If it’s the right thing to do why do you need a $100 million payoff?

The $100 Million Health Care Vote?
By Jonathon Karl
ABC News
November 19, 2009 3:03 PM

What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?

Here’s a case study.

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

Here’s the incredibly complicated language:
Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony Watts over at Watts Up With That has a breaking story about unknown hacker or persons breaking into the East Anglia Climate Research Unit’s database. The over 61 megs of data “appears to be genuinue” considering the herculean task of creating emails and other sundry data of such magnitude.

I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far:

An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.

We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents

The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files.

It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.

I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.

Watts has the text of some of the huge file’s emails posted on his website. Saunter over to the first link above to read at his site.

Of special note is CRU’s Prof. Phil Jones’ admission of fudging the numbers to hide the temperature decline.

Read the rest of this entry »

Doesn’t get more direct then this from Andrew Breitbart on the ACORN story:

Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.

Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes? Read the rest of this entry »

The managing news editor for Gallup, Lymari Morales, tweets an hour ago:

Gallup Daily tracking results just in. Obama will be below 50% for the first time when we update our numbers at 1pET. http://bit.ly/F3Izu

Michael Moore’s latest blockbuster lacks luster. After languishing in theaters for two months, Michael Moore’s anti-capitalism movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, has officially bombed. In its painfully short run of two months, the movie grossed 14.2 million. Approximately 55% of sales make it back to the studio, that leaves eight million to cover production costs and advertising costs, in other words the film has finished in the Red, how appropriate.

Moore scored big with Fahrenheit 9/11, it had a 120 million domestic gross. Since then his films have been falling faster than a fat man on ice. Sicko made a fairly respectable 24.5 million. Then Moore made an ego trip movie, Captain Mike Across America; vanity movies are not well received by the public and movie patrons seemed to be on to the greed and poor dollar value of Moore’s Socialist Propaganda. He had to give the movie away to get exposure and save face. Read the rest of this entry »

Keep underestimating her:

A HarperCollins insider told The Daily Beast that the book sold a staggering 300,000 copies on the first day alone, which was Tuesday. “Sales are phenomenal, and we are convinced that the book will continue to sell phenomenally for some time to come,” says the insider. They’re not prevaricating: As of 2:30pm today, the book was #1 on Amazon, ahead of both Stephen King’s new novel, Under the Dome, and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The latter sold 1 million copies on its first day, but that figure included the UK, and top fiction generally trumps non-fiction.

The books are selling so well the publisher is printing out an additional 100k of em:

