Yesterday the White House circulated a memo by pollster Joel Benenson. It was designed to create momentum for Obamacare by convincing wayward House Democrats that support for the President’s plan has been building since the State of the Union. As with everything else that comes out of the White House on health care these days, the memo is nothing but pure fantasy.

This Tuesday, Gallup released its latest poll showing that by a 48%-45% margin Americans would tell their representative in Congress to vote against President Obama’s health plan. Compare that to the last time Gallup asked the question in January, Americans supported the President’s plan 49%-46%. That’s a net six point loss in support for the President’s plan since the State of the Union. That is momentum. Against Obamacare.

And Gallup isn’t alone. The Associated Press released a poll this week showing that 68% of Americans believe the President and Congressional Democrats shouldn’t pass their health care plan without Republican support.  “Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats’ current health-care plan,” Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen add in today’s Washington Post, “A solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan.”

Yesterday was particularly tough for the President’s plan. First, the White House underwhelmed the Democratic Caucus in a presentation of the new (still unwritten) reconciliation bill. Then, the Senate Parliamentarian killed the Democrats favored procedural path for passage by signaling he would rule that President Obama must sign the original Senate bill into law before the Senate could act on the President’s new reconciliation package. Finally, the Associated Press reported that House leaders have abandoned all hope of finding language to satisfy Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-MI) concerns that the Senate bill funds abortion. By the end of the day, the leftist firedoglake site had dropped its count of committed House Democrats for passage to 189 (Speaker Pelosi needs 216 for passage).

With the loss of Stupak and his 7-12 member caucus opposed to taxpayer-funded-abortions, Speaker Pelosi will have to find the remaining dozen plus votes from the ranks of cost conscious Blue Dog Democrats. For example, Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) who voted against the House bill in the fall explained at the time: “According to the Congressional Budget Office, the House health care bill will actually increase federal health care spending over the long term, while proposals being considered by the Senate would have a net decrease.” But according to a new CBO score of the Senate bill passed on Christmas Eve (the one with the Cornhusker Kickback), it actually increases health care spending. And the reconciliation bill only make things worse, since, among other increased spending measures, President Obama “fixed” the Cornhusker Kickback not by eliminating the new spending, but by extending it to all 50 states.

With no votes piling up, and  “yes” votes materializing, the Democratic plans to shove Obamacare down the throats of the American people are becoming more and more desperate. This Monday, the House Budget Committee will begin markup on the new reconciliation bill even though actual legislative text does not exist for it yet. The Democrats plan to pass a shell of a bill through the appropriate committees so that the Rules Committee can then substitute the bill that is being drafted completely behind closed doors by the White House and Senate and Democrat leaders.

Politico reports that despite the Parliamentarian’s initial verbal ruling, they will press on with their Slaughter Rule plan to pass the Senate bill without voting on it. NRO’s Yuval Levin quips: “Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it.”

But President Obama’s progressive base is way past rational thought when it comes to health care. They want it passed at any cost. And as George Will pointed out yesterday, the very essence of progressivism sublimates the democratic process to the rule of experts in Washington. No one can say if this bill will finally pass, but if it does, it is abundantly clear that our republican form of government will be permanently damaged by it.

From ESPN:

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.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with “facts,” in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the New York Times reported on Feb. 12 that “President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities.”

Read the whole thing here

How far off course have we gotten when environmental extremists can exert this much influence over a sitting president?

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-Cnation

Another day, another stream of health care fantasy from the White House. A quick look at two health care events from yesterday, one in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and the other in Tawas City, Michigan, clearly exposes the yawing gap between the Obama administration’s health care rhetoric and cold hard legislative reality. First in Glenside, President Barack Obama turned up the volume on his already tired “final push” for health care reform. In addition to the usual litany of false claims about the legislation in Congress (in fact, you don’t get to keep your doctor, it isn’t paid for, it doesn’t reduce costs) President Obama also repeated his new line from his doctors-in-lab-coats address last week:

We have now incorporated almost every single serious idea from across the political spectrum about how to contain the rising cost of health care … Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill…

But, as we pointed out last week, there is one not-so-minor difference between the Senate bill and the President’s new proposal: the Senate bill actually exists. Now, Democrats may be telling their conservative counterparts that they will have reconciliation legislative text in front of the Budget Committee by tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath. The “fixes” that the White House is promising wavering House Democrats they will make all sound easy at first glance: 1) scaling back the tax on high-end health insurance policies; 2) closing the Medicare D loophole; 3) boosting insurance subsidies; 4) increasing Medicaid payments; and 5) fixing the Cornhusker Kickback. But when you take a second look, you see that all of these “fixes” will cost more money. Just look at the Cornhusker Kickback which the President chose to address, not by taking away Nebraska’s special Medicaid payments, but by extending those extra Medicaid payments to every state! Every single item in the President’s proposal either increases spending or reduces new revenues. And he didn’t put forward any way to pay for them. If passing health reform were as easy as giving away free candy, Obamacare would be law already. Finding a way to pay for all these fixes is going to be just as difficult as every earlier effort to pay for this bill. So don’t expect any solutions anytime soon.

And we haven’t even mentioned “abortion” yet, which brings us to Tawas City where Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) hosted his own health care townhall. Now the Associated Press headline may read “Stupak: Health bill abortion fight can be resolved” but then the AP actually reports “Rep. Bart Stupak said he expects to resume talks with House leaders this week…” In other words, there is no agreement yet. And what kind of timeline is Stupak looking at for such an agreement? WJRT reports: “[Stupak]’s confident a bill will pass sometime this year.” “Sometime this year” is a bit longer of a timeframe than the White House deadline of next Thursday. But even more importantly, look at the process Stupak suggests for final passage: “According Stupak, until the House and the Senate bills and the president’s proposals become one piece of legislation, health care will remain in limbo.” Considering that everyone agrees that abortion cannot be fixed in reconciliation, Stupak’s position is a total rejection of the White House’s current plan to have the House pass the Senate bill now on the promise that the Senate might come back and try and fix it sometime in the future. Stupak clearly wants “one piece of legislation,” and the only way to accomplish that is to scrap the current Senate bill and start over.

