Thompson stressed that he is a conservative. In fact, he signed the Americans for Tax Reform no-tax-increase pledge just yesterday. He also touts his business credentials as a supper club owner.

He knows he has a hard road against him. The 31st has produced one Republican in the last 100 years, Ron Brown, and it was Vinehout that beat him after only one term. While that election was in the Democratic wipeout of 2006. In fact, he outspent Vinehout by roughly a 2-1 margin.

Of interest to everybody, especially to those not in the 31st, Thompson answered that he thinks his brother Tommy will run for Senate against Russ Feingold. He further said that Tommy does need to give an answer, one way or the other, soon.

While we wait for the conference to begin, I may as well upload a few photos (not necessarily in order) I took on my way in.

In any case, I’m all over the place this weekend:

- Tonight and tomorrow – Defending the American Dream Summit, Chula Vista Resort and Wisconsin Dells Center, Wisconsin Dells.

- Sunday, 1 pm – Taxpayers’ Rally with Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch, Rosebud Cinema (6823 W. North Ave.), Wauwatosa.

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

Those dildo-sucking genocidal asshats have no fucking shame, or brains for that matter. Not only do they admit that PlaceboCare is now all about killing the unborn, this at a time when they’re losing the generational battle on abortion, but they also admit that this fucked-up repugnant piece of shit bill is nowhere near fucking “revenue-neutral”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For those of you who missed the lowlights of that plan, they’re going to take a pass on voting on the Senate version (partly because it is so toxic, SanFranNan can’t get to 216 with that bill as-is, partly because they can’t trust the Senate or Teh Won to hold up their ends of the bargain), instead working on Wreconcilation and stating that, if that gets 216, the leadership will stipulate that vote also applies to the Senate bill, even though that bill will never have been voted upon.

Bold prediction – if that gambit is used, the Supreme Court will strike down the entire thing before the end of 2011, and it won’t be a 5-4 vote.

Now that I’ve given you some material, it’s your turn to feed the beast.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The best part was Jim working “Badger” into the preview of Steve Kagen (D-Green Bay). Somehow, I don’t think he’ll rise up like a Phoenix.

The first salvo in the current numbers war came from Milwaukee County Executive, and candidate for the Republican nomination, Scott Walker, who wants to create the conditions to allow the private sector to create a minimum of 250,000 jobs by the end of his first term. That would roughly duplicate the feat achieved in former Governor Tommy Thompson’s first term.

The second salvo came from Barrett, who wants to, in his first three years, merely replace the 180,000 jobs lost since the “start” of the recession at the end of 2007, by spending somewhere north of $900 million up-front in taxes, both state and federal. At the same time, he scoffed at Walker’s notion that it is possible to do that and add an additional 70,000 jobs in a fourth year, much less without spending something in the neighborhood of $1 billion in taxes.

Salvo three came in from former Congressman, and Republican candidate for governor, Mark Neumann, who while refusing to play the numbers game, also says that it is the private sector that actually creates jobs.

ESPN reports on what is likely coming down the pike for anglers on virtually every body of water in the United States:

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning….

Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for “marine spatial planning” by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

Led by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.

Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

As a reminder, fishermen and hunters have done more to protect the environment than the EPA, the environment-enforcement part of the DNR, Greenpeace, the WWF, et al. We have a unique stake in a clean environment. In fact, when I go canoeing, I drink right out of the lake.

