Back to Basics

Grim reaper photoshop credit: Manly Rash

I said yesterday in my Beltway Chainsaw Massacre column that the GOP needs to track the Obama jobs death toll and tell the victims’ stories far and wide.

But there’s no need to wait for the GOP. I’ll keep doing it right here.

The first story of the day comes from the Fort Worth Star Telegram in Texas, where a health insurer called Health Markets has laid off 70 workers and expects up to 180 more as it braces for the costs of Obamacare and other government mandates:

HealthMarkets, the North Richland Hills-based seller of health insurance, laid off 70 employees this month and expects to trim 180 more positions by the end of the first quarter of 2011, according to a recent federal filing.

In the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, HealthMarkets blamed the layoffs on “dropping enrollment levels experienced by the company’s insurance subsidiaries,” along with national healthcare reform and “related legislative developments.”

HealthMarkets provides insurance plans to the self-employed, individuals and small businesses.

The second story of the day comes from the Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts, where a local hospital will slash about 50 full-time jobs:

About 50 full-time jobs will be eliminated at the HealthAlliance Hospital — Leominster Campus, and one of two planned expansion projects may be cut back.

Mary Lourdes Burke, chief communications officer for the hospital, said yesterday the job cuts do not mean 50 layoffs, because some were vacant positions that will not be filled, and some were positions that had hours reduced. Also, she said, some union contracts required moving employees into other posts.

Loathsome cowboys

How’s that Summer of Recovery working out for you? Continuing my series on the White House War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s attack on the economy, and the White House land lock-up (Part 1, Part 2) and ocean grab, here is the latest on Barack Obama’s deliberate job destruction policies.

According to the WSJ, the administration forged ahead with its junk science deepwater drilling ban despite knowing it would cost 23,000 jobs.

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Marcia McNutt, an Obama administration science adviser, commented on the corporate culture of BP in a memo sent to Michael Bromwich, the administration’s new top offshore oil exploration regulator, on June 28.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects…

Sound familiar?

Just last month, you’ll recall, the TARP inspector general reported on how the capricious Dealeragate mandates of Obama’s non-expert auto experts deliberately destroyed jobs in the name of “shared sacrifice” to appease Big Labor.

Then there are more and more Obamacare job-killing stories piling up like this one:

Assurant Health is eliminating 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., by Oct. 1 as the health insurer prepares for changes under federal health care reform.

After his endorsement of a mosque at Ground Zero created an awful kerfuffel that has Democrats racing for cover right before mid-term elections, President Obama has retreated behind the protective cover of the U.S. Constitution.

Barack Obama and the Constitution?

Is it not the highest form of blasphemy just to mention this president’s name in the same sentence as the U.S. Constitution?

After all, he has waged all-out war on that document since invading the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.

As reported at Yahoonews.com, in part:

“BOARD AIR FORCE ONE – A White House spokesman says politics wasn’t a factor in President Barack Obama’s remarks about building a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City.

Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said it was “not politics” but Obama’s feeling that he had the obligation as president to “make sure people are treated equally” under the Constitution.”

If Obama really gave a tinker’s dam about the Constitution, he would scrap his outrageous law suit against the state of Arizona for protecting its citizens from invaders.

He would move to scrap ObamaCare, which was rammed down the throats of unwilling Americans with legislative sleight of hands and bribery when the votes were not there to follow the rules.

I spotlighted the $26 billion BigGovJobs’ union payoff bill that President Obama signed into law last week — a payoff that was achieved through elaborate money-shuffling, including taking $12 billion from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Now comes word via The Hill that the Dems are going to double-dip into the food stamp program again — this time to pay for the massive expansion of the Child Nutrition Bill pushed by First Lady Michelle Obama.

The House will soon consider an $8 billion child nutrition bill that’s at the center of the first lady’s “Let’s Move” initiative. Before leaving for the summer recess, the Senate passed a smaller version of the legislation that is paid for by trimming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.

The proposed cuts would come on top of a 13.6 percent food stamp reduction in the $26 billion Medicaid and education state funding bill that President Obama signed this week.

