GregNews

There’s an interesting debate between two former Bush Administration officials regarding the Obama’s  attempt to hide the fact that many of the policy-makers in the Justice Department previously defended al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in private practice. Both Michael Mukasey, former U.S. attorney general, and Marc Thiessen, former Bush adviser, make comparisons to the Democrats smearing of and even attempting to disbar Bush lawyers (such as John Yoo and Jay Bybee) who simply did their job and provided legal advice regarding topics like enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) and legal versus illegal combatant status.

Mukasey, writing in the WSJ, opines that just because Democrats ruined the careers of Bush lawyers Republicans should not react in kind towards Obama Justice department lawyers who previously defended terrorists (and now write policy on detainees, Guantanamo, etc.). Conversely, Thiessen, in the Washington Post, argues that Republicans are asking legitimate questions about Eric Holder’s Justice lawyers.

Thiessen writes, “The standard today seems to be that you can say or do anything when it comes to the Bush lawyers who defended America against the terrorists. But if you publish an Internet ad or ask legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America’s terrorist enemies, you are engaged in a McCarthyite witch hunt.” That’s absoluely accurate, and just the latest example in a never-ending cycle of Liberal selective outrage and media slant.

More to the point, however, having read both arguments, it appears that Mukasey is defending a point that many Republicans (Thiessen, but not all mind you) are not denying: the right of legal council for the accused, even dirtbags.

[Mukasey] A lawyer who represents a party in a contested matter has an ethical obligation to make any and all tenable legal arguments that will help that party. A lawyer in public service, particularly one dealing with sensitive matters of national security, has the obligation to authorize any step or practice the law permits in order to keep the nation and its citizens safe. And a lawyer who undertakes to represent someone whom his neighbors—perhaps rightly—revile as a threat to the public welfare is obligated to bring his talents to bear just as forcefully in favor of that client as he would if he were representing Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, the French artillery officer who in 1895 was found guilty of treason and sent to Devil’s Island for little more than being Jewish.

Nice not-so-subtle use of the race card there, eh? However, what conservatives like Thiessen or Michelle Malkin are arguing is a point of TRANSPARENCY. No doubt Thiessen and Malkin are otherwise outraged, but their first argument is that if Liberals are so very proud of the fact that lawyers who defended terrorists are now serving in very the Justice Department commanded to try these terrorist then why is Eric Holder and the Obama Administration desperately trying to gloss it over or actively obfuscate the truth?

The next argument is one of conflict of interest. Conservatives aren’t necessarily saying no representation for terrorists (a huge myth, by the way, as all Guantanamo detainees have for years both had lawyers and had judicial reviews, basically trials), but saying first that domestic criminal trials are entirely inappropriate for a variety of reasons including the loss of intelligence needed to destroy terror networks and win wars, and second, that lawyers previously charged with protecting al-Qaeda terrorists shouldn’t have the job of trying them now.

[Thiessen] Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would — and rightly so. … Should a lawyer who advocates setting terrorists free, knowing they may go on to kill Americans, have any role in setting U.S. detention policy? My hunch is that most Americans would say no.

This is accurate, and the fact that Obama and Holder are looking to move past the criticism instead of defending the practice tells one that they believe it is accurate as well.

“We are held hostage at any given moment by health insurance companies that deny coverage or drop coverage or charge fees that people can’t afford.” — Barack Obama, Aug. 14, 2009.

“We’re seeing this at the same time where not only is there an economic downturn around the country, but we know that insurance companies are not suffering that same kind of downturn. The five largest insurers in America have declared more than $12 billion worth of profits in 2009.” — Health & Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius.

“At a time when everybody’s getting hammered, they’re making record profits, and premiums are going up. What’s the constraint on that? … Well, part of the way is to make sure that there’s some competition out there.” — Barack Obama, July 2009.

The Saint Petersburg Times’ Fact Check already debunked the last of the three hate-inciting whoppers by the Obama administration, and many others have as well, but that hasn’t changed much. It’s great to read that Mr. Obama is all for “some competition” but it comes off as an empty statement considering that Democrats have gone out of their way to exclude any Republican idea to increase the same, such as insurance pools for individuals, or allowing insurance companies to cross state lines. Democrats are only for “competition” when it means the government getting into the act — but it’s hard to compete with an entity that may borrow perpetually, has no budget, need not answer to its stockholders (i.e., the taxpayers), can print money, and spend any amount it desires. This is competition? If that’s so then the U.S.S.R. was the epitome of free enterprise!

But more to the point of this post: The Obama camp lies. Or at very least exaggerates for anger’s sake. It’s hard to believe they don’t have the data.

Insurance companies don’t make record profits. Indeed they make far less than most industries.

Jeff Anderson explains:

According to the most recent Fortune 500 rankings, health insurers are not even among the top-30 United States industries in profit-margin. Health insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin of just 2.2 percent — less than one-fifth the profit-margin of railroads. None of the ten largest American health insurers made profits of more than 4.5 percent, and two of them lost money. Health insurers’ collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It’s also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?

The combined profits of America’s ten largest health insurers are $8.3 billion. That’s less than two-thirds of the profits of Wal-Mart alone, less than half of the profits of General Electric alone, and less than one-seventh of what Medicare loses each year to fraud. Health insurers collectively have one-eighth the profit-margin of McDonald’s or Coke, one-ninth that of eBay, and one-fifteenth that of Merck.

