
I don't know where this illustration originated from, but until I hear otherwise I'll credit iOwnTheWorld.

...[Congressional Budget Office chief Elmendorf] gave a speech this morning on Medicare. I think he gave us a window into what is coming. He outlined a number of measures that would help to put Medicare on firmer footing.
The federal government will spent north of $1 trillion in 2011 for health care (7% of total GDP!). Half of that will go to Medicare. That’s a bad result. But it is nothing compared to what will happen in the coming decade. The cost of all medical treatment will rise substantially above Mr. Bernanke’s measurement of inflation and there will be many more people on the Medicare line due to the rapidly aging population.
...Cut payments to Medicare providers for services they provide....Reverse the expansion of Medicaid and the subsidies for purchasing insurance that were enacted in last year’s legislation...
...The most significant recommendation (to me) is the suggestion that Medicare will not cover new treatments under some circumstances. This is the Death Panel concept of rationing health care that everyone has been taking about...
"Currently, Medicare pays the costs of nearly any medical treatment or procedure that a doctor recommends. An alternative would be for Medicare to pay only the cost of existing ways of dealing with a specific health problem..."
I was surprised that Elmendorf made it clear that if someone on Medicare had the money to pay for the better, newer treatments they could do it. But they had to shell out of their pocket. In this plan, what happens to those who don’t have that money? Easy, they die or get inferior treatment.
"Under such an approach, patients would be able to use their own money to pay for the more-expensive care, but the federal government would not pay more."
Elmendorf acknowledges the difficulty in making the choices of which treatments are covered and which are not:
"It would be an immense challenge to formally classify treatments and procedures into sets that address the same health problems and to evaluate whether some treatments and procedures are better for some or all patients."
Yes Doug, it will be an “immense challenge” to come up with that list. But that list is coming.
FL Ed Reforms Succeed, Spread to Other States: Foundry
Is there a more mendacious liar in Congress than the malevolent Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland? I mean besides Chuck Schumer, of course."Where the president has failed to lead, we’re going to lead and we’re going to put out ideas to fix this problem... Democrats could use the plan as a 'political weapon,'" Ryan said.
...We are giving them a political weapon to go out against us, but they will have to lie and demagogue to make that a political weapon. They are going to demagogue us, and it’s that demagoguery that has always prevented political leaders in the past from actually trying to fix the problem. We can’t keep kicking this can down the road.”
He added, “Shame on them if they do that.”
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Ryan's proposal is not "courageous" or "bold.""To govern is to choose, and it is not courageous to protect tax breaks for millionaires, oil companies and other big money special interests while slashing our investment in education, ending the current health care guarantees for seniors on Medicare, and denying health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans. That's not courageous, it's wrong," Van Hollen said in a statement.
15 out of every 100 people living in the U.S. are receiving food-stamps.
In his pursuit of "wealth redistribution" strategies, Barack Obama has rung up more debt in three years than any other President in history. More debt than the world has ever seen.
Memo to Hill GOP: It's time to face your giants: TapscottQOTD: Marxism didn’t work so the Left called it Communism
Communism didn’t work so the Left called it Nazism
Nazism didn’t work so the Left called it Fascism
Fascism didn’t work so the Left called it Stalinism
Stalinism didn’t work so the Left called it Collectivism
Collectivism didn’t work so the Left called it Socialism
Socialism didn’t work so the Left called it Progressivism
Progressivism won’t work so what will the Left call it when it also fails miserably?
--Commenter Galt2009
SRA/Ericsson MTA (Mobile Telephone System A) - Year: 1956
In the days before cellular phone networks, the world's mobile phones lacked a unifying standard. Instead, they used varying communication methods defined on a company-by-company basis.