In the meantime, legislative “limbo” has not been kind to the Senate bill. Every day seems to bring news of yet another yes vote switching to undecided or no vote. Just yesterday, former-yes votes Reps. Michael Arcuri (D-NY), Dan Maffei (D-NY), Bill Owens (D-NY) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL) all confirmed they were either now undecided or would vote no. And Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL), who voted no the first time, said he would suspend his campaign for Governor just so he could come back to Washington to vote against Obamacare again. The President can travel the country talking about an up-or-down vote for “our proposal” all he wants, but the reality is he simply doesn’t have the votes in the House for the only piece of health care legislation that actually exists.

—–

The author of this reprehensible piece of ‘journalism’, Christina Hoag, should be ashamed of herself for her blatant and intentional - since there’s no way she couldn’t know the whole story - misrepresentation of the types of situations she claims to be reporting on. In almost all cases, the offending item (noose/swastika/spray-painted racial slur, etc…) has been shown to have been placed by a member of the target minority themselves as a way to garner sympathy for their ‘plight’.

Ms. Hoag won’t tell you, for example, that the UC San Diego noose was planted by a (unspecified) minority female, while the ‘compton cookout‘ was organized by a black man.

Why? Because it won’t fit the narrative of Hoag and her ilk that the white man is the biggest single perpetrator of racism among us.

The fact, glaringly obvious to anyone capable of honest analysis, is that nothing is further from the truth.

The overwhelming majority of racism in this country emanates from the very people who cry about it the loudest….who also happen to be the very same people who view every person and every situation in terms of race. It’s always race first. Before character. Before merit. Before accomplishment.

It is a disgraceful situation that will continue to tear our country apart unless the people - you know, us -  and our elected representatives develop the spine to say ‘No More”. And, of course, until responsible news organizations throw agenda-driven hacks like Ms. Hoag out onto the street where they belong.

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-Cnation

On March 5th of last year, firefighter Travis Ulerick, of Dublin, Indiana, introduced President Barack Obama at a White House summit on health care. Upon hearing the first rumblings of dissent about the President’s plan, Ulerick tells USA Today he thought at the time: "I definitely think it’s going to have to be a huge consensus." It’s now 12 months later, and the only consensus that exists among the American people is strong opposition to the President’s health care plan.The White House, however, is now completely uninterested in establishing a consensus for their health care plan before they jam it through Congress. Today, in a speech from the White House, President Barack Obama will urge Congress to move swiftly to pass his health care plan by implementing a legislative tactic that can be used to pass legislation that has failed to gain broad support among the American people. It’s known as reconciliation.

Reconciliation has been used in the past, but only for procedural reasons, not because the underlying policy change was unable to muster 60-vote support. So, for example, the 1996 welfare reform law signed by President Bill Clinton was passed through reconciliation, but it also ended up getting 78 votes in the Senate (28 of them from Democrats). President Ronald Reagan also passed seven bills through reconciliation, but every single one of those bills passed through a Democratically-controlled House and won Senate votes from both parties. Never has reconciliation been used to pass any bill on purely partisan lines.

In an attempt to provide some political cover for his nakedly-partisan health care push, President Obama released a letter yesterday identifying "four policy priorities" that "I am exploring." Specifically he is "open" to: 1) random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid; 2) $50 million in cash for states that reform medical malpractice laws in ways the White House approves of; 3) increased spending on Medicaid; and 4) language that clearly allows Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to qualify as health insurance.

The White House has not yet released any legislative language for any of these "policy priorities." In fact, his letter does not even promise that whatever legislation the White House does eventually offer will contain language on each of these issues. He only says he is "exploring" the issues. This is beyond a sham of bipartisanship. Details matter. The American people must be allowed to see real legislative language and they must be allowed the time to read and comment on it before any votes are taken.

Most importantly, simply adding so-called conservative ideas to the bill does not change the fundamental direction of the proposal. The bills before Congress, including the President’s new additions, would still result in a massive shift of power over health care financing and delivery of care to Washington politicians and bureaucrats. The public has spoken, and it does not want a federal take over of health care.

Julia Denton of Yorktown, Virginia, another of the Obama administration’s hand-picked March 5 health summit attendees, tells USA Today: "The legislation as proposed is so long and tough to read that people are afraid of it. Health care is such a highly personal issue. I cannot see how anyone will win if unpopular reforms are forced through over vigorous opposition." Denton is 100% correct. The American people should not have unpopular health care reform forced down their throats in the face of strong bipartisan opposition. At a bare minimum they should have the opportunity to see actual legislation from the White House and be allowed to speak to their members about it while they are home in their districts over Easter break.

Conservatives should continue to press the Administration and leaders in Congress for bipartisan solutions that are based on elements of common ground, including letting states take the lead on health reform, tackling the tax treatment of health insurance, sensible insurance market reforms, and an honest commitment to fixing existing health care programs that the government already controls.

For real bipartisanship to work, the President must set aside the current proposals that are based on consolidating power over health care in Washington and instead embrace solutions that would give individuals and families more control over health care dollars and decisions. Simply adjusting the magnitude of the existing proposals or adding so-called conservative provisions does not change this fundamental direction.

