RINO is a Four Letter Word

Professor Ann Althouse links a crude remark but rather apt remark  Rush Limbaugh made about the political whore Dede Scozzafava:

Scozzafava has screwed every RINO in the coun — we can say that she’s guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just see how phony and dangerous they are. You know, 2010 might be a nightmare for PETA. Two animals may become extinct; RINOs and Blue Dog Democrats. Pelosi’s gonna kill off the Blue Dogs, and the conservatives are gonna finally get rid of RINOs. The American people have had enough.

Scozzafava accepted some eighty thousand dollars of republican campaign contributions  and then endorses a democrat.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere….The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the Election Day Edition

• WHAT IS THE GOAL? EVEN HE DOESN’T KNOW: Byron York today says
  

  A lot of observers are having trouble figuring out the philosophical underpinnings of Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

  Clearly, that’s because those observers are not used to American leaders trying to diminish the role of the United States in the world. As York himself points out,

  Among other things, Obama tried to find new jobs for displaced steelworkers, to create after-school programs, and to bring new political power to public housing residents. But he truly succeeded at just two things. One, he pushed the city of Chicago to open up a summer-jobs office on the far South Side, where there had not previously been an office, and two, he helped force the city to clean up asbestos in a 1940s-era housing project in the same neighborhood.

  That was it.

  

  Byron York

  Obama the organizer spent most of his time teaching community members how to put pressure on the city government, or on various wealthy corporations, to give them money. Obama’s organizers could be confrontational, or they could be conciliatory — Obama favored the latter — but the whole idea was to make powerful people feel guilty, or embarrassed, or annoyed enough to give them things.

  Quite so.  The issue now is that Obama himself is on the other side of the fence.  He is the power as I pointed out by quoting Mark Steyn  in yesterday’s Ramble. Obama has spent his entire political existence being a thorn in the side of the powerful.  He will never been a million years be able to meld that affectation of being anti-leader, when he is the leader. If there’s anything it’s amazing to me about this whole thing it’s that so many have a great deal of difficulty figuring it out .   That applies to far more than just foreign policy, of course.

• DISENFRANCHISING THE MILITARY IN NY23: One of the biggest features of the Watertown, New York area is Fort Drum.  Given the relatively low population density of the area, the military and its base outside Watertown is a large consideration when talking about voting in the area.  It had occurred to me yesterday to comment on this, but lacking any direct information as to how military ballots were being handled in NY23, I decided to sit back and wait.  So imagine my surprise last night when I notice Hans A. von Spakovsky over at The Corner holding forth on this very subject:
  

  In New York, the governor set the election with only 35 days notice, which is ten days short of the recommended 45-day minimum. So when did the counties in the 23rd congressional district actually get their ballots printed and mailed out to military voters (such as the thousands of members of the Tenth Mountain Division deployed in Afghanistan)? Thirty days before November 3? Twenty-five days before November 3?

  The question of when Virginia and New York actually mailed out their absentee ballots is something that investigative journalists in both states should be probing, even as we go into what may be a very exciting Election Day. Otherwise, our military voters may be disenfranchised, as courts determined they were in Virginia in the November 2008 elections, and in New York in the March 2009 special congressional election for the 20th district.

  Run that up against the post that I put up this morning regarding ACORN and its plans to protest the election vote tomorrow.  Can you imagine those in the military protesting the election on the grounds that they were disenfranchised?  So why is it acceptable from ACORN? Maybe it’s because we’re used to the idea of the military having something more in a way of integrity, then we do far left activists.

• THE PALIN EFFECT:But may start this piece out by giving you a little bit of the Limbaugh interview on Fox News Sunday the other day:
  
  I think that’s exactly correct.  The CW on Sarah Palin has always been exactly as Limbaugh suggests.  Then again, the purveyors of C.W. have yet to figure out just what it is that’s driving the tea bag movements, as well.  Which one of them predicted NY23, as an example?

