Democrats move to tax health benefits – Flashback Obama, “If McCain is elected your health benefits will be taxed for the first time in history.”

Remember this from the campaign? USA Today:

McCain’s health plan was distorted, in turn, by Obama.

“Your health care benefits will get taxed for the first time in history,” Obama warned voters in attacking it. He often leads voters to think that’s the full story. Hardly.

Today:

Workers’ Health Benefits Eyed for Taxation
Revenue Would Fund Expansion of Coverage

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 12, 2009; Page D01

With President Obama’s plan to tax the rich to pay for health care facing deep skepticism on Capitol Hill, key lawmakers are pressing a different way to raise money: taxing the health benefits workers receive from their employers.

Since companies began offering group health insurance on a large scale during World War II, the value of that benefit has never been counted as income, reducing workers’ taxable earnings by an average of $9,000 a year for family coverage.

In recent weeks, however, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee, has repeatedly advocated changing tax laws to include employer benefits, arguing that it makes sense to fund the health-care changes by sucking cash out of the existing system. Meanwhile, 13 other senators — from both sides of the aisle — have signed on to a plan for universal coverage that includes a tax on employer-provided benefits.

UPDATE – The obligitory Sunday morning talk show non-denial denial. 

ABC’s Jake Tapper Not Giving the Full Story on Alaska Earmarks – Update Tapper lied.

Jake Tapper had this to say this morning (its ok Jake I know its early and you haven’t had your coffee yet ;-) :

Palin’s Back to Lovin’ Her Some Earmarks

March 12, 2009 9:55 PM

Not only are earmarks a bipartisan affliction, but the double-talk and hypocrisy surrounding them are as well.

After spending sigificant (SIC) time and airspace bashing the earmark process as the running mate of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin requested an unspecified number of earmarks in the omnibus spending bill, Jonathan Stein and David Corn report at Mother Jones.

One hundred earmarks worth $144 million are headed for Alaska, Taxpayers for Common Sense says. That works out to $209.71 per state resident — more money, per capita, than any other state.

“We have drastically, drastically reduced our earmark request since I came into office,” Palin told ABC News’ Charles Gibson last year after he pointed out that Alaska received $231 per person in earmarks in 2008.

“The abuse of earmarks, it’s un-American, it’s undemocratic, and it’s not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration,” she said. “Earmark abuse will stop.”

Hey Jake, here is the Alaska Daily News Sept. 8, 2008:

For the 2007 federal budget year, the administration of former Gov. Frank Murkowski submitted 63 earmark requests totaling $350 million, Palin’s staff said. That slid to 52 earmarks valued at $256 million in Palin’s first year. This year, the governor’s office asked the delegation to help them land 31 earmarks valued at $197 million. http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/516743.html

And this year according to what you have there $144 million this year. Another reduction. I have seen Governor Palin say that she wanted to lower the amount of earmark requests to avoid abuse. It seems like she is weening the state off of them. Looks like promise made promise kept. [This is 4 years in a row where earmarks dropped.]

Chuck Norton, Editor

UPDATE –

The Governor’s press release on this issue is HERE.

Jake Tapper knew he was being deceptive in today’s Palin reporting. This is another example of how the media lies and creates false and misleading narratives. They give you some of the facts and present them with a false spin or attitude, in this case to try and make Gov. Palin out to be a liar when in fact she has always been consistent on this issue and 10 minutes worth of fact checking would have given him the truth. I used to think that Jake Tapper was different, now we know he is just another lying member of the drive by media. If Jake Tapper had a residue of integrity when shown the truth he would have retracted and apologized and not posted this immature comment. Tapper is ABC’s White House correspondednt and there is no excuse for this.

If Gov. Palin runs for office again, reporters who lie to us in order to destroy her need to be treated as if they are a political opponent. There are ways to do this effectively.

Here is what happened this morning.

Jake tapper put out a tweet this morning saying that “Forgot to mention palin back to pro-earmark”

So I sent him a tweet back saying:

@jaketapper Didnt Palin say that they have been cutting the earmark requests every year? It looks like AK earmarks have dropped 3 years str8

As many of you may know, this editor was known as a pretty popular Palin Truth Squader so I had the earmark numbers and statements by the Governor’s Office archived. So I made the post below marked above the update early this morning and sent this to Jake Tapper.

