The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Of Goose & Gander

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Obama is a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” 

And so it is that his much-loved closed doors have come back to bite Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) yet again.  Spoken during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and quoted in a new book about it (“Game Change,” by Time magazine reporter Mark Halperin and New York magazine writer John Heileman), these words reveal a great deal about old Grinch Harry’s mindset and attitude towards blacks; first, that skin color is something by which one judges others and somehow lighter skin means something and, second, that those blacks who are able to speak proper English are either a surprise or useful.

Both of these perspectives, judgement calls, if you will, are troubling.  Particularly when uttered by someone who is now the majority leader in the United States Senate and a highly-visible member of that progressive liberal gang of bleeding hearts who tout that their efforts are always for “the common man” yet are the first to play the race card when confronted with common sense.  They show us eyes that view the world through a lens of class and racism, both of which have no place in a country where “all men are created equal”.  That old Harry sees Obama’s speaking ability as something that is controlled begs the question of just how much old Harry thinks it may be used to some advantage, thereby relegating a human to the status of an object.

Of course, everyone knows and (unfortunately) accepts that Democrats are collectively the lowest of scum-sucking douchebags so a Democrat making racist comments goes pretty much unnoticed by other Democrats.  But when regular Americans took offense at old Grinch Harry’s remark, he apologized and His Transparency, in a show of maintaining some image of party unity or in obeyance to his self-perceived image of magnaminity, promptly accepted it. 

But words once spoken can never be taken back.

And it is through spoken words that yet one more time the blatant hypocrisy of the Democrat double-standard comes bubbling up.  Both old Grinch Harry and His Transparency went after Trent Lott back in 2002.  President Walking Eagle himself had called for Lott’s resignation after Lott mentioned that in Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign, a campaign centered on opposition to integration, Mississippi was one of four states Thurmond carried and followed that up with, “We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.”

Then-Senator Obama stuck his nose up in the air:

“It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator (Thurmond) for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do.  The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party.”

Even the Congressional Black Caucus  released a statement at the time, calling for a “formal censure of Senator Lott’s racist remarks”.  And after Lott resigned, old Grinch Harry went on the record about it this way:

“He had no alternative,” said Reid at the time claiming, “If you tell ethnic jokes in the backroom, it’s that much easier to say ethnic things publicly. I’ve always practiced how I play.”

Cue the flying pigs.

Dems Scheming To Screw MA Senate Voters If Brown Wins

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They are hell-bent to pass some version of health care “reform” before His Transparency holds his State of Union address on some as-yet-scheduled date.  So while reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of legislation is hurriedly being negotiated by Democrats behind closed and locked doors, other Democrats in Massachusetts are tipping their hand about their plans to do anything to insure passage of whatever form of slavery ends up being thrown onto the House and Senate floors for a vote.

Their weapon of choice?  The special election on January 19th to replace good old boy, Ded Ted.

Big special elections like that coming up in Massachusetts take time to be certified and it is that very process the Democrats are now trying to figure out how to twist so that the current, hand-picked Senator, Paul Kirk, can remain in office long enough to vote “yes” with his pork-filled cohorts.

Some key snippets from the article in today’s Boston Globe:

The longtime aide and confidant of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who was handpicked by Gov. Deval Patrick after a controversial legal change to hold Kennedy’s seat, vowed to vote for the bill even if Republican state Senator Scott Brown, who opposes the health-care reform legislation, prevails in a Jan. 19 special election.

—

The U.S. Senate ultimately will schedule the swearing-in of Kirk’s successor, but not until the state certifies the election.

—

“Because it’s a federal election,” spokesman Brian McNiff said. “We’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.”

Another source told the Herald that Galvin’s office has said the election won’t be certified until Feb. 20 – well after the president’s address.

Since the U.S. Senate doesn’t meet again in formal session until Jan. 20, Bay State voters will have made their decision before a vote on health-care reform could be held.  But Kirk and Galvin’s office said today a victorious Brown would be left in limbo.

