| Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page |
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August 7, 2009 |
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Story #1: Seelye: Obama Loses Control of Agenda (to Rush)
RUSH: Kit Seelye in the New York Times, a blog post today: "Over the Airwaves and on Cable TV, Health Care Dominates -- Radio talk shows and cable television outlets, which are dominated by" one person: Rush Limbaugh. (Ahem.) I threw that in myself. It actually says "dominated by conservative hosts."
Anyway, radio talk shows "led the way last week in ratcheting up the attention that the news media devoted to health care, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism." The point of her story is this: "As the subject of health care rose in airtime on radio and cable, President Obama's ability to control the debate appeared to be eroding, at least according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. The poll said that 69 percent of respondents were worried that the quality of their own health coverage..." That's probably very right. We're the only people that have been telling anybody what's in the bill. The State-Run Media hasn't. Obama won't tell anybody what's in the bill. So even the New York Times is saying State-Run Media is being overwhelmed by radio. Radio's driving State-Run Media and hurting Obama's ability to "control the debate." This is no time for pessimism, folks!
Story #2: Rasmussen: 68% Say Health Care Good, Excellent
RUSH: Scott Rasmussen, Rasmussen Reports' polling guy, has an op-ed today in The Wall Street Journal. He says Obama's biggest obstacle "is that 68% of American voters have health-insurance coverage they rate good or excellent. That number comes from polling conducted this past  weekend of 1,000 likely voters. Most of these voters approach the health-care reform debate fearing that they have more to lose than to gain. Adding to President Barack Obama's challenge as he sells health-care [lie] to the public..." Rasmussen didn't write that; I threw it in, "is the fact that most voters are skeptical about the government's ability to do anything well." Well, that took long enough! "While the president says his plan..." and again, what plan? The president has never offered one. The only plan we have is the House plan, another reason why the president won't talk about it.
He doesn't have one, and he doesn't know what's in the House plan. "While the president says his plan will reduce costs, 53% believe it will have the opposite effect." So we finally as a group know the government doesn't accomplish what it says and lies about it. If this report with Rasmussen is true, it could be a tipping point. And these poll numbers are fine for what they ask, but I would like to see what happens to the numbers in the health care poll if the questions were more informative. For example, what if the question in Rasmussen's next poll was worded like this: "Would you be strongly in favor of or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 435 of the Democrat health care bill that allows the government to garnish your bank account to pay for medical procedures?
Would you be strongly in favor of or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 401 of the Democrat health care bill that mandates end-of-life government counseling every five years for those 65 years and older? "Would you be strongly in favor of or strongly opposed to the provision in the health care bill that allows the government computer access to your bank records to transfer money from your account to their account to pay for whatever they think you owe?" In other words, this polling has got to go beyond the vague philosophy -- the overall philosophy of government running the health care and whether or not deficits are going to go up. We all know that the government can't run anything. They can't even run a $1 billion trade-in program for old cars. They can't run anything right. The Post Office is down $4.2 billion.
"They are thinking about closing 100 post offices. The polling needs to go beyond these vague, nonspecific, philosophical questions about deficits and spending and government competence and get to the specific questions in the bill. And I guarantee you if Rasmussen would do this, if he would run around -- and his polls, he does his polls as telephone polls. If he would put in questions like that... All he's gotta do is go, "Page 16: Are you strongly in favor or strongly opposed to the provision on Page 16 of the bill that would force you out of your private insurance plan?" Ask them that, and you are not going to find just 63% or 58% oppose it. You are going to find in the 70s and 80s. And it wouldn't be that hard for a pollster to do and it'd be perfectly honest.
Story #3: Victor Davis Hanson: Prairie Fire Anger
RUSH: Victor Davis Hanson has put it very well, if I can find the right stack here. Here it is. "Why Are People in Revolt?" writes Victor Davis Hanson. The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President's key policy initiatives -- cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus -- are already less than half of polled voters. Obama's own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. ...