@jaketapper you misspelled significant :-) – Here are the numbers according to Alaska Daily News – http://tinyurl.com/amr8tz #tcot

As you can see the number of earmarks used by Alaska has dropped four years in a row. Literally this is a Palin promise made and a Palin promise kept.

So Jake Tapper is reporting this evening:

Palin v. Political Punch

March 13, 2009 6:43 PM

A very irate aide to Gov. Sarah Palin contacted ABC News today to explain why his boss’s 31 requests for earmarks in the fiscal year 2009 budget, totaling $197 million, represent a victory for fiscally conservative values.

“I am disturbed by this item,” wrote Bill McAllister, director of communications for Gov. Palin, referencing a blog entry from last night in which we referred to an article in the liberal magazine Mother Jones noting that Palin — after what seemed like a campaign against earmark abuse — was back at the proverbial trough.

“The headline doesn’t seem very dignified for a major news organization,” said the spokesman for the governor who repeatedly referred to then-Senator, now-President Obama as “palling around with terrorists.” He also quibbled with our referencing Mother Jones. (We also reference conservative publications here. But anyway.)

“Let’s start with the overwhelming mischaracterization of Gov. Palin’s stance on earmarks that has been repeated and repeated since Aug. 29,” McAllister wrote. “The governor never said that earmarks should be abolished or that the State of Alaska wouldn’t seek or accept any. Didn’t happen. What she said well before she was a national candidate (going back at least to October of 2007) was that earmark reform was necessary and the state would need to rely less on federal money than it had been.”

McAllister then pointed out that Palin made 51 earmark requests for the FY 2008 budget, totaling $256 million; and 31 requests totaling $197 million, for the FY 2009 budget.

McAllister said that for next year’s budget, Gov. Palin will only make eight requests, totaling $69 million, which will include “six ongoing federal appropriations and just two new projects: an upgrade at the Kodiak Missile Defense Facility, which is relevant to national security, and a bridge replacement critical to construction of the pending Alaska natural gas pipeline, also in the national interest.”

Than Tapper posted this smart ass comment:

Alarmed, I asked McAllister how Palin was “literally” injured. Was she okay? Was she infirm?

“I didn’t say physically injured,” he wrote back. “Certainly her reputation was injured by the erroneous reporting.”

Ah.

Update II – Hotair.com comments HERE.

An Open Letter to Meghan McCain

Dear Meghan,

I have been watching what you have been saying over the last few days and while I think that you are a nice girl, It has become clear \ that you are a nice girl who has been making some mistakes.

To quote you:

I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. But no matter how much you or I disagree with her, the cult that follows Coulter cannot be denied.

With all due respect, when you do not understand someone or something would it not be wise to take the time to find out instead of just making allegations that just happened to look very much like the nonsense you see in the leftist elite media? Instead of taking the time to get informed you decided to trash Ann Coulter (and the people who read her books) based on the ignorance which you fully admitted to.

I am very concerned that you have leveled an ugly charge of anti-semitism against Ann Coulter when ten minutes of fact checking shows you to be demonstrably false. Lets toss aside the fact that Ann has always been a supporter of Israel and examine what Ann said, essentially that Christians believe that Christianity is the perfection of Judaism. The truth is that this is long ago established Christian doctrine and here is the proof:

The Catholic Encyclopedia from its entry on the New Testament:

Other doctrines, specifically Christian, are not added on to Judaism to develop, but rather to supersede it. In reality, between the New and Old Testaments there is a direct but not revolutionary succession as a superficial observer might be inclined to believe; just as in living beings, the imperfect state of yesterday must give way before the perfection of today although the one has normally prepared the other. If the mystery of the Trinity and the spiritual character of the Messianic Kingdom are ranked among the peculiarly Christian dogmas, it is because the Old Testament was of itself insufficient to establish the doctrine of the New Testament on this subject; and still more because, at the time of Jesus, the opinions current among the Jews went decidedly in the opposite direction.

