3.16.2010 By Chase K. Hunter….. Covering the “Coverage” – Tedious.
Nancy Pelosi, regarding Obamacare: “It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know.” Rally Nancy? We know all about just how “insider oriented” it is. You are liable and accountable for trying to cram this Obamacare bill down America’s throats. We won’t forget. [November 2010]
I’d like to thank The Huffington Post for having the courage, [ balls, ovaries, hutzpa, spunk] to cover today’s Code RED 3.16.10 Washington D.C. Tea Party Protest. I can at least say there is one news outlet in America that seems to care enough to make an effort to track the maneuvering and posturing, and to follow the MSM’s ineptitude in covering anything about what is actually happening at this stage of the process, as opposed to what the presume is happening. The Huff Post coverage seems bent toward favoring the bill, but at least it is coverage.
Just locating ANY news coverage about today’s DC Tea party protest has been an exercise in REALITY checking how “state controlled” our mass media outlets have now become.
It’s frightening. Once again, it seemed that a prior directive had been “issued” to ignore the DC tea party march. But thanks to the good folks who run patriot related and alternative news blogs, and the other sharp citizen journalists who attended and were quick to post their videos, I have some info to share about today’s events in DC. I regret that for health reasons I could not attend.
So here are some of the latest videos, and some noteworthy re-posts from the few mainstream news sources which apparently still give a damn whether or not we are subject to socialized medicine in the USA against our wills. I’m worried, very worried about my country.
Another day in the health care reform debate brings with it another battle over parliamentary procedure, and another example of the media struggling to get some basic facts right. Today, the battle is joined over deeming resolutions, the process by which House Democrats may finally overcome hurdles and worries to get the process of passing reform moving forward.
..that’s wrong. House Democrats aren’t doing that.
In fact, they ARE taking an up or down vote on the Senate health care bill. They’re just doing it AT THE SAME TIME as they’re passing the reconciliation language, which countermands several controversial provisions.
Here’s what’s going on. The House is stuck having to basically pass the Senate health care bill, because the bill cannot be reconciled in conference committee. Why? Because it will be filibustered. However, House members are averse to doing anything that looks like they approve of the various side-deals that were made in the Senate — like the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.” The House intends to remove those unpopular features in budget reconciliation, but if they pursue budget reconciliation on a standard legislative timeline — where they pass the Senate bill outright first and then go back to pass a reconciliation package of fixes — they’d still appear to be endorsing the sketchy side deals, and then the GOP would jump up and down on their heads.
Enter “deem and pass.” Under this process, the House will simply skip to approving the reconciliation fixes, and “deem” the Senate bill to be passed. By doing it this way, the Democrats get the Senate bill passed while simultaneously coming out against the unpopular features of the same.
YES. All of this is basically motivated by concerns over perceptions and other such cosmetic bullshit. This is all about the House Democrats being scared out of their minds that they’ll have to spend even an hour explaining, “No, we do not approve of the Cornhusker Kickback.” But that’s America, circa 2010. It makes the Democrats look timid, but it doesn’t make them wrong.
This is now the third round of opposition that’s been put before the media ever since the “Slaughter Rule” was first proposed. The first round featured Republicans going nuts about it, on the grounds that it was some sort of unprecedented legislative maneuver. Just like they said about budget reconciliation! Sadly, that doesn’t bear up under scrutiny. As Ryan Grim reports, however, deeming resolutions are pretty darned precedented:
The first time that the chamber used what’s known as a “deeming resolution” — the mechanism Democrats are leaning toward using to pass the Senate health care bill through the House — was March 16, 1933. Then, as now, it involved a bill that had little support in the chamber among individual Democrats, but all of them knew they had to pass it. Very few Democrats want to vote for the Senate version of health care reform, but most are okay with it as long as it’s amended through reconciliation.
Less than two weeks into FDR’s first 100 days, Congress needed to raise its debt ceiling, a ritual vote that hasn’t gotten any easier for the majority party in the intervening 77 years — and is still political fodder for partisan opponents.
Instead of voting on the underlying Senate bill to raise the debt ceiling in 1933, the House voted on Resolution 63, which stated that “immediately upon the adoption of this resolution the bill H.R. 2820, with Senate amendments thereto, be, and the same hereby is, taken from the Speaker’s table to the end that all Senate amendments be, and the same are hereby, agreed to.”
More recently, Grim notes that deeming resolutions were used by Republicans “36 times in 2005 and 2006,” and by Democrats “49 times in 2007 and 2008.”
