BREAKING: Ben Nelson is voting for the healthcare bill

Fox News ^ | 12/19/2009 | Self

[krogers58]

Ben Nelson is on Fox News announcing he will vote to end the filibuster, and he will vote in favor of the healthcare bill

[nathanbedford]

Conservatives naturally will be angry and we will want to vent our anger but it will not do to be nearsighted.

We have years of history since the 94 elections to look at and we have, especially, the Bush years and mistakes enough to tell us that this battle was not lost when Harry Reid finally found Ben Nelson's price, or when they finally found enough votes to put big mouth in Minnesota into the United States Senate.

It was lost when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and Bush declined to defend his administration on this or virtually any other issue especially after he won his own reelection. It was lost when Bush pushed billions of dollars into AIDS in Africa, when he got cozy with Ted Kennedy on education and established a brand-new medical entitlement for kids. It was lost when he turned a blind eye on every disreputable earmark that went through every appropriations bill. It was lost when Republican congressman after Republican Congressman turned venal. It was lost when Tom DeLay got into bed with the K St. crowd. It was lost when McCain and Grahamnasty started sleeping with the enemy.

It was lost when Republicans turned their face from conservatism.

[clintonh8r]

Standing there alone like a deer in the headlights. Come on, Nebraskans....get rid of this turd.

[autumnraine]

“I smell a revolution brewing.”

Me too. I’ve heard about voting all my life when people are upset. Everyone I know isn’t prepared to wait that long.

[TribalPrincess2U]

God Bless America, land of the once FREE and mighty.

Now torn apart by threats and payoffs from within
by a greedy destructive enemy.

nancy pelosie...we will do almost anything to get this passed. (or something similar to that wording)

Well we certainly took you at your word. Never a doubt.

[whitedog57]

No. With our minority populations, Greens and angry women, we will never get the 2/3rd majority.

[Xenalyte]

Thank you, Mr. Forrest. Glad someone had the balls to say it.

WE lost this country.

WE let them take it from us.

Now WE gotta do the dirty work and the heavy lifting to take it back.

[exit82]

Well said,nb.

And the absolute truth.

[whitedog57]

Well said.

And don’t forget Bush/Paulson bank bailouts.

It is a ruling elite problem, not a Dem/Repub thing. I doubt if Eric Cantor (who has been quiet) if part of the elite. Maybe that is why he is quiet.

Thank god for the guy in Moon Valley AZ who actually stood up. Can’t remember his name, but he is better than that empty suit Jeff Flake from Mesa.

[anglian]

It can be anything Mr. Reid and his pals want to dream up in their private, well-appointed Capitol Hill sitting rooms.

“The irony is,” said Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond (D-MO), “the president campaigned on total transparency. … What kind of bill is this?”

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) told me that the request for lawmakers to vote on such a massive bill sight unseen was unprecedented. “I haven’t seen anything like this on a bill of this magnitude,” he mused.

“Unbelievable,” Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) said. It is the “most closed process” he has seen in his lifetime.

Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) was pretty fired up. “I’ve been in elected office for 32 years. … Here we are with a 2,074-page bill and no one knows what’s in this bill.”

Senator Mike Johanns comes from Nebraska, the same state as wavering Democratic Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE). “About a week from now,” Johanns laments, “we’ll cast a final vote redesigning everyone’s health care and today we don’t know what’s in a final bill.”

Johanns observed that even Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), the second-ranking Democrat, confessed he was kind of clueless about what would be in the final bill. Durbin admitted on the Senate floor on December 10: “Most of us know the fundamentals, but we don’t know the important details.”

But isn’t this the era of the Obama presidency, where there was supposed to be openness and transparency in government?

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.

And are the “good government” types screaming? How about those ethics groups? Are they foaming at the mouth?

The reality is that hardball Democratic Party practices do not seem to connect with Democratic Party ideals. Their idea of governing is to cut deals behind closed doors, to anoint winners and pummel losers. Has anyone told them it is the most corrosive and cynical way to govern in a democracy?

The Washington Post laconically reported last Monday:

The full contents of the legislation probably will not be known until Tuesday, at the earliest, when the Congressional Budget Office is expected to provide an official cost analysis.

That was last Tuesday. There hasn’t been a CBO ruling. Hence there is still no bill to examine.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-health-care-bill-no-one-can-see/

[jesseam]

Politicians do NOT represent their constituents. They DO represent their own selfish interests. In this case they threw in with Satan as they feel he will give them a better deal when they quit wasting oxyge

[silverleaf]

They are ALREADY SPENDING YOUR CHILDREN’s FUTURE EARNINGS

Now they can start on your grandchildren’s

Oh, and seize your accumulated assets when you die, too

to heck with “your” earnings

[moose2004]

The Governor of Nebraska is terrified, along with many other current governors, of the massive increases in the State funded Medicaid rolls that will happen if this bill passes. Medicaid is already bankrupt, and now it’s rolls will probably double. Insanity.

[catfish1957]

Wow... I thought Nebraska was a conservative state. With electing this turd, I guess I thought wrong.

[Ann Archy]

NEVER.......EVER TRUST A DEMOCRAT.....NEVER!!!!

[silverleaf]

the democrats are planning that once forced on the electorate, it will create a massive new entitlement class and mentality

Folks will be unwilling to give up- only to expand it more (ala, MEDICARE prescription plan foisted on us by Bush)

so probably NO to repeal. We will be pushed onto the slippery slope down with no brakes in sight

Rush has suggested breaking it into a thousand pieces and attacking it bit by bit for rollback- if we elect leaders with the will to do so.

That's a big IF

Senators and Congressmen have now been purchased
Elections can also be purchased

Unless somehow, somewhere, the spigot of the oligarchs using future debt to purchase present programs can be turned off

The future actually looks brighter today for China, than for us. Amazing, isn't it.

[silverleaf]

the farm states actually have damned American values by electing liberals

I guess pork and bacon prevail over common sense for all of America

[freekitty]

This has been broken about 100 times.

[no dems]

It was lost when Republicans turned their face from conservatism.

BLESS YOU! I've been trying all morning to think of a nice way to say it; you nailed it.

[sport]

Unfortunately for America, the farm States had a lot of help.

But that is now water under the bridge, the question is what will we do? Roll over on our backs with our arms and legs in the air like a dog submitting or will we fight tooth and toenail?

[hampdenkid]

If you want to find the true culprit in all of this, look to the weak-kneed, spineless, wimpy-toast Mitch McConnell. While that sorry excuse for a man was nancing around the Senate doing nothing, his “conservative liaison” was running around to conservative groups telling them, “Don’t put on any pressure, Leader McConnell [THAT’S RIGHT: THEY LIKE TO REFER TO EACH OTHER AS IF THEY ARE NOBILITY] has a strategy. You just have to back off and let him work it.”

Well, it turns out that “Leader McConnell’s” strategy was to sit on his hands and do nothing while Reid and Obama bought the votes they needed. And all he had to do was demand unanimous consent on each amendment offered, and he could have put off the bill until next Christmas.

We need Vitter or DeMint as minority leader — otherwise, girly-man McConnell is going to strategize us into a quick and complete Marxist takeover.