Desperate Sob Stories

Via Ann Althouse, my own former Congresswoman reels out a desperate sob story in a desperate attempt to desperately pass anything.

I didn’t like her back in the day when I lived in her district, I still don’t.

But she looked very, very nervous, didn’t she?

There are no safe seats, Louise. One wonders if that realization is what made her look so nervous.

Backfire

I had to work today, so I was unable to watch the “summit”. But I knew it did not go as expected when I heard NPR’s reporting on it.  They are desperately spinning the result as “nobody really expected it to work”. They were not crowing about Obama’s performance. In fact, they admitted that Obama had felt the need to hold an impromptu press conference on a lunch break to try to spin things his own way.

In other words, it is like Copenhagen (twice).

It did not work.

It appears to have backfired mightily. Paul Ryan has been heard speaking some very solid American values and common sense.

The difference is this. We don’t think all the answers lie in Washington.

By federalizing the regulation of insurance, and by mandating exactly how it’ll work, you make it more expensive and you reduce the competition among insurers for peoples business. We want to decentralize the system, give more power to small businesses, more power to individuals, and make insurance compete more. But if you federalize it, you standardize it and mandate it, you do not achieve that. And that’s the big difference.

That sound bite would never have been reported by the MSM. That alone damages the Wizard’s plans.

I’m quite happy that what I feared did not happen.  I’m pretty sure that the White House wishes today had not happened.

Because it did not work as planned. Obama did not overawe and silence the opposition. His awesome awesomeness failed – yet again.

For Your Own Good…

…We’ll poison you.

To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to “renature” the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly.

By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.

The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol,” New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. “[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.”

Do go read the entire article. It should horrify you. How many Americans were crippled, blinded or killed by overzealous bureaucrats in their own government? Nobody actually knows. Understand something here. The consumption of alcohol was not banned by the 18th Amendment, only the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction”.

The victims of this were sickened, maimed or killed by overzealous  bureaucrats for no reason whatsoever. They had committed no crime whatsoever.

Sure, it was a long time ago, a different America, a different time. But ask yourself this: Are you willing to entrust your welfare to bureaucrats? Do you really want them making decisions for you?

Given the history, I don’t think that’s a really great idea.

The Rasputin Bill

Is it undead or merely Rasputin? Hard to tell.

Like Rasputin, the plan nevertheless remains evil and crazy. It treats 21st-century Americans like the subjects of Middle Ages monarchy, telling them what they must buy; could prolong the recession by scaring businesses to death with new costs; and will definitely worsen the frightening problem of runaway government spending.

Never mind, because Obama can now point to a recent, steep rise in insurance premiums in California and promise price controls as part of his improved plan, and some people may respond positively without understanding that such controls never fix anything in the real world but will generally, in one way or another, make matters worse.

The American people, by a substantial majority, reject this so-called “reform”. It is a bloated, bureaucratic nightmare that will kill liberty in this country. It will be enormously expensive – much, much more costly than the already appalling estimates and it will cut most people off from the plans they like. It will seriously damage the economy and will make the current downturn last even longer. The economy, in fact, may be utterly crippled by this hideous monument to the Wizard’s already gigantic ego.

But it just won’t die.

But if the Democrats continue to follow the 0, their political careers sure as hell will.

Ramming Speed

The Wall Street Journal has a concise opinion of the “bipartisan” summit Obama is going to conduct:

A mere three days before President Obama’s supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House yesterday released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters what they don’t want anyway.

Ah, the glory of “progressive” governance and democratic consent.

“The President’s Proposal,” as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone.

I have pointed out that I do not see any upside for Republicans from even attending this sham. But I do see a very, very powerful symbolic gesture they could make if they do choose to attend. When the bullying hits a fevered pitch – as it will – they should stand up and leave.

That simple.

Kabuki

McQ over at QandO is thinking right along the same lines as I am about the so-called health care summit Obama has called.

Obama gets his moment recorded by the TV cameras no less. And mournfully he pronounces the Republicans as obstructionists who refused to negotiate in good faith as the great and wonderful Democrats have offered to do. And because of that, it is with a heavy heart and reluctantly he is forced to agree with the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reconciliation is the only route left open to them to do “what is right” for the American people.

