And, hey, its not me saying it – its HuffPo:

A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government’s leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada — and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: “Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.”

The most transparent government, ever? Hope and change? Is this what you liberals voted for? And isn’t this just the sort of thing you (falsely) have accused our side of doing for years? Small wonder, now, that PhRMA is funding pro-Obamacare efforts.

You on the left should simply be ashamed of yourselves for being so easily taken in by a this outgrowth of Chicago’s gutter politics.

Which, of course, is the question about we should show mercy to the merciless:

Britain dismissed suggestions of a link between the Lockerbie bomber’s release and energy deals with Libya on Saturday, and the head of the U.S. FBI said the move gave comfort to terrorists.

London and Washington have condemned the ‘hero’s welcome’ given to Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on his return to Libya after being freed from a life sentence in a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.

‘The idea that the British government … would sit down and somehow barter over the freedom or the life of this Libyan prisoner and make it all part of some business deal … it’s not only wrong, it’s completely implausible and actually quite offensive,’ said British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson.

In Washington, FBI director Robert Mueller released an angry letter he sent to Scottish minister Kenny MacAskill, who ordered the release, calling it inexplicable and detrimental to justice.

‘Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world,’ Mueller wrote in the letter posted on the FBI’s website.

But the man does appear to be dying – and thus poses no threat, in himself, to anyone else. But when we take a mass murderer and release him, does this not encourage the worst that no matter what we say, our most fierce justice is subject to change? What to do?

Never lose sight of the need for mercy – but this Libyan should not have been allowed to have such a heroes welcome. Better had Britain just quietly removed him from prison and either placed him in a civil hospital or quietly, even without the Libyan government having advance notice, deposited him on the coast of Libya with a note of explanation. There are ways to show that our justice is tempered with mercy without having to allow terrorists to claim they scored one off us.

Because we already have relations with enough savage, inhuman governments and we don’t need any more:

A church leader from a fast growing independent Church movement in Cuba is being accused of criminal activity by the Government just one month after a Pastor from the same group was sentenced to six years in prison.

This follows the recent detention at least sixty pastors and leaders in May and June.

Alexi Perez has been in prison for over a month accused of illicit economic activity. Although the original charges against him have been dropped, he now faces a new charge of illegally receiving construction materials.

Observers note this new charge is the same as that reportedly made against a prominent human rights activist; Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramirez.

Alexi Perez oversees a group of around 100 church members (out of a total of 800), at the Apostolic Evangelical Church in San Jose de las Lajas in Havana Province.

In July, Pastor Omar Gude Perez, again from the Apostolic Movement, was sentenced to six years in prison. He had spent fourteen months in jail without trial prior to sentencing, and the charges against him had been changed on two occasions.

Around sixty other pastors and leaders from the Apostolic Movement have reported being temporarily detained and threatened on charges of “social dangerousness” in two sweeps between May and June this year.

Any government which charges people with “social dangerousness” is not a government we wish to have relations with. At least, its not if we have a government at all in tune with core, American principles. Naturally, the Obama Administration – as well as the usual suspects in Hollywood and on the left in general – are eager for the day of normalization…so that we can, also, pour out US funds to subsidize Castro’s inhuman horror.

No, never – until Castro and his hateful regime are gone, we must not have normal, diplomatic relations. Further more, we should seek means by which we can progressively downgrade our relations with other inhuman tyrannies. Free people must band together, not shake hands with barbarians.

Beware collectivist solution:

…I think that habit of dealing with men in the mass, not merely on abnormal occasions, as in a war or a strike, but in normal circumstances and as a part of ordinary social speech, is a very bad way of trying to understand the human animal. There are only a few animals, and they are not human animals, who can be best judged or best employed in packs or herds. Some may compare the workers of a Communist state to a pack of wolves; I should very strongly suspect that they bear more resemblance to a flock of sheep. But neither of these animals can be said to have a very complex or entertaining type of mentality; few of us would be eager to listen, even if we could, to the flowing and continuous reminiscences of a sheep; and St. Francis seems to have been the only man who was ever on intimate terms with a wolf. It is precisely because man is the most interesting of the creatures that he finds his proper place among those creatures who dig a domestic hole or hang up an individual nest; and the disgrace of our society is not when he has not a hive or an ant hill; but when, among so many nests and holes, he has no where to lay his head. – G K Chesterton

Free men and women owning their own homes – that is to be our goal, now and forever. Because only if we are such, will we be free men and women.

Here in Las Vegas, its 13.1% an all-time high; in California, 11.9%, a post-WWII record; in New York, 9.6%, a 12-year high.

