We've been here before--sort of

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Senator from Texas before he was Vice President and then President. When he had Harry Reid's position, Senate Majority Leader, he was one of the most effective leaders the Senate ever had, if "effective" means he could pass legislation. He was known for his in-your-face arm-twisting methods, and he got results--real bipartisan results, not just one vote from a whacko faux-Republican from Maine. One of the best books I think ever written about the Senate is Robert Caro's third volume of his Johnson biography, Master of the Senate.

I was reading a different book just last night, a biography of Katharine Graham, the owner of The Washington Post, by Carol Felsenthal. What I read about Johnson's passage of the Civil Rights Act made me realize that what's happening now in the Senate about health care is nothing new. What's different about the process now is that it's out in the open, mainly because of bloggers on the internet and also because of the 24-hour news cycle. Unfortunately, it would seem as if the tortured process and work-arounds that we're seeing today is pretty much business as usual.

This is from Felsenthal: There were some who were focused on making sure that Lyndon Johnson would be the Democrat candidate for President in 1960. And with that goal in mind, Johnson was pushed to make the Civil Rights Act of 1957 his cause. The bill had been passed by the House, and Johnson was advised that if he wanted the presidency he had to shed his segregationist image by piloting it through the Senate, where he was the majority leader. Johnson was in a tough position--squiring the bill would hurt him in Texas; killing it would hurt his national ambitions. So, following his political instincts and the advice of Phil Graham [Katharine Graham's husband and the owner of The Washington Post]--who bolstered his advice with some very helpful editorials in The Washington Post--Johnson decided to weaken the bill, but just enough to save his Texas constituency without fatally disillusioning his hoped-for national one. It was a brilliant piece of work. The version of the bill that Johnson pushed through the Senate had everything cut out of it except voting rights, and even there the enforcement provisions were enfeebled.

Sound familiar? "Pass anything"--and then later they will come around again and make the bill into anything they want it to be. This morning at 1:00 a.m., in the dead of night, Harry Reid passed cloture on his crap bill with a completely partisan vote, 60-40.

Seriously, this is taxation without representation. Everyone's taxes will go up because of this health crap bill--Every. One's. It will also turn out to be a job killer--just ask any small business owner how many new jobs he's going to be creating over the next year--or instead, how many people he will have to lay off.

This is my last post for awhile. I have my own work to do, and I need a break from the smell of this Washington swamp. I plan to keep reading about what's going on to keep myself informed, but I'm going to stop blogging for awhile--it's too time consuming and it feels like a waste of time at this point--although I reserve the right to change my mind even tomorrow if I want to, since for me writing is often the very best way to learn what I want to know about a subject.

It's clear that these assclowns in Washington are going to succeed in shoving whatever they want to down our collective throats, at least for the time being. We've been here before, but it seems much more dangerous this time. We could lose our country, literally, because Washington seems determined to spend until they break the bank. It's imperative that people keep informed about what's going on, but unfortunately, I'm afraid that many too many thinking adults aren't paying attention. When they wake up one morning and ask, "What happened to my country?" at that point it will be too late.

What's the quote?--"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have." --Thomas Jefferson

I plan to stay informed, stay involved, and do what I can to help change the direction we're headed--off the precipice--as Obama recently said in one of his most memorable Freudian slips. I know there are a lot of people out there who are doing the same, and I only hope that more people--on both the right and the left--will join the cause.

Oh, and P.S. I'm not feeling defeated nor even feeling particularly pessimistic. We have the greatest country in the world, and the people who love this country will prevail. Also, I'm not nearly as calm as this post may sound. I'm INCENSED at what the Senate has done the past week, and I guess I'm just taking a step back to figure out how best to respond. Re-form the line, and fight on.

Dems don't get it:
We're proud to be the "Party of NO"

Every one of the polls--every one--is telling these politicians in Washington "NO" to passing the health care bill. But they aren't listening. They tell us, as if we were children, that they know better, that a few years down the line, when we've all gotten used to this bill, we're really going to like it. Hell No.

The latest WSJ poll says that only 32% think passing the bill is a good idea.
The latest ABC News poll: 51% say passing the bill is a bad idea.
Gallup: 49% oppose the bill.
Rasmussen: 56% oppose the bill.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) defended the Party of No: “We’re accused of being the party of no,” he said. But “no is a wonderful word. When your child is misbehaving, you say no. When someone’s stealing liberty, you say no…Saying no at the right time saves lives. Saying no at the right time saves money…Saying no at the right time saves liberty.”

The rhetoric in the Senate as these assclowns work to pass this craptastik health "reform" bill would be hilarious if the issue weren't so serious. The Leftists have "calling names" down to an art form.

Here's Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) giving us one for the books as he talks about passing the $636 billion Pentagon spending bill; he said the deficit "mushroomed" under Bush "because these fiscally conservative, flinty-eyed, styptic-hearted Republicans engaged in a war that they wouldn't pay for.

Then there's Sen. Sholden Whitehouse (D-RI), who tops even Durbin's overblown rhetoric.

“Voting ‘no’ and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.

They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.”

Let's see, did he miss anything? Running around in white sheets, maybe? What an embarrassment this clown is. Here's the video, h/t Gateway Pundit.



And here's Ed Morrissey's [HotAir] answer to this fool. Beautiful.

When an idiot can’t answer an argument, he tosses ad hominem bombs in an attempt to silence his critics and provide cover for his intellectual deficiencies. When a politician does it, we should all wonder why he’s unable to provide support for his position. In Whitehouse’s case, it may be either that he’s a foul-mouthed fool educated far beyond his mental capacity to process the information, or that he’s defending an indefensible position and has nothing better to offer. Or, in Whitehouse’s case, it could easily be both.

Breaking News: Benedict Nelson will vote for cloture

. . . with blood on his hands

The Cornhusker Kickback: Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was bought, just like the others. Big, big, big surprise.  Harry Reid found his price. As HotAir is reporting this morning, Nelson and his state will receive a boatload of federal cash. The HotAir post gives the details about why none of the progressives who are for this bill will be bothered by the so-called anti-abortion funding language. Conclusion: Nelson caved on abortion and sold out for an extra year of federal Medicaid subsidies.

Here's a link for 2010, if anyone is interested. Nebraska Republicans Are Looking Ahead With Confidence

Here's Nebraska Governor Heineman speaking with Greta Van Susteren last week: HEINEMAN: Well, I haven't talked to him personally for a couple of weeks. We do run into each other at various functions, obviously, in our state. He knows my concerns. I think he's genuinely undecided right now. There was also a poll released today that showed by a margin of 67 percent to 26 percent, Nebraskans are opposed to this health care bill. Slow down. Get it right. There's nothing magical about getting this done by Christmas.