  Speaking of that; Do you wanna know why Doug Hoffman is doing so very well in that district just now?  Do you wanna know what turned the tide for him?  It was the endorsement of Sarah Palin. As was demonstrated over the weekend the GOP leadership still does not understand what it is that they have in terms of anger within the party. Certainly Newt Gingrich doesn’t. (You will recall he came up in a post or two over the weekend as regards that NY23 race)   They still don’t understand who the real movers and shakers are, considering themselves to be such.  But in case after case, that proves not to be correct.  In fact, I’m going to tell you this as a cautionary note; watch NY23 very closely indeed tonight.  You will see signs that the Democrats understand far better what the teabag movement is about then the GOP leadership does.  That’s despite the fact the movement frightens the crud out of both of them. Then again, given the positions on the issues of the day by Sozzafava being so Democrat-Like despite the fact that she was running as a “republican”, perhaps the reason they share such fear about real conservatives is because they share other points of view, as well.  Something to think about.

• DEMOCRAT RACISTS: Here’s a little tidbit I bet you didn’t know; according to a note I got this morning in the mail every single one of the active affects investigations that are being run by Democrat- run the ethics committee, every single one of them… is centered on a black lawmaker.  Every .  Single.  One.  Are we going to hear about racism again over this, I wonder?
• JERRY WRIGHT, MARXIST: I’m going to show you something that I consider rather ominous.  First, a quote from Neal Boortz:
  

  Jeremiah Wright is back in the news. This time over a video where he praises Marxism. Sounds about right.

  Yes, so it does. So we go to the site where the vid is, and we get

  Sorry, “Rev Jeremiah Wright (introduced by Robert McChesney) at Monthly Review’s 60th Anniversary” was deleted at 9:45:56 Tue Nov 3, 2009. We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.

  That sounds about right, too. 

Just a reminder to those of you whose districts have an election today… Vote.

ACORN foe Anita Moncrief over at Hot Air:

Anita Moncrief

Multiple sources on the ground in New York’s 23^rd Congressional district confirm that ACORN is expected to be actively protesting the election results in Clinton County, New York tomorrow. This move comes on the heels of a legal win for the Hoffman camp today as it was ruled that all poll watchers would have to be registered voters of NY 23.

The fact is, these tactics should be a surprise to nobody given where they’re coming from, and who they are in support of.  The all out effort to hang onto the district is even reflected in the economic bailout plans of the current administration. As Anita points out:

MSNBC reports that :

“The New York governor’s office just released county-by-county data on stimulus spending. (Here, here, and here.) It breaks down where — and on what — money was spent.

A First Read analysis of the data shows that almost $1 billion was allocated to counties in — either wholly or partially — New York’s 23rd congressional district.”

One does not have to wonder what WFP/ACORN’s motivations are. They clearly appear to be related to money and power.

Do you begin to understand the type of people we are dealing with, here?  And, does anyone doubt that this is exactly the kind of nonsense we’re going to see in the 2010 and 2012 elections?

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

We’re in November already. The kids around here spent evening before last one drink from door to door demanding candy or what have you.  After spending piles of their parents  cash on a costume to wear for the occasion, the vast majority of them ended up wearing their brand new water coats over said costumes, because of the cold and wind.   It’ll struggle to get out of the 40’s around here all week. Grey, bleary, and yecccchhhhh. Welcome to western New York. I still wonder why I stay here, between the weather and the government here, and the locals, too.

The  world of the political is no less ironic or frightening, as I look around.   Let’s get to some of the better stuff.

• STEYN QUIPS: A couple quips from the always impressive Mark Steyn:
  

  Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that “we’re going to speak truth to power.”

  Who’s Valerie Jarrett? She’s “Senior Adviser” to the president of the United States – i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to.

  Would anyone care to explain to me how this is any different than our current administration?
  …

  

  Mark Steyn

  The Senior Adviser seems to have forgotten that she is the power. Admittedly, this is a recurring lapse on the part of the administration. There was Barack Obama only the other day, blaming everything on the president – no, no, silly, not him, the other fellow, the Designated Fall Guy who stepped down as head of state in January to accept the new constitutional position of Blame Czar.

