posted Sep 30, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 30, 2009 at 10:09 PM

This is just plain astonishing (from the Associated Press):

NEW YORK - Red and yellow lights shone from the top of the Empire State Building at dusk Wednesday, a tribute to communist China’s 60th anniversary that protesters labeled “blatant approval” of totalitarianism and criticized as inappropriate for an icon in the land of the free.

At minimum, it’s in deplorable taste.  At worst, it is unconscionable pandering to a thugocracy for whom oppression and exploitation are fundamental to its continued existence, and a hot poker in the eye of people everywhere yearning to be free.  To think the Statue of Liberty and the jokers who lit up the Empire State Building in this deplorable manner share the same area code.

Makes you wonder how on Earth the landmark’s managers allowed the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht to slip through unacknowledged.  Think they have something special planned for the centennial of the Russian Revolution?

Read the whole disgusting thing here.

 

 

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Reason No. 4,397 Democrats don’t want us to read bill before the vote

Posted Sep 27, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 27, 2009 at 12:16 AM

Incisiveness by the Washington Times, via Powerline, describes death panels by another name.  Death by rationing surely is on its way if Democrats get their way.

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Doing the people’s work?

Posted Sep 23, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 23, 2009 at 08:51 PM

Remember a few years ago when Pasco County commissioners caught holy heck when it was revealed that some of them surfed the Internet during board meetings?  Then-candidate Michael Cox rode voters’ hyper-ire to victory over two-term incumbent Steve Simon in what many observers regarded as at least a mild upset.

Comes now this oddly familiar, memory-evoking photograph from a recent session of the Connecticut state legislature in which, while a colleague addresses the group during a session convened to consider the state’s new budget, members plainly can be seen playing solitaire and visiting ESPN’s Web site.

Small wonder, critics said, state lawmakers already were three months late producing a fiscal plan.  Whatever other nefarious intent—or indiffierence—could be assigned to transgressing board members at the time, at least Pasco’s Webanauts never let their online activities get in the way of the county’s business.

That we know of.

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Dubious partners: universal health care and the Constitution

Posted Sep 23, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 23, 2009 at 11:45 AM

As part of its Constitution Day celebration, Saint Leo University has scheduled a debate on a largely unexamined aspect of the current health care reform effort, and that is this: “Is Universal Health Care Constitutional?”

Beginning at 7 p.m. at the university’s Student Community Center, the agenda, with speakers drawn from the faculty, includes the following:

• “Health Care and the Constitution” with Hudson Reynolds, associate professor of political science. Reynolds teaches courses on constitutional and government issues.

• “Health Care Systems Around the World’ with an international panel. Faculty members presenting are Marco Rimanelli, professor of political science; Patricia Campion, associate professor of sociology; Astrid Vicas, associate professor of philosophy; and Galo Alava, assistant professor of health care administration. Rimanelli is originally from Italy and specializes in politics and international relations. Campion has studied or worked previously in Europe and Mexico and writes frequently on international dimensions of social issues. Vicas previously taught at universities in Canada, where she was educated, and at Saint Leo teaches philosophy and ethics courses. Alava was trained as a medical doctor in his native Ecuador and at Saint Leo teaches courses including health care organization.

• “Health Care in America: An Overview of Access and Funding” with Dr. Gavin Putzer. Putzer holds a medical degree from the University of South Florida in addition to the Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University and a doctorate in health services research from the University of Florida. He recently joined Saint Leo as associate professor of health care management.

Well.  Can’t wait to hear what Saint Leo’s learned ones have to say about all this.  But regarding the constitutionality of universal health care, legal scholars writing for the Wall Street Journal already have come down forcefully against it.

Washington, D.C., lawyers David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Bush I Justice Department say (in part) this:

Federal legislation requiring that every American have health insurance is part of all the major health-care reform plans now being considered in Washington. Such a mandate, however, would expand the federal government’s authority over individual Americans to an unprecedented degree. It is also profoundly unconstitutional.