Go read the whole thing, there’s a lot more that McQ thinks is coming. NRO sees the trap as well and offers some advice:

They should keep the focus on the defects of the Democrats’ proposals. Thus they should resist two temptations. The first is to dwell overlong on the advantages of their own free-market plans. When the president criticizes Republicans’ ideas, they should defend those ideas but move quickly back to the subject at hand. Building support for Republican reforms is a long-term project that requires the defeat of Obamacare in this legislative session.

Frankly, I don’t see any upside to the Republicans even showing up. The lapdog media will excoriate them whether they do or not. That same Obama house organ will declare Obama the winner regardless of whether he really is or not.

It’s a lose-lose-lose all the way around. Harry Reid has already declared that they will try to use reconciliation to pass this monstrosity, regardless of the outcome of the “summit”.

The fix is in – it isn’t worth the effort to attend Obama’s kangaroo court.

Graveyards

The independent voters in Iowa are deserting Obama. This is a big deal since Iowa made Obama during the run up to the 2008 election:

A sharp drop in approval for President Barack Obama from Iowa’s political independents has pushed the Democrat’s approval further below 50 percent in the state and below the national average, according to the latest Iowa Poll.

Approval among Iowa independents has dropped 10 percentage points since November, to 38 percent. Independents in Iowa helped Obama win the leadoff nominating caucuses in 2008 and later carry the state in the general election.

Similar shifts in independent voters helped elect Republicans in governor races last year and a special U.S. Senate election last month. The Iowa findings confirm Democrats’ worries that this key voting bloc could sit out this fall or vote for Republicans.

“That’s been the big drop that’s occurred,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said of the shift of independents away from Democrats. “It fueled Scott Brown in Massachusetts. It clearly helped create the margin of victory in New Jersey and Virginia.

“It’s obviously a very worrisome development for this November,” said Maslin, who was Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign pollster. “If those kinds of trends continue, then obviously we are in danger of losing the U.S. House and potentially the U.S. Senate.”

Think it’s bad now? If Democrats follow Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Wizard of 0 over the cliff and into the valley of the Little Bighorn, it will be utter ruin for the party.

Ann Althouse gets what’s wrong:

Now, why would we let him do that? We would be imbeciles to accept some big abstraction and not pay attention to the details.  Friedman is talking about what Obama should have done to retain the support of voters like me who don’t automatically vote for Democrats, but who thought Obama was more likely than McCain to deal with the various problems we faced in the next 4 years.

I can tell you that I am not distracted by the feeling of having “a big, aspirational project.” It wouldn’t lull me. It would alarm me. I don’t care about the labels and generalities. I voted for Obama the Pragmatist, not Obama the Ideologue or Obama the Lefty.

You know, what Friedman calls “a hodgepodge” or “a to-do list” would be perfectly fine with me. Just make the items on the list — or in the pot — good ones.

The problem is the agenda. The problem is the bill of goods the Democrats and the Wizard are pushing. The problem will be a tombstone chained to Democrats in only a few months. They can try to whistle past this graveyard, but the grim fact is that their agenda has lost the voters that they need to get reelected. If they continue down the path they are going, a lot – a real lot – of them will be gone for good from the political scene.

There are going to be a lot fewer “safe” seats than some Democrats assume come November. There will be virtually no safe seats for Democrats in districts McCain carried in 2008 if congressional Democrats vote to support ZombieCare.

The economy is job one – not the undead health care “reform” that Americans overwhelmingly reject.

Democrats who whistle pat that are whistling The Garryowen.

The Undead Are Restless

The Chicago Tribune:

There’s one way for Democrats to start restoring trust. They could formally swear off using the legislative trick called “reconciliation.” Right now, they’re clinging to it as a back-door way to shove their much-maligned health care plans through Congress.

The House and Senate have passed different versions of health care, but they don’t much like each other’s bills. The public doesn’t like either of the bills. While Democratic leaders were haggling over what to do next, the whole effort flatlined when Republican Scott Brown won a special Senate election in Massachusetts.

So their bills are like zombies, floating in the netherworld. Not quite dead, clinging to life only because Democratic leaders keep whispering about this legislative maneuver called reconciliation.

