Blogs For Victory

This will certainly make things interesting:

The Senate narrowly rejected an amendment that would have restricted abortion coverage in the pending health-care bill, leaving in question whether Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has the 60 votes needed to move the bill toward final passage.

The measure, which failed 54-45, addressed the scope of restrictions on coverage of abortion services for people who receive subsidies to buy insurance. The outcome was expected, but could cost the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who has threatened to filibuster the $848 billion bill unless abortion restrictions are tightened.

Pro-life or pro-choice, a majority of Americans has consistently opposed federal funds for elective abortion.

Question: Does this kill the bill? Can Reid get 60 votes for cloture without a ban on abortion funding? If he can swing it, are there 218 votes in the House to pass a health care bill without an explicit ban? That 54 voted against the ban shows that the pro-abortion fanatics are pressing hard for this – we’ll have to see how this comes out.

When 56 newspapers march in fascist lock-step, you know you’ve got a problem:

A ‘Profound Emergency’ Not Worth Writing a Sentence About

“Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial,” announces that editorial, produced by London’s Guardian. “We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet” blah blah blah, etc.

To put it another way, this is such a dire emergency that the editorial boards of 55 newspapers (including, in this country, the Miami Herald) cannot be troubled to write a word about it. It’s the equivalent of just filling space with wire copy–and in fact, that would work just as well, since the Associated Press has its own global-warmist editorial.

A sad joke to some, perhaps, but there should be a thrill of fear down your back as you read that. The mindless conformity is already there in the MSM – all it would take, now, is a government subsidy to turn Rush’s semi-joke about ‘State run media’ in to a reality. And don’t think these MSM outfits won’t take a government subsidy – first off, from a liberal government like Obama’s, they’d consider it an honor; secondly, from any government they’d consider it worthwhile because its better than losing their jobs as their dinosaur media model becomes more irrelevant.

This is just a blatant example of the liberal group-think of the MSM which results in the media bias we talk about.

Sticking to the story:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson dismissed GOP calls to delay a critical finding on greenhouse emissions in light of hacked e-mails from climate scientists…

…“There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science upon which this decision is based,” Jackson said in announcing the finding this afternoon.

Thus the sad, sad spectacle of a person who has given over their mind and soul to an ideology. It doesn’t matter that “Climategate” calls in to question the basis of anthropogenic global warming – ideology requires that AGW be taken as a matter of faith, and off she goes.

Terrible to see fellow human beings so willingly become the slaves of others.

UPDATE: After all, it fits so well with Carbonhagen.

Entirely unsurprising:

Politics in Law Firm and Law School Hiring: Time for some Tit for Tat?

The following question was posed to the NY Times‘ resident ethics expert:

While interviewing law students for jobs as paid summer interns and full-time associates for my firm, I noticed several had résumés listing their activities in the Federalist Society. Some of my partners have conservative views similar to those of the society, but I do not. These students’ politics would not affect their professional function, but my review is meant to consider their judgment and personality (though I don’t need to give reasons for the assessments given). May I recommend not hiring someone solely because of his or her politics?

To his credit, Randy Cohen of the Times answered that you cannot discriminate – but the larger issue is: how could anyone even ask such a question? Only in a politicized society in which people are to be judged on ideological purity as opposed to competence. Remember, we’re not asking here if we should hire the crazed, Islamist zealot as security guard for our nuclear weapons – we’re talking about a law firm. As far as Federalist views go, plus or minus, they have no effect on a lawyer representing his client – the law is what the law is. The lawyer with a Federalist background might be offended at any one of a hundred laws currently on the books – so might a lawyer with an ACLU background – but as long as a lawyer can do his job, that doesn’t matter. Not hiring based on ideology is a reflection of hatred, pure and simple.

The person who asked the question just doesn’t want people of the “wrong” view to have, well, anything – its the sort of attitude which informs the socialist elites in totalitarian societies. There they divvy up the people between “socially friendly” and “socially hostile” elements, and woe to those who are rated “hostile”. This is what we’re in for if we don’t win this battle against the left – eventually, we’ll be forced out, everywhere, simply because we don’t toe the leftist line.

Awsome.

Barack Obama’s presidential job approval rating is 47% in the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update, a new low for his administration to date. His approval rating has been below 50% for much of the time since mid-November, but briefly rose to 52% last week after he announced his new Afghanistan policy.

Any slight bump in support Obama received coincident with his new Afghanistan policy proved to be very short-lived, as his approval rating returned to below the majority level by the weekend, and slipped further to 47% in Dec. 4-6 polling.

Feel free to discuss.

This actually came out on Friday – you know, in a data dump designed to get it out there, but not have anyone notice it:

In October and November, the government spent $292 billion more than it took in, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said.