Sarah Palin’s memoir just hit the stands today but demand for “Going Rogue: An American Life” is so strong that HarperCollins Publishers is going back to press for an additional 100,000 run, bringing the total number of hard-covers in print to 1.6 million copies.

~~~

Three major booksellers declined to release sales figures for “Going Rogue” on Tuesday. However, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com… Inc.’s Web site noted in an email that the title “is already one of our bestselling nonfiction books of 2009.”

And a few numbers the lefties will not like, and will try to turn around is these: Read the rest of this entry »

“It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost,” Thompson said on his radio show today. “I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what’s necessary to win it. His heart’s not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

He’s probably right

Did Obama lie in his joint address to Congress when he said “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions?”

cue to 1:28 for “YOU LIE”

Last summer and earlier this fall Obama repeatedly claimed that those on our side who expressed concerns about many aspects of the health bills working their way through Congress were lying about certain provisions. One of those “lies” was the GOP claim that money from the government run plans would be used to fund abortions.

When Joe Wilson shouted “YOU LIE” during Obama’s speech to Congress, Joe wasn’t just talking about illegal immigrants getting benefits under these plans (they do). Despite the vote taken in the House to strike abortion funding from their version of the bill, Harry Reid put it back in the Senate bill.

This from House Leader John Boehner (R-OH):

Just like the original 2,032-page, government-run health care plan from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) massive, 2,074-page bill would levy a new “abortion premium” fee on Americans in the government-run plan.

Beginning on line 7, p. 118, section 1303 under “Voluntary Choice of Coverage of Abortion Services” the Health and Human Services Secretary is given the authority to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run health plan. Leader Reid’s plan also requires that at least one insurance plan offered in the Exchange covers abortions (line 13, p. 120).

What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run health plan. It’s right there beginning on line 11, page 122, section 1303, under “Actuarial Value of Optional Service Coverage.” The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account – and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.
Read the rest of this entry »

The AP has found it expedient to unleash the fact checking dogs onto Sarah Palin’s ghost written autobiography, Going Rogue; while conveniently ignoring the dubious inconsistencies in Obama’s book Dreams From My Father. Palin announced that her book was ghost written, while evidence continues to mounts that Obama’s book was in fact not written by him. The imperative choices made by the self anointed Fourth Estate, our ever faithful watchdogs of government who selflessly serve the public interest, seem to patronize the public while considering Obama above and beyond even a pretense of criticism.

While the global economy is recovering from the worst recession since World War II, the United States flounders in the same doldrums of New Dealism that kept America locked in The Great Depression while the rest of the world enjoyed growing prosperity.

Crude is $79.92, Gold is $1,147.72, Platinum is $1,43.10; India has just contracted to buy two metric tons of Gold, China is sucking in most of copper, aluminum, and iron ore on the market; the United States languishes in the doldrums of skim milk Marxism, while other nations are forging into un-before known prosperity, we have economic pundits forecasting hyper inflation; and the AP worries whether Sarah Palin has errors in her new book Going Rogue, rather than examining the integrity and writing skills of the Great Ditherer.

The Great Ditherer has come by his nick name honestly, in the 89-90 school year he was elected by the Law students to be the President of he Harvard Law Review. A position that was to become symbolic, for other than gushing reviews from the New York Times over his “irresistible” writing skills, he contributed nothing and wrote absolutely nothing, other than one ineffectual unsigned case note, and since that brilliant contribution he has not written a legal article in nearly 20 years.

In reality, Obama was probably elected to the position, for much the same reason that he was elected to the Presidency of the United States, to appease White Liberal ambivalent guilt feelings over their wealth and prestige. Thus Obama became their Token Negro in the front office to lessen elite guilt, for how can you be a Liberal without demonstrating your uncompromising fairness without having Negro window dressing. Thus an irresistible writer was elected to a prestigious position and was expected to do… nothing. Thus the role of Great Ditherer was becoming more defined for a talent that thrived on being noted as a mediocrity and reinforced by the Ivy League Liberal Elite of Harvard. A precedent was set that the young Obama could finally grasp, the concept of dithering. Read the rest of this entry »

Senator Lindsey Graham, of all people, destroys Our Attorney General (and Obama) on their idiotic decision to fight this war as a law enforcement issue:

Ann Althouse:

Holder imagines that he can hide inside that “thoughtful” routine that Obama so often relies on, but it is utterly pathetic here. Either he knows damned well what he’s doing and he’s lying or he’s outrageously unqualified for his job. His evasive style is so similar to Obama’s that he makes Obama look worse.

Dan Karipides at Wizbang isn’t buying it. He doesn’t believe Holder is this much of an amateur: Read the rest of this entry »

Independents are deserting him in droves!

A new record on the Rasmussen index:

After the huge election wins for the GOP in Virginia and New Jersey the “news” media did it’s best to deny that the GOP surge had anything to do with Obama. I guess they are going to have to learn the hard way.

Not only did Independent voters desert the candidates in those races who were vigorously supported by Obama, but independents continue to flee from Obama nationwide.

Chris Cillizza analyzes the new Washington Post/ABC News national survey and finds:

Only on international affairs does Obama get majority support with 57 percent of independents offering approval for the job he is doing.

The rest of Obama’s approval scores among independents on the seven issues tested in the poll range from fair to borderline poor. Forty six percent approve of his handling of “the threat of terrorism” while 45 percent said he has done a good job on the economy.

Obama’s job approval ratings are weaker among independents when it comes to health care (41 percent), Afghanistan (39 percent) and the budget deficit (37 percent).

While Obama maintains a positive job approval among independents (50 percent approve/47 percent disapprove) the broad skepticism toward how he is handling some of the country’s critical priorities could spell trouble down the road for the president.

That same trend is being tracked by the Gallup daily poll and other national polls like the latest Quinnipiac survey in which Obama’s job approval rating has dropped below 50% for the first time.

What’s happening here?

I can’t put it better than Obama’s former Pastor Rev. Wright:
Read the rest of this entry »