Apparently the media simply cannot help itself. The media attacks on Sarah Palin continued today. The AP reported that Palin is facing another ethics charge- the 18th charge against her. But, for some odd reason the AP forgot to mention that Governor Palin has defeated every bogus ethics complaint filed against her.It's funny how that works, huh?

The irony is that with each continued attack the media complex is building Palin into the Conservative hero they have worked so hard to tear down. With every negative story, with each slanderous attack the left only serves to foster her burgeoning iconic status among those on the right looking for a fresh face and new voice on the political landscape.

What happens when voracious spending exceeds revenues taken in by the Treasury?! A BOOMING federal deficit that has now topped $1 trillion for the first time ever.

The national debt is the total of what we owe ($11.4 trillion) as a nation to investors, mainly China. The deficit is the annual amount that is being added to the national debt.
Interest payments alone on the national debt is over $450 billion a year. This is nothing more than a gigantic Ponzi Scheme Team Obama and the Dems are saddling us with.

The US has already spent more than a TRILLION dollars than it expects to receive this year in revenue, and we have almost three full months left to go. The Wall Street Journal wonders whether that will hinder Barack Obama in getting his big-government spending plans through Congress, and whether Congress has the will to address runaway deficits at all.

In spite of the booming deficit, government spending is on the rise to address the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and an unemployment rate that has climbed to 9.5 percent. Remember, if government spending got us out of recessions, why would we ever have recessions? We’d just spend our way out of everything.

To my democratic friends, please tell me again about the promises of fiscal reform and stimulus. Perhaps this time you can use an illustration to help explain just how well the massive spending plans are working. Allow me to start by showing you my illustration as provided by the WSJ. It explains government spending and receipts between this year and last:

As HotAir notes: Obama will claim, of course, that he inherited this deficit from George Bush, but as I’ve pointed out a number of times, it’s simply not true. Bush did not get a chance to address the FY2009 budget, as the Democrats in Congress kept postponing budgeting for FY09 until Bush left office. Even more critically, Congress spends the money, and since January 2007, Congress has been controlled by the Democrats — including then-Senator Barack Obama. Bush did approve the TARP funding and the Fannie/Freddie bailout — with considerable pressure from Congressional Democrats to do so — but a look at the right-hand side of the above graphic shows that spending significantly increased from FY08 to FY09 even without the bailouts. Most of the increase came from the “Other” category: non-defense discretionary spending, and the rest from entitlement expansion.

Barack Obama’s domestic agenda promises to make all of these conditions even worse. He wants to create a massive expansion of Medicare’s purview, which will greatly increase the entitlement burden that already threatens to undermine the stability of America’s currency and credit. On top of that, Obama wants to impose an energy-rationing system that will make the recession even worse, lowering receipts from almost all categories except the “other” category as DC reaps the taxes it imposes on energy producers. And on top of that, Obama wants to force American companies to pay taxes on foreign profits — almost alone among Western nations — that will force multinationals to reorganize overseas to avoid the competitive disadvantage Obama’s policies impose.

Those receipts will keep declining, and the spending will continue to increase. We will look at the $1,000,000,000,000 barrier with nostalgia in a very short period of time.

Perspective: By historical standards, the 2009 deficit — at 13% or more of the country’s gross domestic product — would be the U.S.’s biggest since the end of World War II in 1945, when it reached 21.5%.

It was 1967 when Ronald Reagan said:

Californians are fed up with the ineptitude and wasteful spending of a state legislature dominated by a majority party that would rather defend cheaters, ignore rampant abuses and scams than to enact reasonable and common sense reforms to save money.

What’s become apparent from California’s failure to rein in spending and streamline programs is that business cannot and should not, continue as usual. The buck stopped 26 billion dollars ago. The process of growing government and its programs without any sensible cost controls is unsustainable. Republicans have been shouting that warning for a long time now.

