Fed close 9 more banks; Cheney attacked; Jobs saved or created?; Health czar with super powers?

1) Inside Pelosi's Health Care Bill Page 94, Pelosi plan: "Prohibits the sale of private individual health insurance policies, beginning in 2013, forcing individuals to purchase coverage through the federal government." In 2013, after the 2012 presidential election. In 2013, there is no private insurance allowed. The sale of it will be prohibited. Page 110: "Requires the use of federal dollars to fund abortions through the government-run health plan -- and, if the Hyde Amendment were ever not renewed, would require the plan to fund elective abortions." Page 111 -- Section 223: "Establishes a new board of federal bureaucrats (the 'Health Benefits Advisory Committee') to dictate the health plans that all individuals must purchase -- and would likely require all Americans to subsidize and purchase plans that cover any abortion." The death panels are back, by the way. Page 211 -- Section 321: "Establishes a new government-run health plan that, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group, would cause as many as 114 million Americans to lose their existing coverage." Page 225 -- Section 330: "Permits -- but does not require -- Members of Congress to enroll in government-run health care." So they'll be able to opt out of it and maintain their Cadillac plans. Page 255 -- Section 345: "Includes language requiring verification of income for individuals wishing to receive federal health care subsidies under the bill -- while the bill includes a requirement for applicants to verify their citizenship, it does not include a similar requirement to verify applicants' identity, thus encouraging identity fraud for undocumented immigrants and others wishing to receive taxpayer-subsidized health benefits." …Page 1174 -- Section 1802(b): "Includes provisions entitled 'TAXES ON CERTAIN INSURANCE POLICIES' to fund comparative effectiveness research, breaking Speaker Pelosi’s promise that 'We will not be taxing [health] benefits in any bill that passes the House.'" And this, you know, is just the scratch-the-surface look 'cause there are 1,990 pages. See: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_103009/content/01125115.guest.html 1a) Morning Bell: The Pelosi Blueprint for Government Run Health Care So that’s the plan: force all Americans to buy health insurance, regulate the private plans till they are too expensive, and then slowly expand the power and size of the public option as Americans are left with no choice but to turn to government run health care. That is how Pelosi aims to achieve Obama’s goal of “Everybody in, Nobody out” government run health care. The costs are going to be staggering. Not only will health care quality and choice suffer as more and more Americans are forced onto a government plan that reimburses providers at low government set rates, but the price tag is guaranteed to skyrocket. The only way the House managed to keep their price tag as low as $1.05 trillion is by pretending that Congress would cut Medicare reimbursement rates by 20% in 2010. The full ten-year cost of being honest about the Medicare reimbursement rates would be $250 billion. Less choice, lower quality health care, and trillion dollar deficits for years to come: that is the House’s prescription for health reform. See: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/30/morning-bell-the-pelosi-blueprint-for-government-run-health-care/#more-18678 1b) House Health Bill – A Whopping 1,990 Pages! (from Sean Hannity e-mail newsletter) The new House health care bill contains almost twice the number of pages than The Bible and weighs more than 5 pounds! The House bill, which was unveiled yesterday, weighs in at a jaw dropping 1,990 pages. Sean, who perused the massive document this morning, noticed a few important things. “The one important promise Obama gave that you get to keep your health insurance if you want is false (emphasis mine),” Sean said. “Go to pages 92 and 18 and you’ll find some frightening language in there that I guarantee you no one in the media is going to pick up on.” Medical devices, such as hearing aids or knee replacements, now come with a 2.5% excise tax. There is also a new tax on health savings accounts and the elimination of non-taxable reimbursements of over the counter medication! 1c) Pelosi Plan Would Give Health Czar Super Powers Among the fallacies in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care bill is the pretense that bureaucrats are smarter than the rest of us. An unelected bureaucrat would be given czar-like control over our lives, our health, and our pocketbooks. Even super powers. This new all-powerful “health choices commissioner” would be entrusted with more power than most superheroes. The laundry list of that special power is proof that it’s a government takeover of health care. This presidential appointee will both control the new government-run insurance plan AND decide how private insurance companies are to operate, by creating the standards for their coverage and enforcing compliance. Likewise, employer-run health plans would answer to super-czar. In other words, this health czar will control both the government plan and all of its competition. So much for claims about a