Having failed to convince the country that we should reorder one-sixth of our economy (health care) in one fell swoop, liberals in the Administration and Congress are now doubling down and moving on to the next big thing. This time it’s the transformation of everything, through climate legislation. One could almost stand agape, admiring the boldness of the overreach, were not so much prosperity at stake.

The latest attempt to force the U.S. economy to turn away from readily available, affordable fuels and leaving it to the tender mercies of untried, experimental and expensive technologies is a bipartisan effort by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). A legislative package from them, according to The Washington Post on Saturday, would individually cap how much traditional energy the main pillars of the American economy would be able to use. This would of course cripple our economy and threaten our prosperity. Any doubts about how broad and deep this effort is are dispelled by reading the following paragraph in the Post:

According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.

The reason the Senators could not act through their preferred vehicle, a “cap-and-trade” scheme that would put an across-the-economy ceiling on the use of traditional sources of fuel such as coal, oil and natural gas—above which companies using these fuels would have to pay for extra rights—is that the whole edifice of global warming is now falling apart.

It is collapsing with such rapidity that it is worth pausing from time to time to take stock.

The foundations of such edifice rest on a single assumption. This hypothesis—one that drove many people, even some reasonable ones, to contemplate upending the world as we know it — is that that traditional fuels will have cataclysmic consequences on the environment because they emit gases that make the world too hot.

The authority to turn this assumption into fact rested largely on a U.N. document - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report - which declared climate change “unequivocal” and its man-made origin “very likely.” The purpose of the IPCC report was to turn hypothesis into fact.

The reason Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman had to turn away from cap-and-trade, and target industries individually, is that the idea of an iron-clad scientific consensus is now being revealed to be a bit, shall we say, exaggerated. The IPCC’s turning of hypothesis into fact now looks less like the scientific process and more like the magician you paid $50 an hour to pull flowers out of hats at your daughter’s birthday.

The first scales began to come off the global warming edifice in November, when emails from the University of East Anglia in the UK revealed how scientists at that key global research center had tried to suppress the opinion of peers who dissented from their view and hid evidence that countered the theory of man-made global warming.

Then the U.N.’s Copenhagen summit that was supposed to produce a global agreement to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol fell apart in December, with the key countries refusing to hobble their own economies for the sake of science that was less and less there.

Then, last month it started to become clear that the 2007 IPCC report was more hollow than hallowed. Its claims that half the Netherlands is below sea level was off by a factor of two. Ditto for the outlandish fear-mongering that the glaciers of the Himalayas would melt by 2035. The IPCC was forced to admit that, actually, its projections were that that would happen by 2350. Oops!

Then last Friday, the news pages of The Wall Street Journal published yet one more devastating story on the IPCC and its hapless chairman, Rajendra Pachauri. The front page story detailed how inconclusive science, political pressure and shoddy administration all led to the Cassandra-like pronouncements of the IPCC report. Imagine that: politicians putting pressure on scientists to come up with theories that would vastly add to their regulatory and taxing powers.

Things have gotten so desperate that Al Gore himself had to come out of seclusion and pen a piece for The New York Times. On Saturday he implored readers that all these cascading events didn’t amount to a hill of beans. The article was vintage Gore. Let’s say it was not restrained. Here’s Gore on what will happen if we fail to act now:

Our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands.

The former Vice President and failed presidential candidate was so exercised he even took a jab at FOX, apparently blaming it for the troubles global warming is experiencing: “Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment.”

Alas for Gore, Pachauri, et al., the climate alarums are working less and less not because of FOX, but because the alarmists overreached. Even an embarrassed U.N. was forced to announce Saturday that an independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the IPCC.

Unfortunately, climategate and IPCCgate have not put a dent on the Obama Administration’s plan to (mis)use the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2, and thereby the companies that power our nation. Its Administrator Lisa Jackson was out in front of Congress last week again repeating the same shibboleths on a scientific consensus on global warming. This should make us all wonder if stopping global warming really was ever the end game.

As for Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman, their reaction is to slap carbon controls on individual sectors of the economy separately, instead of setting a national target through cap-and-trade. The foundations for doing cap-and-trade have been torn asunder. Our research shows that cap-and-trade would be a $1.9 trillion tax on businesses over eight years, more expensive than the Vietnam War, Hurricane Katrina or the New Deal. But taxing the different pillars of our economy individually would be just as economically suicidal.

Sen. Kerry told the Post last week about his legislative effort, “What people need to understand about this bill is this really is a jobs bill, an economic transformation for America, an energy independence bill and a health/pollution-reduction bill that has enormous benefits for the country,” Kerry said. Notice he said nothing about global warming or climate change, the reason we were supposed to take this long walk off a short pier. Notice also he didn’t say it was about handing the political class the reins of the private economy. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman want electric power to be first on the economic chopping block. Previous analysis of similarly severe carbon cuts project electricity prices will rise over 70 percent, even after adjusting for inflation. Not only is this a nightmare for household utility bills, the higher cost will hit consumers over and over since businesses must pass on their higher costs as well.

The day before yesterday’s White House health care summit, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told reporters: “The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here.” When Conrad was reminded that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has repeatedly insisted that the House will not pass the Senate bill until the Senate passes a second bill that fixes the first, Conrad replied: “Fine, then it’s dead.”

This was the dynamic that President Barack Obama was trying to alter with his eventually-seven-hour meeting. And judging by pretty much every major news outlet, he completely failed. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), who is one of the 39 House Democrats that the White House needs to switch from a “no” the first time around to a “yes” this time, told The New York Times: “I don’t see very many at all who voted no who are going to switch their votes unless there are substantial changes in the bill.”

And that reality is already spreading throughout Capitol Hill. Politico reports that while Democrats were hoping to pass Obamacare by Easter, “there were signs Thursday night that the schedule was slipping. One Democratic lawmaker involved in the negotiations, who asked not to be identified to speak candidly of the process, said the party would not, in fact, start down the path of reconciliation next week.”

