Articulating a point made by the Administration, various Washington Democrats and perhaps a pundit or two, one of our readers insisted that support for Obamacare “will only increase once it passes and the apolitical undecideds reward Obama for getting something done“.  Hardly.  Given the trend in polling showing that the more Obama promoted the Democratic overhaul, the more support declined, we know that the more Americans know about these reforms, the less likely they are to support them.

Opposition to Obamacare increased even as some media outlets were all but shills for the various Democratic plans.  A friendly media may have helped sway a Senator or two (or three or four), but it didn’t prevent the American people from turning on the plan.  Had the coverage been more even-handed, the numbers (from the Democrats’ standpoint) would be even worse than they are today.

Should this bill become law (and there’s still hope that it won’t), the Democrats will have a hard time hiding its details, you know, those “specifics” Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida faults Republicans for addressing.  The more people learn about those specifics, the less likely they are to support the bill.

And when Americans learn how the Democrats rammed this through, they’ll wonder why Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid scheduled midnight sessions at a time of year when most people are paying little attention to politics, rushing through passage to meet some Christmas deadline set in Democratic back rooms.  Wonder why the Senate voted in the dead of night for cloture on an amendment which “had been public for about 36 hours” before people “had a single business day to examine it.” They’ll wonder about all those weekend votes (not just this time around) and will certainly ask about pay -offs to wavering Senators with federal funds at a time of increasing deficits.

In short, when the American people see how this was passed, they’ll see Democrats for what they are.  And the percentage having a negative opinion of the majority party will continue to increase.

No wonder some are calling the “Democratic health agenda . . . a political suicide pact.”

Of all the Democratic Senators up for reelection next fall in states which normally vote Republican, I had assumed (and still contend) that Indiana’s Evan Bayh would have the easiest time winning reelection.  To be sure, Indiana did narrowly go for Obama last fall, but the Democrat really invested in the state while McCain took it for granted until polls showed the “red” state to be a tossup.

Of the eighteen seats currently held by Democrats up next fall, only two are in states which McCain won (Arkansas and North Dakota).  Of the remaining fifteen states (there are two Senate races in New York next fall), Indiana delivered the smallest margin of victory to the Democratic nominee.  Given her vote this morning for cloture on the Reid-Baucus-Dodd-Harkin amendment, there’s not much Blanche Lincoln can do to save her Arkansas Senate seat.  Should North Dakota Governor John Hoeven challenge his state’s junior Senator, that seat will flip as well.  But, now even a lesser known opponent has a chance against Byron Dorgan, albeit probably not a strong one unless he can raise a pile of cash.

Which brings us back to Indiana.  I’ve always liked Evan Bayh and not just because we went to the same law school (albeit at different times).  He’s a decent fellow and does not engage in the partisan demagoguery of the leaders of his partisan caucus.  As Democrats go, he’s pretty moderate, but still considerably to the left of center.  And now in voting for cloture, he has signed on to a  massive increase of government power.  Hardly a moderate vote that.

In 2004, against a well-funded opponent in a state that George W. Bush won with 60% of the vote, Bayh ran ahead of the Republican presidential nominee, beating a well-funded GOP opponent by over half-a-million votes.

2004, however, was not a throw-the-bums out year.  And it sure looks like 2010 is shaping up to be such a year.  Could Indiana voters send its popular former Governor packing?  Will he suffer the fate of his father in a similar such year? Right now, I wouldn’t bet on it.  But, thirty years ago, this month no one would have bet on a 2-term Congressman to unseat the well-liked Democrat.  One year later, on November 2, 1980, Dan Quayle easily ousted the elder Bayh.

I am just STUNNED, I tell you — STUNNED. (h/t – Instapundit)

No inspector general can unearth corruption without access to his office, computer or staff. An “administrative leave” putting an IG in that position has the same effect, for all intents and purposes, as an immediate firing. That’s the basic logic behind former Inspector General Gerald Walpin’s lawsuit demanding at least temporary reinstatement to his job as watchdog at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). New revelations about the case from two lawmakers indicate that there is good reason to suspect duplicity from those who helped force Mr. Walpin’s overnight removal in June.