The second salvo from health care opponents arrived in the form of complaints that Louise Slaughter once opposed the use of her own “Slaughter Rule” on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. As Ezra Klein explains, that’s true:
So today’s furor is that Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter joined Public Citizen in a lawsuit arguing that a bill that George W. Bush signed was invalid because Deem and Pass is unconstitutional. But the court ruled against Public Citizen, Pelosi and Slaughter. Deem and Pass, well, passed. And now Democrats are using it, too.
Of course, the fact that Slaughter learned that deeming resolutions were entirely above board is probably what informed her decision to employ a deeming resolution!
I don’t think anyone captured the baseline of this ongoing back-and-forth raging over parliamentary procedures better than Matt Yglesias, who writes, “Everyone knows that 100 percent of the people who like the underlying health care bill will approve of the use of the procedural mechanisms necessary to enact it, whereas 100 percent of the process-objectors will also be people who don’t like the bill.” It stands to reason that if all the majorities were flipped and the GOP was about to use “Deem And Pass” to get something passed, they’d pull the trigger on it and never look back.
There’s no doubt at all that this legislative obscuranta is confusing. But it’s not impossible to explain, you just have to want to explain it. Unfortunately, the media is doing a terrible job at this task. Per Byron Tau, over at The New Republic:
But the way that some journalists are describing it, you’d think the House Democrats were willing a bill into law by magic. “House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it,” blared a Washington Post headline. The Post’s only explanation of the tactic came from Nancy Pelosi, who said, “It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board went even further, beginning their editorial with a cutesy fairy tale setup:
We’re not sure American schools teach civics any more, but once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely “deem” that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway.
None of this is new! Does one side want health care and the other side not want health care and nobody wants to compromise? Yay! SHINY HORSE RACE FOR THE MEDIA TO COVER. Who cares if the contention that Nancy Pelosi wants to pass health care reform without a vote is a lie? To the political press, a lie is just an “interesting point of view.”
The national Tea Party Movement is having a march on Washington DC 3.16.10 to protest the FEDERAL Obama takeover of healthcare. Even if you can’t attend, you can help! Just re-send, share, or re-tweet this msg with the link below – everything is on the blog front page pertaininig to the protest. Help me get the word out! Thanks – here it is: Please re-tweeet:
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CODE RED 3.16.10 TEA PARTY MARCH on DC protest FED healthcare takeover,
I’ve been writing and warning readers and American citizens and my neighbors everywhere about the heinous nature of RFID microchipping plans for at least 3 years. Last summer I identified elements hidden in the first Obamacare Plan that called for a national healthcare identification number for every US citizen, a piece of legislation that has been intentionally crafted to lead, once again through the well known NWO tactic that I call “insidious gradualism” to mandatory RFID chipping of all Americans.
I have suspected from the very beginning of Obama’s presidency that he was working under a CFR mandate to put the legislative elements in place that would attempt to “normalize” the idea of RFID chipping for American citizens, in an eventual conclusion that would commence with issuing a National Healthcare ID Card for all Americans under his health care overhaul.
People might argue, as I am quite sure that the pro-Obama left will, that any connection made between a national healthcare ID card under obamacare and mandatory human RFID chipping is pure here say.
They are dead wrong. The process of gradually acclimatizing Americans to a national identification system [for nefarious purposes which would appear “benign” initially] was tried years ago under Bill Clinton’s administration, and it was mentioned repeatedly under Bush W. regime, even as a nationa driver’s license. How quickly foolish and distracted Americans forget about these things. These events I mention from the past are not unrelated.
The NWO behind the scenes “puppet master crowd” has been trying to get Americans to accept the idea and actuality of a national identification system of some sort for at least 16 years, that I can recall. I started doing research and writing about the New World Order in 1991.
So none of this is new to me, except that the tone of the dialogue has now become quite urgent, as Americans struggle to understand why accepting a national healthcare overhaul must include also accepting an RFID embedded national healthcare ID card. The national healthcare card will lead to mandatory human RFID chipping.
I have a dire warning to make, and I must issue that warning now, while the dialogue is still open: if legislation is passed which includes any sort of mandatory national healthcare ID card in it, then we will have marched one more 100 mile leap, in one step, toward eventual human RFID chipping which will become mandatory.
Please America, I am pleading with you, do not allow this to happen. I know our healthcare system needs overhauling. But that need cannot be used as tacit justification to cram a nationa healthcare Identification system down our throats that steps us closer to mandatory human RFID chipping.