  (Snicker)  You know, though, this is exactly the kind of snark we’d be seeing from the left, at ANY Republican president, particularly one as big a demonstrable disaster as Obama has been thus far.  As it is, we see stuff coming from them such as in the next point.

• THE LEFT COMES UNGLUED: The subject of course is the race over in NY23…. which is by some reports firmly in the hands of Conservative “upstart” Doug Hoffman.  When we see leftists invoking Stalin, you know they’re losing it.  Ed Driscoll, noting the amount of foam that is forming around Frank Rich’s mouth, suggests a bit of irony, here.
  

  

  Ed Driscoll

  But a paradox emerges: does Rich consider “Stalinist” a good or a bad thing? From Duranty copping a Pulitzer by shilling for Uncle Joe himself, to Pinch Sulzberger backing the NVA because “It’s the other guy’s country” to, just last month, Thomas Friedman pining for Communist China, it’s certainly hard to tell.(And of course, while Scozzafava’s views were certainly to the left of mainstream Republicanism, it seems a bit unfair for Rich to call her a Stalinist…)

  (As an aside, this is a point that Ed expands on today. )  Frank Rich apparently failed to note the endorsements from ACORN and the SEIU and the Daily Kos for Scozzafava. Yep. Real conservative, this Scozzafava woman. Yet, the left is sparing nothing, it seems in their attempt to paint her as a conservative.  As to the  reaction of the usual suspects, Michelle Malkin  laughs quietly and says:

  

  Michelle Malkin

  Political groups other than MoveOn spending money to sway the electorate? Why, it’s Stalinism.

  And see, there’s the point; I have my doubts Frank Rich or anyone else inside that crumbling leftist institution called the New York Times would have any problems at all with MOVEON, or ACORN, or  or any other leftist org spending money on a political race. Their own writings over the last 100 years tend to bear this out to the point of achievement of axiomatic status.

  In the end, what we have is a bunch of leftist blowing steam because the attempt to take over the Republican party and direct it’s agenda, the way it did with John McCain, has been exposed, and lost, and they rightly see this as a harbinger of things to come.

  Now consider, people… this is just one race, and they’re already in spastics, calling anyone to their right “extreme” and “Stalinist” and a “Whacky, paranoid cult”… essentially trying to paint most of America as the next incarnation of Hitler, and McViegh. It’s called desperation, folks, and the left is reeking of it today. Can you imagine the steam coming out of their ears in another year, much less three years from now?

• LEADESHIP? And what of the GOP “leadership”? The center of the Republican party has been tossing shots acorss the bow of the GOP “leadership for a generation.  And yes, this supposedly there’s of the party of been leading the republicans and two were relevance for some time now, specifically by ignoring the values of  the base. That they are now claiming they were blindsided by this revolt of the rank and file reinforces my confidence in their ability to lead the Republican party not at all.  the republican party leadership at best start understanding that the party needs to start sounding like Republicans, and not like Democrat Lite.. . Else the party will continue to slide into irrelevance.  I’ve said it before, I will say it again; I have been watching political events for 40 years and longer, and I am here to tell you that the success of a Republican candidate is directly tide to how conservative they are perceived as.  You would think John McCain would’ve been a wakeup call.  Apparently, these bozos need a few more attitude adjustments with the large it wouldn’t plank device, such as what NY 23 is providing.
• SCOZZAFAVA’S LACK OF INTEGRITY: Oh, and as for Scozzafava herself? Note please, that she’s been working behind the scenes for the Democrat long before officially throwing her support behind him yesterday. So much for being a ‘lifelong Republican”, as if that means somehting when your positions are so disconnected from the maintrseam of the  party you claim membership in.  So much for Gingrich and his call for “Party Unity”  We see now that “party Unity only flows one way… to the left. There’s a lesson Gingrich has yet to really learn, despite his having retracted support from Scozzafava and going with Doug Hoffman.  Bipartisanship isn’t the answer when it beocmes a code-word for ‘leftist’. As for her future, let me just say this; Short of changing parties, Scozzafava’s political career is over. More here.
• OOPS: I knew a girl once, who got pregnant. The doctors told her it was going to be a 6lb 9oz girl. It came out a 9lb 6oz boy, and she just a little bit of a thing. So trust me when I tell you I was amused to learn that the predictions for a record hurricane season, all because of ‘Global Warming”,  turned out to be the quietest hurricane season  in the last 30 years. Let’s just say my trust in the  ability to predict things like this, of those who supposedly know so much more than we,  is not strong.
• NOW, SUDDENLY, LEAKS AREA A SERIOUS SECURITY PROBLEM: John Hinderaker at Powerline:
  