It’s a complex, lightly used budget-related gambit that “was never designed for this purpose,” says Robert Dove, the Senate’s parliamentarian emeritus who helped create the process.

What we need is a few good cricket bats.

Seriously, the Republicans need to walk out on the sham photo-op Obama has planned. The entire dog and pony show is only meant to delay and divert attention while Reid and Pelosi scheme to try to trick the rules of the Senate to pass anything they can before the public gets wise to them. Or rather, even more of the public wises up as many already have. This is a horrible bill that the majority of the public does not want. The “pivot” to focusing on the economy lasted about three seconds and has now dropped from Obama’s consciousness.

All he cares about are his zombies.

Cooked

Wow. Really.

Cook: I sort of reject the notion that there is a communications problem with President Obama. I think it’s just fundamental, total miscalculations from the very, very beginning. Of proportions comparable to President George W. Bush’s decision to go into Iraq. While Bush went, “We’re going to go after Afghanistan as a reaction to 9/11,” and then just pretty soon got distracted and obsessed with going into Iraq with varying rationalizations that sort of evolved over time.

This was a case where I think the White House people could see, look at the president, the White House and congressional Democrats as sort of checking the box on stimulus, but found that kind of boring, and moved on to health care and cap-and-trade. And the thing is, Democrats piled all this cotton candy and pork and junk and pet projects into it, so it discredited the stimulus package in the minds of a lot of voters and at the same time, it wasn’t big enough. It was totally insufficient, yet they wanted to keep it under a trillion dollars because they didn’t want to spend a lot of political capital on a really big stimulus package because they wanted to save it for cap-and-trade and health care. And so we start off with the original sin of a very imperfect and inadequate economic stimulus package and then moving off the economy almost entirely going into cap-and-trade and health care.

You really have to watch the video and read the entire piece. It’s amazing.)

Some of the suicidal Democrats may think it’s a great idea to set themselves and their party on fire to pass ObamaCare. We’ve already seen Harry “extra crispy” Reid so state. The problem is that you have to get a lot of House and Senate Democrats to also decide that the utter destruction of their public careers and the complete ruination of the entire party is a grand thing.

That might be a hard sell.

A very, very large majority of the American people do not want this crap bill passed. An even larger majority of the people want government to focus on getting the economy going again.

Obama, Reid and Pelosi continue to play with gas cans and matches.

Cooked donkey, anyone?

Perfectly Safe In Your Room

Mark Steyn:

It’s a mistake to think that the infantilization of once-free peoples represented by the microregulatory Nanny State can be confined to pancakes and hot tubs. Consider, for example, the incisive analysis of Scott Gration, the U.S. special envoy to the mass murderers of Sudan: “We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration a few months back. “Kids, countries – they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”

Actually, there’s not a lot of evidence “smiley faces” have much impact on kids in the Bronx, never mind genocidal machete-wielders in Darfur. So much for the sophistication of “soft power,” smiling through a hard-faced world.

Please go read the whole column. It’s important.

We can’t be safe on small issues unless we are safe on the big issues. That is where the increasingly nannyish tendencies of Western governments – including the US – are failing us. They try to micro-regulate our behavior while letting real monsters grow in the outside world.

How will ObamaCare work when you are incinerated by a nuke? Will your formerly cohesive molecules be taped back together by the magic of “free” health care?

Will you trade being safe from that “dangerous” hot tub for the ever-increasing chance of being incinerated by a madman’s nuclear weapon? Are you impressed by Washington’s sudden, urgent interest in a few sticky gas pedals in Toyota cars instead of them worrying about the crazies getting nuclear weapons?

The Wizard of 0 does not care whether Iran gets nuclear weapons. He doesn’t care whether you have a job. All he cares about is cramming government control over the most personal aspects of your life down your throat.

You can sit there in your little room, safe from the hot tub. The Wizard will take care of you.

He’s betting your life on it.

Just Say No

With this revelation, Congressional Republicans must say no to attending Obama’s photo-op this week. Because it is all for show – there will be no negotiation, the fix is already in – according to Harry Reid:

Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster.