That is some rare great news for the American people. As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) ably explained yesterday, Americans do not want Washington dictating their health care decisions to them, and that is exactly what Obamacare would do:

The difference is this: We don’t think all the answers lie in Washington regulating all of this. … if the National Restaurant Association or the National Federation of Independent Business, on behalf of their members, wants to set up an association health plan, we think they’ll probably do a good job on behalf of their members. Let them decide to do that instead of restricting insurance competition by federalizing the regulation of insurance, and by mandating exactly how it will work, you make it more expensive and you reduce the competition among insurers for people’s business. We want to decentralize the system, give more power to small businesses, more power to individuals, and make insurers compete more. But if you federalize it and standardize it and mandate it, you do not achieve that. And that’s the big difference we have.

President Obama bristled at this analysis, responding: “Can I just say that, at this point, any time that a question is phrased as, “Does Washington know better,” I think we’re kind of tipping the scales a little bit there since we all know that everybody is angry at Washington right now.”

The President seems to understand that the American people do not want bureaucrats in Washington controlling their health care decisions, but then he seems completely oblivious to the fact that increasing bureaucratic control at the expense of every American’s ability to make their own choices is exactly what his plan does.

The American people know this. That is why support for the President’s health care plan has been steadily declining. That is why the most recent CBS News/New York Times Poll shows 53% of Americans say the United States cannot afford to fix health care at this time. It is why 52% of Americans tell Gallup they do not want to see Obamacare pass with only 50 Senators in support (Vice President Joe Biden casting the 51st vote). That is why 59% of registered voters tell Fox News they want the President to start over.

And he should. If the President truly wants to enact historic bipartisan and lasting health care reform, he needs to admit this version of Obamacare is dead. In 2011, when there is likely to be a more centrist Congress in place, then Obama should come back and start again.

Boy was I wrong. The Republicans were on. They were well prepared, articulate, on-message, but most importantly showed that despite the Obama administration’s relentless assault on the Republicans as the ‘party of no’, the Republicans did in fact have a very firm grip on the healthcare situation. Oh yeah, and they had a plan. And now everyone knows it.

I think the Democrats were hurt today…by just how much remains to be seen, but they would have been better off sitting this one out. The Republicans, on the other hand, have for the first time in what seems like forever made a gain based on their own solid performance rather the failings of those on the other side of the aisle.

Here’s six minutes of sheer awesomeness from Rep. Paul Ryan. He summarizes all that is wrong with the current bills in very simple terms, and basically calls out the president on the unworkability and sheer deceitfulness of the numbers game the Dems have been playing. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Then forward it around.

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-Cnation

In July of this year, the American people were mostly undecided about Obamacare: equal numbers opposed and supported the health care bills that the White House was shepparding through Congress. But then August happened and informed Americans turned out at townhalls across the country to express their strong disapproval of Obamacare. The larger American public noticed and and pluralities of the American people began to oppose Obamacare. The White House concluded they had a “communications problem” so they scheduled a prime time speech in front of a rare Joint Session of Congress. But the President’s speech arrogantly dismissed the concerns of the American people and after a brief uptick in support (from the low 40s to the mid 40s), opposition to the President’s plan grew.

Then in November, liberals lost governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia as opposition to President Obama’s signature policy priority inched towards 50%. Again the White House concluded that nothing was wrong with their policy agenda and they dismissed their setbacks in two states that had voted for President Barack Obama as local elections with weak candidates. Instead of rethinking their policies and procedures the White House doubled down and pushed for a speedy passage of Obamacare with as little debate as possible. Over the next two months the White House bought support for their health care plan with the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, and big labor tax breaks. And their behind-closed-doors, backroom-deal tactics almost worked … until Massachusetts happened.

Just like in August and November, Sen. Scott Brown’s (R) upset win over Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) took the Obama administration completely by surprise. Again, the White House concluded they had a “communications problem” so this time they scheduled a six-hour health care summit that is supposed to take place at The Blair House, across the street from the White House, this Thursday. But like everything else that has come out of the Obama administration during this health care debate, the President’s effort to “seek common ground” at the summit is completely disingenuous. The New York Times reported this past Friday that the White House is drafting, and will release this morning, a final health care bill they expect Congress to pass quickly. And this bill is specifically designed to pass without any conservative support:

Democratic officials said the president’s proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

And a “simple majority” does not mean they need 51 Senators. The nuclear option the White House is now pushing, reconciliation,  only requires the Obama administration to muster 50 votes before Vice President Joe Biden can cast a tie breaking vote in favor of a government takeover of health care.

And make no mistake, a government takeover of health care is exactly what Obamacare is. Just last night the White House revealed that one new feature of their legislation will be to give the federal government sweeping new authority to set prices for health insurance. This is on top of the sweeping new authority that Obamacare already grants the federal governemnt to micromanage the coverage details of every single health insurance policy in the country. And since the nuclear option only requires 50 Democratic Senators for passage, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has signaled that an outright government run health insurance company, the public option, will also be included in the final bill.

There is a reason that the longer this health care debate has dragged on, more and more Americans have become solidly against Obamacare: the plan has been exposed as a welfare state takeover of our health care sector that can only be passed by the most partisan and venal tactics. If the President was capable of listening to the American people, and learning from August, November, and Massachusetts, then he would abandon the legislative disasters still pending in the House and Senate and start over. That is what the American people want.

