Archive for September, 2009

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. More Obama. Maybe it wasn’t. The latest Rasmussen poll shows the President’s Sunday blitz of talk shows — excluding Fox, of course — did nothing to boost support for a radical remaking of the nation’s health care system.

Support nationally is down another two percentage points, to 41, while opposition is solid at 56.  Among the group commonly called “seniors,” just 33 favor with 59 percent opposed.  Of those, 16 percent tell Rasmussen pollsters they strongly favor the remake, while 46 are strongly opposed.

The public knows — especially those seniors who have sorted through scams and snake-oil pitches for six decades or more — that the health care makeover will cost more while quality drops.  Since  they’re  at an age where quality medical care is important, they’re of no mind to be gamed.

Meanwhile, for the younger generation who’ll be fined if they don’t buy health insurance, there’s no good news concerning their future …

Continue reading More Obama seemed like good idea »

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

● Was away early week. Understand Atlanta got drenched. With a reservoir on Atlanta’s land in Dawson County, we could have kept it for drinking.

● President Obama may be having a hard time with America’s Right, but the world’s Left thinks he’s a kindred soul. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised him for throwing Poland under the bus and the Czech Republic spoke admiringly of him, too, following his speech to the U.N. They think their intransigence has been rewarded; that they’ve won.

● At this stage in life, I’ve seen hotshot experts by the score ride to the rescue of a company, department, team or, more routinely, a school or some other aspect of public education. Most flame out, destroying what was there and moving on. Then there’s Bobby Cox. Steady. Reliable. Capable. He built, rebuilt and tried to make average performers better and gifted performers team players. Give me a Bobby Cox to fix anything …

Continue reading We need a lot more Bobby Coxes »

President Obama’s proposed spending of $12 billion borrowed dollars to expand two-year colleges is tomorrow’s money chasing yesterday’s needs. The problem here is not lack of opportunity. It’s lack of interest and preparation. The money would be more productive going to prison education programs. There, at least, students aren’t distracted and can’t get away.

The President was in New York Monday promoting expansion of Pell Grants and promising that by 2020, the U.S. will again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.  He’s convinced that “green” research is the key to future prosperity.

At present, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, that distinction is held by Russia, with 55 percent of the population between 25 and 64 holding college degrees. Next is Canada with 45 and the U.S. with 39.

Increasing subsidies to students to stay in college, or to enroll, is appealing, feel-good public policy. But if having the world’s …

Continue reading Put education money in prisons »

By Jim Wooten

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

● No, it’s true that President Obama is not “ignoring calls for tort reform and changes in medical malpractice laws.” Trial lawyers are a key constituency of the Democratic Party, which largely explains why party leaders have chosen to ignore this potential cost savings.

Here, though, backed into a corner, the president proposes “demonstration projects.” Long, slow test runs on tort reform. Quick, radical remake for one-sixth of the nation’s economy.

● Anybody seen ACORN? The organization may be off to Afghanistan, where the main headline reports “Karzai’s vote lead clouded.” A smaller headline explains: “Fraud suspected in more than a quarter of all Afghan votes.”

● These are tough times for the left-leaning ACORN. Two independent investigators with hidden cameras, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, caught ACORN staffers giving advice on how to get housing help while skirting the …

Continue reading Did ACORN work in Afghanistan? »

So, House Democrats plan today to scold South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson for shouting “You lie!” when President Barack Obama declared before Congress last week that illegals could not qualify for healh care coverage.  Wilson apologized later, but House Democrats bringing forth a resolution of  disapproval want a formal apology from the House floor.

The conflicting interpretations about whether illegals could gain coverage and about whether federal funds would be spent to cover abortions (the Senate, incidentally, is attempting to revise proposed health care legislation to make Obama’s words true), are examples of why news organizations and supposedly non-partisan public interest groups should avoid the temptation to declare political assetions to be “fact or fiction.”

The problem for such “authorities” is that they either lack sufficient knowledge of  proposed legislation in the context of existing law or they have a bias that is contrary to that of those  who make …

Continue reading Healthcare taxes, hidden and otherwise »

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

• President Barack Obama, if not a socialist, is an extreme liberal. Only somebody on that end of the spectrum thinks like this, from his address Wednesday night to Congress on the cost of his proposed health care agenda: “Add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years — less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” National security, to the left, is the reason money’s not available to spend on their social agenda.
• This president is utterly amazing. He tells us that the government that built waste and inefficiency in its programs will now cut them out so we’ll all get better health care for less money without adding a dime to the deficit. Said he: “Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.” Americans are not dummies. They know that’s not so.
• While U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) was disrespectful to the …

Continue reading Health tab still too costly for me »

After a round of protests from conservatives and from parents and school officials who didn’t want the President of the United States mobilizing impressionable young school children to his political causes, the rewrite crew toned it down.

In the end, it wasn’t the cult leader starting the process of organizing the school children into Obama- atics who could support the Leader’s neighborhood political network.  It wasn’t, either, the beginning of the classroom recycling initiative.  That’s where first graders taught that recycling bottles, newspapers and plastic was the way to save the planet grew to adulthood as “green” fanatics. The schools are the ideal place for government to indoctrinate children and, for that reason, they’re no place for a President’s agenda, except perhaps for wartime where the nation’s survival is at risk.

Obama’s speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., based on the prepared text, is really the kind of parental lesson most all children …

Continue reading The nation’s daddy speaks to children »

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

Ah, it’s the old “some people say” routine, prized by opinionated journalists, academics and politicians caught expressing thoughts deemed to be offensive. Academics Keith Jennings and William Boone, authors of a memo that Big Name politicians called racist and bigoted for detailing how blacks could beat a popular white candidate and keep control of city hall, declared this week that they were merely relaying the thoughts of some unnamed blacks. “We would never suggest such a thing,” said Jennings.

Cities, counties and states rise to greatness – or don’t – because leaders emerge – or don’t – when they’re most needed. That was true of Atlanta with Ivan Allen, DeKalb County with Scott Candler and Cobb County with Ernest Barrett. And it’s true of Gwinnett County with the two Waynes – Wayne Hill and Wayne Shackelford, the latter of whom died this week at the age of 75. Shackelford was a visionary who also served Georgia well as …

Continue reading Run, Dick, run, and keep talking »