Revisions/extensions (6:20 pm 3/9/2010) - Allahpundit tracked down an old campaign promise Obama made to Sport Fishing (emphasis in AP’s post):

My administration would place the emphasis in fishery management where it belongs: in ensuring the long-term health and sustainability of stocks through the use of effective and appropriate conservation measures. Such an approach would not provide a preference for one management tool, such as a marine reserve, over another. Given sufficient management controls and data, a fishery can meet conservation objectives through a variety of catch controls and habitat-protection measures, including gear restrictions, bag limits or closures. In some cases, additional conservation measures may need to be taken to ensure a positive recreational marine-fishing experience for future generations of Americans. Recreational fishermen have not shirked from embracing such measures when needed to achieve long-term stock sustainability, as long as measures are matched to the problem. While marine reserves may be an effective means of achieving important goals, their use and design must be based on an assessment of impacts and balanced by a strong respect for the ability of recreational anglers to practice their sport. In my view, we need to be open to the use of a variety of innovative conservation tools and be prepared to use them if the science justifies their establishment, and if it has been determined that less-restrictive options will not achieve critical goals like rebuilding fish stocks. The decision to establish marine reserves should be made as a result of a transparent, science-based process and be the least intrusive possible to get the job done. Such a process should include outreach to the sport-fishing community to explain both the scientific basis for the action and the expected conservation benefits to future fishing generations if it is to gain the community’s active support.

As AP notes, it is an “official Barack Obama campaign promise”, which means that under the Jim Geraghty Principle, sooner or later, it will reach its expiration date.

It likely won’t happen all at once, but it will happen in bits and pieces, with the ultimate goal of no legal fishing happening if Obama stays in office the full two terms.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of drinking songs…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have at it.

The March 2010 Drinking Right will commence in 24 hours over at the usual place (Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W. Burleigh in Milwaukee). You are hereby instructed to be there. Failure is not an option.

Now, repeat after the EBS – “I will be at Drinking Right Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 7 pm.”

This has been the Emergency Blogging System.

Between February 2009 and January 2010, the combined OASDI Social Security “Trust Funds” spent $112 million more than it took in in taxes. As noted in the original post (below), the 12-month primary (or cash) deficit is the first since monthly records were kept in 1987, and likely the first since the “forever” fix of 1983.

The estimate using the Treasury’s numbers was a $91 million primary deficit, which instead of proving too pessimistic based on recent analysis of the difference between the Treasury Monthly Statements and the OACT final numbers, proved to be too optimistic.

To contrast, just last year, the Obama administration expected the FY2010 primary surplus in the combined “Trust Funds” to be $21,028 million (or $21.028 billion – I will use a single base to make sure the numbers hit home) as part of its FY2010 budget. Now, it’s estimated to be a $33,754 million deficit, a shift of $54,782 million to the red. That’s $54,782 million that, thanks to the well-over $1,000,000 million (or $1 trillion) deficit that was already planned for this year, needs to be borrowed by the Treasury on the open market.

The situation is not yet as dire as it was between 1975 and 1981, when the combined funds ran overall yearly deficits, or 1982, when the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund borrowed from the Hospital Insurance (Medicare Part A) fund to stay fully-capitalized. However, raising the withholding tax 14% and the self-employment tax 64% isn’t exactly going to play well, and like the previous time, it will only slow the inevitable.

Note – This is the original post from February 22, 2010.

I really could call this Part 1 of the double-dip bad news on Social Security because in the course of digging deeper into the numbers, I found a second bit of bad news. While Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary has not released the final financial data of the “Trust Funds” for January 2010, the Treasury Department has released the basis for those numbers, the January 2010 Monthly Treasury Report, and it appears that the combined OASDI “Trust Funds” have finally gone into a 12-month primary (or cash) deficit for the first time since monthly records were kept in 1988, to an estimated tune of $91 million.

I do have to note that the Office of the Chief Actuary does revise these numbers somewhat. However, adjusting them to match the cumulative difference between the Monthly Treasury Reports and the Social Security final numbers between January 2009 and November 2009 only drops the 12-month primary deficit to $63 million.

To contrast, just last year, the Obama administration expected the FY2010 primary surplus in the combined “Trust Funds” to be $21,028 million as part of its FY2010 budget. More on that in a bit.

The situation is not yet as dire as it was between 1975 and 1981, when the combined funds ran overall yearly deficits, or 1982, when the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund borrowed from the Hospital Insurance (Medicare Part A) fund to stay fully-capitalized. However, raising the withholding tax 14% and the self-employment tax 64% isn’t exactly going to play well, and like the previous time, it will only slow the inevitable.

