Which issues should be front & center this fall?....
ObamaCare Duplicity. Paul Ryan exposes the latest proven lie President Obama told the country as part of ramming ObamaCare into law. A new CBO analysis shows that 3 to 5 million Americans will be forced to switch from their employer-provided health care plans, each year from 2019 to 2022. So much for no one being forced to give up their current health care plan. Deroy Murdock at NRO details the cost cover-up that helped ObamaCare pass, by keeping the official marque number below the politically toxic trillion-dollar level. Two years after passage, the $940 billion price tag CBO put on ObamaCare is now $1.76 trillion, an 87 percent jump. The number of uninsured will drop less than 10 percent, after "O" promising that everyone would be insured. And by back-loading benefits by four years, the original cost projection was kept artificially low. Ditto for (not mentioned in DM's piece) keeping the "doc fix" outside the ObamaCare legislation; the doc fix adds $2 billion per month to health care costs, by preventing a reduction in Medicare reimbursements to doctors. Over a decade this will add at least $240 billion to ObamaCare costs.
Politico sums up by citing four myths about ObamaCare: (1) no one will be forced to change coverage; (2) costs will go down; (3) the law will pay for itself; (4) people will like ObamaCare. All FALSE.
Immigration Duplicity. Marco Rubio explains why Harry Reid's DREAM Act is a Trojan Horse for a new flood of immigrants, and how to balance allowing those brought here by undocumented parents can be allowed to stay without opening the gates.
Energy Duplicity. Charles Krauthammer explains why Obama's claim that he deserves credit for rising domestic energy production is simply fraudulent. CK begins with drilling:
●off the Mid-Atlantic coast (as Virginia, for example, wants);
●off the Florida Gulf Coast (instead, the Castro brothers will drill near there);
●in the broader Gulf of Mexico (where drilling in 2012 is expected to drop 30 percent below pre-moratorium forecasts);
●in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (more than half the size of England, the drilling footprint being the size of Dulles International Airport);
●on federal lands in the Rockies (where leases are down 70 percent since Obama took office).
He then notes the Keystone XL fiasco, which delays importation of oil & gas from friendly Canada whilst sending money instead to the likes of Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez Iran's strongest ally in the southern hemisphere. Lastly, CK notes the absurd contradiction in "O" stating that less demand will reduce gas prices, while increasing supply will not do so. This, needless to say, is Economics 101. At Commentary Blog Peter Wehner retraces Energy Secy Steve Chu's Damascus conversion on gasoline prices, from calling for European-level $8 - $10 pump prices to wanting today's $4+ per gallon price to come down.
Foreign Affairs Duplicity. North Korea prepares to launch a satellite, which is in fact a test of its ICBM. So much for Team Obama's latest deal trading food for presumed nuclear restraint by Pyongyang. Team Obama will give phony national security waiver to Egypt, to bypass funding restrictions imposed by Congress, despite it having taken the son of the Transportation Secy hostage. Which suggests that in addition to the $4 million ransom to release them ("incidental carrying chanrges," as Sydney Greenstreet said in "Casablanca"); there may well have been an under-the-table price paid for his release.
Worse, it plays into the hands of the Islamists:
Egypt has gotten billions in aid since the early 1980s largely as a bribe intended to both keep the country out of the Soviet orbit and to preserve the peace treaty it signed with Israel in 1979. But with Egypt now moving away from an ice-cold peace with Israel to a situation that is barely distinguishable from belligerence, the same criteria no longer should apply to the annual grant of U.S. largesse. For too long, the aid was rightly seen by the Egyptian people as merely a baksheesh payment to Mubarak and his cronies that did nothing to better their lives. In continuing this practice now that a new group hostile to American interests has replaced the dictator, Obama has not only demonstrated his contempt for ordinary Egyptians but also told the Middle East that it is the Brotherhood and not America that is the “strong horse” in the region.
If the United States is truly going to use its $1.3 billion present to the Egyptian military as leverage over the country, then it might have been advisable to employ it as more than a ransom payment. Egypt has opened up its border with Gaza relieving the isolation of the Hamas government of the strip. The military has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood in an uneasy alliance rather than seeking to work with secular liberals. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to envision Egypt as either a bulwark against fundamentalism or a force for peace in the region.
By throwing away its one bargaining chip, the administration has lost its ability to have any sort of impact on the situation. While it is reasonable to argue that a complete cutoff of aid would deprive Washington of any ability to influence Egypt’s rulers, by not even waiting until after a new presidential election is held to replace Mubarak, Obama has made it clear that both the generals and the Brotherhood will have a free hand in the coming months no matter what they do.
Yet it likely will happen.
Bottom Line. While the GOP nominee must make a strong positive case on the merits, he must also expose serial, gross deceptions that underlie the President's utterly specious claims made on behalf of his election campaign.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Conservative Politics
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