In contrast, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) was sworn in at the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after winning a special election to replace Martin Meehan.  In that case, Tsongas made it to Capitol Hill in time to override a presidential veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Like with Tsongas’ election, this is yet another example showing how progressive, liberal Democrats will do anything to insure their nefarious plans have a snowball’s chance in their version of hell for America.  And it is another reason for every American with a modicum of common sense to send a patriotic $9.12 to Scott Brown’s campaign and for those who live in Massachetts to get out on January 19th and cast their ballot for him.

Only a clearly enormous majority win by Brown can force the Democrat’s to lift their dirty skirt and cause the proper backlash that can kill their plans for not only their version of government-run health “care”, but all their other tax- and deficit-raising atrocities.

Spread the word, Patriots.

Harry The Hypocrite

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Harry does another Washington show-and-tell about how to win friends and influence people and properly represent your constituents.  This one is titled:  It’s only wrong when someone else does it.

“Of course, nobody can see the managers’ amendment. It is composed of over 40 amendments. How could anyone vote for a piece of legislation such as that — a managers’ amendment with 42 separate amendments?

“Now, these amendments were not put in in a conference committee. People complain about that. But at least in a conference committee, you have people working together, sticking things in. Sometimes Democrats complain and sometimes Republicans complain — whoever is in the minority here. Well, we didn’t get enough consultation; you cut us out of the process. But at least you had a group of Democrats and Republicans in the process. Here, you have one person making a decision as to what is going to be in the managers’ amendment. There is no way to know what is in it. How could anyone say: ‘OK’? You have taken care of me, but I don’t want to see the other 40 amendments — -because with this legislation, similar to all legislation, you put something in one spot, and you have to take something out someplace else.”

(Senator Harry Reid, 2/9/06)

 

 

Flash forward to October 2009:

But now, as a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington:  Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) sits at the head of a wooden table at his office as he and  Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and  Max Baucus (D-Mont.) work to merge two competing versions of health-care legislation into one bill. The three men will be joined by top aides as well as by members of President Obama’s health-care team, led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

…after weeks of Senate Finance Committee public hearings, the Senate negotiations are now an invitation-only affair in Reid’s office. The majority leader is unlikely to expand his group, even as some senators unhappy with parts of the legislation, such as  John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), have asked to be in the room.

“Neither I nor any other senator has the luxury of passing a perfect bill — I wish we could — that conforms exactly to his or her beliefs.  But we must act.”
(Harry Reid)

And again in December 2009:

Sen. Dick Durbin’s job as majority whip is to count votes, but don’t ask him for the current tally on the health care bill.

“I don’t know,” Durbin said earlier this week. “Sen. Reid is the one who has been keeping it pretty close.”

Early on in the process — when Reid was still trying to reconcile bills moving through two different Senate committees — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked him about the progress he was making.

Reid pointed both of his index fingers to his head and said: “I got it all figured out how we’re going to do this.” And then he walked away.

The Unholy Trinity To Reconcile Health Bills

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Why does it come as no surprise that the final version of health care “reform” legislation is going to be prepared by only Democrats?  More specifically, in a revolting little three-way behind closed doors by that nauseatingly loathesome, unholy trinity of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.

WASHINGTON — House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses. 

The unofficial timetable calls for final passage of the measure to remake the nation’s health care system by the time President Obama delivers his State of the Union address, probably in early February. 

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. 

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors. 

It’s going to be another headlong rush into unconstitutional, crushing ruin.

Bypassing a formal conference committee enables Democrats to omit time-consuming procedural steps in the Senate and prevents Republicans from trying to delay the final negotiations. 

Under Senate rules, three separate votes are required before negotiators for the two houses may hold a formal meeting. While the three normally are agreed to within seconds, each may be filibustered, and Democrats would then have to produce 60 votes to cut off debate. 

Additionally, Republicans would have the right to demand votes on nonbinding proposals once negotiators for the two houses were appointed. That could, in turn, require Democrats to vote on political controversies such as wiping out the legislation’s proposed cuts in Medicare, the type of issue that could easily be turned into attack ads in next fall’s campaign. 

Congress plans no formal sessions until Jan. 19, but Pelosi intends to meet this week with key committee chairmen and other leaders, and a separate meeting is also planned for members of the rank and file.

There are no words to describe the disgust I feel for the Democratic party this evening.  But there are two words that may put a big monkey wrench in their plans.

