Health Wars (8/19/09)

How can a frustratingly spare-time blogger who used to be a most-of-the-time blogger possibly capture the entire breaking story of Barack Obama's Karl Rove actually doing the very kind of thing of which Barack Obama's party endlessly and slanderously accused Karl Rove of doing?

Double-M to the rescue!:

Y'know, I don't care who the president might have been, doesn't it just fit like a glove that the corrupt political hack, um, "architect" of a corrupt, political hack administration that is doing what comes naturally to corrupt political hacks bears a surname like "Axelrod"?

Maybe the surname "Capone" was taken.

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Will "Dirty Harry" Reid, the soon-to-be ex-Senate Majority Chisler, really invoke "reconciliation" to abate any filibuster and ram as much of BarryCare through the Senate as possible?

Ensign Ed doubts it very much:

First, the Democrats have to convince the Senate parliamentarian, ostensibly non-partisan, to agree that the bill is primarily budgetary.  No one in their right mind could honestly make that judgment about massive regulation of 15% of the American economy.  They’re likely to get denied before they even get started.

However, if they do manage to get past that obstacle, the Republicans can shut down the Senate for the next year.  Those unfamiliar with the parliamentary procedure may not realize that a great many steps get skipped by unanimous consent.  Bill-reading is just one example.  One Senator can force each and every bill to be read aloud at every appearance it makes on the Senate floor, including when they are sent to committee.  For ObamaCare and cap-and-trade, one bill reading could take a week, keeping the Senate floor locked off from any other business.

I dunno 'bout you, but I wouldn't bet the farm on the "non-partisan"-ism of any "ostensibly" neutral official in any legislative chamber run by the Democrats.  But even if the Parliamentarian did "sack up" and hold the even-handedness line, all Reid would have to do is break up BarryCare between its wouldn't-trigger-hysterical-laughter-if-you-called-it-budgetary and wouldn't-be-budgetary-with-a-green-eyeshade-and-a-pocket-protector portions and shove through the former as a "downpayment".

As for the GOP's version of "going nuclear" by essentially shutting down the Senate for the rest of this Congress, I don't think any Pachyderm has the stones to actually go through with such a thing as retaliation for getting steamrolled on BarryCare.  If they could stop it by doing so, perhaps, but I've got to believe that it is withdrawing unanimous consent, not Reid invoking reconciliation, that's the bluff.

Would it cement a GOP tsunami next November?  Almost certainly.  But that'll be the case either way (as it was in 1994).  If the Dems are going down anyway, might as well accomplish a long-cherished dream now, while they've got the power, and while Red Barry will still be in the White House to veto any repeal attempts.  And in the long term, it'd probably get them their majorities back sooner rather than later.

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But as even the NYT noted, it's Democrats that have to reach a consensus amongst themselves in order to enact health care nationalization.

This numbnut is too Kool-Aided up to require any convincing:

I gotta side with AP - "Triple J" probably is that stupid, while his Lord and Savior knows EXACTLY what he's doing, and just suffers from inarticulate verbal incontinence.

Which, in turn, makes resistance from serving as B.O.'s cannonfodder that much simpler for the Azure Mongrels, especially after the earful they've received over the past few weeks:

But despite efforts by Congressional leaders and the White House to make the legislation more palatable to them — by, perhaps, eliminating, the public health care option, or imposing more Medicare cuts — many of these members of Congress have sounded more skeptical of the bill as of late, according to local media reports.

Representative Gene Taylor, D-MS, at a town hall meeting in Moss Point Monday night, said, per the Associated Press, “I would hope that everyone in this room knows by now that I am not going to vote for the health care plan.”

Says Representative Jim Marshall, D-GA, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post, “As the bill stands right now, I would have to vote ‘no’ until we get a better handle on the costs. I am adamantly opposed to throwing more money at the current system.”

During a town hall teleconference Tuesday night, Representative Travis Childers, D-MS, said “he would not vote for a House health care reform bill in its current form,” a Memphis TV station reports.

Representative Charlie Melancon, D-LA, said “it’s appearing more likely that he’ll break with his party and oppose President Barack Obama’s controversial health-care plan should it come to a vote on the House floor,” reports Houma Today.

Other Cerulian mutts lining up in opposition on the House side so far:

• Walt Minnick (ID)
• Heath Shuler (NC)
• Leonard Boswell (IA)
• Dan Boren (OK)
• Bobby Bright (AL)

Problem is, all Crazy Nancy needs at minimum to ram BarryCare through on partisan lines is fifteen Bow-Wows, and currently she appears to be, at worst, only two short.

This petulantly extremist "all or nothing" mentality reveals which faction is truly interested in health care "reform" and which is using it as a means of Sovietizing America.  Most BDs are certainly not against health care reform - they're just not in such an infernal hurry:

Jim Tanner (D-TN) probably speaks for many in the BDC when he advises an incremental approach.  Noting that people do want some of the problems in the current delivery system addressed, such as the difficulty of insuring with pre-existing conditions, Tanner says that Congress should take a much more deliberative approach.  “[W]e’ve got some holes in the current delivery system that are resulting in inefficiency, duplication, nonproductive … provider-to-patient expenditures, and what I’ve been telling people is we need to figure that out before we start overturning the entire system.”