Revisions/extensions (7:01 pm 2/23/2010) - Where’s my copy editor, or at least a new keyboard? I originally had the 12-month deficit as $98 million in the post (the graphic was and still is correct).

Why is this so noxious? The OCI pretty much has free hand in regulating the entire insurance industry. Given every driver in the state has to have auto insurance, and if PlaceboCare gets put into law, every person would have to have health insurance, the philosophy of the operation of that power is something that should not be divorced by three years from the expression of will by the public.

Oh, and before you Democrats scream that it was a partisan Tommy Thompson that got the term changed from a fixed term to one of the governor’s discretion, it was done by a Democratic Legislature.

Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District Republican Party today voted in overwhelming numbers to officially endorse Ashland County District Attorney Sean Duffy as their choice to defeat Chairman David Obey in November.

Of those who voted to endorse, Sean Duffy received 406 delegate votes, or 84 percent of the vote to Dan Mielke’s 78 delegate votes, or 16 percent of the vote.

“I’m humbled and extremely grateful to Republicans in the 7th District for their official endorsement. I’ve never seen the Party more unified or more energized. Our positive message of job creation and fiscal responsibility has clearly resonated,” said District Attorney Duffy. “Dave Obey’s big government spending spree has mortgaged our children’s future, slowed our economic recovery and driven American into record debt. The contrast between us is clear and simple – Obey puts his faith in government bureaucrats, and I put my faith in the American people.”

The Duffy for Congress Campaign has raised a record $400,000 – twice as much as any previous Obey challenger raised in an entire election cycle – while being highlighted by the Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, and named by the Washington Independent as the #3 conservative in America to watch in 2010.

Sean Duffy was first elected as Ashland County District Attorney in 2002 and has served in that role for seven years. As District Attorney, Duffy has aggressively compiled a 90 percent conviction rate. He is three-time World Champion Lumberjack athlete, ESPN Outdoor Games analyst, and former MTV Real World cast member.

Good luck Sean.

Yet the reported $7.677 trillion liability shows that it’s still nowhere near enough to meet future promises, primarily because:

• FDR and his smarties didn’t build the improved life expectancy of future generations into the program. If they had, today’s normal retirement age would be somewhere between 70 and 75, instead of its current 66-67, depending on one’s year of birth.
• The method of indexing chosen in the mid-1970s has caused benefits to go up faster than the real living standards of everyone else, and has subtly changed the program’s perceived purpose from preventing destitution to providing the means to ensure a lower middle-class lifestyle.
• The smarties also didn’t anticipate lower birth rates that were already occurring, and which were then dampened even further almost 40 years later by legalized abortion. As a result, at the end of 2008 there were less than 2.6 employed workers for each Social Security beneficiary (143.3 million divided by 55.8 million).
• Additionally, as shown in several previous columns (one is here), the so-called Social Security “trust fund” has been wantonly raided for the past 40 years and used to pay for the government’s everyday operations. The “trust fund” contains virtually nothing except $2-plus trillion in IOUs from the rest of the government, which is itself trillions of dollars in debt.

Because of all of this, even the astronomical taxes noted earlier have been less than benefits paid for most of the past year — and it’s going to get worse. The crisis that supposedly didn’t exist in 2005 is here. Thanks, smarties.

The bad news is that is the good news, and that was based mostly on the Trustees’ look at the long-term health of Social Security from last year. Medicare’s unfunded liabilities are much worse – $38.1 trillion (again, as of last year), while Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, which aren’t even accounted for in the Treasury Department’s 2009 Financial Report, lost $100 billion last year and may end up costing the government between $1 trillion and $5 trillion in losses.

A bonus item from Tom’s tease back at BizzyBlog – that employed/beneficiary ratio dropped from 2.56 (rounded up to 2.6 in the column) at the end of 2008 to 2.39 at the end of January 2010, and is likely to worsen through the end of the year.