The 88-pound MTA phone, shown here, is typical in size and weight of early mobile phone systems from the pre-integrated-circuit era. Most were so heavy and power-hungry that they required permanent installation in a car or other vehicle. Very few people owned, used, or even encountered such devices; for example, the service for the model shown here existed in only two Swedish cities and served a mere 125 subscribers from 1956 to 1967... [it was the] first automatic mobile telephone system (it didn't require a human operator to manually connect the user to an outside phone line).Motorola DynaTAC 8000X - Year: 1983
Though Motorola announced the world's first handheld mobile phone--a prototype of the DynaTAC 8000X you see above--in 1973, it took ten years for the DynaTAC to reach the market... Upon its release in 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X became an instant cultural icon, both as a status symbol for the rich (thanks to the $3995 retail price--$8657 in 2009 dollars) and as an almost miraculous wonder-phone that a person could use anywhere. With the DynaTAC, the cell phone revolution had finally begun...Motorola MicroTAC - Year: 1989
After the success of the DynaTAC, Motorola followed up with the much smaller and lighter MicroTAC phone in 1989. The MicroTAC included a novel space-saving idea: Motorola engineers placed part of the phone's hardware in a hinged section that could fold inward or outward as needed, thus reducing the phone's size when it wasn't in use. The flip concept lives on in many cell phones today...Motorola StarTAC - Year: 1996
In 1996, Motorola further shrank its line of pocket cell phones, producing the 3.1-ounce StarTAC--which immediately proved popular and influential. The StarTAC expanded on the partially collapsible design of its precursor, the MicroTAC, by allowing users to fold the phone in half when they weren't talking on it. We now call this design "clamshell," for its resemblance to the way a clam opens and closes. The StarTAC's general design was widely imitated, and a large percentage of mobile phones still use it today...RIM BlackBerry 5810 - Year: 2002
The BlackBerry brand began in 1999 as a simple two-way pager, but it morphed into a line of full-fledged smartphones in 2002 with the BlackBerry 5810, the first of the series to include integrated cell phone support. Thanks to top-of-the-line mobile e-mail and text messaging (the QWERTY keyboard didn't hurt either), BlackBerry phones soon became indispensable tools for businesspeople and other professionals... [it was the first] BlackBerry with an integrated voice cell phone [and] push e-mail support...Sanyo SCP-5300 - Year: 2002
Who would want a camera in their cell phone? When news of such combination devices trickled over from Japan in the early part of the decade, the idea seemed silly and excessive to some people. In 2002, Sprint and Sanyo released the first American cell phone with a built-in camera, the SCP-5300--and the public went crazy for it.
The camera phone became a bona fide cultural phenomenon, allowing the average Joe to quickly and personally share both mundane and earthshaking events with the rest of the world. Today, camera phones are so common that we don't call them "camera phones" anymore...
Goldstone asserts, “We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding commission.” Poppycock! As Goldstone’s numerous critics pointed out as soon as the report was issued, its many vulnerabilities were known at that very moment....As Goldstone admits underhandedly, saying that his critics were correct,
Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.
...there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. ...In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise.
No kidding. It seems it has just occurred to the judge that a terrorist organization committed to destroying Israel cannot, unlike democratic Israel, have any stake in investigating its own human rights violations. Did the judge really not comprehend this in 2009?
[But] whatever Judge Goldstone’s current obfuscations, and his intent to pass off his report’s failures as the fault of Israel’s non-cooperation rather than his own weaknesses and lack of impartiality, his current re-evaluation is more than welcome... So I, for one, thank Judge Richard Goldstone for his going public to help minimize the damage to Israel that he and his report have already produced.
Indonesian Muslim protesters hold a banner during a protest against the military attack on Libya by the United States in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, April 1, 2011. (OC Register)
Malik Zulu Shabazz, National Chairman of the New Black Panther, personal friend and admirer of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, unleashed his vitriol toward Obama, whom he lashes out at for representing “the ideology of the white man... policies of the white man..."
..."represents the CIA set-up sabotage lie on an African leader and bomb [sic] that man like he’s George Bush ... And his wife should leave the n***er tonight. She should walk out, and his beautiful daughters should walk out on this bamboozling, buck-dancing Tom...
...Oh yeah, I said it. We’ve held back on this Negro for a long time... he caved in like a punk... You should have listened to Louis Farrakhan a long time ago when you were at his table.
...But you wanted to follow the white man and the white man's time is up! ...We pray that our Gaddafi survives... we see the same thing with the white man comin' after us all the time... [Obama] wanted to be the white man's n***er...
A woman has died and five people were rushed to hospital after a serious head-on crash in the Westcountry... Two vehicles were involved in the collision at the B3274 between Roche Cross and Castle-an-Dinas.
The female driver of a Smart Car, aged in her 60s, died from her injuries sustained in the collision... A Peugeot 308, registered to a Plymouth driver, was also involved in the smash...
Police say the five occupants of the Peugeot all have minor injuries.