Ha! There is if you're Harry Reid. And now Ben Nelson as well, since he's saving Offutt AFB and bringing cash to his state. What's that put up against a few dead babies one way or the other, hey Ben?

Page 98 of the managers amendment specifically identifies Nebraska for higher federal matching funds, fully funding its expansion for an additional year:

‘‘(3) Notwithstanding subsection (b) and paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection, the Federal medical assistance percentage otherwise determined under subsection (b) with respect to all or any portion of a fiscal year that begins on or after January 1, 2017, for the State of Nebraska, with respect to amounts expended for newly eligible individuals described in subclause (VIII) of section 1902(a)(10)(A)(i), shall be determined as provided for under subsection (y)(1) (A) (notwithstanding the period provided for in such paragraph)

Subsection (y)(1)(A) refers to page 399 of the original merged Senate legislation which fully funds state Mediciad expansions for the first two years. The manager’s amendment also provides 2.2% increase in FMAP to help states finance their existing Medicaid programs.

From Allahpundit at HotAir: That will be worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars in federal cash for Nebraska … for the first three years. After that, Nebraskans get as screwed as the rest of the country. **Nope, that's wrong. We will be paying for Nebraska's Medicaid--forever. See below, Update #2.

A downloaded version of the manager's amendment is here.

Update. Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) reacts to the Dems takeover of health care after buying off Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska: "jamming it through in the middle of the night on the last weekend before Christmas. . . . this is not renaming a post office."

Here's a partial transcript; the video is below.

Mitch McConnell: a few things about the bill you need to know.

• The bill slashes hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare to fund a massive new government bureaucracy. We know there are cuts to hospitals. We know there are cuts to nursing homes. We know there are cuts to home health care. And we know there are cuts to Hospice.
  
• With regard to taxes. The bill includes massive tax increases on American families and on American businesses—doing that at a time of double digit unemployment. Taxes will make it much harder to create jobs as we try to come out of this economic slowdown. There are taxes on health insurance. There are taxes on medical devices. There are taxes on medicine. And there are taxes on working families with very high medical expenses.
  
• Abortion. The bill includes permissive language on government funded abortions, language that would lead the federal government to violate long-standing policies on abortion funding.
  
• The class act: referred to earlier this year by the chairman of the budget committee as a ponzi scheme, is in the bill.
  
• Medicaid. This is particularly interesting. The bill imposes massive burdens on states that are already struggling under the weight of the costs of Medicaid. At the same time, however, it gives special sweetheart deals to a select few states [NEBRASKA]. Interestingly enough, two states that stand out are Nebraska and Vermont.

So, what is the upshot of this for taxpayers elsewhere, taxpayers in Kentucky, and even in Nevada? –and Ohio, and Virginia, and New York, and Michigan? They end up, in effect, paying more so that Nebraska and Vermont can get a special deal.

So our conclusion would be this, based on what we know so far on the bill still being read and analysed, not only by my office but everybody else in the Senate who hasn’t seen it , and all of you. Our friends on the other side like to talk about making history about the historic steps they’re taking. The history that’s being made here, make no mistake about it, the history that’s being made here is the ignoring of the will of the American people. The history that’s being made is that a bill that was sold as helping a major problem in our nation actually makes the problem worse, because independent non-partisan score keepers tell us that premiums, taxes, and overall health care spending will actually go up under this bill.

America, if this was a good bill with bipartisan support, I assure you they would not be trying to pass this the weekend before Christmas and in the middle of the night. And the reason I say the middle of the night, the next vote, literally, will be the middle of the night. It will be at 1:00 a.m. Monday morning. The presumption is, of course, that no one will be watching. If this was a good bill with bipartisan support, if we had followed Sen. Snowe’s advice several weeks ago, to sit down and write this bill in a way that could pass the Senate with 80 votes, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. This is an absolute outrage that’s being perpetrated on the American people—an absolute outrage. Americans need to know what’s going on, and we’re going to give them every opportunity to learn as much as we can and they can about this as the process moves forward. -end transcript-



Update. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) is working behind the scenes, trying to sink the abortion compromise. This subject may warrant its own post--we'll see where it goes. "We ain't done yet!"

Update #2. What did Nelson get for his vote? He got the federal government to pick up most of his state's future Medicaid tab--forever. That means, of course, we all--except those who live in Nebraska--get to pay for Nebraska's Medicaid. Read it here at Politico.

So then why doesn't everybody in the Senate just sell their vote on this thing--like Bayh or Lincoln or Pryor or any of the other Dem, any of whom obviously could represent the 60th vote? These people are getting nothing for their vote. Allapundit at HotAir asks, "Is there some strategic point to this that I'm missing or are they simply the royal schmucks we suspect them of being?" They certainly must feel like schmucks right now, giving away their votes for "free."

Update #3. BigGovernment has the story of Sen. Nelson's bribe. In its quixotic attempt to ensure everyone has health insurance, the Reid legislation greatly expands Medicaid eligibility. Because Medicaid is a program whose costs are split between the federal and state governments, this expansion in eligibility raise costs dramatically for states. States will be forced to either raise taxes or cut other services to accommodate the forced increase in Medicaid spending. Unless that state is Nebraska.

Copenhagen Cleanup

I am SO DONE with Copenhagen, but I thought this last headline was worthwhile. It comes from the Fox White House Press Blog, contributing editor Major Garrett: "Copenhagen Climate Conference Ends With Whimper, No Legally Binding Pact, No Commitment to Pursue One in 2010."

This is what Obama calls "meaningful"? Garrett reports that the agreement has no internal or external enforcement mechanism. . . . "Significantly" the commitment to pursue a legally binding pact in 2010 was dropped. Obama left Copenhagen before any sort of accord was approved due to the "massive" snowstorm that was forcast for D.C.

As with anything else involving Barack Obama, we need to keep an eye on the subtext--what does the agreement mean, how will it be implemented, will he be doing some fancy two-step end-around Congress to transfer wealth to "developing" countries by agreeing to some sort of global tax? We can never let down our guard with ObamaTeam.

And finally, in keeping with my Twelve Days of Copenhagen theme, I thought this video of the The 12 Days of Global Warming was a good sendoff. Thanks, Al.