Why don’t these much more profitable companies or industries need to be taken over by the federal government? Why don’t they need to be subjected to something like President Obama’s proposed Health Insurance Rate Authority, which would be run by the same U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that already loses $60 billion of taxpayer money to Medicare fraud each year? (Not that I want to give the Obama administration any ideas.)

In all, the combined profits of the 14 largest American health insurers (the ones who crack the Fortune 1000) are $8.7 billion. That’s less than 0.4 percent, or 1/250th, of overall U.S. health-care costs, which are $2.5 trillion.

Anyone but an ideologue could plainly see that insurance profits aren’t the problem. The problem is having a health-care system with too many middlemen (government or otherwise); too little competition and choice; and too little opportunity for Americans to control their own health-care dollars, shop for value, or even see prices.

If you can’t identify the problem, you aren’t likely to stumble upon the solution. Maybe that’s why the Congressional Budget Office says that, under Obamacare, which would cost $2.5 trillion in its real first decade (2014 to 2023), the average family’s insurance premiums in the individual market would increase by $2,100 in relation to current law — while under the House Republican health bill, which would cost $61 billion (just 2 percent as much as Obamacare), the average premiums would be reduced by 5 to 8 percent.

President Obama likes to say that the Republicans don’t have any ideas, but the House GOP bill would clearly make the American health-care system better. The small bill would make it better still. Obamacare would raise nationwide health costs, siphon billions out of barely solvent Medicare and spend them elsewhere, cut Medicare Advantage benefits by an average of $21,000 per beneficiary in its real first decade, politicize medicine, reduce liberty, raise taxes, cost jobs, and inevitably lead to rationed care.

[ABC NEWS] ABC News Thomas Giusto and Lindsey Ellerson report:

Conservative author Jason Mattera launched a relentless revolt today against President Obama and the leftist agenda, mocking Obama loyalists during remarks made at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

… Not only did Mattera hit Obama for his acknowledged drug use as a youth, but he went on to ridicule feminism, diversity and homosexuals.

“The allegiance to political correctness on the college campus goes a long way toward explaining how young people in their heart of hearts actually believe that a scrawny street agitator turned presidential candidate could save mankind, renew our faith in American politics, stop glaciers from melting, curb racism, end all wars, tackle terrorism, provide us health care, pay for our college tuition, and oh while he’s at it, Barack promises to send a government unicorn down to the sky to fly us up to the left’s world where people dance across the streets of government owned gold, eating FDA approved candy canes, and where MSNBC is programmed on every channel,” chided Mattera.  “Buyers remorse is setting in, heck even the slutty Obama girl said her crush has faded.”

Read the entire article and you’ll have no doubt that Mattera’s shtick seems obnoxious (albeit no different than a conservative Keith Olbermann).

But more curious is that I’ve read this a couple times in a row and I’ve yet to find the part where Mattera allegedly “went on to ridicule feminism, diversity and homosexuals.” Huh?

All he’s doing is pointing out that Obama proclaimed himself as the chosen one — saying at his own nomination that we’d remember it as the moment “that the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” — and now, just one year later, people are finding it’s just not so.

He’s not a messiah. He’s not even half as deft as he thinks he is. He’s just the latest reincarnation of disproven, ineffective, stale, Marxist-Wilsonian socialist ideas. For thee, not for me! ‘If ONLY evil corporations would stop pursuing profits,’ summarized Obama in his $7 million NYT’s best-selling book, et cetera, and so on. It is to laugh. Obama is everything the far left has stood for and failed at for decades, and makes Jimmy Carter look like Barry Goldwater.

But for pointing this out, albeit crudely, says ABC News, Mattera MUST BE a gay-hating, misogynist racist. Ah, yes, THAT media bias…

Paging Eric Alterman!

I had a laugh out loud moment this Sunday night, flipping channels and stopping on the FX network showing (yet again) of The Day After Tomorrow, an apocalyptic global warming movie filled with gratuitous scenes of our destruction.

I imagine the folks at FX programming probably would never have guessed that this weekend one of the chief global warming proponents and researchers would be forced to admit that he “lost” all of the data he used to produce the infamous “hockey stick” computer model predicting global temperature increases due to carbon output. This comes after the professor, Phil Jones, stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the wake of scandal over e-mails showing that researchers were manipulating climate change data (i.e., Climategate).

Whoopsie! I lost my data. Of course, a more skeptical person might say Jones “destroyed the data.” And an even more cynical person might say the good professor “made up” or “fabricated” the data.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Gosh… one would think that all scientists and policy makers, skeptics or not, would want to ensure that the facts and data were sound. One would think, that is, if this were really about science. But it’s really about control and social engineering by taxing and regulating the one thing that ensures a healthy and productive society: energy consumption.

Nonetheless, Professor Jones’ admissions are just more bad press for the global warming folks. What’s a social engineer who sucks on the government grant money tit to do? How will the likes of Duke Energy ever make billions off carbon trading now? How will the Congress ever institute a fraudulent VAT tax if there is no warming?

In just the last few weeks we’ve had: Climategate e-mails followed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was forced to admit that it relied on faulty science in a claim that Indian glaciers would disappear by 2035, that it was wrong about 1998 being the warmest year on record (1934); that it accidentally confused feet and inches in a report regarding sea level rise in Fl0rida (18 inches not feet).

Fear not, though, warming freaks!

The Obama administration isn’t going to let something as simple as the truth or facts get in the way of regulating the number of farts you make and miles you drive — they’re promising that the EPA, a gang of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, will by totalitarian fiat force we American consumers to, well, consume less.