In the wake of the House vote for President Obama’s government takeover of health care, some conservative commentators are asking what may have been had House Republicans decided to follow Rep. John Shadegg’s (R-AZ) advice to vote present on the Stupak-Pitts amendment.  The amendment prohibits the federal government from spending any funds to provide abortion under the plan’s public option and prohibits anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that covers abortion.

Sixty-four Democrats voted with Republicans in passing Stupak.  The argument says that had Republicans voted “present” or “no” on the amendment, it would have failed.  The theory is that those sixty-four Democrats would have abandoned the final bill without the prohibition included, effectively killing the overall effort to socialize the nation’s health care system.

But that thinking represents the triumph of hope over experience.  It supposes that Nancy Pelosi, who has shown herself to be nothing if not a cold-blooded and ruthless political operative, would not take any other necessary steps to find the votes necessary to pass the bill.  The only reason Stupak was allowed to come to a vote in the first place was because Pelosi was willing to shiv two-thirds of her caucus to get the bill passed.  Pelosi, and Obama, would have moved any obstacle, made any promise, and broken any number of arms to get the White House a “victory” on health care, however hollow that victory may ultimately turn out to be.

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The extremists are taking over the party!

A few days ago, the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org began sending out emails seeking contributions to fund primary challenges against any Democratic senator who does not fully support “health care reform with a public option.” Now there’s an update: MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben says the group has raised $3,578,117 for the project and is thinking of new ways to punish errant Democratic lawmakers.

Haven’t we heard this somewhere before?  Oh yeah, from Obama lackey Valerie Jarrett:

White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said Scozzafava’s pullout under pressure “tells a lot about where the Republican leadership is right now.” They are “more and more extreme and more and more marginalized,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Hey, Val, you might want to give George Soros a ring and let him know he’s going to be marginalized.

The last time a Democrat was in the White House we got the Communications Decency Act (since thrown out by the Supreme Court) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (still a weight on the neck of American innovators). This time we’re not only seeing “Net Neutrality” being used as cover for sweeping proposed regulation of the Internet like never before seen in this country, but we’re also due to expand copyright further.

The best thing about the DMCA is that its long arm can’t extend offshore, so Americans have been able to bypass it when needed by working with non-Americans who retain their rights to such technically-critical activities as reverse engineering.

But now the Obama administration is looking to promote an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a trojan horse for a Global DMCA. Or worse actually, because the DMCA only requires ISPs to act on specific copyrightholder requests to shut down accused infringers. Says Cory Doctorow, the ACTA would require ISPs to be active nannies policing copyright, and would outright kill Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, and probably Twitter. Further, your complete access to the Internet could be shut down, without warning, just because you are accused of being a copyright infringer.

Elections have consequences. How’s teaching the Republicans a lesson working out, libertarians?

The House Democrat bill (in Section 222) not only requires coverage for the following services, but mandates that “there shall be no cost-sharing under the essential benefits package” for these services. Some of these services are unobjectionable, but to force them on all Americans, paid by taxpayer dollars in many cases, and free of charge rather than bearing some personal responsibility, is too much.

Included on list of mandated free services:

1. Alcohol misuse screening and behavioral counseling interventions
2. Chlamydial infection, screening
3. behavioral counseling in primary care to promote a healthy diet.
4. Gonorrhea, screening.
5. screening.
6. Obesity in adults, screening.
7. Sexually transmitted infections, counseling.
8. Tobacco use and tobacco-caused disease, counseling.

Americans should not be forced to pay for these benefits, let alone to give their tax dollars to make them free.

Multiple people are telling RedState that the Democrats are blocking the public from attending their health care conference on Capitol Hill. The press conference is being held in a public area on the Capitol Grounds that should be accessible to public observers.

Not today.

The Democrats, having tried to avoid the public for the duration of the health care process, are now determined to block the public from getting close to them at the press conference.

Talk about timing:

President Obama offered him some warm words at a Miami fundraiser for the Democratic congressional campaign committees last night.

Obama, in introducing the members of Congress in attendance, called Grayson – along with Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek – as “outstanding members of Congress.”

This would be the same day that it came out that Alan Grayson went on the Alex Jones show last month - the Alex Jones Show - and called a Treasury staffer a “K Street whore.” This is actually angering more than a few Democrats right now - and if you’re wondering why this resonated when other nastiness didn’t, it may be because K Street in DC is also known for being a hangout for actual prostitutes, which certainly puts a somewhat different complexion on the attack*.  Now Grayson’s behavior, I understand: he’s a darling of the progressive antiwar Left, which means that his casual misogyny is a unexceptional rhetorical flourish to that sort**.  He’ll just scream louder and louder until he gets smacked for it.  But what’s the President’s excuse?

