Don't blame this guy, he just needs more of your money

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You all are pretty familiar with the drill by now, right? When a Washington D.C. pol claims that something, namely a law he voted for, is getting off to a less than stellar start, it can't possibly be because that particular law is hopelessly flawed. No. Never. Failure to launch can only be attributed to a lack of money in the form of your scratch.


Ladies and Gentlemen, here's Senate Majority Leader hapless Harry Reid singing the ObamaCare CYA blues:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he shares colleagues’ concerns that the Affordable Care Act could become a “train wreck” if it’s not implemented properly.

Reid warned that people will not be able to choose health insurance plans on government health exchanges if federal authorities lack the resources to set them up and educate the public.

“Max said unless we implement this properly it’s going to be a train wreck and I agree with him,” Reid said, echoing a warning delivered last month by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.).

Reid warned the federal government is not spending enough money to implement the law because of Republican opposition to ObamaCare.

“Here’s what we have now, we have the menu but we don’t have any way to get to the menu,” Reid said.

A couple weeks back, in a very strange coincidence, Baucus, who was one of the chief architects of ObamaCare, slammed the implementation of the law and within 48 hours announced he would not be seeking re-election as the senior Senator of Montana. Weird, no?


But fear not, the President has exercised some flexibility and originality to this dilemma by...

The shortage of funding to implement the law has forced President Obama to shift funds from other parts of the law.

“The president is taking money, I wish we had the money just to do this on its own but he’s agreed, he’s determined he’s going to take money from some of the other things that he feels are less important in the healthcare bill and put it on letting you and others know what’s in the bill,” Reid told a caller to the show.

... or exactly the opposite of how he has handled the sequestration cuts.


Later in the linked article, Reid claims to have actually read the law though we cannot know for sure whether it was before or after it became the law of the land. Whenever it was he read the law, what appears to be missing is the section titled: "How the Hell We Are Going to Implement a 2,200 Page Monstrosity That Will Essentially Remake the Entire Health Care Industry".

Please note there is not a "?" after that last. We pay Harry Reid and those of his ilk there in D.C. good money, a gig by which there is also ample opportunity to line one's pocket if you are doing it right, so it stands to reason that Harry perhaps should have thought of the difficulties of getting this bird off the ground while he was twisting arms in epic fashion in order to push it through the sausage grinder.


Oh well, America, you get what you vote for and what you voted for is more free sh@t and you entrusted hopeless buffoons like Harry Reid to bring it home for you. We are now seeing how that all is working out.



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Though following Patty Murray makes him look like the President of MENSA

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You want a good look at obstruction? You want a look at gridlock in Washington D.C.? Here's Capt. Do-Nothing at a press conference trying to not really explaining why they didn't end the Bush tax cuts when they controlled by the House and the Senate for two years at the beginning of Obama's term.

"Shut up", he explained.


Via The Weekly Standard:

TWS: Leader Reid, when it comes to the Bush tax cuts…why didn’t Senate Democrats push through this bill back when you controlled the Senate, the House, and the presidency?

REID: The tax cuts weren’t about to expire then. So that’s why we’re doing it now.

TWS: You could have foreseen this issue two years ago.

REPORTER: What are you talking about? They expired at the end of 2010.

REID: And that’s why they were extended one year.

TWS: Why didn’t they vote when you could have pushed this bill through and had it signed into law?

REID: Next question.

That is what the Presiddent is running on. His entire campaign of class-warfare and divisiveness can't even be justified or explained by his Party's most powerful man on Capitol Hill. Making the rich pay their fair share or something was so important they never bothered to get around to it for the entirety of 2009 and 2010.


Seeing Murray and Reid up there and the combined intellecutal heft they possess, perhaps it's a good thing the Senate has become a collection of lay-about ne'er-do-wells.

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Sarah sez

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One in series that takes a look at some of the wild, zany and madcap things said by the former governor of Alaska.



Proving no shortage of ridiculous things in which to say, Palin was commenting on the sluggish economy and the current debate in Washington regarding taxing the rich and what the rich mean to job creation.

"Millionaire job creators are like unicorns,” said Palin. “They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”

“Republicans say the richest of the rich in our country … shouldn’t contribute more to put our economy back on track,” said Palin. “They call our plan time after time a ‘tax on job creators,’ and I say so-called job creators because … every shred of evidence contradicts this red herring."

