Repeal And Replace: Balancing Tactics And Strategy

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by Smitty

‘Smart Politics‘ claims the carnivorous conservative:

Being the party of pointing out problems, without solutions, or simply the party of No is not enough. The GOP has got to bring more to the table than that if they hope to win the health care debate.

‘Oh Boy,’ replies Ace of Spades:

The problem is offing up a replacement plan ensures the focus of the debate will shift to, Which plan is better for Americans? That’s an argument we might win but it’s a tougher one to have. The Democrats will run out their sob stories and we’ll be on the side of arguing cold, hard, theoretical numbers.

Keep in mind too that the mind of the electorate has been systematically crippled by the Left. Notions of history, economics, and ethics have to re-instilled. Whatever the final shape of ‘Repeal and Replace’, it has to attack evil seeds currently being planted.
Not only is health care not a fundamental right, the notions of ‘fundamental’ and ‘right’ need to be recovered. The Left evangelizes falsehood with religious zeal.
So, to repeal and replace I would add ‘reinforce’. The Left is impotent at debate with anything other than emotion. Ryan’s gentle, firm rebuke of Slaughter at the committee hearing must be replicated across a dozen topics. The American people not only need to understand that the Progressive agenda is false, but why it is false.

If The Judas Congress Was, Instead, An Engineering Outfit

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by Smitty

Pelosi: Launch it now!
Sestak: I really wasn’t a blackshoe, but she doesn’t look seaworthy to me.
P: Once we kick her down the ways, more construction will follow.
S: No, really, that’s how the rules of the game work. Sure, there’s always a little fit and finish once she’s launched, but responsible engineers don’t just throw out a partial product.
Hastings:
S: This is madder than an Eric Massa snorkeling expedition.
P: Shut up, Sestak. We have to get this thing launched before the customer remembers that the original order was for an aircraft!

Do Blondes Have Rights in Canada?

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“Hate speech” against American conservatives:

Speaking to students and academics at the University of Western Ontario Monday, Coulter said the e-mail sent to her Friday by Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost of the University of Ottawa, targeted her as a member of an identifiable group and as such, she will be filing a complaint with the Human Rights Commission alleging hate speech.
“I’m sure the Human Rights Commission will get to the bottom of it,” Coulter said to loud cheers from the 800-strong audience. “I think I’m the victim of a hate crime here. Either what (Mr. Houle) did was a hate crime, or the whole commission is BS.” . . .

(Why can’t both things be true? I submit that Houle is a hate criminal and the whole commission is BS.)

Ezra Levant, lawyer and former publisher of the Western Standard magazine, spoke before Coulter on Monday and called Houle’s letter a “veiled threat.” . . .
“It’s almost like there is one standard for Conservatives and one completely different one for Liberals,” Coulter told the crowd . . .
“A word is either offensive or it’s not. In a world of political correctness, all words are banned unless they’re used against conservatives.”

The post-speech Q-and-A was exciting:

“As a 17-year-old student of this university, Muslim, should I be converted to Christianity? Second of all, since I don’t have a magic carpet, what other modes do you suggest,” Al-Dhaher said to loud and sustained applause.
“I thought it was just American public schools that produced ignorant people,” Coulter replied, prompting her own round of applause.

Ann sent an e-mail to an Ottawa newspaper:

“Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives,” Coulter wrote in an e-mail on Monday.
She questioned whether every speaker booked at the university received a similar warning or just the conservative ones.
“The provost simply believes and is publicizing his belief that conservatives are more likely to commit hate crimes in their speeches. Not only does this promote hatred against conservatives, but it promotes violence against conservatives,” Coulter wrote.

Assuming that Dudley Do Right doesn’t catch her first, tonight Ann speaks at the People’s Republic of Ottawa. Should she escape from that Stalinist gulag, on Thursday she will speak in Calgary, and then return to America to hang out with me at Saturday’s Vegas Tea Party.

UPDATE: Kathy Shaidle has a report about Coulter’s speech last night, which you may compare to this excellent example of Canada’s respectable, responsible, unbiased press corps.

UPDATE 3/24: Canuckistani terrorists shut down Coulter speech in Ottawa.

Just Booked My Flight: Vegas, Baby!

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“Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. . . . Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. … Just roll the roof back and screw it on, grease the face with white tanning butter and move out with the music at top volume, and at least a pint of ether.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

OK, the original plan had been to drive to Vegas, but that was before life got complicated and the weasels forced me to spend a whole week blogging about their sordid ObamaCare scam — about which, the less said, the better.

Among the unfortunate side effects of that disaster, however, was the catastrophic scrambling of my travel plans because I needed an extra day or two to finish up arrangements in Washington before leaving, and because the drive time from here to Nevada is 38 hours, the cross-country itinerary wouldn’t work out if I was going to be there to pick up Ali Akbar at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport for the trip to Searchlight to catch the start of the Tea Party Express III tour.