Letting the Teleprompter do his thinking for him again, perhaps?

Moe Lane

*Although Rep. Weiner  - who originally declared Grayson to be a ‘one fry short of a Happy Meal’ - has since changed his tune.

**See here (via Instapundit) for how more and more feminists are reacting to such indulgences.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Republican Christopher Christie has been hammering Governor Jon Corzine on the issue of taxes in the New Jersey governor’s race of late.  But the New York and Philadelphia media which has deigned to cover the race has wanted to talk about mammograms, traffic tickets, and Christie’s weight.  Chritsie has been relentless in driving the message of lower taxes and slashing state spending as medicine to get New Jersey’s worst-in-the-region economy moving again.

There was another recent candidate for governor in the Garden State who rode the message of lower taxes to victory in November:  Jon Corzine.  Back in 2005, Corzine promised property tax relief for New Jersey’s over-burdened citizens.  Things have not exactly worked out according to plan.

With a little help from the Wayback Machine, Jon Corzine’s 2005 tax promises have been recovered.  And his betrayal of New Jersey taxpayers exposed.

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Organizing for America, the increasingly combative political operation of the White House, today unveiled a new web video targeting Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele, charging the Republican Party chief with “siding with Washington elites and insurance companies and playing political games to kill reform.”

The latest installment in OfA’s “call ‘em out” campaign—a call to arms of sorts for complacent allies of President Barack Obama to debunk Republican myths about heath care reform—accuses Steele of scare-mongering and orchestrating a misinformation campaign against the President’s efforts on health care.

“Michael Steele is willing to lie and play political games in order to kill reform that would help Americans of every political party — so we’re calling him out,” reads an email from OfA Executive Director Jen O’Malley announcing the video.

The Democrats’ new web campaign, however, is as blatantly wrong as it is overtly hostile.

Opening with a recent segment from White House-scorned FOX News on health care reform’s “obligation to older Americans,” Steele said, “Just look at the situation with our veterans when you have a manual out there telling our veterans, you know, stuff like are you really a value to your community. You know, encouraging them to commit suicide.” Promptly followed by a blaring, rubber-stamped chyron reading “FALSE,” OfA cites as Politifact.com as cover for their claim.

At issue is a Department of Veteran Affairs-funded pamphlet—dubbed the “death book” by the Wall Street Journal—which presented various advanced care scenarios to aging veterans, callously prompting readers to then decide if their life would be “not worth living.” Democratic strategists correctly note the “Your Life, Your Choices” document was first published in 1997 and promoted by the VA throughout President George W. Bush’s two terms in office. What they fail to mention, conveniently, is that the “manual” was suspended after a review by Bush administration officials – and only later revived in 2009 by the new Democratic administration.

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While the cognoscenti of the Western financial world is attempting to spin the recent fall in the dollar as a stylish financial mystery play with a journalist based in the Middle East as its star, the Whodunit spin is a red herring: the facts are that the dollar is weak, and getting weaker.

The world is awash in dollars. There is a massive oversupply. We are electronically creating (printing in another era) hundreds of billions of dollars to buy our own T-Bills. Our deficit and spending has soared.

Kudlow, in his column, “Save the Greenback, Mr. President” explains that solution is to remove the excess dollars from the market and to stop “printing so much debt:”

for therapy, the Fed should begin moving excess cash from the economy….And they need to stop printing so much debt from Congress. All this massive spending and borrowing is killing us.

Instead, the Democrats in Congress and the White House are planning more spending: a second spending bill is on the table — ironically tagged as the second stimulus bill, which ought to stimulate the dollar tanking — and of course, President Obama’s $1 trillion health care spending boondoggle.

When town hall meetings are interrupted with shouts of “stop printing money” the jig is up. Note to the White House: in the age of the internet, you cannot hide printing $600 Billion a year from the world.

Until the Federal Reserve stops printing money to buy our own T-Bills, and the Democrats in Congress stop spending on new programs and we lower our deficit the dollar will continue to drop. End of story, no other outcome is possible.

Simply put, the Dems are killing the dollar.

I’m a conservative, so I have no problem with anyone using their rights to enter the public discourse, and I’m not allergic to corporations. So I when I call the latest from Google “astroturf”, I’m saying it purely to illustrate the hypocrisy of the left, because by their standard Google is becoming quite an installer of the fake grass roots.

I find it entirely unfair that the left gets to try to shout down our side while theirs goes entirely unnoticed. If we don’t at least speak up, then the left’s arguments might get some traction.

So let’s watch carefully. Google has hired Frannie Wellings, the telecommuniations advisor to Senator Byron Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat. Sounds boring, but dig deeper. Dorgan was the author and sponsor of the Senate’s Net Neutrality bill in 2007. Is Google buying access? That’s what the left would say if the parties were reversed.