Scott Brown.

Profiling Terrorists

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It reads like a bad joke.

You might be a terrorist if:

  • You believe in the United States Constitution (earning a higher position on the watch list if you can actually quote it)
  • You exercise your right to bear arms
  • You exercise your right to free speech
  • You think letting Muslims without passports onto airplanes while strip-searching Grandma is wrong
  • You believe in fiscal responsibility (earning a higher position on the watch list if you actually practice it)
  • You believe that charity begins at home
  • You believe everyone has a right to choose for themselves
  • You don’t believe everyone must pay for the choices of others

This profiling comes courtesy of our progressive liberal administration.  The same progressive liberal administration that wants to change the lexicon to call terrorism “man-made disasters” and its perpetrators “unprivileged enemy belligerants” sees no hypocrisy in profiling the average American.  Maybe because such a broad swath cuts across race and gender?  One certainly can’t accuse them of discrimination now, can they?

But when there are significant numbers of people in this world whose only goal in life is to kill Americans, if not outright destroy America, discrimination is desperately needed.  The average American practices it every single day.  Children are taught to not accept candy from strangers.  Women walking alone at night are taught to cross the street to avoid coming close to a strange man.  When there’s a knock on the door in the middle of the night, everyone looks through the peephole before opening the door and when what they see isn’t a familiar face, most won’t open it.

Truth is our lives are made up of an endless series of judgement calls, discriminating against a combination of various oh-so-unpolitically-correct variables.  It’s an inherent survival mechanism, for to blindly embrace what is radically different on the surface may mean death.  (It’s why the progressive liberal cavemen didn’t survive their hugging the sabre-toothed tiger.)  Sure, it can create a stubborn mindset of prejudice but more are the stories of those pleasantly surprised when they find out not everyone of a certain stripe is really all that different (caveman hugs wolf) than the stories of those who take their prejudice up like a sword and set forth to destroy their perceived enemy.

Yet is is exactly such a hard-core, prejudiced-based war that we have with Islamic extremists, those zealous jihadists the average American rightly call terrorists.  They are identifiable by their ethnicity or chosen cultural identification, by their words and their deeds and to ignore them is what now tremendously endangers us.  The enemy we face is without but by not recognizing them using clear, level-headed judgement for fear of being seen as racist or bigoted, or lacking in their beloved sophistication or what have you (by anyone other than the average American, that is), this administration has effectively become the enemy within. 

Though Washington may be loathe to admit it, the average American knows this.  They look at this administration with its endless excuses and it is slowly dawning on them that, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  And in order to survive, the average American will do what they have always done.  They will create a profile to allow them to root out their enemy, and they will not hesitate to call that enemy by its real name:  progressive liberal politician.

Here’s The Brie To Go With Your Whine, Senator Nelson

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Who let the dogs out?

My question is, who let the curs in in the first place?

If Senator Ben Nelson could turn back the clock (or buy his Kool-Aid from the same distributor as Obama), he’d have us all believing that Senator Harry (the Grinch) Reid pulled a fast one on him by slipping that 100% payment-in-perpetuity of Nebraska’s expanded Medicaid costs into the Senate’s health care “reform” bill so Ben would vote for it.

Either he thinks the American people really ARE that stupid or he’s the one who’s so stupid he didn’t understand the terms by which his vote was bought.

Personally, seeing as how old Ben’s a Congress critter with his hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar, I’m going to guess it’s the former.

Politico reports:

Let’s try some math, shall we?  It is estimated that what Reid expects the American taxpayer to send to Nebraska for Nelson’s vote is at least $100 million over the next ten years.  If you simply multiply that by 50 (to cover all the states), that’s a cost of $5 billion.  But we all know that those illegal immigrant-loving states like California and poverty-stricken progressive liberal Democrat strongholds like Michigan will incur higher costs so it’s quite conceivable that such a (stupid) plan would cost tax-paying Americans far, far more.  Billions that rather neatly erase the much-touted-though-double-dipped-savings-false Democrat claims that Reid’s closed-door bill will cut the federal deficit.