Update. They must have felt they had to get something out of this conference, so the agreement they reached is being called--ta-da!--the Copenhagen Accord. This thing was drawn up on Friday night by leaders from the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. It was formally accepted by the UN COP15 during a closing session on Saturday morning. Wow--strong language: "The conference of the parties takes note of the Copenhagen Accord," says a final decision.

A Euro spokesman told BBC News: "What could be agreed today, falls far below our expectations but it keeps our goals and ambitions alive. . . . It was the only deal available in Copenhagen."

Here's the financing commitment: the Copenhagen Accord says developed countries commit collectively to providing 30 billion U.S. dollars in new, additional funding for developing countries for the 2010-2012 period. It also says developed countries support "a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year" by 2020 from a variety of forces." And who will oversee these funds? Does anyone remember the Oil for Food program that was supposed to be administered by the U.N.? That worked out so well.

As always, the American Thinker has some good clean-up stuff on the Copenhagen mess.

"I don't want to be a Norwegian," by Fernando R. Teson. I don't want the United States to become Norway; that is, I don't want the United States to turn into a quaint, small, powerless, and socialist country. Yet I suspect the Obama administration is trying to do precisely that.

I don't want to be Sweden, either. Take a gander at Malmo, Sweden, right across the water from Copenhagen.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/556299.aspx

"All you need to know about Copenhagen," by Randall Hoven. This is all about wealth transfer and sabotaging capitalism.

"Global warming and the 'settled science' baloney, by Claude Sandroff. If you've misspent your youth conducting experiments, taking graduate courses in physics and chemistry, and know something about thermodynamics, molecular spectroscopy, fluid mechanics, modeling data and publishing scientific papers, the current debate over anthropogenic global warming can make you hurl.

Saturday HealthCare Bill Update: Keeping Track of 60 Votes

Lieberman is out of town, reportedly in Connecticut to celebrate the Jewish sabbath and the last night of Hanukkah. So that means he won't be available for any vote on Saturday. Evidently he was assured that his vote wasn't needed to pass the Defense Appropriations bill, which means the Dems are relying on at least one Republican to vote with them so that they can put the appropriations bill behind them and get back to health care.

The Dems were able to pass cloture on the appropriations bill by 63-33; Sens. Collins and Snowe (the R-Maine hag twins) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas) voted yes with the Dems, but only when it was clear that the Dems had the 60 votes to pass cloture. It's sort of interesting to see the Senate at work. I happened to see this vote on CSPAN (at about 1 a.m. St. Louis time). The three women stood together talking at the front of the room, waiting for all of the Dems to vote. They finally voted Yes when they saw it didn't make any difference. So how will those three vote on the actual bill? If they were to vote No, then the Senate would have to wait for Lieberman to return to cast vote #60. It's all about playing for time.

While we're playing for time, here's something to listen to: http://www.bornagainamerican.org/index.html. Nice.

But let's assume Harry Reid is able to get one Republican to vote with him for the appropriations bill--which also assumes that all the other Democrats are available for the vote despite the snowstorm that hit Washington, D.C. last night, which to me seems like something of a stretch. That means they would move on to healthcrap. On Friday night, Reid said he intends to unveil final revisions to the health care bill on Saturday. Way to go, Harry. Breitbart reports that Reid is expressing "confidence" about passing the bill after daylong talks with Dem holdout Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Not that anyone is counting, but that must be about the 87th time that Reid has expressed confidence in passing the bill since about April.

Despite Reid's optimistic posturing, The Hill reports that Harry started the week four votes shy of the 60 he needs to move the bill forward--and he ended the week the same way. That's not progress, Harry.

Possible Holdouts:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb). He wants language in the bill that will safeguard taxpayer dollars from paying for abortions. He's also concerned about the burden the bill will put on the states with additional Medicaid spending.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). He's a liberal who often bucks his party. Evidently his vote isn't yet secure.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). He's not really an Independent--he's a Socialist. He's a passionate single-payer advocate. Now that single-payer is supposedly off the table (although who knows, since no one has seen the bill), Sanders' vote is anybody's guess. He didn't strike me as a team player when I was listening to him rail against the system when he withdrew his amendment.

Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.). This guy is a wild card. He's the one who was put into Obama's Senate seat. In the past, he's threatened to join a Republican filibuster if a public option wasn't part of the bill. He's on record as saying he doesn't support the bill. He doesn't strike me as someone who's going to stand in the way of Reid's bill--I think he's more mouth than action.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). She could give Reid the 60th vote if any of the Dems decide not to go along with the bill. Also count on Harry to scream "bipartisan" about healthcrap if she votes Yes. She says she's still a holdout, however, wanting to see the final bill before she decides (imagine that one) and wants to hear about a cost estimate. Evidently she's also insisting that the vote should take place after Christmas.

Stay tuned.

Update. Saturday morning. The Senate approved the Defense spending bill, 88-10. Sen. Feingold (D-Calif.) voted No, along with 9 Republicans. And Harry's Manager's Amendment is now being read on the Senate floor. I've looked at a copy of this thing--it's 383 pages and probably averages somewhere around 100 words to the page because of line spacing and large margins. So it's not going to take all that long for them to read it on the Senate floor. [Several websites keep repeating that it's going to take 9 hours to read. No it won't--it can't be taking more than a minute per page to read, and most pages probably take considerably less, so that would be somewhere between 3 and 6 hours, with 6 hours being an outside maximum. What's the point? This is a done deal. I'm feeling totally cynical and sickened by this whole process.

Here's a small example of what we're dealing with having this bill, that will take over one-sixth of the American economy, cobbled together as a manager's amendment:

Section 2715(a) of the Public Health Service Act, as added by section 1001(5) of this Act, is amended by striking "and providing to enrollees" and inserting "and providing to applicants, enrollees, and policyholders or certificate holders."

The entire amendment is like this. I wonder how many other acts and bills it refers to? So unless someone has a copy of the Public Health Service Act handy, for example, they can really have no idea what's going on with the health crap bill, even if they do read the thing. This is an absolute travesty. It ought to be illegal. The American people have been totally punked by this nasty little man, Harry Reid. NO ONE should vote for this piece of shit. You can find a downloaded version of the manager's amendment here.

Reports are that the CBO score for the bill will be released before noon.

Harry Reid's Demented Obsession

Has Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lost his mind? I mean seriously, is the man insane? I was up reading late last night (Thursday) and happened to remember that the Senate was supposed to reconvene at 12:01 a.m. Friday morning to vote for cloture on the bill to fund the military. "Vote for cloture" is a phrase I wouldn't have understood just six short months ago. Sadly, I know all too well now what it means. All it means is a vote to end debate on a bill--it does not mean that a Senator is voting "for" a bill. A Senator could just as easily vote for cloture so that he or she could get on with a negative vote. But I digress.