• FY2010 – $1,500 billion (which The Hill notes is $56 billion less than the White House Office of Management and Budget estimate due to the CBO estimating less spending – H/T Zip)
• FY2011 – $1,341 billion (versus OMB’s $1,267 billion)
• FY2012 – $915 billion (versus OMB’s $828 billion)
• FY2013 – $747 billion (versus OMB’s $727 billion)
• FY2014 – $724 billion (versus OMB’s $706 billion)
• FY2015 – $793 billion (versus OMB’s $752 billion)
• FY2016 – $894 billion (versus OMB’s $778 billion)
• FY2017 – $940 billion (versus OMB’s $778 billion)
• FY2018 – $1,001 billion (versus OMB’s $785 billion)
• FY2019 – $1,152 billion (versus OMB’s $908 billion)
• FY2020 – $1,253 billion (versus OMB’s $1,003 billion)

The total sum of the deficits as estimated by the CBO is $9,761 billion (or $9.761 trillion), versus the OMB’s $8,532 billion estimate. That is attributable to a higher estimate of tax revenue by the OMB; both the OMB and CBO estimate that there will be about $45 trillion in government spending over the next 10 years.

Further, I note that, while the bulk of the Bush tax cuts would be allowed to expire (something the Government Accountability Office does not assume in its “alternate” scenario touched on in the prior post), and discretionary spending is lower than in the baseline (due entirely to lowered spending in defense), the increased costs of PlaceboCare make the overall picture in FY2020 look quite a bit like the free-spending “alternate”, which assumes discretionary spending remains at the bloated 8.7% GDP. Indeed, the cost of “mandatory” spending and net interest would be roughly 94.7% of the entire tax take of the federal government, higher than said GAO “alternate” (approximately 93%) or the pre-budget “baseline” (81.7%).

Before I really delve into the GAO’s January 2010 update on “The Federal Government’s Long-Term Fiscal Outlook”, I have to briefly explain the two major scenarios they use; the “Baseline Extended” and the “Alternate”. Both are based on the Congressional Budget Office’s January 2010 10-year baseline. The major difference on the revenue side is the Baseline Adjusted assumes that the expiring tax cuts (both Bush’s and Obama’s) expire on schedule and the Alternate Minimum Tax does not get indexed for inflation (the indexing currently must be done by Congress yearly), then continue to be at 20.2% of GDP (the 2020 level) after 2020, while the Alternate assumes that the tax cuts continue through 2020 and the AMT continues to be indexed through 2020, then adjust to the 40-year historical average of 18.1% of GDP. On the spending side, unlike the Baseline Extended, the Medicare “Doc Fix” (again, done by Congress yearly) continues to be done, the refundable portion of tax credits due to expire don’t through 2020, and discretionary spending goes up at the rate of economic growth (or a constant 8.7% of GDP, versus the Baseline Extended assumption of going up by the rate of inflation through 2020 then remaining at 6.7% of GDP).

Under the Baseline Extended scenario, which the GAO notes has revenues higher than historical average and discretionary spending below historical average, the unfunded liability over the next 75 years is $41.1 trillion. That compares very unfavorably to the fall 2009 estimate of $36.1 trillion in unfunded liability. Of note, the GAO says that either taxes would immediately need to go up 24.2% and remain that much higher than their projections throughout the next 75 years, which would leave taxes at 25.3% of GDP by 2020, or discretionary spending be immediately reduced by 20.0% and remain down at that level throughout the next 75 years, to close that gap.

However, we know that government will not allow spending to grow by only the rate of inflation; hence the Alternate scenario is operative. The GAO notes that both revenues and discretionary spending under that scenario are roughly the same as their historical averages. Under that scenario, the unfunded liability over the next 75 years is $76.4 trillion. That’s right – a $1 trillion deficit every year for the next 75 years. That is also a $14.3 trillion increase in unfunded liabilities since last fall, when it was $62.1 trillion.

