Morning Briefing for MONDAY, July 13, 2009
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1. On the “Cheney Didn’t Tell Us” Lie
Facts are troublesome things for the Democrats
2. Distractions
This is a Democrat inspired game to distract conservatives from pending policy initiatives.
3. Tim Geithner to Laid Off Americans: Your getting laid off is “healthy”
This from a tax cheat who has never worked in the private sector
4. Backers of Sotomayor: “Let’s Get the Firefighter!”
The politics of personal destruction
5. House Democrats Delay Health Care Bill
They want to make sure they can get it through once everyone is distracted
6. Democrats agree to raise taxes $550 billion to fund so-called health care reform
But they said they weren’t going to raise taxes
7. Dems Address Paying For It
A familiar refrain: SOAK THE RICH!
8. David Obey (D-WI) Wants You to Know that He is Using the Government to do the Work of Jesus.
It’s only offensive when Republicans do it
1. On the “Cheney Didn’t Tell Us” Lie
Facts are troublesome things for the Democrats
While Democrats are screaming that evil Dick Cheney did not tell them about a CIA program, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency says Congress did know about it.
“Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden angrily struck back Saturday at assertions that the Bush administration’s post-9/11 surveillance program was more far-reaching than imagined and was largely concealed from congressional overseers.
“In an interview with the Associated Press, Hayden said that top members of Congress were kept well informed all along the way, notwithstanding protests from some that they were kept in the dark.”
It is worth nothing that Michael Hayden, when appointed Director of the CIA, was a career military guy. He was not a Republican or Democrat partisan, unlike Leon Panetta, a long time Democrat partisan now in charge. Panetta has decided to play political games at the behest of the Obama administration to distract Americans from Obama’s legislative policies.
Remember, it was only a couple of months ago that an Obama administration official told David Broder of the Washington Post that Obama was suffering because Bush was not in the news any more. This is a way to get him back in the news as a distraction.
How many Americans are going to get killed while the Obama administration plays games with our national security?
2. Distractions
This is a Democrat inspired game to distract conservatives from pending policy initiatives.
There is a game of distractions being played in Washington, D.C. right now. It is both intentional and designed to minimize conservative strengths.
We must not play the game as the left would have us play it.
Here is how the game is played.
The President pushes cap and trade to the Senate while also advancing socialized healthcare.
As those balls advance, the Attorney General makes rumblings about prosecuting individuals who engaged in enhanced interrogation techniques.
While conservatives get distracted by the Attorney General, the administration claims Dick Cheney refused to disclose a CIA program and the Democrats will investigate.
Today Sonya Sotomayor begins her confirmation hearings.
By throwing all of these balls around, the left hopes to distract the right. Our natural inclination is to be distracted by the shiny national security balls. Some of us will fixate on Sotomayor.
Meanwhile, the leftist agenda makes it way further through Congress. Already, some Blue Dog Democrats are leaning toward supporting socialized healthcare. And the right is suddenly intrigued by the Cheney story, which is as much about distracting us from Nancy Pelosi’s lies about the CIA as it is to distract us from coming policy.
Don’t play the game.
Sonya Sotomayor will be confirmed. Ignore that ball as best you can.
Dick Cheney will need some help, but we don’t all need to focus on that ball.
The interrogators will not be prosecuted. It is a ruse. Do not be distracted.
Cap and Trade and Obamacare are the balls in play. Keep focusing on them.
We cannot afford to be distracted from these two policy initiatives. They are trying to distract us. We must target Congress on healthcare and cap and trade.
It is a telling point of the game’s existence that the Democrats have not revealed the terms of their healthcare legislation. They want us fully distracted by these other matters before they do and rush it through.
Our singleminded focus right now must be on defeating healthcare reform. These other balls can keep bouncing off the walls.
3. Tim Geithner to Laid Off Americans: Your getting laid off is “healthy”
This from a tax cheat who has never worked in the private sector
According to CongressDaily, Tim Geithner testified before “a joint House Agriculture and Financial Services hearing on the regulation of derivatives.”
“Noting the rising unemployment, Geithner said what the economy “is going through is a very necessary and healthy adjustment as [Americans] go back to living within their means.” He added: “We do not have an economy that is growing again.””
It’s a “necessary and healthy adjustment”? Seriously? 9.5% unemployment is necessary and healthy how exactly?
How is “an economy that is [not] growing” necessary and healthy?
This is the guy so needed to get our economy going again that Congress overlooked his tax evasion.
And this is the man who, having never worked in the private sector, thinks you losing your job is “necessary and healthy.”