From the The House Republican Conference  •  GOP.gov

On February 18, 2010, the President signed an executive order (EO) to establish the “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” co-chaired by President Clinton’s former White House Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles, and former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY).  According to the White House, the commission “will build bipartisan consensus to put forth solutions to tackle our long-ignored fiscal challenges.”  However, the commission fails to take tax increases off the table and would not require a vote on the final recommendations by Congress until after the elections in November (or ever).  In reality, the commission amounts to little more than a political gimmick, allowing Democrats to talk about fiscal responsibility while they continue to bury future generations with record spending, deficits, and debt.

Summary

The President’s EO establishes the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with the expressed mission of “identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.”

Membership :
The commission would be comprised of 18 members who would be appointed by the President, the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate, and the Speaker and Minority leader of the House.  Under the EO, 12 members would be selected by Congress.  Three Senators from each party would be appointed by their respective Senate Majority and Minority leaders.  Likewise, three House of Representative members would be selected by the Speaker of the House and three by the Minority Leader.  The final six members would be selected by the President.  The President would be barred from selecting more than four members from the same political party, meaning the President would likely choose four Democrats and two Republicans.  Under that scenario, the commission would be comprised of eight Republicans and 10 Democrats, but Democrats would have control of 12 appointments compared to the GOP’s six.  This means that Democrats would choose which Republ! icans are on the panel.

Mission :
The commission would be charged with identifying and presenting policy recommendations “designed to balance the budget,” including policies to cut deficits by increasing taxes and slowing the growth in entitlements.  According to the White House, “primary balance” in the budget is defined as “achieving deficits of about 3 percent of GDP,” as compared to the projected FY 2010 deficit of 10.6 percent of GDP.  Over the next ten years, deficits will average 5 percent of GDP under the President’s budget.  Specifically, the EO requires the commission to propose “changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government.”

Report :
The commission would be required to vote to approve a report containing their final recommendations by December 1, 2010.  The final report must be affirmatively voted on by 14 of the 18 members of the commission, meaning that at least four Republican members of the commission-presumably including the two appointed by President Obama-must vote for the recommendations.  Following the issuance of the report, Congress would not be required to act upon the recommendations.

Issues of Concern

A Powerless Commission :
The commission would be established by an executive order, rather than by a binding statute as other deficit-panel proposals have sought to do.  A commission established by an executive order cannot compel Congress to act on its proposals.  Democrat leadership may say that it would bring the commission’s recommendations to the floor if they retain their Majority, but they could easily change their position or simply ignore the suggestions.  Democrats could also choose to act on “bipartisan” recommendations which they support, like tax increases, and reject the spending cuts.

Taxes on the Table :
Given the Democrats’ track record of raising taxes, it has been widely speculated that the Obama commission could be used by Democrats to propose supposedly “bipartisan” tax increases.  Democrats could use the “bipartisan” panel as a means to say that tax hikes are supported by Republicans.  Many Members may believe that the current recession is the worst possible time for crushing tax hikes and that tax increases need to be explicitly taken off the table.

Politically Imbalanced :
When introducing the commission, the President stated, “the Commission I’m establishing today will build a bipartisan consensus to put America on the path toward fiscal reform and responsibility.”  In actuality, the commission is politically imbalanced as Democrats control 20 percent more of the panel and two of the Republicans will be selected by the Democrat President.

Timing :
The Commission would not be required to report its final recommendations for nearly a year, well after the federal government spends a record $3.72 trillion in FY 2010.  Many Members believe that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be faced immediately, not sometime down the road.  In addition, the commission would likely conceal its recommendations from the American people until after the November elections.  Some Members may be concerned that the panel is designed to hide its final proposals from the people until after they have voted.

A Lack of Credibility :
Democrats would control a majority of the commission and ultimately decide what tax increases or spending changes to recommend.  Unfortunately, since taking over Congress and the White House, Democrats have an atrocious record of increasing spending, deficits, and taxes.  Since Democrats took control of Congress and started passing their budgets in 2007, the national debt has grown by 42.8 percent.  In 2009 alone, House Democrats passed a “stimulus” bill-which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now predicts will cost $862 billion-a $1.3 trillion health care takeover that raises taxes by more than $700 billion, a $873 billion national energy tax on every American, two omnibus spending bills totaling more than $855 billion, and increased non-defense discretionary spending by 12 percent.

Facing political pressure, Democrats are desperate to feign interest in the rising deficits.  As a result of its nonbinding nature, many Members may believe that this commission constitutes an empty political tactic to convince Americans that something is being done, without actually addressing difficult fiscal realities.

Amy Bishop, UAH Shooter

Ever since Obama won the presidential election and the Democrats assumed full power, there has been a seemingly never-ending string of events, comments, gaffes, and situations from the left which have passed by virtually unnoticed by the media and blogosphere, any of which would have caused major shitstorms had they come from the right. From the Rangel/Reich discussion of keeping white males from taking stimulus-funded jobs, to the President palling around with domestic terrorists and felons, to Harry Reid’s “negro dialect‘ comment of a few weeks ago…it goes on and on, usually to the refrain of “can you imagine if a conservative had done/said that?”

On the flip side, it’s also not the least bit uncommon to see the left take the slightest, most innocuous little thing done or said by a conservative/republican and blow it w-a-y out of proportion (ie the Palin hand notes thing), very often reaching and perpetuating outlandish conclusions not even remotely grounded in fact, or to find and highlight a connection, no matter how slight, between a person who’s done something heinous and conservative efforts/personalities. Like this. It happens all the time; the conservative blogs have gotten very good at calling out those who would misrepresent a given situation, and setting the record straight.

Unfortunately, some conservative bloggers have actually begun employing the very same tactics, and that is what I am writing about this evening.

By now, everyone knows about Dr. Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Huntsville biology professor who killed three of her colleagues and wounded three others this past Friday during a faculty meeting.

