Apparently the secret to passing ObamaCare is for the President to acknowledge that all Members of Congress have something they don’t like about the bill, but to vote for it regardless:

AP reports the President said in New York yesterday:

“The bill you least like” improves coverage for millions, he said in New York. “Let’s make sure that we keep our eye on the prize.”

Seems a little strange to announce this in New York, a blue state, that members need to hold their nose and vote for health care reform. Is this the winning formula? Is holding New York members of Congress becoming tough? And if the President needed to say this in New York, what does this mean for the rest of the country?

The roll call vote on the motion to proceed to S. 1776 is instructive of what happens to a bill that cannot stop the filibuster on the motion to proceed. President Obama and the White House asked Senator Reid to put $247 billion in new spending off budget to buy off the American Medical Association. Majority Leader Reid was embarrassed. The White House, Senator Reid said, wanted him to bring the bill up. He needed 60 votes to stop the filibuster. He got 47 votes. Missed the mark by 13 votes. Here is the simple filibuster math (60 minus 13 = 47.)

Perhaps this is why President Obama did not go public on the vote, he did not want to risk a Chicago is knocked out in the first round of voting despite his personal lobbying for the Olympics type experience.

This is a lesson for everyone: no cloture, no laundry. And 60 votes in the Senate is a tough number to hit, even with 60 Democratic voting Senators (58 Dems and two independents). S. 1776 is dead. The bill did not even make it past the motion to proceed.

Today, AP ran a story questioning whether President Obama has the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster on ObamaCare. Really? Really, really. Here is some of Charles Babington’s piece:

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Let me explain what happened here to President Obama with regard to the Olympic bid.

One has to make a distinction between the people of the world, and the governments of the world. The people of the world generally like the USA/Americans/the concept of America for one or more of the following reasons:

• Because we are free;
• Because we are vulgar;
• Because we are loud;
• And because we visibly do not care if anybody likes that or not.

Meanwhile, most national governments do not like the USA/Americans/the concept of America for one or more of the following reasons:

• Because we are free;
• Because we are vulgar;
• Because we are loud;
• And because we visibly do not care if anybody likes that or not.

So, when the President went to the IOC to get this valuable thing for his home city and country, I’m sure that he thought that he would be able to remedy the situation.  But all that he did was make it clear to people who don’t like us very much - mostly for the ‘vulgar’ and ‘loud’ bits - that he and the USA could be quite gratifyingly (to them) snubbed.  So they did.  And they enjoyed doing it, because they know that there’s damned little that the USA can do to them about it.

Personally, I’m grateful: this is an incredibly cheap lesson in Foreign Relations 120: Why we don’t have better relations with certain countries.  It is my sincere hope that the President take the hint, and stop worrying quite so much about our overseas reputation.  And by ’stop worrying quite as much’ I mean ‘visibly do not care.’

Moe Lane

PS: There are quite a few governments that do not hate us, of course.  Unfortunately, these days one thing that they mostly have in common is in having been snubbed by this administration.  It’d be great if that stopped happening.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Hahahahaha.

I thought the world would love us more now that Bush was gone.

I thought if we whored ourselves out to our enemies, great things would happen.

Apparently not.

So Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world, made promises to half the Olympic committee, and they did not even kiss him.

So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O.

Maybe now perhaps we can hope he will mature a bit on the issues of foreign affairs. But I doubt it.

BTW, Dear Barack Obama, you are no Billy Mays.

The Supreme Court announced today that it will decide, in McDonald v. Chicago, whether the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun laws. That puts the focus on the Court’s newest Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, and on President Obama’s future picks for the Court.

Gun owners were alarmed by Sotomayor’s nomination to the Court, because of her “extreme anti-gun philosophy” and record on the Second Circuit, in the words of former NRA president Sandy Froman. At her Senate hearing this summer, Sotomayor defended that record by saying that her hands were tied by old Supreme Court precedent. Now that she’s on the High Court, her hands are no longer tied. She will have a lot of explaining to do if she decides in McDonald that the right to keep and bear arms is the only significant right in the Bill of Rights that doesn’t apply to the states. Such a decision would indicate that she was not serious when she promised the Senate that she would put the rule of law above ideology.

Today’s announcement ensures that gun owners will continue to play a big role in Supreme Court confirmations, just as they did this summer. The Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as an individual right, moved the battle over gun rights from the legislatures to the courts. That set the stage for gun owners to enter the judicial wars. The decision to review McDonald puts the future of gun rights back squarely in the Supreme Court, reinforcing the conviction among gun owners that their fate is now in the hands of judges and that their continued involvement in the judicial confirmation process is vital.

Whatever the Supreme Court’s decision in McDonald, it will further focus the Second Amendment community on the needs for constitutionalist judges. Heller was limited to federal gun laws and the District of Columbia, but most of the laws that worry gun owners are at the state and local level. If the McDonald decision recognizes an individual Second Amendment right at that level, the number of gun rights cases – and thus the importance of the judges issue to gun owners – will explode. Should the Supreme Court rule the other way in McDonald, the anger of gun owners will be a force to reckon with every time there’s a Supreme Court nomination.