The Democrat’s promise of a government that does everything for everyone is nothing but a worthless IOU – and an expensive, destructive one at that. Sacramento has become a place where the Democrats work for only two constituencies: those who desire public assistance, and unions. Democrats respond like puppets to the needs of the one and the demands of the other and legitimate taxpaying citizens have been ignored.

And who pays for all this? Reluctantly, the taxpayer. California has one of the highest personal income tax rates and the highest sales tax rate in the country. Corporate taxes are way above the national average. State government regularly extracts weighty sums from California taxpayers and for what? Do we have better educated children? Do we have roads, transportation and schools that are the envy of the country like we used to? No.

California languishes near the bottom of most national rankings. Democrats will say the problem is that we’re not investing enough money in those areas, but the evidence says otherwise. Forty years ago, the state spent $1240 for every resident in the state, in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars. Now, we spend more than double that amount – $3200 per person – and quality of life has plummeted.

When will Democrats understand that government must be accountable to the people who support it? Senate Republicans repeatedly offer common sense reforms that would put people back to work and ultimately generate the necessary revenue to support programs Democrats want.

Republicans want people who need services and assistance to get it. By refusing to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in social programs, Democrats essentially limit the number of families that can receive help.

Currently only 22 percent of CalWORKS recipients meet federal minimum work requirements. Without a 50 percent work participation rate, California faces penalties that could cost upwards of $180 million. The cost of In-Home Support Services doubled in the past decade and costs about 5.4 billion annually. The program has virtually no oversight. It is forecast to grow by 8 percent a year through 2014. That’s irresponsible, and we simply cannot afford it in these economic times.

It’s time to make sensible reforms to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently, and eliminate fraud. California citizens demand and deserve that.

As Democrats and the Global Warming Alarmists continue pushing to get more plug-in cars on the road, a report by the GAO now says the push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports:

It’s a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

“If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country’s electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?” asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: “Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy.”

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

This misses another point as well, one HotAir.com mentioned during the campaign. Obama wants the US to decrease its electrical demand over the next several years as a means of conservation as we switch away from coal and other fossil fuels as a source for power. Transferring cars from gasoline to electricity would vastly increase demand for power at the outlet, which would conflict with the decrease Obama wants to mandate. The result would be prices skyrocketing even higher, and people unable to use their vehicles from a lack of ability to pay for recharging them.

Of course, we have a source for electricity in abundance: nuclear power. IBD suggests that a program to rapidly expand our nuclear-power generation could fill the gap while generating zero carbon emissions. The Obama administration and the Democrats don’t want that, though. They shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility, which would have recycled used fuel rods into material for more nuclear power, giving us an almost-completely renewing resource for decades into the future.

The GAO also points out that electric cars would have the US trading one set of dictators for another in order to power our cars. The batteries for electric vehicles are lithium-ion, and for the experimental production levels in the US at this moment, we have enough lithium resources to keep pace. However, once we start building electric cars in mass numbers, we will quickly run through our proven stores of lithium. We would most likely have to do business with Hugo Chavez lackey Evo Morales of Bolivia, where half of the world’s proven stores of lithium reside. Even if we didn’t buy directly from the leftist leader, Morales has the ability to set the global price — just as Saudi Arabia and OPEC do with oil.

Plug-in electrics just trade one carbon source for another, one dictator for another, and deliver a lower-standard vehicle. It’s about as lose-lose as it gets, at least without nuclear power to fuel it.

Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate who electrified the GOP campaign last year, will resign as Alaska's governor later this month.

She built strong support among conservative Republicans as John McCain's running mate last year, and now says she will step down in three weeks because she can contribute more away from politics.

As you can imagine there is a great deal of speculation as to the reasons behind her decision, but in the clip below you can hear her in her own words. The crux of her logic seems to be that she’s quitting because it’s in Alaska’s best interest, not her own. If it turns out this was nothing more than a way of clearing her schedule to start early on running for president, her primary opponents will never let her hear the end of it.

