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Time To Vote!

Quote Of The Day

"Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it."
- Yuval Levin

Trickery

This letter was published today at NRO. I sincerely hope that the President and the Congressional Democrats pass health care this way. An idiotic move of this dimension would be enough to bury the Democratic Party for decades, if not permanently.

If the Democrats resort to this tactic there will be hell to pay. Since they apparently don't think much of the Tea Party activities and marches or the town hall meetings, I wonder what they would think of citizens surrounding the Capital building with torches, rope and guns?

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

National Review Online has acquired a new letter soon to be sent out by the House GOP to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.):

February 12, 2010

Dear Mr. Leader and Madam Speaker:

As you know, we welcomed the President’s call for bipartisan health care talks. The American people have made it clear that they strongly oppose the comprehensive health care bills you have passed and want them shelved in favor of a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.

Given the President’s statement that he is “open to any ideas” at the proposed summit, it is our responsibility as congressional leaders to see that the views of our Members and our constituents will be heard in good faith. The existence of any kind of backroom deal among the White House and Democratic Leaders would certainly make a mockery of the President’s stated desire to have a “bipartisan” and “transparent” dialogue on this issue.

To that end, we were taken aback by a report in the Tuesday, February 9 edition of Politico stating that President Obama “hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.”

We were further taken aback by a report in CongressDaily later the same day in which an aide to the Speaker, appearing at the National Health Policy Conference, described the legislative “trick” Democratic Leadership intends to use to jam through a “pre-negotiated” health care bill. It has also been reported that other congressional aides present concurred with this assessment.

Additionally, the Christian Science Monitor reported today that special interest groups are calling for Democrats to finalize a deal in advance of the proposed summit.

To ensure we can move forward in good faith, we ask that you publicly disavow these reports and assure the American people that Democratic Leadership is not putting together any kind of backroom deal or plotting any kind of legislative trickery to pass it. Your response will help clarify whether Democratic Leadership is serious about genuine bipartisan negotiations and whether the proposed summit will be a truly open forum or merely an intramural exercise.

We appreciate your immediate response in this matter and look forward to further efforts to foster bipartisan cooperation.

Sincerely,

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN)

Marching Orders

From Markos at Daily Kos last night via Twitter:

"Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate."

9/12 March On Washington, DC

From The Rhetorican:

"I dunno if that’s 2 million. But really, who the hell cares? Put any number you want on them. The video speaks for itself. And this is what it says: It’s not just a Mob. It’s a popular movement."


It was easy for the administration and the MSM to dismiss the the Tea Parties because they were dispersed all over the country. But if you took the time to tally up attendance numbers you would have found 500,000 in March, over a 1,000,000 in July and the only thing I can say about the August town halls is Congress is lucky there were only 31 days in the month. EVERYDAY CITIZENS DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO TRAVEL TO DC. WE'RE BUSY MAKING THIS COUNTRY WORK AND WE ONLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO GET OUT OF THE WAY.

But yet here they are, and yes indeed, that is a lot of folks by any measure. As I have said from the very beginning - this administration is working overtime to piss off all the wrong people. I wish I could have been there myself but instead I am flying my Gadsden flag and am there in spirit. When you have that many everyday citizens that feel they need to march on Washington to show their disapproval for the current administration's policies, someone, somewhere had better start to pay attention. If they don't, this isn't going to end well for them.

Any other interesting side note from Instapundit:
"I’ll tell you what I find impressive. I’m watching the Fox news video about 15 minutes after the end of the event. The crowd has thinned out enough that you can see the ground and there is not a speck of trash on the grass. Absolutely clean. To contrast, google ‘pictures of litter on the mall after the inauguration.’”

Any Questions?

Run For Your Life

Dr. Szasz at The Wall Street Journal:

"The idea that every life is infinitely precious and therefore everyone deserves the same kind of optimal medical care is a fine religious sentiment and moral ideal. As political and economic policy, it is vainglorious delusion. Rich and educated people not only receive better goods and services in all areas of life than do poor and uneducated people, they also tend to take better care of themselves and their possessions, which in turn leads to better health. The first requirement for better health care for all is not equal health care for everyone but educational and economic advancement for everyone.

Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about "health care" as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.

If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.

Henry David Thoreau famously remarked, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Thoreau feared a single, unarmed man approaching him with such a passion in his heart. Too many people now embrace the coercive apparatus of the modern state professing the same design."

CWCID: Maggie's Farm