Wait Until The Taxes Hit!

The Healthcare bill is in trouble in the Senate and the press is saying the problems have to do with abortion, and illegal immigration.

No, the problem has to do with Senators.

Unlike the house members who can be disciplined by the Speaker, and must run every two years – and a constant campaign requiring constant money from the Democratic National Committee – the Senate is filled with virtually independent Sheiks.

Each Senator runs a virtual fiefdom, from which he or she is immunized from outside pressures. Because they run every six years, they are not so dependent upon the Democratic national Committee and in fact many have a war chest large enough to survive several elections.

With only two Senators per state, they get more free press, and that gives their campaign war chest a rest.

More importantly, Senators THINK they are immune from pressure, because they really THINK they are SOMEBODY. They need to be courted rather than pressured, and they are not immune from blandishments.

In the case of the healthcare bill, however, many of their feet are already in concrete and where they are not in concrete they have “issues.” Some of those issues were worked out in the Senate version, but the House Bill reintroduced them a second time and they must be “nuanced” sufficiently that a House/Senate conference can get a single, combined bill past both houses.

I suspect they can do it, but it is not going to be nearly as strong a bill as the liberals want and it also will not do much of what really needs doing – like tort reform – and what it does do will not be done – like cutting Medicare, fraud or not.

This is a HUGE case of laboring mightily and bringing forth a mouse.

A lot of wasted time, but it keeps them busy and when the new taxes are apparent it will cause a revolt.

That will be the best result.

 

Line ‘em Up, and KicK ‘em Out!

The State Inspector General has issued a four page report listing the mistakes that the State made in missing the activities of Phillip Garrido in his kidnapping and holding Jaycee Lee Dugard in Antioch, California.

That list is damning – basically everything that could go wrong, did, but I don’t want to review that list.

I only want to see the list of people FIRED!

I remember the State representative coming on the media the day after Jaycee was finally freed, to say that his department did everything by the book. It didn’t take more than a few days for the Inspector General to find hundreds of instances where the system failed to do what it was designed to do…but there were hundreds of opportunities and PEOPLE failed!

People should lose their jobs!

Come to think of it, a lot of people should lose their careers in the case of the Fort Hood shooter, Army Major Nidal Hasan, and there probably will be. The military tends to make individuals responsible for their actions, or inactions, at least to a greater extent than State government does.

Political Correctness Cost 13 Lives

The more information we learn about the Fort Hood shooter, the more obvious it is that he was a terrorist – despite all of the political correct palaver that we must await an investigation.

Even General Casey says that we must be certain not to charge “diversity” with the problem…well it is the problem, not that it caused the shooter to do what he did but that diversity kept the Army from doing anything about him.

The Army had MORE than enough information to take him off of his duties. He was under investigation by the CIA, and that ALONE was sufficient information to take him off his duties.

Do we need Muslims to be translators, but we don’t need fundamentalist Muslims who have made many verbal statements to many people against our war in Iraq and Afghanistan interacting directly with our troops who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Political correctness was the death of 13 of our soldiers. That alone is too high a price to pay for political correctness.

The House Healthcare Bill is DOA

The House Healthcare Bill is “DOA” according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the “Republican moderates” that the healthcare bill will need in the Senate (but will not get.) It is unlikely that any Republican, even Olympia Snowe will vote for any plan that has any “public option,” and yet that is the touchstone for liberals

Reid probably has 57 votes for “a” healthcare bill, but probably a lot less for this House bill. 

What will eventually survive the conference is unknowable. What is known is that some Blue Dog Democrats walked the plank for no good reason, because what they were twisted into pretzels for by Pelosi, is for naught.

But they knew the consequences – they were stuck between either immediately annoying a powerful Speaker who could relegate them to a broom closet in a dark corner while reducing their staff, or hoping that their angry electorate might well turn them out next year.

Like the GM and Chrysler executives who traded immediate labor peace for eventual bankruptcy, the Blue Dogs made a knowledgeable decision and cannot cry when the pain comes due.

(But they will.)

The Race Does Not Always Go to the Swiftist, Nor the Battle to the Strongest

Well, the Naval Academy upset 19^th ranked Notre Dame 23-21, for their second defeat of Notre Dame in the past two years.

Obviously, I have a special relationship with Annapolis but rather than gloat I will simply remind everyone of what the Notre Dame announcers told everyone: Navy had no players on the team that were even recruited by Notre Dame, and that Navy players were badly overmatched…”small and slow” was their accurate analysis. Heck, Navy is overmatched by every team they play except for the two other service academies, but they came within a whisker of upsetting Ohio State this year..  

ESPN announcers said that Navy players could not even get into Annapolis if they were as big as Notre Dame players. True.

I might add, that Navy has NO FOOTBALL SCHOLARSHIPS – while Notre Dame and other Div. 1-a schools get 85 full scholarships!

Just to put the game in further perspective, The Naval Academy has a total of 4,000 Midshipmen on campus each year, compared to, as an example San Diego State which has 55,000.

The Naval Academy population is about the same size as Rancho Bernardo High and Middle School, but this year Navy will go to its sixth consecutive Bowl game!

You might be interested in why a BIG team like Notre Dame even plays Navy – it has to do with WWII, Notre Dame was struggling financially to sty open in WWII, and the Naval Academy needed to turn out more Naval officers – it selected Notre Dame to  train the officers it could not accommodate, keeping Notre Dame alive.

In appreciation, Notre Dame schedules Navy every year, despite the fact that Notre Dame has nothing to gain by playing a small school with little national football reputation…and like this year it has everything to lose.

The Compulsory Utopians Are At It Again, On Steroids.

The Compulsory Utopians are at it again, on steroids.

The Joint Committee on Taxation, Charles Rangel, Chairman, has released a letter (Nov.5) and published on a Republican website (http://republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/JCTletter110509.pdf) which calls the requirement to purchase a medical policy under the proposed House Healthcare Bill (H.R. 3962 – “Affordable Health Care For American Act”) a “tax.”

The letter contains a few pages of jargon, but it states in stark language a range of penalties, including, in Section 7201 a fine of up to $250,000 or 5 years in jail for willful evasion.

But the letter uses the word “tax” throughout, and refers to the IRS throughout.

So much for the “not one dime” no-tax increase pledge of President Obama.

Still In Recession

While “unemployment” is listed at 10.2%, the REAL measure of unemployment (U6) is 17.5%, nationally. (U6 includes discouraged workers who have given up looking for jobs, and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time work.)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/6/801210/-Layoffs-Slacken.-U6-Soars-to-17.5

Fannie and Freddie are looking at impacting the looming foreclosures scheduled in 2010 (higher than 2009!) by allowing the current owners to rent the homes they would otherwise have lost “on the Courthouse steps.”

There will be unintended consequences – there always are to good intentions – but that move will help the housing market by keeping a mass number of homes from flooding an already overstocked market, and it will help stabilize the rental market as well. It will also reduce the potential for neighborhood blight because foreclosed homes are not maintained by banks.

But it would not stop the homes from eventually coming on the market…it would just control the expected flood.

The recession remains.

Interesting NOVA Series

NOVA on PBS has an interesting series on the Evolution of Man. It is a terrific series, and one of the more interesting theories of evolution is that our species exists because of…are you ready for this…”Climate Change.”

Apparently there is a lot of evidence developing that after division from simians, six million years ago (according to DNA), there developed over the succeeding years many human-like species.

Rapid climate changes took place on the African continent, and only our species was able to adapt to those changes.

We are the result of climate change!

“We got Walloped” — Senator Warner (D-Va)

Not all of the usual suspects whistle by the graveyard regarding the Tuesday elections.

“In contrast to the Obama’s team sanguine analysis, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told POLITICO, “We got walloped.”

Spin and rationalization aside, some people are apparently willing to speak the truth. That is particularly important because newly-elected Democrats in those usual red states that went blue for President Obama, and are the ones primarily in trouble – and they are the votes the Democrats need to push through healthcare and cap and trade.

Those worried today include Newt, who stepped on his crank in this election – and is now groveling for forgiveness. Newt is as smart a political operative as exists, but backed a “Republican” who endorsed a Democrat (and sealed her own political fate) – but who could have predicted such a turn? What he really endorsed was a candidate selected by 11 County Chairmen and blessed by the RNC, without doing his own analysis. He is getting spanked by the Republican “base”, and deserves it, but he is not even in trouble compared to Owens, the Democrat who won in the NY 23^rd.

Mark Davis on radio advises Owens not to buy a home in Washington – good advice.

Both sides can claim some victory in the election, any election, but the tea leaves are obvious.

 

Gay Leaders Blame Obama for Maine Loss

Cultures have a right to determine the rules of that society, so everyone regardless of their political position should applaud the Maine vote.

That is the 31^st consecutive vote that Gay Marriage has lost, so the loss is not s fluke. Gay Rights leaders partially blame…President Obama. (See Associated Press quote below.)

Will Gay Marriage, or something similar with all the “rights and benefits” eventually pass?

Certainly. I hope so, but that is a cultural opinion, and my opinion differs from the majority. What I do agree with is that the people have a right to decide upon their cultural norms.

But the 10 Amendment says such subjects not entertained in the Constitution as a federal responsibility, belong to the State.

State after state have spoken – rightly or wrongly. Some courts have found that marriage is some sort of human right, but mostly it is not considered a “civil right” except by a minority.

Apparently the Gay Rights leaders partially blame President Obama for the Maine loss.

(AP) “Stunned and angry, national gay rights leaders Wednesday blamed scare-mongering ads — and President Barack Obama’s lack of engagement — for a bitter election setback in Maine that could alter the dynamics for both sides in the gay-marriage debate.”