Of course, that wasn't Palin rather the Senate majority leader, poor ol' Harry Reid on the floor of the Senate yesterday.

Have a listen:




Citing NPR to bolster your argument probably isn't the sturdiest bit of backing Reid could have chosen.


And since you seem to be flailing a little, Senator, allow us to help locate one of these apocryphal job creators. Here's American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Jack Gerard (hey, betcha he's probably a millionaire) on jobs and revenue generation:

"Some people still don't get it. And some have resorted to various antics to distort the facts about our industry's ability to create jobs, to provide an economic stimulus to our economy, and increase revenues to the federal government. We're here today to clear up any confusion that was raised recently in a letter to API by Congressman Edward Markey. ... His letter illustrates the typical misunderstandings about important industry facts and how that misunderstanding can lead to public policies that hinder, rather than help, job creation and economic growth."

(italics, ours)

We're glad Gerard made that point because every time we hear about increasing revenues with respect to the budget, it is always... always couched in terms of raising taxes when no one, even the Republicans get caught in this trap, talk about pro-growth economic policies that will bring additional revenue into the cophers of the federal government. Please note for yourself this phenomena and let us know if we're wrong.




More Gerard:

Congressman Markey and other critics now appear to be calling into question the very use of multipliers to project job impacts. Not only is this concept accepted by almost all mainstream economists, but Dr. Wassily Leontief won a Nobel Prize for developing the input/output methodology that includes this effect. In fact, most recent estimates of jobs impacts, including estimates of the administration's recent jobs proposal, include direct, indirect and induced effects in their calculations. The critical point is that indirect and induced jobs created by the oil and natural gas sector are real jobs that will employ real Americans."

(italics, again, ours)

Multipliers... hmmmmm... where have we heard that before?


That's right. The reason Reid and fellow statists like House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney don't believe the rich create jobs or believe in a private sector multiplier effect is because they believe that food stamps and unemployment benefits are the real job creators in this economy. And the way this particular economy is sputtering along, who could blame them? It's not exactly like it's been a conducive environment for the evil rich to invest in hiring so, in a sense, one would never know the difference.




It doesn't take an economics degree to realize just how hopelessly delusional it is to champion unemployment benefits over that of the wealth-generators in this country with respect to getting this economy up and roaring again.


Yep, we're in the very best of hands.





P.S. We also think that Obama's BFF Warren Buffet would be pleased to know that Harry Reid simply doesn't think he exists.

Did we forget that? Our bad

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You know how it is when you are up against Christmas Eve vote deadlines and having to deal with pesky pro-life Congressmen (in our own party, even!) and Senators who want some kick-back love while you are attempting to ram through your 22-hundred page signature legislation... some things are just going to fall through the cracks, right? Stuff happens, right?

State officials are pushing back hard against what they view as shortcomings in the healthcare reform law for fear they'll be barraged with complaints when people have trouble affording insurance.

Federal regulators are writing the rules governing key aspects of the law, including the guidelines to determine who's eligible for subsidies to buy private insurance.

Those benefits will be delivered through state-based exchanges, however, leaving state officials on the receiving end of angry phone calls if glitches in the law aren't ironed out by 2014.

One key shortcoming is found in the law's subsidies for people who don’t have access to affordable coverage through their employer. As The Hill first reported in July, the law links the subsidies to the cost of coverage for a single employee. If that coverage is found to be affordable, the individual does not qualify for subsidies in the state health exchanges.

But the determination is based on the single-employee rate regardless of whether the individual has a spouse and/or children — meaning that someone could end up disqualified from the federal assistance yet unable to afford the family coverage that an employer offers.

(emphasis, ours)


Ooops.

Minor actuarial details like factoring in how many crumb-catchers are laying about the house got left out of the pages of ObamaCare? Shocking.

"Such an outcome would undermine Maryland's goal of reducing the number of uninsured residents," Maryland Health Benefit Exchange officials wrote in comments to the Department of Health and Human Services that were due Monday.

"It could also engender significant frustration with the Exchange among affected families."