In the past 10 days, two major developments have occurred. First, Obama administration attorneys continued their efforts to deny Mr. Walpin his day in court. On Dec. 7, they filed reply briefs rearguing their demand that the case be dismissed without even a hearing. Second, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, have openly questioned the honesty of CNCS Chairman Alan D. Solomont. Most explosively of all, dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play “a central role in the national service agenda.”

Mr. Walpin’s suit claims that President Obama did not abide by the requirement in the Inspector General Act that IGs be given 30 days’ notice before being “removed” from office. Mr. Walpin instead was placed on “paid administrative leave” for 30 days. The new administration brief argues that such “leave” does not constitute “removal.”

Mr. Walpin’s suit explained that the entire reason for the 30-day-notice requirement is to ward off political interference with ongoing investigations. The administrative leave that denied him access to all the tools of his job, he contended, effectively “removed” him just as he was following up on two reports extremely critical of close allies of the Obamas or of Mr. Solomont.

I can’t really decide if Michelle or Barry are more like Nixon…. or the American Perons.  Time will tell.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Not too long ago, one of our critics faulted me for not fact-checking a line in a recent post.*  I had said something appeared to be true because the only confirmation I had (of this point) was a response to a friend’s facebook posting.  Given that man’s criticism, I am relieved I have never blogged about Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a man “considered the top climate scientist in the world“.

You see, I had always considered Dr. Pachauri, who (as head of the IPCC) shares a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change“, was a trained climate scientist, with an education and background in geology or meteorology, or some science closely related to the study of the earth and its atmosphere.  Had I, based on his prominence in the promotion of the notion of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), called him a climatologist, I would have been wrong.  And my left-wing critics would have surely excoriated me for the misrepresentation.

You see, Dr Pachauri “often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as ‘the world’s top climate scientist’)” is, in actuality, “a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics”.  He “has no qualifications in climate science at all.”  Not just that, he stands to benefit financially from the various schemes recommended by the IPCC.

No wonder Ed Morrissey describes Pachauri as “the perfect pick to lead the effort” to promote “AGW hysteria”:

It’s all about economics, not the climate or science at all.  It’s an excuse to impose a massive transfer of wealth from developed nations to Third World dictatorships, and people like Pachauri have positioned themselves to get rich on the transactions.

He does have a lot in common with Al Gore.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  My pal Sonicfrog gives me some gentle (I hope) ribbing:

Man, you are so behind the times. I gave the good Dr some bloogy love way back in Nov of last year. One of the best things about Climategate is that people are starting to pay attention to things we’ve been pointing out for years.

* (more…)

“. . .moral sanctimoniousness and a determination to do the opposite of whatever George W. Bush was doing.”

Jennifer Rubin

Every time I review the 2008 presidential campaign, I remain amazed at how well John McCain did, given the political headwinds against which he and his party were sailing last fall.  To be sure, with the selection of Sarah Palin and the successful convention, he had built up a good head of steam heading out of St. Paul.  Problem was, his team hadn’t developed a strategy for confronting unexpected obstacles, nor for dealing with a hostile media.  Not just that, he never found a way to articulate a coherent economic message which become particularly important in the wake of the financial meltdown of mid-September (one of those aforementioned unexpected obstacles).

That meltdown and McCain’s showing came to mind again last night as I was reviewing various polls for posts I was working on at the time.  According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, the percentage of Americans believing the country was “off on the wrong track” hit a high of 78 just two weeks before the election, with only one in eight voters thinking we were headed in the right direction.

Just look at this pollster.com average of polls to see how the gap between those thinking the country was on the wrong track and those who thought we were headed in the right direction expanded in the run-up to last fall’s balloting:

It just wasn’t a good place for the candidate of the incumbent party to find himself in an electoral contest where the candidate of the opposing party is outspending him while the media fawns all over said opposition candidate and trashes the Vice Presidential nominee of the incumbent party.

