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POPSThe Health Bill Is Scary My 25 years as a practicing physician have shown me what happens when government attempts to practice medicine: Doctors respond to government coercion instead of patient cues, and patients die prematurely. Even if the public option is eliminated from the bill, these onerous rationing provisions will remain intact. For instance, the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost. An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill"composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members"will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program. Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production. It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.
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POPS Code Red In Washington D.C. Today; “This bill must be stopped!”
Also: The Dems now expect the CBO scoring of the Reid plan that no one has seen to look good once the Medicare expansion is thrown under the bus. And: After all the sound and fury, Joe Lieberman is now reportedly on board with Demcare. Update: Heeeeere come’s MoveOn! Steamed at the Democrat majority over negotiating with Joe Lieberman, the nutroots will hold their own “emergency rally” today at 1pm Eastern today to lobby for nationalized health care. Wonder if unhinged Jane Hamsher will show up to burn Sen. Lieberman’s wife in effigy. Update 11:49am Eastern: Lieberman talking to press right now. Says Demcare plan is now “heading in the right direction.” GOP Sen. Susan Collins is standing by him, smiling, through his remarks. Ok, Susan Collins speaks. She can’t see voting for the bill in its current form. “It’s still too deeply flawed for me to support it.” She says she won’t support it even with amendments intended to improve the bill (that no one has seen, of course).
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POPSMcCain, Coburn Target 100 Stimulus Projects The duo, who have railed against “wasteful spending” in recent years, put out their “stimulus checkup” shortly before President Barack Obama made a speech at the Brookings Institution outlining new job-creation proposals. McCain, from Arizona, and Coburn, from Oklahoma, say the projects they’ve identified “raise questions about how stimulus money has been used so far.” The White House said it would look at the projects cited in the report but that it should be “taken with a grain of salt,” noting that Coburn’s earlier reports on stimulus spending have included errors. A spokesman for Coburn hit back, pointing out that the data used by the administration to estimate the impact of the stimulus hasn’t been perfect. “The stimulus office might want to revisit its job creation estimates before it lectures others about accuracy,” said John Hart. By Louise Radnofsky Political Insight and Analysis From The Wall Street Journal's Capital Bureau
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POPSJim DeMint Proposes Term Limits For Congress Rarely, he gets voted out--and Senator DeMint points out that 90% of all incumbents who seek re-election, win re-election. Tom Coburn offers greater detail on why incumbents win re-election 90% of the time: The power of incumbency has created an almost insurmountable advantage for Washington politicians. Incumbency allows politicians to raise millions of dollars in campaign funds in exchange for earmarks. Incumbency gives Congress the power to raise money for itself " Congress just approved itself an increase of nearly $250 million from the U.S. Treasury that members will spend to promote themselves. Senator Coburn also points out that with redistricting (except for the unlucky Representative who gets drawn out of the House if his State loses one or more seats), a Representative, having good connections with his State legislature, can "choose his voters." The effect of this amendment would be very simple. Senators would be limited to two terms or fifteen years ....
