RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s Not Just the Mandate: ObamaCare’s Other Infringements

http://pjmedia.com/blog/its-not-just-the-mandate-obamacares-other-infringements/

ObamaCare supporters were hit with more bad news recently when the Congressional Budget Office announced that the health care law would cost nearly twice the original estimates [1]: $1.76 trillion over ten years rather than $940 billion. Of course, such “unexpected” cost overruns are nothing new for government programs. When Medicare was passed in 1965, it was predicted to cost $12 billion by 1990. In reality, it cost a whopping $110 billion, almost 10 times more than predicted [2].

But the escalating economic costs of ObamaCare will pale in comparison to the escalating losses of freedom.

The infringement of personal freedom receiving the most attention lately has been the “individual mandate” requiring Americans to purchase health insurance. This issue is at the heart of the current legal challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court. But ObamaCare imposes numerous other mandates and controls, including the following:

* Doctors must purchase and use expensive electronic medical record systems [3].

* Doctors must electronically record certain patient data [4] such as ethnicity, BMI (body mass index), blood pressure, and smoking status — and turn over patient data to the government [5] upon request.

* Doctors treating Medicare patients must practice according to government “quality” guidelines [6] or face economic penalties.

* Insurance companies must offer numerous “free” benefits [7], including various preventive health services, birth control, and coverage of “children” up to age 26.

* Insurers may not raise their rates to cover these new expenses unless the government agrees those rate increases are “reasonable.” [8]

* An Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) of unelected bureaucrats will set prices for Medicare services that will lead to de facto rationing [9].

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/28/Scalia-Greatest-Hits
Justice Scalia is always the most entertaining justice during oral arguments. Today was no exception. Here are Scalia’s greatest hits:

Scalia asked whether the standard for striking down an entire law was whether Congress would have enacted the law without the unconstitutional provision:

That would mean that if we struck down nothing in this legislation but the – what’s it called, the Cornhusker kickback, okay, we find that to violate the constitutional proscription of venality, okay? When we strike that down, it’s clear that Congress would not have passed it without that.

Constitutional prescription of venality? Boom goes the dynamite!

On reading the whole bill to determine what provisions should stick and which should be tossed, rather than tossing the whole thing:

What happened to Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through 2,700 pages?

The Eighth Amendment, for the constitutionally impaired, prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

On whether his clerks should be forced to read the entire bill:

I don’t care whether it’s easy for my clerks. I care whether it’s easy for me.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11690/pub_detail.asp

Just how dangerous are Barack Obama’s words to the Russian president? When more than 6,000 ballistic missiles are deployed from other countries outside of our allies, why does he seek to block our constitutional right to hold him accountable to us?
As world news noted, recently in Seoul, Korea while meeting Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, our President, Barack Obama was quoted off the cuff at the end of their 90 minute conversation about resolving missile defense issues with Russia.

President Obama stated that he would have “more flexibility”, after his re-election to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense, but to tell the incoming Russian President, Vladimir Putin that he needs to give him “space”.

This morning in Korea, President Obama deflected his previous remarks by making a joke about it with President Medvedev and stating that missile defense is too complex an issue as it couples with his arms control vision with Russia to achieve bipartisan Congressional support in an election year.

These sets of remarks, one off the cuff and one planned, in regards to missile defense would raise the single question of why the voice and vote of the American public is not considered or relevant? The President should be held accountable by the American public with the contrast of the President’s own words of assurances to Russia to wait until after his re-election on missile defense, when he would no longer be accountable by vote of the American public.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11693/pub_detail.asp
The Sierra Club and other environmental pressure groups are redoubling their efforts to “stop fracking in its tracks.” No wonder. The technology is an existential threat to fundamental “green” dogmas.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing is a true “game changer.” In less than two years, this proven but still rapidly advancing technology has obliterated longstanding claims that we are running out of petroleum. Instead, the USA now finds itself blessed with centuries of oil and gas.
Thankfully, much of it is on state and private lands, which cannot easily be locked up by federal diktat.
Poland and Estonia are using it, China has invited companies to the Middle Kingdom, Britain, Israel and Jordan are evaluating their shale deposits, and other nations are following suit – coaxing oil and natural gas from shale and other rock formations that previously had refused to yield their hydrocarbon riches.
By making more natural gas available, fracking has reduced the US price for this clean-burning fuel to under $3 per thousand cubic feet (or million Btu), compared to a peak of $8 a few years ago.
Natural gas is also supplanting coal for electricity generation. Due to excessive, mostly unnecessary new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, many US coal-fired power plants are shutting down. Replacement plants are far more likely to be gas-powered than nuclear, especially in the near term.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/03/obama_becomes_omobba.html

THIS IS NOT ONLY FROM THE PLAYBOOK OF MARXISTS….IT IS THE PLAYBOOK OF HUGO CHAVEZ…..AND TIN POT DICTATORS WHO IMPLEMENT DICTATORSHIP THROUGH DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS…..RSK

In another historic first, President Obama’s backers are actively whipping up mobs. Not just the Occupoopers of Wall Street, but also Twitter mobs, Facebook mobs, and flash mobs.