So now we’re forced to decide whether Nelson is really so stupid as to think the American people are going to believe that everyone was supposed to get Nebraska’s special Medicaid costs treatment and think that’s a good thing, or that Senator Harry Reid is an even bigger liar than already proven by analysis of his bill.

We’ll have to flip a coin on this one. 

The article goes on to say that:

…the goal of the GOP attorneys general was to remove the Nebraska Medicaid provision from the bill and that “he saw no way that he—nor any of the state attorneys general—will support extension of the Cornhusker Kickback to every state nor be a part of a deal like that.”

At least those busy flying pigs get a rest this time.

Happy New & Increased Taxes Year!

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Yes, yes, I know, recovering from late-night reveling readers, President Walking Eagle promised during his campaign that there would be no new taxes under his watch.  If we elected him, he would most assuredly keep middle America safe from the greedy avarice of that evil and secretive federal government.

And pigs fly.

As this new year and a new decade gets off to its shaky start, courtesy of those silly, misunderstood “unprivileged enemy belligerents” labeled as common criminals by the administration faster than it takes His Transparency to address the American people about it and given the full rights of American citizens to due process under our laws even when they attempt to enter the country under dubious legality while setting their underwear on fire on a plane several thousand feet in the air, every one of us is going to feel the soaring rhetoric of hope and change as we begin preparations for the annual headlong run into the textbook definition of federal bureaucracy.  The filing of our annual income tax returns.

Let’s hope Turbo Tax can keep up.  Effective today, the following tax breaks are no longer available:

  • Deduction of state and local general sales taxes (section 164) (Personal Tax Incentives)
  • Additional standard deduction, up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples, for state and local property taxes (section 63) (Personal Tax Incentives)
  • Research tax credit and alternative simplified credit (section 41) (General Business Tax Incentives)
  • New markets tax credit (section 45D) (Community Assistance Provisions)
  • Empowerment zone incentives (sections 1391 and 1202) (Community Assistance Provisions)
  • Renewal community tax incentives (sections 1400E, 1400F, 1400I, and 1400J) (Community Assistance Provisions)
  • District of Columbia Investment Incentives (sections 1400, 1400A, 1400B, and 1400C) (Community Assistance Provisions)
  • Net disaster loss designation and $500 limit per casualty for personal casualty losses attributed to federally declared natural disasters (section 165) (General Disaster Relief Provisions)
  • Expensing for qualified disaster expenses (section 198A) (General Disaster Relief Provisions)
  • Biodiesel and renewable diesel incentives (section 40A) (Energy Incentives)
  • Alternative motor vehicle credit for heavy hybrids (section 30B) (Energy Incentives)

And effective today, the following new taxes will be levied:

  • Increased exemption levels for the individual alternative minimum tax (section 55) and personal tax credits allowed against the AMT (section 26)
  • Exclusion of unemployment compensation benefits from gross income (section 85)
  • Alternative fuel mixture tax credit (section 6426(e))
  • Reduced estimated tax payments for small businesses (section 6654(d)(1)(D))

No one is left out; from business owner to laid-off worker, there’s something in here for everyone and the sole purpose is to suck more of your money into the federal coffers so the liberal progressives can hand it out to their special interest “victims”.  Current example being Numbnuts Abdulmutallab; charged under U.S. criminal law instead of by the military he must have a lawer, you know.  And why not one paid for by you and I, instead of his wealthy family?  And why not a corrupt lawyer in a corrupt federal jurisdiction at that?  Welcome to the affirmatively-graduated Ivy League ideology of “equality” for all. 

But I digress.

Now, His Transparency is going to tell you that it’s not HIS fault that middle-class America sees new and higher taxes today.  No, no; don’t blame HIM.  He promised, but even though Nancy’s Nuthouse managed to pass legislation to prevent these tax hikes and new taxes from going into effect, high-roller Harry in the Senate found it more important to concern them with appropriating your tax dollars for planes the Pentagon doesn’t need and cutting those backroom, closed-door secret deals to get 60 votes for his unconstitutional version of “health care reform” instead of addressing less-pressing problems like, oh, the economy.  So of course Obama simply must pass the buck on this one.  Those unrepresenting representatives in Congress are the ones that didn’t do their jobs and do right by you.  He promised.  Really. He. Did.  It was Congress who didn’t deliver.