The federal government -- through its oppressive and bizarre CAFE standards -- wants you to drive Smart Cars and similarly-sized vehicles. The government, in essence, tells you what kind of cars you are required to drive.Though Democrats tout the auto bailout as a success, recent reports illustrate the taxpayer cost of the GM auto bailout was substantially larger than the Obama administration and a Congressional Oversight report has owned up to. ... In Obama's world, success mean tax payers only lost as much as $84 billion. --Kerry Pickett
Barack Obama has some 'splaining to do about tax payers' profitable "investment" in General Motors. It turns out the president is imagining things.
Though Democrats tout the auto bailout as a success, recent reports illustrate the taxpayer cost of the GM auto bailout was substantially larger than the Obama administration and a Congressional Oversight report has owned up to....a March 16 Congressional Oversight report ... estimates taxpayers will be out of $25 billion. Additionally, the report points out that “full repayment will not be possible unless the government is able to sell its remaining shares at a far higher price.”
That's only the beginning. Both the White House and the Congressional Oversight report omit the fact that during its bankruptcy, GM got a $45 billion tax break, courtesy of the American people.... GM will also get a $14 billion dollar domestic tax break...
...[Yet] the Obama administration and its allies presently continue to celebrate the success of the auto bailout, regardless of the facts. "I don’t think there’s any doubt that this was a success," said ... acting assistant secretary at the Treasury Department Tim Massad, who oversees the TARP program at Treasury, to a House panel on Wednesday.
Do Challenges to Wisconsin Labor Law Have Merit?: PJMA furious mob in one of Afghanistan's most peaceful cities killed at least 12 UN workers and wounded many more as the anger rose as the reports of an American man in Florida burning the Quran spreads across the country.
It's some kook in Florida, not an Imam preaching genocide in his sermon, who is to blame here.Recent reports find that General Motors (GM) is lobbying for the passage of legislation by Michigan [Democrat] Senator Debbie Stabenow that would turn a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit into a rebate that will be available to all consumers at the point of sale. It's been dubbed "Cash for Clunkers II".
...Apparently, Chevy is not pleased with its sales -- 321 units sold in January and 281 in February -- out of 30,000 cars made for 2011, and a planned 45,000 to be made in 2012... At that rate, just 3,600 of the cars will be sold this year, [only] 12 percent of the supply.
...Since GM's initial public offering in November, the government sponsored automaker has been desperate to boost overall sales on a monthly basis. As such, GM boosted buyer incentives for the past four months. GM's incentive spending averaged about $3,663 per vehicle in January, and $3,732 in February, more than $1,100 over the industry average.
...According to the CarConnection.com, "That's increased GM's market share - albeit at the expense of image, resale value, and even company profits - oddly, at a time when most other automakers have admitted that such a strategy doesn't make long-term business sense."
Chevrolet has pulled off a surprise announcement with news that a 2-door convertible version of the brand’s Volt electric hybrid will come to market as early as this summer. Set to make its debut next month during the New York Auto Show, the Volt convertible will be powered by the same hybrid gas/electric powertrain found in the sedan. Power comes from a lithium-ion battery pack or, when extra range is needed, a generator connected to a 1.4-liter 4-cylinder engine. Range is approximately 40 miles in electric-only mode, with about 200 additional miles provided by the small-displacement engine......Unlike most modern power-top convertibles, the Volt’s is lowered and raised manually to conserve the vehicle’s pure electric range. The entire process is faster than a power system and a rigid tonneau easily pops into place over the folded top for a nice, clean and fuss-free design. The one hand operation also means the top can be lowered while the vehicle is in motion.
Reducing and eliminating needless spending and programs are appropriate, but a wholesale reduction in spending, without considering economic, cultural, and social impacts is simply irresponsible.
Today, with the backing of the whole Senate GOP Caucus, Senator [Mike] Lee introduced an amendment to the Constitution to balance the federal budget... The Hatch-Lee Balanced Budget Amendment is aimed at putting the country on a path to fiscal sanity. The central theme of this bill is that total spending for the fiscal year not exceed total receipts and must not exceed more than eighteen percent of the economy, as measured by gross domestic product.
Let's do the math. The U.S. GDP is $14.12 trillion. 18% of that amount is $2.54 trillion -- in other words, the maximum amount the federal government could spend in toto under the BBA.