Earlier this evening, Glenn Reynolds posted about something he found at the web site ratemyprofessors.com, where some anonymous poster - presumably one of her college students - stated that Bishop was a socialist:

This class was great. Bishop makes the class interesting by talking about her research and her friends research. That speaker she had for class was hard to understand but smart. She expects alot and you need to come to every class and study. She is hot but she tries to hide it.And she is a socalist but she only talks about it after class.

Reynolds’ point as I understood it was that if there had been something in Bishop’s past that had linked her to conservatism, the TEA party movement, etc…, the connection would probably have been trotted out and used by the left-wing blogosphere and/or media in some manner to disparage the right.  He was not, by any stretch, using the ratemyprofessor post as evidence that the shooter actually was a socialist.

While one might question the need to even bring it up in the first place, I don’t believe Reynolds’ intent was malicious.

But then we have Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit. I’ll state for the record that I read his site pretty much every day and often post direct links to his articles. His sensationalist streak is well-known to his readers, but his information is usually high enough quality to overlook the melodrama. Tonight though, he crossed the line.

Here’s the headline from Gateway Pundit:

Socialist Professor Amy Bishop Who Killed 3 Profs Yesterday Shot & Killed Her Brother in 1986 …UPDATE: Dem Rep. Delahunt Made Call to Release Bishop in 1986!

Is this what we’re doing now, taking the unsubstantiated statement of some anonymous college kid from the ratemyprofessors website and posting it as pure, uncontested fact? Isn’t this exactly the same type of thing we give the lefties hell over?

Hoft has been around long enough to know better, but instead ran full speed ahead with his “Socialist Professor” headline in what can only be described as an incredibly reckless and irresponsible manner, especially considering the considerable size of his readership. To make matters worse however, the headline has now been picked up and run verbatim by other so-called conservative bloggers who seemingly lack the intellectual capacity to recognize the problem with the headline, and who are apparently too lazy to perform any fact-checking of their own.

There is no excuse for any of this. As a conservative blogger, I am both embarrassed and ashamed at the events that are transpiring this evening.

It’s bad enough when the left does it, but we’ve learned expect it from them (OK, not all of them, but enough). That’s why, by and large, they have the credibility problems they do. We do -not- need this from our own side, and we should therefore be just as hard if not harder on so-called conservatives who find it acceptable to spread this type of unsubstantiated sensationalistic bullshit. It undermines our credibility across the board and should not be tolerated, no matter how well-respected the source.

I haven’t even touched on the sheer repulsiveness of politicizing these murders in the first place, but suffice it to say that I find it unconscionable, and so should you.

Let us not forget that three families will be burying their dead in the coming weeks. They, the victims who’ve survived, the children of the shooter…all whose lives were touched by this senseless tragedy can use our prayers.

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-Cnation

Tomorrow, NBC (which is owned by General Electric) will begin broadcasting the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver, Canada. Only two events are scheduled for the opening day (alpine skiing and ski jumping), but even those events will be difficult to pull off. Why? There is no snow in Vancouver. And International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge knows exactly what is to blame: global warming. Rogge tells AFP: “Global warming of course is a worry, it is a worry for the entire world.”

Considering that NBC/GE  has already received billions in TARP bailout cash from the Obama administration and is actively lobbying for a global warming energy tax bill so that it can receive billions more in government green-energy subsidies on top of the millions it already receives, we are sure to hear lots from NBC announcers about how the lack of snow in Vancouver is just another reason Washington needs to act now to stop global warming.

But back in Washington, the global warming scare-monger crowd is singing a slightly different tune. Facing record snowfalls, Time is reporting: “Snowstorm: East Coast Blizzard Tied to Climate Change.” But do not confuse this headline with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s column from two years ago claiming that global warming was causing “anemic winters” in the Washington region.

No snow, too much snow. It does not matter to the enviroleft crowd. For them, global warming always is to blame. That is the whole reason the movement made a deliberate decision earlier this decade to stop calling it “global warming” and start calling it “climate change.” That way they could expand the universe of terrible things they could plausibly blame on global warming. One British citizen even maintains a comprehensive list of everything the enviroleft has tried to blame on global warming including: Atlantic ocean less salty, Atlantic ocean more salty, Earth slowing down, Earth spinning faster, fish bigger, fish shrinking, and (most importantly) beer better, beer worse.

The media are not the only ones complicit in the climate fear industry. The 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which is the most prestigious scientific body charged with determining what is and is not settled science) has also been found to be cooking the books. In just the past year, the IPCC’s 2007 report has been exposed for overstating the science on glacier loss in the Himalayas, crop loss in Africa, Amazon rain forest depletion and damage from weather catastrophes.

Here is what we do know: the cap-and-trade system in Europe is completely failing to reduce carbon emissions; the cap-and-trade system proposed here in the United States would do nothing to affect global temperatures, but would do trillions of dollars of damage to the U.S. economy.

Something to think about while you shovel out your driveway today.

Yesterday, USA Today ran an editorial on the Obama administration’s handling of terrorism, writing: "Officials’ handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour." Graciously given the space to respond to this charge, Obama administration Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan replied: "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda." Got that? The Obama administration considers any criticism of its national security policies, even from as benign a source as USA Today, as serving "the goals of al-Qaeda." And the problems with Brennan’s letter don’t end there: Interrogation Contradictions: First Brennan asserts that "Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thoroughly interrogated and provided important information." But just one sentence later Brennan admits: "The most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights." So which is it? Was the first interrogation so thorough that no active and useful intelligence was lost, or did "the most important breakthrough" come over a month later, giving al-Qaeda a month’s head start? 

