Will Obama destroy his presidency to ram down healthcare?
My guess is yes, yes he will destroy his presidency in an attempt to ram healthcare through. That’s probably a big problem for a malignant narcissist…when people say ‘NO’ I mean….
Update from the Tea Party Patriots:
Let the Healthcare March Madness Begin!!!
Below, you will find some ideas that you may find useful to use in this fight. You can select which ones, if any, you or your group will use.
1. Calls.
Make phone calls and send faxes to the House members listed below.
2. Petitions.
Tea Party Patriots will has a Stop Reconciliation Petition up on our web site. Sign it and encourage others to sign it. We will print it off and hand deliver to Congress.
3. Rallies & Candlelight Vigils:
Host a rally and/or candlelight vigil outside your representative’s LOCAL offices.
We must host these events as often as possible. Daily is a good idea and can be done as follows:
Some groups are doing rallies and a repeat of what we did in August. Some members held daily protests outside the local offices. NO not huge events, but daily events with at least 10 – 20 people. We did two shifts a day, Monday through Thursday from 8:30 to 10:00 AM and 4:30 to 6:00 PM. This covers the commuters to and from work.
Suggested idea is to have individuals on the street protesting and one by one someone goes up to the office to speak with an office member and/or your representative. At the same time someone else calls the office. We can keep them busy. Deliver to the office a petition (get signed by friends and neighbors), a handwritten letter voicing your complaints about the HC bill and reconciliation, ask for a meeting with your rep or anyone in the office immediately not tomorrow.
The discussion is to do a national day of protest; these are the dates we have heard so far from other groups. Thursday, 3/11, Thursday, 3/18 and Wednesday, 3/24.
Update: More Taxes. Pushes capital gains to 22.9% in 2011. WH Healthcare Plan: Charge of the Seventies Brigade
Update: Plan released. Taxes. Lots and lots of fees, fines and taxes. He is raising cap gains 8% over the next 2 years and he thinks this will HELP CREATE JOBS? Good Gawd.
…In the plan, Obama is advocating applying taxes for Medicare, the government health program for the elderly, to unearned income for the first time.
Obama would place a 2.9 percent assessment on income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents for individuals earning more than $200,000 or families making more than $250,000, according to a summary released to reporters.
…The proposed tax would also apply to capital gains, an administration official confirmed. That would push the rate to 22.9 percent in 2011, up from 15 percent currently and 20 percent scheduled to take effect next year. Obama also embraced the Senate proposal for an increase in the Medicare payroll tax on the highest earners….
Get your Disco ball ready…..
Highlights of the WH plan include such 70s hits as Price Controls and Caps!
President Barack Obama wants to give the federal government sweeping new authority to curb exorbitant rate hikes by the nation’s health insurance companies, a White House official said Sunday night…
…Obama’s proposal would give the Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, new powers to review premium hikes by private insurance companies – and in some cases, block those deemed excessive. Anthem’s rate hikes of up to 39 percent in recent weeks have focused attention on the skyrocketing health insurance costs, the very costs Obama vowed to fight when he undertook comprehensive health care reform last year…
And also fresh from the 70s, when in doubt, create a new government bureaucracy!
Obama’s plan would create a new board made up health insurance experts, which would determine annually what are reasonable premium hikes in various markets, and the HHS secretary also would work with state officials, the White House said. The proposal was first reported in the New York Times…
More when the ‘plan’ is released in 20 minutes…I’m sure AHIP is glad they partnered with Obama now, feel the burn you get in exchange for working with Team TOTUS..imagine when the hospitals raise their prices 30% and the insurance plans are told, uhm no, no rate hikes for you! Premium nazi (like Soup Nazi)….
…Gee they would have to go out of business and leave the government the only game in town..part of the design no doubt about it.
Krauthammer Agrees!: Twofer Tuesday: The Middle
Update: Feb. 19, 2010 – Krauthammer agrees!:
..It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable.
It’s 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives — cap-and-trade and health-care reform — lie in ruins.
Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked the New Republic. Guess the answer….
The leadership of the Democratic Party still does not get it.
The lamestream journOlists are trying to spin the departure of Bayh as a sign the ‘system doesn’t work’ i.e. government is broken.
Huh funny that, I remember Dubyah getting Medicare Part D, two wars, No Child Left Behind and tax cuts passed with far less of a majority and the same system of governance. Big Dawg got NAFTA, SCHIP, FMLA, balanced the budget. Both created millions of jobs.
The system is not broken, the leadership is weak. OWN YOUR CANDIDATE.
And that’s the view from here in ‘The Middle’ 🙂
I read posts from the ‘left’- BTD at TalkLeft, and the journOlists – the Politico hit piece on Evan Bayh today and I think, wow they are So Far Away From Me. I think they will continue to be shocked! and amazed! and astounded! as the Dems are swept out of power. It is clear to everyone but those in the bubble or on the left that the country is saying N-O to the Obama Agenda all down the line.
The Democratic Party is So Far Away from the Middle. Since America IS The Middle we will have to remove them at the ballot box again. My Generation’s (X)turn to be a ‘Reagan Democrat’ is it, and save the country from the worst proclivities of the farleft neoprogressive agenda? Okay I’m down with that.
I get so tired when I have to explain
When you’re so far away from me
See you’ve been in the sun and I’ve been in the rain
And you’re so far away from me-Dire Straits
Update: Video added; Moderate Dems remove the beer goggles: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) challenges Obama at Dem Q/A ‘No one in your administration knows how to make payroll”
Update: CSPAN has posted the Q/A, Boxer D-CA wants MORE liberal policy pushes, denial just ain’t a river in Egypt ya know?! and poor Blanche, (who is clearly forced to ‘rely on the kindness of strangers’ at this point) tries to tell Obama to push back against the lefties and get the party back on the middle path (h/t Buddha).
AWESOME!!! Look signs of life in the moderate Democrats! Coming out of their koolaide induced stupor waking up next to a neoprogressive, big government, tax and spend, trade war inducing, capital market killing leadership. Looking for video hope someone gets it up! Obama moseys on down to the Senate Dem conference and lectures them to walk on off that cliff! and ignore the American people cuz he knows best (he sure has some Daddy issues and IMO will patronizingly, condescendingly, arrogantly ‘father’ this country into a Depression if he continues to pursue these ass backwards economic plans)
The seminal moment of this morning’s q-and-a between Senate Democrats and President Obama was an extraordinary — and extraordinarily uncomfortable — exchange between Blanche Lincoln and Obama over the party’s left and right wings.
Obama, in professorial mode, had spent much of the first hour of today’s appearance instructing Democrats to stay his progressive course on health care and other key issues.
Lincoln, who faces serious competition in her ’10 re-elect — and a 27 percent approval rate in Arkansas — practically demanded Obama “push back in our own party… for people at the extremes.”
She added that “no one in your administration” understands how to make payroll.
Obama shot back hard, warning Lincoln, gently but firmly, that he had no intention of adopting the previous administration’s policies, cautioning, “I don’t know what would differentiate us from the other guys.” [quickie transcript]
“We should not be spooked,” he added.
Blanche Lincoln is the second canary in the Dem electoral coalmine (following MASS) and after polling miserably recently she is pushing back. Also on national security:
Update: Martin Mull and Horatio Hornblower on the Dems insurance mandate and $3800.00 penalties…
Update:09/09 10:00pm AZ time: Lookee here, Daniel Henninger of the WSJ has an opinion piece going up for tomorrow that agrees with MiM but in much more palatable language, lol:
…The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has 87% of the public somewhat or very dissatisfied with the economy. The unemployment rate is likely to go above 10% for all 2010. Whatever GDP growth may occur, there is no evidence of new-job creation. Gold’s price has risen above $1,000, suggesting inflation is swimming below the economy’s flat surface. China is stockpiling gold and worrying out loud about the weak dollar. A U.N. panel said this week the world should abandon the dollar as the world’s anchor currency.
Just now, Barack Obama’s mad obsession with arcane health-insurance puzzles looks beside the point….
I thought these Critters were living in an Ivory Tower looking down on Americans without understanding them, now I am wondering if they are actually living in a tower in Mordor instead…
MiM was for a universal mandate to bring down the cost of high usage insureds, you spread the risk over a wider pool etc etc but that was, of course, BEFORE the economy WENT OFF A FRAKKIN CLIFF!!!@ HELLO??? Is anybody checking these Critters in DC for a pulse??
How in the hexx can they try to pass the mandate and penalties in THIS economic environment? In 1994 this would work, hell in 2004 this would work, in 2007 this would work. You know, in an EXPANDING economy.
But now we have a RETRACTING economy and MASSIVE UNEMPLOYMENT.. Which is of course why MiM thinks this is POLITICAL, Congress and TOTUS pushing it now, not an actual health care delivery crisis. And pullleeeezze don’t tell me how this does not kick in until 2013. People will FEEL the pain NOW and revolt against it and kill the plan or as I predict take control back in 2010 (which I think will happen in the House regardless).
And let us not forget the impact this will have on CAPITAL MARKETS and HIRING which are, of course, FORWARD LOOKING!!!!! D’uh!!! Way to kill an incipient recovery. We cannot even invest in DEFENSIVE stock plays, like KO!!! (Coca Cola) b/c even CONSUMER STAPLES like lightbulbs (and next I’m sure Teh Evvvvvil Two-Ply toilet paper killing Gaia!) are under assault (Cheerios and sugary drink makers, Tylenol in flu season, look out, Big Brother coming to frak with you too!)
People are LOSING THEIR HOMES. Food Stamp usage is at a RECORD high. Now is NOT the time to tell people to get ready for another ginormous govt program and TAX.
And if it can wait until 2013 to kick in, why in the name of all that is Holy are we ramming it through NOW?? Yeah POLITICAL BS that’s why. So take your moral imperative and pack it up with your condescension and take a long walk neoprogs…a 4 year walk according to Baucus…
You know what’s a crisis? THE DAMNED UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IS A CRISIS!
Anywho, H/T to the commenter on McCardle’s site who said the Baucus $3800.00 penalty for a family who does NOT buy health insurance under his plan is comparable to the Python Martin Mull! skit wherein Christopher Columbus in reply to his Officer telling him ‘The men have not eaten in days sir” says “Well Make them eat!”
Gee it’s almost like some band of intellectual elites far removed from the realities of everyday Americans lives are coming up with these ideas isn’t it?
Mashup by iRat13
High-income people being more inclined to believe that everyone ought to have to buy health insurance has sort of a Marie Antoinette quality to it. (“Why the hell aren’t you buying health insurance?” “Uh, I don’t have enought money?”)
Or the old Python Christopher Columbus sketch (from whence comes the song “Men, Men, Men”): “Sir, the men haven’t eaten for days.” Columbus replies: “Well, make them eat!
Update: Critter demands ID from attendee!! Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)Townhall with Howie Dean…
Update: Oh it just gets better Moran moron, demands id from an attendee who he is convinced is bused in, this as AFCSME and SEIU are sitting in front of him with their OFA signage!! UnbelIEVable!! vote this yahoo out VA!
Courtesy of ifbnews
WH Doubles Down on Public Option: Sebelius insists the media created the confusion…
Update: Drew at AceHQ has the NBC poll numbers reflecting a plurality of Americans oppose the public option. He went to MSNBC so we don’t have to 🙂 When even NBC-GE can’t spin a poll to show support for the public option you know they are really bleeding support (they must be losing even moderate Dems now to get adults showing negative, much less likely voters)….
That is not the Sunday interview she knew. We have always been at war with Eastasia…
Courtesy of patriotsandheroes
The Health and Human services secretary completely denies ever implying the public option was off the table and blames the news media
Moderate in the Middle 