Saturday Health Care Open Thread

ObamaCare has racial preferences – because nothing a Democrat does can leave off picking over the bones of racism.

Make it a roll call vote – after all, if Democrats in favor are proud of the effort, they should have no problem being very public about it, right?

Pelosi was against “Deem and Pass” before she was for it.

Hammering Pelosi on her use of Catholicism to pass the bill: is she just ignorant, or cynical? It seems this lady either didn’t pay attention to the sisters who educated her, or she’s just being rather dishonest.

The abortion problem.

Attempting to conscript Catholicism for Obamacare – amazing how liberals hold us in utter contempt, but so eagerly attempt to bamboozle Catholics in to supporting their efforts…almost as if they know that what they do is immoral, and they want cover.

UPDATE: Constitutional challenges to ObamaCare.

UPDATE II: The bribe list.

UPDATE III: Obama at 56% disapproval.

UPDATE IV: A bit of good news – ACORN going broke.

You can stop Obamacare!

Obama Really Getting Unpopular

From Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

I seem to recall seeing numbers like this before. Back in 2007.

Health Care Update Thread

(Blogging Note: This is clearly the most important issue of the day – and will be until the vote is taken on Sunday. We’ll have an open thread up on this issue for Saturday and Sunday. So that the comments don’t get too bogged down and hard to follow.)

TEA Party will defend Democrats who vote “no”. A good thing – those Democrats who do show the courage to vote in favor of America on this issue deserve to be defended.

ObamaCare expands the power of the IRS. Naturally – when you’re acting like a little fascist you want ever more coercive power over the citizens.

Romney and Huckabee poll well against Obama for 2012. Which means people are getting in an “anybody but Obama mood”.

Bill would cost Caterpillar $100 million in first year.

The more people look in to it, the more tax increases they find.

Christian Medical Association condemns abortion provisions.

They are lying, you know?

CBO numbers bogus?

An aroused electorate: 100,000 calls per hour to Congress. Anyone want to take bets on the pro/con breakdown?

Out and About on a Friday Morning

At least one Democrats understands who bad the Democrat tactics on ObamaCare have been:

Even one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, says a proposed parliamentary move to pass health-care reform would be “disingenuous” and harm the credibility of Congress.

Governor Christie is demonstrating that his are made out of brass.

Fess Parker, RIP.

Hey, liberals, our military is morally superior to the enemy.

380 banks at risk of failure.

McCain up only 7 over his GOP primary rival.

The requirement of morality in economics:

The financial crisis that has affected the entire world can be a good opportunity to rethink the development model, making it more attentive to the needs of the whole human family and not aimed only at the logic of profit. The crisis itself, in fact, has shown that in a market beset by bankruptcies, those economic actors are able to adhere to a moral behaviour and attentive to the needs of their area, have survived”.

Imagine that – the “whole human family”…which includes the unborn and the elderly; which presupposes the family will have a house to call their own, and wealth no one can take from them…might be interesting to try.

As Obama and the Democrats (and a few “wet” Republicans) talk “comprehensive immigration reform”, the American people remain dead set on securing the border.

Death of Civilization watch: Cal-OSHA to vote on whether or not the prostitutes who work in pornographic film should wear condoms.

What the 2010 Election is All About

A quote from Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech:

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

It was the issue then as LBJ prepared the disastrous “Great Society”, it is the issue today as Obama pledges to transform America. We lost in 1964 and the situation we’re in today is the result of that error. We dare not lose, this time.

Keep that in mind as we go through this year.

Poll: 80% Have a Negative View of Congress

Wow:

…speaking of Congress, the new Gallup Poll also finds that barely 16% of Americans approve of its job while 80% (as in eight out of every ten Americans) now disapprove of the work being done by both bodies and their Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Both of whom are up for re-election in November.

Now even in Gallup, Obama is getting unpopular. After a while, as President Bush learned, you can’t climb out of the cellar.

The really important thing: if we Republicans win in November, we’d better just dazzle the American people with our ability. Our fellow Americans are in an unforgiving mood.

UPDATE: Sen. Boxer (D-CA) polls badly against all three possible GOP rivals. The GOP hasn’t elected a Senator in California since 1988.

UPDATE II: Could Congress’ ratings be down because they are pushing a health care plan opposed by 55%?

ObamaCare, Etc Open Thread

I guess until our Whip-wielding House Dominatrix either wins or loses, we’re going to keep talking about Obama’s miserably un-American health care reform proposals. What sort of America do we want, Mr. President? Let’s just say, “not one with you and your cronies deciding what’s best for health care”.

UPDATE: ObamaCare has a 3.8% tax on investment income; further downward pressure on the ability of the economy to create wealth.

UPDATE II: Hennessey is taking the bill apart piece by piece. Its not a pretty picture:

…Spends money on doctors in 2013 and 2014, but leaves out the permanent fix, as expected. This means there’s another $300-ish B of Medicare spending that is not counted in this bill. So much for true deficit neutrality…

…Adopts a version of the President’s proposal for feds to regulate health insurance premiums in addition to States. Secretary of HHS could “review potentially unreasonable premiums and may take corrective actions, such as requiring the insurer to pay a penalty, denying or modifying the premium or ordering the plan to pay rebates to consumers.” What is a potentially unreasonable premium?? Congratulations, AHIP. You have made your industry a federally regulated utility. Have fun with that.

UPDATE III: ObamaCare will crush the middle class:

The hardest hit won’t be those earning more than $250,000 a year–the group that he says needs to “pay their fair share.” Rather, it’s families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.

These folks will be too “rich” to qualify for ObamaCare’s subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president’s plan forces them to buy.

Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, “silver” health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. After income taxes, they’ll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

This is not a bug, its a feature – its the way to pressure the middle class in to agreeing a single payer plan.

UPDATE IV: Catholic sisters come out against ObamaCare (PDF).

Governor Christie Leads the Way

He keeps on like this, and we’ll start talking him up for President in 2012:

Gov. Chris Christie will propose a constitutional amendment limiting annual property tax increases to 2.5 percent when he introduces a budget Tuesday that will seek fundamental changes in spending at every level of government, according to administration officials with knowledge of the plan…

…The governor’s $29.3 billion budget will shave $2.9 billion off state spending from last year, about a 9 percent drop. The cuts include reductions in aid to municipalities and school districts, said two officials, who spoke to The Star-Ledger on the condition of anonymity ahead of the speech.

Imagine if we had a President who had the guts to cut our national budget by 9%. That would work out, next year, to about $325 billion. We’d still spend more than $3.2 trillion, so its not like we’re asking for granny to be thrown out on the street. But at least some attempt at stopping the bleeding – some attempt to avert complete fiscal disaster.

But, we won’t get any of that. If anything, Obama will spend even more than projected – and as his policies flounder, we can expect revenues to continue to drop, meaning an even worse deficit. We don’t have a President who even understands the concept of setting priorities – a President who understands there is a real limit to the amount of debt we can carry, and we’re pretty much already there.

Governor Christie, on the other hand, has shown rare courage ever since he took office. We’ll now see if he has the grit to carry this out. He faces a Democrat-controlled legislature and there will be legal challenges, especially to his proposed cuts in education. If he has the courage, he’ll stare down these challenges and emerge as a tribune of the people…and set himself on a fast track to higher things, if not in 2012, then at some point.