And if any of that makes sense to you, you need more drugs. That makes two of us, but don’t worry. Gonzo is a pre-existing condition and, thanks to Bart Stupak, now we can bill taxpayers for our heinous chemicals.

Never mind. Hit the tip jar, because I paid $528 for the cheapest possible round-trip to Vegas, leaving here Thursday afternoon and not returning until next Wednesday. Mrs. Other McCain is already mad enough without me getting stuck with that tab, even though I’ll be saving money by crashing on Steve Foley’s sofa in Vegas. Plus, I’ll have to pay $75 a day for a rental car so I can drive Ali to Searchlight, hang out a few hours, then turn around and drive back to Vegas in time for Ann Coulter’s appearance at the Henderson Pavillion.

After that day of insanity and whatever weirdness Foley gets me into Saturday night, then I’ve got to get up Sunday morning and drive 300 miles (20 cents per mile = $60) to meet the Tea Party Express in Phoenix, Arizona, where Barbara Espinosa of American Freedom blog has promised me face-time with J.D. Hayworth and Vernon Parker. So I’ll spend Sunday and Monday in Phoenix, drive another 300 miles back to Vegas on Tuesday morning, and do some more reporting on the campaign against Harry Reid before catching a red-eye back home with a 3-hour layover in Minneapolis.

Only a lunatic would attempt to cram all this into six days. So hit the tip jar, because where else are you going to find a lunatic who’s also a professional journalist?

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

I Have Totally Fixed This Healthcare Debacle!

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by Smitty (via Insty)

The New Ledger points out that this odious legislation says that staff are exempt:

(II) CONGRESSIONAL STAFF- The term `congressional staff’ means all full-time and part-time employees employed by the official office of a Member of Congress, whether in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC.

So, all of us become part-time Congressional staff for GOP Congressman.
Rules? What did Alcee Hastings say about them?
For simplicity, maybe we all work for Paul Ryan.
Problem solved!

Dingy Harry’s ‘Kickback’ Revealed! (Not Really)

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by Smitty

Paco envisions the scene (RTWT):

Reid [Looking at the president with that expression of a befuddled goat for which is he is so well known]: Why, what do you mean, Mr. President? You assured me that, if I supported the health care legislation, you’d see to it that I was taken care of if I lose my reelection bid.

Obama: Oh, of course, of course. Heh. Just kidding! I’m going to make a note right now to check on it [Obama jots down a note on a piece of paper: “Hillary: Any vacancies in our embassy in Chad?”] Now, I think this occasion calls for something special. Ah, and here it is! Set it down on my desk, Gus.

As I commented over there, I heard that the post was really Bulungi.

On The Value Of Flogging Senator McCain

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by Smitty

This is not a defense of the gentleman, fellow IFNAG (Idiot Frickin’ Naval Academy Graduate) though he may be.
In seeing the country’s arc as sinusoidal, I’m not sure that we’d have been better in the long run with a JSM administration.
It’s all counter-factual now, but I submit that with a President McCain, we’d still be asleep at the switch. Progressivism would continue to leech away at Federalism slowly. The Democrats would have peddled their crypto-Marxism to still more people.
Hopium and Change-eeba have been the Tet Offensive for the would-be aristocrats and their Utopian tools in the Judas Congress.
People still say I’m talking out the stern gate on an Article 5 cram-down, but I don’t see what less than that can return the country’s arc to a positive slope.
The pachyderm on the patio is that DC holds all of the cash. To be politically tenable, whatever you do to give entitlement programs the fax machine treatment
can’t threaten those over whatever arbitrary age you care to name, say 50.
Financial reform is foundational to the package of reforms that restores sanity and exceptionalism to American government. Everyone except our North Dakota readers needs to be pinging their State capitol for a bank to look after their own citizens.
Until that evil Federal Reserve is decommissioned, or at least audited, Progressives like Senator McCain will know that the hue and cry of the Tea Parties has no substantial legs, because of the unholy reverse cash flow from DC to State and local governments. You either tell me what you’re doing to un-frobnicate this situation, or Nancy “Iscariot” Pelosi will just keep on smilin’. In the uncomfortable listening department, you’ll become familiar with an old Nine Inch Nails cut:

Slave screams he thinks he knows what he wants
Slave screams thinks he has something to say
Slave screams he hears but doesn’t want to listen
Slave screams he’s being beat into submission
Don’t open your eyes you won’t like what you see
The devils of truth steal the souls of the free
Don’t open your eyes take it from me
I have found
You can find
Happiness in slavery
Slave screams he spends his life learning conformity
Slave screams he claims he has his own identity
Slave screams he’s going to cause the system to fall
Slave screams but he’s glad to be chained to that wall
Don’t open your eyes you won’t like what you see
The blind have been blessed with security
Don’t open your eyes take it from me
I have found
You can find
Happiness in slavery
I don’t know what I am I don’t know where I’ve been
Human junk just words and so much skin
Stick my hands through the cage of this endless routine
Just some flesh caught in this big broken machine