Update via HotAir: Real Clear Politics has video of Mitchell’s report, including the detail that Palin’s allegedly told her top backers to go ahead and commit to other candidates for 2012. Bill Kristol thinks resigning now could actually be a bold gambit to free herself up for an intense presidential campaign, but I think she’s following more of a Nixonian strategy here. I.e. it could be she’s burned out on politics and dispirited by all the garbage she’s put up with and wants to get away at an opportune moment.

Then again, perhaps she's simply a mother of five who has decided instead of cranking through the political wheelhouse for another term, she wants to take the time to be with her family and her youngest son Trig who suffers from Down Syndrome.

One thing is for sure, her announcement leaves a great deal of questions and speculation.

The Pelosi-Reid Congress is not only spending more of your money and giving themselves raises and bonuses they are also spending more on exotic excursions than ever before. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as "codels," has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

Of course, this would only be shocking news if the reverse was true.

Exit Thought: Aren't these the same hypocrites who scolded auto execs for taking private jets to DC?!

The following is a speech given on the House floor last Friday by California Rep. Tom McClintock, after the passage of the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade bill. The speech is insightful, well constructed, and makes a comparison to the history of the Great Depression many of us have not heard before.

McClintock first discusses California's climate change legislation of 2007 and how it drastically deepened the state's financial woes, and then compares cap-and-trade to the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff that sent the country into the Great Depression. It also doesn't hurt that he casually rips apart the claims of global warming alarmists used as a reason to support the bill.

You can see transcripts of his other speeches here.

California began its new fiscal year at midnight, and celebrated by taking billions in budget solutions off the table.

So how exactly did California get into this mess, and what are state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doing to try to get out of it? The Associated Press gets most of the questions and answers right:

Q: How big is the state's budgetary mess?
A: California's $24.3 billion deficit is roughly a quarter of the general fund, which is the state's main bank account for paying its daily expenses. For perspective, lawmakers could eliminate all funding for state prisons and the higher education system and still not save nearly enough money to address the shortfall.

The budget gap is the biggest of any state.

California’s Speaker of the Assembly, Karen Bass is at it again.

Sunday night Assembly Democrats passed a $23.4 billion package of cuts, tax and fee increases, and accounting tricks designed to close a gaping hole in the budget for the fiscal year that starts Wednesday. On Monday, the California Senate followed suit acting upon the same package of legislative measures.

While the Democratic majority vote solution is comprised of some cuts in state spending, the measures also raises taxes and fees to the tune of $2 BILLION. The majority plan hikes taxes on on cigarettes; creates a new tax on oil production and raises or imposes new fees on property insurance policies, vehicle registration and drivers licenses.

During Sunday nights debate, Assemblywoman Audra Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) presented this speech in which she challenged the Democrats' on their stance that their most important constituents are the poor, sick and aged.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made it clear this morning he won’t sign the package of taxes and cuts approved by Assembly Democrats Sunday night as a way of balancing the state budget.

Powerhouse California, a nation-state of 33 million with a budget larger than most small countries, has again been brought to its knees in a life-or-death struggle for financial survival. So how did it come to this?

On Friday the WSJ printed a brilliant Op-Ed entitled the Albany-Trenton-Sacramento Disease which plainly explains how California as well as New York and New Jersey have found themselves in their current financial debacles.

In short the article shows how the real-life experience of progressive governance in California, New Jersey and New York has resulted in devastating budget deficits as the bills for years of tax-and-spend governance come due. These states have been models of "progressive" policies that are supposed to create wealth: high tax rates on the rich, lots of government "investments," heavy unionization and a large government role in health care. Yet they have proven exactly the opposite.

A decade ago all three states were among America's most prosperous. Today, all three are drowning in a sea of red ink. Here's a few quick lessons to be learned as noted by the WSJ:

Government spending as economic stimulus. State-local spending per capita is $12,505 in New York (second highest after Alaska), $10,136 per person in California (fourth) and $9,574 in New Jersey (seventh).