Some items of note from Ryan and the House Republicans on the Budget Committee:

• By 2020, roughly 93 cents of every dollar of Federal revenue will be spent on major
  entitlement programs and net interest costs.
• By 2030, net interest payments on the Federal Government’s accumulating debt will
  exceed 8 percent of gross domestic product [GDP] – making them the largest single
  expenditure in the Federal budget.
• To close the fiscal gap today, the government would have to immediately raise taxes by
  50.5 percent (note, that would raise the tax take beyond 2020 to 27.2% of GDP), or cut non-interest spending by 34.2 percent.
• If no action is taken in the next 10 years, in 2020 the government would have to raise
  taxes by 60.7 percent (or to 29.1% of GDP), or cut noninterest spending by 40.2 percent

Figures 3 and 4 in the GAO report, which outline revenues and composition of spending under the Baseline Extended and Alternate scenarios respectively, are must-sees. Even under the Baseline Extended model, spending on interest, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will exceed total revenues by 2040. It’s worse under the Alternate scenario – the major entitlements and interest will exceed total revenues long before 2030, and Social Security alone plus interest will exceed total revenues in 2040.

For those of you who think that the problem is low revenues, I decided to mash the Baseline Extended revenue projection into the Alternate spending chart, which is the most-likely scenario given that the majority of “Republican” Senators refused to find $10 billion in a $3,600 billion budget to cut to pay for a month’s worth of additional unemployment benefits.

The red-boxed 473,000 jobs added in February was a really poor result. It trailed the 2004-2008 average of 714,000 by about 240,000. January’s actual result was only 72,000 worse than the 2004-2008 average. That’s 168,000-job swing in the wrong direction.

Even though February 2010’s +473,000 is less than 2008’s +516,000, the seasonally adjusted job loss for February of -36,0000 — the one number the press and everyone else will singularly focus on — is less than 2008’s -50,000. Why? Because the 2009 disaster is mucking up the seasonal adjustment calculations, making the +473K look better than +516K, when it obviously isn’t.

As Tom asked, “If, according to you guys, we were in a recession in February 2008 (an assertion I have disagreed with since NBER made the call that it began in December 2007), when the economy added a lackluster (by traditional February standards) 516,000 jobs, what do you call it when February 2010 sees 43,000 fewer jobs added?”

Lest one says that it’s because there were fewer jobs in 2010 than in 2008, let’s first take a look at the actual number of jobs in January 2008 (135,840,000) versus the number of jobs in January 2010 (127,606,000), and see what the percentage increases between January and February in both years were. The rate of job-number change between 1/2008-2/2008 was +0.380%. The rate of job-number change between 1/2010-2/2010 was +0.371%.

Next, let’s compare that to the “seasonally-adjusted” job-number change for the same time frames. In January 2008, there were 137,941,000 “seasonally-adjusted” jobs, with a drop of 50,000 “seasonally-adjusted” jobs in February 2008, for a rate of job-number change between 1/2008-2/2008 of -0.0362%. In January 2010, there were 129,562,000 “seasonally-adjusted” jobs, with a drop of 36,000 “seasonally-adjusted” jobs in February 2010, for a rate of job-number change between 1/2010-2/2010 of -0.0278%.

In short, despite what the chattering class says, the jobs market is not even at the point where it was near the “start” of the recession, much less its average between 2004 and 2008. Indeed, there were fewer jobs in February 2010 than there were in any other February since at least 2000 (note; the BLS statistics I’m relying on only go back to 1/2000).

To be fair, I do have to note that the February low in the 2000’s happened in 2003, when there were 128,660,000 actual (non-adjusted) jobs, and that month’s 412,000 improvement from January 2003 was weaker. However, unlike 2003, the immediate-future tax and regulatory climate is much worse now.

Revisions/extensions (3:00 pm 3/5/2010) - Corrected part of the quoted post from Tom since he corrected it on BizzyBlog.