I MUST reiterate something here. HEAR THIS: I don’t care what I am called, who calls me out, who does the name calling, who ridicules me, or what they say: my soul HAS SEEN the future of what they intend to do to human populations under mandatory human RFID chipping, and others like Aaron Russo have seen it too. He was close friends with Nick Rockefeller for years and was told POINT BLANK by Rockefeller what the world government plan is, and that mandatory human RFID chipping is integral to that plan and it’s implementation.
We cannot allow this to happen. Speak out, call your local conservative talk radio show, make your voice heard, email and write, call your senator and congressman and let them know how vehemently you OPPOSE any legislation which will lead to mandatory human RFID chips in this country.
Bringing a national healthcare ID card bill up at this particular moment in the debate is a RED FLAG for this nation about what is hidden in the Obamacare health care bill.
I cannot implore my readers and guests enough about how important this is. Make your voices HEARD NOW if you do not want to wake up into a reality just a few years from now, where you are asked to bring in your health ID card, turn it in, and accept the imbedded chip instead in order to keep working, keep your healthcare coverage and not be jailed.
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
Important to note about these new laws Obama is preparing his Nation for is that they are all being quietly put into place while the people in America are being distracted by their propaganda media organs to focus their attention on the so called health care debate and have been deliberately hidden in bills without their knowing.New reports coming from America today are warning that as that troubled Nation edges ever closer to what economists are calling the“unstoppable second crash”, and as their descent into outright socialist rule continues unabated, President Obama is preparing to unleash upon his citizens the most draconian and tyrannical laws ever enacted in their entire history.
One of these new “hidden” laws is being put forward as an immigration measure supposedly to deal with their growing numbers of illegal immigrants, but as we can read as reported by the Wall Street Journal News Service has much more ominous implications for all Americans:
To those Americans prepared to oppose Obama’s plan to remake the United States into a Communist Nation another new law will enable the US Military to arrest and hold them without trial forever, and as we can read as reported by the Atlantic Magazine News Service:
In order for Obama’s “grand plan” of communizing the American people to succeed he has deliberately targeted their middle classes for destruction, and no where is this more evident than in millions of them being thrown from their homes, and as we had previously reported on in our February 16th report “Obama Plot To Throw Millions Of Americans From Homes Uncovered”.
Not satisfied with the pace of this destruction of his middle classes, however, Obama is preparing new laws to force a further 5 million of his citizens from their homes and into the streets, and as we can read as reported by the New York Times News Service:
In our March 2nd report “Russia Warns US Communist Threat Endangering Entire World” we had detailed the plans of Obama’s Communist forces to destroy the United States and further warned these Americans of Congressman Ron Paul’s warning to them that their own government was preparing to openly assassinate all who oppose them, but to no avail as the masses of these people continue to deny the overwhelming evidence showing their destruction is near at hand.
And to the “new world” these unsuspecting Americans are entering into we can glimpse from the Kitco New Service article titled “America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship” and which warns:
To if the American people will arise in their righteous wrath to confront the destruction of their Nation it is not in our knowing, other than to note, that in all of history, those who have given up their freedom to despotic rulers have, without exception, condemned themselves, their children, and their grandchildren, to lives of servitude and degradation towards the cruelest of masters who only see them as useless eaters fit for nothing but death.
And do not think for one second that these words are written lightly either, and by clicking on this link you can hear for yourself one of these elites, Bill “Microsoft” Gates, the World’s richest man, calling for the outright destruction of over 1 billion human beings to “de-populate” our Earth…of which you, undoubtedly, are a part of.
[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report “Who Is Sorcha Faal?”.]
We already have RFID enable driver’s licenses and a social security card. We do not NEED to carry yet another form of mandatory identification. It’s all pretext. It’s all about the RFID global agenda, and the American people are just not that stupid. At least I hope they are not. Here’s what I wrote about RFID last year:
Even though Obama supporters, Pelosi and Reid are all hailing the passage of Obamacare as a victory, it spells their political doom come November 10th 2010. Americans spoke loud and clear in overwhelming numbers this past weekend that they oppose this legislation. Their will and wishes [a 70% majority of Americans opposed the bill] were flagrantly disregarded in one of the most arrogant moments of sheer political bulldozing of a majority’s voice that I can recall in my lifetime. Even though the bill has been passed into law, this battle is not over.