Just to serve as a reminder about the nature of Obama’s “mandate.”  It wasn’t so much the agenda of his party voters were rejecting, but that of the then-incumbent party that voters were rejecting.  Given where we were last fall–and the kind of campaign McCain ran–it’s simply amazing that he broke 40% of the vote, much less the nearly 46% he actually won.

Despite President Obama’s repeated efforts to move public opinion in favor of the Democratic plan to overhaul our health care system, he was only able to generate a slight bump in the polls in early September, but to see those numbers slide even further–and a pretty steady pace–in the following months.

As a result, Democrats appear to have won passage of this massive government intervention in our lives not by an appeal to public opinion, but by legislative machinations.  Some new kind of politics.

Given the mostly favorable coverage the president and his plan received in the mainstream media, with “reporters” often exaggerating the benefits of the plan and downplaying criticism, I wonder if those numbers would have declined further–and at a more rapid pace–had the coverage been a little more even-handed.

While the Democrats hard sell worked to flip erstwhile “moderate” Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, one centrist Republican who had voted for the Baucus version of a health care overhaul in committee, remained unswayed:

One GOP lawmaker who had been in talks with the White House, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, said the bill was being pushed through without a chance for meaningful debate or change.

She said the “beat the clock” approach “is really overruling legislative sanity.”

Unlike her Cornhusker colleague, the lady for the Pine Tree State is clearly not a “cheap date.”

With the Democratic Congress on the verge of passing quite possibly the most unpopular piece of major legislation in U.S. history, with more people disapproving than approving Obama’s handling of the economy and with an increasing number of Americans believing the country is on the wrong track, it’s no wonder Democrats want to turn the clock back and run against George W. Bush in 2010.

Sure beats running on their record, Obama’s broken promises and an increasingly unpopular Congress.  According to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, a higher percentage of Americans (68) disapprove of the current Congress than disapproved (65) of the last Republican Congress in September 2006.  (Interesting that poll also showed that in mid-October 2008, only 12% of Americans approved of the then-current Congress, yet two weeks later voted to increase the Democratic majorities in both Houses.)

Democrats may remain obsessed with George W. Bush, but a year from now, the American people will be more concerned about how the incumbent President, then nearly halfway through his White House tenure, is doing.  And heck, the way thing have been going these past few months, by the time we head to the polls to elect a new Congress next fall, the immediate past president may be more popular than his successor.

Guess running against a retired politician is easier sell for Democrats than running on their record.

With repeated and regular Republican votes against Obama’s big government initiatives, people are slowly beginning to realize that Democratic claims notwithstanding, this is no longer George W. Bush’s GOP.  A year hence, people may not want to be affiliated with Barack Obama’s party.  That NBC/WSJ poll shows that for the first time since Obama took office, a higher percentage of Americans (45) have a negative opinion of the Democratic Party than they (43) do of the GOP.  In February, nearly half of all Americans had a positive view of the Democratic Party.  Barely a third do today.

The GOP, to be sure, still has a ways to go, but, as elections in New Jersey, Virginia and the New York City suburbs show, when actual candidates replace a generic party name, Americans increasingly prefer the Republican.

No wonder President Obama and the Democrats moved heaven and earth to overhaul our nation’s health care system.  It’s all about making history.  On Yahoo!’s main page, we read Obama hails 60th Senate vote for historic health reform bill”

Jubilant Democrats locked in Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson as the 60th and decisive vote for historic health care legislation Saturday, putting President Barack Obama’s signature issue firmly on a path for Christmas Eve passage.

At the White House, Obama swiftly welcomed the breakthrough, saying, “After a nearly century-long struggle, we are on the cusp of making health care reform a reality in the United States of America.”