What has to be remembered is that the hard left dream of socialized medicine was around long before Barack Obama was even incarnated.  Yet no Democrat president has ever realized it - not FDR, not Truman, not JFK, not even LBJ with his post-Goldwater/1964 2-1 Donk congressional majorities.  The steps down that road that have been taken have been - drumroll please - incremental.  And the reason for that is built into the Republic itself.  Our form of constitutional government simply does not accommodate wrenching "transformative" policy changes.  To the contrary, it is structurally designed to encourage political and institutional stability - one of the reasons why it has lasted so long, despite all the statist corrosion to which it has been subjected.  Huge ideological shifts must be accomplished one bite at a time, reflecting widespread public persuasion, support, and validation, rather than forced upon the electorate in one massive, choking gulp.

Not to be too scatalogically metaphorical, but try eating a steak first one way and then the other and see which you enjoy more.  To extend the metaphor to BarryCare, what's essentially happened is that the L'il President and his congressional capos tried to take that steak and shove it down our gullet whole while we were sound asleep.  We, The People, have simply vomited it back up and have less than no desire to re-ingest the unpalatable fragments.  After a brief, disastrous foray at pouring ketchup on the steaming mess and re-serving it to us as "Hamburger Helper," the Dems are mobilizing their Purpleshirts to hold us down and shove it back down our throats and then cement our mouths shut.

Gee, when I put it that way, it's no wonder a metastasizing majority of Americans are highly pissed about the whole thing.

Which gets back to the reform vs. transform question.  After waiting for three-quarters of a century for a chimera that has never materialized, the neoBolsheviks have decided that that the time for waiting is over.  And, of course, their "god" wants it NOW because he wants to be The One who finally brings the United States into the Warsaw Pact.

BarryCare is not "reform," it's a means to an end that nobody outside the Donk Poliburo wants.  For a group that purports to be "fiscally conservative," this should not be a difficult realization to make.  To the degree that they actually vote accordingly, it underscores the foolishness of the hamhanded, ironfisted, jackbooted approach they've taken with the BDs, Republicans, and the entire American people.

Still, all they need is fifteen currs....

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Has Comrade Hussein begun to learn the virtues of discretion?:

“Absolutely not,” Gibbs said. “We continue to be hopeful that we can get bipartisan support and will continue to work with those that are interested in doing that.”

“Our goal is to get this done in a bipartisan way,” he said. “There are several more weeks to go in potential negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. I don’t know why we would short circuit any of that now.”

Gibbs said if that were the intention, he would go on vacation. “I don’t know why on August 19 we would declare on something that would be voted on in either September or October that the possibility is only fifty-one votes,” he said.

The president’s spokesman said Mr. Obama would “orbit the moon” if he thought it would help bring progress in health care reform.

Answer: No, he hasn't.  He's just being dishonest about his desire for a bipartisan fig leaf.  Note the weak-assed emphases in the Baghdad Bob quote.  Does that sound like a firm, avid commitment to "reaching across the aisle" to form a "bipartisan consensus" that meets the GOP "halfway"?  Doesn't to me.  Sounds a lot more like meaningless rhetorical time-marking.  And why not at this point?  No need to telegraph the "go it alone" gambit until you actually do it, assuming you ever can.  DP sources spitting it out there like a brick now in a moronic attempt to simultaneously bully and dupe 'Pubbies into caving based on the delusional notion that they'd better get on board this WILDLY POPULAR legislation before it's TOO LATE just feeds the latters' "hardening" opposition, and the chances that when it more or less inevitably comes time for the party-line jamdown, the votes (particularly in the Senate) might not be there.

I think that last Gibbs sentence is a lot more candid about Barry O's mindset.  And that, in turn, makes Jim DeMint's "waterloo" comment all the more (potentially) prophetic.

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Exit quote:

President Barack Obama needs some outside help pushing health care reform, and he’s turning to rabbis to get it.

In a morning conference call with about 1000 rabbis from across the nation, Obama asked for aid: “I am going to need your help in accomplishing necessary reform,” the President told the group, according to Rabbi Jack Moline, who tweeted his way through the phoner.

“We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” Obama went on to say, according to Moline’s real-time stream.

Is that so?  No doubt he considers himself the "senior" partner in this little arrangement.  I think of blasphemies like this whenever False Messiah bloviates about his "Christian faith".

But you know it is written, "You shall know them by their fruit":

What would Jesus do about BarryCare?  I think He'd go heal the sick Himself rather than lobbying Caesar to take over the Judean-Galilean health care sectors.  And He wouldn't bear baldfacedly false witness with lies nobody believes anymore about a government takeover that will end up inflicting more poverty, misery, pain, and death on the American people than the much simpler and humbler expedient of just leaving well enough alone.

Hey, why do you think I call Barry "False" messiah?