The Oxford University Guide To the New Testament makes this same point in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews:

The Epistle to the Hebrews asserts the superiority of Christ to the prophets, the angels, Moses, Joshua, and the Jewish priesthood. Christ brings a superior covenant, a superior tabernacle, and makes a superior sacrifice. Like many other authors whose task is Christian self-definition, this author uses the Hebrew Scriptures to illustrate the authenticity of his claims. For example, several Old Testament prophets mention a new covenant that God will make with the Jews. Drawing on Platonic thought, this author argues that the old covenant was a foreshadowing of the new, an imperfect reflection of a perfect reality.

Scholars do not know when or where this book was written. It is clear, though, that the author was concerned to define group boundaries. He argued that Christianity represented the perfection of Judaism. Christianity was the religion foretold by the prophets. Those who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, moreover, were not the true people of God.

With all due respect, if that doesn’t satisfy you here are what some prominent Rabbi’s had to say about Coulter’s remarks:

Rabbi Levin, a spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance for America and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, commented to LifeSiteNews.com on the matter saying: “It is a fact that millions of Christians believe in evangelizing and preaching the gospel and it is their belief for a Jew to accept the tenets of Christianity and accept the divinity somehow completes them and brings them to perfection.”

Levin stressed, “That’s obviously not our belief; that’s not the traditional Jewish belief at all.”

“But the fact that Miss Coulter was asked to try to say that this is now anti-semitism, I believe is off the mark, is even sad and dangerous in certain ways,” continued Rabbi Levin. “Because I’m concerned that many Christians out there will hear her merely saying what they have been taught in their religion and having that referred to as anti-semitism could put a strain on relations. People will say, ‘I’m not entitled to have my religious opinions on the subject of evangelizing and what’s considered to be perfect’.”

The spokesman for some thousand orthodox rabbis concluded, “So, I very strongly feel it’s important to say that saying things like this does not an anti-Semite make.”

http://catholicexchange.com/2007/10/16/86631/

One of the most revered and respected rabbi’s among conservatives is Dennis Prager. Prager insists that there is not an anti-semitic bone in Ann Coulter. Read his words carefully:

Those who label Ann Coulter an anti-Semite do damage to the battle against anti-Semitism.

I say this as a committed Jew, a religious Jew, a Jewish writer and lecturer, a past college instructor in Jewish history, co-author of a widely read book on anti-Semitism, recipient of the American Jewish Press Association’s Prize for Excellence in Jewish Commentary, instructor in Torah at the American Jewish University, and a man who has fought anti-Semitism all his life.

There is nothing in what Ann Coulter said to a Jewish interviewer on CNBC that indicates she hates Jews or wishes them ill, or does damage to the Jewish people or the Jewish state. And if none of those criteria is present, how can someone be labeled anti-Semitic?

What damage has she ever done to Jews? What is wrong with a person believing that it would be better if another person adopted their faith? Is there one liberal who doesn’t believe that a conservative would be better — “perfected,” if you will — by embracing liberal beliefs and values? Why is it laudable for a liberal to hope that conservatives convert to liberalism, but dangerous and hate-filled when a Christian hopes that Jews or anyone else will go to heaven (that is, after all, Ann Coulter’s and most other Christians’ primary concern) by believing in Jesus?

I have read Jewish and non-Jewish writers who argue that Ann Coulter’s words will lead to another Auschwitz. How does one respond to irrationality? How does one respond to hysteria?

There is also a move to boycott Ann Coulter, so dangerous are her words. Of course, there is no such Jewish or liberal boycott of former President Jimmy Carter, who has done real damage to the Jewish people by describing Israel as an “apartheid” state in the very title of his anti-Israel book. In fact, Carter was invited to speak on his loathsome book at Brandeis University, an ostensibly Jewish university. But for many Jews and liberals, real hatred, real damage to Jewish security can only come from the right, especially from Christians on the right. So Ann Coulter, who has done nothing in her life to compromise Jewish welfare, is to be boycotted, but Jimmy Carter is worthy of invitations to speak. Jewish groups even invite John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, the authors of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which is essentially a tempered modern-day version of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” But Ann Coulter is beyond the pale. And she said nothing to harm Jews.

