Source: Jim Geraghty, National Review Online, "Off the Charts"

…because we don’t have the votes for it. I wish we did. I think if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer, and that’s the best way to reach single payer. Saying you’ll do nothing until you get single payer is a sure way never to get it.

"Thousand-page bills, unread and indeed unwritten at the time of passage, are the death of representative government. They also provide a clue as to why, in a country this large, national government should be minimal and constrained. Even if you doubled or trebled the size of the legislature, the Conyers conundrum would still hold: No individual can read these bills and understand what he's voting on. That's why the bulk of these responsibilities should be left to states and subsidiary jurisdictions, which can legislate on such matters at readable length and in comprehensible language."  Rep. John Conyers before the National Press Club

What we've found so far, there -- it includes 33 entitlement programs, creates or expands or extends, 53 additional offices, bureaus, commissions, programs, bureaucracies the bill creates. It uses the word -- you'll like this from an attorney's perspective. It uses the word "shall" 1,683 times, representing new duties for bureaucrats and mandates. That's up from an increase of 306 mandates in the discussion draft. (Emphasis mine)

Although no agreement was announced regarding the US demand for a settlement freeze, Israeli officials said the sides were "getting close" to "finding that common ground to enable progress."

"I'm always worried about using the word victory, because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur." Investor's Business Daily, Opinion Page,  Friday, July 24, 2009

"...we are at something of a crossroads in Afghanistan. The toil, tears, sweat — and especially blood — have increased of late. As a result, public displeasure is on the rise in Britain, Canada and Germany, which with their tens of thousands of troops are taking part in the U.S.-led coalition — the kind of coalition, by the way, that liberal Democrats consider absolutely vital before fighting wars against terror states. Our allies could eventually pull out. So at a time like this, the job of the president is to remind them, and the American people, that we are in a world war against a network of evildoers." Investor's Business Daily, Opinion Page,  Friday, July 24, 2009

 

"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terrors, victory however long and hard the road may be — for without victory there is no survival." ~Winston Churchill, 1940 to the British people

 

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.   ~George Orwell

"Because this has been ratcheting up and I helped contribute to ratcheting it up, I want to make clear that in my choice of words I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically and I could have calibrated those words differently."

Fox "Hannity" tonight - "Hawaii's Universal Health Plan" By Michael Laprarie on Health Care Tonight's "Hannity" show on Fox News features an in-depth look at "Keiki Care", the attempt by the state government of Hawaii to implement a universal health insurance program. From Griff Jenkins' blog at Fox: [T]here are lessons in the land of pineapples that seem lost on its favorite son, Barack Obama. Hawaii was the first state in the country to attempt universal health care. It was called "Keiki Care" (Keiki means Child in Native Hawaiian) and it was stopped seven short months after it began due to budgetary concerns. Republican Gov. Linda Lingle had signed it into law, but they soon found a whopping majority of those who wanted free health care already had been insured! You don't hear the President talk about "Keiki Care" in his speeches. So our mission was simple: talk everyone in Hawaii and find out what happened in the Aloha State. Here's more on last year's cancellation of Keiki Care: Gov. Linda Lingle's administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan. "People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free," said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. "I don't believe that was the intent of the program."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

"... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."       ~then candidate for President, Barack Obama to Joe the Plumber

I would like to wish America a hearty Happy Birthday! 

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. " ~George Orwell

"Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis, they are debating about cow tails, and I think that this is inexcusable," Schwarzenegger said. "I mean, how do they explain this to the California people, that in the midst of the biggest budget crisis we are having a debate about cow tails?"