Has all this public sector "investment" translated into jobs? Not quite. California had the nation's third highest jobless rate in May (11.5%). New Jersey and New York had below average unemployment rates in May compared to the national average of 9.4%, but one reason is that so many discouraged workers have left those states. From 1998-2007, which included two booms on Wall Street, New York and New Jersey ranked 36th and 31st in job creation. From 2000 to 2007, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association calculates that nine out of 10 new Garden State jobs were in the government.

Soak the rich. Mr. Obama plans to pay for his government investments through higher tax rates on the top 1% and 2% of taxpayers. Our troika of liberal states are champions at soaking the rich. The state-local income tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation, is the highest in the nation in New York, second highest in California and sixth in New Jersey. New York City boasts the highest business tax rate, 17.6%, according to a study by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Seven of the 10 highest property tax counties in America are located in New Jersey.

Instead of balanced budgets, these high taxes have produced record red ink. California's deficit for 2010 is projected at $33.9 billion, New Jersey's $7 billion and New York's $17.9 billion, despite multiple tax increases this decade. The Manhattan Institute finds that three-quarters of the loss in revenues this year in Albany is a result of reduced income tax payments by rich people even though the state keeps raising taxes on high earners.

As we've noted, study after study after study; example after example; time and again show the same thing: Increasing taxes hurts the economy and decreases revenues to the treasury.

Powerful unions. In all three states where organized labor is king, the middle class is getting creamed. The unionized share of the workforce is 20% in California, 19% in New Jersey and 27% in New York compared to 13% across the country. All three are non-right-to-work states, have super-minimum wage requirements and provide among the nation's most generous public-employee pensions.

Workers in these paradises are indeed uniting -- by leaving. New York ranks first, California second and New Jersey third in moving vans leaving the state. A study by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research found that over the past decade these and other high-union states (mostly in the Northeast) had one-third the job growth of states with low union penetration.

Sadly, these formerly rich states - the envy of the nation - are now known for job losses, booming deficits and debt, wage stagnation, out-migration and laughing-stock legislatures. The lesson is actually simple and surprisingly uncomplicated: Higher taxes never solve budget deficits.

Food for Thought...
Even the EPA admits Cap & Trade will hurt the economy...
Even Obama admits Cap & Trade will cause energy costs to skyrocket.
The initiative will cost American families approximately $700 to $1,400 dollars each year.
Congressman Dingell admitted that cap and trade is a tax-- a Great Big tax!
Cap & Trade will be one of the biggest spending items in the federal government’s history.

As you dig into this post, we ask that you bare with us for a brief moment. To illustrate a broader point with extensive applications, we will use the example of a bill winding its way through the California Legislature.

In a few days the California Senate will hear AB 474 authored by Assemblyman Blumenfield (D-Woodland). In essence, the measure authorizes city governments to create a government-run loan program, to pay for water efficiency improvements. This legislation builds on a bill enacted last year which allowed local governments to provide upfront loans for energy efficiency improvements (ie. solar panels, dual pane windows ect).

Here's the problem. Government should not be in the lending business when the private sector can provide loans if a market for such loans exists. If a market existed -- if demand were evident -- the private sector would, and should, be involved. It isn’t.

However, there is an even larger issue at hand. Every expansion of government is, in essence, an impingement on freedom and in certain instances - the free market. Milton Friedman and his intellectual forebears in the Austrian School famously argued that free-market capitalism, in which people engage in largely ungoverned commercial activity that places them in active competition with each other, produces maximal prosperity for all levels of society in the aggregate.

What seems to be too often overlooked is that private wealth generation is indeed a necessary component of social-welfare programs run by the government. It not only produces jobs, it creates a pool of money to provide the capital stock that produces the goods and services that all may consume. And not only that. The government’s ability to provide social services is almost entirely dependent on the wealth produced by the private market, since the more there is, the more money will be available to the government for redistributive purposes.