Cue those busy flying pigs.

It was President Walking Eagle’s “historic agenda” that HE mandated as top priority.  Pesky little things like these tax hikes and tax cuts that break his promises never even entered his head.

Welcome to 2010.

Don’t Worry, His Priorities Are In Order

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We have fanatics trying to roast their nuts on airplanes and blowing themselves up on our military base in Afghanistan, yet President Walking Eagle could barely manage to muster up the time it takes to mouth a few lame words to the American people.

But he can take the time out of his busy vacation schedule to sign his first veto.  Because this was oh so by gosh, by golly important it just couldn’t wait.

HONOLULU – President Barack Obama has rejected his first piece of legislation from Congress, a stopgap spending bill that never had to take effect.

The White House on Wednesday said Obama exercised his right to send back to the Congress a temporary appropriations bill that lawmakers passed in case a winter storm about two weeks ago would have prevented them from approving a final measure to fund the Defense Department next year. The Dec. 19 blizzard didn’t keep them away from the Capitol and they approved the $626 billion defense spending bill before the previous budget expired.

The White House described the move as a technicality that the president took out of an abundance of caution, and that it was his first veto.

Whew!  Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to see he still has those audacious priorities in order.

On The Desire Of “Justice For All”

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Though sourced from a rather unusual quarter, in this excerpt from a fictional letter sent by the archangel Lucifer to his brother Michael comes an argument defining the dangers posed by liberal progressives:

Certainly, in hell there is no free will, for the damned relinquished it on their worlds.  This torment has been denied them by me.  Therefore, they cannot will to climb to Heaven by self-denial, by contemplation, by worship, by dedication, by acts of faith and charity.  These attributes shriveled in them during their lives, or were rejected scornfully by them in moods of risible sophistications.  They can desire to possess them now, but I would keep them safe and warm, as Our Father never kept them so!  So, they can will nothing.  They can only accept the pleasures -and the pains – I bestow on them.

In Heaven, however, free will is fully released.  The ability to reject, to deny, remains with archangels, angels and the souls of the saved.  The gift of repudiation is still with them and the possibility of disobedience.  Is that not most frightful?  What insecurity!  What danger!  My damned remain with me in eternal slavery because in life they desired only safety, and lacked the fire of adventure, though, God knows, they protested enough on their worlds!  But what did they protest?  Inequality, which is the variety of God.  Instability, which is the light of the universes.  Uneasiness of mind, which is the soul of philosophy.  Apparent injustices, which are the goad of the spirit.  Vulnerability to life and other men, which is a charge to become invulnerable through Faith in God.  The presence of suffering or misfortune – but these are a call for the soul to put on armor and serenity.  They demanded of their rulers that they remain in constant cocoons, silky and guarded by earthly authority.  They did not ask for wings to soar into the sunlight, and the ominous threats of full existence.  They rejected freedom for hell.  Certainly, they cried for freedom on their worlds, but it was freedom only to live happily without the freedom to be divinely unhappy.  

I have satisfied all these lusts of men. Strange, is it not, that my hells, though the ultimate success of the dreams of men, are filled with weeping?  And strange, is it not, that they still do not believe in the existence of God?  But then, they never did; they believed only in me.  They cannot will to believe in God.  They see absolute reality about them now, which was their will in life.  I will not pretend that I do not understand them, for was it not I who promised them all without work and without striving?

But lately I asked of a newly descended soul which had much acclaim on Terra:  “What was your greatest desire on your world, you who were applauded by rulers and admired by your fellowmen?”

He replied, “Justice for all,” and put on a very righteous expression.

That was admirable, for who does not admire justice, even I?  But I probed him.  He declared that in his earthly view all men deserved what all other men possessed, whether worthy or not.  “They are men, so they are equal, and being born they have a right to the fruits of the world, no matter the condition of their birth or the content of their minds, or their capacities.”  I conducted him through the pleasures of my hell and he was delighted that no soul was lesser in riches than another, and that every soul had access to my banquets and my palaces, no soul was distinguishable from another, none possessed what another did not possess.  Every desire was immediately gratified, he discovered.  He smiled about him joyfully.  He said, “Here, justice is attained!”