They’d especially say that when the job that Wellings is taking was just created. She is to be Google’s “federal policy outreach manager.” In other words, she’s going to run Google’s lobbying operations in Washington. Which means either she or people accountable to her are going to be going right back into Dorgan’s office.

Further, before taking the job with Dorgan, Wellings worked at… yup, Free Press, the special interest group that founded and runs Save the Internet.

What a coincidence it is that Google, Save the Internet, and a Democrat Politican are linked like this! Free Press and Google must justify this if they are to continue their shameless attacks on our side, instead of arguing with facts and logic about the benefits and disadvantages of their goal: aggressive regulation of the Internet, centered on an FCC picking winners and losers in private network policy disputes.

A direct result of Barack Obama being elected President and the Democrats take over of Congress is that the U.S. the deficit has grown to a record $1.4 Trillion. From AP:

The federal budget deficit tripled to a record $1.4 trillion for the 2009 fiscal year that ended last week, congressional analysts said Wednesday.

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Noted Democrat strategist Ed Kilgore thinks the GOP is engaged in a murder-suicide.

It’s possible, and perhaps even probable, that the GOP strategy for 2010 is to create a political environment so toxic and voter-alienating that Republicans can win a very low turnout election by whipping their base into a genuine frenzy. That’s obviously not a very good scenario for the country, and it remains to be seen if it’s even good for the GOP.

The problem for Ed is that this is exactly what the Democrats did in 2006 and 2008 — from “miserable failure” to “Hailburton” to pegging Bush as a “war criminal”, etc. The list really does go on and on.

So if Ed is trying to indict a political party, he just did it to his own.

Promoted from diaries. - Moe Lane

For those who haven’t read my bio, my background is in collective bargaining and employee relations.  I cut my teeth on the union side as an understudy to an old-time liberal Democrat trade unionist.  His mantra was, “Before they do anything, make sure they think about what you’ll do about it.”  After a stint in the private sector, I went to work for the State government representing the employer in dealing with labor unions.  That is actually very common in both public and private sector labor relations since the union side is the best place to get good, hands on training in labor relations practices.

I began working on the employer side at the depth of the depression brought on by the oil price crash of ‘86.  Gov. Cowper (Democrat), elected with great state employee union support, took one look at the revenue and budget projections and announced “All bets are off” to the Democrat constituencies accustomed to having their hooves in the trough.  There ensued a decade of concessionary bargaining and labor strife.  The times broke the back of the old-fashioned independent association that represented the bulk of State employees and the State’s largest unit came to be represented by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).  The old association had acted like a labor union, AFSCME acted like a political party and a whole new education began for me.

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Consider this an open thread.

(BTW the video has one Democratic Congressman cussing at his constituents, so slightly NSFW.)

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While we are all focusing on H.R. 3200, the House Democrats’ health care plan, we should at least glance at H.R. 3221, the House Democrats’ plan to kill off higher education access. (PDF)

The legislation is opposed by many major universities including Notre Dame, among others. Basically, the bill would shut down all private providers of student loans, drive up costs for universities, and become a bureaucratic nightmare for institutions of higher learning. The professors may be leftists, but the administrators have to pay attention to the bottom line.

The Director of Student Financial Strategies at University of Notre Dame warns in a letter to Congressman Miller, “Any legislation that eliminates choice and competition and mandates that all institutions adopt an all-government run program for the 2010/11 academic year is filled with immense risk and would create massive confusion.”

Get that? The Democrats want an “all-government run program” to provide people access to money to pay for college. And if they do that, then they can force universities to comply with lots of new rules or deny students the right to use federal student loans to go to particular colleges.

But it gets better. Boy does it ever get better.

§ 343 of the plan creates a Green Schools Czar. No kidding. A Green Schools Czar (and committee naturally) would examine the impact of more environmentally friendly universities and find ways to create even more environmentally friendly universities. Oh . . . I have an idea . . . if students need financial assistance and they are forced to go through the feds, the feds can simply tell universities to become compliant or they won’t let students use their student loans to go there.

What is so funny is that §312 of Obama’s stimulus plan also sent money to schools to become more environmentally friendly. That was the carrot. Well, this new law will become the stick.

Let’s keep this one simple (H/T: AoSHQ Headlines):

Q. Why is it that a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act - one with more than 90 Congressional supporters - will apparently not even make it to the House floor?
A. Because Rep. Barney Franks - who is not one of the supporters - was blunt about why he wasn’t a supporter: the Democrats don’t have the votes for it.

