Picked this up from one of the listeners to Bruce’s radio program this evening. (I’d give props, but the chat scrolled away too fast, sorry!)

Heritage does a great job running through the evils of the actual Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010, laying aside the sausage-making chicanery, ominously (but aptly) titled: “Ordinary Americans Have Been Warned”:

In a recent analysis, Heritage’s Kathryn Nix and Bob Moffit examine the consequences of policies embodied in the Senate bill. It would have enormous consequences for jobs, the economy, and the health care of every American. For example, it:

•Bends the Cost Curve Up
•Increases the Federal Deficit
•Expands Medicaid
•Imposes additional costs on insurance
•Invites Insurance Market Instability
•Creates Incentives for Employers to Drop Group Insurance Plans
•Discriminates Against Low Income Workers
•Creates New Inequities Among Employees
•Creates an Uneven Playing Field for Private Insurance
•Taxes the Middle Class
•Penalizes Marriage

There are details on each of these faults. To see them, I’d suggest you read the whole thing.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

The NRCC is now calling out two California Democrats, Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa, who are on the fence on the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010.

On the fence, that is, about to fall into a a river:

The U.S. Department of Interior announced yesterday that it is increasing water allocations for the Central Valley of California, a region that depends on these water allocations to support local agriculture and jobs. The region has recently been starved for water and as a result unemployment has soared. Not surprisingly, Cardoza and Costa had a hand in the announcement

I guess the old question about blood and water is moot for this Administration.

Who’ll be next to get a great deal from the scheisters Washington Democrats in order to vote deem the way Pelosi and Obama want?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

Please join me on the Wednesday night radio program — GayPatriot’s America — at BlogTalkRadio.com.  Tonight at 10PM Eastern.

Tonight’s guest is fellow conservative blogger and CPAC sponsor Kevin McKeever (aka – BankOfKev).

What did you think?

UPDATE: Review from NRO: “the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter.”

UP-UPDATE: Here’s the video:

General Electric, the corporate home of countless Obama mouthpieces and financial backers, has put up a website honoring President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday (next year). This must be a sign of the end of times!

The Official Reagan Centennial Website is HERE.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In one of the best piece I have read in the past few weeks on the Democrats’ end-end-endgame on health care, Michael Barone pretty much summarizes the issue, with his keen analysis of polling trends and election statistics: What’s good for House leaders is bad for members:

But the political incentives for the 138 Democratic members who represent districts where the health care bills are unpopular are entirely different. What we are seeing is something like an irresistible force (a highly skillful leadership) meeting an immovable object (public opinion in most Democratic districts). One or the other will give.

For many Democratic members — especially the 37 Democrats who voted no last November — the best thing to happen is for the bill not to come to a vote on the floor and just go away.

Emphasis added.  (Read the whole thing–it’s Barone.)  The push for Obamacare comes from the White House, the Democratic leadership and left-wing interest groups.  It’s all about ramming their vision for greater government involvement in our lives through.  Most Democrats in swing districts would rather focus on other issues.

Tight now, the Democratic leaderships doesn’t have the votes to get their rahming done:

Asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to say if he had the 216 votes necessary to pass the legislation in the House, [House Majority Leader] Hoyer, D-Md., replied, “I don’t have a precise number. Having said that, we think we’ll get the votes. … We think we will have the votes when the roll is called.”

Um, Steny, when’s that going to be?  When are you going to call the roll?  And when are we going to see the bill?

Just a second ago on Megyn’s show, that’s what the Michigan Democrat just said.

No, unfortunately, he wasn’t literally talking about the vote on the Stalinization of Health Care Bill of 2010 itself.

What he was talking about was all the vote-counting of his “Stupak Dozen”, those pro-Life Democrats who voted for the House version of the bill last November, but have threatened to flip to a “no” if their demands that taxpayer-funded abortion provisions be stripped from the legislation are not met.

Megyn had asked him about reports that some had been peeled away (something I’d not heard anyway) already, and he replied that, basically (I’m paraphrasing) all the reports of who the Dozen actually are are incorrect. He said, “I keep my list with me”, and that the reports he’s hearing about who they are and who is wavering are “not even close.”

You suppose that lady with all the Botox is posturing? Bluffing? Here’s hoping Rep. Stupak and whomever is on his list hang tough and hang together.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

I’d not presume that Bret Baier of FoxNews reads our blog. But since he’s asked for our input, here are the first three questions I’d pose to President Obama if it were me interviewing him today:

1) Mr. President, you’ve continued to say, even up to this week, that your plan will not affect Medicare negatively. In fact, in Ohio the other day, you criticized those who question you plan by calling them out: [start sound-bite]

You know, the most insidious argument they’re making is the idea that somehow this would hurt Medicare.