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POPSU.S.Troop Funds $2.6 Billion Taken From Guns and Ammunition For "Pet Projects" Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance "a disgrace." "The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines," he said in a statement. RELATED STORIES: • Michigan town lobbies for Gitmo transfers • Top Treasury posts stay empty in financial crisis • VA Dept. hospitals botched treatments Mr. Wheeler, who conducted the study, compared the Obama administration's requests for funds with the $636 billion spending bill that the Senate passed. He discovered that senators added $2.6 billion in pet projects while spending $4 billion less than the administration requested for fiscal 2010, which began Oct. 1. Mr. Wheeler said that senators took most of the cash for the projects from the "operations and maintenance" or O&M accounts. "These are the accounts that pay for troop training, repairs, spares and supplies for vehicles, weapons, ships and planes,
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POPS30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape
Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS) In the debate, Senator Sessions maintained that Franken's amendment overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution. To which, Senator Franken fired back quoting the Constitution. "Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution gives Congress the right to spend money for the welfare of our citizens. Because of this, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, 'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds and has repeatedly employed that power to further broad policy objectives,'" Franken said. "That is why Congress could pass laws cutting off highway funds to states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21. That's why this who
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POPSThere is A Blizzard in Hell Tonight! Dems Vote To Ban ACORN Funds! Gregg did not surprise me. Hutchinson thinks she can be governor of Texas with missing such a big vote? Old unreliable McCain is sitting this vote out too. Michelle Malkin details McCain’s ACORN coziness Vitter is in LA and that is ACORN country so no surprise here either. I lope Louisiana doesn’t lift a finger to send Vitter back to the Senate! From Michelle Malkin's blog: 5:42pm Eastern. Roll call vote still underway. Several Democrats have voted AYE, including Cardin, Carper, Inouye, Johnson (SD), Murray, Tester, Warner, Bingaman, Begich, Nelson (NE), Webb, Landrieu, Bayh, Conrad, Rockefeller, Dodd, Pryor, Hagan, Kohl, Feingold, Boxer, Nelson (FL), Brown, Harkin, Lincoln, Wyden, Baucus, Klobuchar, Kaufman, Shaheen, Lautenberg (switched from no to yes), Menendez, Stabenow, Leiberman, Levin, McCaskill, Reid, Feinstein, Udall, Bennet (CO) Merkley, Cantwell, Dorgan, Schumer… I am shocked by some of the hardcore lefties here.
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POPS Is Obamacare Constitutional? “The Tenthers.” I recently started seeing a few references to this term in the standard places, Alternet, ThinkProgress, and elsewhere. But now it seems to have come from on high like the NeoCons did with every new buzzword during the Bush years. In fact, its usage has come on so fast and so regularly that someone over at the Washington Times picked up on the newly-approved jargon: Health care reform supporters at the Center for American Progress, the American Prospect, MSNBC and other outlets have deployed the term against Republicans who cite the 10th Amendment as reason not to create new programs. Some of the leading Republican proponents of the allegedly “dangerous” and “conspiratorial” theory include Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. “As the nation emerges from the worst economic downturn in three generations, the tenthers would strip away the very reforms and economic
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POPSThe Bad Medicine of the Republican Doctors Then there's Oklahoma Senator and unexpected Obama confidante Tom Coburn. As a Senate candidate in 2004, Dr. Coburn famously warned that "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom." Upon his arrival in the Senate, the former obstetrician was elevated to the Judiciary Committee despite having advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. More recently, Coburn the C Street marriage counselor to John Ensign and Mark Sanford turned Deather:
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POPSThe Replacement Killers | replacement killers music hard boiled, The Replacement Killers, chow yun fat, netflix, mira sorvino, reign of fire, mira sorvino legs, replacement killers cast, michael rooker, replacement killers music, antoine fuqua, john woo, american beauty, jet li, keep hope alive, ithaka, replacement killers crystal method, meg coburn, replacement killers band, danny trejo, replacement killers soundtrack
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POPSCash for Convicts Sounds like an “Only in Massachusetts” kind of thing, but even the hacks in Taxachusetts couldn’t believe it when the feds mailed economic stimulus checks to state prison inmates. Boston Herald Read it and weep. Or laugh. By the way, federal checks could be stimulating the cons at a prison near you. Boston Herald again: Feds’ payout probe goes nationwide.
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POPSJohn Fund Reports on a New Congressional Travel Scandal "The policy is completely inconsistent," one House member told me. Total per diem allowances (per person, including staff) can top $3,000 for a single trip. Unused funds are supposed to be given back to the government, but congressional records show that rarely happens. It's all part of the "arrogance of D.C.," Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) told me Monday. "These are lucrative payments since many members have zero expenses overseas." After his last government-sponsored trip to Iraq, Mr. Coburn wrote the U.S. Treasury a check for his unused per diem. Not wanting to be dependent on government handlers, he paid for his own trip to the Middle East a couple of years ago. "I learned a lot more on my own than on the government trips I've been on," he says. The House's official handbook requires that lawmakers use regular U.S. airlines "whenever possible, unless such service is not reasonably available." But congressional records show members routinely take military planes to London,
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POPSIs There a Doctor in the House? Yeah, 16 of ‘em! The other members of Congress who are physicians are: Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) OB/GYN Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) Orthopedic surgeon Rep. Rolf “Parker” Griffith (D-AL)"oncologist When pressed on the single-payer approach, Griffith said he doesn’t support it. He suggested a single-payer system would stifle health care innovation that has successfully brought down mortality rates for heart disease and cancer. Rep. David “Phil” Roe (R-TN)"ON/GYN Dr. Roe believes that a government-run bureaucratic healthcare system is not the answer, and that free market ideas and competition can help rein in escalating healthcare costs. Bill Cassidy (R-LA)"specializes in the treatment of diseases of the liver Instead of creating a national health care bureaucracy, Congress should look to proven cost-controllers like Health Savings Accounts (HSA).
