.

Unconstitutional Procedure Being Used to Pass Unconstitutional ObamaCare

Subject: txt lbrty bbro - hcare -
Michael McConnell, Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, explains it this way at the Wall Street Journal today:

Democratic congressional leaders have floated a plan to enact health-care reform by a procedure dubbed “the Slaughter solution.” It is named not for the political carnage that it might inflict on their members, but for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.), chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, who proposed it. Under her proposal, Democrats would pass a rule that deems the Senate’s health-care bill to have passed the House, without the House actually voting on the bill. This would enable Congress to vote on legislation that fixes flaws in the Senate health-care bill without facing a Senate filibuster, and without requiring House members to vote in favor of a Senate bill that is now politically toxic.

McConnell is right. The Constitution says that:

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.

If a branch does not vote on a bill, then that bill did not pass...

READ MORE

Obama: Polls Do Not Reflect the People

[Today's insult.]

President Obama was out stumping for his health care bill in Ohio today. In the conclusion of his speech, he told the crowd that he would ignore the polls and do what the people want:

"The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for these interests, for their future. So what they’re looking for is some courage. They’re waiting for us to act. They’re waiting for us to lead. They don’t want us putting our finger out to the wind. They don’t want us reading polls. They want us to look and see what is the best thing for America, and then do what’s right. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership."

What are the polls but an expression of what the American people want? It is one thing to say that the polls are wrong or that the people have been misled. But to say the American people want us to ignore the polls is to say the American people want us to ignore what they say.

As it happens, last week IBD published a profile of the late George Gallup, founder of his namesake polling company. In researching the story, I struck by a quote I came across of Gallup defending his profession from critics in Washington.

He always had a high opinion of public opinion. (Gallup poll editor-in-chief Frank) Newport related how after politicians said they didn’t listen to polls, Gallup responded, “Well, just substitute the ‘polls’ with the ‘public.’ They are saying they shouldn’t listen to the people who elected them.”

Seems like Democratic pollsters’ intervention with Obama and the congressional Democrats over health care didn’t work...

READ MORE

ABC Touts White House's Official Victim of Health Care - Who's In the Hospital

Subject: txt hcare msm -

[Who's in the hospital, because no one can be denied care in this country, it's illegal - the government requires it of the private sector.

But when it's their budget being destroyed, do we think that will still hold?]

READ MORE

Health care reform is not about helping people

Subject: txt hcare -
The bill will not assist the people that Obama is holding up as victims of the current system, it will harm them and the 90% of Americans for whom the current system works just fine.

Its sole goal is to give government power over the populace by controlling what's most important to them...

READ MORE

[If we're foolish enough.]

.

Media Reality Check: A Year of Spin for Liberal ObamaCare

Subject: txt hcare msm bias -

The end of Congress’s long debate over ObamaCare could be near, as the President pushes for a final vote this week before his Asia trip, and House Democrats want a resolution before next week’s Easter break.

Yet whether or not liberals’ dreams are ultimately realized, they have had a huge advantage throughout the process. Over the past twelve months, journalists have continually stacked the deck in favor of a big government takeover of health care.

A review of the worst spin: [long list]

READ MORE

Dem Pollsters: Media Deceiving Themselves ObamaCare's Popular

Subject: txt msm bias libs hcar -
Two prominent current and former Democrat pollsters are accusing media of deceiving themselves about healthcare reform being popular.

"Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan."

So wrote Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen in an op-ed published at the Washington Post Friday:

READ MORE

.

Nearly Half of Americans Believe Nation 'Less Safe' Under Obama

Subject: txt gwot nsec -
Nearly half of Americans believe the U.S. is less safe against terrorism since President Barack Obama took office — and more than one-third say the nation is “much less safe,” an exclusive Newsmax/Zogby poll reveals...

READ MORE

What is Wrong with Obama -

Subject: txt intl nsec gwot islm -
Obama's obsession in engaging terrorists, religious extremists, and rogue nations while ignoring US allies and friends. Obama's silence against Assad's mockery, defiance, and show of support for resistance and terror during the last axis of evil dinner in Damascus is disturbing. Bush-Cheney would have stood tall for America.

Assad threatened Israel the same day the US said it will send a US Ambassador back to Damascus...

READ MORE

First Sowing--Now Reaping

Subject: txt intl nsec owg -
Now that foreign leaders have had more than a year to size up the Obama administration, I think things abroad are going to begin to happen quite quickly. At best, American policy is so lethargic that it will force freeloaders and opportunists to grow up and get out on their own; at worst, we have flipped — and are no longer the world’s staunch bastion of support for free-market capitalist democracy.

At the U.N., America is now indistinguishable from Europe. Most have gotten the message by now that the United States is not particularly committed, at least in the old fashion, to defending Israel from its myriad of material and intellectual enemies.

The world's troublemakers — Ahmadinejad, Chávez, Castro, Putin, etc. — assume that the world's Marshal Will Kane took that buckboard ride out of Haldeyville and just kept on going. China, in its latest tantrum, has essentially announced that we are belligerent rivals. Japan doesn’t quite know what it is doing — only that the U.S. doesn’t either. India is worrying over what happened to the new, now old special friendship.