Food stamps have made multiple appearances on the fiscal chopping block because Democrats have few other places to turn to offset the cost of legislation.

Party leaders raided the budget to find off-setting tax increases and spending cuts to pay for their top legislative priorities, including the roughly $900 billion healthcare law. Congressional pay-as-you-go rules require lawmakers to offset all non-emergency spending.

Democrats have turned to the food stamp program because funding increases enacted in the stimulus package last year were already scheduled to phase out over time. The changes proposed in the state aid and nutrition bills would simply cut off that increase early, in March 2014. Because the cuts would not take effect for more than three years, Democratic leaders have voiced the hope that they will be able to stop them in future legislation.

The bill previously passed by the House is HR 5044 and it includes such goodies as $5 million for a “Food Service Management Institute” and an open-ended “green cafeterias pilot program.”

A couple of days ago, President Obama said that he’d take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico to prove to America that the water in the Gulf was safe for swimming in the wake of the oil leak. He also said that there would be no press allowed in the area for his swim because the last time he took his shirt off with reporters around he ended up on a magazine cover that now doubles as wallpaper in Chris Matthews’ dressing room.

But maybe the White House didn’t want any press photographers around because the wrong angle would give away the fact that Obama wasn’t in the Gulf at all.

According to the White House website, Obama swam off Alligator Point, which is not in the Gulf, but rather in Saint Andrews Bay.

If Glenn Beck said he swam in the Gulf but was actually in the Bay, it would be splashed all over Media Matters by now. A good portion of the media didn’t care to do as much geographic parsing as they no doubt would have if they were writing about Bush:

Reuters: Obama swims in Gulf, says beaches open for business

AFP: Obama, daughter swim in Gulf in act of reassurance

CNN: Obama takes plunge, swims in Gulf

Harry Reid’s advancing dementia became quite obvious recently when he used the Race card in a feeble attempt to paint all Republicans as anti-Hispanic bigots.

As reported at alternet.com, Harry’s words of wisdom were:

“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK,” said the ranking Democrat at a campaign event with Latino supporters earlier this week. “Do I need to say more?”

Actually, Harry, you did say quite a lot more on the floor of the U.S. Senate when you declared that illegal aliens (90% Hispanic) are scam artists and free loaders.

Surely you remember this classless diatribe from just few years ago?

Your office released the following statements (in bold) concerning illegal immigration:

“In response to increased terrorism and abuse of social programs by aliens, (I) today introduced the first and only comprehensive immigration reform bill in Congress. Currently, an alien living illegally in the United States often pays no taxes but receives unemployment, welfare, free medical care, and other federal benefits. Recent terrorist acts, including the World Trade Center bombing, have underscored the need to keep violent criminals out of the country.”

Your bill, Senator Reid, titled the “Immigration Stabilization Act,” would overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, and calls for a massive scale-down of immigrants allowed into the country. The bill also changes asylum laws to prevent phony asylum seekers.

The senator said the U.S. open door policy is being abused at the expense of honest, working citizens.

There is going to be a shitstorm of outrage if Obama and his incompetent administration goes ahead with this rumored mortgage bailout of underwater loans. The liberal elite in Washington is simply doing whatever it wants without regard for the people. They are corrupt and will be happy to forgive portions of your neighbors loans in return for their votes.

Those of you who bought a house and used a large down payment will be screwed. Those of you who bought within your means will be screwed. Those of you who have not bought a house in the last 10 years or so will be screwed. Your kids are going to be paying for this their whole lives. Your grandchildren will be paying for this their whole lives. It is generational theft and is immoral. I am sorry your house is financially underwater. Are they going to extend the same courtesy to cars?

We are going into debt in huge amounts due to all of the so-called Democrats (read Socialists) spending sprees over the last 2 years. It is insane. To pay for all this my taxes will probably go up. I do not believe for a minute that making less than $250K will save me from a large tax burden. My health care benefits will most likely go up as well. I am F#$%@! sick of this. I sit here seething at what the government is doing to this country.