Those who work to get rich are not doing so because they are seeking to provide enhanced tax receipts for the government, or to make it easier for government to do what elected officials and unelected bureaucrats think is best. They are, rather, fulfilling basic human desires—to excel, to succeed, to best the other person, to show the old man. Those desires provide the drive. The drive provides the wealth. The wealth provides the ancillary benefit for others. And the act of wealth creation itself creates opportunities for others. Americans pursue business and wealth for their own reasons, and we should be deeply hesitant to throw those out with the proverbial bathwater. The unintended consequences of such action could be catastrophic - especially as government grows in its desire to provide more "benefits" and "programs."

Legislation the likes of AB 474 are merely a small example of how across the nation politicians continue to pursue political policies that hamper the growth of wealth and prosperity by squeezing out the private sector and/or implementing punishing tax schemes which drive out business and costs jobs. Government can and should do better... but the people must demand it.

Exit Thought: As Milton Friendman eloquently notes in this video clip, "So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system."

Facing a $24 billion deficit, on Wednesday Democrats put up votes for their budget proposals including a bill containing $11 billion in spending cuts. The measures required two-thirds majorities to pass fell short in both chambers on mostly party-line votes, with Republicans holding the line saying the reductions did not go far enough.

Clearly $11 billion in cuts does not match the $24 billion deficit, so Democrats also proposed $1.9 billion in tax increases on oil extraction, tobacco and car registrations, but those were not put up for a vote Wednesday.

The following video clip is from Senator Roy Ashburn's (R-Bakersfield) Senate Floor speech during Wednesday's budget debate:

Senator Roy Ashburn from CA Senate GOP on Vimeo.

Balancing the budget and preserving state services can be achieved by doing precisely what the voters have asked us to do -- cut wasteful spending and stop uncontrolled government growth. California, more than any other state, is dependent on road transportation and increasing gas prices will do more to hurt families than cuts in government services.

As the family budget goes south, so goes our businesses, our economy and ultimately our state's fiscal solvency.

Remember: California doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit.

The Golden State still faces a $24 BILLION deficit and is now only 8 days away from simply running out of cash. Yet as if to prove they learned nothing from the voters rejection of $16 BILLION in tax hikes, Democrats are seeking:

Across the nation states are drowning in a sea of red - even our once "golden state" of California still faces a $24 BILLION deficit.

Sadly, while facing deficits and rising unemployment many of those states continue to pursue failed tax and spend policies.

As previously noted, taxation has been under the microscope ever since Adam Smith first distilled the principles of good and bad taxation in the 18th century. Two hundred years of evidence later the science is clear: high taxes don't work. The reasons for this failure of higher taxation is simple: (1) Higher taxes destroy incentives to work. (2) Higher taxes destroy enterprise.

But at last it would seem there's a place in America where tax cutting to promote growth and attract jobs is back in fashion. Who would have thought it would be Maine? The WSJ reports:

This month the Democratic legislature and Governor John Baldacci broke with Obamanomics and enacted a sweeping tax reform that is almost, but not quite, a flat tax. The new law junks the state's graduated income tax structure with a top rate of 8.5% and replaces it with a simple 6.5% flat rate tax on almost everyone. Those with earnings above $250,000 will pay a surtax rate of 0.35%, for a 6.85% rate. Maine's tax rate will fall to 20th from seventh highest among the states. To offset the lower rates and a larger family deduction, the plan cuts the state budget by some $300 million to $5.8 billion, closes tax loopholes and expands the 5% state sales tax to services that have been exempt, such as ski lift tickets.

This is a big income tax cut, especially given that so many other states in the Northeast and East -- Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York -- have been increasing rates.