I turned on CSPAN for a little while to see if the Senate was really in session--and I saw a little bit of the Senate debate and vote to end cloture. What I thought was, these people are too old to be staying up so late. I have no idea how long they were at it, because I went to bed.

Harry is keeping these hours, and causing his fellow Senators and staff to keep them with him, so that he can keep to a totally artificial deadline of passing the Senate version of the health care bill before the Senate leaves Washington for Christmas break. Of course he needs to do that, because the thinking is, if the Senators go home for Christmas break and get an earful from the 61% or so of Americans who are against this craptastik government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, then passing this monster bill when they come back from break in 2010 is going to be next to impossible. If he is able to keep to the schedule, if Republicans are unable to slow the vote down more than they have, then it looks as though the Senate will be voting on the bill on Christmas Eve.

Then there's this: none of Harry's colleagues, even Democrat Senators, have actually seen this bill. Huh? Well, evidently that's true, because even the Democrats keep saying they haven't seen the bill. This was posted today at Politico: "Wait Goes On, Possibly No Bill Till Morning." So what's going on?

It's all about 60 votes. Sen. Reid is having a hell of a time getting the 60 votes he needs for this bill. As of today, Friday he evidently still doesn't have the votes he needs, so Harry is going to do an end-around the need for 60 and use something called the manager's amendment.  Let David Brody explain what that is and why Harry's using it. It's complicated, so I'm going to quote him at length:

Let me try and explain this. You see, Harry Reid needs 60 votes to pass a healthcare reform bill. If Ben Nelson's pro-life language is not in the bill, Nelson says he won't vote for it. That leaves Reid at 59. Independent Joe Lieberman won't vote for the bill if it has a public option in it so now Reid is at 58. To get to 60, Reid has a couple options. First of all, he's going to need to change the public option that is currently in the Senate bill so he could try to forge some sort of compromise in the public option (negotiations are taking place now on that) to the point where Snowe and Lieberman agree to it. That would be 60. Or to get Nelson back on board, he could just put Nelson's pro-life abortion amendment in a larger Manager's Amendment at the end of the process right before a final vote. (yes pro-choicers will hate this but they may have no other choice if they want healthcare reform) If he does that, he gets Nelson and hopes that Lieberman is content enough with the compromise on the "new" version of the so-called public option. That could get Reid to 60 as well.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Sen. Jim DeMint have threatened use any procedures available to them to slow down the vote on the bill, including requiring that the bill be read on the Senate floor before it can be voted on. They did this with an amendment submitted by Vermont self-proclaimed Socialist Bernie Sanders. After about three hours of reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment--which was against Senate rules, but if you're the Majority party, and you're a Democrat, then I guess you can throw 200+ years of Senate polity out the window if it doesn't serve your purposes.

Usually the reading of a bill is set aside in a unanimous vote, but in this case, with Harry's timeline being such an issue, those against the bill hoped that by slowing down the process, Reid would be forced to send the Senate home for Christmas break without a vote. I've done the math, and if they were to read the 3,000-page bill on the Senate floor, they would be at it for about 19 8-hour days. That's where the manager's amendment comes in so handy for Harry Reid, since this thing would take, as someone else has estimated, only about eight hours to read. However, since no one has seen an actual copy of this manager's amendment, who's to say that the estimate is correct. I don't think even Harry Reid knows how many pages are in this thing--so I don't think that estimate is worth much.

The Hill is reporting for the Senate to vote on the health care bill before Christmas, Sen. Reid will have to force votes all week at odd hours, like the one at 1:00 a.m. this morning to end cloture on the spending bill. The Hill spells out the details of what Reid will have to do to stick to his schedule for a vote by Christmas. And again, all I can say is that the pressure of passing this legislation seems to have driven Harry Reid right around the bend. Seriously, I'm hoping for a nervous breakdown for the guy, the sooner the better. What he is doing is plain evil. Last night I watched as they wheeled in poor old 90-something Robert Byrd (D-WV) by wheelchair, at 1:00 a.m., so that he could cast his vote for cloture. I didn't hear anyone report it, but I'm quite sure I heard Senator Lieberman's distinctive voice cry "Shame" as they brought him in--I assume "shame" that they would bring an old man out of his bed in the middle of the night so that Harry Reid can shove this crap bill down the country's collective throat.

Speaking of Sen. Lieberman. He's an orthodox Jew who doesn't drive or ride on Saturday, the Jewish sabbath. Which means he will be walking to the Senate chambers from his Georgetown home if a vote is called for on Saturday. But it's my understanding that "driving" or "riding" is defined as "work," which is why it's forbidden on the Sabbath. So why would Lieberman be able to cast a vote on the Sabbath--wouldn't that be "work"? Lieberman explains: religious law makes an exemption for actions that are for the welfare of the community, and many Democrats — if not Republicans — think healthcare reform will help their communities. “I have a responsibility to my constituents, really to my conscience, to be here on something as important as healthcare reform,” he said.

Plus there's a big-ass snowstorm forecast for Washington tonight--it's snowing there as I write this and the roads already look nasty, and there's a winter storm warning until 6:00 a.m. on Sunday. Considering the weather report and the late hours that everyone will be keeping, Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard is calling for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to end all of this tonight ("End It Today, Ben") by announcing today he won't vote for cloture on the health care bill and allowing everyone to go home for the weekend: Harry Reid is maniacally insisting on a Christmas Eve vote on a bill whose final text no one has seen yet. So from a good government point of view, Nelson can say that he feels he has to be against cloture.

Update. Well, this is a first, linking on this site to that ultra-leftist whacko Daily Kos, who is calling for the Senate to scrap this crap bill and start over. He gets most of it wrong, with whacko-leftist revisionist history, but in the end he's still calling for the bill to be pulled.

And at what point do supporters finally bail on this? When the subsidies are removed, medicaid expansion curtailed, Stupak anti-abortion language included?


We're at the point, I think, where you strip this thing of anything remotely controversial and pass whatever is left -- maybe tougher rules against rescissions, some regulatory reform, etc. But as far as substantive reform, we live in a legislative world were a majority can't accomplish shit because idiotic rules prevent government from governing. And we can't resort to reconciliation because we live in a world in which procedural tactics that were okay for Republicans, are somehow off limits for Democrats.