But it gets better. There are nine states that don't have individual income tax, including Florida and Texas, so it will be nigh impossible for the IRS to determine who qualifies for federal assistance. (ed. note: it is never, repeat, never a good thing when you are forced to mention the IRS in relation to your health care. But you all knew that.)

NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) consumer advocate Tim Jost this past week urged the group to take a "leadership role" in pressing states to address potential gaps in the healthcare law's consumer protections.

Self-insured plans are exempt from most of the law's regulations, Jost pointed out, and policies offered by large employers also don't have to meet certain requirements.

Jost also said small businesses are shifting toward self-insurance, so employees will be stuck without benefits Congress intended to provide.

(italics, ours)

Allow us to translate what The Hill article does not: small businesses can't afford the mandates in ObamaCare so it just make more sense for them to apply for a waiver or just drop health care coverage for their employees altogether. So, that means the President's promise that if you liked your health care plan you could keep it, came highly qualified.


Former Speaker Pelosi was right: like cordwood, the shortcomings, gaps, pratfalls and outright lies contained in ObamaCare have been stacking up once our dear leaders passed ObamaCare and we are now getting a chance to see what's actually in it.

Wait, what?

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One in a series that takes a look at the unexpected and the absurd.*




Here's the Senate Majority Leader on employment priorities in this nation in the year of our Lord 2011:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday said Congress needs to worry about government jobs more than private-sector jobs, and that this is why Senate Democrats are pushing a bill aimed at shoring up teachers and first-responders.

"It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Wait, what?

Private sector jobs have been doing fine? Reid said that?





For those of you wondering why D.C. is "broken" or perhaps why it's "dysfunctional", maybe it wouldn't be so if incompetents such as Harry Reid didn't keep getting sent back there.

And what Reid was talking about was the President's jobs bill which the obstructionist Republicans who hate this country refuse to pass because they surmise, rightly so, that it's merely a half-pint repeat of the original jobs bill, Porkulus Pt. I, passed back in 2009 that worked so well...

... that, evidently, we're going to have to do again. One gets the sense that Reid believes that we're going to have to keep doing this until we get it right.




Also:

Reid reiterated his emphasis on creating government jobs by saying Democrats are looking to "put hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, have more police patrolling our streets, firefighters fighting our fires, doing the rescue work that they do so well … that's our priority." He said Republicans are calling the bill a "failure" because they are "using a different benchmark for success than we are."

Teachers, police and firefighters are matters of the state and local levels. It's not incumbent upon the federal government to tend to the funding of these jobs. Never was. Porkulus Pt. I helped prop up these jobs and in many cases also helped states paper over their budget shortfalls without those same states making the necessary budget cuts and/or budget reforms so that many of those same basic need services could be retained. That states like California won't address their fiscal woes is now, apparently, a matter of federal concern.

Good luck with that.

* We thought about making this a Sarah Sez installment but what Reid says was even beyond the pale of any insanity that "Sarah" could muster.

ObamaCare in the news

Another day, another ObamaCare defector:

Missouri’s Democratic attorney general broke with his party on Monday and urged a federal judge to invalidate the central provision of the new health care law.

The filing of the brief by Attorney General Chris Koster, a onetime Republican state legislator who switched to the Democratic Party in 2007, underscores the act’s political tenuousness in a critical Midwestern swing state.

Mr. Koster’s action followed months of pressure from state Republicans that he join attorneys general from other states who are challenging the constitutionality of the law.

Though he did not join the litigation, deciding instead to file a "friend of the court" brief, consider this just another stick on the as-yet unlit bonfire stack as Koster objected to the mandate in ObamaCare that compels every U.S. citizen to purchase healthcare.





And elsewhere...

Bummed that the budget deal did not defund Planned Parenthood? Yeah, so are we but this bit of under-reported news on the compromise might make you feel a little bit better.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, agreed to remove the Planned Parenthood provision in exchange for an agreement that would allow Congress to take up the funding issue separately. The Republicans also won inclusion of a provision that will require the Senate to vote on a bill to de-fund the health care reform law.

Another provision won by Republicans would prohibit the District of Columbia from spending local or federal funds on abortion services.

This keeps ObamaCare front and center in the business of Congress rather than be allowed to fade gracefully into that good night as the more ObamaCare gets talked about, discussed and debated, the more unpopular, seemingly, it becomes.