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.

However, I do disagree that the body blow was how to pay for it. The Senate had before it, at a point when they needed absolutely no Republican support and no need for what Michelle Malkin has aptly called “Wreconciliation”, a bill that did everything the Left has ever wanted out of PlaceboCare but one “minor” detail – full federal funding for and a mandate on private insurance to provide abortion-on-demand. In order to get that into PlaceboCare, they sacrificed the official public “option” (with no real change in the cost), shifted a big part of the payment of the costs from “the rich” to businesses deemed to be too generous with their health-care plans, and threw in so much bribery that the House initially blanched at taking it up.

While most of the activities will happen on Saturday, there is an opening reception Friday night. The list of confirmed speakers is rather impressive:

Vicki McKenna – WISN Radio, WIBA Radio
Lord Christopher Monckton – Columnist, inventor, and Advisor to Margaret Thatcher
Honorable James Sensenbrenner – Wisconsin 8th District
Herman Cain – Author, Radio Talk Show Host
Steve Moore – Wall Street Journal
Grover Norquist – Americans for Tax Reform
John Fund – Wall Street Journal
Tim Phillips – President Americans for Prosperity
Mark Block – AFP Wisconsin State Director
J.B. Van Hollen – Wisconsin Attorney General
Joe Wurzelbacher – “Joe The Plumber”
Eric O’Keefe – CEO, Sam Adams Alliance
Linda Hansen – Wisconsin Prosperity Network
Tim Nerenz – The Oldenburg Group
Niger Innis – Congress of Racial Equality
Dr. David Gratzer – Author, The Cure
Debra Waller – Chairman & CEO, Jockey International
Phil Kerpen – Nat.l Policy Director, AFP
Paul Driessen – APR, Esq.
Pat Synder – WSAU Radio
Fred Kelly Grant – Author, Justice My Ass
Michael Reagan – National Talk Show Host and son of President Ronald Reagan

Be there.

The Washingotn Post is reporting that key advisers in the Obama administration are set to recommend that Attorney General Eric Holder be overridden and the trials of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and several others be conducted in the military tribunal system instead of civilian courts.

It remains to be seen whether the expiration of this particular promise to the Islamokazi-appeasing Left is due more to the incredible amount of bipartisan (original meaning) backlash it has caused or a cynical deal to unexpire the promise to close Club Gitmo.

A crusade or struggle characterized by the participants willingness to sacrifice their own lives for the benefit of said crusade or struggle.

It’s now apparent that the Democrat leadership of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry, dancing on another 36,000 job deaths, Reid, have decided to do anything and everything they can to pass Placebocare.  Which version or what is actually contained in Placebocare doesn’t even matter to them anymore.  They will enact any version or combination of the government takeover of health care that they can find enough votes or contrivance of procedures to get it passed. 

The vehicle that is getting the most focus for enacting Placebocare is via reconciliation.  For the life of me I can’t figure out how they use reconciliation as there isn’t a bill that both Houses are working on.  In my mind, the only way to get Placebocare passed, as things stand today, is to convince the House to pass the Senate bill just as it stands.

Whether the Democrats attempt reconciliation, pass the Senate bill or use some other mechanism, the implications on their November prospects are the same; Horrible!  Note the following quotes and polls:

“What the President is really asking House Democrats to do is hold hands, jump off a cliff and hope Harry Reid catches them,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference said.  “And, Harry Reid will have no incentive to catch them because by the time he gets to the reconciliation bill, the President will have already signed the health care bill into law.”