Um, Kos, Republicans used reconciliation (the 51-vote option) on a budget bill to end cuts in Medicare and student loans, not on a bill that would take over one-sixth of the economy that almost two-thirds of the American people don't want. But here I am, arguing with an idiot, which I have told myself I will not waste my time doing.

DK concludes: [I]t's time for people to stop supporting the current bill until we know what it will actually look like. Because it doesn't just enable its opponents, but will also leave you looking stupid when that bill turns out to be nothing more than a backdoor expansion of abortion restrictions, and assorted other horrors. I couldn't agree more.

Update. Here's a good website: Defeat Reid 2010. I just made a contribution.

Update #2. Saturday afternoon. Well, I guess the guy is crazy like a fox. It certainly looks like he's going to succeed in shoving this crap sandwich health bill down our collective throat. I like this article at PajamasMedia by Richard Pollock: "The Health Care Bill No One Can See."

On January 21, 2009, the president issued an eloquent statement — almost poetic — on how information can really be a truly valuable national asset:

Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset.

So here we are, eleven months into his young administration, and we are seeing a pivotal bill born of the worst possible process: no openness, tons of secrecy, and back room wheeling and dealing. . . . After eight years of screaming about President Bush’s secrecy, it is interesting that the mainstream media is largely mum about the legislative abuse now underway.

We don’t know how AARP fared in influencing details of the bill. Or how SEIU shaped the bill. Or what Big Pharma was promised for its endorsement of an early Obama plan. Citizens cannot see who authored which provisions, who won big federal favors, or who will get new privileges in the Brave New World of Big Brother delivering health care. No one knows … yet.

"On the twelveth day of Copenhagen,
the GreenFrauds (and Obama) gave to me. . ."

Updates below.

"Angry Obama" speaks to Copenhagen. Well, Obama is in Copenhagen, and he evidently spoke to his adoring socialist Euro-fans.

The COP15 website is reporting the "serious disarray" of the talks that prompted the world leaders to hold an unscheduled meeting: The lack of a deal caused leaders to throw out the planned timetable for the final day of the two-week UN climate conference, with their informal talks delaying the opening of the regular session.

Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, negotiating on behalf of the 27-nation European Union, blamed the morning's impasse on the Chinese for "blocking again and again," and on the U.S. for coming too late with an improved offer, a long-range climate aid program announced Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

World leaders handed off the draft text of about three pages at about 3 a.m. local time to their ministers and they continued to work on it through the night. But by 5 a.m., negotiators from Mexico and the G-77 plus China said they were nowhere near agreement on the final document.

Major Garrett, Senior White House reporter for Fox News, reported that Senior Chinese officials--those empowered to make decisions here--boycotted the meeting. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei came mainly as an observer. His attendance was viewed widely by heads of state as a formal Chinese snub of an 11th-hour push for compromise.

Here is Obama's speech. Wow, he's really doing the arrogant Mussolini chin-jut thing during this speech. Sorry, Obama. You can't go around the world apologizing for America all during your campaign and first year as president and then pull out the American-exceptionalism-moral-authority card when you need it. It just doesn't work that way.



Critics of the speech say he offered "nothing new," and some environmentalists criticized his remarks. "This speech appears to be more of a face-saving exercise for President Obama than an attempt to unite countries around a truly planet-saving agreement," said Friends of the Earth U.S. President Erich Pica in a statement. "The U.S. has failed to significantly improve upon the weak position it brought to these talks."

Britain's main Leftist rage, the UK Guardian, said that his speech "disappoints and fuels frustration" in Copenhagen. China and India have walked out of the Copenhagen talks. Apparently these Euro-socialists thought that Obama would come to the summit, heal the divisions, and bring everyone together with a world-wide climate agreement--all in one day. Have they not been paying attention to his abysmal job performance for the past year?

Others are reporting that Obama's speech was "boring, frustrating, and insincere." Vanity Fair, a Leftist rag that has given Obama only the most drooling sort of approval, called Obama's speech a "flop." The VF article quoted the disappointment registered by a climate scientist: “I don’t think the speech will be very well received by China, among others,” said Richard Klein, an I.P.C.C. climate scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute. “There is such a thing as historical responsibility. [President Obama] has a way with words that works for the media, for the general public, but it doesn’t work for seasoned negotiators who know the ins and outs of these issues and who won’t be reassured that this is a different U.S. from what we’ve seen over the last eight years.”

Klein's point is well taken: Obama can fool the willing stooges in the lamestream media and also his fawning fans in the general public, but when he's speaking before a crowd that actually knows a thing or two about his subject, then it doesn't always go so well for The Won, mainly because his speeches are patchworks of empty rhetoric with little substance--they don't say anything, which seems to be, yet again, the knock on the Copenhagen speech. VF did somewhat excuse Obama, saying he was "looking tired after his overnight flight." Did he "look tired" at Oslo after his overnight flight to pick up his Nobel Prize?

This is a post from a HotAir commenter that I think is particularly on point.

Such a concentration of the world’s most hypocritical loons…

They fly into a country, during blizzard conditions (to talk about global warming), on their private jets, drive around in limos and demand that the capitalist countries send money to the socialist ones, none of which has done anything to further advances in humanity or freedom. Then, they give a standing ovation to a third-rate, third-world dictator who’s in the process of stealing his country’s wealth.


At the end of the day, what is their biggest obstacle? Other than China, who isn’t insane enough to go along with the global warming farce, it’s we the people who value the capitalism and freedom that helped us to prosper.


We the people will be sending the liberals home next year and replacing them with people who defend every aspect of America and will tell Chavez to shove it where the sun don’t shine. Every twenty or thirty years, we the people elect snake oil salesmen liberals and have to suffer the consequences before we’re reminded how great our society had been. A couple of years of Pelosi, Reid and Obama has been a real wake-up call for we the people.

If Obama were to make a deal with the Green World at Copenhagen, some believe he might be violating the constitution.

Update. Totally predictable. Who didn't see these results? "Climate Deal Announced, but Falls Short of Expectations," reports the NYT.

After 12 days, I am completely sick of blogging about Copenhagen. You're on your own unless there's something that's a whole lot more interesting than the completely predictable crap coming out of the Obama administration: a "meaningful" agreement. Blah.

"On the eleventh day of Copenhagen,
the GreenFrauds gave to me. . ."

Copenhagen is a mess, on many levels. Where to start? How about with James Delingpole, writing at the UK Telegraph? Yesterday's article: "Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming." Delingpole writes that "Climategate just got much, much bigger."

