Bloodthirsty Liberal

And all we’re left with is “-cracy”, which is close enough for government work to “crazy”:

Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

…

Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?

That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.

But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?

According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.

Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.

Now, I’ll say what you’re thinking: Dick Morris can’t be the sole source of a story if we are to give it complete credence.

Fine.

But tell me you have complete confidence that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to this horror story of legislation run amok. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Maestro, a little music to pass the time?

There is a rub to all of this.

This secret plan being hatched by Pelosi and Reid requires not only a pledge by 52 Democratic senators to vote later for the House modifications. House liberals must actually believe these Senators will live up to their pledge and pass the fixes at some future date.

A Senate source cautions: “Senators more than House members and both more than ordinary people, lie.”

I’m feeling real good about the legislative process right now, how about you?

Or is it just “madam”?

It’s okay, Speaker Pelosi, this campaign has been hard on all of us.

I’m not saying she’s looking bad (when ordinarily she polls high among GMILFS), but why else am I thinking of Willie Horton? Yeesh!

- Aggie

An inconvenient question

We will pay for it with increased taxes, smoke and mirrors, cuts to physician reimbursements, and cuts to Medicare. Among the closet full of Medicare cuts, we find cuts to home health care.

Dozing in a big lift chair, propped up by pillows in the living room of her modest home here, Bertha G. Milliard greeted the nurse who had come to check her condition and review the medications she takes for chronic pain, heart failure, stroke and dementia.

Ms. Milliard, 94, said those visits had been highly effective in keeping her out of the hospital. But the home care she receives could be altered under legislation passed by the House and pending on the Senate floor as Congress returned to work this week.

As they are across the nation, Medicare patients and nurses in this town in northern Maine are anxiously following the Congressional debate because its outcome could affect Medicare’s popular home health benefit in a big way. The legislation would reduce Medicare spending on home health services, a lifeline for homebound Medicare beneficiaries, which keeps them out of hospitals and nursing homes.

Under the bills, more than 30 million Americans would gain health coverage. The cost would be offset by new taxes and fees and by cutbacks in Medicare payments to health care providers.

I am constantly amazed at how the party of compassion hurts the weakest among us. From social programs that encourage unrealistic dependency, through harming truly defenseless elderly patients who wish to remain in their homes, the Democrats are callous and unresponsive to suffering, all the while cloaking themselves in mushy rhetoric.

Here’s an offensive tidbit; home health care workers are overpaid!, according to the bleeding heart Democrats:

Under the legislation, home care would absorb a disproportionate share of the cuts. It currently accounts for 3.7 percent of the Medicare budget, but would absorb 10.2 percent of the savings squeezed from Medicare by the House bill and 9.4 percent of savings in the Senate bill, the Congressional Budget Office says.

The House bill would slice $55 billion over 10 years from projected Medicare spending on home health services, while the Senate bill would take $43 billion.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate justify the proposed cuts in nearly identical terms. “These payment reductions will not adversely affect access to care,” but will bring payments in line with costs, the House Ways and Means Committee said. The Senate Finance Committee said the changes would encourage home care workers to be more productive.

This is just too rich to ignore:

Home care shows, in microcosm, a conundrum at the heart of the health care debate. Lawmakers have decided that most of the money to cover the uninsured should come from the health care system itself. This raises the question: Can health care providers reduce costs without slashing services?

“Can health care providers reduce costs without slashing services?” Hmm, let’s cogitate on that for a moment. Our government is going to increase the size of the insured by roughly … 10%… 15%… does anyone have this number? But they are not planning to increase the money to pay for this. First of all, that is untrue. Part of the increase will come from new taxes and new fees. But, putting aside that little white lie, do you suppose that you could increase any part of your spending by 10% without it costing more? Purchase 10% more food but somehow cut back on the food that you eat so that it comes out ok? What would you give up? Dining out? Meat? Sweets? All packaged foods? Would you replace brand name products with no-names? How about just buying powdered milk instead of the fresh stuff? Who needs it anyway? Remember, you can’t choose to consume less; you must consume more.

Quality changes have to happen. One could argue that they are just fine. Maybe meat really is bad for us. Certainly sweets are not the greatest for health. And we really don’t need to go out to dinner; we can try out exciting new recipes at home involving lots of powdered milk. But what exactly are these health care cuts and when do we get to find out?

Elections have consequences, and this is a big one.

- Aggie

CBO says House health care bill hurts seniors

Elections have consequences, even for grandma and grandpa.

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

I am sure that the boomers who voted for this administration will happily pay for seniors to receive full Medicare benefits, as we know them today. And of course they will open their homes to aging seniors who cannot find placement in nursing homes. Why, either mom or dad will quit their job to care for the seniors in the home. And they will stop funding both their own retirements and their childrens’ college eduction, because, well, health care can suck up a lot of resources.

This is only fair and I am certain that all of us will gladly do it.

- Aggie

Michael Capuano: Any child you can kill I can kill better.

Martha Coakley: I can kill any child better than you.

After appearing to waver on her controversial health care position, Attorney General Martha Coakley went on the offensive yesterday and indirectly challenged US Representative Michael E. Capuano over his vote last week to advance a bill with a provision that would limit coverage of abortions.