This mortgage bailout better not happen. It best stay a rumor. You think people were pissed about TARP, then health care? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

A Western team of Christian medical volunteers that provided eye care to poor villagers in remote northeast Afghanistan was lined up, stripped, and shot to death by the Taliban.

Monsters. Evil monsters.

Via the Christian Science Monitor:

The execution-style killings of 10 people working for a Christian medical team in a remote region of northern Afghanistan fit into Taliban insurgents’ stated shift in tactics: Target Western civilians, especially Christians, as “foreign invaders.”

The Taliban took credit for one of the deadliest attacks yet on aid workers in Afghanistan, saying the Christian charity workers were proselytizing to poor villagers – a charge that the International Assistance Mission, which dispatched the team, denies.

The bodies of six Americans, a Briton, a German, and two Afghan interpreters were discovered Friday in a forested part of Badakhshan Province in remote northern Afghanistan – until now considered a relatively peaceful region known mostly to adventure travelers. The only person in the party not killed was a local translator who offered proof he was a Muslim by quoting the Koran, according to the Associated Press.

The attack represents the largest single toll of American civilian deaths in Afghanistan since December, when a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team. It also points to the operational viability of Taliban insurgents’ stated intent to target foreign aid workers as combatants.

Via BBC, the Taliban spokesman crowed: “They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all.”

Via the NYT, more on the murder victims, including the six American doctors:

Tom Little raised three daughters with his wife in Afghanistan, avoided kidnappings during the Russian occupation, hid in his basement for months during the Taliban rule in the 1990s, survived rocket attacks and endured arrests for one reason, friends and family members said: to provide eye care for indigent Afghans.

The case of Mr. David Weigel, a reporter who was hired by The Washington Post to blog about conservatives and who resigned from his job on June 25, exposed the inner workings of journalism in America.

But what has been most telling about the case since then hasn’t just been Weigel’s actions or the revelations of other journalists on “Journolist,” — which is described by The Post as “an off-the-record listserv for several hundred independent to left-leaning commentators and journalists that was founded in 2007″ — but how other journalists have reacted to the news.

Although it has long been well-known that journalists overwhelmingly have liberal leanings, they have typically claimed that it doesn’t affect their reporting. But the boost given Weigel’s career by the revelations that he advocated shaping news coverage to help President Obama pass his legislative agenda was extremely surprising.

How Weigel advocated that news be tilted to help Obama ought to be have been the main story in the scandal. But, of course, that has not been the take coming from journalists. Instead, they portrayed Weigel’s foul language and attacks on Newt Gingrich, Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and “PaulTards” (a derogatory term for Ron Paul’s libertarian supporters) as simply a personality quirk. Thus, Ross Douthat at The New York Times dismissed the scandal as just “some off-color vents about his beat.” Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post and CNN said that Weigel’s “vituperative language against Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives had embarrassed the [Washington Post] that hired him three months earlier to cover the right.”

Despite the criticism, his fellow journalists agreed on one thing, that Weigel was a great or an extraordinary reporter. Politico referred to “the enthusiastic endorsements of his reporting skills after he left The Post last.”

And all this has helped his journalism career. Politico ran this headline: “Losing a job to get ahead.After leaving The Washington Post, Weigel was immediately signed on as a contributor for MSNBC. Just last week he was officially hired back by The Washington Post to write for Slate.com. Two weekends ago Politico listed him first on its short list of five “media stars.”
But what all of these media outlets ignore is that Weigel not only held strong political views, he crossed the line to actively plot with other reporters on how to best mold news coverage.

Thus, after Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts, Weigel expressed worries that the victory could derail Obamacare and recommended that other journalists emphasize in their stories that Mr. Brown’s opponent State Attorney General Martha Coakley was a horrible candidate. He argued that doing this would diminish the significance of Mr. Brown’s surprise victory. “I think pointing out Coakley’s awfulness is vital, because it’s 1) true and 2) unreasonable panic about it is doing more damage to the Democrats,” Weigel told the other journalists. This went beyond offering friendly advice and was something that Weigel considered “vital . . . because . . . it is doing more damage to the Democrats.”