Fox Guarding the Henhouse?  John Fund of the Wall Street Journal in video interview this morning discusses  the latest appointee to Obama’s “Deficit Reduction Commission” of 18 members—most are Congressmen, but not the newest member.  It’s Andy Stearn of the SEIU (now at least he will get a paycheck for all those visits to Capitol Hill!).  Congress should technically be able to take charge and reduce the deficit but won’t, no one will take a leadership role and do the tough thing, so they formed a committee to make it look like someone is doing something.  What’s more, SEIU actually lobbied AGAINST a deficit reduction commission.  So what exactly is Andy’s role—some kind of “self-regulation”?  Cronyism runs rampant, more than ever before, not really change you can believe in.  And conveniently, the Commission “reports” Dec 1—AFTER mid-term elections.  What do you think Stearn’s idea of a “fix” will be for the deficit?  John Fund says it will be rampant new taxes…. and appointing Stearn “basically guarantees you are not going to address one of the biggest problem we have with government”—-the labor unions.

Washington Examiner Chris Stirewalt’s entertaining article “I liked that speech better the first time”, citing the Los Angeles Times article “Obama strives to revive the spirit of 2009”:  “State of the Union speech last night : ‘Typical Obama: nothing for everyone’….rather than practical ideas about how to create a government of reasonable aims, the president gave a more confrontational version of the speech he gave to Congress almost a year ago….And just as last year, he didn’t offer any plan for actually achieving his goals. There should be a national health plan, but he didn’t suggest a way to revive his moribund legislation in Congress. There should be another stimulus package, but didn’t say of what kind. We should fight global warming, but he didn’t say how….it was mostly a restatement of his existing agenda…..It was the speech of a president who is audacious but not bold. Audacious in his dreams and demands but not bold in his strategies.”

The Associated Press (AP) took a look at what was true…and what quite wasn’t….with comments made during the speech in this article: “Fact Check: How State of Union Compares With Reality”

In his State of the Union speech, Obama did something unusual that flew in the face of decorum and propriety, criticizing the Justices who sat in the audience.  In addition to publicly admonishing them for a court decision he disagreed with, Obama’s speechwriter also got MANY facts wrong, just about that topic alone.  Obama said that foreign companies can give money to campaigns, but that is just not true.  He said the Supreme Court “overturned a century of law” but in fact it was only a decade.  The Moderate Voice summarized it best: “This was a rather stunning conclusion coming from a President who was supposed to have taught constitutional law. I’m not sure which is worse… the idea that Obama is intentionally lying about the court decision to score political points or that neither he nor any of his advisers and speech writers understand the court ruling. In any event, when you wake up today and see a number of left leaning writers running around with their hair on fire over Alito’s reaction, just keep the above facts in mind. Alito silently remarked that Obama was “wrong” on the facts. And he was. Totally wrong, as it turns out.”    That brief passage was only one of many things that were completely untrue in the State of the Union address.  Here is a great video featuring attorney Megan Kelly.

Campaign finance “reform” was a farce and it’s good it was struck down, said George Will of the Washington Post in his article here: “Campaign finance: a ‘reform’ wisely struck down”.  Will says it is false for Obama to have said the reversal by the Supreme Court ”will enable Wall Street and big oil” to decide elections, citing OpenSecrets.org reports that in 2008 lawyers gave more money than either of them…and 78% of those donations went to Democrats in 2008.  And 64% of Democrat’s 2008 contributions came from the financial institutions of “Wall Street”.  Obama took a lot of money for his campaign and Read the rest of this entry…

“527s: Advocacy Group Spending in the 2010 Elections” Open Secrets” article is interesting.  See the full list at http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/index.php.  Top 5 Committees Receiving Money are these:  Read the rest of this entry…

Less than 1/3 of Americans want this damaging Health Care bill, which is “expansion” (not “reform”) and doesn’t solve the problems (in spite of 100 bills introduced by Republicans that have been rejected: see Nov 4 NCN post)!  And apparently many senators couldn’t find enough merit in the Senate version of the bill to vote for it either.  Well, unless they had a little incentive—click here for an MSNBC video that gives a list of all the Read the rest of this entry…

Great diagram of the process of the Health Care Bill.

Glossary for Healthcare.

FAQ/primer on Healthcare from New York Times.

“ ACORN Qualifies for Funding in Senate Health Care Bill”:  See Weekly Standard article here.

“Reid Bill Says Future Congresses Cannot Repeal Parts of Reid Bill” says Weekly Standard article, for instance, the Independent Medicare Advisory Board.  And what exactly is that?  Dick Morris explains.