Delingpole reports a statement issued by the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA): The IEA believes that Russian meteorlogical station data did not substantiate the anthrpogenic global warming theory. . . . The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

There's more information posted by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit.

Delingpole wraps it up with this: The crux of the argument is that the CRU [Climate Research Unit]cherry picked data following the same methods that have been done everywhere else. They ignored data covering 40% of Russia and chose data that showed a warming trend over statistically preferable alternatives when available. They ignored completeness of data, preferred urban data, strongly preferred data from stations that relocated, ignored length of data set.

Obama's good buddy Hugo Chavez showed up at Copenhagen yesterday. As GatewayPundit reports, Chavez told the crowd "Capitalism is the road to hell" and got a standing ovation. Chavez blamed all the world's ills--AIDS, poverty, war--on capitalism, "the enemy of the earth." Chavez's speech was red meat for this Socialist/Marxist/Warmist crowd.

"Putting Our Economy in the Hands of Chavez Fans," Andrew Bolt writes at the Herald Sun that Chavez, going 20 minutes beyond his alloted 5-minute time, brought down the house with his anti-American rhetoric. The crowd was also treated to a mass-murderer railing against the crimes of the West, Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s veteran President, who is the target of Western sanctions over alleged human rights abuses.

There's video of both Mugabe and Chavez on the Bolt site.

Mugabe and Chavez are only one face of Copenhagen. Here's another.

It seems pretty clear that these "climate activists" at Copenhagen are very much about street theater, which is fine. The hippie freaks of the 1960s had their day as well, when the crowds who showed up to "protest the war" were really about hanging out in the street with like-minded people, "make love not war," "don't bogart that joint," yadda yadda. That being said, however tolerant I am of their right to hang out in the street and do whatever, I certainly have no interest in handing over billions of U.S. dollars to some utopian global government where people like this crowd are going to demand that I change my life to fit some twisted ideal of what they believe is "fair." I'm also afraid that this is pretty much the face of the young generation of Socialism, and guys, do what you want, but I don't want to pay for your shit. Yes?

Roger Simon reports on the Copenhagen crowd from Pajamas TV: "The Real Copenhagen: Hippies, Goofballs, and Climate, Inc."

Simon: This is Roger Simon reporting to you from Climate Central. That means Copenhagen, Denmark, which has been taken over by what seems to be hundreds of thousands of people. Every hotel room is jammed, including my own, all the streets are filled with journalists. This city and what is going on here has almost nothing with science or climate science. It's kind of a combination of third-world profiteers and hippie rebels. It is not about anything serious, no matter what you read in the paper, and no one you talk to on the streets is serious. Everybody thinks this is a goof.

Also, it's vastly mismanaged. You thought that the Scandinavian countries were famously orderly. Well, no one can get it, no one can get press passes, no one can get their badges. But you can go down to a place called the Klimo Org [sp?] and pick up a lot of things there, including the following newspapers. Climate Chronicle. Now, in case that one doesn't interest you, there's the Climate Justice Times, another fine paper. Then there's, in magazine form, Ode, "for intelligent optimists." I'm sort of like a dopey pessimist. But anyway, this Ode magazine is a special Copenhagen edition. And of course, last but not least, the COP15 Post, which is the daily conference news. And who is on the cover, but the man who I myself called out, and he says that he didn't know who I was, but he heard what I said when I said they should retrieve his Oscar. Of course I'm referring to Al Gore himself, who is here today, once again making a fool of himself by making statements about acidity in the ocean which are evidently not true. But that's Al, and it's just part of the charade.

This is all a game. And nothing much is really going to happen from here, but we're going to have a lot of fun making fun of these people.

By the way, when I arrived, of course the first thing--everything is climate central here--I arrived and the cab driver welcomed me in his climate-friendly car. The cab driver himself, though, was a little disabused of how cap drivers were not profiting from the occasion. I arrived at my hotel, which is called the Kong Arthur, the King Arthur, and is the world's first climate-friendly hotel. Now what does that mean? I asked the very nice concierge:

Simon: I'm here at the Hotel Kong Arthur which is a carbon neutral hotel, is that right?
Concierge: That's correct. We are carbon neutral hotel.
Simon: How does that happen? What makes it carbon neutral?
Concierge: What you do is, every single person has a carbon footprint they leave behind. We do it so here, we actually go into neutral, so what is emitted is actually going into neutral. Based on the hotel, from all the footprints, we go into neutral.
Simon: What happens in August when it gets really hot? Do you turn off the air conditioning?
Concierge: We don't have air conditioning.
Simon. Oh boy, it's a nice hotel. I'll have to stay here in August to find out.

Then I went to my climate friendly room, which is very poorly lit, naturally. It only has, I regret to say, one fluorescent lightbulb, but it has three old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs. Shame on them. However, it's still the most climate friendly hotel around. Why it is, I'm not quite sure, but you can look it up on their website, and they have a lot of words for it. That's what you get in this town, words about climate friendliness, everywhere, everywhere you go, it's climate central. It's kind of like Disneyland for Climate. You know how when you go to a convention city that's taken over by one kind of thing? Well this is taken over by Climate Change. This is a very interesting event. Can we call it corrupt? Well, maybe. Let's look into that and tomorrow we'll have more on that question. This is Roger Simon. -end video transcript-

Pajamas TV has posted another video, "Climate of Greed: Getting Rich With Doom and Gloom." It's about the money, straight up.

And then of course, there's China, the world's largest industrial emitter of CO2. This comes from the Washington Post this morning: "US Pledges Billions; China Says Climate Pact Is Doubtful." The United States pledged Thursday to help build a $100 billion annual fund by 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate change, but said its commitment depends on whether the nations gathered here forge a substantive environmental pact that includes "transparency" on tracking emissions cuts. Hilarious. The most un-transparent administration evah, that campaigned on transparency, is demanding an agreement from the world that includes transparency. Maybe they'll put AlGore in charge of the transparency clause. Like giving a lunatic the keys to the asylum door.

The UK Telegraph reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is attempting to break the deadlock in Copenhagen "by offering huge amounts of money." Saying that the danger climate change is now "undeniable," Clinton warns the world "must agree" to a deal within 48 hours. What is it with these Leftists? I guess they found out that hysterically yelling WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW worked once, with the stimulus, so now they try it with everything--health care and now the Copenhagen treaty. Well, stuff it Hill, that trick works only once--and shame on us for that.