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POPS Out Of Gas Over $2 billion on 5,547 bike paths and pedestrian walkways, including $878,000 for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge for a Minnesota town of 847. An additional $2 million in federal stimulus funds for a bike lane along a deteriorating road in Pennsylvania, where exasperated local officials say the road is so bad they may be forced to drive on the bike path instead. $121 million for 63 ferry projects and ferry terminal facilities, including $1.6 million for a ferry boat program in Oklahoma that features Saturday morning cartoon cruises with Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote on the ferry’s flat screen T.V.; $84 million for 398 pedestrian and bicyclist safety projects, including a brochure that encourages bicyclists to “Make eye contact, smile, or wave to communicate with motorists. Courtesy and predictability are a key to safe cycling”; $3.1 million in federal stimulus funds to make a historic canal boat a permanent floating museum in New York, in addition to
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POPSEnsign back in D.C.; group plans ethics complaint In yet another blow against ethics, Republican Sen. John Ensign returned to the capital today to handshakes from colleagues. What does this say of his colleagues? Do they condone his behavior? Senator John Ensign called for Bill Clinton and Larry Craig to resign over sexual misconduct, and then cheated on his wife with a married staffer. This "defender of marriage" should have the dignity to resign now. But dignity is in short supply in politics. Therefore, it is business as usual in the nations capital. Does his affair mean we cannot trust him to speak for his constituents? If nothing else, it lessens his authority on ethics issues but we already know that any talk of ethics reform from politicians is nothing more than hot air. If you cannot live up to the vows you make to your spouse in front of God then how can you be trusted to live up to your promises to the people who put you in office? The 'ole boys club' ethics wins again.
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POPSObama to Spend $1 Billion on FutureGen The Department of Energy on Friday announced that the FutureGen project is on track after all, committing federal stimulus money to advance the project to its next stage. One reason: It was the only shovel-ready project that fits the requirements of the stimulus bill. Administration officials and the project’s other big backer, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), insist that’s not an earmark at all, as promised " because the stimulus bill doesn’t specifically name the FutureGen project as a recipient of the money. But others say that’s a distinction without a difference " that FutureGen is merely an earmark by another name, a project that had powerful patrons, funding straight out of the stimulus bill and requirements for the money targeted so narrowly that only a few projects would fit the bill. The funding is attracting harsh criticism from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who will release a report Tuesday blasting 100 wasteful projects in the federal stimulus spending.
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POPS0bama Executive Order Limits Federally Funded Construction Spending to Union Shops The Stimulus was a payoff to the union bosses. It directly harmed the U.S. taxpayer to benefit Democrat cronies. Now that's change we can believe in. The combination is a festival of waste, fraud and mismanagement, topped off with a wonderful return-on-investment for the union bosses. The Porkulus package was not temporary, was not targeted, and it certainly didn't create any jobs. That's why even *Joe Biden admits that it's a failure. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts current unemployment (U-6) at a shocking 16.4%. http://www.onepennysheet.com./?p=19938 *When serial gaffer Joe Biden reports that our government brain trust "guessed wrong" relative to said recovery, then we all know there is trouble in Dodge City. http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/even-biden-notes-stimulus-not-really.html
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POPS100 stimulus projects Our grandchildren, in 2030, are going to be really mad when they find out what their tax money is paying for from the bills we have run up in 2009 .
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POPSStimulus Program fraught with waste, report says A Republican senator's office says stimulus funds are going toward dubious projects, such as a $3.4-million tunnel for turtles. Obama aides say the report is flawed. Around the Web Obama’s questionable stimulus plans|weblogs.chicagotribune.com
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