Then he saw that no face was joyful, however mean or lofty its features.  He remarked, wonderingly, on the listlessness of my damned, and how they strolled emptily through thoroughfares filled with music and through streets wherein there was not a single humble habituation.  He heard the cries of pleasure over my laden tables, and then heard them silenced, for there was no need now for food and where there is no need there is no desire and no enjoyment.  He saw that the poorest on earth were clothed in magnificence and jewels, yet they wept the loudest.  He was no fool.  He said, “Satiety.”  True, I answered him, but satiety can only live in the presence of total equality.  He pondered on this while I led him to the seat of thousands of philosophers, and he sat down among them.  But, as there is no challenge in hell, and no mystery, there can be no philosophy.  That night he came to me on his knees and begged for death.  I struck him with my foot, and said, “O man, this was the hell you made, and this was the desire of your heart, so eat, drink, and be merry.”

He attempted to hang himself in the manner of Judas, and I laughed at his futility.  I meditated that above all futility is the climate of hell.

He said to me, in tears, “Then, if you are, then God exists.”

“That does not follow,” I replied to him.  “But, did you not deny Him on Terra?  Did you not speak of supra-man and man-becoming, and the ultimate glorification of man on earth, without God?”

“I did not see God among men,” he said, wringing his hands.

“You did not look,” I said.  “You were too dull in your human arrogance and too enamored of humanity.  You never denounced your fellows for their lusts and their cruelties.  You told them they were only ‘victims.’  You refused to look upon their nature, for you denied the infinite variety and capacities of nature.  To you, one man was as good as any other man, and equally endowed, for the foolish reason that he had been born.  You saw no saints, and no sinners.  It was only a matter of environment, though the proof was all about you that environment is but a mere shading or tint on the soul, and is not destiny.  You denied that men have gifts of the spirit, often above those of other men.  In truth, you denigrated those gifts of striving and wonder.  You denied free will.  Everything evil that happened to a man was only the result of his fellowmen’s lack of justice.  You denied the reality of good and evil, the ability to make a choice.  In short, you denied life, itself.”

“Then God in truth does exist?” he asked, after a moment’s miserable thought.

“That you will never know,” I said.  “But rejoice!  All your dreams are fulfilled here.  Delight yourself.  Behold, there are beautiful female demons here, and banquets and sports and pleasures and soft beds and lovely scenes and all whom you had wished, in life, you had known.  Converse with them.”

“There is no desire in me,” he said.  “I want nothing.”

“You are surely in hell,” I replied, and I left him weeping.

 

Dialogues With The Devil, Taylor Caldwell, 1967.

Will Government Health Care Cover Spinal Reconstruction?

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If what America has been forced to witness in Congress the last two months wasn’t enough to convince those still willing to give them even the slimmest benefit of the doubt, what’s going on during this holiday break should be enough to demonstrate once and for all that almost to a man (and to a woman), those we send to Washington to (not) represent us are nothing more than walking poster children for entitlement derangement-syndrome.

Everyone knows that the House had a huge fight over the Stupak amendent and that it finally passed and was included in their nasty little version of health care “reform” legislation.  Blue Dog Democrats defied the Queen of the Nuthouse in support of the Stupak amendment; with much jumping up and down and great thumpings of their chests many claimed to agree with the vast majority of Americans that they could never, ever consider voting for any kind of health care “reform” that didn’t contain such proper constraints to prevent the use of taxpayer money to fund abortions.

Oh, it was quite a sight.  Do you remember?  Such weeping and wailing in defense of what is right in the face of so much angry Botox-enhanced “feminist” opposition, it almost brought a tear to my own cynical eyes.

Almost.

The Senate then rammed through their version of a health care “reform” bill on Christmas Eve.  It most visibly differed from the House bill by counting alleged savings from cutting Medicare payments to doctors twice, by not including a so-called “public option”, and by adding in a very last-minute, very lame, very loopholed section that, effectively, will allow taxpayer monies to fund abortions through government health insurance premium subsidies so that Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska would, along with his 100% Medicare expansion subsidy-in-perpetuity, become Harry Reid’s 60th and deciding vote for the monstrosity.  The Senate version also changes the standing rules in the Senate so that there may never be a repeal of the bill’s main unelected panel of bureaucrats.  You know, those beancounters who will set regulations imposed on doctors and patients, the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.  The Democrats want to keep them in unconstitutional control of your health care forever.