Coordination Contradictions: Brennan asserts "Senior counterterrorism officials from the White House, the intelligence community and the military were all actively discussing this case before he was Mirandized and supported the decision to charge him in criminal court." But this has been directly contradicted by the sworn testimony of National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Someone is not telling the truth about a vital national security matter. Congress must investigate. False Miranda History: Brennan writes: "Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken off a plane he tried to blow up. The same people who criticize the president today were silent back then." But Brennan leaves out the fact that Reid was arrested in December 2001, before the military detention system was in place. This is like accusing George Washington of treason for not using machine guns against the British. He didn’t use them because they didn’t exist yet! Military vs. Civilian Custody: Brennan writes: "There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical." That is perhaps the most fatuous sentence in Brennan’s op-ed. The roles of lawyers in the civilian and military system are completely different. In military custody, detainees are not read their Miranda rights and their lawyer’s purpose is to challenge his detention as an enemy combatant. Under civilian custody, the suspect is read his Miranda rights and his lawyer is there to make sure he does not say anything that will incriminate himself. The situations are completely different, not "nearly identical." Military vs. Civilian Trials: "Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation." The false choice of all civilian or all military trials is what lacks foundation. There are hundreds of witnesses who stand ready to testify and send Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to jail. We do not need his testimony to be admissible. There is nothing stopping the administration from questioning Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant without reading him Miranda rights and then trying him in civilian court later. Last month, The Washington Post editorial board, who has endorsed every single Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988, wrote:

UMAR FAROUK Abdulmutallab was nabbed in Detroit on board Northwest Flight 253 after trying unsuccessfully to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear. The Obama administration had three options: It could charge him in federal court. It could detain him as an enemy belligerent. Or it could hold him for prolonged questioning and later indict him, ensuring that nothing Mr. Abdulmutallab said during questioning was used against him in court. It is now clear that the administration did not give serious thought to anything but Door No. 1. This was myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

Myopic. Irresponsible. Potentially dangerous. That is a spot-on assessment of the Obama administration’s knee-jerk Miranda-rights-for-everyone counterterrorism policy. And admitting as much would be the first step to defeating, not supporting, al-Qaeda.

Still, at least she didn’t mispronounce ‘corpsman’. Three times. Interesting how the hypocrites on the left have nothing to say about that.

But let’s face it, their real problem with Palin’s speech last night is that she decimated their president and his fatally flawed ideology.

They probably oughta get used to it…

…..

So what is the left going after this morning? They’re going after the fact that Sarah Palin had to refer to notes and what were presumably a few bullet points scribbled in the palm of her hand during her Tea Party convention speech last night.

Because really, that’s so much worse than mindlessly reading every single word that’s been carefully scripted for you by someone else off a teleprompter.

And, you know….it’s not necessarily even Zero’s incessant teleprompter use in and of itself that’s the problem, it’s his utter inability to speak clearly and intelligently without it which both amuses and frightens us.

Unlike Zero, Palin speaks with conviction, from the heart, with a clarity of purpose that connects directly with the conservative majority in America, and which rightfully scares the living shit out of the progressives/leftists of the world as they see their agenda crumble before their eyes.

So, the next time you hear one of your moron leftist friends attempting to ridicule Palin, understand they’re just not capable of better. Immaturity and intellectual dishonesty of the type they’re displaying this morning is their stock in trade, especially when they’re getting their asses handed to them.

Pity them as you might an unruly emotional child, but then just smile and walk away.

…..

-Cnation

The smackdown she laid on the current administration and its policies was thorough and dead-on accurate.

AND….not a teleprompter in sight.

This video is in 5 parts, all selectable from the bottom and sides of the video frame.

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-Cnation

I went to the site. This is what I wrote:

“I pledge and support the elimination of Politically Correct insanity that would eliminate the use of a completely acceptable and accurate word from our vocabulary rather than admonish those who would misuse it.”

Yes, I’m fully aware they won’t publish it.

This uproar over Rahm Emanuel’s use of the term ‘fucking retarded’ is ridiculous; his response and the media reaction is pure insanity.

It’s not the word that is the problem, it’s the use of the word as a pejorative. I’ll even go so far as to admit that its as a pejorative is a rather large problem. But is the answer really to ban the word or refer to it - in a most infantile way - as the ‘r-word’?

Of course not.

Banning a word or referring to it as we once did as children (MOM! JOEY SAID THE F-WORD!!) does nothing but attempt to mask the problem. It’s like trying to fix rust by hiding it under a fresh coat of paint.

The idea, that by somehow eliminating a word deemed offensive from our vocabulary we will also eliminate the stigma attached to its misuse, is flawed to its core. The stigma will simply transfer to whatever word or term is used to replace it. In fact, it already has. If you haven’t heard the jokes and slurs centered on the word ‘challenged’, you have simply not been listening.

If we want to attack the underlying problem, we start - as we do in so many situations where the PC police would otherwise attempt to run the show - by teaching our children the difference between right and wrong, and that intentionally insulting anyone - regardless of physical/mental abilities or lack thereof - is unacceptable. That is where this whole argument should begin and end. Unfortunately, this would require both discipline and personal responsibility, two concepts virtually unknown to the liberal PC crowd except as the occasional punch line.

The word ‘retarded’, like it or not, is accurate and correct when applied to those now referred to ‘mentally challenged’ (or whatever the acceptable-pc-obfuscation-of-the-week happens to be as of this writing), and probably the least offensive of any of the PC-concocted terms created to replace it.

I’m not going to devote a lot of time to this, but in closing I would like you to consider the following: how many words in the English language are or can be used in an ‘offensive’ manner? If we eliminated all of them, what would we be left with?

We as free Americans need to draw the line.

