“A little more than a month after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s trillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s health care system, the administration has already begun to tout its successes. On his weekly radio address, the president argued that it was already providing Americans with “real benefits,” while Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a four-page memo laying out the “significant progress” she claims her department has already made in implementing the law. “Over the coming weeks, our team across government will continue to work diligently to produce the regulations and guidance necessary to implement this landmark new law,” she concludes.

The prospect of adding new regulations to the books may be what passes for excitement in Washington these days, but it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. So while ObamaCare might qualify as victory for Washington’s army of bureaucrats and rulemakers, for the rest of us, there isn’t much to cheer.

Since the law’s passage, the news about it has been been unrelentingly bad. With each passing it day, it looks more likely that costs will go up, businesses will face new bureaucratic burdens, and many individuals will lose their current health care plans—just as the law’s critics predicted before its passage.

…At the same time, cost projections continue to spiral upwards. The Congressional Budget Office now reports that the law will require an additional $115 billion in previously unreported (and yet unpaid-for) discretionary spending. Medicare’s actuary has reported that total medical spending in the U.S. will actually go up and that crucial cuts to Medicare—cuts being used to pay for the law’s new entitlement spending—aren’t likely to happen, but that Medicare benefits are likely to be reduced. And in Massachusetts, the state whose 2006 health care overhaul served as the model for ObamaCare, insurers have gone to war with the governor, and the state treasurer is warning that the program could drive the state into bankruptcy.

Thanks to the pace of modern medical progress, it’s no longer true that, as Jean Baptiste Moliere quipped in 1673, “nearly all men die of their medicines, not their diseases.” But when it comes to health care, it may be that governments die of their reforms.”

Glenn Beck deconstructs Marxist Rev. Jim Wallis

March 26, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

This is your future America….

March 26, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

Hot Air:

Chavez arrests head of last independent media outlet

“Venezuela takes yet another step towards becoming a Sean Penn Paradise. Hugo Chavez had Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Globovision Television, arrested forallegedly making offensive comments about Chavez, a crime in Hugo’s fiefdom these days. And it’s not the only significant person now in prison for insulting the President-for-Life, either:

Today, the Venezuelan government arrested Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Globovision Television, the only remaining television on public airwaves critical of Hugo Chavez. According to the government, Zuloaga made offensive comments about Chavez (which is against the law in Venezuela) while speaking at a conference of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in Aruba, where media representatives criticized the Venezuelan regime’s crackdown on freedom of speech. …

“It is becoming a crime to have an opinion.” That’s how Carlos Zuloaga summed it up this afternoon when he referred to this incident and the recent arrest of former Venezuelan state governor Oswaldo Alvarez Paz for having said during a Globovision interview that Venezuela has become a drug-trafficking haven.

How will hemispheric leaders and the Organization of American States react to this renewed attack on free speech in Venezuela?

Hemispheric leaders such as the Castro Brothers and Daniel Ortega? I’d doubt we’ll hear much from them. After all, Cuba has done much worse to its internal critics, and Nicaragua isn’t following too far behind Chavez now.

How about hemispheric leader Barack Obama? Our President intervened when Honduras took action against Manuel Zelaya’s attempted power grab by … siding with Zelaya, and with Chavez, the Castro Brothers, and Ortega. But if the case of Zuloaga doesn’t generate some outrage from the White House, how about the case ofOswaldo Alvarez Paz, the opposition leader jailed under the same statute?”

What say you Mr. Obama???

Tom Paine: The Crisis

March 25, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), one of America‘s great founding patriots, wrote this on December 23, 1776, when the American Revolution was less than six months old. Substitute Democrats for Tories, Obama for King George III, Pelosi for Howe, Reid for Gage – Sarah Palin for the “Jersey maid” – and he is speaking to us today.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fifteenth century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc.

Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment!

Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered.

In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings, which we do not immediately see, that God hath blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can even flourish upon care.

I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks on the state of our affairs; and shall begin with asking the following question, Why is it that the enemy have left the New England provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war?

The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness.

The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! What is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, “Well! give me peace in my day.”

Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;” and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.

I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.

Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.

Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but “show your faith by your works,” that God may bless you.

It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike.

The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy.

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?

What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain ofAmerica.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful.

It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.

Howe’s first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the Tories call making their peace, “a peace which passeth all understanding” indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of.

Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

The Radio Equalizer: Control the airwaves

March 25, 2010May 13, 2014Jenny Marie Hatch

Feeling emboldened by the Democratic Party’s success in imposing ObamaCare on the American public, lefties are already looking for the next hot issue to shove down our throats.

For MSNBC libtalker Ed Schultz, it’s the airwaves that should next be subjected to a socialist government takeover.

From Caracas, Hugo Chavez sends his best wishes.

After all, how is it fair that Rush Limbaugh has over 600 stations, while Big Eddie’s affiliates can be counted on one hand?”

Aren’t any poor people with microphones? Bull! Blog talk radio is FREE. Anyone at all could set up an account and start a radio show today, using the library computers and a cell phone. I just started a radio show and it was FREE~!

Jenny Hatch