Rivkin and Casey object on the grounds that the federal government anticipates overstepping its “enumerated” authorities, and also that the proposed mandate is delivered as an individual-specific tax.

As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers: “[I]n the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects.” Congress, in other words, cannot regulate simply because it sees a problem to be fixed. Federal law must be grounded in one of the specific grants of authority found in the Constitution.

These are mostly found in Article I, Section 8, which among other things gives Congress the power to tax, borrow and spend money, raise and support armies, declare war, establish post offices and regulate commerce. It is the authority to regulate foreign and interstate commerce that—in one way or another—supports most of the elaborate federal regulatory system. If the federal government has any right to reform, revise or remake the American health-care system, it must be found in this all-important provision. This is especially true of any mandate that every American obtain health-care insurance or face a penalty. …

But there are important limits. In United States v. Lopez (1995), for example, the Court invalidated the Gun Free School Zones Act because that law made it a crime simply to possess a gun near a school. … Of course, a health-care mandate would not regulate any “activity.” … Simply being an American would trigger it.

Health-care backers understand this and—like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen insisting that some hills are valleys—have framed the mandate as a “tax” rather than a regulation. Under Sen. Max Baucus’ (D., Mont.) most recent plan, people who do not maintain health insurance for themselves and their families would be forced to pay an “excise tax” of up to $1,500 per year—roughly comparable to the cost of insurance coverage under the new plan.

But Congress cannot so simply avoid the constitutional limits on its power. Taxation can favor one industry or course of action over another, but a “tax” that falls exclusively on anyone who is uninsured is a penalty beyond Congress’s authority. If the rule were otherwise, Congress could evade all constitutional limits by “taxing” anyone who doesn’t follow an order of any kind—whether to obtain health-care insurance, or to join a health club, or exercise regularly, or even eat your vegetables.

This type of congressional trickery is bad for our democracy and has implications far beyond the health-care debate. The Constitution’s Framers divided power between the federal government and states—just as they did among the three federal branches of government—for a reason. They viewed these structural limitations on governmental power as the most reliable means of protecting individual liberty—more important even than the Bill of Rights.

Yet if that imperative is insufficient to prompt reconsideration of the mandate (and the approach to reform it supports), then the inevitable judicial challenges should. Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to invalidate “regulatory” taxes. However, a tax that is so clearly a penalty for failing to comply with requirements otherwise beyond Congress’s constitutional power will present the question whether there are any limits on Congress’s power to regulate individual Americans. The Supreme Court has never accepted such a proposition, and it is unlikely to accept it now, even in an area as important as health care.

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Health reform torture: (aaaaaaaa)AARP!

Posted Sep 23, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 23, 2009 at 10:33 AM

From Phil Klein at the American Spectator, more evidence of double-dealing on the so-called health care “reform” front.  Makes me glad I dropped AARP membership a few years ago; makes me want to re-enroll so I can drop it all over again.  Travel discounts aren’t worth enlisting with the shameless shenanigans this crowd is up to.

House Republicans have issued a report providing evidence that AARP is in a position to recieve tens of millions of dollars in “kickbacks” if Democratic health care legislation becomes law.

President Obama and Democrats have proposed saving money to pay for health care legislation, in part, by cutting $162 billion in payments to Medicare Advantage, which allows Medicare recipients to choose privately-administered coverage. If these changes go through, millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage would lose their current coverage, forcing them into government-administered plans with less generous benefits. As a result, many of them would have to purchase policies to supplement traditional Medicare. Enter AARP.

In 2008, AARP generated $652.7 million in revenue by selling products like Medigap supplemental Medicare insurance, accounting for over 60 percent of the group’s revenue, according to an analysis of its financial statements cited in the report released by the House Republican Conference.