The next step is reconcilation of these two differing, green-be-damned-ceiling-high stacks of paper and then final passage of the same version of a bill in both the Nuthouse and the Senate.  But word is already out on the street that principle, not to mention adherence to their oath to uphold the Constitution, remains a foreign paradigm to Nuthouse Democrats and reconciliation is not really going to happen.  The Senate version, in all of its inalienable Rights-killing glory, is going to be swallowed basically its entirety by House Democrats.  Some may hold their noses just for show, but it’s going down in one, basically unchanged gulp. 

How do we know this?  These Sunday morning talk show statements don’t exactly sound like statements made by anyone who’s had any recent contact with their spine, do they?

“We’re not going to rubber-stamp the Senate bill. On the other hand, we recognize the realities in the Senate.”  Before the House was to give up the public option, we would want to be persuaded that there are other mechanisms in whatever bill comes out that will keep down premiums.  We’ve got to make sure that the final product is affordable.”  (Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee)

“Well, I’m sure the conference will yield some changes, but the reality is, having served in the House and its leadership, I understand sometimes its frustrations with the Senate, but if we are going to have a final law, it will look a lot more like the Senate version than the House version.”  (Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J)

“We want a public option to do basically three things:   Create more choice for insurers, create more competition for insurance companies, and to contain costs. So if we can come up with a process by which these three things can be done, then I’m all for it. Whether or not we label it a public option or not is of no consequence.”  (House Democratic Whip James Clyburn; who had previously personally appealed to the President not to yield on a “public option”)

 Since the most heated debate came over the Stupak amendment, which effectively replaced the House’s original lax verbiage with Hyde amendment assurance of no federal funding of abortions, let’s take a look at the Democrats that voted for it:

Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania Steve Driehaus of Ohio James Oberstar of Minnesota
Joe Baca of California Brad Ellsworth of Indiana David Obey of Wisconsin
John Barrow of Georgia Bobby Etheridge of North Carolina Solomon Ortiz of Texas
Marion Berry of Arkansas Bart Gordon of Tennessee Tom Perriello of Virginia
Sanford Bishop of Georgia Parker Griffith of Alabama Collin Peterson of Minnesota
John Boccieri of Ohio Baron Hill of Indiana Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota
Dan Boren of Oklahoma Tim Holden of Pennsylvania Nick Rahall of West Virginia
Bobby Bright of Alabama Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania Silvestre Reyes of Texas
Dennis Cardoza of California Marcy Kaptur of Ohio Ciro Rodriguez of Texas
Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania Dale Kildee of Michigan Mike Ross of Arkansas
Ben Chandler of Kentucky James Langevin of Rhode Island Timothy Ryan of Ohio
Travis Childers of Mississippi Dan Lipinski of Illinois John Salazar of Colorado
Jim Cooper of Tennessee Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts Heath Shuler of North Carolina
Jim Costa of California Jim Marshall of Georgia Ike Skelton of Missouri
Jerry Costello of Illinois James Matheson of Utah Vic Snyder of Arkansas
Henry Cuellar of Texas Mike McIntyre of North Carolina Zack Space of Ohio
Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania Charlie Melancon of Louisiana John Spratt of South Carolina
Artur Davis of Alabama Mike Michaud of Maine Bart Stupak of Michigan
Lincoln Davis of Tennessee Alan Mollohan of West Virginia John Tanner of Tennessee
Joe Donnelly of Indiana John Murtha of Pennsylvania Gene Taylor of Mississippi
Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania Richard Neal of Massachusetts Harry Teague of New Mexico
    Charlie Wilson of Ohio

 

One would rightly expect that if asked to vote on “reconciled” health care legislation that fails to include the proper ban on the use of taxpayer money to fund abortions, they will vote no.  But the fate of the largest single federal usurpation of individual liberty is now at stake.

Cue the flying pigs.