I’m about to head down to take in at least the first couple of hours of the FreedomWorks protest.
As is customary, I’ll be sporting my USS Constitution ballcap and a bow tie, which is absolutely not an expression of Tucker Carlson-ism.
It’s also worth pointing out that Grandpa John’s vision of me, likely a side-effect of peyote in the lutefisk, is rather distorted. My fingernails are more trim, and the wife disallows facial hair.
On the topic of facial hair, I will admit that hanging out with His Road-tripping Badness, Stacy McCain, supports this blog’s claim to being both bad and nationwide.
Apropos the seriousness of ObamaCare and this atrocious 111th Congress,
“Degüello” means The Beheading or “no quarter” (as in “no surrender to be given or accepted–a fight to the death”).
One hates to argue a zero-sum game, but, as with a malignant tumor, there isn’t much room to negotiate with Progressivism.
The House Budget Committee has voted down a Republican motion in support of the abortion language favored by Rep. Bart Stupak on a 19 to 17 vote, with three Democrats voting in favor of it. . . .
Rep. Jim Jordan offered the motion for Republicans . . .
Who would have thought this Congress and this administration would again attempt to ram through this health care bill using a partisan reconciliation process? Simply put, Mr. Chairman, the American people have had enough. They told Democrats “no” in August, “no” in September, they told them “no” at Thanksgiving, “no” at Christmas when they tried to pass this bill, they said “no” when Democrats wanted to do it by the State of the Union, and they’re going to say “no” tomorrow, when thousands of Americans come to Washington again to say, “Enough is enough.”
During the past year, I’ve traveled around our district, throughout Ohio, I’ve seen first-hand the emergence of a grassroots movement fueled in large part by the arrogant and out-of-control federal government. Millions of Americans from every walk of life have stood up, in many cases for the first time, to make their voices heard. They gather in town squares, they organize, they pray, and they’ve marched on Washington.
Far from the dangerous extremists the other side and the elite media may characterize them as, these are ordinary citizens — moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas — who believe that America is an exceptional nation. They are freedom-loving Americans who feel like their government is ignoring them. . . . They believe that there are ideals and principles that make this country unique throughout history and they see those principles being assaulted everyday in Washington.
— Rep. Jim Jordan, 4th District Ohio
Show of hands — who’s going tomorrow? And among those of you who are, who’s still so ignorant about the basics of the bill after month upon endless month of Obama speechifying that you need some Democratic backbencher to explain it to you?
Smitty will be attending Tuesday’s rally on Capitol Hill and relaying reports with photos and videos to me for posting in near-real-time, so if you can’t make it D.C., don’t miss this coverage.
Not everyone in the country wants to be called a Scot, though I’ll take it. Sassenach is among the nicer epithets I’d have for the Wicked Witch of the West.
We’ve got to do a better job of holding Stupak together at the end of the flick, though.
If the moves of the Democrats in Congress were not so despicable, one could nearly feel some sympathy, almost. They’ve worked so hard to drive the Progressive agenda, have so many special interests pulling their strings, that they have to pass something, anything, even if it’s a baby that aborts its own mother in the birthing.
So, given that heinous outcome, and the knowledge that the Faustian bargains that put you in power threaten the fabric of that very power, what do do? HotAir may offer a clue:
A former federal appellate judge appointed by Bush took to the Journal’s op-ed page today to declare the Slaughter strategy flatly unconstitutional, which means there’ll almost certainly be a court challenge to try to undo the legislation if they use this procedure to pass the bill. Given the potential downside of all that, I’m frankly amazed that they’re still considering it instead of simply biting the bullet and having an up or down vote on Reid’s bill.
One thing you could do is invent some parliamentary sleight-of-hand that, along with three shots of tequila, makes enough sense to get through the Congress, but is sufficiently riddled with Constitutional over-reach that the legislation won’t stand review.
That way, the Democrats can look to their owners and say: “Hey, we stopped at nothing to pass this,” while having poisoned the well enough to know it will be struck down.
Meh. I’m probably attributing too much intelligence to a bunch of Progressive religious fanatics.
American Glob links Mark Levin calling for Slaughter’s ouster.