“I’ve had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi,” Reid said during an appearance Friday evening on “Face to Face with Jon Ralston” in Nevada. “And we’re really trying to move forward on this.”

The entire health care summit is a sham, nothing but a fraud. It’s meant to be a way for Obama to showboat while his treacherous allies, Reid and Pelosi, just go ahead and ram health care “reform” down America’s throats. Despite the fact that America overwhelmingly does not want this.

Walk away, Republicans. Or walk out. Deprive the showboater-in-chief of his false negotiation.

There’s That Word Again

Unexpectedly:

The number of newly laid-off workers filing applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly surged last week after having fallen sharply in the previous week. The gain dampened hopes about how quickly the labor market may improve this year.

The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose by 31,000 to a seasonally adjusted 473,000. Analysts expected a small decline.

It is always unexpected, isn’t it? They need a better thesaurus. How about Dictionary’s list of synonyms?

abrupt, accidental, amazing, astonishing, chance, electrifying, eye-opening, fortuitous, from left field, impetuous, impulsive, instantaneous, not bargained for, not in the cards, out of the blue, payback, prodigious, staggering, startling, stunning, sudden, swift, unanticipated, unforeseen, unheralded, unlooked-for, unpredictable, unpredicted, wonderful

The Emerald House will doubtless go with “wonderful”.

It sounds so much better.

They’ll be inventing or imagining in overtime to claim the ’stimulus’ created even more jobs in fictitious Congressional districts to offset the unexpected.

The Gathering Darkness

Pete Du Pont:

Or as Sen. Judd Gregg, top Republican on the Budget Committee, put it the other day, this huge deficit spending “is a death certificate to the American dream for our children. Their lives will be mortgaged by the debt we put on their backs.” Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under the first President Bush, noted in The Wall Street Journal last week that President Obama will have added more debt in his first two years in office than George W. Bush did in eight years. In his first 15 months, Mr. Obama will have raised the debt burden as a percentage of GDP by more than President Reagan did in all of his eight years.

This administration wants larger, not smaller government; broader, not lesser regulation; and greater government, not greater individual liberties. That would make our country weaker on the international stage, make it much more difficult for us to handle future recessions, and even more difficult to implement new programs or strategies that may be needed to improve our economy. Lawrence Summers, now director of the president’s National Economic Council, once asked, “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?” Obviously not very long, and we are rapidly moving in the wrong economic direction.

China is dumping US securities, that should worry you. The administration is swearing that their big spending saved us from a new great depression. Unfortunately, unemployment is higher than than Obama swore it would be if we just let him spend whatever he pleased on whatever he wanted.

In other words, we are declining. Rapidly. We have an economy in real trouble and a completely clueless leadership in power.

How’s that hope and change coming along?

Burning Both Ends And The Middle

Dick Morris:

One of my favorite quotes about politics comes from Henry Kissinger in his book Years of Upheaval, his memoir of the Ford presidency: “A statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation’s experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation’s experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hews too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events.”

Now, at once, we see both happening to President Barack Obama.

So, as Morris puts it, Obama got too far out ahead of America with health care “reform”, then turned around and went dormant on pretty much everything else. (Do go read the whole piece.)

He has burned the right with his statist agenda, burned the left with his passive, status quo policies and really, really burned the middle as they realized that this guy is not only clueless, but is dangerous to America. He’s managed to light the candle at both ends and the middle all at the same time.

Jimmy Carter seriously damaged the Democrat brand with his utterly miserable presidency. Clinton came close to destroying the party, but was able to pivot, move to the center and survive, saving a fair number of his party to fight another day. Obama is as poor or poorer at the job as Carter, but far less politically adroit and capable as Clinton (and Obama is advised by the utterly clueless, to boot). He has a real chance of smashing the Democrat brand into utter ruin.

Run away from this man, Democrats. It is your only hope. Obama has the leaden touch. Everything he touches turns to lead, for his agenda and his party. His machinations cannot save you, he has pissed off too many voters, left, right and center. He is your worst nightmare if you do not row away from his sinking ship as rapidly as possible.

How To Make Carter Look Good

Jimmy Obama with a blast from the past.

Carter on steroids strikes again.