American Thinker has a great piece on this very subject this morning that begins with a Confucius quote:

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”

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-Cnation

Pence Decries Democrat Debt Limit Increase and PAYGO

“American people long for this administration and this Congress to lead us away from the brink of fiscal disaster

Washington, DC - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, delivered the following remarks today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in opposition to H. J. Res. 45, Democrat legislation that will increase the national debt limit by a record $1.9 trillion:

“Time for a little bit of truth telling about their side and about our side. The truth telling about our side is that back when we were in charge we didn’t do so well on controlling runaway federal spending. My colleagues, who know me well, know that I, many times, found myself at cross purposes in fighting the president of my own party and some leadership of my own party in some of those big spending fights. But under the last administration we doubled the national debt. I want to stipulate to that. But frankly, that’s no excuse for what’s happening today, Madam Speaker.

“Over the last three years, the Democrat majority has literally broken the ceiling on fiscal responsibility, and as I just admitted, that ceiling was pretty high. Since Democrats took control of Congress in January, 2007, the national debt had increased by $3.96 trillion, a 42 percent increase in three years. To keep up with this spending binge, Congress has increased the debt limit five times over the last 19 months. Three times since the current administration took office one year ago. And the statutory debt increase that comes before us today, $1.9 trillion, is the largest one-time debt increase in U.S. history.

“This is the fifth increase, as I mentioned, in the last 19 months. This one-time increase in the debt limit of $1.9 trillion is actually larger than the entire GDP of almost every country in the world.  It’s larger than the GDP of Canada, Russia, Spain, or Brazil. And it’s larger than the GDP of Australia and Poland combined. The American people are looking at this extraordinary gusher of spending and debt and they are asking the question: ‘When will it stop?’  And the answer is, as we look at the budget that the administration submitted earlier this week, no time soon.

“I hasten to add, the administration, just this week, announced plans for a budget $3.8 trillion in scope, with a $1.6 trillion deficit and $2 trillion in higher taxes.  And let me say with respect, the American people looking in ought not to be deceived by the promises of fiscal discipline known as ‘PAYGO.’  And the truth is, the bill before us today is 58 pages long and 32 of those pages are all the programs that are exempted from the PAYGO requirements.  Forty percent of federal spending is exempted from the fiscal discipline fix that we’re being told is encompassed in PAYGO.  The truth is, PAYGO really means here in Washington: you pay and they go on spending.

“The fact is that what we see here is a failure of leadership.  President Obama, as a United States Senator, said in March of 2006, when he came out against raising the debt limit in a vote, ‘The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.  It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills.  It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s recklessness.  America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.’  So said then-Senator Barack Obama, March 2006.  Let me suggest he was right, then, and his words are equally true today.

“The American people long for us to put our fiscal house in order.  They long for us to embrace true fiscal discipline and reform.  They long for this administration and this Congress to lead us away from the brink of fiscal disaster.
This PAYGO, this debt ceiling vote, is no solution, and I urge its opposition.”

To view this floor speech, click here.

…..

-Cnation

Following weeks of strong bipartisan criticism of their handling of terror trials and detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder released a letter yesterday defending the Obama administration’s criminal justice system approach to prosecuting the war against al-Qaeda. Defending his administration’s handling of the Flight 253 terrorist, Holder wrote: “I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government.”

First, this statement directly contradicts the sworn Congressional testimony of Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair who, when asked by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) under oath if he had been consulted about how Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated, responded: “I was not consulted.” Under intense political pressure from the White House, Blair has since said his remarks were “misconstrued.” But his politically-pressured retraction was not made under oath. His initial statement was. At the very minimum, Congress must demand that both Holder and Blair testify under oath to settle this contradiction.

But more importantly, both the personal pronouns and the underlying substance of Holder’s letter speaks volumes about this administration’s approach to protecting the American people. Holder wrote yesterday: “Neither advising Abdulmutallab of his Miranda rights nor granting him access to counsel prevents us from obtaining intelligence from him. On the contrary, history shows that the federal justice system is an extremely effective tool for gathering intelligence.” Holder appears to be arguing that reading suspects their Miranda rights is a great way to get them to talk. But as American University law professor Kenneth Anderson notes: “The point of offering suspects the Miranda warning and associated rights is not in order to persuade them to talk, but in order to make sure they know they don’t have to and, if they have much in the way of brains, won’t.”

And, in the past, Holder himself has even acknowledged this. The Weekly Standard’s Stephen F. Hayes flags this exchange between CNN’s Paula Zahn and Holder about American Taliban John Walker Lindh from January 28, 2002. Zahn: “How much pressure should they put on this man to get information out of him as they interrogate him?” Holder replied: “Well, I mean, it’s hard to interrogate him at this point now that he has a lawyer and now that he is here in the United States. But to the extent that we can get information from him, I think we should.”

Holder asserts throughout his letter, and in contradiction to his 2002 statement, that absolutely no intelligence was lost by treating Abdulmutallab like a common criminal. That is just not plausible. In a speech at The Heritage Foundation yesterday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said: “The fact remains that all the intelligence he possessed concerning the locations, training techniques, and communications methods of Al Qaeda in Yemen is perishable. Yemeni forces needed that information on December 25th, not six weeks later. Meanwhile, the American people are left to wonder whether, in place of interrogations, their safety depends on terrorists having families who can persuade them to talk.”

The criminal justice system can and should play a role in our nation’s fight against al Qaeda. But it should dictate war-time policy for the entire Executive Branch. Again, from McConnell yesterday: “No one denies that a balance must be struck between preserving civil liberties and protecting the homeland. No one wants to sacrifice one for the other. But in many cases, all that’s involved is a simple question of judgment. And when a judgment call has to be made, our priorities should be clear: keeping Americans safe should always win out, within the law.”

And who should be making those judgment calls? The American people did not elect Eric Holder to balance the interests of national security and civil liberties. They elected Barack Obama to do that.