“It was another emphatic denunciation by [Democratic Rep. Stephanie] Herseth Sandlin of the reconciliation process, a controversial technique allowing Democratic leadership in the Senate to bypass an otherwise required 60-vote super majority. And it also was a clear rejection of the Senate version of health-care reform, approved when Democrats still had the 60 votes needed for a super majority.” (Kevin Woster, “Herseth Sandlin says no to Senate health bill, reconciliation,” Rapid City Journal, 03/04/10)

“House Democrats have said they don’t trust the Senate to actto make changes to the Senate bill, which the House would likely have to pass before they’re able to take up a new bill to make changes to that original legislation.” (Michael O’Brien, “Stabenow: House and Dems hammering out final health bill details,” The Hill, 03/04/10)

 “… 48 percent saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on health care reform.” (Paul Steinhauser, “CNN Poll: Health care provisions popular but overall bills unpopular,” CNN, 02/24/10)

Even Howard Dean, no shrinking violet when it comes to larger government and bureaucratic controls, recognizes that budget gimmickry of Placebocare will cause the Democrats pain not only in 2010 but also in the 2012 election:

“The plan, as it comes from the Senate, hangs out every Democrat who’s running for office to dry — including the president, in 2012, because it makes him defend a plan that isn’t in effect essentially yet,” Dean said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show.

With the heated, negative perception of Placebocare, even amongst the Democrats themselves, a reasonable question would be, “Why, if the results are surely political death, would Obama, Pelosi and Reid push for the passage of Placebocare?”  The answer is very straight forward; the Democrat leadership is perfectly willing to commit political suicide for themselves and all those around them, if they are able to move their crusade forward.  Obama, Pelosi and Reid are American jihadists.

If you believe that my use of the term “jihadist” is nothing but hyperbole, you haven’t been paying attention.  Look at the words of Nancy Pelosi.  Numerous publications including the WSJ, have reported Pelosi telling members of her caucus that she is willing to lose seats if they can pass Placebocare.  More to the point, were the Democrats to lose the number of seats that they are now estimated to lose, Pelosi herself would certainly lose the Speaker position.

One of the confounding challenges of combating Islamic jihadists is that they don’t fear their own death.  In fact, Islamic jihadists are told that they will garner a great reward in the afterlife if they sacrifice their physical bodies.  In like manner, the Democrats are willing to sacrifice their political lives to ensure the securing a key victory in their crusade.  President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have been working hard to ensure the House jihadists that they too will receive great rewards should they lose their political life.

In the end, whether Placebocare succeeds or fails in the House will depend on one thing; will the House members choose the life they know or will they choose the rewards promised them in their political afterlife?

Andrew McCarthy unloaded on the Senate “Republicans” who dumped all over Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) for daring to ask that, in a budget of $3,600 billion, that $10 billion in excessive spending (or 0.28%) be found to pay for a month’s extension of unemployment benefits that were already extended from 6 months to 15-17 months depending on the state:

In sum, Bunning’s battle gave Republicans a chance to make points about runaway deficit spending, the fraudulence of PAYGO posturing, the foolish redistribution of wealth to create expensive and unproductive government jobs, unemployment-benefit extensions that Democrats refuse to pay for and that actually increase unemployment, and the monstrous rationing that would be wrought by Obamacare. So, did Republicans rally behind Bunning? Not a chance.

Why? Why abandon this fight when the GOP has the facts on its side? Why no enthusiasm when a year of Obama’s forced march to crony socialism has the public more receptive than ever to the case for slashing government? Simple: Republicans are afraid of being demagogued — as Democrats and the media demagogued Bunning — as wanting to cut off funding (i.e., money we don’t have) for unemployment insurance and the usual laundry list of other Big Government baubles like COBRA coverage, satellite TV dishes, the “highway trust fund,” etc. Republicans also did not want their own sorry PAYGO history rehashed.

Here’s the sad truth: For all the shining they did at last week’s White House “summit” on health care, when it gets down to actually putting the brakes on the Big Gummint Express, most of today’s Republicans are AWOL. They’re great at the debate society. But making the fight on something concrete, really saying no when it means grinding redistribution to a halt, means taking the slings and arrows. No thanks, they say, let’s just make the whole thing go away on a voice vote, the sooner the better. Indeed, while Senator Bunning should be lauded for engaging this fight, it is telling that he took it on only after deciding not to seek reelection.