I continue to maintain that this battle is a war for the very heart and soul of a nation. It is not God’s Will that a tiny elite and political contingency in Washington D.C., guided by hidden CFR mandates, bulldoze the will of the American people. It will not stand, and the Obama presidency, as I see it, is now historically doomed over it. He will be a one term president, and in my own opinion, he should be impeached.
I’ve been writing and warning readers and American citizens and my neighbors everywhere about the heinous nature of human RFID microchipping plans for at least 3 years.
I have suspected from the very beginning of Obama’s presidency that he was working under a CFR mandate to put the legislative elements in place that would attempt to “normalize” the idea of RFID chipping for American citizens, in an eventual conclusion that would commence with issuing a National Healthcare ID Card for all Americans under his health care overhaul. This process of “insidious gradualism” works by way of slowly psychologically acclimatizing the American public to the idea that carrying RFID embedded national healthcare cards is “normal”. Once people begin to “take the bait”, and accept that fact, then transferring the information embedded into the cards, onto an RFID chip and embedding that chip under the skin is the next step toward an eventual global fascist RFID hell on earth.
People might argue, as I am quite sure that the pro-Obama left will, that any connection made between a national healthcare ID card under obamacare and mandatory human RFID chipping is pure “hearsay”.
The NWO behind the scenes “puppet master crowd” has been trying to get Americans to accept the idea and actuality of a national identification system of some sort for at least 16 years, that I can recall. I started doing research and writing about the New World Order in 1991.
So none of this “national identification system” dialogue is new, except that the tone of the dialogue has now become quite urgent, as Americans struggle to understand why accepting a national healthcare overhaul must include also accepting an RFID embedded national healthcare ID card. The national healthcare card will lead to mandatory human RFID chipping.
I have a dire warning to make, and I must issue that warning now, while the dialogue is still open: since this heinous legislation has now been passed, if any provision of the Obamamcare bill includes any sort of mandatory national healthcare ID card in it, then we will have marched one more 100 mile leap, in one step, toward eventual human RFID chipping in America which will eventually become mandatory.
As American citizens we cannot allow this kind of legislation to remain in force. Orwellian laws must be overturned, and it will take courage, tenacity, due diligence, spiritual faith in God and sheer determined perseverance to overturn them. We are the American generation who have those spiritual qualities, and we are the generation who must use them to overturn this legislation. The people of the world who look to America as a spiritual guiding Light are all watching. We cannot let them down either.
The present overhaul of the American health care system cannot be used as tacit justification to cram a national healthcare Identification system down our throats that steps us ever closer to mandatory human RFID chipping.
I MUST reiterate something here. HEAR THIS: I don’t care what I am called, who calls me out, who does the name calling, who ridicules me, or what they say.
My soul HAS SEEN in visions of our futurewhat the hidden global elites intend to do to human populations under mandatory human RFID chipping, and others like Aaron Russo have seen it too.
Aaron Russo was close friends with Nicholas Rockefeller for years, and he was told POINT BLANK by Rockefeller what the world government plan is, and that mandatory global human RFID chipping is integral to that plan and it’s final implementation.
Once that global RFID chip system is in place, persons will have no civil rights, no human rights, no privacy rights, and no financial privacy under any circumstances. Those who protest or refuse to comply with any governmental directive – even an overtly evil one – will simply be “cut off” from the source of their financial assets, by having their embedded chip de-activated, and literally starved into submission, as they will not be able to access their own assets via the international RFID system. It will become the world fascist “Beast Identification System” which was prophesied in the Bible, literally come to pass.
This global RFID cashless system which has been designed to enslave humankind is evil, and it cannot be allowed to come to fruition. The soul of humankind has a choice. To remain silent is to give one’s consent by default.
We cannot allow this planned global RFID human microchip system to be implemented. Speak out, call your local conservative talk radio show, make your voice heard, email and write, call your senator and congressman and let them know how vehemently you OPPOSE any legislation which will lead to mandatory human RFID chips in this country.
I cannot implore my readers and guests enough about how important this issue is. Make your voices HEARD NOW if you do not want to wake up into a helplessly entrapped socially engineered new dark reality just a few years from now, where you are asked to bring in your health ID card, turn it in, and accept the imbedded chip instead in order to keep working, keep your healthcare coverage and not be jailed.
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
Important to note about these new laws Obama is preparing his Nation for is that they are all being quietly put into place while the people in America are being distracted by their propaganda media organs to focus their attention on the so called health care debate and have been deliberately hidden in bills without their knowing.New reports coming from America today are warning that as that troubled Nation edges ever closer to what economists are calling the“unstoppable second crash”, and as their descent into outright socialist rule continues unabated, President Obama is preparing to unleash upon his citizens the most draconian and tyrannical laws ever enacted in their entire history.