Every active conservative should spend some time on social media sites to see liberals whipping each other into a frenzy. Know your enemy — and if you don’t like the word “enemy” (I don’t), consider what Saul Alinsky calls you. You may not consider yourself their enemy, but that’s how they think about you. Ignore it at your peril.

The Obama campaign loves to boast about its use of Facebook and Twitter to push The One over the top last time. With Facebook claiming 700 million members, the potential for political mayhem is huge.

This is David Axelrod’s specialty of astroturfing. Obama has become O’mobba: he is the first president in history to give his official public blessing to “idealistic” anti-capitalist mobs.

There is no doubt that these organized “spontaneous” mobs will be used in the election campaign. Be prepared to face nasty, vicious lowbrow mobs with iPhones and iPads.

The poopers last week dumped a tub full of their diapers’ products in a Chase ATM vestibule in Lower Manhattan. They have finally discovered their bottom line.

They are now talking about the revolutionary necessity for violence. An Occumobster from Austin, TX recently wrote to USA Today promising to “take up … guns and storm Wall Street and our nation’s capitals.” Don’t doubt that this is a deliberate, purposeful campaign, designed to frighten and dehumanize normal people (like Tea Party members) in order to keep the radical left in power.

That USA Today letter comes from Richlatte, a fitting moniker for a rich, latte-drinking thirty-something kid who has decided to wage war on productive Americans. We have millions of spoiled-rotten offspring of the rich, young and old, and they will be bringing hard muscle to bear on Obama’s election campaign. After all, Bill Ayers is the son of a millionaire. The Wall Street Occupy kids were not able to utter a single coherent word to explain their “idealistic” campaign; nobody had scripted them. “What are we here for? I dunno! Somebody tweeted at me on my iPad. Police brutality! Eff the Pigs!” It was Radical Chic turned into Radical Sick.

In fact, Occupoopers are the first Obama mobs, set up by billionaire-funded outfits like The Ruckus Society.

“Spontaneous demonstrations” is what communist agitators used to whip up attacks against their scapegoats, from Moscow to London. They were the storm troopers of the left, and they still are.

The discredited old “communist agitator” has now been laundered into the noble “community organizer.” The first communist agitator was Karl Marx, a child of Prussian wealth. David Axelrod made his PR millions by organizing phony grassroots campaigns. The coming year will see astroturfed flash mobs harassing decent and honorable Americans for their political beliefs.

Take a good look at the Ruckus Society website, because you will see them again, smashing windows and fighting cops wherever media cameras gather. These are the kids of the powerful starting their own political careers, the way John Kerry did during Vietnam by accusing his Navy Swift Boat buddies of committing war crimes.

It’s the career path for leftist demagogues from Hitler to Lenin. Germany’s biggest Green politician, Joschka Fischer, started out in 1968 as a black-clad anarchist fighting cops in the streets of Frankfurt, where one cop was killed. It’s a career path for these people. This stuff goes back to the mob demagogues of Greece and Rome, as described by Plato and staged by Shakespeare.

Technology changes, but human nature stays the same. Which is why the U.S. Constitution is not “out of date.” The Constitution is designed precisely to deal with mobs and their demagogues. Obama is not new. He is old, old, old. The Founders knew about scores of Obamas, from Napoleon to Oliver Cromwell, all the way back to the Caesars. The world has always been bubbling over with Obamas and their cults.