  

  John Hinderaker

  Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday invoked the state secrets privilege in connection with a case titled Shubert, et al. v. Barack Obama, et al..  The Shubert case is pending in federal district court in San Francisco. Assuming the court agrees with the Obama administration’s position, the case will be dismissed on the ground that it cannot proceed without a danger that vitally important national security secrets will be revealed.Many commentators have noted that this is one more instance where the Obama administration, now that it is in possession of the facts and charged with responsibility for the nation’s security, has acted in full concert with much-reviled policies of the Bush administration.

  No kidding?  Looks like another case of “See, I told you so. ”

• NO V-SHAPED RECOVERY:  Billy Beck over the weekend:
  

  

  Billy Beck

  Someone dig up data and run the numbers:

  Didn’t catch his name, but I just heard an economist on TEEVEE point out that in order to get back to 6% unemployment, this economy needs to grow at a rate of 5% for the next four years.

  If that’s the case, it’s just another indicator of how bad things can get, because I just don’t see that under a more socialist government than ever before in American history.

  Well, fine. Here you are:

  The bulls say we’ll have a sharp recovery this time because the rate of jobs recovery matches the rate of decline: Panicked employers cut too many jobs and now they’ll have to hire them back.  Anything is possible, but this bullish argument does not explain how the job market will rapidly absorb the huge amount of slack that is not reflected in the unemployment rate. It also does not explain how companies will rapidly increase their payrolls when they’re selling to consumers that are hunkering down and trying to rebuild savings.

  Specifically:

  • A record-low work-week suggests that employers have a lot of room to ramp production without hiring new employees (or old ones back).  David Rosenberg estimates that just increasing the work-week back to normal levels will be the same as creating 3 million jobs.

  • Consumers still have debt coming out of their ears (consumers are customers of most of the companies that need to start hiring)

  • Consumers’ wealth has been clobbered, so they need to start saving instead of spending again (ditto)

  • Approximately 4 million jobs in finance, construction, and real-estate are gone for good (or at least a while)

  • Getting the unemployment rate back to 5% in 5 years would require average monthly job creation of 250,000. The average for the major boom of the 1990s was 150,000.  The average for the past 30 years has been about 50,000.

  The number of job openings to unemployed job-seekers has now hit a record high of 1-to-6. So it will be a long time before we get back to normal on this ratio, let alone create a job-seekers’ market.

  One  easily gets the impression that are the time any kind of sizable recovery happens the Obama presidency will be a distant bad memory, even assuming the implausible happening of the rate of recovery doubling under the government-driven ‘solutions’ of the Democrats.

• BROKEN EGGS: I noted a pertinent question from Bruce McQuain yesterday. It doesn’t edit down well, so I’ll ask you to go and read it. Now, within that context, and while looking up something else, (by way of Ed) I ran across this quote from the writer known as Theodore Dalrymple:
  

  My little collection has led me to the conclusion that the Soviet Union was valued by contemporary intellectuals not for the omelette, but for the broken eggs. They thought that if nothing great could be built without sacrifice, then so great a sacrifice must be building something great. The Soviets had the courage of their abstractions, which are often so much more important to intellectuals than living, breathing human beings.