Also, in the face of finding out what's actually in this law, vulnerable Democratic Senators, say, like Claire McCaskill of the aforementioned state of Missouri (by the way, Missourians hate ObamaCare, as it turns out), that voted for it will be forced to defend their votes to their constituents or... vote against it this time around. Harry Reid's 18 seat cushion has dwindled to 6 and things could get very interesting.



Lastly, we couldn't resist this headline:

Democrats will yield on everything but abortion

The deal breaker for Democrats had been the rider cutting off federal funds for Planned Parenthood. As a "senior Democratic source" told the Huffington Post on Friday, "The cuts will be hard for us to swallow, but we won't bend on Title X" -- that is, federal funding of Planned Parenthood. "Reid doesn't even have to go back to the caucus to ask on that one."

Reid said so himself Friday: "We are not -- we are not! -- bending on women's health." When you consider the flexibility of Reid on other issues, this shows extraordinary devotion.

Extraordinary, indeed - but we gotta keep those mills humming, now don't we?

Video clip of the day

Punt (n): 1. To execute a punt.
2. Informal To cease doing something; give up:

Let's punt on this and try something else.






Harry Reid: not into math.

Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog pieces that caught our eye this past week.






Left Coast Rebel has a nice round-up of the shooting tragedy that occurred yesterday in Arizona.

Related: The President warned us of the dangers of over-heated rhetoric.




Terrific. Now they find out what causes male pattern baldness.

Although, this affliction is highly subjective to interpretation.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale whines about the filibuster.

This from a man whose party controls the Oval Office and both houses of Congress and who "achieved" the $800 billion Porkulus spending package, Wall St. financial reform and, of course, ObamaCare. What exactly is he bitching about? And here we thought that the Senate took some sort of perverse pride in being the "most deliberative legislative body in the world".

Memo to Mondale: Making laws is not supposed to be easy.

And in other related news:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she will “use every single tool available” to thwart efforts by House Republicans to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate regulations.

Good news: Chinese look to build high-speed rail system here in California. You know, the one where no one can really find a need.

Maybe that's because we already have one. It's called "commuter flight".




Leslie at Temple of Mut has been blogging up a storm lately (somewhat against her own wishes). You may have heard Caifornia is in a bit of a self-inflicted hole. Well, it would appear we are going to be getting some outside "help".

Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse on the left coast, along comes more bad news for the Golden State. Across the country, Republican state legislatures and governors are adopting a new economic development strategy: Raid California for its jobs and businesses.

Also, how to hit back against the smear machine that sprung up instantly after the Arizona shootings yesterday.



B-Daddy has some thoughts on de-funding ObamaCare.

However, I don't think anyone has thought it through. By not taking the Senate, the Republicans actually gain the upper hand in this little confrontation, and they have a very nice fall back position. Since the appropriations bills must originate in the House of Representatives, the Republicans can send over all manner of appropriations that prohibit the funding of various aspects of Obamacare. Then Harry Reid will have a tough call to make. He will likely amend the appropriation and send it back to the House. A conference committee would then have to resolve differences. Now it is equally on the Senate whether particular agencies get shut down. (Remember that most agencies operate on their own appropriations bill, so the whole government doesn't really get shut down at once.)

Make this about Harry Reid and not the President. We knew that still having poor ol' Harry around would be highly beneficial.


And finally, KT has some thoughts on Chinese parenting: the good, the bad and... no sleep-overs?

Harry, it's time to just send everyone home

The lamest of lame-duck Congresses shambles along with some more pleasing results.

The Senate on Saturday blocked a bill that would create a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrant students who came to the United States as children, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements including passing a criminal background check. The vote, 55-41 in favor of the bill, effectively kills the measure for this year, and its fate beyond that is uncertain.

Most immediately, the measure would have helped grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students and recent graduates whose lives are severely restricted because they are illegal residents, though many have lived in the United States for nearly their entire lives.

So severely restricted are they that many of them were sitting in the Senate gallery as the Senate clerk called role.





And in other possibly related news:

Authorities continue to comb the rugged southern Arizona terrain during the manhunt for a suspect they say was involved in the deadly gunfight that claimed the life of a U.S. Border Patrol agent late Tuesday night.

