This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Liberals suck

  • Congress on the 3rd party insurance plan

    Congress is wasting no time in distancing themselves from the Obama/Emanuel/Shinseki plot to force third party insurance on service members with service-connected injuries. Chairman of the House Committee on Veteran Affairs and California Democrat Bob Filner issued this statement;

    The Obama Administration’s proposal to charge ‘third-party’ insurance companies for service-connected medical treatment will not be taken up by the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Our budget cannot be balanced on the backs (or legs, or kidneys, or hearts) of our nation’s combat-wounded heroes. We believe we can achieve the Administration’s budget request (the first in history to actually exceed the recommendation of the veterans’ Independent Budget) in other ways.

    Senator from Hawaii and Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Daniel Akaka is quoted;

    VA’s sacred duty is to care for veterans injured in honorable service to our nation, and the department should not turn to wounded warriors’ private insurance to pay for combat injures. Under my Chairmanship, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee will not advance any such legislation.

    Looks like it might be an uphill struggle for the Obama/Emanuel/Shinseki cabal to even get this into committee.

  • Buying political patronage

    I’m still on this Obama-Shinseki thing. It pisses me off to no end, and here’s the main reason; If you go back to the Stars and Stripes article I referenced last week, it touts the Administration’s plan to enroll a half-million Priority 8 veterans;

    The plan allows the VA health care system to enroll up to 550,000 new Priority Group 8 veterans by 2013. These are veterans who have no service-connected ailments and have incomes deemed adequate based on family size and geographic location. The total for new enrollees includes 266,000 Group 8 veterans already slated to enroll in VA health system starting this summer under a funding initiative Congress passed last fall.

    Now, when those 10 veterans groups met with Obama and Emanuel yesterday and they protested his plan to force third-party payers on service connected disabled veterans, the response was “Find the money for us” or words to that effect. Well, there’s the money. They plan on saving $554 million by inflicting this third-party payer plan on veterans, and they also want to enroll 550 million veterans who don’t need VA care – if it costs more than a dollar to enroll each of those priority 8 veterans and they don’t do it, they saved the money they need. Right?

    Now, I’m no budget expert and I saw that right away. So, why does the Administration insist on doing the exactly wrong thing? Political patronage. They think that by giving VA care to people who don’t need it builds some loyalty among a half-million voters. Just like SCHIP gives health care to people who don’t need it buys political patronage in the civilian sector.

    The decision to go ahead with this stupid proposal is purely political. It’s not about what is good for the country or what’s good for veterans. It’s about what’s best for the Democrat Party. And where is the media on this today. The story has been out there for more than 12 hours and the only mention of it is in a tiny McClatchy newswire piece.

    Shinseki should see that he’s being used, as a disabled veteran, to inflict this plan on veterans.

  • Obama-bots get their marching orders

    Your neighbors are about to get a whole lot more irritating;

    That last paragraph really bothers me;

    We know this fight won’t be easy. But important battles never are. Together, we have the opportunity to shape our country’s future. We believed in the power of people to win an improbable election victory. And we believe in the power of people to drown out the cynics and entrenched interests in Washington to bring lasting, meaningful change we can all be proud we played a role in.

    What fight? The one they’re having against common sense? Does this mean they’re going to be knocking on my door every few hours? Are they going to hold me in headlock until I say “uncle”? This isn’t an election – what can they accomplish? Well, here are their choices for pledging support;

    Who do they think they’re going to be convincing? Any one who can make any sort of decision? I guess it’s just to keep them all in the habit of doing what they’re told.

    And that “entrenched interests in Washington” line is sounding more like Chavez’ “oligarchy” phantoms every time they use it.

  • Kos throws Murtha under the bus

    I guess since it’s not Bush’s War anymore they don’t need John Murtha’s portly shadow cast over them;

    Here’s the link if you want it, but you’ve got to paste it into your browser (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/12/122212/162/186/707656) The really amazing part is that nearly all of the commenters agree. Of course, I recognize it as hypocrisy because they were scrambling to save Murtha a scant few months ago when it looked like he might lose his seat. So now that they control the Congress and the White House, they want to shed themselves of a potential embarassment. Personally, I don’t care – just so long as he’s gone.