One of these new “hidden” laws is being put forward as an immigration measure supposedly to deal with their growing numbers of illegal immigrants, but as we can read as reported by the Wall Street Journal News Service has much more ominous implications for all Americans:
To those Americans prepared to oppose Obama’s plan to remake the United States into a Communist Nation another new law will enable the US Military to arrest and hold them without trial forever, and as we can read as reported by the Atlantic Magazine News Service:
In order for Obama’s “grand plan” of communizing the American people to succeed he has deliberately targeted their middle classes for destruction, and no where is this more evident than in millions of them being thrown from their homes, and as we had previously reported on in our February 16th report “Obama Plot To Throw Millions Of Americans From Homes Uncovered”.
Not satisfied with the pace of this destruction of his middle classes, however, Obama is preparing new laws to force a further 5 million of his citizens from their homes and into the streets, and as we can read as reported by the New York Times News Service:
In our March 2nd report “Russia Warns US Communist Threat Endangering Entire World” we had detailed the plans of Obama’s Communist forces to destroy the United States and further warned these Americans of Congressman Ron Paul’s warning to them that their own government was preparing to openly assassinate all who oppose them, but to no avail as the masses of these people continue to deny the overwhelming evidence showing their destruction is near at hand.
And to the “new world” these unsuspecting Americans are entering into we can glimpse from the Kitco New Service article titled “America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship” and which warns:
To if the American people will arise in their righteous wrath to confront the destruction of their Nation it is not in our knowing, other than to note, that in all of history, those who have given up their freedom to despotic rulers have, without exception, condemned themselves, their children, and their grandchildren, to lives of servitude and degradation towards the cruelest of masters who only see them as useless eaters fit for nothing but death.
And do not think for one second that these words are written lightly either, and by clicking on this link you can hear for yourself one of these elites, Bill “Microsoft” Gates, the World’s richest man, calling for the outright destruction of over 1 billion human beings to “de-populate” our Earth…of which you, undoubtedly, are a part of.
[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report “Who Is Sorcha Faal?”.]
The new president spent his first months in office coasting on love and popularity. In his health care speech to Congress Wednesday, he rallied after a rough summer with a new round of tough talk.
But with the moment of truth fast approaching on Capitol Hill for the signature item on his domestic policy, Obama seems to lack one item that most presidents find helpful to have in their White House tool box: Fear.
On the left and on the right, interest groups and members of Congress have been eagerly enjoying the rewards—publicity, negotiating leverage—of challenging the president or dissenting from his policies.
That’s usually a practice presidents try to discourage—especially among members of their own party—by making it clear that the long-term penalty will be greater than any short-term gains.
But the practice has been encouraged by this president’s own intellectual and political style—a preference for negotiation, combined with a disinclination toward drawing bright lines about his own bottom line.
In the speech this week, Obama rallied Democrats by saying he would not tolerate GOP distortions of his health care ideas, but also signaled unmistakably that liberals in the end will probably need to join him in caving over their hopes for a “public option” health insurance plan. Even the legendary Rahm Emanuel, cast early on as the White House enforcer, has taken a slightly more statesmanlike portfolio, with no obvious deputy hit man to step in.
It’s got some people in both parties wondering whether there really is a steel fist inside Obama’s velvet glove.
Democrats in Congress told POLITICO they’ve been surprised that there seem to be no obvious consequences for sharp criticism of the White House. Cheerleaders on the left are beginning to urge him, in the words of Maureen Dowd, to be “more Rocky, less Spocky.”
“One of the few areas of agreement on the right and left is that both sides want to see more strength of leadership from him,” notes Dan Gerstein, a Democratic political consultant. “There has to be respect – and fear.”
“His problem has been almost from the beginning that while Democrats on the Hill appreciate him, they’re occasionally inspired by him, they’re not all that impressed with him,” said Bush political advisor Karl Rove. “They appreciate his diffident attitude, but I’m not sure it’s one that inspires either fear or respect.”
Democrats, on Capitol Hill or the White House, aren’t likely to be swayed by taunting from the likes of Rove.
But it is true that as the health care debate reaches its denouement, Obama is almost certainly going to be pressuring liberals in his own party to accept less than they once expected, and conservative Democrats to spend more than they want.
When this moment comes, Obama will likely need find the power of reason is more effective when backed by a demonstrated willingness to crack heads.