  So now, the question becomes, how what we’re seeing out of Washington these days is any different than what Dalrymple describes. I don’t see as you can fit water between them, myself. Thing is I suppose there’s a lot more Americans thinking along the same lines than is good for the Democrats and their election chances in the next few cycles. A rebellion is already taking shape.

• BITSBLOG BUMPER STICKER OF THE DAY: Seen on a lifted4*4:  My other car is underneath this one.

The Fox News Sunday interview with Rush Limbaugh.

Presidential advisor David Axelrod fires back, Polttico:

“It is a surreal day when you are getting lectures on humility by Rush Limbaugh,” Axelrod said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “He is an entertainer. The president has to run the country.”

Mr. Axelrod, if  Rush Limbaugh is just an entertainer, why are you  responding to him.   Is it the job of a presidential advisor to debate entertainers?    By the way, I note no substantive response.

Mr. Axelrod, if Obama has a country to run why isn’t he running it?  Rather than tend to our nations problem such as ; soaring jobs losses,  an ever  weakening dollar and dithering on a war of necessity: the one dithers playing twenty-four rounds of  golf,  jet setting to Copenhagen and going out on the town.   Leaders, lead.   All frat boy Obama can do is to party.

I know legend has that the American writer Edgar Allan Poe died a drunk on the streets of Baltimore in 1849.

Stacy McCain

Edgar Allan Poe

Yet in the spirit of first Ronald Reagan, and now Jake Tapper, trust but verify, can we be so sure?   Poe does bears a certain resemblance to Robert Stacy McCain.

So please consider the possibility that Poe faked his own death,  and continues to drink, and write.   The preservative powers of alcohol are well known

Then if  Stacy is one hundred fiffty, I gotta find out what he is drinking

The main stream media has not turned on Barack Obama, but at the same time they are starting to put some distance between themselves and the claims of the Obama Whine House.  The Whine House has created a new moan, to wit calculator abuse,  via Fausta:

Jake Tapper managed to figure out that $160 billion divided by 1 million “created or saved” jobs equals $160,000 per job.

And, whammo!

The White House is so shocked at Jake’s finding, they acuse him of calculator abuse.

Video:

It seems that the gospel according to Obama requires the unquestioning obedience to the Whine House approved spin from the mount.    The Whine House does not allege that Tapper’s math is wrong.   Rather they complain that Tapper does not accept the Whine House claims at face value.

Now the other day, Obama said that only liberals think for themselves.   So as Tapper thinks to do his own math  computations on the Whine House cllaims, Tapper must be a liberal.

THIS is the 40th anniversary of the antiwar protests that led to the ban of R.O.T.C. at some of the nation’s most elite universities — Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Tufts. And yet, the attitude on these campuses today is hardly antimilitary….

AT the Harvard commissioning ceremony, General Petraeus did not bring up the campus ban. It fell to Mr. Whitt, the former naval captain, to make the case for bringing back R.O.T.C.  Mr. Whitt quoted a Harvard president from another era, Abbott Lawrence Lowell. R.O.T.C. was established during World War I, and in 1916, President Lowell spoke about why it was important for Harvard and other universities to do their share: “The aim of a country which desires to remain at peace, but must be ready to defend itself, should be to train a large body of junior officers who can look forward to no career in the Army, and can have no wish for war, yet who will be able to take their places in the field when needed.”

Read more at NYTimes by Michael Winerip

Eric, did you notice that while we were napping a couple of rednecks sneaked  into the state?   And boy does the National Republican Congressional Committee(NRCC) have grits all over their faces.

The NRCC spent $900,00 in an attempt to install RINO Dede Scozzafava in Congress.    The opposition  consisted of Tea Party conservatives, and redneck bloggers.

Mark Tapscott

The rednecks won,  from Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner:

It’s official now, liberal New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava has suspended her campaign as the Republican nominee to succeed Rep. John McHugh, R-NY, in the Empire State’s 23rd congressional district.