That was even worse than the same period last year, when the government was on its way to posting a record $1.4 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

According to the linked report, outlays were down, so the extra deficit comes from lower revenues – naturally, they look for a tax cutting culprit (in this case, an easement on corporate write-offs), but that is just idiotic – a 9% decline in revenues doesn’t come from such things. Not even close. The real deal is that economic activity is vastly less than it was in the Oct-Nov 2008 time frame – and its not like the economy was going gang-busters in late 2008.

Its all a smoke a mirrors recovery, good people – and things like idle ships, idle trucks, lowering tax revenues are what to pay attention to…not banker/bureaucrat reports on bogus profits at bailed out corporations.

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: Obama’s two-month deficit Is more than the Bush deficit For the entire 2006 calendar year

Yeah, no kidding:

The high-profile lawyer hired to investigate ACORN has found no pattern of intentional illegal conduct in the community organizing group — a finding that was dismissed as “damage control” by one of the two filmmakers who, posing as a pimp and prostitute, videotaped staffers offering advice on how to operate a brothel.

One wonders why they even bothered….but, then again, liberals will believe it and sure as night follows day, we’ll eventually get liberal comments saying that ACORN has been investigated and cleared…

Hey, if you can’t get it done via democratic means, it doesn’t mean you don’t get it done, right?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will formally declare that greenhouse gases endanger human health on Monday, allowing President Barack Obama to show action as a major climate change summit opened in Copenhagen.

The EPA finding will allow it to regulate planet-warming gases even without legislation in the U.S. Congress, and will inject some optimism into the two-week global meeting on controlling climate change in the Danish capital.

Keep in mind that “greenhouse gasses” include the stuff you exhale a zillion times a day – you, my friend, are a threat to the earth! The EPA has decided that controlling your breathing is so important that they’ll act outside the law. Cool, huh? All it takes is a collection of pinheads in government who haven’t the faintest notion of what a law is. Oh, and you have to continue to believe that human beings are causing global warming…or, at least, pretend you believe it because its such a handy tool to gain control of peoples’ lives.

UPDATE: 1,200 limos and 140 private planes transport global warming fascists and dupes to conference

Noted over at Big Government:

Insuring 30 million people at a 10 year cost of $849 billion would mean a per person cost of $28,300. Over 10 years that would be $2,830 a year, but this isn’t a 10 year plan. The bill before the Senate doesn’t take effect until 2013, well after the next Presidential election. And while the Congressional Budget Office score covers the years 2010 through 2019, only in the years 2013-2019 is anyone actually insured. So we’re looking at a window of 7 years, which give us an average cost of $4042.85 per person, per year people are actually being insured. The average person could find a cheaper health insurance plan.

But, of course, its not about health care – its about control. Liberals want fascist control over our lives, and they figure the best means of doing this is getting control of our health care. That done, we’ll be easily pressured in to conceding the rest of our liberties – with liberals grandly allowing us the freedom to be freakish in our sex lives, should we so choose; they’ll take care of everything else.

Its all a big scam – not, at this point, as big a scam as global warming, but right up there.

UPDATE: And now Reid, believe it or not, plays the race card on the health care debate.

Mish, once again, goes over the real numbers and, among many other things, shows this:

Highlights

* 11,000 jobs were lost in total vs. 190,000 jobs last month.

* 27,000 construction jobs were lost vs. 62,000 last month.

* 41,000 manufacturing jobs were lost vs. 61,000 last month.

* 58,000 service providing jobs were added vs. 61,000 lost last month.

* 15,000 retail trade jobs were lost vs. 40,000 last month.

* 86,000 professional and business services jobs were added vs. 18,000 added last month.

* 40,000 education and health services jobs were added vs. 45,000 added last month.

* 11,000 leisure and hospitality jobs were lost vs. 37,000 last month.

* 07,000 government jobs were added vs. 0 added last month.

A total of 69,000 goods producing jobs were lost (higher paying jobs). Retail and professional services contributed massively to to the plus side.

In my view, this is very bad – and I highly suspect the 86,000 number for “professional and business service” jobs, as well as the 58,000 for “service providing”. It seems to me that the numbers for October and November were tailor-made to have jobs lost number come in just where, say, a banker or bureaucrat would want it to be – presuming that said bankers and bureaucrats want us to doubt our lying eyes and believe them about the state of the economy.

But even if these numbers are rock-solid, the loss of 102,000 manufacturing jobs and 89,000 construction jobs over the past two months indicates to me that if we are growing our economy, we’re growing it in the wrong way. We need to be doing more real work and less paper shuffling – the jobs numbers indicate that whatever growth we’re having, its at the expense of those who actually create wealth.

We need to return to the economy of making, mining and growing our own stuff – until we do, we’re just spinning our wheels.