Q. Don’t the Democrats control Congress?
A. Yes.

(pause)

Q. Didn’t they campaign on this is…
A. (Interrupting) They lied.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The Democrats say if you want to keep your insurance, you can. But then why do they require so much of you in order to let you keep your plan? The Democrats’ healthcare legislation uses the word “require” 84 times focusing on what should be your rights.

Why?

Don’t believe me? I’ve got the video:

After Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) rejected Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ultimatum to offer a mea culpa on the floor of the House for his outburst during President Barack Obama’s address on Wednesday evening or face a formal admonishment, Democratic leaders are now moving to introduce a resolution to censure Wilson.

But Republican responses to the pending censure might explain why some prescient Democrats, perhaps guilty of similar actions under the last administration, were uneasy with assuming the role of disciplinarian: several key Democrats are weathering their own controversies, including Reps. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means committee, Jack Murtha (D-PA), and Pete Visclosky (D-IN).

“Call it the Glass House of Representatives effect,” writes Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

The censure is “another stunning example of hypocrisy,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele in a statement. “Congressional Democrats are wasting taxpayers’ time and resources on a legislative measure to censure Congressman Joe Wilson so they don’t have to talk about their exceedingly unpopular health care plan.”

While the proposed censure has galvanized Republican legislative opposition to the President and Speaker Pelosi, it represented low-hanging fruit for many Capitol Hill communicators – an opportunity to revive fading Democratic controversies.

“If we are going to march Members down to the well of the House to apologize, Joe Wilson is going to have to get in line behind Nancy Pelosi, who attacked the intelligence community who protects us, Charlie Rangel who cheated on his taxes, Jack Murtha – a walking scandal, and we all know how the Democratic leadership tried to protect William Jefferson” said Steele.

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The House Republicans have been passing around the information below. We got a copy of it and wanted to post it for you.

In a nutshell, the Democrats lack enough moderates to pass H.R. 3200 with the government option and if they ditch the government option, the Democrats would lack enough liberals to pass it. Sucks to be them.

Here is what the GOP is circulating:

NOTE: At least 44 more moderate Members of the Democrat Caucus have gone on the record in opposition to the current health care bill in the House. Likewise, at least 57 liberal Members of the Democrat Caucus have gone on the record saying they will vote against a health care bill without a strong public option. In other words, unless multiple Democrats flip on their stated position on health care, Speaker Pelosi lacks the votes to pass a bill through the House on the strength of Democrat votes alone. How will the President address this intra-party squabbling during his speech tonight?

WHIP COUNT

44 Democrats Opposed

1. Rep. Altmire
2. Rep. Adler
3. Rep. Barrow
4. Rep. Boren
5. Rep. Boucher
6. Rep. Boyd
7. Rep. Bright
8. Rep. Carney
9. Rep. Childers
11. Rep. Cleaver
12. Rep. Cooper
13. Rep. Costello
14. Rep. Cuellar
15. Rep. Dahlkamper
16. Rep. Davis
17. Rep. Driehaus
18. Rep. Ellsworth
19. Rep. Gordon
20. Rep. Griffith
21. Rep. Halvorson
22. Rep. Hill
23. Rep. Holden
24. Rep. Kanjorski
25. Rep. Kaptur
26. Rep. F Kratovil
27. Rep. Marshall
28. Rep. Massa
29. Rep. Melancon
30. Rep. McIntyre
31. Rep. Minnick
32. Rep. Murtha
33. Rep. Oberstar
34. Rep. Ortiz
35. Rep. Perriello
36. Rep. Peterson
37. Rep. Polis
38. Rep. Pomeroy
39. Rep. Ross
40. Rep. Shuler
41. Rep. Stupak
42. Rep. Tanner
43. Rep. Taylor
44. Rep. Titus

57 Liberal Democrats to vote no on a bill without a strong public option

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Mark it down.  President Obama’s “make or break” speech, as the media is portraying it, will be widely viewed as a success among the chattering class.  It will be groundbreaking, visionary, full of clarity, and a “game changer,” as CNN has already labeled it.

But sit tight, that’s just for a while.  Patrick Rufini had it right on Twitter last night.

Tmrw’s speech will be widely praised for resetting the debate on #hcr. And then everything will go back to exactly how it was within 96 hrs

Exactly.  What Patrick realizes, that the MSM does not, is that short term gain is all the president’s speech is intended to do.  If the speech was to be anything like what the media is previewing, the White House would not be making it known that Obama does not plan to offer any real specifics, and plans to be “non-committal” on the central question of the whole debate, the so-called “public option.”

No, the speech is nothing more than an “operational pause,” to borrow a military term of art.  The aftermath is meant to be the calm before the storm.  Next week, the real advance begins.

So as you read the headlines tomorrow, and watch the tingling commentators tonight, remember that it’s all just part of the plan.  And steel yourself for the coming fight.