Politics, Government & Public Policy: January 2011 Archives
Just go read Gateway Pundit's summary of Obama's history of support for killing babies who survive "botched" abortions.
Here's a video from a few years ago created to pressure then-Senator Obama on the issue.
Here's audio from 2002 in which Obama explains that it would create too much hassle for doctors to legally require them to care for babies who survive abortions.
Obama voted four times against a legal requirement that doctors be required to care for newborns who survive abortions. That means he's just fine with with the actions of Dr. Kermit Gosnel who is charged with delivering seven babies alive and then murdering them with scissors.
In a typical late-term abortion, the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces. That is more common than the procedure opponents call "partial-birth abortion," in which the fetus is partially extracted before being destroyed. Prosecutors said Gosnell instead delivered many of the babies alive.He "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," District Attorney Seth Williams said. Gosnell referred to it as "snipping," prosecutors said.
Prosecutors estimated Gosnell ended hundreds of pregnancies by cutting the spinal cords, but they said they couldn't prosecute more cases because he destroyed files.
"These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them," the grand jury report said. "They were considered 'standard procedure."'
All acceptable to Barack Obama.
Glenn Greenwald's frustration at Obama's vindication of Bush's approach to the War on Terror is delicious.
Conservatives would love to bash Obama for being weak on Terrorism so that, in the event of another attack, they can blame him (and Cheney, in last night's interview, left open that possibility by suggesting Obama may suffer from unknown failures). If it were at all possible, they'd be out accusing him of abandoning critical programs that Keep us Safe; that's what they do best. But they cannot with a straight face claim that Obama has abandoned their core approach, so they do the only thing they can do: acknowledge that he has continued and strengthened it and point out that it proves they were right -- and he was wrong -- all along. If Obama has indeed changed his mind over the last two years as a result of all the Secret Scary Things he's seen as President, then I genuinely believe that he and the Democratic Party owe a heartfelt, public apology to Bush, Cheney and the GOP for all the harsh insults they spewed about them for years based on policies that they are now themselves aggressively continuing.Obama has won the War on Terror debate -- for the American Right. And as Dick Cheney's interview last night demonstrates, they're every bit as appreciative as they should be.
Except that we're going to vote Obama out.
So forget about the loss of freedom and the increased taxes and spending spearheaded by Obamacare: how many people will Obamacare supposedly help?
It’s been like giving a party to which no one comes. The Medicare program chief actuary predicted last spring that 375,000 would sign up for the new risk pool insurance in 2010. But by the end of November, only 8,000 had done so. As Amy Goldstein reports in The Washington Post, this includes 75 in Virginia, 80 in New Hampshire, 97 in Maryland and a whopping 700 in North Carolina.While a lot of people are surprised by these numbers, I am not. Here is why. Don’t you think it is a bit odd for the White House to send out an appeal to victims so they can identify themselves? That’s not normally how the political system works.
The more usual scenario is: victims unite and form interest groups; they lobby Congress, write letters, testify, etc; and eventually the pressure become so great that Congress legislates.
When have you ever heard of that entire process in reverse? When has Congress ever before decided it wants to do something and then conducted a nationwide search to find people who will benefit?
The reasons for the reversal is that this whole problem has been completely hyped and exaggerated from the get go. In this country we have made it increasingly easy for people to get health insurance after they get sick.
But Obamacare must turn out to be really cheap since so few people are using it, right? Right?
Even though they have less than 1/40th of the expected enrollment, the plans are already running out of the money.
Oh.
(HT: Megan McArdle.)
I'm definitely no fan of Robert Gibbs, but I completely agree with President Obama's statement that Gibbs has been working for "relatively modest pay".
In bidding a sort-of farewell to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, he noted the "relatively modest pay" for which Gibbs has labored.In fact, he earns $172,200 in a nation where the average family income hovers around $55,000, unemployment is high, record foreclosures persist and wages for most folks are at best stagnant.
I believe that we need to pay our top government officials -- the President, his Cabinet, the Supreme Court, Senators, and Congressmen -- vastly more than we do. At least ten times more. Why?
I've known elected officials, who had significant impact on laws and regulations touching the private sector, who bristled at the sums earned by the CEOs who lobbied them and whose firms they impacted, sometimes helped enormously. One congressional titan even pointed with blatant envy to the seven-figure salaries of network television anchors who cozzied up to him.
These officials have more power than any CEO, have jobs as difficult as those of any corporate executive, but aren't paid accordingly. So what do they do? They leverage the power of their office to make money. It's called corruption, and it is motivated by greed and envy. Sure, it would be nice to have politicians who are honest, trustworthy, and motivated by the public good... uh, right. In the meantime, maybe we should consider paying them salaries that are high enough that corruption isn't so tempting.
Sounds like TurboTax is more competent than the IRS.
The IRS said that it needs until mid- to late-February to reprogram its processing systems because Congress acted so late this year cleaning up the tax code. The bill, which includes deductions for state and local sales taxes, college tuition and teacher expenses, wasn't signed into law until Dec. 17. ...Though itemizers can work on their tax returns before the IRS is ready to accept them, the government said people should not send them in before it is ready to process the returns.
The IRS hasn't yet said exactly what day it will be able to begin processing the impacted tax returns, but it expects to announce that date "in the near future."
Meanwhile, TurboTax said its customers can e-file with the company as early as Jan. 6, and it will hold onto the filings until the IRS is ready to process them.
