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.