In a Corner post this past weekend called “Transformation,” I dissented from the heady palaver on the Right about how Democrats are headed for a November Waterloo. I think the Left has already factored in the inevitability of setbacks — perhaps heavy setbacks — in the next few election cycles. While our side swoons over the prospect, the statists coldly calculate that these losses are a price well worth paying in order to impose a transformative takeover of the economy.

It is a perfectly rational calculation for two reasons.

First, with a significantly bigger and more powerful government bureaucracy, there will be many avenues for leadership to reward Democrats who lose their seats after casting the unpopular votes necessary to enact the Left’s program. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who spent his post-Clinton wilderness months in a lucrative sinecure at Freddie Mac, knows well how this game works — and, under Obama’s command, the economy is becoming one big Freddie.

Second, and more important, Democrats know the electoral setbacks will only be temporary. They are banking on the assurance that Republicans merely want to win elections and have no intention of rolling back Obamacare, much less of dismantling Leviathan.

For my money (while I still have some), that’s an eminently sound bet. The Bunning battle, in which the GOP was nowhere to be found, is the proof. Bunning just wanted Congress to live within its gargantuan means. Yet, the Washington Post ridiculed him: “angry and alone, a one-man blockade against unemployment benefits, Medicare payments to doctors, satellite TV to rural Americans and paychecks to highway workers.” That’s outrageously unfair, but it is a day at the beach compared to the Armageddon that would be unleashed upon any attempt to undo Obama’s welfare state on steroids.

As it turns out, Republicans didn’t have the stomach for a fight over wealth transfers that plainly exacerbate the problem of unemployment. Why would anyone think they’d take on a far more demanding war, in which Democrats and the legacy media would relentlessly indict them for “denying health insurance to millions of Americans”?

Even if the GOP gets a majority for a couple of cycles, even if President Obama is defeated in his 2012 reelection bid, Obamacare will be forever. And once the public sees that the GOP won’t try to dismantle Obamacare, it will lose any enthusiasm for Republicans. Democrats will eventually return to power, and it will be power over a much bigger, much more intrusive government.

The historical strategy of the Left has been to create a new Leviathan growth of Socialist government every 30 years, stave off defeat of said Leviathan until it becomes so ingrained into the culture that even those that would have worked to kill it both before it its creation and during its infancy accept its place in the culture (which usually takes 15-20 years), then repeat the cycle.

2009-2010 school year (aka FY2010) – $56,500 in salary, $95,316 including benefits
2010-2011 school year – $56,500 in salary, $100,005 including benefits (or a 4.92% increase overall)

Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, the median per-capita income between 2006 and 2008 in the city was $19,092, with the median family income $42,950. I doubt the average resident in the private sector had $40,000 in benefits to boost their total compensation, or the equivalent of 12 weeks of vacation.

Fox notes that places Californians at the head of all three of the committees that will deal with PlaceboCare 4.1 (the aforementioned Stark “temporarily” heading Ways and Means, Henry Waxman running Energy and Commerce, and George Miller running Education and Labor), as well as a fourth major committee (Howard Berman running Foreign Affairs), and said “Ethics” Committee (Zoe Lofgren).

Guess it’s time to to dip into the video vault…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Revisions/extensions (7:37 pm 3/3/2010) - Roger L. Simon lists just some of the lowlights of Stark’s raving madness. As Simon says, “Do these Democrats have a death wish? Have they gone completely bonkers? Or did Nancy Pelosi’s plastic surgeon misfire and accidentally inject the Botox into her brain?”

R&E part 2 (2:35 pm 3/5/2010) - It’s now Rangel ally Sander Levin “in charge”. As Ed notes, it’s actually SanFranNan and Chris Van Hollen that run Ways and Means.

I’m sure Shoebox can, and will, provide a better rundown than I can. Good luck Dave, and may we be calling you Sen. Thompson this time next year.