She said she believes that Jews who accept Jesus as their savior are “perfected.” I fail to see why this is some form of hate-speech, let alone the basis of anti-Semitism, as stated by Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which often defames conservative Christians, whom he and his organization hold to be the greatest domestic threats to America.

As a practicing Jew, I do not agree with Ann Coulter’s theology any more than those attacking her do. But I am neither offended by her nor frightened by her or her beliefs. She believes that Christianity is better than Judaism. So what? Why is that in any way different from liberals thinking that liberalism is truer and morally superior to conservatism? Or conservatives thinking that their values are superior to liberal values?

Liberals not only believe that conservatives are philosophically imperfect, but they often believe that conservatives are bad human beings (something in no way implied by Coulter about Jews). 

http://townhall.com/Columnists/DennisPrager/2007/10/16/ann_coulter_wants_jews_to_become_christian_–_so_what

Prager is stating what is obvious; Muslims believe people should me Muslim, Jews believe people should convert and Christians believe people should accept Jesus Christ and His teachings. With all due respect, you have shown a great deal of ignorance by acting like one should be surprised by such a concept. As a result, by calling Coulter an anti-semite you have helped create a false narrative that Reagan wing conservatives such as Coulter are against Israel, when in fact most hostility against Israel is from the left and most of the support for Israel comes from the right.

I have experienced this truth first hand because as someone who is finishing a new degree at a university, I have taken heat from the left for standing up against anti-semitism among some of the far left faculty.

You have stated that you do not understand Ann Coulter or why she does what she does and then proceeded to call her names and this had made you popular on the morning TV shows. Smearing someone to get the approval of the Andrea Mitchell’s of the world is a sign of bad character.

Again with all due respect, I would like to help you understand.

Ann Coulter is a political satirist and likely the sharpest tongued satirist alive. Satirists use metaphor, humor, use absurdity to demonstrate absurdity, and use rhetorical sting as literary devices to make a point. The whole idea is that the person reading the satire is supposed to be smart enough to see the intellectual substance behind the satire.

Satire is a literary tradition in politics dating back to the ancient Greeks and truth be told; Coulter’s satire is positively mild compared to what was done in this country in the first 150 years of its history and considered to come with the territory of politics. Face it, political discourse gets mighty dry by always couching it in straight laced policy debates.

The millions of people who read Ann Coulter are not a part of a “cult” as you put it. They are very smart people who appreciate effective satire. Ann Coulter has a stack of number one best sellers on her resume for that very reason.

Before I conclude there is something else that you need to understand.

The elite media can and will be happy to use you, manipulate you, and kiss up to you as long as you are bashing other Republicans and calling them names, but you should keep in mind that Ann Coulter is a part of the very large Reagan wing of the party and even if you do not consider yourself a part of the Reagan wing; on the majority of individual policy issues you, me, your father, Rudy Giuliani, Ann Coulter and most of those people who attended CPAC by and large do agree. So when you call Ann Coulter names, that allows the far left and the elite media to take any policy position taken by her and portray it as extreme even if it happens to be a policy issue that you and her agree on and why???……because Meghan McCain said so.

Always remember that your father was the elite media’s favorite Republican. They wanted him on whenever he had a fight with members of his own party. When your father took a stand against Barack Obama look at what the New York Times did; they accused your father of having an affair with a 40 year old lobbyist and stopped printing his op-ed letters. The rest of the elite media launched unfair attacks against him, they attacked your mother, and look at what the lies and smears they did to Sarah Palin.

Two months later it is now clear that your father was right about Barack Obama on many things. Where is the elite media begging to have him on now…. no wait, they can have his daughter on because she is bashing Republicans and smearing them with ugly charges of anti-semitism.  

The elite media will be happy to use you and manipulate you for this purpose for now, but the time will come when you take a stand based on a conservative principle in opposition to an elite media favorite like Obama and when that happens the elite media will stop being interested in your opinion and they will use any excuse to smear and destroy you. If you don’t think that these elite media people who are showing you so much attention would do that to a young woman, just ask Bristol Palin.