The issue dominated the US Senate race much of the past week, but Coakley put forth her strongest argument yet on a day when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to Boston to give a strong endorsement to Capuano and praise his health care stance.

“There are other matters where, of course, you would be involved in compromise,’’ Coakley said in an interview. “This is one, whether as a congresswoman or a senator, I wouldn’t have compromised on. This is an important issue for me; it always has been.’’

…

Capuano also scored the key backing yesterday of the person who negotiated the health care deal. Pelosi, the nation’s top female politician, said yesterday at the Omni Parker House in downtown Boston that Capuano was a strong congressional leader who cast a courageous vote on health care legislation.

“Any one of us could have found one reason or another not to vote for the bill,’’ Pelosi said. “But that was not any excuse for preventing this historic moment from taking place.’’

I don’t think Pelosi has any pull even here—but that’s not why Capuano supported the bill.

“Don’t you dare cross me, you goombah, or I swear I’ll cut your [bleeping] balls off and shove them down your throat.”

That’s why Capuano supported the bill.

A long, long time ago, I can still remember…

She’s railing against what she perceives of as Republican strong-arm tactics in the House and Senate, and she’s got a point. No time to read the bill, lack of transparency—the student has become the master.

And she’s gotten younger looking over the years.

The House of Representatives is sometimes called “the lower chamber”.

It’s easy to see why:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the House version of health care reform legislation last week, but most voters are still opposed to the effort.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down from 45% a week ago but unchanged from two weeks ago.

Fifty-four percent (54%) now oppose the legislative effort, up three points since last week.

…

Only 23% of all voters Strongly Support the plan while nearly twice as man (44%) are Strongly Opposed.

Voters finally saw the bill, and swerved away from it—yet the House, in its wisdom, passed it.

If I had to guess, I would say that the honorable members thought they could get away with voting yes, thereby getting Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama off their backs, safe in the knowledge this beast will never pass in the Senate and actually become law. They held up the White House and the House leadership for favors and perks, but won’t have to live with the consequences of their treachery.

I’m trying to decide how low the lower chamber really is: the 8th circle of Hell, reserved for fraudsters; or the 9th, reserved for traitors?

I think if Dante dug a little deeper in the fetid, fiery pits of hell, he might just have scraped the top of the Capitol dome.

Democrats celebrate passage of historic health care bill in the House chamber.

And if that image doesn’t chill your blood to the freezing point, this one might:

So sayeth Nancy Pelosi to her caucus:

Byron York and the Washington Post agree on Nancy Pelosi’s plan to vote on her health-care bill this Saturday — she can’t afford to let Democrats go home to their districts before the vote. In fact, as John McCormack notes, she can’t even afford to keep her promise to have the bill on line for 72 hours before the vote so that their constituents can know what they’re doing. If they went home to face their constituents, Pelosi knows that they would never vote for her massive spending:

…

For party leaders, setting a weekend deadline for passage represented a calculated risk, one that could backfire if the vote — now expected late Saturday or Sunday — fails or must be delayed. But they feared that if members were given more time to consider the legislation, new issues could arise, particularly as lawmakers digest the results from Tuesday’s elections. Most ominous for Democrats were their losses in gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, although the party did prevail in House special elections in New York and California.

This is your government in anti-democratic action, straight up. Which is fine, let ‘em try. But there will be unholy hell to pay.

For those not familiar with the quote that provides the title of the post, it’s from A Bronx Tale. Language and violence warning, and definitely NSFW—but once you get to the fight, the best stuff’s done.

And if you find that film analogy unconvincing, picture Nancy Pelosi as Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs—and if you’ve never seen this scene, don’t start now. Don’t. Do not. It gave me the creeps just perusing it to see if it was the one I wanted.

It was. And don’t.

I’ve sold the Democrats short. I thought their whole “Celebrate Diversity” nonsense was just a bunch of hooey. Turns out, they are a “big tent” party (as in circus-comma-freak show)

Plumline’s Greg Sargent has posted the results of a highly confidential House Democratic Party Whip Count which shows 47 Democrats at No on a public option, with another 8 leaning No for a total of 56. A dozen Democratic House members are still undecided. The hard No votes, alone, are enough to kill the bill. The leaked document was produced by the U.S. House Majority Whip’s office.

In a major violation of whipping protocol, the document was shared with Progressive House members who refuse to vote for health reform unless it contains a robust public option. Plumline reports that the Progressive Members of Congress (hard core left-wingers) blamed everyone: the White House and the Democratic leadership for not putting enough pressure on members to vote for the public option, from Plumline:

“House progressives argue that the document should light a fire under Dem leaders. One House progressive tells me he’s convinced that most of the undecideds, and a number of the No votes, can be won over with the right mix of pressure and incentives — which only the House leadership and the White House can provide.”

“Only leadership and the White House can get this done,” this progressive says.

I don’t think even this president can promise enough rounds of golf to satisfy the old boy network.

That’s 68 Democratic congressmen less than enthused with the “robust” public option (though who has anything to say against an enfeebled one?), more than a quarter of the party. And as the excerpt above makes clear, the 47 hard nos alone are enough to defeat the bill if they are joined by all 177 Republicans.

And Reid in the Senate is no more secure.

I’ll believe this thing is dead when I see it buried and can piss on its grave. Not until. But at least I can crack a smile.