There’s a scene in the Kevin Costner movie “Tin Cup” where he tries over and over again to reach the green with a shot that’s just about impossible to pull off. After several tries fall short and go in the water the TV Director in the trailer starts shouting “Somebody tackle this guy!”.
That’s exactly how I feel after following the ongoing scandal with our Governor.
It was bad enough that he betrayed the trust of his wife and family. It was even worse that he tried to cover it up and went to visit her again after claiming he had ended the illicit relationship. It was unseemly when finally caught by a reporter at the airport he realized the game was over and he would have to ‘fess up. Then he went into meltdown mode during the confessional appearing to be emotionally adrift.
Now c0mes the latest revelations that he, like Jimmy Carter, had lusted in his heart (and physically too) with other women over the years but had stopped short of having sex with them. What a mountain of self-restraint. How humiliating for Jenny Sanford to hear the father of her 4 children talk about how his Argentine flame was “his soulmate” and how he was “trying to fall back in love with his wife”.
This whole business has been about as wacky as these things get. The only other guy I remember being this out of control was Sen. Gary Hart. You recall he was running for President when rumors of an affair sprung up. He indignantly denied it and invited the press to follow him around if they didn’t believe him. They did, and caught him with his paramour aboard the appropriately named boat “Monkey Business”.
Sanford’s body may be in Columbia, but it appears his heart is in Argentina.
Setting aside the moral implications of a man who campaigned on a platform of family values and who called for Bill Clinton to resign in the wake of the Lewinsky affair hypocritically refusing to quit himself is the issue of professional performance. The Governor’s going AWOL shows a shocking lack of commitment to his job and the people of South Carolina. A decision to resign would not be made in a vacuum since it would elevate Andre Bauer to the state’s top job, a post he has said he planned to run for in 2010. But Bauer’s qualifications, or lack thereof, notwithstanding, it’s obvious that Gov. Sanford is not emotionally or mentally fit to be making decisions required of his office.
It’s time to move on.
What a tragedy for Sanford, his wife and sons and ultimately, for us.
President Obama has talked a lot about his desire to have bipartisan debate.
Where is it on the issue of healthcare?
The ABC infomercial scheduled for next week has refused a response from the GOP on their broadcast and has even refused advertsing that offers a different proposal than the “single payer” system the administration wants.
This is a complicated issue and sometimes, as in budget discussions, it makes your eyes glaze over. But it needs explaining as to exactly what Obamacare proposes to do and what the alternatives are.
The head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank has written a really good, point by point explanation of what is being talked about and what it really means.
I’m re-printing it here so you can get a handle of the healthcare debate.
Bob
Open Letter on Health Care
To the President and Congress of the United States
From Edwin Feulner, Ph.D.
President, The Heritage Foundation
Health care reform has been a central goal of The Heritage Foundation since our creation more than three decades ago, so we welcomed President Barack Obama’s call for a common effort to find the right solution to this public policy challenge. We believe that putting families, not the government, in control of the system is the key to success. We want to strengthen our health system based on that principle.
The trouble has been that, no sooner does the President call for “everybody to pitch in” and engage in the debate, than he vilifies any one who criticizes his plans. Denigrating different views does nothing to improve the tone of the debate here in Washington, let alone achieve real reform.
Having a civil national debate will produce more lasting change; accusing opponents of engaging in “scare tactics and fear-mongering” will not.
And make no mistake: there are legitimate concerns with what the White House has proposed. Americans need to understand the implications of all of the competing proposals, whether from the White House, from Capitol Hill, from industries, from think tanks or from interest groups.
In his speech to the American Medical Association, the President said, “When you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.” Truth, however, is not a commodity over which the President has a monopoly. We not only believe that we are alerting the nation to potentially catastrophic consequences when we point out pitfalls in his plans, we think that some proposals being made by the White House are advertised on false premises.
Here are a few examples:
• If you like your health care package you can keep it: This assertion is difficult to square with the facts. The President says that a “public option”-a government plan-would just be one of many health care plans that Americans could select. In fact, a public plan will lead many employers to drop private health coverage for their workers and dump them into the public plan-just as many employers in the 1990s pushed their workers into cheaper managed care plans. According to independent analyses, as many as 119 million Americans could end up in a public plan. This is hardly letting people keep what they have. And many in Congress are eager to expand a public plan, with tight rules on what your doctor can do and how much he or she will be paid. Congress can do that because it will be both the “umpire” who sets the rules and the “team owner” of the public plan. There will be no “level-playing field.” We believe a public option will toll a death knell for private plans.