“I assure you, that every effort will be extended to bring that suspect into custody,” said Richard Barlow, the Border Patrol deputy chief of the Tucson Sector.




Agent Brian A. Terry was gunned down the frenzied shoot out that involved a cadre that robs illegal immigrants--vulnerable targets-- as they cross the border. One of the suspects was injured during the shoot out and taken into custody, said Barlow. Three more suspects were later apprehended.

Are we blaming the students for the death of Border Agent Terry? Of course not. However, you will not get us anywhere close to the table to begin discussing comprehensive immigration reform until we see some solid good-faith efforts towards comprehensive illegal immigration enforcement which entails securing the border and which we have not to date.

Taking back the Gadsen Purchase territory, once sovereign U.S. land, would be a good start.

Quote of the day

“I have only one loyalty,” he says, “and that’s to the immigrant community.”

That from Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-MX via Chicago), illegal immigrant and open borders shill.

Just a little reminder, folks, regarding the mentality and ideology behind "comprehensive immigration reform" and the opening act, the DREAM Act, which is currently showing in the lame duck session of Congress.

Never mind that Gutierrez pledged an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and to the United States, his non-immigrant constituents might be interested in just how he prioritizes their interests.

And while we won't dare question Congressman Gutierrez's patriotism, whether he realizes it or not, he's a tool of the anti-American, open-borders left and all the thinly-veiled racism, third-world socialism and anti-capitalistic ways they bring to the table.

Want more proof that the DREAM Act, which would in part, grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, is not about cogent, rational legislation towards sensible immigration reform but rather shameless pandering to the open borders loons?
There are currently four versions of the DREAM Act on the Senate docket, including one that rolled out Tuesday night at 8:45 P.M.

Here's Senator Jeff Sessions expressing some mild displeasure with Harry Reid over the lack of due Senatorial process in light of the DREAM blitz:






When the well-intended and high-minded among us call for "dialog" and "civil discourse", we respond, where is there any room or hope for "dialog" and "civil discourse" when these shenanigans are going down?

Video clip of the day

Look on the bright side: Would you rather hear Nancy Pelosi breaking down Cal-Stanford?


Before we can get to work on the DREAM Act or the Food Safety Act, we can use this as a replacement for our usual Tuesday night viewing of CBS College Sports Network's lineup of college football highlight and analysis shows.


Step aside, Tony Barnhart, because... It's good to be the King.





Oh, quit whining. You were spared the entire 5 minute rant which you can see if you so desire in all its visual-tryptophan glory, here.


Mediaite notes that the best part may be that they are starting "morning business" around 2 P.M.



H/T: Hot Air

We've still got Harry Reid to kick around

The HopenChange that swept most of the nation last night was tempered a bit here on the West Coast.

California decided to send a retread (Jerry Brown) back to the governor's mansion and a disgraceful incompetent (Barbara Boxer) back to the Senate. And while we give the lunatics in the Assembly the ability to pass a budget on simple majority (Prop. 25) we denied ourselves the capabilities of easing the pain (Prop. 19 - marijuana legalization). Oh, and we decided to continue our one-state crusade to battle man-made global warming by shooting down Prop. 23.

But on the bright side... we've still got Harry. Sure, this particular campaign was national and was supposed to be a referendum on the tea party but if there was ever a last-stand/Alamo-like effort to preserve the most high-profile Democrat seat, we saw it by the Democratic Party in Nevada in the last few weeks leading up to yesterday.

Never quite grasping the irony, an ecstatic Ed Schultz of MSNBC was crowing of what an incredible accomplishment it was in sending Harry back to D.C. amid one of the worst state unemployment rates in the nation... brought upon by policies levied upon that state by Reid and his party.

(Again, we cannot emphasize enough just how bad MSNBC's coverage was last night. All told, we wound up watching about an hour's worth of coverage and we were stunned by the lack of balance and professionalism. "Whistling past the grave yard" is the metaphor that best described a cable operation of which we weren't sure was watching the same election results we were.)

So, Harry the human punching bag gets to go back and lead a Senate that owns a 9.6% unemployment rate and a stalled economy and which will be facing an energized Republican House that will get to use Reid as a proxy to attack the furthering of the regime's statist agenda.