If the House Democrats health care bill becomes law, the report argues, it would be a boon to AARP, because while Medicare Advantage plans will be required to pay out 85 percent of the money collected in premiums to claims made by policy holders, the requirement would only be 65 percent for the kind of Medigap policies sold by AARP.

“In other words, under the Democrat bill, seniors could pay as much as 20 cents more out of every premium dollar to fund ‘kickbacks’ to AARP-sponsored Medigap plans than Medicare Advantage plans,” the GOP report charges.

There’s more, and it’s eye-popping.  Read it here.

 

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Reason No. 3,547 to resist feds’ health care push

Posted Sep 21, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 21, 2009 at 05:36 PM

From Monday’s Washington Post comes yet another reason to resist further governmental intrusions into health care (or just about any other aspect of life you can think of).

In its desire to pursue green initiatives at any cost, the federal government has been hopelessly and relentlessly profligate with taxpayer dollars.  In one spectacular case, the Department of Energy paid contractors $850,000 to upgrade buildings in Oak Ridge, Tenn., that no longer existed.

Writes the Post’s Robert O’Harrow Jr.:

The audit findings show the potential for waste and abuse at a time when the department is poised to launch billions of dollars more in stimulus spending on an unprecedented welter of green projects across the country.

The initiatives are hallmarks of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act approved by Congress in February. The stimulus law directed almost $17 billion to the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, including $3.2 billion for energy-efficiency and conservation block grants and $3.1 billion for state energy programs.

Ah, but we shouldn’t much worry about it.  After all, as Vice President Joe Biden famously said in June, “We know some of this money is going to be wasted. … There are going to be mistakes made. Some people are being scammed already.”  Get over fuddy duddy, busybody, buzz-killer self, OK?

Says the Post:

The explosion in green spending is occurring despite well-documented weaknesses at the core of the strategy: A chronic lack of government officials assigned and properly trained to oversee the financially and technically complex projects.

That’s an interesting way to spin it.  The failure isn’t in federal agencies that fail to perform due diligence on the front end; it’s the limited number of existing bureaucrats.  Government grows, but it needs to grow more to check how it’s growing. Yikes.

The problems are not exclusive to Oak Ridge. The auditors, from the department’s inspector general’s office, also determined that $565,000 had been paid over six years under the same arrangement to a contractor in Texas for a high-efficiency laundry that was no longer in use. The department also paid out $3.4 million on another project without checking whether the conservation measures worked – and $160,000 for measurements that were never taken.

But these are the guys we are going to trust to wring “waste, fraud and abuse” out of the current health care system to make sure the whole thing remains deficit neutral, right?  Sure they are.  If we’ll just hush up long enough to let them pass a bill.

 

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Walk the talk, Mr. President

Posted Sep 11, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 11, 2009 at 01:48 PM

From the communications office of U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, the Congresswoman’s take on President Obama’s health care pep rally Wednesday night on Capitol Hill:

“Last night, the President outlined an idea that addresses a lot of Americans’ key concerns: Medicare reform, Medical Malpractice reform and Illegal Immigration among them.  But the bill he talked about has never been before me in Congress.

“There was a whole lot of fluff, but I was left to wonder; where’s the beef?

“It is easy to talk about a bill that does not exist.  I can only assume by his remarks, that in the coming weeks, the President will produce legislation of his own.  When he does, I’ll be glad to read it.  If he makes good on his word and invites House Republicans to the table – something that he has yet to do – I’ll be eager to oblige his request.  Right now, all I have seen and all I have voted on is H.R. 3200, which is a bill that cuts Medicare benefits, was negotiated in secret without bipartisan input and would remove millions of Americans from their current health care plans.

“I agree with my constituents, we need health care reform, but it’s going to take more than just words from this President, it’s time for him to walk the talk.” 

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Obama’s malleable millions

Posted Sep 9, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Sep 9, 2009 at 10:23 PM

From Powerlineblog.com, another glaring symptom of the president’s slippery nature.

But will he be called on it?

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