It’s all about the historical struggle, the people be damned.  For this isn’t the only thing historical about this vote as Megan McArdle (and other bloggers, including yours truly, and pundits) have pointed out:

No bill this large has ever before passed on a straight party-line vote, or even anything close to a straight party-line vote. No bill this unpopular has ever before passed on a straight party-line vote. We’re in a new political world.

We sure are.  But, we’re still in the same old media world.  In telling us how historic this bill is, the AP only reports those aspects of the CBO report that fit its narrative:

CBO analysts also said the legislation would cut federal deficits by $132 billion over 10 years and possibly much more in the subsequent decade.

According to the CBO Director’s Blog (via Big Government),

These longer-term calculations assume that the provisions are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation. For example, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) mechanism governing Medicare’s payments to physicians has frequently been modified (either through legislation or administrative action) to avoid reductions in those payments, and legislation to do so again is currently under consideration in the Congress. . . .

The legislation would maintain and put into effect a number of procedures that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. Under current law and under the proposal, payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare would be reduced by about 21 percent in 2010 and then decline further in subsequent years.

And while the AP article reports all the legislation’s supposed benefits as facts, the unnamed author leaves it to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to spell out the costs, as if they’re not really facts, just allegations by a man embittered by his defeat.  The article doesn’t mention the payoffs to the state of Nebraska nor the other federal funds siphoned off to secure the votes of other once-wavering Democrats.

To talk about the messy way this bill was passed might get in the way of the historical narrative the AP wishes to offer.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Ryan reminds us that just because something is historic doesn’t mean it’s good:

Historic? Oh, it’ll be historic.

The crash and burn of the Hindenburg was historic. The Black Plague in Europe was historic. The fall of Rome was historic. Wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people are historic. But none of these were good things. However, it’s exactly the kind of “historic” we’re seeing here in Obamacare.

The BAD kind of historic.

And I would add the Munich agreement Neville Chamberlain signed was also historic.

As this chart below shows, support for the Democrats’ proposed overhaul of our health care system was never strong, rarely cracking 50% (and then only by a point or tw0) in any of the surveys used for this compilation.  While support has gradually declined since Obama took office, opposition skyrocketed in the spring to increase at a slower, but steady pace since this summer.

Has Congress ever passed reforms of this magnitude with so little popular support, indeed, with support as the issue was being debate in Washington?

Well, the good news is that come 2013, Nebraska will have two Republican Senators for the first time since 1976.  Indeed, it now seems likely that Republicans will have a cloture-proof Senate for the 113th Congress.  The likelihood for a Republican majority in the 112th Congress has increased dramatically, with an 80-seat pick-up in the House no longer out of the question.

Perhaps, never before in the history of the United States has the majority party in Congress done so much to pass a bill that is so unpopular.  With their endless arm twisting and bribery (with our tax dollars as well as those of our children and their children and grandchildren), ol’ Harry got Ben Nelson’s vote.  While Democrats have lost the battle of public opinion on health care reform, they have won the battle of political control.  The government will likely soon have greater control over our health care, more power will be transferred to Washington while our health care cost will increase and our choices decrease.

And all this in a debate that broke nearly every promise Barack Obama made on the campaign trail.  It was not transparent.  The majority resorted to the same ol’ political tricks that he decried on the campaign trail.  C-SPAN cameras were not present for the negotiations.  Indeed, they were taking place at the best possible time to avoid public scrutiny.  Ol’ Harry unveiled the reform he promised ten days ago on the Saturday before Christmas:

When normal people are making breakfast for the kids, wrapping last-minute presents, cleaning their houses for out-of-town guests, or still sleeping.

Who conducts business this way?

Only people with something to hide.

Only furtive power brokers doing everything in their power to avoid full, public scrutiny and an open, deliberative process.

There still is time to stop this monstrosity.  And let’s encourage Republicans to use every trick in the legislative rule book to block it.  And if ol’ Harry complains, well, let’s just remind him of the tricks he pulled to block more popular legislation and qualified Republican nominees when there was a Republican in the White House.