Also, on the bright side, no more mailers clogging our mail box and no more political ads on T.V. In honor of this joyous occasion we may just run NFL bloopers and Cheezburger photos for the next few days as an ode to frivolity in the wake of all this politically besotted earnestness.

And speaking of besotted, looks like we will be enjoying that Herr-adurra later this evening as we nailed the Senate pickups (6) and darn-near nailed it in the House (58 vs. the predicted 56).

And to further this exercise in frivolity, we will be going to, speak of the devil, Vegas this weekend for the Breeder's Cup among other things. Programming Alert details to follow.

Sarah sez

One in a series that takes a look at some of the zany and madcap things said by Sarah Palin.

David Brody [Interviewer]: Can you think of a greatest living American?

Palin: I’m glad I had the opportunity to know Ted Kennedy. Whether you agreed with him or not, what a life he lead with his two brothers being assassinated, his other brother being killed in World War II. And Robert Byrd who just died. What a– he was in the Congress of the United States for more than 25 percent of the time that we have been a country. That’s fairly remarkable.

Unfortunately, this interview was done back in July and both Byrd, the ex-Clansmen and the drunk manslaughtering, Kennedy were still both dead. And even more unfortunately, that was not Palin responding to the question but rather the current Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

Dead or alive, that this doddering old fool would think either one of those two people as "greatest" Americans is proof that it's time to show Harry the door.

Hey, Harry. Nancy was right, wasn't she?

Yet another qualifier for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery... where Harry Reid finds out just what's in ObamaCare after it has become law.

You can't make up this stuff: Looks like poor ol' Harry Reid finally got around to reading ObamaCare and surprise!... finds out it's bum deal for his home state hospitals in Nevada.

In a July 21 letter to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Service Kathleen Sebelius, the Senate Majority Leader complains that ObamaCare’s cuts to Medicare will “result in a net reduction in payment to Nevada’s hospitals when they are unable to absorb such a cut.” Furthermore, he questions the method used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to calculate the payments to hospitals, and is “very concerned about potential effects on beneficiary access if this regulation is finalized without adjustment.”

Consider us baffled by Reid's bafflement. In order to get ObamaCare deficit neutral, as promised, one of the key elements of the plan was to cut nearly a half billion dollars from Medicare. Amongst other budgetary gimmicks used in ObamaCare this was to be remedied by the infamous and still-as-yet-to-be-passed "Doc fix". Everyone knew this. Everyone. Well, almost everyone, apparently.

That this dawned upon Harry a full 4 months after the passage of ObamaCare is hysterical. Forgive us if we allow ourselves to bathe in the warmth of schadenfreude. C'mon in - the temperature is fine.

Here's our own open letter to Harry:

Dear Senator Reid: deal with it, you miserable, clueless nitwit.

Sincerely,
Beers with Demo

H/T: Baseball Crank

Ooops...

Dear Santa, we didn't ask for too much for Christmas last year and if this turns out to be true, we won't ask for jack-squat this December.



When one doesn't even bother to read the bill, can one be blamed for gooning up even the most self-serving aspects of that legislation? Turns out that Congress, which had every intention of exempting themselves from the Obamacare public health exchanges of the unwashed masses, may have shot themselves in the foot due to a "drafting error" in the crafting of the legislation.

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members.

For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.

Please try to contain your child-like giggling, there's more.

The law promises that people can keep coverage they like, largely unchanged. For members of Congress and their aides, the federal employees health program offers much to like. But, the report says, the men and women who wrote the law may find that the guarantee of stability does not apply to them.

“It is unclear whether members of Congress and Congressional staff who are currently participating in F.E.H.B.P. may be able to retain this coverage,” the research service said in an 8,100-word memorandum.

Operational pause: If the people who allegedly wrote this bill cannot even game themselves out of Obamacare, what does that say about all the "unintended consequences" and general wretchedness of Obamacare for the rest of us?

Resume insane cackling.

The provision governing members of Congress can be traced to the Senate Finance Committee. When the panel was working on the legislation last September, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, proposed an amendment to require that elected federal officials and all federal employees buy coverage through an exchange, “rather than using the traditional Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.”

A scaled-back version of the amendment, applying to members of Congress and their aides, was accepted in the committee without objection.