“One of the things you lose the ability to do when you step back from the legislative process is to jump in there and be beefy when things don’t go the way you want,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who has criticized the White House’s plans from the left at no apparent political cost.
The decision to let Congress lead the way to health care reform was a strategic one, driven by the failures of the Clinton Administration. Come the fall, if Obama eventually signs major legislation, it may look like a brilliant one.
But the diffidence is also closely linked with Obama’s personality and his governing style: In private debates, advisors say, he likes to hear and restate arguments; he more rarely shows his own cards.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27057.html#ixzz0R2eLUGa5
And he has yet to take a tough stand, or pick a difficult fight, on many of the major policy issues of the day. He continues to search for a Goldilocks solution in Afghanistan – not too hot, not too cold, and projected nothing more than caution when Iranians took to the streets. He has allowed disfavored proposals from allies – like the Employee Free Choice Act – to die of their own accord, professing support all the while.
The question is where this personal and strategic blurriness turns into a more dangerous political sense of weakness, a dangerous perception for American presidents George H.W. Bush learned when Newsweek labeled him a “wimp” on its front page. His son labored to avoid that mistake, his obsessions about projecting strength sometimes coming off as swagger.
When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) was reduced to abject, groveling apologies for bellowing “You lie!” at Obama during his address to a joint session of Congress, it wasn’t just an opportunity for Democrats to cast Republicans as less than constructive; it was also a reminder of presidential stature and power.
But Wilson, within 24 hours, had come back around to his own defense, and he’s a rare Republican to have paid any price for attacking the president. After early internal debates over whether accommodation would be more effective than confrontation, congressional Republicans have clearly decided that they have little to lose from a fight.
One Republican consultant, Nelson Warfield, traced that realization to the passage of energy legislation through the House over near-unified Republican opposition.
“After the uniform stand against cap and tax [as Republicans deride the bill], there was no price to be paid,” he said.
“There hasn’t been any cost for opposing him – in fact there’s been a premium ,” he added.
“He’s not meeting the basic standard of manhood,” taunted Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant whose clients include the National Republican Trust, which ran some of the earliest, most scathing anti-Obama ads.
Partisan jibes are, of course, nothing new. But Obama’s capacity to inspire fear on his own side of the aisle also remains in doubt. The House Progressive Caucus and members of its Blue Dog minority have taken steady shots at his health care views and his management of the issue without any obvious bruises to show for it, and many take his hands-off stance as a kind of license.
Obama has been accused of weakness before. In the summer and fall of 2007, he found himself reassuring even his own backers that he could face Hillary Clinton. In the summer and fall of 2008, he beat back Senator John McCain’s attempt to cast him as effete.
The Democratic consultant Paul Begala, who is close to the White House, noted that the President gives two kinds of speeches: “Olympian and even-handed ones” like talks on race and on Islam and the West; and tougher stemwinders, like his direct assault on Hillary Clinton at Iowa’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in 2007 and his speech at last year’s Democratic National Convention.
“Given how screwed up Washington is and how deep the partisan poison runs, it’s for the most part a good thing that he’s coolly analytical and a consensus builder,” said Gerstein, the Democratic consultant. “But what we’ve seen in his first nine months in office is that there are times when that is not just the wrong approach – it’s counterproductive, because it allows people to get off the hook, or take advantage of you – as opposed to a more LBJ-style kick ass, take names way of wielding power.”
Kevin McCullough – FOXNews.com – September 01, 2009
Why the Obama Administration Will Implode In Weeks
I was the first pundit to predict that Barack Obama would become president. Here’s what I think we can expect from this administration in the next six to eight weeks.
Never has an administration had more political firepower at their disposal yet been set to so totally fail in the next six to eight weeks. It is nearly a foregone conclusion. It is nearly unavoidable. And it defies all logic given the sizable majority the administration has in both houses of Congress.
Since I was the first pundit to predict Obama’s presidency (back in December 2006) it behooves me to tell you the course I believe the next few weeks will take. Just think, it was only a few months ago that the left looked unstoppable in bringing about their plan to radicalize, nationalize, and federalize America.
1. Health Care’s Long and Painful Death
Barring the existing possibility that the Democrats cram a reform bill down the throats of actively protesting Americans through an ultra-partisan process that would shut out conservatives and Republicans from even being allowed to contribute to the discussion, health care reform is dead.
It actually died a good while back when the president decided to pivot and create a new issue that no one had been discussing–health insurance reform. The American people will want to know why we should spend $4 billion to cover everyone in America “efficiently,” when we already do so with inefficiencies like people using the emergency room as their general practitioner for $2.5 billion.