Every year at this time, I, like countless other Americans, review my finances and figure out how much to give to the various charitable causes I support.  As per my previous post, I am often annoyed that some groups which do good work show little respect for their contributors (and potential contributors) by regularly sending appeals for donations, sending unsolicited gifts and asking for more money in letters confirming a contribution.

In this post, I’d like to single out three groups which send out only a handful of solicitations each year (in the case of one group, no more than two) and whose thank-you notes are just that, thank- you notes and not appeals for contribution.  They do good work by respectively, helping injured service members across the country, providing housing for the mentally ill homeless in Los Angeles and promoting free market ideas in our nation’s capital.

I encourage you to support these organizations:

1. “The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund provides financial assistance and quality of life solutions for Marines, Sailors and other military personnel assigned to Marine Forces, injured in post 9-11 combat, training, or with life threatening illnesses, and their families.”  Click here to donate.
2. The Lamp Community helps “people living with severe mental illness move from streets to homes. Lamp offers immediate access to affordable, safe and permanent housing without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment.”  Click here to donate.
3. “The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace.”  They’re doing yeoman’s work on healthcare reform, promoting free market alternatives and challenging what was once the conventional wisdom on global warming.  Click here to donate.

Of course, there are many groups out there which do good work.  In my experience, these groups combine the good work they do for those in need of medical care, housing or an education in freedom while respecting those who want to help them meet those needs.

If your finances allow, be generous at this time of year, indeed, strive to be generous throughout the year.  Even if you don’t support these groups, please find a worthy cause to support.  Or a lonely friend to visit.  It’s not just through our donations that we can show our generosity.

Today, I received a letter confirming a contribution I made to a charity I have long supported.  Attached to this letter of gratitude was a solicitation for an additional contribution.  Other charities send me regular snail mail, often in thick envelopes, marked with reminders to the Postal Service to handle the package with care as “free gifts are enclosed.”

Fancy writing on other packages indicates “Your FREE 2009 Wrapping Paper & Gift Tags Are Enclosed.”  Others are marked “Urgent” while I received two solicitations from the same charity on one day.  In many cases, I receive regular solicitations, often in thick envelopes from organizations I have never supported.  One particular think tank in our nation’s capital regularly sends me 8 1/2″ by 11″ envelopes asking for my money.  Some send me “gifts” they want to send back to them so they can send them along to soldiers or schoolchildren.  It might save some expense if they didn’t first send such things to me.

I wonder how many trees were cut down for the regular 8 1/2″ by 11″ mailings I receive from the National Resources Defense Council (a group I never supported).  Oddly enough, organizations I have never joined send me reminders to renew my membership while my apartment is cluttered with gift cards I never ordered, books I have yet to read, CDs I have yet to open and DVDs I have yet to watch, all sent to me, free of charge by groups about which I know little.

In one case, I received regular mailings from an organization I was convinced was a fly-by-night operation, using the stories of children with facial deformities in the third world to enrich scam artists on the East Coast.  I later learned that group does very good work; they just have a very bad group of fundraisers.  Indeed, I’m sure that many of these groups do very good work; it’s just that those in their Development Office (or those to whom they farm out fundraising) don’t have much respect for their potential donors. (more…)

Ten months ago, California’s junior Senator praised the Senate for passing the so-called “stimulus,” noting that the “$787.1 billion economic recovery legislation” was “designed to save or create millions of jobs“.  She cited a White House prediction “that the legislation will save or create approximately 400,000 jobs in California.”  Well, since her vote for the bill, the Golden State has lost 342,600 jobs.

That means that before Ma’am again faces the voters, she’ll have to find a way of creating nearly three-quarters of a million jobs, 742,600 to be precise.

Wonder what plans she has to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses, you know, those enterprises which create the most new jobs.

Looks like there’s something to our contention that the supposedly non-partisan Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is really just a gay auxiliary for the Democratic National Committee.

