For the first time, Democrats admit what Americans already know about their health care bill: it would raise premiums, it’s a windfall for drug companies and insurance companies, votes were secured through backroom deals, it cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, and it raises taxes.

ShareThis

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.

ShareThis

Top Obama campaign aide: Dems could get ’slaughtered’ in 2010 By Eric Zimmermann – 03/11/10 11:14 AM ETDemocrats could end up being “slaughtered” in the 2010 midterms, one of President Obama’s top campaign aides said today.

“I think that there is a real shot we are going to get slaughtered in elections this fall if we aren’t leading the efforts to reform Washington,” Steve Hildebrand, Obama’s deputy national campaign director in 2008, told CNN. “We campaigned in ‘06 and ‘08, and if voters don’t see that change, we haven’t lived up to that promise.”

Hildebrand, who didn’t join Obama’s White House after the election, is pushing Democrats to do more on ethics reform. He’s urging Congress to approve an outside watchdog agency to handle ethics complaints, and pushed the matter in a meeting yesterday with David Axelrod.

“We went after that culture of corruption, and I don’t believe there is a culture of corruption, but I do believe there is an image problem that Washington in general has to deal with,” Hildebrand said. “And Democrats are in trouble now and if they don’t do anything.”

The Hill

ShareThis

Showdown in Searchlight – March 27th

ShareThis

Behind closed doors, the Obama Administration, House and Senate Democrat leaders are cutting a secret deal on ObamaCare. They have come up with a way to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House without any House members having to vote directly on the bill. Now The Hill is reporting that the House and Senate Parliamentarians are helping to advise Democrats on how to pass ObamaCare. When will the self proclaimed most ethical Congress in history start acting ethical and honest? This 111th Congress has proven, to date, to be the most secretive, non-transparent and devious Congress in recent history.

I explained in a blog on The Foundry yesterday the unethical procedure being used to pass ObamaCare:

House members have come up with a unique way to structure a vote that attempts to avoid the House voting on legislation before it goes to the President. First, the House Budget Committee will report out a reconciliation bill. It is unclear as to whether the Stupak Amendment will be added. This reconciliation measure would be reported for consideration by the House of Representatives as a whole. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would then package the Senate passed Obamacare bill and the House reconciliation measure into one measure. The House rules committee will report out a rule that will allow the Senate passed Obamacare bill to pass the House without a vote.

This seems to be a violation of the constitutional requirement of Article 1, Section 7. The Constitution states in part “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States.” The House will avoid a direct vote on the Senate passed ObamaCare by passing a self-executing rule that deems ObamaCare to be passed, if the House approves the rule setting up debate on ObamaCare. Under the rule if the reconciliation measure passes, then the Senate passed ObamaCare bill will be deemed to have passed the House without a vote.

There is precedent in the House for self-executing rules. In 2007, the House to pass a self-executing rule during the debate on a War Supplemental. Also, during the budget process over the past few years, the House has inserted language into the annual budget resolutions that ”deems” as passed a debt limit increase. This type of rule allows the debt limit to pass the House without a vote and as similar rule would allow teh Senate version of ObamaCare to pass without a vote.

Late last night, The Hill reported that “Democrats Nearing Deal on Reconciliation”:

House and Senate Democratic leaders and White House officials were optimistic Wednesday evening that they were nearing a deal on a reconciliation package that would smooth the way for them to finally complete health care reform. Congressional leaders and senior administration officials met in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office late in the day to hammer out a deal on reconciliation, meant to act as a sidecar of adjustments to the original $871 billion Senate-passed health care reform bill.

This meeting was not transparent and not open to the public. Pelosi was behind closed doors in order to cut a deal on a reconciliation measure that the House may consider in the next week or two. Yet again, Democrat leaders have used a closed door secret procedure to craft legislation to impose on Americans.

House Democratic leaders will walk their rank and file through portions of the package in a Thursday morning meeting, a leadership aide said.

