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These are my links for June 29th from 10:49 to 18:29:

• Liberals, not Bachmann, are hypocrites on Medicaid – Any outspoken, pro-life, conservative woman will be the target of unfair, almost rabid attacks by liberals in the media. But the latest left-wing talking point against Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is perhaps the stupidest criticism any politician has endured this year.
  It turns out that Bachmann's husband, who runs a mental health clinic, has helped Medicaid patients. What's wrong with that? Well, you see, Bachmann has opposed the expansion of Medicaid, and she generally favors limited government.

  This makes her a hypocrite, NBC News reporter Michael Isikoff suggested in an article this week. Isikoff went to universal health care activist Ron Pollock for his money quote: "She's giving hypocrisy a bad name. … It's clear when it feathers her nest she's happy for Medicaid expenditures. But people that really need it — folks with disabilities and seniors — she's turning their backs on them."

  Pollock knows about businesses that "feather [their] nest" with government health care spending, because those businesses are the moneymen for his campaigns to expand government's role in health care. Pollock's group, Families USA, partnered in 2009 and 2010 with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — the nation's largest single-industry lobby — to support President Obama's health care legislation. PhRMA, representing drug companies, backed the bill because it expanded subsidies for prescription drugs, required state governments to cover drugs under Medicaid, imposed mandates on individuals and employers that would effectively subsidize drugs, established lengthy exclusivity periods for biologic drugs (keeping generics off the market for 12 years), and didn't touch the industry's other government favors.

  Families USA also teamed up with health insurers and drug makers in 2008 and 2009 to lobby for a more generous State Children's Health Insurance Program, which was created to subsidize health insurance for poor children and expanded in 2009 to cover the middle class and young adults.

  So, by the logic of Pollock and Bachmann's other liberal critics, these profitable and politically connected industries are being noble and consistent by lobbying for the very policies that profit them, while Bachmann is a hypocrite for opposing policies that would profit her husband.

  When liberals advocate policies supposedly contrary to their own economic interests, it's heralded as selflessness. Warren Buffett and Barack Obama want a higher tax rate? How public-spirited! Michele Bachmann thinks her husband is too subsidized? Hypocrite!

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  Read it all

• Flap’s Links and Comments for June 28th through June 29th | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for June 28th through June 29th #tcot #catcot

These are my links for June 28th through June 29th:

• Michele Bachmann’s Polling Can’t Be Dismissed – You know the Republican presidential race has changed when you start seeing headlines wondering “How To Stop Bachmann.” That was the title of a Jonathan Chait piece in the New Republic yesterday that came only a day after Ed Kilgore wrote on the same site asking whether Bachmann could “Survive Being Taken Seriously?”

  The reason for this hysteria can be found in the poll numbers that demonstrate the Minnesota congresswoman has evolved in the last month from a marginal player in the GOP presidential race to a major contender. The latest such survey came from the liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling that shows Bachmann leading in both Oregon and Montana. While it was possible to rationalize her surge in Iowa, a state where Christian conservative activists have always been highly influential and where she has some roots, it is difficult to dismiss her lead in Oregon.

  The question for the moment is how seriously to take these polls.

  On the one hand, any poll this far in advance of the first votes being cast has to be taken with a shovelful of salt. Four years ago at this time, Hillary Clinton was the certain Democratic nominee, John McCain’s candidacy had crashed and burned and Rudy Giuliani was looking like a strong contender in 2008.

  Like those 2007 surveys, polls at this point in the election cycle say more about name recognition than anything else. That’s why Clinton and Giuliani were doing so well four years ago and why someone like Mitt Romney is considered a frontrunner today. But those arguments don’t tell us much about Bachmann’s surge. Unlike Romney, who has been running for president for more than five years, Bachmann was a relative unknown outside of the Tea Party movement until just a few weeks ago. Her poll numbers are not the product of longstanding name recognition. Rather, they say everything about the way she has burst upon the scene looking and sounding like a confident, smart woman who isn’t afraid to take on either Obama or her Republican rivals. While other candidates, such as Tim Pawlenty, have presented far stronger positions on the economy and foreign policy, there’s no getting around the fact Republicans seem to like Bachmann better so far.

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  Actually, no it cannot be dismisseed…..

• ObamaCare: Divided Sixth Circuit Panel Upholds Individual Mandate – A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Martin, has upheld the individual mandate against a Commerce Clause challenge.  The same panel, in an opinion by Judge Sutton, rejected the argument that the mandate can be sustained as an exercise of the federal government’s taxing power (which means, to date, no court has accepted the taxing power argument).  Senior District Judge Graham, sitting by designation, dissented from the court’s Commerce Clause holding.

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  On to the Supreme Court eventually…..