Mrs Clinton said a lack of transparency will be a "deal breaker". [Was she able to say it with a straight face?] “There shall be a transparency requirement,” she said. “How it is defined and implemented is something we leave up to negotiators.” Mrs Clinton was also unclear about how much money the US will pay towards the fund or how the money will be raised. Too bad that because of our enormous debt, we really have no moral authority or any other authority over China.

I've seen several articles about the inadvisability of Obama going to Copenhagen. Ed Morrissey at HotAir thinks that Obama can’t afford to look foolish for at least the third time on his international adventures. He's already been to Copenhagen once and come home empty handed. Morrissey thinks Obama will find "pressing domestic issues" to pre-empt his Copenhagen trip. I don't know, in my experience, it's pretty damned hard to shame a narcissist. They just don't ever see themselves as looking foolish, since they always blame someone or something else for things going wrong.

Proof that God has a sense of humor: Copenhagen has been visited with what they are calling a "blizzard" --10 whole centimeters of snow (or 4 inches, for those who are metrically challenged or who just plain refuse to use the one-world system of measurement). Evidently Copenhagen is much like St. Louis in that they don't get a whole lot of snow (and so therefore, like St. Louisans, don't "do" snow very well). Some are calling this the "Al Gore effect." Reports Bloomberg.com: Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century.

Breaking News, Health Crap Bill. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) Forces Reading of 700-Page Amendment on Senate Floor

Updates below.

The one thing Harry Reid couldn't deal with while cramming the health crap bill down the country's throat was to have his hurry-up process slowed down. Earlier today, Senator Bernie Sanders, Socialist Senator from Vermont, introduced an amendment to the Reid version of ObamaCare that would have established a single-payer health-care system in the US. Ho-hum. Probably no one in the Senate was paying attention to the Sanders' amendment. Clearly it wasn't going anywhere, had no chance of getting sixty votes.

Enter Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), my newest favorite Senator evah, who warned last month that he would demand a reading of the bill on the Senate floor before a vote on the bill. So here we are, having the 767-page amendment read on the Senate floor.

Wednesday, Noon. I'm watching the Clerk of the Senate on C-Span read this bill as I write this. This is dense language and I feel for her--it's not easy to get through a page of this bill. She has to get through 700 pages. As far as I can tell, it's taking her somewhere between 2 and 4 minutes to get through a page--and she's noticeably slowing down. Oh my, a second person just took over for the original female reader. This guy is reading at about half the rate that the woman was reading at. He seems to be taking somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes to read a page. If this continues, they won't be finished with this until sometime later this evening.

I could be wrong about what constitutes a "page"--I'm counting when they turn the page over and appear to go on to another page. HotAir is reporting that this could take 12 hours. A Senate aid is estimating 8 to 10 hours. Michelle Malkin is reporting that it took 17 minutes to read the six-page Table of Contents. Heh.

I found the bill online and tried this myself. I've read papers at conferences before. For "normal" text, figuring about 250 words per page and I can normally read one page in two minutes. I just tried reading a page of this very convoluted text--it took me almost three minutes. So if it takes them an average of 2.5 minutes per page--and judging from the rate they're reading, it's going to take longer than that--it's going to take them 32 hours. So I don't know where the estimate of 8 to 10 hours is coming from.

Ed Morrissey of HotAir has this to say about Coburn's procedural move: What does this do? It makes a hash out of Harry Reid’s plan to move the bill through the Senate by Christmas. Twelve hours of floor time for just a single amendment means that no other business can be conducted until at least Friday. Coburn apparently launched this effort in response to an attempt by Reid to shove the bill to a cloture vote without giving everyone enough time to read the bill or peruse the CBO analysis, due this week.

Seriously, this is our democracy at work. The Founders meant for the government to move slowly and work badly--for the very reason that 2,000-page bills should never be up for a vote. The Founders would have been horrified, to say the least, at any bill 2,000 pages long and that was being passed with the intent to take over one-sixth of the economy.

The entire amendment is here.

Here is Coburn's statement before the reading. Sen. Max Baucus's (D-MT) response to Coburn: "I can't certify that members of the Senate will understand what they're reading." Then for the Love of God, man, don't write 2,000-page bills, you freaking tool. This reminds me of my students when I taught writing at the University. I not only had to give them a minimum page requirement, I also gave them a maximum requirement, because if I didn't, some of them would give me 20 crappy pages instead of 5 well-crafted good pages. I did my best to teach them that it's more difficult to "write shorter" than it is to write long. What's the joke?--"Sorry my letterto you is 10 pages long, but I didn't have time to make it shorter." These people who are responsible for this piece of crap bill are getting exactly what they deserve.



The HotAir commenters are at their best for this post:

• Does the amendment have to be read in Spanish, too? 
• "One man with courage is a majority." --Thomas Jefferson
• Ironic that it takes one stubborn minority legislator to deliver on the President’s promise of openness and transparency.

Update: 1:45 p.m. Wednesday. Sen. Sanders has withdrawn the amendment. He's railing against the Republicans right now for "shutting down" the government. If reading your amendment, Senator Sanders, shuts down the government, then maybe the problem is with the amendment and with the bill, and not with the Senators who used a procedure to slow down this crap bill.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) was working with Sen. Coburn, so we should thank him as well. DeMint has said that they will also vote to have the entire bill read before the vote. Evidently, if a Senator demands a reading of a bill, then he has to stay on the Senate floor or the other party can stop the reading. So it was important to have DeMint join Coburn so that they could "tag-team" each other. That amendment would have taken somewhere between 32 and 36 hours to read. The 3,000-page bill will take about 150 hours. That would be about nineteen 8-hour days.

I'm watching Sen. Sanders continue to rail on. Please God, make this crazy man the face of this health crap bill. Listening him, you would think that we were some kind of third-world country. This guy is a shameless liar. He's saying that we have worse health care outcomes and spend more per person than any other country. Keep talking, chump.

Update #2. Sen. Tom Coburn, who is also an M.D., writes about the health care bill in the Wall Street Journal: The Health Care Bill Is Scary. "Every American, not just seniors, should know that the rationing provisions in the Reid bill will not only reduce their quality of life, but their life spans as well."

Update #3. Well, this is fascinating. I'm not up on Senate procedural rules, so I wasn't aware that Sen. Sanders was breaking a Senate rule by ending the reading of his craptastic amendment yesterday. Plain and simple: Once a senator asks for a bill to be read, the reading goes on until he asks that it stop or, by unanimous consent, the bill/amendment is withdrawn. So the only way the reading could have been stopped yesterday, according to Senate rule, was for Sen. Coburn to ask that the reading be stopped, or if the Senate voted unanimously for the bill to be withdrawn. Instead, Sen. Sanders was simply allowed to withdraw his amendment.