Obama and his Democrats can take their “green shoots”, “stimulus” and “hope and change” and shove ’em. We don’t want bail-outs for failed banks and businesses, we want an economy where people can work to build their dreams.

UPDATE: Bernanke and the Stimulators claim to have saved the world. Mish’s explains that they are, well, insane.

UPDATE II: Steyn notes that never in the course of history has so much been borrowed from so many to benefit so few.

Gateway Pundit has the details including a link where you can find a rally in your area. Let’s have at it and let these liberals know that their tenure in power is limited – that we will take our country back from them and bring real reform to our nation.

The Baseline Scenario has an excellent run-down on the mechanics of what went wrong – months after we geared up to modify loans the fact is that delinquencies and foreclosures are rising.

There are various things going wrong here – banks are looking out for themselves, especially the servicing banks as opposed to the note holders; note holders are wary of going in to a modification because it might just be better to let the house go short sale/foreclosure and get the bird in the hand rather than two in the bush; the people who are running the modification show at the banks are not experienced and may not have proper underwriting skills (if this is the case, I nominate my friend who blogs under the name of Nevada Pundit as National Home Mortgage Underwriting Czar – he does actually know what he’s doing and it’d be a cool gig for him) – but, for me, the largest, single obstacle to this is the fact that we’re not admitting that not only have home values dropped, but that they’re not going to come back to what they were in 2005 – at least, not for 10 to 20 years (and my view is that in real terms, they never will). We need to reorganize America’s housing industry as it is undergoing national bankruptcy.

I’ve talked about this (well, by now it should be characterized as “yammered on endlessly”) – we need to find means of number-crunching the home values and figuring out, within 15% or so, what their real value is, and then applying that value to the mortgage. It’ll be hard, it’ll hurt – but it must be done as its the only way we can provide a floor underneath our home values and bring in a bit of price stability which will convince the millions of currently negative-equity home owners to stay in their home. Among all my friends – and there are a lot of them – I can only count two whom I know are probably certain to have positive-equity in their homes. One because she bought a long time ago and didn’t go in for serial refinances during the boom, the other because I’m pretty sure she bought it outright, or at least with 50%+ down. As long as we trundle along letting banks try to finesse themselves out of their mortgage jam, we’ll get nowhere – and foreclosures will continue to rise until a point is reached where major banks are, once again, faced with bankruptcy.

It is time to think anew and act anew – we can’t just sit here, Micawber-like, and hope that something turns up. Time for a bit of courage – and a bit of real hope and real change.

Can’t just sit there hoping Obama’s warmed-over FDR/Carterism will do the trick:

As our case is new, we must think and act anew. – Abraham Lincoln</blockquote

Time to shake off the shackles of a century of liberalism and start heading in a new direction – and some times, in order to go forward, one must go back to where one screwed up and choose the right path, this time.

Always felt sorry for her on two counts – loss of her son and the cruel way the left exploited her sorrow and naivete:

Just a few years back, she was the media’s darling. Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier slain in Iraq, led the anti-war charge against George W. Bush. Egged on by the mainstream media and left-wing activists eager to put a “face” to their cause, she camped out in front of Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The entire situation became a media circus, with Sheehan at its epicenter. We saw her getting her hair cut at “Camp Casey,” saw her visiting her son’s grave with media flunkies in tow, and watched her get up close and personal with Hugo Chávez. Feted and celebrated, she could do no wrong; she held what has been called an “absolute moral authority card.”

So what exactly happened? Where is Sheehan today? She said she was quitting public life back in 2007 when, according to her post on Daily Kos, her cutting ties with the Democratic Party got her “trashed on such ‘liberal blogs’ as the Democratic Underground. Being called an ‘attention whore’ and being told ‘good riddance’ are some of the more milder [sic] rebukes.” Just a year later, though, she tried to unseat Nancy Pelosi. Perhaps having had a taste of the limelight, she couldn’t help herself. But, as one could have predicted, she was beaten handily by San Fran Nan — receiving less than 18 percent of the vote.

You might think that Sheehan had given up entirely and gone back to the quiet, placid existence that most Americans live, but you’d be wrong. It’s just that the left and the media have finished with her. Having wrung every ounce of moral authority and celebrity out of the poor woman that they could, they’ve moved on to greener pastures. It’s an era of hope and change, you know, and now that The One™ is in office, Sheehan’s brand of anti-war activism is no longer a welcome diversion — it’s more of an unwelcome distraction.