Cross-posted at the Committee for Justice blog.

No, really.

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

The City of Chicago is basically closed for business on Aug. 17, a reduced-service day in which most city employees are off without pay. City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices will be closed.

They technically ‘moved’ this reduced-services day from New Year’s Eve, and if somebody wants to believe that they won’t have to have that day be reduced-services - or that there won’t be other reduced-service days added - well.

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So when you think Independence Day fireworks audio productions do you think of John Mellencamp, Kid Rock, and Neil Diamond as the musical accompaniment? Apparently the City of Chicago did. Either that, or the City of Chicago didn’t care enough about the patriotism inherent in an Independence Day fireworks show to make sure that the radio station they farmed the job out to bothered to include any patriotic songs in the program.

Not only were there no patriotic songs in the program (unless you think “R O C K in the USA” is a patriotic song?) but someone forgot to tell the obviously clueless radio station that the William Tell Overture is supposed to serve as the finale of the show, not as the tune that is supposed to start off the display!

The City of Chicago is becoming well known for raping its citizens, but it is also now widely known for doing its level best to ignore the Constitution of the USA with its unconstitutional gun banning laws, its practice of high taxation for little return, its internal, mobbed-up corruption, its high murder rate and now even a casual disregard for patriotism.

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One must wonder these days if the Democrats are wrapping themselves around Chicagoland rough and tumble politics, or are they wrapping themselves around the politics of hyper-inflation experiencing third world thugocracies.

In Chicagoland politics, like third world thugocracies, opponents of government get gunned down, thrown in jail, threatened by the powers of government, etc. We saw this happen a few months ago when a bank executive wrote a letter to the editor in his local newspaper criticizing TARP. Barney Frank demanded he appear before Congress to answer questions unless he recanted his position.

We see it again today, very starkly,

Roll Call reports Senator Max Baucus, the Democrat leading the fight for socialized healthcare, is threatening businessmen that appearing with Republicans will be harmful to their business interests.

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From the department of pathetic ignorance or willfully not getting it (not sure which to file this one in yet) comes this clip of a CNN reporter shouting down a Chicago Tea Party attendee for not displaying the appropriate appreciation and gratitude to President Obama for his gift to the state of Illinois of billions in borrowed money and trillions in new debt.

These people simply don’t get the fact that these modern-day tea parties aren’t simply about taxes.

They’re about increased taxes and even more greatly increased debt, yes. But they’re also about the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; about the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome, and — perhaps most importantly — they are about current attempts by liberal politicians to interject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen can try to control the focus of these tea parties all she wants by shouting at participants to talk only about taxes, but that just shows she’s missing the boat as badly as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat), who posted to Twitter this afternoon that she was “confused” why people were fed up with trillions in government waste.

It’s okay; these people can not get it all they want. Those who participated (and are participating in) any of the thousand modern-day tea parties being held around the country today get it — and when this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, they’ll start to get a clue just what magnitude a sleeping dragon they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.

[UPDATE] Well, well, well: I may be happy to be proven wrong in this case: “Illinois governor says Burris should resign
Quinn says a new senator should be chosen by special election.” Via Hot Air.

Reported by Jim Geraghty: given the drumbeat of articles cropping up (”Black Ministers May Rethink Backing Sen. Burris,” and “Blagojevich aide tells of Burris call in fall,” and “What people are saying about Burris“) this was probably inevitable.  More as it comes in; thoughts after the fold.

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It doesn’t get much simpler or more clear-cut than this. During his campaign, President Obama promised that he “will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

The so-called “stimulus” bill was passed by the Senate just before midnight on Friday night (after Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, arrived on the publicly-funded private jet Obama sent to fetch him from his mother’s funeral and cast the deciding vote for the package neither he nor a single other member of Congress has read).

President Obama, who has also not read the $787,000,000,000.00 borrow-and-spend bill, has announced that he will sign the debt legislation into law on Tuesday in Denver.

The legislation was posted on WhiteHouse.Gov on Friday afternoon (at 2:05pm EST), but was not passed until that night. So, let’s count the days: Saturday-1. Sunday-2. Monday-3. Signing on Tuesday. That’s three days, not five.

The only possible excuse is that it’s not a “non-emergency bill,” and therefore the timeline promise doesn’t apply. The only problem with that is, if it’s such an emergency that not a day can be lost, why is President Obama vacationing in Chicago this weekend and waiting until he returns to sign it?

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Savor that headline, will you? The Democratic stronghold of Oak Park, home of trendy downtown shops and many Obama signs, is working with its lawyers to keep a homeless man off the ballot for the next village election.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Oak Park’s village board voted 2-1 to prevent Daniel Fore from running for village trustee on the April 7 ballot because he does not have a residential address. Fore is, however, registered to vote in Cook County using the address of an Oak Park relative and has been a well known citizen of the area since the 1970s.

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