Why was Sen. Sanders allowed to subvert a Senate rule that has been in place for over 200 years? After only three hours of reading, Sanders was allowed to withdraw his amendment. How and why was this allowed to happen?

Here is Sen. Mitch McConnnell (R-KY), Minority Leader of the Senate, making the point that the Senate rule was subverted.

McConnell: It is now perfectly clear that the majority is willing to do anything--anything--to jam through a 2,000-page bill before the American people, or any of us, have had a chance to read it, including changing the rules in the middle of the game.



In a separate but related issue, Allahpundit at HotAir makes the point, along with Rich Lowry at National Review, "Where's the bill?"  Maybe we’ve actually reached the point where not only aren’t they reading the bill before voting on it, they’re not even writing it before voting on it.

The whole process of this health crap bill has been a sham and a farce from the very beginning.

"On the tenth day of Copenhagen,
the GreenFrauds gave to me. . ."

Are the Copenhagen talks imploding? Maybe, or perhaps it's premature to say one way or the other. Politico is reporting "Chaos at Climate Conference." Protesters have returned outside the Bella Center, negotiations between China and the West seem bogged down again over carbon emissions and Denmark's climate minister, Connie Hedegaard, has stepped aside as the president of the conference in favor of Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen.

Of course, the warmists are attempting to put the best spin on recent events, saying that all climate conferences have experienced similar turbulance. The conference website reports that Hedegaard's resignation was "expected": Hedegaard, who is the Danish Environment Minister, said that with so many heads of state arriving it was appropriate that the Danish Prime Minister would preside over the summit and that the move was procedural. That's the kind of statement that makes my bullshit meter go off.

Says the COP15 website, the talks are entering a "decisive" phase while "clashes erupt" outside the conference center. It's possible this could get ugly if Greens decide they're being stiffed in the negotiations. The Wall Street Journal gives details about the disputed issues in their article, "Divisions Persist On Core Questions As Leaders Arrive." I don't think it's any big surprise that the talks aren't going well. I think the real surprise would be if something substantive was achieved at COP15.

Stay tuned.

Update. Things not going well?

A Nice Story: Merry Christmas to the Troops in Maine from Stephen King

Author Stephen King and his wife Tabitha King are making it possible for 150 soldiers from the Maine Army National Guard to come home for the holidays.

Members of the 3rd Battalion, 172nd Infantry Unit will travel from Camp Atterbury in Indiana to Maine for Christmas. The soldiers left Maine last week for training at Camp Atterbury. They are scheduled to depart for Afghanistan in January.

"On the ninth day of Copenhagen,
the GreenFrauds gave to me. . . "

This report from the Heritage Foundation reminds me of people who point out that it's ludicrous to think the U.S. government can run health care if they can't even distribute H1N1 flu shots.

"They Can't Even Run a Conference, Let Alone the Global Economy," posted at The Foundry, a Heritage blog. For one thing, unregistered participants were stuck out in the cold for hours, according to the NYT. They had two years to plan the event, but evidently failed to solve the problem of 45,000 participants fitting into a venue that holds 15,000.

The Copenhagen Climate conference is serving "sustainable food." Yum. We haven't begun to see nanny state policies in this country compared to what is in place in socialist countries like Denmark. But this is the direction that ObamaTeam and his Leftist friends would like to take the U.S. State-approved labels for everything. It's little wonder these people don't understand capitalism.

"Sustainable food" is the catchphrase at COP15 [COP15 is just the catchy acronym for the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference]. Dictated by the COP15 greening policy, crude materials, food and packaging has to comply with the standard requirements for acknowledged marking arrangements such as Max Havelaar, the European Union Eco Lable and the Nordic Swan - or equivalent. Furthermore, the food production will be characterized by low energy consumption and environmentally sound waste disposal.

There are other words in the Green lexicon you need to know if you want to follow what these people are doing. One of these is "fairtrade." For example, if you go to the Max Havelaar website, you'll read a lot about fairtrade food products. Fairtrade is an organized social movement that's been around for about 20 years. It's a market-based approach that aims to "help" producers in developing countries. What could be wrong with that, right? Like everything else if you're a Green, then concepts like sustainability and fairtrade are givens. It's "fair," right? Do they ever stop to consider that there might be another side to fair trade?

"The supermarkets... sell Fairtrade as premium lines, with margins to match. Any intelligent person will ask themselves a simple question: should I pay up to 80p more for my bananas when only 5p will end up with the grower; or should I just buy the regular ones and give the difference to a decent development charity?" Philip Oppenheim, The Spectator, November, 2005

"We don't for one minute think the solution to all problems in world trade is Fairtrade. What we want to create is a situation where it is no longer acceptable to do nothing, where every company, and every individual, has to do something to make the world fairer." Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fairtrade Foundation

In other words, it's the often-seen favorite Leftist false dichotomy--do it our way or you are doing nothing. It always seems to come back to that--we will require you to build a better ("fairer") world because you are unethical schlubs and you would never do this on your own. Like at church, for example. Just like Lady Michelle Obama has said that Obama will "require" us to volunteer. Huh? Fairtrade seems to be part of that same mindset. Going back 20 years or so and looking at the beginnings of fairtrade, I imagine it would have started out as a good thing to do--voluntary compliance and all that. Unintended consequences, however, always hover over these movements like a dark cloud. Also, when mega-corporations like Nestle jump on the fairtrade bandwagon, then the whole concept becomes suspect, as far as I'm concerned.

Why are Leftists always such suckers for this kind of crap? I think it has something to do with weak critical thinking skills--they simply don't understand logical fallacies, for example--in fact, they argue using logical fallacies. But there must be more to it than that. Perhaps it's also because a lot of Leftists have never seen the inside of a church in their adult lives, so their solution to everything is secular and therefore they think solutions must be dictated; they have no idea, since it's outside of their experience, that people at church actually do this sort of thing voluntarily out of the goodness of their hearts.

He Gives Himself "a Solid B+"

What a fool, he sounds like an overly earnest 10-year-old saying this. But he's a narcissist, so he can't help himself. And when health crap passes, then he'll bump himself up to an A-. And unemployment, just to name one of his issues, is where?



h/t to GatewayPundit

It's pretty bad when you're a Leftist like Obama and you get laughed at by the women on The View. Who would have thought a year ago that would happen?



h/t to HotAir