For the redneck gloating,  Stacy McCain:

Stacy McCain

Big shout-out to Erick Erickson of Red State, who came out strong and early for Hoffman and pushed hard. The role of CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale — who got about a dozen conservative bloggers on an Oct. 14 conference call — must also be acknowledged. (Note to self: Make list of names for Wednesday a.m. discussion panel about NY23.)

I wish Scozzafava  would get past her animus towards human beings not yet born,  and wish her well.   Sadly in a state as blue as New York there is a real Republican need for politicians like Scozzafava.   However there is no need for a blue politician like Scozzafava in a district as red as New York – 23.   The last thing this country needs is for Mrs. Pelosi to have yet another vote.

ADDENDUM: (Eric):  Yes, I did notice that. I confess to being mildly pleased with the message it’s sending to the GOP leadership, though candidly, I wonder if that message will alter the course of said ‘leadership’. Given the recent past I tend to doubt it.

However, even our regular readers might have noticed that I have refrained from commenting on the races involving NY23. there are a couple  of reasons for this.

First, the most of the polls that I’m seeing for that district show Hoffmann and is Democrat rival running neck and neck.  (Yes, I’m aware of the polls which show Hoffman up by five, but I take these with a certain grain of salt, given the source of the polling, and the fact that the polling result is only marginally outside the abnormally high margin of error.) Frankly, I wonder how that’s going to play, even absent voter fraud as so many areas of the country  suffered last year.

The second question has to do with what Mr. Hoffman will be able to do assuming that he manages to get himself elected.  Certainly, the Democrats are not going to be interested in playing ball with Mr. Hoffman on any agenda he may have. And certainly the Rockefeller Republicans who dominate this state are going to be much disposed to cooperating with him, either.

Add to this the idea that with Hoffman being the single target now, the Democrats are already refocusing their efforts and drawing in supporters from places like Vermont, to help keep Hoffman out. I fully anticipate Hoffman to be labeled the next Anti-Christ, Hitler and Timothy McVeigh all rolled into one neat little package. That kind of smear campaign is a bear to use against two targets. With one? It’s a Democrat party specialty and I will flat out guarantee you we’ll see it `being played at volume 11 all across the district.

On the other hand, and since this is  the first time I’ve opened an editor for this topic, let me make a shout out to former house speaker Newt Gingrich:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is warning conservative activists that their support for a third-party candidate in a key upcoming New York special election is a “mistake.”

In a video captured last week and posted on YouTube Friday, Gingrich told tea party organizer Lisa Miller at a book-signing event that conservatives are inadvertently hindering the cause by backing Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman over Dede Scozzafava, the Republican Party’s nominee.

“I just think it is a mistake for the conservative movement to think splitting in the special election is a smart idea,” Gingrich said. “If we give that seat to the Democrats, shame on us.”

Perhaps the speaker would be interested in explaining to us how putting a candidate like Scozzafava is helpful to the Republican Party, when in nearly all respects save the name, Scozzafava is in fact a liberal Democrat. I submit that such a person creates far more damage to both the party and the country, than would turning the seats over to a real Democrat.

At the bottom line, this is an issue not about party power, but about the power of ideas.  What does a gain the party and its platform if we all liked people within the party who don’t believe in the parties values, and actively work against them?  At best, even assuming Scozzafava won the election it would be a pariahic victory at best, in terms of furthering the cause.

I wonder, and not for the first time, just whose  side Mr. Gingrich is on.  The party, perhaps.  It’s his devotion to the ideals of the party, that worry me.

Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her bodyguards on this day 25 years ago. Ramachandra Guha looks at the legacy of India’s most controversial and best-known politician….
Great patriot, but deeply flawed democrat – that is how history should remember Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 to 1984.
Read more at BBC News

Jeff Zeleny in te New York Stimes:

WASHINGTON — As President Obama returned to the White House on Thursday, after a visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to honor 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan, he said the cost and suffering of the war were among the factors influencing whether he would send more troops to the region.