And then, in all the hoopla of git'er done and the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase and the pharmaceutical and union buy-offs, they just kind of forgot about that unfortunate provision from last
Fall. Seriously, who has time for any rear guard action when one is selling one's soul for a once-in-a-generation piece of legislation?

If we had to shut down this blog tomorrow, nothing would be more appropriate than a final post that demonstrated not only the rapaciousness but the complete incompetence of the jackals that fashioned Obamacare... for the benefit of us all, of course.

H/T: Hot Air

By the time we got to Searchlight....

... we were dozens and dozens strong?










CNN beclowns themselves with crowd estimates at the Tea Party event in Searchlight, NV, Harry Reid's hometown, this weekend.

The Tea Party event was held on private property so the big question is: who is the Tea Party's Max Yazgur? Probably better left in anonymity, though.

Roger Hedgecock who spoke at the event has his write-up, here.

Harry Reid in 2010!

On Friday, Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid, had the following insight with respect to the latest jobs numbers:



We think what Reid was trying to say here was, “yeah, we got our asses kicked but, we beat the spread!”

No matter. It was a pretty ridiculous thing to say which didn’t prevent Reid from firing back at his critics who jumped on it.

Reid took to the Senate floor Friday afternoon to characterize remarks he made this morning in which he appeared to celebrate last month's jobs numbers as "really good" news.

"I want to talk about some remarks I made this morning – especially in light of how they are being irresponsibly mischaracterized by those seeking to score political points," Reid said Friday afternoon.

And while the majority leader said that February's job losses were "undeniably devastating," Reid argued that job losses were much less than they could have been had Democrats not acted with their stimulus measures over the past year.

And how’s that working out for America? We’re not sure what figures Reid is looking at but Porkulus and the other demand-side gimmicks the administration has ran with are doing pretty much what we predicted it would do.



(H/T: The Foundry)

But enough of bad economic policies and their inevitable results, let’s get back to poor ol’ Harry Reid.

But Reid also lashed out at Republicans who've opposed many of those policies, accusing them of rooting for the economy's failure for their own political game.

"And I warn them, once again, that this country has no place and no patience for those who root for failure," Reid said to the GOP.

(italics, ours)

We’ll grant Senator Reid knowing exactly of what he speaks.



We're beginning to think that perhaps defeating Harry Reid in November may not be in our best interests.

"Obama the populist" to take on the BCS?

Gulp

The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review.

In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch's request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates antitrust laws.

"Importantly, and in addition, the administration also is exploring other options that might be available to address concerns with the college football postseason," Weich wrote, including asking the Federal Trade Commission to review the legality of the BCS under consumer protection laws.

File this one under be careful for what you wish for.

A couple of things to start off with if you are new to this site and/or are not familiar with our positions regarding the news item above from the AP.

First, we despise the BCS. Our stated position is to either scrap the thing entirely and go back to the old bowl system where the national champion is voted on at the end of the bowl season or.... scrap the thing entirely and go with an 8 or 16 team playoff system. This bastardized hybrid of old bowl system and quasi-playoffs (conference championship games in the Big 12 and SEC have served as de-facto semifinals in recent years) needs to be junked.

Secondly, and we know you were asking yourself the question as you read that news item, doesn’t our government and particularly Congress have better things to do than screw around with amateur athletics?

Congress has a long and proud (and perfectly legal) tradition of injecting itself into this country’s sporting pastimes. Congress has granted anti-trust exemptions for professional football and baseball and have never shied away from threatening to remove the same in order to leverage action from the NFL and MLB in way of things like free agency and drug testing.

Of course, the flip side to this is that Congress has done such a bang-up job of late with things like the economy and healthcare legislation, what could possibly go wrong?

At this point, and we hate to be this way, we’re going to take the squishy middle ground and just see how this plays out.

The President, in taking leadership in this issue, is after all, fulfilling a campaign promise to “throw his weight around a little” with respect to the BCS and the cynic in us believes that a distraction towards college football and away from the economy is just what the economy needs currently.

However, the degree by which the government intervenes is going to be key. We’re all in favor of a little saber-rattling in way of Congressional hearings with the anti-trust exemptions held aloft. Saber-rattling effected some positive change with respect to the BCS a few years ago by opening the door for “little guys” namely from the Mountain West Conference to participate in BCS bowl games (BYU and Utah, two MWC schools, are in Hatch’s home turf) and with drug testing in baseball. Without that Congressional leaning-on a recalcitrant BCS and MLB would not have made those changes.