• The end goal is not a single payer system: This is another Washington euphemism that confuses people. Let us all be clear: The “single payer” here is Uncle Sam, using taxpayers’ money, and not just paying the bills but calling the shots and deciding what care every American will get-or not get. The inclusion of a public option is nothing more than a Trojan horse. The architects of the President’s proposals, and the sponsors of his proposals on Capitol Hill, know that once a government plan is in place, private insurance companies will be eventually run out of business. The government already owns a major bank and auto company; we shouldn’t hand over the medical industry as well.
• The proposals are deficit-neutral: The President also asserts that a government system will be fully financed. This is a stunning untruth. Analysts, including the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office–Congress’s own watchdog–have issued preliminary estimates that the cost could be high as $2 trillion over 10 years, with most of that borrowed money. Even squeezing Medicare payments and adding new tax revenue will not pay for the massive burden this plan would put on American families. And current congressional proposals would still leave millions without insurance. Washington always says that new costs will be paid by savings elsewhere, but these phantom savings never materialize. These new costs will be borne by American families.
• The quality of your health care will get better: One need only look at current government health programs to test this premise. Medicare has huge gaps in coverage. Medicaid’s quality is notoriously bad. They both offer substandard care compared to most private insurance plans. These persistent deficiencies are routinely overlooked in discussions of a government health plan. Rather than fixing Medicare and Medicaid, what the government proposes is to make these programs the foundations of a universal plan.
But we know opposing bad ideas is not enough. We need to fix the gaps in our health care system and lower costs for Americans. The system we need must not just protect union bosses, bureaucrats and select cartels, it must empower American families. The nation needs health care reform, not health care micromanaged by the government.
We are happy the President has joined a cause we have championed since our inception. He has recently been asking audiences across the nation “Where’s the alternative?” We at The Heritage Foundation are ready to discuss our alternative plans and help craft a bipartisan solution to America’s health care problems. That is what the country needs and what the President says he wants.
Specifically, a plan that would reform health care will need t
• Give families control of their health care: We need to let families-not the government-control decisions so they can choose the coverage they want. For this to happen private health insurance needs to be portable-that is, owned by Americans so they can take their package from job to job. The health care system we have today was conceived in the era of World War II, when many Americans worked for the same company all their lives. As we know, that is not the case today. The President has acknowledged this. But we do not need a public plan, or mandates on businesses, to have portability. We need changes in rules and the removal of tax penalties to allow families real choice and ownership.
• Reform the tax system: For portability to become reality, we need to reform the tax system. Right now, families can get a tax break for their insurance only if they hand over control of their insurance to their boss, and leave their plan behind if they change jobs. That needs to change. We need to provide the same tax relief to families wherever they choose to get their plan. In that world of empowered families, plans would have to compete to satisfy them, not compete to cut costs for employers.
• Bring on competition: Americans will get quality health care only with the mechanism that has given us quality in all other aspects of life: competition. The way to get quality care in America is to have insurers compete to satisfy families in an insurance market, one that provides transparent information, ease of delivery and quick results, and which is fair to families and their doctors. Members of Congress pick and choose plans in such a market. The rest of America should also have that right.
• Recognize that states know better than Washington: The challenges of organizing and delivering health care vary greatly across the nation. Rural Mississippi is not the same as Midtown Manhattan. States have always been smarter than Washington at figuring out how to get the job done. To the extent that government must play a role, the states should take the lead in devising the best way to reach our national goals. The last thing we need is one-size-fits-all health care. Congress needs to let states find the best way to achieve value for money in widening coverage while bringing down costs.
A reckless, expensive and one-sided rush toward “reform” would not only be damaging to our public discourse, but it could fundamentally change our society in ways that have far-reaching consequences.
Rather than bringing in the failed central-planning approach to health care, with the government controlling who gets what, let’s ensure access to affordable health care for all Americans. Let’s use the tried and tested approach of the empowered consumer in a truly competitive market.
These are some of our remedies to our nation’s health care system. There are other free market ideas that also warrant consideration. We call on the President and Congress to widen the conversation. Let the debate truly begin.
The IT skills of the younger generation continue to amaze me.
Anne Robards forwarded this email to me. It’s from a woman in Alabama and before the Tea Parties she asked her teenage son if he could put together a video to promote the event. She said he sat down at the computer for about an hour, then came back and asked “Is this okay, Mom?”.
It’’s more than okay.
Watch it and judge for yourself. It takes just a couple of minutes to watch but is well worth the investment in time.
