Sarah Palin is looking very good as a contender in 2012. I am still favoring Governor Jindal in Louisiana, with Governor Sanford in South Carolina as #2. But Palin is definitely in the mix!
I am so happy when I see women standing up for fiscal conservatism, social conservatism and a strong foreign policy. I am going to give her 2 A+ ratings for these two tough media interviews. She understands the vision of small government and low taxes. And she has a talent for explaining it in a winsome, engaging manner. The trouble is that Democrat voters are so ignorant about economics that she has to explain it very slowly.
Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.
Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. The measure’s cost is reaching well beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a 10-year down payment for the policy changes.
Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion over a decade, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.” Some Senate Republicans, including Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, say the costs will likely exceed $1.5 trillion.
…That won’t be enough to cover the overhaul costs. Obama said this week he plans in the coming days to disclose more proposals for raising “additional sources of revenue.” In a letter last week to Senate Democrats drafting legislation he said he will be proposing between $200 billion and $300 billion in further Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
If you think that tax hikes on “the rich” won’t affect you, you’re naive. The rich are the people you work for. If Obama starts confiscating your money, they will ship your job overseas where taxes are lower. That’s just the way it is. The most productive people in the world are not just going to hand over their money to Obama to redistribute to unions, bureaucrats, the United Nations, ACORN and Planned Parenthood.
Stem cells in India
Meanwhile, here is a neat health care story so you will know where to go for medical treatment (India) after Obama tells you that you will have to wait two years behind people who voted for him.
“It was the first time in eastern India that such a transplant was being performed on a child,” he said….Pramita’s bone marrow, which contain stem cells, was collected from her spinal cord. It was successfully transplanted in her body in April 2009. The entire process took two months during which she was kept isolated in a sterilised room with high efficient particulate air (HEPA) filter. “We will do a follow-up on her health for the next six months since she may contract infection during this period and so has to follow some restrictions. But after that she can lead a normal life and can resume her dance lessons without any problem,” Dr. Mukhopadhyay said.
Why doesn't Obama stand up for freedom and democracy in Iran?
Fox News reports that the election was fraudulent, accoring to U.S. analysts: (H/T Hot Air)
U.S. analysts find it “not credible” that challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote, a senior U.S. officials told FOX News.
Hot Air has tons of updates at the link above, and a video of the protest.
In the Iranian capital’s most serious unrest for 10 years, thousands of liberals who claimed the election had been rigged vented their fury in running battles with police.
They fought officers armed with batons and stun grenades, set fire to police vehicles and threw stones at government buildings.
I saw police in camouflage uniforms and black flak jackets respond by firing the grenades from motorcycles into a crowd that chanted “Down with the dictator” and denounced what it called a stolen election.
In a stand-off near the interior ministry, which oversaw the count, opposition supporters formed barricades of burning tyres, sending plumes of smoke over the city. Helmeted police chased protesters who became detached from the main group and beat them with truncheons.
Hot Air linked to this BBC video, in which protests cry for freedom are beaten by police: (H/T Hot Air)
The Obama administration would not describe the outcome as legitimate or illegitimate or deem a victory by Mousavi as necessarily better.
“We’re not going to characterize what would have been a better or worse scenario,” the official said. “We will deal with this as it is, not as we wish it to be.
And they also report on the Republican response, which is quite different:
“There appears to be pretty good evidence that this is a cooked election,” Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., told FOX News. “And the most depressing thing for me is we were going to see whether in fact the true leaders of this country, the religious leaders, were going to allow for a real election to have an expression of the people.
Mousavi and Karrubi, the two “reformist” candidates in Friday’s “elections” are under house arrest, along with dozens of their followers;
“Reformist” journalists and activists have been rounded up and jailed;
Cell phones (including, after a day’s delay, international cell phones) have been blocked, access to internet has been filtered, facebook is unreachable, and you can’t tweet (can the silencing of Western reporters be far behind?);
In Tehran, student dormitories are surrounded by security forces.
The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government, senior officials said Saturday, despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…
Business as usual… just keep talking with them, and hope they will forgive us for all our misdeeds. There is not going to be a challenge to this coup from the White House… the Iranian people are on their own.
Gateway Pundit linked to some photos are here and here.
WINTERY KNIGHT 