Checking out “HRC PAC records at OpenSecrets.org for the 2010 election cycle,” principled left-wing blogger Michael Petrelis finds that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) “is the largest recipient of HRC PAC money so far this year“.  Scanning the HRC’s donations, I founds lot of donations to Democrats.  Well, they did donate to one Republican, but practically the first thing that DIABLO did after dropping out of her special election contest in Upstate New York was to endorse a Democrat.

And HRC seems heavily invested in Ma’am’s re-election, donating $4,000 to “Friends of Barbara Boxer.”  HRC and Ma’am do have a lot in common.  They can raise a lot of sound and fury (and a huge chunk of change to boot), but don’t seem able to accomplish much.  For her 17 years in the Senate, Ma’am has only seen three of her bills become law, while HRC has little to show for their bowing, scraping and fundraising for the Democratic Party.

There must be something good in that wind that comes sweeping down the plain. Not a single county in the Sooner State went for Barack Obama in last fall’s election.

And while Oklahoma’s senior Senator is in Copenhagen trying to bring some sense to a politically correct multitude gathered there for the global warming conference, his junior colleague is manning the fort back in Washington, standing firm against the Democrats’ press to overhaul one-sixth of the American economy.

Time to sing a rousing salute to the state which gave us two men willing to stand athwart conventional wisdom yelling, “No.”

In one of the great works of the last century, the French Nobel laureate defined “un homme révolté” (translated into English as a “rebel”) simply as a man who who says “no.”  In saying “no” to one thing, he says “yes” to something else:

Apparently negative since it creates nothing, this revolt is profoundly positive because it reveals what is always to be defending in each man.

And so today, in rising on the Senate floor to defend the Party of “No,” the junior Senator from Oklahoma channeled the Algerian-born writer/philosopher from France.  For, in saying “No” to Obamacare, he affirmed the values for which America’s founders fought over two centuries ago:

We’re accused of being the party of no. . . .  no is a wonderful word. When your child is misbehaving, you say no. When someone’s stealing liberty, you say no…Saying no at the right time saves lives. Saying no at the right time saves money…Saying no at the right time saves liberty.

Let the Democrats call us the Party of “No.”  And we’ll tell them, as Tom Coburn has, what that “No” affirms.

‘Twas the Friday before Christmas, and not on the Senate floor
Was Harry Reid’s Health Care Bill available, nor its CBO score.
The Senators were pretending to ponder the issue with care,
With Democrats promising the legislation soon would be there.

Finally some Democrats are are taking Reid to task (though ever so slightly) for his failure to produce a bill. Politico reports that “Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Jim Webb and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman” signed a letter, calling on ” Senate Majority Leader Reid [D-Mount Crumpit] to increase the process’ transparency”:

Every step of the process needs to be transparent, and information regarding the bill needs to be readily available to our constituents before the Senate starts to vote on legislation that will affect the lives of every American. The legislative text and complete budget scores from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of the health care legislation considered on the Senate floor should be made available on a website the public can access for at least 72 hours prior to the first vote to proceed to the legislation.

Wonder if these eight will refuse to vote for cloture until those 72 hours have passed after the release of the bill.

While now rousing ailing nonagenarians in the dead of night, wheeling them in to vote on bills that should have been debated long ago, Reid and his Democrats can hardly expect Senators to have clear heads with they vote on legislation increasing government control over one-sixth of the American economy.

The letter of these eight Senators is not quite the tongue-lashing that Reid needs, but it’s at least a step in the right direction.

If Washington Democrats weren’t trying to nationalize one-sixth of the United States economy while giving government a greater say in the most personal decisions we make about our health, the current shenanigans in our nation’s capital would make for a fine farce, you know, to borrow a title, a real comedy of errors.  The latest comes to us via Michelle.

It seems that while inveighing against Republicans for their delaying tactics, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Mount Crumpit) arrived “more than an hour later than he told other Senators to come to the floor, [saying] ‘other business’ prevented him from being on time.”

Other business, Harry?  What’s more important than health care?  Didn’t you say we needed to pass something right away?  Please let us know what you were doing that was so pressing.