What we don’t want to see though, and the track record thus far is atrocious, is a top-down cram-down approach like which was taken with General Motors, Chrysler, the Wall St. bailouts (started under Bush and continued under Obama), healthcare and cap and trade legislation where bullying, smear campaigns, backroom deals, bribes and blunt force politics of the worse manner were the order of the day. Again, these are legislative bodies currently run by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi – think of the possibilities.

It will be fascinating to see just how this all unfolds. Trust us, we’ll keep you posted.

Quotes of the week

We were used as kind of a political football during the campaign. We obviously would cover these negotiations. The only time we’ve been allowed to cover the White House part of it is one hour inside the East Room, which was just a show-horse type of thing…

The American people pay for all of this that goes on in this town. It’s always been my contention…that if we pay for something, and it’s the public’s business, we ought to be able to see how it’s done. It’s just that simple, it has nothing to do with this particular fight right now.

- C-SPAN'S Brian Lamb on the "transparency" of the healthcare debate.

“Of course, nobody can see the managers’ amendment. It is composed of over 40 amendments. How could anyone vote for a piece of legislation such as that — a managers’ amendment with 42 separate amendments? Now, these amendments were not put in a conference committee. People complain about that. But at least in a conference committee, you have people working together, sticking things in…Here, you have one person making a decision as to what is going to be in the managers’ amendment. There is no way to know what is in it.”

- Harry Reid in 2006 railing against informal deal-making that circumvented the committee process and attacking the use of manager's amendments to avoid public scrutiny.

"President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He's made a lot of commission's members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations."

- 9/11 Commission member and former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, on the mirandizing of counter-terrorism.

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy -- these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII ... I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

- Castro and Chavez-coddler, Oliver Stone, on his upcoming Showtime miniseries documentary "Secret History of America". What could possibly go wrong?

New year, same garbage. (UPDATED)

Because nothing says “we’re proud of what’s in this bill" like pre-dawn and Christmas Eve votes, completely opaque “negotiations” and multi-hundred million dollar payoffs.

But it’s a new year and now that the House and Senate healthcare bills will need to be reconciled, maybe those conference committee negotiations will be televised live on C-SPAN just like the President promised, right?

Not quite.

Despite their claims to the contrary, the way that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have handled the healthcare bill has been anything but transparent. And, if the left-wing blogosphere is to be believed, the two congressional leaders intend to keep the deliberations secret as they try to merge the House and Senate versions of the legislation into something that will pass both chambers.

Legislation this important to the American people can’t be held up by anything as icky as parliamentary procedure, can it? The talking points going out will be that this method will remove the roadblocks set up by obstructionist Republicans when the reality is that House Democrats, like Bart Stupak, he of the anti-abortion Stupak amendment are just as nettlesome, if not more.

Every single feature in this bill and particularly every step along the legislative process path has convinced us this bill has nothing to do with improving healthcare but rather with passing something… anything for the sake of checking off “healthcare reform” on the presidential to-do list.

There’s no real reform in this bill. The net effect of Obamacare will be the increased subsidization of a flawed healthcare system that, over the years, will be dragged further downward under its own weight.

Features like the public option, if they are not in the final version that winds up on the President’s desk for signature, will worm its way into the system over the years via incrementalism.

Or as Paul Krugman would put it, Obamacare like any other great social safety net program we have instituted would just get better over time.

Just like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, eh, Krugman?


(UPDATE #1): Welcome to the struggle, C-SPAN...

When President Barack Obama was campaigning for the job in 2008, he vowed that he would bring greater transparency to government—especially when it comes to health care reform legislation:

We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.

Now C-SPAN is asking precisely for that. Its CEO, Brain Lamb, has sent a letter to House and Senate leaders, requesting that his network be permitted to broadcast the final negotiations, as the two chambers work out the differences between each body's version of the legislation:

As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.

The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety. We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.

Yawn.

This plea for transparency would’ve been helpful when Congress returned to work in September after it’s summer break not now when the bill is mashed-up bag of fait accompli. Thanks for the timely and courageous hold-their-feet-to-the-fire request, C-SPAN.