To whch one Oliver Willis responds:

Some presidents actually have respect for the war dead.

Yes, Ollie, some presidents do honor our fallen heroes,  and some do not.from Cassandra,  Villianous Company:

To gain an idea of just how military families view having the President turn the homecoming of their loved ones into a photo op, one need only look at what happened when the families whose loved ones came in on this flight reacted to the news of Obama’s visit. Of the 18 families involved, 17 declined to allow the media to photograph the return of their loved one. But more than that, 6 of the 18 (that’s one third) were undecided until they learned Obama would be there. According to the article, nearly two thirds of Gold Star families have allowed the press to be present.

Uncle Jimbo, Blackfive:

FireDogLake Buttheads clueless about Bush and our war dead

I never cease to be amazed by the sorry haters on the left and their inability to understand the military, respect, dignity and the difference between a gesture and a heartfelt gesture.

If the President had wnnted to honor our dead heroes, he would have respected the wishs of their families.

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere; The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• THE OBAMACARE FALLOUT: The Politico’s David Rodgers scored an interview with Queen Nancy yesterday. It’s posted here. Says Rodgers:
  

  Even before her bill reaches the House floor, health care reform has been a lesson in the limits of power for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and in the immense challenge of managing disappointment on the left.

  The bill rolled out Thursday is weaker than many progressives — including Pelosi — had once hoped for, but her advice is to “declare victory” and recognize that this is not the last word.

  “On any given day, success that upsets business as usual in Washington can be perishable. I don’t want to get too bogged down,” Pelosi told POLITICO in an interview Thursday afternoon. “We are not passing a bill, shutting the door, turning out the lights and walking away. We will have other legislation.”

  

  David Rodgers

  Nor is she much open to prolonging the public option insurance debate by allowing a floor debate on an amendment to insist on a more robust version than the one now in the House bill.

  “I’m not big on showing weakness. It’s not my thing,” she said in the interview. “I don’t like to have predictable losses.”

  “Predictable”? And, “showing weakness” ?
  If there’s one thing that has been remarkable about this entire process has been that the weakness as demonstrated by the Democrat leadership in both the House and Senate have been so eminently predictable.  The far left are now faced with reality, and their inability to deal with that reality is in fact, their weakness.

  That reality involves limitations on the power of both those individuals, and those positions. It’s not just a matter of Republican opposition to the agenda of the far left, in which I include Pelosi. The far left’s biggest problem is their fellow Democrats.
  However; notice please the intentions of Pelosi, here. She’s going to get what she can get on this round, and t then she’s going for more, once the dust settles on this particular scrimmage.  So that $894,000,000,000.00 price tag, already questionable at best as I mentioned yesterday in these pages,  is going to go up yet again, come around to if Queen Nancy has anything to say about it.  (As an aside, the CBO rates Pelosi’s monster at a bit over a trillion dollars.) The question is, will the voters wise up before she does have anything to say about it.

• FRAUD! Reports have fraud under Medicare at around $60 billion annually. Now, does anyone think that’s not going to get worse when government runs the whole thing? Please….
• DEATH PANELS AND TAXES:: Ryan Ellis has the list of new taxes. And it appears the Death Panel measures survived in Pelosi’s bill.
• Jon Allen at Politco has the totals figureed out. Hint: 2.2 million dollars per word.
• AND NO BLINKING WONDER: The Housing Crash has already resumed. Gee, does this have anything to do with leftists and their anti-business rethoric, do you suppose?
• THE RECOVERY MEASURES AREEN’T HELPING: Jobs created or saved are a White House Fantasy
• LIEBERMAN TO SWITCH? Not that it makes a great deal of difference, but an interesting wrinkle on the news today is word that Sen. Joe Lieberman claims he’ll back Republicans in 2010 congressional races…
• HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Birthday Wishes today to Chris Muir, author of “Day By Day” which is a strip available here at BitsBlog. (Look at the masthead to find the link) Also we send wishes on Sunday to Gary G. Howell who is a regular correspondent with BitsBlog via the mails.
• BITSBLOG BUMPER STICKER OF THE DAY: Speaking of Gary, he sends this one along. As usual, it’s not a bumper sticker at all, but could be very easily, and should be, really. The pics are from Mandeville, Louisiana. State Farm, by the way has lost my business, given their reaction to the sign. They demanded it be taken down. I will not do business  a company seemingly bent on silencing free speech.  That’s MY “Good Neighbor policy”.