Deep thinkers on the issue also want to know why the president hasn’t entertained one item of tort reform– protecting his friends, the trial lawyers– yet is willing to claim that doctors are eager to lop off feet, tonsils, and other body parts just to make a buck.
2. Cap-and-Trade Will Be the Largest Tax Increase in American History
With the 2010 election cycle just around the corner, it won’t be too long before the campaign ads are drafted. With cap-and-trade still sitting in legislative limbo (and the president’s own adviser–Warren Buffet– now opposing it openly in the media), with anti-tax Democrats, Republicans, and Independents coming to Washington on September 12, and with “Blue Dog” Democrats getting hammered by constituents during the August recess, the chance of an ultra-partisan “ram through” victory on the legislation would not be wise.
Cap-and-trade, if passed, will contribute to unemployment, Wall Street stop and starts, and ultimately reduced treasury revenues. It would serve as the single largest tax increase on the average American in all of American history.
Even President Obama admitted as much, predicting that electric bill prices, in his words, would, “skyrocket.” Those that have looked at the specifics tell us that the average utility bill in America will go from $167 to $307 per month, per family.
3. Unemployment Will Remain
By now several Washington organizations, from left and right, and one of note consisting of both–the Congressional Budget Office, predict that unemployment will not shrink from the predicted “Obama high” of eight percent. Instead, nearly without fail, economists are predicting that unemployment will be at or over 10% for up to the next 24 months.– That is a nearly 250% increase in the unemployment rate under Bush for nearly the duration of his two-term presidency. We did not see the unemployment climb this high during President Bush‘s entire two-term presidency.
If more people were working, higher taxes and possible new health care entitlements could be considered, but with at least ten percent of the population out of work, it is political suicide for Democrats to even think of it.
4. Obama’s Integrity Has Been Tarnished in August
Not a great deal has been made of the whoppers that the president has been spewing while Congress has been away during the summer recess but it turns out that more people than I realized have also noticed the president wildly “exaggerating” in his talks on health care. For instance, the president confused the $500 physicians actually get to amputate a foot as opposed to the $50,000 that he claimed they got. He also showed an utter disregard for the reputation of those doctors he talks about, the “facts” he uses to make his argument, and is highly overly optimistic about the results of his policies. Long story short, at the beginning of the summer Americans mostly trusted him, his passion index was at +10, he heads into the fall at -14.
5. A $3 Trillion Dollar Budget
There was lots of new spending for this and it sure added up. And that brings me to number 6.
6. A Coming Middle Class Tax Hike
The Obama administration will hem and haw about hiking taxes. — There will be an official, and arrogant, explanation given by Robert Gibbs from the podium in the White House briefing room about why they must to do this to be “good stewards” and to be a “responsible administration” that “pays as it goes.”
But the truth is, in order to pay for everything the Obama administration has promised (and budgeted for), a tax hike is looming for small businesses and the working families that President Obama promised would never come.
And as an aside, the president was going to break that promise all along. Because the minute the Bush tax relief measures run out in 2010, middle class taxes would be going up in the Obama administration. That means that, fundamentally, that Obama’s “not a single dime” pledge on the campaign trail was just hot air from start to finish.
Of course, the president, the Democrats, the left, and Congressional leadership could surprise me. They could show up in September and endorse the Coburn health care bill in the Senate and steal all the credit for it. They could show up next week and fight with all their might to not allow the tax rates to skyrocket in 2010. They could decide to scrap cap-and-trade and re-think the use of public money for a true job-based economic stimulus.
But I’m not holding my breath, and I’d advise you against it as well.
They’ve awakened the American worker, the American small-business owner, and the American voter.
All three of which are now wondering aloud, “What on earth have we done?”
Kevin McCullough is the nationally syndicated host of “‘Baldwin/McCullough Radio” now heard on 197 stations and columnist based in New York. He blogs at www.muscleheadrevolution.com. His second book “The Kind Of MAN Every Man SHOULD Be” is in stores now.
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NWO Owned Mass Media Tries to Ignore 3.16 Tea Party Protests in DC [Should We Be Surprised?]