"Why the sudden uproar? Bait-and-Switch. There is a growing sense of a 'we've been had', bait-and-switch. Millions of moderate Republicans, independents, and conservative Democrats -- apparently angry at Bush for Iraq and big deficits, unimpressed by the McCain campaign, intrigued by the revolutionary idea of electing an African-American president -- voted for Obama on the assumption that he was sincere about ending red state/blue state animosity. They took him at his word that he was going to end out of control federal spending. They trusted that he had real plans to get us out of the economic doldrums, and that he was not a radical tax-and-spend liberal of the old sort. Instead, within days Obama set out plans that would triple the annual deficit, and intends to borrow at a record pace that will double the aggregate debt in just eight years.
"He not only took over much of the auto- and financial industries, but also did so in a way that privileged unions, politically-correct creditors, and those insider cronies who favor administration initiatives. On matters racial, his administration is shrill and retrograde, not forward-looking. It insists on emphasizing the tired old identify (sic) politics that favor a particular sort of racial elite that claims advantage by citing past collective victimization or ... In other words, the Obama swing voter thought he was getting a 21st-century version of pragmatic, triangulating Bill Clinton -- and instead got something to the left of 1970s Jimmy Carter. ...
"[H]ow strange that the highly-compensated, privileged DC technocrat deprecates the manifestation of success of the small businessman while bailing out the Wall Street buccaneers who have so lavishly donated in the past to the Obama cause. In the world of Obama, make $300,000 in household income and you deserve to be in the crosshairs; make $30,000,000 and you are a sensitive fat cat donor..." He goes on to contrast all of the hypocrisy. "Al Gore, for example, preached the evils of DC insiderism and the need for a new independent TV network," then sends two employees to North Korea. He's gotten rich lying about the environment while flying around in jets and having a huge house that pollutes on its own.
Story #4: Cash for Clunkers Leads to More SUV Purchases
RUSH: Forget what you have heard about the most popular car in the cash-for-clunkers program. Do you know what the most popular purchased new car is? The top three are SUVs and crossovers. Take that, Mr. President!
Story #5: NYT to Claim Unemployment Problem "Decade Old"
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I have been advised that the New York Times planning heavy coverage for this weekend on the following story. It's being written by Floyd Norris. "In Last Decade, a Lack of Job Growth..." This the just amazing in its malpractice and irresponsibility. Listen to this now. "For the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring. The accompanying charts," which I don't have here; I just have the advanced text "show the job performance from July 1999, when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers, through July of this year, when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II."
So from 1999 to now, we have produced no new jobs. We've been in a decade-long jobs recession. The Bush administration never happened! They're willing -- at their near bankrupt newsroom, at the New York Times -- they are willing to put out drivel like this in order to prop up this catastrophe of a president. You remember it was just two years ago we were at record employment at 4.7%, after coming out of a mild recession that Clinton left us with and then 9/11. We had a growing population. We had a booming economy that they tried to make everybody think was rotten, especially in the second Bush term.
Story #6: AP Admits Unemployment Rate Didn't Really Dip
RUSH: I must mention this. I finally read the full Associated Press story on the new unemployment numbers, and even the AP admits that unemployment didn't really dip. "Employers sharply scale back layoffs in July. The unemployment rate dips for the first time in 15 months, sending a strong signal, the worst recession..."
Then you go to the end of the article, buried at the bottom: "The dip in the unemployment rate was the first since April 2008. One of the reasons the rate declined, though, was that hundreds of thousands of people left the labor force. The labor force includes only those who are either employed or are looking for work." So even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip. We just had a hell of a lot of people give up looking, and they're not counted as members of the labor force. That's what we now know in the BLS figures they put out, Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U6, unemployment 6... Like 9.4% is U3 and that's people who are employed, looking for work, not employed, on unemployment benefits. U6 is everybody that's looking for work, on unemployment compensation and those who are no longer looking, they've given up, and that rate is 16%. Not 9.4. It is 16, maybe 16.9, but it's 16 something. And even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip. It just went off the charts, just went off the unemployment rolls. Well, we have been rescued. See, AP knows people aren't going to read the bottom of the story. We've been rescued from this catastrophe. The president said so today.
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