Mudville Gazette has good coverage on this milestone. We’ve been busy trying to force back Obama’s attempts to impose socialism on us, but we must take time to remember.
Remember those who have fallen.
Remember those who have been injured.
Remember the heroism of the magnificent men and women of our armed forces.
Remember who said we lost the war.
Remember how it came out.
(Blogging Note: This is clearly the most important issue of the day – and will be until the vote is taken on Sunday. We’ll have an open thread up on this issue for Saturday and Sunday. So that the comments don’t get too bogged down and hard to follow.)
TEA Party will defend Democrats who vote “no”. A good thing – those Democrats who do show the courage to vote in favor of America on this issue deserve to be defended.
ObamaCare expands the power of the IRS. Naturally – when you’re acting like a little fascist you want ever more coercive power over the citizens.
Romney and Huckabee poll well against Obama for 2012. Which means people are getting in an “anybody but Obama mood”.
Bill would cost Caterpillar $100 million in first year.
The more people look in to it, the more tax increases they find.
Christian Medical Association condemns abortion provisions.
They are lying, you know?
CBO numbers bogus?
An aroused electorate: 100,000 calls per hour to Congress. Anyone want to take bets on the pro/con breakdown?
At least one Democrats understands who bad the Democrat tactics on ObamaCare have been:
Even one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, says a proposed parliamentary move to pass health-care reform would be “disingenuous” and harm the credibility of Congress.
Governor Christie is demonstrating that his are made out of brass.
Fess Parker, RIP.
Hey, liberals, our military is morally superior to the enemy.
380 banks at risk of failure.
McCain up only 7 over his GOP primary rival.
The requirement of morality in economics:
The financial crisis that has affected the entire world can be a good opportunity to rethink the development model, making it more attentive to the needs of the whole human family and not aimed only at the logic of profit. The crisis itself, in fact, has shown that in a market beset by bankruptcies, those economic actors are able to adhere to a moral behaviour and attentive to the needs of their area, have survived”.
Imagine that – the “whole human family”…which includes the unborn and the elderly; which presupposes the family will have a house to call their own, and wealth no one can take from them…might be interesting to try.
As Obama and the Democrats (and a few “wet” Republicans) talk “comprehensive immigration reform”, the American people remain dead set on securing the border.
Death of Civilization watch: Cal-OSHA to vote on whether or not the prostitutes who work in pornographic film should wear condoms.
Pretty darn unpopular. According to this rating, CNN comes in below Comedy Central, the Food channel…and Cartoon Network. The really bad news for what Rush calls the “State-run media”? MSNBC, CNBC and Headline News don’t even make the to 30 for all-day programming.
You’d think they’d grab a clue. No one’s watching outside the ultra-liberal echo chamber.
A quote from Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech:
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
It was the issue then as LBJ prepared the disastrous “Great Society”, it is the issue today as Obama pledges to transform America. We lost in 1964 and the situation we’re in today is the result of that error. We dare not lose, this time.
Keep that in mind as we go through this year.
Wow:
…speaking of Congress, the new Gallup Poll also finds that barely 16% of Americans approve of its job while 80% (as in eight out of every ten Americans) now disapprove of the work being done by both bodies and their Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Both of whom are up for re-election in November.
Now even in Gallup, Obama is getting unpopular. After a while, as President Bush learned, you can’t climb out of the cellar.
The really important thing: if we Republicans win in November, we’d better just dazzle the American people with our ability. Our fellow Americans are in an unforgiving mood.
UPDATE: Sen. Boxer (D-CA) polls badly against all three possible GOP rivals. The GOP hasn’t elected a Senator in California since 1988.
UPDATE II: Could Congress’ ratings be down because they are pushing a health care plan opposed by 55%?
I guess until our Whip-wielding House Dominatrix either wins or loses, we’re going to keep talking about Obama’s miserably un-American health care reform proposals. What sort of America do we want, Mr. President? Let’s just say, “not one with you and your cronies deciding what’s best for health care”.
UPDATE: ObamaCare has a 3.8% tax on investment income; further downward pressure on the ability of the economy to create wealth.
UPDATE II: Hennessey is taking the bill apart piece by piece. Its not a pretty picture:
…Spends money on doctors in 2013 and 2014, but leaves out the permanent fix, as expected. This means there’s another $300-ish B of Medicare spending that is not counted in this bill. So much for true deficit neutrality…
…Adopts a version of the President’s proposal for feds to regulate health insurance premiums in addition to States. Secretary of HHS could “review potentially unreasonable premiums and may take corrective actions, such as requiring the insurer to pay a penalty, denying or modifying the premium or ordering the plan to pay rebates to consumers.” What is a potentially unreasonable premium?? Congratulations, AHIP. You have made your industry a federally regulated utility. Have fun with that.
UPDATE III: ObamaCare will crush the middle class:
The hardest hit won’t be those earning more than $250,000 a year–the group that he says needs to “pay their fair share.” Rather, it’s families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.
These folks will be too “rich” to qualify for ObamaCare’s subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president’s plan forces them to buy.
Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, “silver” health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. After income taxes, they’ll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.
This is not a bug, its a feature – its the way to pressure the middle class in to agreeing a single payer plan.
UPDATE IV: Catholic sisters come out against ObamaCare (PDF).