The alleged fierce, moral urgency of being anti-war during the Bush years has been replaced by the fierce, moral urgency of slavish devotion to executive power. In this Sheehan is no longer needed, and so she’s frozen out. A few die-hard pacifists still hang around, but the rest of the left has no more use for her – it was never about the war, Cindy, or your heroic son…it was all about bashing President Bush with whatever club came to hand.

It must always be kept in mind that when dealing with the left, power is the central thing – the retention and expansion of same for leftist leaders. If, by some strange chance, doing the right thing coincides with this, then that is ok. But for most of the time, “right thing” and “leftist power” are in opposite corners and so a ruthless, cynical manipulation is necessary to make it appear there it a bit of “right thing” in leftist actions. Sheehan hasn’t entirely figured it out as she’s officially blaming Bush for the lack of funds she suffers under – but, once upon a time she was proud of her hero son and took comfort from President Bush’s strong, moral stance on the war….perhaps she’ll wake and go back to that.

Whatever else happens, Sheehan provides an excellent object lesson for anyone who wishes to join the left. You can do so and gain a lot of wealth and fame – but as soon as you are no longer needed, you will be discarded like yesterday’s trash.

Who knew that the liberals new, tin-plated demi-god would fall so far, so fast?

The Spell is Broken. Cap-and-trade, the mega-deficits, the apology tours, and the sleaze of some appointments and congressional grandees (cf. Rangel, Dodd, Murtha, etc.) were stimulants, but not in themselves enough to awaken the somnolent American people from their collective trance. Yet health care was like a shot of adrenaline that jolted the patient out of his slumber. Suddenly hope and change no longer worked like the swinging watch and “you’re getting sleepy” lingo. Voters are feeling they’ve been “had” and were mesmerized into being used for an extremist agenda.

Who made the following decisions? 1) to propose a 1,000 page bill that no one had read, much less could explain?; 2) to ram down the greatest change in the US economy in fifty years by the August recess?; 3) to talk loosely of the “uninsured” without knowing why they were not insured, how much it would cost to insure them, or whether they currently in fact find some sort of care?; 4) to reference Rahm Emanuel’s doctor brother as a source of wisdom? 5) to demonize the health-care industry as greedy?

(NB: Does Obama really believe that illegal aliens do not possess 200-300 dollars a month to buy catastrophic health coverage, when they send on average at least that amount back to Mexico on the assumption the emergency room here is free, for everything from injuries to natal care? Does he believe that a 25-year old does not gamble that his robust health means he prefers his I-pod, DVDs, and nights out to squirreling away cash each month for health insurance? There are flaws in our system that must be corrected, but the notion of conspirators in black hats who plot to prevent health care for the “uninsured” is fallacious.

If Pelosi had really cleaned House – especially of people like Rangel and Murtha; if Obama had really been transparent; if there had been a genuine attempt to reach across to the defeated right…if, if if…as Churchill once observed, “the terrible ‘ifs'” have accumulated. Its not just been one mis-step; it has been a whole series of terrible tactical and strategic errors and there is no evidence to date that anyone, from Obama on down, realizes how badly they’ve screwed up. In fact, we’re getting indications that the left, including Obama, merely wants to double-down…to press even harder for a leftist agenda, apparently in firm conviction that America really did turn left in November and the opposition really is just “astro-turf” corporate shills and right wing die-hards. The left will be disabused of this notion.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Obama can’t climb back up a bit – heck, it doesn’t even mean he can’t be re-elected in 2012. But the bloom is off the rose and he’ll never get it back. You don’t get do-overs in politics. Regardless of the merits of the case, once the Katrina response was tagged as a miserable failure, President Bush could never recapture that aura of firm executive competence he had built up – Obama will never again be the savior-like political figure he was in November of 2008.

Ultimately, the failure of the left lead by Obama must be laid at the door of the rank and file of the left – for decades the left has been warned that their leaders are actually corrupt hacks who are merely using leftist rhetoric as a means to power, and power is to be used for personal gratification and enrichment. Overly-concentrated on the relatively rare and usually small-time corruption of various Republicans, the left failed to notice that, via legislation and regulation, leftist leaders have been systematically robbing the people of the United states – robbing them of their wealth and their freedom. This, in turn, all stems from that fundamental flaw of the left – built on the false premise that Mankind is perfectible via man’s actions, the only way it can be sustained over times is by dishonesty…and once you head down that route, you’ll just get worse and worse about it.

Obämerdämmerung – the twilight of the liberal gods. Its all gone wrong, and they won’t be able to get it back. As long as we hold firm and press our agenda, we will sweep them in to the ash heap of history for good.