And when you are done talking with her ask Clearence Thomas, Robert Bork and Miguel Estrada what it is like to have every manufactured, politically motivated, far left allegation against you presented as fact.

With all due respect, you should apologize to Ann Coulter and be grateful she has (so far) decided to show restraint and not turn her sharp tongue on you. It may make you less popular with the Today Show, but it is the honorable thing to do.

Chuck Norton, Editor

UPDATE – You can see video of one of Meghan’s elite media appearances at Hotair.com.

UPDATE II – Tammy Bruce has comments on this issue HERE.

AWESOME VIDEO: Steven Crowder on US “Torture” of Detainees

The First of the Obama Political Persecutions Begin

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the victim. What is his “crime”? He enforces state and federal immigration laws and the far left doesn’t like it. Former Arizona Governor Napolitano doesn’t like it either and now she is the Homeland Security Secretary.

Attorney General Eric Holder showed us the kind of man he was when he worked to have former terrorists pardoned and have the greatest tax evader of all time pardoned while he was still a fugitive from justice all while his ex-wife was giving large donations to the Clinton Library.

Instead of dealing with a border that is out of control with Mexican drug gangs, they are doing this. These kinds of actions are what banana republics are made of.

CNS News:

Justice Dept. Investigates Arizona Sheriff for Enforcing Immigration Law
Thursday, March 12, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona following requests by congressional Democrats and allegations by liberal activists that the department has violated the civil rights of illegal aliens.

Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Robert Scott (D-Va.) requested the investigation, and activists groups such as National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN launched petition drives and rallies in support of the probe.

The investigation focuses on Sheriff Joe Arpaio and dozens of officers under his command who were trained through the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Agreements of Cooperation in Communities to Enhance Safety and Security (ACCESS), which partners federal and local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws. (The Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division is known popularly as ICE.)

In a letter dated March 10, 2009, Loretta Smith, acting assistant attorney general at the DOJ, detailed what her department would be investigating:

“This is to inform you that the United States Department of Justice is commencing an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (”MCSO”) pursuant to the pattern or practice provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,42 U.S.C. §14141 (“Section 14141”) and the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968,42 U.S.C. § 3789d (“Safe Streets Act”), and pursuant to the prohibitions against national origin discrimination in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d to 2000d-7 (“Title Yr’) and the Safe Streets Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3789d(c).”  
 
The letter continues:  “The investigation will focus on alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures conducted by the MCSO, and on allegations of national origin discrimination, including failure to provide meaningful access to MCSO services for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals.”

“In conducting the investigation, we will seek to determine whether there are violations of the above laws by the MCSO,” the letter says.

Sheriff Arpaio’s efforts to enforce immigration laws have been the focus of previous criticism, but Arpaio has defended his department and the results his ICE-trained officers have netted.
 
Concerning the DOJ’s investigation, Arpaio told CNSNews.com:  “I will not back down. What I am doing is upholding the laws of the state of Arizona, and I will not be persuaded to turn my back on my oath of office as sheriff of this county.”

In an August 2008 press release, Arpaio’s office detailed those results.

“While the Sheriff’s illegal immigration and human smuggling operations conducted on the streets and roadways here have netted nearly 2,300 arrests, another very successful effort to locate illegal aliens has been quietly happening inside Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails,” the release said.

It continues: “Despite the growing criticism of the Sheriff’s illegal immigration fight by some valley politicians and activists, Sheriff Arpaio says 60 detention officers trained by ICE officials have conducted over 106,000 interviews and investigations of inmates booked into jail since April of 2007.

“In those 18 months, 16,000 inmates were determined to be illegal aliens. Either they have already been deported or will be deported after being tried and/or serving their sentences for crimes committed in the valley. The work being done be Arpaio’s detention staff is a likely contributor to the recent reduction in crime in the valley,” the press release added..

“That number of 16,000 represents a full one-third (1/3) of all inmates in the United States who have had holds placed on them after being identified by jail or prison officials as illegal aliens.”

The press release goes on to say that 20 percent of inmates in the Maricopa County Jail are illegal aliens and that of those, 2,000 illegal aliens – 70 percent – were arrested for felony crimes