He keeps on like this, and we’ll start talking him up for President in 2012:
Gov. Chris Christie will propose a constitutional amendment limiting annual property tax increases to 2.5 percent when he introduces a budget Tuesday that will seek fundamental changes in spending at every level of government, according to administration officials with knowledge of the plan…
…The governor’s $29.3 billion budget will shave $2.9 billion off state spending from last year, about a 9 percent drop. The cuts include reductions in aid to municipalities and school districts, said two officials, who spoke to The Star-Ledger on the condition of anonymity ahead of the speech.
Imagine if we had a President who had the guts to cut our national budget by 9%. That would work out, next year, to about $325 billion. We’d still spend more than $3.2 trillion, so its not like we’re asking for granny to be thrown out on the street. But at least some attempt at stopping the bleeding – some attempt to avert complete fiscal disaster.
But, we won’t get any of that. If anything, Obama will spend even more than projected – and as his policies flounder, we can expect revenues to continue to drop, meaning an even worse deficit. We don’t have a President who even understands the concept of setting priorities – a President who understands there is a real limit to the amount of debt we can carry, and we’re pretty much already there.
Governor Christie, on the other hand, has shown rare courage ever since he took office. We’ll now see if he has the grit to carry this out. He faces a Democrat-controlled legislature and there will be legal challenges, especially to his proposed cuts in education. If he has the courage, he’ll stare down these challenges and emerge as a tribune of the people…and set himself on a fast track to higher things, if not in 2012, then at some point.
Seems the President wants control over higher education, too:
…A few days ago, another Secretary of Education—Lamar Alexander—inveighed in WaPo on what the folks at Department of Education “haven’t told us.” Senator Alexander notes that DOE plans to borrow from the Fed at a 2.8 percent interest rate, lend to students at 6.8, and splurge with the difference with a massive new spending program. He reports that the Congressional Budget Office has lowered the estimated savings from kicking out the private lenders from $87 billion to something like $47 billion. Some 2,000 private lenders will be forced out of this business. Services to students driven by industry competition will be eliminated in favor of typical federal bureaucratic “efficiency.” And those “educators, engineers and computer scientists—the backbone of the new economy”? They will be spending years longer and paying lots more to pay back loans that are actually being used to fund Congressmen’s favorite edu-pork programs.
The effort to shoehorn the direct lending program into the health care reconciliation bill seems odd on its face. CBS News suggests that the maneuver is prompted partly by Democrats trying to get on top of the wave of student protest over college costs that surfaced during the March 4 campus demonstrations. But CBS also thinks that the Democrats are just grabbing an opportunity that might not come again. “Reconciliation,” if it works, is a way of short-circuiting all the inconvenience of having to line up sixty votes for a controversial measure. Why not slide as much unpopular legislation as possible into one giant, unpopular, economy-ruining, budget-busting, anti-democratic bill?…
It will be quite the boondoggle, if it goes forward. Attentive readers will know my opinion about student loans: they are a scam. A way for colleges and bankers to get rich off of the foolish actions of youngsters suckered by tales of easy money once they’ve got a college degree to their name. All those ads you see on TV about getting a computer programming degree or becoming a chef – financed by student loans…and how many kids do you think really get all that much out of it?
Aside from that, however, what we have here is an attempt by Obama and his Democrats to have full control over a major portion of funding for higher education. Now instead of a scam, we’ll have a government pork-barrel scam. Favored groups will get more loans; favored colleges will find the skids greased…Congressional pet projects will get funded on the side. To top it all off, the Democrats will get kids in college where they can be propagandized by the ignorant, narrow-minded, junior-league Leninsts who run the education show.
Its all a win for Democrats. Not so much for education, the kids or the United States of America. As per usual, the problem here is that government is involved, at all. Government merely distorts – and never in a good way. Someone is always having a rake off. Someone is always misappropriating funds. Someone is always putting out substandard product. Its just the way it is because its all other peoples’ money. It is our economic life, but its play cash to them.
Education is a grand thing – and anyone who is determined to obtain it will do so. We don’t need government setting the agenda or providing the funds. Let the kids work at it; let their parents help; let good souls find the means for a hard working kid to get in to a decent school…but keep government out of it. Education is for free people – not for government monopolies.
Good news:
Mark R. Levin, president of Landmark Legal Foundation, today issued a warning to the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives about the possible use of the so-called “deem and pass,” “self-executing,” or “Slaughter Rule” to enact H.R. 3590, the legislative version of President Obama’s healthcare proposal that has been previously approved by the Senate. If this tactic is employed, Landmark will immediately sue the President, Attorney General Eric Holder and other relevant cabinet members to prevent them from instituting this unconstitutional contrivance.
“Landmark has already prepared a lawsuit that will be filed in federal court the moment the House acts. Such a brazen violation of the core functions of Congress simply cannot be ignored. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution is clear respecting the manner in which a bill becomes law. Members are required to vote on this bill, not claim they did when they didn’t. The Speaker of the House and her lieutenants are temporary custodians of congressional authority. They are not empowered to do permanent violence to our Constitution.”
With Nancy performing as House Dominatrix I do expect them to pass this dog of a bill. But I’m delighted to see the legal challenge all set to go – and, of course, I look forward to November’s results.
UPDATE: Idaho will challenge any individual mandate