Bill Ayers was the son of a millionaire; Penny Pritzker and her Stalinist brother come from billionaire stock; Schwartz Györgyi, aka George Soros, is one of the richest billionaires in the world, and he loves to stir up revolutionary fervor among the brain-dead suckers of the left. These are the wealthiest and most politically connected people playing phony Marxist revolution. Soros is not against the rich; he is himself the richest of the rich, agitating against his biggest competitors, the other rich, the ones who are trying to become as rich as he is.

http://weaselzippers.us/2012/03/28/high-profile-black-politician-vehemently-condemns-the-new-black-panther-party-for-placing-bounty-on-george-zimmerman/

HIS WORDS:

“I vehemently condemn the bounty poster emanating from the New Black Panther Party putting a $10,000 ransom up for the capture of George Zimmerman and call upon the US Department of Justice to prosecute their actions, clearly a hate crime. We have seen this type of abhorrent behavior from this group previously in 2008 as part of a voter intimidation action, it is reprehensible. To openly solicit for the death of an American citizen, with reward, is not in keeping with the laws of due process which governs this Constitutional Republic. However, this is to be expected when irrational voices dominate our public dialogue and are fueled by an ideological driven media. I am concerned that that the tragic death of Trayvon Martin is being hijacked by malcontents.”

http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2012/03/gordon-where-8000-rocket-launches-are.html?

Evelyn Gordon, JINSA Visiting Fellow, is a journalist and commentator writing in The Jerusalem Post and Commentary.

The most chilling comment I’ve seen on the mid-March surge of violence from Gaza, when terrorists fired 300 rockets at Israel in four days, was made almost three weeks earlier. The rocket fire had been steadily increasing, indicating that the deterrent effect of Israel’s 2009 war in Gaza was fading, and Israel Defense Forces officers were discussing whether another large-scale operation in Gaza was needed. “The debate within the IDF,” The Jerusalem Post reported, “is whether it needs to wait for a successful attack by Gaza terrorists – be it a rocket attack that causes casualties or a successful cross border attack – or if the sporadic rocket fire is enough of a justification to launch an operation today.”

Think about that: Palestinian terrorists have fired more than 8,000 rockets at Israel since its mid-2005 pullout from Gaza, along with thousands of mortar shells; even in 2011, a “quiet” year, there were 680 rocket and mortar launches, almost two a day. A million residents of Israel’s south live in permanent fear, punctuated every few months by more intensive bouts of violence that, like the one in mid-March, close schools for days and empty workplaces of parents, who must stay home with their kids. In Sderot, the town closest to Gaza, an incredible 45% of children under six have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, as have 41% of mothers and 33% of fathers; these statistics will presumably be replicated elsewhere as the rockets’ increasing range brings ever more locales under regular fire.

In any other country, such relentless shelling would unquestionably be a casus belli. But Israel’s army was seriously debating whether this alone justified military action, or whether it had to wait until the rockets caused a mass-casualty incident.

On March 30th of this year, Arabs and their assorted mouthpieces and derriere-kissers will begin a massive protest march towards Israel’s borders from all directions as they begin their “Global March To Jerusalem.” The organizers claim that their aim is to highlight the alleged sins of the racist Zionists who live there. Numerous Arabized Iranian […]

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/28/israel_s_secret_staging_ground?page=full

U.S. officials believe that the Israelis have gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan. Does this bring them one step closer to a war with Iran?

In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a cable to the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom titled “Azerbaijan’s discreet symbiosis with Israel.” The memo, later released by WikiLeaks, quotes Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev as describing his country’s relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg: “nine-tenths of it is below the surface.”

Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran’s northern border and, according to several high-level sources I’ve spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the “submerged” aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance — the security cooperation between the two countries — is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In particular, four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran’s northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. “The Israelis have bought an airfield,” a senior administration official told me in early February, “and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.”

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel’s military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners, I was told, must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf — but one that could include the Caucasus. The burgeoning Israel-Azerbaijan relationship has also become a flashpoint in both countries’ relationship with Turkey, a regional heavyweight that fears the economic and political fallout of a war with Iran. Turkey’s most senior government officials have raised their concerns with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with the Azeris, the sources said.

Chasing the Great White Whale of American Racism

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/29/chasing-the-great-white-whale-of-american-racism/

Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using the N-word in private meetings — which turned out to be “St. Nicholas” — the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn’t even pause before conjuring a racist plot in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month. Like Captain Ahab searching for the Great White Whale, the NFM is constantly on the hunt for proof of America as “Mississippi Burning.”

Over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, the month after Martin was killed, gangs in Chicago shot 10 people dead, including a 6-year-old girl, Aliyah Shell, who was sitting with her mother on their front porch.

One imagines MSNBC hosts heaving a sigh of relief that little Aliyah was not shot by a white man, and was thus spared the horror of being a victim of racism.

As it happens, Trayvon Martin wasn’t shot by a white man either, but by George Zimmerman, a mixed-race Hispanic who lives in a diverse (47 percent white) gated community and tutors black kids.