The current economy has brought many states to a crossroads. Lawmakers can push spending – and taxes – thereby burying families, businesses, and the economy in a painful European-style economic hole, or they can make the difficult but necessary decisions to return the size of government to its 1980s and 1990s level.

Instead of asking how they can best tax Americans, lawmakers should take responsibility for the escalating spending trends that have put the nation in this difficult position. It's time for a return to a low tax policy that creates jobs and stimulates economies.

A study in pure contrasts Via GatewayPundit, Sean Hannity compared and contrasted Barack Obama's weak response to the Iranian democracy protests to Ronald Reagan's support of Polish freedom fighters back in 1981.

Reagan understood America. He understood freedom, liberty and human rights.
Obama is no Reagan.

UPDATE: Do you need more proof?
The Obama White House just invited representatives from the killer Iranian regime to July 4th celebrations.

Take your pick - both from our Polls of Hope & Change. If you prefer Gallup, they have him at a 58% approval rating, which is their lowest reading since Obama took office. Rasmussen does his Approval Index, which consists of taking the number of folks who strongly approve of the way the president is doing, and subtracting the number of people who strongly disapprove. Obama has never had a negative Approval Index rating . . . until today.

The new video ad, entitled The Comeback Starts in 2010, lays some nice groundwork and sets up the issues for next year. They split screen Carter and Obama and sprinkle GM, AIG, and the bailouts on top and ask if we want more of that. They they have Reagan speaking, as if from heaven itself, with his words and the light falling on the faces of hopeful Americans, urging us to muster our strength to fight to defend our freedom. Wrap up with a crowd cheering USA!, USA!, USA!, and you can't help but think the GOP may be onto something. Because Americans have been cheering USA! at rallies far longer than they have been chanting O-ba-ma.

President Obama has been presented with a golden opportunity to do the right thing. Recently, presidential elections were held in Iran. The United States had supported Mir Hossein Mousavi to unseat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When the final results of the election were tallied, Ahmadinejad supposedly won. Mousavi cried "foul" and insisted that Ahmadinejad and his followers had stolen the election.

Currently, massive protests have been occurring in Tehran, claiming that the Iranian election process was undermined by Ahmadinejad. Some of these protests have turned violent, with seven people killed just this past Monday, by anti-riot police or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supporters. More protests are planned, and they could take a deadly turn, too. Aside from organizing anti-regime demonstrations, Mousavi and his followers want a new presidential election to be held. And Mousavi and his supporters are looking for international support.




Support from the United States. Support from President Barack Obama.

The phone is indeed ringing at 3 a.m., and President Barack Obama is nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, people are being brutalized and murdered by the regime in Tehran.

Obama has stated "It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be. We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran." President Obama recently elaborated on his position, saying he doesn't want to "meddle" in Iranian affairs.

Does not the President of the United States have an obligation to protect the United States and our best interests? Yes. Obama took an oath of office that stated such. But in this case, Obama is silent. The President of the United States SHOULD be speaking up - in support of the protesters and Mousavi. After all, the only way to have any chance of addressing the nuclear threat that Iran presents is with a regime change. A regime change that could come from within Iran itself.

The Obama Administration had supported Mousavi prior to the elections - now they have left him out to dry. Obama has a great opportunity - to support a regime change in Iran without any military intervention whatsoever. All he has to do is use his self proclaimed gift of "oratory".

Obama has no problem when it comes to "meddling" in the auto industry. The banking industry. The health care industry. Yet, when it comes to an issue that could greatly help the United States AND the people of Iran, Obama doesn't want to "meddle."
And the phone is still ringing...


UPDATE: Rep. Pence On Iran: Reagan Didn't Tell Gorbachev “That Wall is None of Our Business”

Michael Ramirez of IBD Editorials gives Barack Obama’s health-care reform an examination — and discovers that Dr. Obama has the directions backwards on transplantation. The idea is to transplant what works to replace what doesn’t, but Dr. Obama intends to take the worst of government-run health care and drop it into a living, functioning American health-care system:

There can be little doubt that Barack Obama's promise to fix the U.S. health care system was an important ingredient in his recent triumph over John McCain. However, while a majority of voters obviously favor some sort of reform, it isn't at all clear that they understand what the President and his health advisors have planned for them. It therefore becomes, in part, our job to keep informed and inform others.