This means that only Democrat elites have been part of this negotiation. Not until later today will the House Democrat caucus be allowed to see the reconciliation measure. Republicans need not apply, because they will not be allowed to see the reconciliation measure, until Democrats say so. And for your average American who will have to live under this new health care government run regime, you are not allowed to participate in the legislative process at all.

Reid declined to talk specifics as he exited the meeting. But he sounded optimistic that Democratic leaders were on the verge of a deal on the reconciliation package. “We are making progress. A lot of decisions were made,” Reid said. “I really do believe that the goal we’ve been seeking for such a long time — health care reform — is going to be done. We don’t have it all worked out, but we made a lot of progress.” Reid refused to speculate on a deadline for reaching a deal. President Barack Obama has said he’d like Congress to get health care done this month, and lawmakers are set to head out on a two-week recess beginning March 26.

This story in The Hill indicates that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is involved in the negotiations. We know that no Republican Senators were allowed to participate in this negotiation. There is a big shocker at the end of this story in The Hill.

Sources said the House and Senate Parliamentarians also attended the meeting to advise on reconciliation rules.

Stop the press! If this report is true, this could be a major scandal for the House and Senate Parliamentarians. They are supposed to be dispassionate umpires. Any appearance of the Parliamentarian gaming the system to aid one side to beat the rules should be denounced by all sides.

This was a very political and partisan strategy meeting with representatives of the White House, Democrat Speaker Pelosi and Democrat Leader Reid. Even if these Parliamentarians were not cheating the system by giving Democrats tips on how to bend the rules, the secrecy of the meeting should have been reason enough for the Senate Parliamentarian and his House counterpart to run for the exit. If Republicans lose every procedural objection during the reconcilation debate, they have a strong argument that the parliamentarians should recuse themselves from this proceeding because of a strong appearance of impropriety.

ShareThis

The Google-backed (GOOG) Android operating system was the standout winner in the latest market share report from ComScore.

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.investors.com …

ShareThis

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are headed to the White House for a meeting on jobs Thursday, and they’ll have a few words to say about how President Barack Obama is doing his.

The 43-member caucus is fighting through one of the most difficult periods in its 39-year history, and some members and aides said they’re getting far too little support from the nation’s first black president — a man they once believed would be their strongest champion.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) told POLITICO that White House officials are “not listening” to black lawmakers.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) said “there’s not enough attention to poor people.”

And Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said: “While I respect President Obama, delivering victories for his political future should be the least of our worries on Capitol Hill.”

Aides to CBC members said tensions between black lawmakers and the White House have risen in recent months as the caucus has tried to address the extraordinarily high unemployment rate among African-Americans, while navigating a succession of ethical issues — including the ethics committee ruling that cost CBC member Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee last week.

(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com …

ShareThis

Pelosi: we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it.

he real costs are:
(1) 10 years of taxes for 6 years of benefits.
(2) Cut $460 billion from Medicare.
(3) Rob $52 billion from SS.
(4) Rob $72 billion from long-term disability.
(5) Double count the above as bill cost offsets.
(6) Transfer $371 billion into another bill called Doc Fix.

Thus, the true cost is $2.3 trillion for first 10 years, not the democrats advertised $950 billion. This means ballooning the deficit.
.

ShareThis

Way to go Obama!

“WASHINGTON — The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year’s record for the full year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year.

The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago.”

Link

DOGO NAHAWA, Nigeria – The killers showed no mercy: They didn’t spare women and children, or even a 4-day-old baby, from their machetes. On Monday, women wailed in the streets as a dump truck carried dozens of bodies past burned-out homes toward a mass grave.

Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave. A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, “Jesus said I am the way to heaven.” As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: “Jesus, show me the way.”

At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered on Sunday, according to residents, aid groups and journalists. The local government gave a figure more than twice that amount, but offered no casualty list or other information to substantiate it.

Read the whole story at Yahoo News

ShareThis