My only quibble with Levin is that that he thinks that Slaughter is operating independently. I daresay she doesn’t pour coffee without checking with her overlords.
Her Big Government Burrito post came with everything but the salsa and the tote bag:
This commercial does make a puke-perfect metaphor for Constitutional Slaughter, though.
If Obama refuses to look at public opinion polls, then how can he profess to know what the American people want? And if he doesn’t care about polls, then how come the White House is circulating polls on Capitol Hill asserting that support for health care legislation is rising?
House speaker Nancy Pelosi held a news conference with children’s advocates at the Capitol on Monday to push for the Democrats’ sweeping health care legislation. . . .
In a brief question-and-answer session, a reporter asked Ms. Pelosi about assertions by Representative David Dreier of California, the senior Republican on the House rules committee, that Democrats were engaging in legislative gymnastics to complete the legislation.
“It’s about accountability of the insurance companies; it’s about affordability for the middle class,” Ms. Pelosi said. “It’s not about gymnastics alone — except if that’s part of the wellness program that we have for our children.”
Translation: “We’re going to ignore any criticism you might have. It’s about what I say it’s about, you stupid morons.”
5:36 p.m. ET: I was just on the phone with Chris Cassone, and felt the need to explain that there are a zillion other things I’d rather be doing than blogging about the legislative progress of this damned health-care bill. (Ann Coulter in Vegas! ) But the Democrats are completely out of control, and I feel the obligation to pay attention — which is annoying, because there is nothing more boring than a Rules Committee mark-up hearing.
As expected, the House Budget Committee just rubber stamped the “shell” health care bill with a 21 to 16 vote, sending it to the Rules committee, where all of the language will be stripped out and replaced with whatever deals Democrats have been negotiating behind closed doors. . . .
Two Democrats — Reps. Allen Boyd and Chet Edwards — voted against the bill and would have to be considered firm nos at this point.
That’s good news.
PREVIOUSLY: Rep. Paul Ryan on the Pelosi kabuki-dance: “This is an extraordinary and unprecendented abuse of the reconciliation process.”
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, Democrats released a 2,309 page health care bill that will start the process of reconciliation — but don’t let that fool you, it’s not the actual reconciliation bill with all the changes you’ve been reading about. Instead, as Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member on the Budget Committee, explained to me last week, this is just the “shell” bill — the vehicle that Democrats need to get moving on health care. Once the bill gets approved (likely Monday), Democrats will send this phantom bill over to the Rules Committee, where it will be stripped, and then they’ll insert in all of the actual changes that they’ve negotiated. . . .
The House Budget Committee on Sunday evening released text that will serve as the base legislation for the changes the House will seek to the Senate bill this week. . . . The measure posted online does not include the substantive changes to the Senate healthcare bill that House Democrats will seek. Those changes will be offered during the markups in the Budget and Rules committees, which the budget panel hopes to begin on Monday afternoon.
This whole Pelosi procedure is nothing but a thumb in the eye of the Constitution. The House could merely have an up-or-down vote on the Senate version of the bill, but Pelosi doesn’t have enough votes to do that — she’d lose the votes of several Democrats who have principled objections to various measures in the Senate version — and so instead they’re going through this bizarre kabuki dance.
Nucking futz, and all of it, BTW, is because Scott Brown got elected in Massachusetts. Before Brown’s election, the Democrats had enough votes in the Senate to get cloture, so that a House-Senate conference committee could resolve the differences and the resulting final bill would be approved in both chambers.
But then Brown got elected as the “41st vote,” the Senate Democrats can’t get cloture now, and what we’ve seen for the past two months has been a desperate effort by Obama and Pelosi to escape the consequences of that election — essentially bypassing the Senate.
Anybody who thinks the Democrats are going to get away with this has got another think coming.
“I am absolutely confident we are going to be successful,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
And Axelrod, who was a top strategist on Obama’s 2008 campaign, said he relished the prospect of Republicans campaigning on a repeal of the legislation in 2010. . . .
“Let’s have that fight,” he said. “Make my day.”
As mooched from here. Someone needs to communicate to Robert Gibbs that the Administration in general, and he in particular, have zero credibility. Do they know this, and slog forward anyway, or are they simply incapable of grasping it? The answer probably doesn’t matter.
