Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Morning Bell: A Whole New Health Care Ball Game

Heritage "You have to read all the way to page A-25 in today’s New York Times to learn about it, but the Senate took its first floor vote on Obamacare yesterday and the White House lost. Big."

Photo from Patriot Post

What if Bush had done it?

Hot Air "In other words, the press has a story line that they have to defend. If Obama gets exposed as a flop, and worse as a typical Chicago pol, then it makes their failure to properly vet Obama during the primaries that much more clear. In a sense, they created Obama, and his collapse would be their collapse as well."

Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

Zinni: Don't Delay Decision on Afghan War

CBS "He warned that the battle over an Afghan strategy is not just about militants, but also about neighboring India and Pakistan. "We have two nations out there with nuclear weapons, one of which had the Taliban 65 miles from their capital. We have the Taliban and others trying to provoke some sort of conflict between these two nations. We also have a Taliban that is stretching their influence into Central Asia.""

Dismantling America / Will the country wake up before it’s too late?

By Thomas Sowell "Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions as trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation."

Obamacare’s False Dawn

By Rich Lowry, NRO "Eventually, Democrats will have to settle on a final bill and won’t be able to sweep its weaknesses under the rug of the next drafting process. Whatever its final form, it will raise taxes, cut Medicare, and — in all likelihood — increase insurance premiums. If the past few months of polling are any guide, it will be under 50 percent approval. Its benefits, such as they are, won’t kick in until 2013, while the taxes will start immediately."

Pelosi wants to 'rename' the public option

By Rick Moran in AT "What is it about liberals that they think they have to fool people into supporting them?Run as a nice, safe moderate only to become screaming leftists once in office. It really shows they have no confidence that the substance of their ideas can stand scrutiny much less win out in a fair fight with the right."

Decline is a choice. But is it America's choice?

By Charles Krauthammer First of two parts. Tomorrow: Retreat abroad begins at home. "Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline -- or continued ascendancy -- is in our hands."

Fox News Channel's Ratings Soar After White House Attack

Newsbusters "In fact, since Anita Dunn's now infamous appearance on CNN's "Reliable Sources" when she claimed Fox isn't a real news network, the cabler has seen HUGE gains in overall viewing AND in the important demographic aged 25 to 54."

The Race Against Nothing

American Thinker "We have busied ourselves in a race between technology and nothing. Huge amounts of money and effort are being spent to develop an approach to address the hoax that is man-induced global warming, arguably the definition of nothing."

John Kerry's Afghan war speech; Foreshadowing Obama's decision?

LA Times Blog "...People want to know, why stay in Afghanistan? And especially, why consider an increase in troops? First, we start from the premise that Al Qaeda remains at the center of our mission. They still want to attack us, they are still trying to attack us, and we have interrupted plots globally over the last few years. But it’s an awful lot harder to plan new attacks when they are boxed in, harassed, and living in fear. We are, as we ought to be, committed to hunt Al Qaeda wherever they go. Bin Laden and his deputies in Northwest Pakistan haven’t gone far, and to keep them on the run, we must prevent the Taliban – with long-standing ties to Al Qaeda—from once again providing terrorists with an unfettered Afghan safe haven, just across a border that many there view as mere abstraction."