As NRO points out, the basis in public opinion for a politically successful opposition to the Democrats’ health-care plans is as follows:

Any liberal plan will either raise most people’s taxes or raise the deficit, possibly both. Any liberal plan will either impose rationing right away or set the stage for rationing in a few years. And almost any liberal plan will disrupt the existing health-care arrangements of millions of Americans and replace them with something that could well be worse. It could, for example, throw many millions of Americans out of their private insurance and into a public plan, where they might find that their doctors don’t want to see them anymore. (Some Democrats promise “Medicare for all,” but “Medicaid for all” is at least as likely.)

Via HotAir.com:
What works in the US is free-market economics. We have a model for successful, plentiful, and inexpensive health care — in fact, a few of them. Lasik and cosmetic surgery specialties do not get insurance coverage or Medicare, and so patients must pay directly for the services. That not only forces consumers to choose carefully when selecting a practitioner, it also forces providers to become cost efficient. The demand and the lower overhead in billings drives doctors into the specialties, so there is no artificial shortage of providers, as a look at any town’s billboards or Yellow Pages will make plain.

Instead of trying to reinvent the broken wheel of statism, we should focus on reforming the rest of the health-care system so that it works more like Lasik and cosmetic surgery, whose markets function properly.

As noted by the Sacramento Citizen Blog, California unions want the legislators to sign statements of support for up to $44 BILLION in new or higher taxes on the wealthy, oil companies, tobacco and other industries, products and people.

From our "Polls of Hope & Change," we bring you the latest numbers from Gallup.

Thus far in 2009, "conservatives" comprise the largest ideological group in the United States, with nearly twice as many Americans saying they are conservative as those claiming to be liberal. 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal.

This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

Ahmadinejad is speaking out after re-election, making new threats against the West as he plans his victory rally. Meanwhile Obama's silence on the Iranian election is drawing greater criticism.

Mitt Romney today said that the election in Iran was a "fraud" and called on Barack Obama to denounce the Iranian regime. Joe Lieberman did, too, saying: "I would hope that President Obama and members of both parties in Congress will speak out, loudly and clearly, about what is happening in Iran right now, and unambiguously express their solidarity with the brave Iranians who went to the polls in the hope of change and who are now looking to the outside world for strength and support."

Joe Biden, meanwhile, said that it was too soon to know the actual results of the Iranian election, but added that there was "real doubt" about the legitimacy of balloting and said: "There's an awful lot of questions about how this election was run."

That's an improvement over the Robert Gibbs and Hillary Clinton statements, but not nearly as forceful as a statement -- or even a short speech -- from Obama would be.

UPDATE: Regime thugs are beating reporters on the streets of Tehran in an attempt to force reporters out of the country. However, Allahpundit posts a video clip of a CNN producer in Iran, who says:

The following article is courtesy of our friends at The Sacramento Citizen who made the report yesterday afternoon:

...The Sacramento Citizen has now learned that in an effort to show that State Government is suffering alongside the average Joe, Senators will move to issue a 5% pay cut to [Capitol] staff as well as potentially limit health benefits.

California remains in the throws of a $24.3 billion hole for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The Legislature has 2,136 employees and a total, annualized budget of about $132.7 million. A five percent pay cut applied to all Capitol staff would result in approximately $5 million savings, 1/48000th of the current deficit.

It is unclear if the Assembly will take similar actions. If pursued by the Senate alone, the budget savings would have an even smaller impact.

Perhaps most intriguing is the ironic twist that comes when one looks at what budgetary items are not on the proposed chopping block for the Nation's highest paid state legislators.