Now, that seems a pretty stern characterization of your detractors, to call their tactics “insidious”. Are you willing now, here today, to classify the Congressional Budget Office as “insidious”, considering they have called into question the use of double-counding of quote-unquote savings from Medicare for the purposes of shoring up its own solvency while at the same time using those savings to offset the costs of your overall plan?

2) Mr. President, as a former Constitutional law professor, you were highly-lauded as someone who, quote, “stood apart in too many ways to count.” You were praised by former students and wept upon by the press for your excellent manner of presentation. Could you, now, in terms that all those who watch FoxNews—and clearly could never therefore be nearly as erudite in the ways of the world, let alone the US Constitution as someone like yourself—can understand how it is that the process, from the bill’s passage in the House last fall, through a different bill’s passage through the Senate on Christmas Eve, through reconciliation and the so-called “Slaughter” rule, works? And how this is in keeping with our form of Constitutional and representative government?

3) Finally, Mr. President, you’re also a student of American history, and indeed, now part of it (Haven’t been able to sit down with you since your election, for some reason, by the way, Congratulations on that!) Similar to my last question, and with the understanding that we’re about to make history here in the United States, can you give an example of when, in our Nation’s history, such a broad new entitlement program—which will reorder over one-sixth of the Nation’s economy—was passed without any support from the minority party, an overwhelming majority (greater than the majority that so historically elected you a year and a half ago, for what it’s worth) of the electorate opposed to it, with only the slimmest of margins in the Congress to pass it, through the scheme of reconciliation in the Senate and/or the Slaughter manuveur in the House?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

I guess Obama, Pelosi and Reid will rule the United States like a banana republic from this week on.  We are no longer a “nation of laws.”

In a recent comment, one of our perennial critics, Tano, makes a somewhat cogent defense of Slaughter Rule, a defense which works only if it works out as he says it will.  First, here’s the defense:

What they are trying to avoid – what the whole “deem passed” maneuver is about is their hope to avoid a recorded vote on the UNAMENDED Senate version of the bill. The one with all the Cornhusker – Lousiana stuff in it – y’know the stuff that is coming OUT of the bill. The problem for them, is that they have to vote FOR the Senate bill before they can amend the Senate bill. So technically – they have to vote in favor of all the things that they are going to vote against a day later – things they do not support.

Now, if the House could “deem” the Senate bill passed as part of their actual vote on the amendments (pulling out the Cornhusker Kickback et al.) and then the Senate revisit the whole package (as passed by the House) before the president signs it, this whole process would pass constitutional muster (even if it is a bad bill) .  House Democrats wouldn’t be on the record backing Cornhusker and the Senate would have to vote on the whole thing (its bill plus amendments) before it become law.

But, here’s the problem.  If the House deems the Senate bill passed, then (I’m assuming) that bill would exist independently of all the amendments passed in the House, meaning the president can sign it and it becomes law without the Senate even considering said amendments.   (Where’s the guarantee the Senate will even vote on them?)  Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase along with a whole passel of payoffs become law.

And since the Senate can’t even begin to consider reconciliation (as per the parliamentarian’s recent ruling) until a bill becomes law, then every House member who accedes to the Democrats’ deeming will have allowed the kickback to become law.

Will the Senate want to move forward on those amendments once its bill has become law?  Obama will have had his signing ceremony, the historic moment will have passed.  Will he want to expend any more energy into getting the Senate to act on amendments crafted in the House?  Will Senators?

That’s the main problem with the “deeming” solution.  It’s a sure-fire way to make the Senate bill the law of the land, with no guarantee that the House “fixes” will even be considered.

UPDATE:  (more…)

First, a major hat tip to the folks at the leftie blog, Think Progress, for posting the video embedded below.  General David Petraeus, them man widely admired on the right, the man who, we believe, was the real man of the year in 2007 and who, I believe, would make a fine presidential candidate in two years time, now says “the time has come to consider a change to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”

The good general is exactly right that this should be done in a “thoughtful and deliberative manner,” not the willy-nilly manner in which the the Clinton Administration tried to enact it..

According to the folks at Think Progress:  ”This week, the Pentagon’s Office of the General Counsel is also expected to release the results of its 45-day review of how Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell could be implemented in a fairer manner.” Seems the process has been pretty deliberative so far.  Let’s hope it leads to repeal before the year is out.