10130903 Hugh Hewitt: Hour 3 – Hugh talks Obama foreign policy and national security with Liz Cheney, daughter of the Vice President, and co-founder of www.keepamericasafe.com. Later in the hour, Hugh concludes his rant at the McCarthy Football League smear job of Rush Limbaugh.
10130902 Hugh Hewitt: Hour 2 – Hugh continues talking with callers, and with National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, about the media and now the NFL trying to keep Rush Limbaugh from joining ownership by smearing him with racism charges in the worst McCarthyesque fashion.
10130901 Hugh Hewitt: Hour 1 – Hugh begins the better part of a three hour rant at the blatant McCarthyism now being shown by Roger Goodell of the NFL because Rush Limbaugh has applied to be an owner of the St. Louis Rams. Jim Geraghty of National Review’s Campaign Spot blog joins the discussion.
Yesterday’s stunning news about the skyrocketing cost of health insurance under Obamacare –from the current $13,000 a year in premiums for a family of four to $26,000 a year in one short decade– ought to motivate you to redouble your efforts to stop this bill. The trail of broken promises on this bill ends up trumped by this last one –it will actually drive health care costs way up, not control them. Contrary to what the president has said again and again, it is in fact better to do nothing. A lot better.
Couple that news of the toll on average Americans that the president’s enthusiasms will take with the story in today’s New York Times on the tax bite of the proposed levy on “cadillac health insurance plans” which will in fact fall on “minivan plans” and you have a perfect plan to greatly burden the middle class for decades to come. The cost of your health care will go up as will your taxes, but the quality of your care will go down, as will the number of doctors to provide it. If you are on Medicare, the services available to you will be rationed and your Medicare Advantage premiums will shoot up.
The White House and its allies predictably savaged the study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, but all the counter-noise cannot stop the public from hearing the truth: Obamacare is a massively expensive redistribution of wealth via direct and indirect taxes that will greatly damage Medicare while driving up health insurance costs for Americans who already have insurance all so that some, but far from all, people without health insurance can be provided with marginal coverage. The side effects on doctors and hospitals are well known, but the stampede being organized by the president seeks to simply jam them through.
The Republican effort to stop the big push is ineffective at best. As my new WashingtonExaminer.com column points out and as Byron York and I laughed over on yesterday’s program, the GOP sent out George LeMieux to make the response to Obama’s weekly radio address this past Saturday. “George LeWho?” you wonder. Our point exactly. Not a confidence-building move by any measure.
Obamacare will get out of the Senate Finance Committee today, and then will be merged with all the other bad ideas on health care that Democrats cling to.
Then Harry Reid will try and force cloture on any bill no matter how incoherent or medicine-destroying its mix of incoherent initiatives and contradictory commands. He will need 60 votes to destroy American medicine and do so at extraordinary cost to the middle class who right now are covered by excellent insurance at significant but not punishing costs.
To get those 60 votes Reid will need one or two “yes” votes from Indiana’s Evan Bayh, Colorado’s Michael Bennet, Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, and Virginia’s James Webb, some of whom will be tempted to vote “yes” on cloture and then try to cover that vote with a “no” vote on the bill.
Every Republican legislator, every conservative commentator, every doctor and hospital professional, and every voter who sees Obamacare as the giant smash-up that it is needs to state again and again that we all know the cloture vote is the vote on Obamacare, and that we will work to defeat any senator who votes yes on cloture.
The contact information for these five and three other Democrats is below. Use it now and urge your families and friends to do the same or start reworking your budget to cut everything else out to pay for the health insurance premium hikes headed your way.
Arkansas
Sen. Blanche Lincoln
DC Phone: (202) 224-4843
Local Phone: Dumas (870) 382-1023, Fayetteville (479) 251-1224, Little Rock (501) 375-2993, Jonesboro (870) 910-6896, Texarkana (870) 774-3106
Link to E-mail
Sen. Mark Pryor
DC Phone: (202) 224-2353
Local Phone: Little Rock (501) 324-6336
Link to E-mail
Connecticut
Sen. Joe Lieberman
DC Phone: (202) 224-4041
Local Phone: (860) 549-8463
Link to E-mail
Florida
Sen. Bill Nelson
DC Phone: (202) 224-5274
Local Phone: Orlando (407) 872-7161, Miami-Dade (305) 536-5999, Tampa (813) 225-7040, West Palm Beach (561) 514-0189, Tallahassee (850) 942-8415, Jacksonville (904) 346-4500, Broward (954) 693-4851, Fort Meyers (239) 334-7760
Link to E-mail
Indiana
Sen. Evan Bayh
DC Phone: (202) 224-5623
Local Phone: Evansville (812) 465-6500, Fort Wayne (260) 426-3151, Hammond (219) 852-2763, Indianapolis (317) 554-0750, Jeffersonville (812) 218-2317, Southbend (574) 236-8302
Link to E-mail
Louisiana
Sen. Mary Landrieu
DC Phone: (202) 224-5824
Local Phone: Baton Rouge (225) 389-0395, Lake Charles (337) 436-6650, New Orleans (504) 589-2427, Shreveport (318) 676-3085
Link to E-mail
Montana
Sen. Jon Tester
DC Phone: (202) 224-2644
Local Phone: Billings (406) 252-0550, Bozeman (406) 586-4450, Butte (406) 723-3277, Glendive (406) 365-2391, Great Falls (406) 452-9585, Helena (406) 449-5401, Kalispell (406) 257-3360, Missoula (406) 728-3003
Link to E-mail
Nebraska
Sen. Ben Nelson
DC Phone: (202) 224-6551
Local Phone: Omaha (402) 391-3411, Lincoln (402) 441-4600, Scottsbluff (308) 631-7614, Kearney (308) 293-5818, South Sioux City (402) 209-3595
Link to E-mail
North Dakota
Sen. Kent Conrad
DC Phone: (202) 224-2043
Local Phone: Bismarck (701) 258-4648, Fargo (701) 232-8030, Grand Forks (701) 775-9601, Minot (701) 852-0703
Link to E-mail
Sen. Byron Dorgan
DC Phone: (202) 224-2551
Local Phone: Bismarck (701) 250-4618, Fargo (701) 239-5389, Minot (701) 852-0703, Grand Forks (701) 746-8972
Link to E-mail
South Dakota
Sen. Tim Johnson
DC Phone: (202) 224-5842
Local Phone: Aberdeen (605) 226-3440, Sioux Falls (605) 332-8896, Rapid City (605) 341-3990
Link to E-mail
Virginia
Sen. James Webb
(202) 224-4024
1-866-507-1570
Link to E-mail.
West Virginia
Sen. Robert C. Byrd
DC Phone: (202) 224-3954
Local Phone: Charlestown (304) 342-5855, Eastern Panhandle (304) 264-4626
Link to E-mail