    On a tip from 1stCavRVN11B

  • Shinseki’s appearance in Congress

    Stars and Stripes writes this morning about VA Secretary Eric Shinseki at the House and Senate veterans affairs committees this week. Shinseki bragged about the amount of money the new budget pours into the veteran healthcare system;

    Obama’s VA budget outline, with full details promised by late April, would raise VA spending to $112.8 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That’s an increase of $15 billion, or 15 percent, over the current budget.

    “This is the largest dollar and percentage increase ever requested by a president for veterans,” Shinseki told lawmakers.

    Sweet, huh? Not only that, Obama and Shinseki want to enroll veterans that don’t even need VA care;

    The plan allows the VA health care system to enroll up to 550,000 new Priority Group 8 veterans by 2013. These are veterans who have no service-connected ailments and have incomes deemed adequate based on family size and geographic location.

    And lifting the remaining portions of “concurrent receipt” – the absurd practice of reducing military retiree’s check by the amount of their disability checks from the VA. In essence, paying ourselves our own disability payments.

    Obama’s defense and VA budgets also call for a gradual lifting of what remains of the ban on concurrent receipt of both military retirement and VA disability compensation for disabled retirees. The next step would occur in 2010 with concurrent receipt allowed for the most seriously disabled veterans forced to retire short of 20 years.

    So why would the Obama Administration begin investigating third party reimbursement for VA treatment of service-connected injuries and illness? To her credit (I never thought I’d write those words) Patty Murray says ‘no’.

    “Veterans with service-connected injuries have already paid by putting their lives on the line. … We should take care of those injuries completely,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

    Though she recognized that no formal proposal had yet reached Congress, Murray told Shinseki, “I can assure you it will be dead on arrival if it lands here.”

    Shinseki said the issue is solely about financing, and not about continuing to deliver superior care.

    “That is not discussable,” Shinseki said.

    Steve Robertson, director of legislation for the American Legion, told senators he was appalled to learn of the insurance proposal. The Legion and 10 other veterans groups sent a joint letter to Obama criticizing the idea.

    “I could not believe that anybody would ever think that Great West or Prudential or Aetna or any insurance company has an obligation to take care of the men and women who have service-connected disabilities. None of those insurance companies … put us into harm’s way and shouldn’t be held responsible for health care,” Robertson said.

    Despite what a great idea Shinseki thinks this is, I wonder if anyone in the Administration has thought about what insurance would cost a veteran with a service connected pre-existing condition. It could affect them in the job market, too, since the Left has tied health care to employers. The thing is; if the Obama Administration isn’t considering tinkering with our health care, why are these discussions even being held? If Shinseki really thinks about veterans first like he claims in his open letter to all veterans, why aren’t these ideas nipped in the bud before the VSOs and Congress even hear about them?

    Veteran health care is an integral part of our national defense – beret salesmen shouldn’t be the ones standing between those who want to interupt the funding and the veterans.

  • Economy turns around overnight

    Well not really, but you’d think so reading the news this morning.

    This is quite a bit different than what Obama was saying a few days ago, isn’t it?

    What’s changed? Well, he signed all of his bail outs and pay offs. He doesn’t need a crisis anymore. Well, until next year.

  • Freeman: Jooos blocked his appoint

    The Washington Post in their editorial this morning, surprisingly, take up the issue of what a poor choice Charles Freeman was for the Obama Administration’s National Intelligence Council.

    A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King “Abdullah the Great,” Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company.

    They also point out that none of this was allowed into the light until Congress started asking questions and now suddenly, everyone thinks he’s a bit of a nutcase. From his emailed statement yesterday, according to Walter Pincus;

    “The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East,” Freeman wrote.

    Referring to what he called “the Israel Lobby,” he added: “The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views.” One result of this, he said, is “the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics.”

    Yeah, someone is keeping the Arabs from advancing their opinions. Like in the video I took earlier this year of the poor Palestinian supporters being oppressed by the Jew lobby known as Free Republic;

    And in this video I took earlier this year in which a Jewish counter-protester struck an Arab protester’s fist with his face;

    The Post editorial concludes;

    What’s striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that “it is not permitted for anyone in the United States” to describe Israel’s nefarious influence…The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

    The same reason that the obama Administration said they were going to reduce earmarks and then didn’t – they’re still campaigning and they don’t figure that the rhetoric needs to match their actions.

  • Wonder why Murtha keeps getting re-elected?

    Frankly Opinionated sent me this newsletter portly John Murtha sent out to his constituents. It lists some of the pork he’s bringing home to them in that spending bill that the President didn’t want to sign but did anyway;
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