That’s Barack Obama’s America.
4. Backers of Sotomayor: “Let’s Get the Firefighter!”
The politics of personal destruction
In preparation for the upcoming Senate confirmation debate, supporters of Judge Sonia Sotomayor are stooping to a new low… According to McClatchy Newspapers, they are going after the Connecticut firefighter at the center of one of the nominee’s most controversial rulings - the one recently overturned by the United States Supreme Court in Ricci v. DeStefano.
This is not unusual. It is the M-O of liberals… they’re all for the “little guy” as a political poster-child, but they simply don’t bat an eye at running over him if it’s necessary to accomplish their agenda.
Mr. Ricci, whatever his past may reveal, is a private citizen who had his day in court… but not just any court, he had his day in the United States Supreme Court, and he won. And now liberal special interest groups want to go after HIM - personally - simply because Judge Sotomayor wrote a lousy opinion with her colleagues and now is getting repudiated for its foolishness.
Republicans should object strongly to these types of personal attacks… and so should Judge Sotomayor.
5. House Democrats Delay Health Care Bill
They want to make sure they can get it through once everyone is distracted
Democrats made a major mistake when they tied their credibility to porkulus, and then allowed Capitol Hill to debate health care rationing and cap-and-tax at the same time. Congress cannot both walk and chew gum - especially when they’re starting to worry about the 2010 political climate. The fights over which should be a top priority, and the uncertainty over the full cost of the Obama agenda, make it very difficult for Members of Congress to decide how to proceed.
As a result, it should be no surprise that Democrat leaders can’t rope a restive caucus together - even to debut the first draft of a health care rationing bill.
6. Democrats agree to raise taxes $550 billion to fund so-called health care reform
But they said they weren’t going to raise taxes
House Democrats agreed Friday to raise taxes by about $550 billion to pay
for their sweeping expansion of the nation’s health care system.
The huge tax increase will only pay for about half the cost of the Democrats’ health spending plans, so according to the New York Times, the Democrats will also cut Medicare spending, the government health plan for the elderly, and other health care savings to pay for the rest of the $trillion-plus health care spending spree.
The top federal tax rate is now 35 percent, but Democrats have vowed to raise it to 39.6 percent next year. The Washington Post quotes Robert Carroll, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Tax Foundation, as saying that combined with other federal tax adjustments, the Democrats’ new health care spending tax increase could leave some taxpayers facing top federal rates of at least 45 percent.
7. Dems Address Paying For It
A familiar refrain: SOAK THE RICH!
Soak the “rich.” That’s the plan. In fact, that is always the plan with tax and spend Democrats. This time it is a new “surtax” on Americans making over $250,000 a year (or $350,000 per couple) to pay for Obamacare.
Ominously, the plan has a hike mechanism right at the outset as Charlie Rangel (D, NY), head of the House Ways and Means Committee, has inserted language that will raise the tax higher if they don’t get as much money as they want with this first dip into the rich folk’s wallets. If anyone thinks Democrats will imagine they’ve gotten enough the first time and that the hike trigger doesn’t need to be pulled… well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
So, who will this hit? Can anyone doubt that it will be doctors themselves? After such a raid into American’s paychecks, it will be doctors that will find that they are being taxed in order to pay themselves further reduced rates by government reimbursements through this new healthcare system.
8. David Obey (D-WI) Wants You to Know that He is Using the Government to do the Work of Jesus.
It’s only offensive when Republicans do it
I just got a press release from David Obey’s office concerning the 2010 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill. Underneath the title of the press release and the date was the following line, in huge, bolded, and italic print:
” . . . whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
- Mathew (sic) 25:40
This is a particularly delicious piece of irony. Sarah Palin suggested last year during a prayer that the government should be acting in conformity with God’s will, and liberals went completely over the edge, twisting that prayer of humble acceptance of God’s will into evidence that Republicans are seeking to impose a theocracy on the country. Here we have one of the most prominent Democrats in the house sending out an official press release that expressly states that the government appropriations in the bill are being used to carry out the work of Jesus.
Let us put to the side for the moment the fact that no one on David Obey’s staff knows how to properly spell the title of the Gospel according to Matthew, and that the particular passage in question did not praise forcibly confiscating the tax money of others and distributing it to the poor. Where is the outrage from liberals and the press (sorry for the redundancy) concerning this attempt to impose a theocracy on this country? Where is the endless bloviating concerning this distressing weakening of the barrier between church and State? Why isn’t it a matter of great national concern, this actual (not imagined) attempt by a Member of Congress to force his phony religious beliefs on the entire nation?
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