Category: Nancy Pelosi

RAMMING SPEED! Democrats Prepare for ‘Really Stupid and Futile Gesture’

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From my latest American Spectator column:

Does anyone else remember what happened Jan. 19? Did anyone else watch the confetti fly and hear the band play in the ballroom of Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel two months ago? Or was the election of a Republican to the Senate seat held for more than four decades by Ted Kennedy merely a dream?
Scott Brown won by pledging to be the Senate’s “41st vote” against Obamacare, but Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democrats seem intent on pretending that Brown’s historic victory in Massachusetts never happened as they prepare to enact the president’s health care plan By Any Means Necessary.
Pelosi’s implacable determination in the face of such clear indicators that voters oppose this measure has left opponents straining for analogies to describe the arguably unconstitutional process. Lindsey Graham insulted the Japanese by comparing Democrats to kamikaze pilots “liquored up on sake” for a suicide mission. It might be more diplomatic to compare Democratic maneuvers to the Animal House scene of Delta Tau Chi brothers crammed inside their hurtling Deathmobile: “Ramming speed!”
It would all be comical were it not for the possibility that this slapstick legislative fraternity prank — perpetrated by the “Slaughter Solution” with Enron-like accounting gimmicks from the Congressional Budget Office — might yet become law. . . .

Please read the whole thing. What annoys me most particularly about this week’s Pelosi-driven madness — above and beyond the unconstitutional-socialist-bankrupt-America aspect of the thing — is that it has distracted me from preparations for next week’s Vegas trip. So when I get to Nevada, I mean to make Harry Reid pay for this damned annoyance.

Speaking of annoying Democrats, Virginians should make sure to attend today’s 11:30 a.m. ObamaCare event at George Mason University in Fairfax (doors open at 9 a.m.), and everybody who can make it to D.C. Saturday should plan to be at the big Capitol rally with Jon Voight and Michelle Bachmann.

PREVIOUSLY:

Ryan: ‘Extraordinary and Unprecendented’ Cramdown on ObamaCare 2.0; UPDATE: Rubber Stamp; UPDATE: Pelosi’s Lips Are Moving

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7 p.m. ET: OK, last update of the night and then — I promise — we’ll go back to blogging about Kate Winslett’s cleavage or Rielle Hunter or something more interesting than the Zombie Health Care Cramdown That Won’t Die. Video of Paul Ryan via Hot Air:

The good news: They still don’t have the votes. The bad news: Obama doesn’t care:

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?

UPDATE 6:26 p.m. ET: Nancy Pelosi reminds the national press corps that she thinks Americans are a bunch of idiots:

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.”

UPDATE 5:57 p.m. ET: Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) will vote NO. (Hat-tip: Virginia Right.) More cramdown blogging:

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.

You know what this health-care cramdown is like? It’s like being trapped in the passenger seat of a Toyota doing 110 mph, driven by a dimwitted geezer who can’t find the brake pedal.

No wonder Democrats in swing states are running the other way.

UPDATE 4:52 p.m. ET: Philip Klein of the American Spectator:

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.”

Via Michelle Malkin who’s live-blogging the “Wreckonciliation.”

I was just on the radio for an hour with Ladd Ehlinger — his show is on WTKI 1450 AM in Huntsville, Ala. — talking about The 2,309-Page Scam That Will Live in Infamy.

TUESDAY: STOP OBAMACARE 2.0! BE THERE!

Introducing ObamaCare 2.0: The 2,309-Page Scam That Will Live in Infamy

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Philip Klein of the American Spectator:

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. . . .

Got that? Here’s more:

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.

More at Michelle Malkin, Riehl World View, Da Tech Guy, Fire Andrea Mitchell, Another Black Conservative, Red State, Doug Ross, Sundries Shack, Melissa Clouthier and Memeorandum. Also see Paul Ryan’s op-ed column proposing a different vision of health-care reform.

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.

UPDATE: David Axelrod boasts:

“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.”

Video via Hot Air:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mr. Axelrod: The fight is not between you and the GOP. It is between you and the American people.

TUESDAY: STOP OBAMACARE 2.0! BE THERE!

(P.S.: Don’t compare this procedure to making sausage — that’s an insult to the fine sausage at Romano’s Market.)

Rep. Pelosi Offers A Quote That Shall Live In Infamy

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by Smitty

Tabitha Hale brings you the video:

Ace had an excellent riff:

In fairness, she’s quoting from the Federalist Papers, which spoke eloquently of “passing some laws so we can find out what great shit’s in them, and stuff.” Pretty sure that was John Jay.

Let’s channel a actual Founding Father, then. Alexander Hamilton:

It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
Federalist No. 1, October 27, 1787

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
Federalist No. 33, January 3, 1788

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.
Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 62, 1788

Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Federalist No. 62, 1788

If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last…. A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, Aug 28, 1794

Pelosi is consistently atrocious, if you recall her Are you serious? Are you serious? interrogative from last October.
Yes, Madame Speaker, we’re as serious as a

Godforsaken Heart Attack!

Update: More links at Ed Driscoll.

Update II: Dan Riehl, as is his wont, puts a ‘positive’ spin on matters:

I think I need a shower after watching the political news. And I’d really appreciate it if Rahm Emanuel left me alone long enough to scrub off the grime of the Democrats we’re getting to see in all their glory right now.

Heckuva job, Barry! Through incompetence and trying to foist your agenda on a nation that mostly rejects it, you are destroying the Democrat brand. He really is, you know. This all begins and ends with Obama. And at this rate, there may not be much of a party left by the time he’s finished. And he will be finished in 2012. Mark my words.

In defense of BHO, while the POTUS is nominally the head cheese of the party, the fact that he’s been national-level goods only since he Gave Good Speech in 2004 means that older, saner heads should be offering Rehoboam more forceful advice.

Weekend At Bernie’s Wasn’t The First Allusion To Come To Mind For Today’s Circus

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by Smitty

Glenn McCoy has fun with it:

Weekend at Barry's
The Obama / Reid / Pelosi try-dumb-virate rides again

And then there was a related Tim Burton take-off, via Digg.

The most shocking bit came from visiting my magic URL, http://www.AllYourNewsAreOnCrack.com for a fortnight into the future, I see an odd article:

Unprecedented Move: President Obama Accepts Own Healthcare Bill In Signing Statement
by Sissypuss, the Bailout Kitty
In an historic move, President Obama today said “I won,” as he signed his own suggested bill into law. “Well, we could have gone to the mat with reconciliation,” mused Mr. Obama, “but I figured it would help the party out if I just sort of dove on the grenade. Those obstructionist Republicans are out to ruin everything. Once we just get all of this in place, I think that the people will come around to my way of thinking and re-elect Democrats in 2010, and me in 2012. And if it looks like the people are having trouble getting on board, well, we’ll be doing everything we can to make sure nothing unfortunate happens to their car, their health, their taxes, their internet, their housing , their food, you get the idea. Running this country is a tough, complex job, and it would really be much smoother if everyone was on the same team, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Did I mention the vanilla pudding subsidy for favored bloggers?”