level playing field! Rather than having Medicare dictate payment amounts to doctors and hospitals (as Pelosi originally intended), her new 1,990-page bill says the czar will “negotiate” rates. That will take an an awful lot of staff. America has 788,000 active doctors and 5,708 hospitals. But that’s not all. The new czar would also: -Oversee the millions of Americans who would qualify for insurance subsidies -Audit the country’s 1,300-plus health insurers -Have power to collect whatever data the office deems necessary, which could involve review of medical -records -Assess fines -Define our terms for us. This commissioner/czar would dictate all the definitions used in health insurance policies. After all, if you control the language, you control the debate -Appoint a national health ombudsman to examine consumer complaints, but only in “a linguistically appropriate manner” See: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/30/pelosi-plan-would-give-health-czar-super-powers/ 1d) Health Care Reform Cost Estimates: What is the Track Record? …But a fair-minded person may ask: But those are just cost estimates; what is the federal government’s track record when it comes to accurately measuring the future costs of health care programs? Well, the Senate Joint Economic Committee has released a report studying exactly that issue, and they found that health care plan costs are always dramatically underestimated. From the report: “Medicare (hospital insurance). In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990.v Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate.” Medicare (entire program). In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10. See: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/04/health-care-reform-cost-estimates-what-is-the-track-record/ 2) Even State-Run Media Doesn't Buy Obama Lies on Stimulus Jobs RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the White House is -- not even the State-Controlled Media is buying this, by the way -- the White House, earlier this week, maybe last week, they put out this number -- 30,000 jobs saved or created by the stimulus. And the press said, "No, it's not 30,000, it may be 10,000," and gave us details, such as that Florida daycare center that claimed they saved or created 129 jobs with their stimulus money when in fact all they did was give people already working there a raise. There were no jobs saved, and there were no new jobs. The report was phony. So the White House, "This is wrong. We got our new numbers and the new numbers are out," and the White House is now saying they created or saved a million jobs since the stimulus passed. The White House claimed today President Obama's plan has saved or created more than one million jobs. Now, during this time, under Obama, the US unemployment rate has gone up from 7.6% to 9.8%. We round off here. We're gonna call it 10% 'cause it's going to get there at some point anyway. Now, in reality, the United States has lost 3.3 million jobs since Obama and Pelosi passed the Porkulus bill, and as I say, the State-Controlled Media is not even buying any of this. Let's go to last night, CBS Evening News, Chip Reid, the chief White House correspondent talking about the stimulus jobs report. REID: At a small college in Georgia, $100,000 in stimulus funds paid for trucks for students to practice for commercial driver's licenses. Another hundred thousand went for a modular classroom. The school reported to the government that 280 jobs were created. In reality, not even close. In Cocoa, Florida, a child care center reported 129 jobs created by a stimulus grant. In fact, no jobs were created. It turns out the administration's initial jobs stimulus report contained hundreds of errors as first reported by the Associated Press. Critics say if the kinds of errors found in that earlier report are repeated in Friday's much more extensive job creation survey it won't be worth the paper it's printed on. See: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_103009/content/01125106.guest.html 3) Glenn Beck: Free Speech Being Muzzled? …But on to Public Broadcasting. Executive director Josh Silver's position paper "Public Media's Moment" spells out to President Obama how to take advantage: "The growing crisis facing commercial journalism and public media's unique ability to address it... makes such reform all the more urgent... you have a rare opportunity to achieve real change and reinvent public media." Adding: "Just as the economic crisis has put an end to free market fundamentalism, so too should the failure of commercial media to adequately serve the public interest end the myth that government has no role in fulfilling society's information needs." You see how the White House's "Fox isn't a real news organization" comments make more sense now, right? Silver calls on President Obama to create a White House commission on public media to provide policy recommendations. See: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/32549/ 4) Federal regulators close 9 banks NEW YORK – Regulators have shut down nine banks, including California National Bank. The move Friday brings the number of failed U.S. banks this year to 115 as the still-weak economy produces a stream of loan defaults. The banks are mostly in the West and had combined assets of $19.4 billion at the end of September. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation says U.S. Bank in Minneapolis agreed to assume the deposits and most of the assets of the banks. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091031/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bank_closures 5) Cheney told FBI he had no idea who leaked Plame ID How shocking that one week after Cheney gives an outstanding speech which is critical of the current administration, they bring up Plame and Scooter Libby. Coincidence? I think not. WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI in 2004 he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA. A summary of the FBI's interview with the then-vice president reflects that he had deep concern about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the probe of who leaked Plame's identity to the news media. At the end of Libby's trial, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "there is a cloud over the vice president" regarding the leaking of Plame's identity. …In a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003, Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to buy a uranium "yellowcake" in the African nation of Niger. Bush referred to the yellowcake during his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union speech to Congress as he was trying to rally support for going to war with Iraq. Yellowcake is a powdered form of uranium that could be used in a nuclear weapon if purified and enriched. The year before, the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports. Wilson brought back denials of any sale and argued such a sale was not likely to happen. Remember, from previous posts, that Irag DID have yellowcake. The AP thinks no one will remember. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091031/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_cheney_cia_leak 6) Liz Cheney Slams Obama on Dover LIZ CHENEY: I don't know why he went to Dover. I think that clearly it is very important for a commander-in-chief whenever he can, in whatever way possible, to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers, our fallen military, folks, but I think, you know, what President Bush used to do was to do it without cameras, and I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House press pool with photographers and asking family members if he can take pictures. I mean, that's really hard for me to get my head around. I think it's an honorable and important thing to pay tribute, there's no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do it. I would also point out that the best way to pay tribute to those who have sacrificed is to win the war (emphasis mine). See: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_103009/content/01125110.guest.html 7) This week on 'The Hal Lindsey Report' (from an e-mail newsletter from Hal Lindsey, http://www.hallindsey.com/) This morning, I read a very brief, but telling, news report from Pakistan. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited there recently, she spoke at the Government College and took questions from the students. One young lady asked her directly, "What guarantee can Americans give Pakistan that we can now trust you... that you guys are not going to betray us like the Americans did in the past when they wanted to destabilize the Russians?" In the face of President Obama's indecision about Afghanistan, that's the $64,000 question. If he can't decide whether to grant his hand-picked commander's request; if we don't have the commitment to finish the job in Afghanistan, how can Pakistan know that we'll stand by them if they take the necessary steps to defeat the Taliban in their country? How can they know that we won't abandon nearby Afghanistan to the very forces that are now seeking to take control of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal? …Because of America's loss of nerve and its unwillingness to confront Iran, Israelis have now come to believe that they can no longer trust America (sound familiar?). In fact, recent "Jerusalem Post" surveys indicate that 96% of Israeli citizens believe that America is no longer pro-Israel! That's why the European Union (remember France's Foreign Minister?) seems to be stepping forward to assume the mantle of chief Middle East Peace mediator. After all, the Middle East is practically in Europe's backyard and, thus, is of more importance to them than it is to America. Not coincidentally, the Bible predicts that in the last days a man will rise from the revived form of the old Roman Empire (Europe) to take charge and guarantee Israel's safety. …Some observers feel that the palpable turn taken by Washington against Israel, evidenced by President Obama's recent referral at the UN to "the Israeli occupation" (the first time a sitting US President has done so), sends a message of tacit approval to the PA to ratchet up the pressure on Israel. Even now I can hear the words and warnings of Zechariah the prophet ringing across those ancient hills. Finally, I'm going to take a few minutes to review with you why the Temple Mount, the most strategic place on earth, is also the most volatile tinderbox on earth. And it's dangerously close to igniting.