• Michele Bachmann reponds to Medicaid payout report – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann responded Wednesday to a report by NBC that the mental health clinic run by her husband has collected annual Medicaid payments totaling over $137,000, while she has criticized the program for swelling the "welfare rolls."
  "Medicaid is a valuable form of insurance for many Americans and it would be discriminatory not to accept Medicaid as a form of payment," Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart told CNN. "As a state-sponsored counseling service, Bachmann and Associates has a responsibility to provide Medicaid and medical assistance, regardless of a patients financial situation."

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  And, she would be criticized if her husband turned away Medicaid patients.

  How do you win with the MSM?

  Answer: As a conservative you don't.

• Flap’s Links and Comments for June 28th on 12:20 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for June 28th on 12:20 #tcot #catcot

According to the lastest Marist Poll.

Looking to 2012, 43% of registered voters nationwide report they plan to vote against President Obama in 2012.  This compares with 36% who say they definitely plan to support him.  A notable 21% are unsure.  Little has changed on this question since McClatchy-Marist last reported it in April.  At that time, 44% reported they planned to back someone else while 37% said they planned to vote for the president.  18%, at the time, were unsure.

Independents play a key role in Obama’s re-election bid.  43% say they would vote against Mr. Obama in 2012 while 29% are securely in his corner.  Nearly three in ten independent voters — 28% — are unsure.  The president has failed to make inroads with these allimportant voters.  In McClatchy-Marist’s previous survey, 47% of independents reported they would not support the president while 32% said they would cast their ballot for Mr. Obama.  21% were unsure.

While 70% of Democratic voters report they will unequivocally cast their ballot for the president and only 10% say they will vote against him, a notable one in five — 20% — are unsure.  Not surprisingly, most Republicans — 85% — don’t plan on supporting the president while just 4% say they will.  One in ten — 10% — are unsure.  

The gereral election:

• 56% Obama Vs. 30% Palin 
• 46% Obama Vs. 42% Romney 
• 48% Obama Vs. 41% Giuliani 
• 48% Obama Vs. 39% Perry 
• 49% Obama Vs. 37% Bachmann 
• 47% Obama Vs. 33% Pawlenty 

GOP primary election:

• 19% Romney
• 13% Giuliani
• 13% Perry
• 11% Palin
• 8% Bachmann
• 5% Pawlenty
• 5% Paul
• 5% Cain
• 2% Gingrich
• 2% Huntsman
• 1% Santorum

Again, this is a national poll and I give them lettile credence since they do not take into account the GOP Primary calendar realities. But, this poll does show that Obama is vulnerable to the GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.

Apparently not.

Undercover phone calls released today show Planned Parenthood of Indiana clinics admitting that they are not the only source of women’s health care for women on Medicaid. Planned Parenthood and its supporters have recently argued in support of restoring their Medicaid funding in Indiana that poor women will lose access to vital health care services if they cannot go to Planned Parenthood. Live Action, the group that recorded the calls, says its footage shows the reality is quite the opposite.

“Indiana has become Ground Zero in the national battle to defund Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion business in America,” states Live Action President Lila Rose. “As more and more states, most recently Wisconsin and Texas, continue to defund the abortion giant of millions of dollars, Planned Parenthood wants us to believe they are the only game in town when it comes to providing care for Medicaid patients. In reality, their own staff admit that they aren’t the only option for women in need.”

In an official press release, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards claimed that Indiana’s defunding of Planned Parenthood would “take away health care from thousands of women in Indiana.” Last week, Live Action’s undercover investigators called 16 of the 28 Indiana Planned Parenthood clinics posing as women on Medicaid concerned about where they could receive services if Planned Parenthood’s funding was not restored.

Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider has been skating by for decades under the disguise that they are frontline providers of healthcare for poor women. Actually, they make their bread and butter on poor women abortions. And, the government has been subsidizing them in an end around the Hyde Amendment which outlaws public funding for abortion services.

What will be the impact in Indiana, if Planned Parenthood goes away from providing non-abortion related services? Not much…..

Even Indiana doctors agree that defunding Planned Parenthood in Indiana would have little to no effect on the care and services provided to Medicaid patients.

“If Planned Parenthood only sees 1% of Medicaid patients in the state, and that’s their statistic, it doesn’t seem like they are making a big imprint in the first place,” said Dr. Geoff Cly, at the Northeast Ob/GYN Women’s Health Group in Fort Wayne, IN. “I know in our group, we currently have capacity to see more patients and I’m sure many other groups could easily take care of the 1% that’s left if Planned Parenthood no longer took care of those patients.”

Yet, the Obama Administration is threatening to cut $ billions in low-income healthcare funds unless Indiana contracts with Planned Parenthood.

Exit question: Why?