17 Mar3.16.2010 By Chase K. Hunter….. Covering the “Coverage” – Tedious.
I’d like to thank The Huffington Post for having the courage, [ balls, ovaries, hutzpa, spunk] to cover today’s Code RED 3.16.10 Washington D.C. Tea Party Protest. I can at least say there is one news outlet in America that seems to care enough to make an effort to track the maneuvering and posturing, and to follow the MSM’s ineptitude in covering anything about what is actually happening at this stage of the process, as opposed to what the presume is happening. The Huff Post coverage seems bent toward favoring the bill, but at least it is coverage.
See http://huffingtonpost.com’s front page for 3.16.2010
It’s frightening. Once again, it seemed that a prior directive had been “issued” to ignore the DC tea party march. But thanks to the good folks who run patriot related and alternative news blogs, and the other sharp citizen journalists who attended and were quick to post their videos, I have some info to share about today’s events in DC. I regret that for health reasons I could not attend.
So here are some of the latest videos, and some noteworthy re-posts from the few mainstream news sources which apparently still give a damn whether or not we are subject to socialized medicine in the USA against our wills. I’m worried, very worried about my country.
– Chase
Noteworthy coverage from the Huff Post:
Another day in the health care reform debate brings with it another battle over parliamentary procedure, and another example of the media struggling to get some basic facts right. Today, the battle is joined over deeming resolutions, the process by which House Democrats may finally overcome hurdles and worries to get the process of passing reform moving forward.
The GOP has advanced the idea that the “deem and pass” process — also known as “The Slaughter Rule” because the idea was suggested by Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) — is tantamount to passing health care reform without voting on it. The media has largely accepted, or at least lent credence to this premise. But does that sound right to you, Marc Ambinder?
Here’s what’s going on. The House is stuck having to basically pass the Senate health care bill, because the bill cannot be reconciled in conference committee. Why? Because it will be filibustered. However, House members are averse to doing anything that looks like they approve of the various side-deals that were made in the Senate — like the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.” The House intends to remove those unpopular features in budget reconciliation, but if they pursue budget reconciliation on a standard legislative timeline — where they pass the Senate bill outright first and then go back to pass a reconciliation package of fixes — they’d still appear to be endorsing the sketchy side deals, and then the GOP would jump up and down on their heads.
Enter “deem and pass.” Under this process, the House will simply skip to approving the reconciliation fixes, and “deem” the Senate bill to be passed. By doing it this way, the Democrats get the Senate bill passed while simultaneously coming out against the unpopular features of the same.
YES. All of this is basically motivated by concerns over perceptions and other such cosmetic bullshit. This is all about the House Democrats being scared out of their minds that they’ll have to spend even an hour explaining, “No, we do not approve of the Cornhusker Kickback.” But that’s America, circa 2010. It makes the Democrats look timid, but it doesn’t make them wrong.
This is now the third round of opposition that’s been put before the media ever since the “Slaughter Rule” was first proposed. The first round featured Republicans going nuts about it, on the grounds that it was some sort of unprecedented legislative maneuver. Just like they said about budget reconciliation! Sadly, that doesn’t bear up under scrutiny. As Ryan Grim reports, however, deeming resolutions are pretty darned precedented:
More recently, Grim notes that deeming resolutions were used by Republicans “36 times in 2005 and 2006,” and by Democrats “49 times in 2007 and 2008.”
The second salvo from health care opponents arrived in the form of complaints that Louise Slaughter once opposed the use of her own “Slaughter Rule” on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. As Ezra Klein explains, that’s true:
Of course, the fact that Slaughter learned that deeming resolutions were entirely above board is probably what informed her decision to employ a deeming resolution!
I don’t think anyone captured the baseline of this ongoing back-and-forth raging over parliamentary procedures better than Matt Yglesias, who writes, “Everyone knows that 100 percent of the people who like the underlying health care bill will approve of the use of the procedural mechanisms necessary to enact it, whereas 100 percent of the process-objectors will also be people who don’t like the bill.” It stands to reason that if all the majorities were flipped and the GOP was about to use “Deem And Pass” to get something passed, they’d pull the trigger on it and never look back.
There’s no doubt at all that this legislative obscuranta is confusing. But it’s not impossible to explain, you just have to want to explain it. Unfortunately, the media is doing a terrible job at this task. Per Byron Tau, over at The New Republic:
None of this is new! Does one side want health care and the other side not want health care and nobody wants to compromise? Yay! SHINY HORSE RACE FOR THE MEDIA TO COVER. Who cares if the contention that Nancy Pelosi wants to pass health care reform without a vote is a lie? To the political press, a lie is just an “interesting point of view.”
Please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com — learn more about our media monitoring project here.
Know something we don’t? E-mail us at huffpolitics@huffingtonpost.com
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