Latin America realizes that it is “progressive” ideology that wins American attention and understanding, regardless of the economic chaos or repression that goes on in places like Venezuela or Cuba. Iran — well, at this point, the world shrugs that it is a question of when, rather than if. There is a sort of calm for a bit on Russia’s periphery, since its scared former satellites need time to digest that they are entirely on their own if a Georgia-like dispute flares up.

Europe is also in sort of a deer-in-the-headlights trance. It is worried about “the future is Greece,” yet sees no disapproval from the U.S. of such fiscal recklessness; quite the opposite, they see American fiscal recklessness to trump their own. And while the Euro public still is hypnotized by Obamania, the leaders are starting to make some troubling “we got what we asked for” conclusions that a Dreams From My Father Obama doesn’t feel all that attached to either a shared Western tradition or any exceptional commonalities.

The war on terror is a confusing mishmash — part silly new euphemisms about war as legal wrestling, part trumping Bush on renditions, Predator attacks, wiretaps etc., part P.C. revisionist appeals to the Islamic world, and part infantile empty gesturing like closing Guantanamo within a year, trying KSM in a civil court in New York, or hounding former CIA interrogators. If we can't figure it out, how could any abroad?

In other words, we’ve passed the look/see period of 1977–8, and a gut-check 1979 year of decision is almost upon us...

READ MORE

.

Flap flies in Haiti over U.S. flag absence

Subject: txt intl libs bdd vals heroes intl -
The many nations helping Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake that struck there have set up their own military compounds and fly their flags at the entrances.

France's tricolor, Britain's Union Jack and even Croatia's coat of arms flap in the breeze.

But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world's — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport.

The lack of the Stars and Stripes does not sit well with some veterans and servicemembers who say the U.S. government should be proud to fly the flag in Haiti, given the amount of money and manpower the U.S. is donating to help the country recover from the Jan. 12 quake.

The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.

READ MORE

Is China's Politburo spoiling for a showdown with America?

Subject: txt intl china trade -
The long-simmering clash between the world's two great powers is coming to a head, with dangerous implications for the international system. China has succumbed to hubris. It has interpreted the soft diplomacy of Barack Obama for weakness, mistaken the US credit crisis for decline, and mistaken its own mercantilist bubble for ascendancy.

Within a month the US Treasury must rule whether China is a ''currency manipulator'', triggering sanctions under US law...

[Washington will cave and China knows it.]

READ MORE

Egypt's wall 'in final stages'

Subject: txt islm intl owg -
Cairo - The reinforced underground steel wall which Egypt is building along its border with Gaza is nearly completed, Egyptian daily al-Shorouq reported on Monday. ''Work on the main wall is in its fourth and final stage,'' the paper reported. Once that is complete, cameras and detection devices will be installed. (Snip) The observation towers along the border are currently being replaced by new steel towers which employ bullet-proof glass.

[And the 'world communities' cries of Apartheid for Egypt's defense against Gaza's terrorist attacks? Where's the peanut farmer now?]

READ MORE

Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs

Subject: txt mny sclm libs -
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits _ billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes _ nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg.

Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs... Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse...

The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come...

READ MORE

.

Moody's threatens "downward pressure" on the US's credit rating

Subject: txt mny - .
Moody’s Investor Service, the credit rating agency, will fire a warning shot at the US on Monday, saying that unless the country gets public finances into better shape than the Obama administration projects there would be “downward pressure” on its triple A credit rating.

It projects that the federal borrowing is so high that the interest payments on government debt will grow to more than 15 per cent of government revenues.

Pierre Cailleteau, head of sovereign ratings at Moody’s, said: “The size of debt makes the US vulnerable to an interest rate shock . . . but the level of fiscal ambition is not one that secures for sure the [triple A] rating.”

The report follows concerns recently expressed about the US public finances from the other large rating agencies. Standard & Poor’s warned last week the triple A status of the US was at risk unless the country adopted a credible medium-term plan to rein in fiscal spending. Fitch Ratings issued a critical report on the US in January.

READ MORE

Arctic Sea Ice Grows

Subject: txt grn -
This should be encouraging news for all those alarmed that the ice-caps might be melting...

READ MORE

California watchdog sees climate policy job losses

Subject: txt grn cali engry -

"California is likely to see modest job losses in the near term from its aggressive climate change policy due to higher energy costs and other factors, the state's independent Legislative Analyst's Office said."

READ MORE

Next Up: Cap-and-Trade?

Subject: txt grn -

Every time you think the Obama administration’s chutzpah has maxed out, you read another story that teaches you that this is a quality that should never be underestimated. According to the Daily Beast, senior aides are telling the press that once they are finished ramming an unpopular health-care package down a reluctant Congress’s throat, they will begin the same process with a raft of legislation aimed at further depressing the American economy and increasing Washington’s control of what will be left: cap-and-trade carbon laws aimed at reducing the threat of global warming...

READ MORE

,