Talk about a slap in the face of reality.
Here’s the opinion column written in Pravda, Russian for “Truth” that gives us a view from a former Soviet of what’s going on over here.
American capitalism gone with a whimper
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
What’s the most powerful player in the global economy?
It’s a non-governmental private corporation. The Federal Reserve.
It was chartered in 1913 to prevent banking panics and economic meltdowns. How’s that working out for us?
Today on the show, Bob Chapman, a financial analyst who edits The International Forecaster, will join me in the 4 o’clock hour to talk about the effort moving through Congress to audit the Fed.
He’ll explain the huge conflict of interest, the incestuous staffing, corruption and unregulated greed that has brought the world to the brink of a global depression.
Bob’s articles on finance have been published in more than 200 publications and he’s been a frequent guest on tv shows.
Some of his predictions include: Calling the top of the market in April 2000; predicting a 9-11 type event nine months before it occured and witrhin 33 days of the actual event; and predicting the invasions of both Afhganistan and Iraq ywo years before they happened.
Hope you can join me for the show today from 3 to 6pm.
I’m pretty fired up because tomorrow (Tuesday, May 12) all the suits from NewsRadio WORD, myself included, will be taking part in a news conference at Byrnes High.
Without totally tipping our hand, let me just say we are very excited about the forthcoming announcement.
The Byrnes High Football program has been among the elite in America for years and we are very pleased to be able to join with them in supporting this outstanding group of people.
Following tomorrow’s 12 Noon news conference I’ll be talking about the details of this on my show from 3-6pm.
We get lots of calls from people wanting an update on the Swine Flu outbreak and how it’s affecting South Carolina.
Here’s the latest update from the Greenville County Health Department.
As more details become available we’ll share those with you on air in our newscasts and on our shows.
Swine Influenza (Flu)Lab results released today showed that 10 South Carolinians probably have the swine flu virus. The lab results have been sent to the CDC for further evaluation. The 10 people who appear to have the virus are all associated in some way with a recent school trip to Mexico. The trip was sponsored by an independent school in Newberry. Jerry Gibson, M.D., chief of DHEC’s Bureau of Disease Control,. said the 10 have been asked to voluntarily isolate themselves for a short time. Anyone who was exposed to them is asked to voluntarily quarantine themselves at home. Those in isolation will receive appropriate care, Gibson said. There’s still a lot we do not know about the swine flu virus. But we are in constant contact with the CDC and healthcare providers around the state. We are closely monitoring doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers to identify and track any cases that might arise.So far, DHEC has tested 22 residents for the virus.This is what we know:
Antiviral drugs seem to work for swine flu when taken shortly after symptoms begin. In South Carolina, we have a small stockpile of these drugs and we’ll be getting an extra shipment from the federal government within the next few days. So we’ll be able to treat about 150,000 cases of influenza should private health care providers run low on supplies.
To fight the spread of the flu virus:
Wash your hands thoroughly and often.
Cover your cough with your sleeve, not your hand.
Stay home if you’re sick.
Stay away from people who are sick.
Eat a healthy diet and get plenty of rest.
It takes from 48-72 hours for symptoms to show up after a person has come in contact with the virus.
There’s no way to know how long the outbreak will last, but we expect this virus to be around for quite some time.
The 10 people who are believed to have the swine flu are associated with Newberry Academy, an independent school. They developed influenza-like symptoms after returning home from a recent school trip to Mexico. The school has been closed this week. Schools routinely close whenever there is a cluster of illnesses. It’s too early to tell if more schools will close.
There is no evidence that you can get swine flu from eating pork.
If you start to have symptoms of the flu, call your healthcare provider or your local public health clinic for guidance.
Resources: For more go to Greenville County Health Department Site at
Here’s the latest information I’ve received on Nikki Haley’s push for a roll call vote on spending legislation.
All of your calling and e-mailing is making a difference. Yesterday and today we picked up three new co-sponsors on H3047.
Jim Battle from
Marion, who is on the Ways and Means Committee is now a cosponsor.
Denny Neilson from
Darlington, who is on the Ways and Means Committee is now a cosponsor.
Shannon Erickson from Beaufort is now a cosponsor.
You are making a difference!!!
Don’t be timid about asking ANY House Member to cosponsor H3047.Eventually, the entire House will have to vote on this. The more cosponsors the better.
In order to pressure the Leadership to allow H3047 be heard in full Committee, it’s important to get as many Ways and Means Committee members to cosponsor the Bill as possible.
Neilson is strategic since she is the subcommittee chairperson.