John Hawking, Pajamas Media,  makes his point:

If Sarah Palin had been a Democrat, no show more credible than Jerry Springer’s would be giving Levi Johnston a chance to spread scurrilous gossip about her.

Johnston has the mores of a Kennedy clan male, albeit without the family’s looted treasure.

Eric Notes: Congressman Mike Pence has posted the following on his site. It’s my inetnt to be one of those that pushes this thing to viral stage.

Please read and forward the link to this note ( http://bit.ly/1rGrpW ) to your friends and family. This reading guide includes what we have uncovered in our initial reading of the Pelosi health “reform” legislation (H.R. 3962) introduced by House Democrats.

Page 94—Section 202(c) prohibits the sale of private individual health insurance policies, beginning in 2013, forcing individuals to purchase coverage through the federal government

Page 110—Section 222(e) requires the use of federal dollars to fund abortions through the government-run health plan—and, if the Hyde Amendment were ever not renewed, would require the plan to fund elective abortions

Page 111—Section 223 establishes a new board of federal bureaucrats (the “Health Benefits Advisory Committee”) to dictate the health plans that all individuals must purchase —and would likely require all Americans to subsidize and purchase plans that cover any abortion

Page 211—Section 321 establishes a new government-run health plan that, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group, would cause as many as 114 million Americans to lose their existing coverage

Page 225—Section 330 permits—but does not require—Members of Congress to enroll in government-run health care

Page 255—Section 345 includes language requiring verification of income for individuals wishing to receive federal health care subsidies under the bill—while the bill includes a requirement for applicants to verify their citizenship, it does not include a similar requirement to verify applicants’ identity, thus encouraging identity fraud for undocumented immigrants and others wishing to receive taxpayer-subsidized health benefits

Page 297—Section 501 imposes a 2.5 percent tax on all individuals who do not purchase “bureaucrat-approved” health insurance— the tax would apply on individuals with incomes under $250,000, thus breaking a central promise of then-Senator Obama’s presidential campaign

Page 313—Section 512 imposes an 8 percent “tax on jobs” for firms that cannot afford to purchase “bureaucrat-approved” health coverage ; according to an analysis by Harvard Professor Kate Baicker, such a tax would place millions “at substantial risk of unemployment”—with minority workers losing their jobs at twice the rate of their white counterparts

Page 336—Section 551 imposes additional job-killing taxes, in the form of a half-trillion dollar “surcharge,” more than half of which will hit small businesses ; according to a model developed by President Obama’s senior economic advisor, such taxes could cost up to 5.5 million jobs

Page 520—Section 1161 cuts more than $150 billion from Medicare Advantage plans, potentially jeopardizing millions of seniors’ existing coverage

Page 733—Section 1401 establishes a new Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research; the bill includes no provisions preventing the government-run health plan from using such research to deny access to life-saving treatments on cost grounds, similar to Britain’s National Health Service, which denies patient treatments costing more than $35,000

Page 1174—Section 1802(b) includes provisions entitled “TAXES ON CERTAIN INSURANCE POLICIES” to fund comparative effectiveness research, breaking Speaker Pelosi’s promise that “We will not be taxing [health] benefits in any bill that passes the House,” and the President’s promise not to raise taxes on families with incomes under $250,000

If you would like to read the entire 1,990 pages yourself, you can find the legislation here: http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf