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Politics: If the Democrats' stitched-together Frankenstein monster of health care reform gets the 60 votes to get through the Senate, it will have been done through an assortment of bribes and brass knuckles. (snip) Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, has also been critical of the buy-in and public option, but he has an additional issue about whatever comes out of the Senate not involving public funding of abortion in any way. Michael Goldfarb on the Weekly Standard blog quotes a Senate aide as saying the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the...

WASHINGTON -The liberals' longtime dream of a government-run health care system for all died Wednesday in the Senate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed it will return when the realization dawns that private insurance companies "are no longer needed." Sanders, an independent and socialist, said his approach is the only one "which eliminates the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, administrative costs, bureaucracy and profiteering that is engendered by the private insurance companies." His remarks drew handshakes and even a hug or two from Democrats who had filed into the Senate to hear him. Sanders acknowledged the proposal...

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and 19 other GOP senators today called for a hearing into reports that the Obama administration used the future of Offutt Air Force Base as bargaining chip in the health care debate, according to a press release by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has flatly denied that Offutt came up in connection with the health care bill or any other piece of legislation. The White House also has described those reports as "absurd." The group of Republican senators called for a hearing in a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin,...

Obama, speaking to CBS in Beijing, says he's "furious' about the stream of leaks characterizing the Afghanistan deliberations... CHIP REID: “Firing offense??” THE PRESIDENT: “Absolutely" M What's odd about this is that many of the leaks (though certainly not all) have seemed deliberate, in tandem with Flickr photo releases from the meetings and in line with a message that Obama is considering deeply. And indeed, leaking has been a signature of the transition from the Plouffe/campaign era to a governing era run by Rahm Emanuel, who talks frequently to the press and whose hiring was one of the first major...

ATLANTA – Federal health officials now say that 4,000 or more Americans likely have died from swine flu — about four times the estimate they've been using.

In less than a year the U.S. government has gone from being one of the chief opponents of the proposed UN Small Arms Control Treaty to being a strong supporter. Elections do matter and have consequences. As many predicted, the United States has changed its United Nations Gun Control Treaty position by joining other countries in the UN’s General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament And Peace, with a resolution calling for the drafting of an International Arms Trading Treaty. This Treaty, which will be up for a final UN vote in 2012, will regulate small arms, as well as other...

Judge Carter Ruling on MTD

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) held a hearing this morning to certify that H.R. 3200 -- the main House Obamacare bill which was the subject of all the town hall rage in August -- has met all requirements to pass as a “budget reconciliation” measure. Under reconciliation, the bill can be passed by a simple majority vote in the Senate -- just 51 votes -- and will be given preferential treatment on the House floor as well. The Dems have apparently invoked the “nuclear option” to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before...

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis yesterday blamed the Bush administration for the organization’s woes and accused Republicans of “ACORN McCarthyism.” Lewis blamed Karl Rove for instigating the legal troubles the “community organizers” are facing. At this point, reports of ACORN illegal conduct have sparked a string of criminal investigations nationwide on charges of fraudulent voter registration activities.  Most recently, two young journalists caught ACORN staffers in a sting operation exposing tax and sex trafficking advice.  Both houses of congress have passed measures to de-fund the organization, Lewis was hosted by the National Press Club at a “Newsmaker” event yesterday where she...

"Hear our cry, Obama." "Deliver us, Obama." Video at link.

*Per Live Interview with Mike Tuffin of American Health Insurance Plans: *Regarding "Humana letter" sent out to Seniors (in regards to Obama Health Care proposed policy). *Insurance Companys have been told by the White House to withdraw letter to Seniors. *WH: "STOP SCARING SENIORS" *Mike Tuffin: "Infrigement on Freedom of Speech."

Health bill says 'tax' when President Obama said 'not' By: Chris Frates and Mike Allen September 21, 2009 09:06 AM EST In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase. But he could look it up — in the bill. Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise...

STUNNING VIDEO UNEARTHED: Obama ‘07 Revelation: Health Care Reform Requires Tax Hikes — Savings Just a Theory http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-honesty-in-07-health-care-reform-requires-tax-hikes-savings-just-a-theory/ Breitbart TV and Naked Emperor News

Not the worst numbers he’s had this summer, but to see this much skepticism on this many aspects of ObamaCare this late in the game — and after his Beyond Thunderdome speech to Congress — is simply devastating. I’m going to tick them off rapid fire here while saving the punchline for the end. Do you favor/oppose the current plan: -10 (38/48, up from 34/49 last month) Will seniors be better/worse off under the plan: -11 (23/34) Will your family be better/worse off: -14 (22/36) Do you prefer ObamaCare/the current system: -9 (37/46) Do you favor/oppose requiring everyone to buy...

"Some Boulder County residents said their afternoon at the Louisville Labor Day Parade turned sour Monday when a Regional Transportation District bus and a U.S. Postal Service mail truck crawled along the route bearing posters supporting President Barack Obama's health-care plan and labor unions. “They were basically supporting ‘ObamaCare,'” Ted Hine said afterward. “That's not what public funds should be used for.”

Popular support for Obamacare is collapsing, due in part to fears that the House Bill’s end-of-life counseling provision for Medicare patients could become a means of pushing seniors into voluntary rationing, that is, into refusing life-sustaining treatment toward the end of saving costs.  Despite the president’s early statements that would seem to support that very fear, the administration’s defenders have branded such criticisms “lying about the bill,” or alarmism.But now, a column in the Wall Street Journal charges that the Obama Administration has ordered veterans to be given counseling about end of life care that pushes the “refuse treatment” option....

A bizarre article from Charles Krauthammer in today's Washington Post. In the second sentence he trashes Palin: "We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate." And by the third paragraph he is explaining that Obamacare will basically create a "death panel": "We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they...

Congressman Leonard Boswell (D-Des Moines, Iowa): "The president (said), 'I'm not going to kick the can down the road.' And he said that and I said, 'Well, that's something I'm kind of used to from southern Iowa, you know. I know about kicking the can down the road.' And he said, 'No, if it makes me a one-term president, I'm going to, we're going to take it on because the country is in need of us taking this on.' I respected that very much."

Obama's Hoof-In-Mouth Disease Larry Kudlow Wednesday, August 12, 2009 It’s hard to know why President Obama said what he said at Tuesday’s health-care town hall in New Hampshire. He actually stated, “If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Oops. Freudian slip? Subliminally speaking, was the president inferring that private health insurers are doing just fine? Government insurance is what’s in trouble today. Medicare is in the hole by about $40 trillion on a discounted present-value basis over the next 40 or 50 years. And if we’re going...

Watching the muscular tactics being used in congressional town meetings by some opponents of health care reform, I keep thinking somebody should remind the Republican leaders who are reveling in the scenes about Bruce Alger. Alger was the first Republican congressman elected from Texas in the modern era, winning a Dallas district in 1954. In 1960, just a few days before the presidential election, he was part of a crowd of several hundred people who surrounded Lyndon B. Johnson, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, and his wife, Lady Bird, when they arrived for a luncheon at the Adolphus Hotel in...