Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Reid and Pelosi Finally Get Mugged by Public Opinion

Dead meat! Due to the fact that the demothug congress passed ZERO appropriation bills (to avoid accountability in the recent elections) this year, the incoming conservative majority will have unprecedented authority to restrain comrade Osama and enforce it's will...T

Elections have consequences. The consequences of the November 2010 elections -- and one might add the November 2009 elections in New Jersey and Virginia and the January 2010 special Senate election in Massachusetts -- became clear as lights shined over the snow at both ends of the Capitol on Thursday night.

At the north end of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly withdrew the 1,924-page omnibus spending bill he had submitted two days before. Reid had hoped that the $8 billion worth of earmarks, including some for Republicans, would provide the Republican votes to pass a bill that financed Obamacare and otherwise furthered Democratic policy goals well into the next calendar year.

But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was able to persuade Republican appropriators not to swallow the bait. Democrats might have gotten their pet provisions through if they had submitted and passed appropriations bills earlier in the year.

But having failed to follow regular legislative order, they were caught defying the will of the voters so clearly expressed in November. Reid's ploy collapsed.

At the south end of the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to watch gloomily as her Democrats failed to rally majorities to alter -- and probably sidetrack -- the deal reached between Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders extending the Bush tax cuts for two years.

Instead, the House voted 277-148 for a measure that the Senate had passed 81-19 earlier in the week. "If someone had told me, the day after Election Day 2008, that the tax rates on income and capital would not increase for the next four years," wrote Bush White House staffer Keith Hennessey in his blog, "I would have laughed."

Plenty of time for laughter now, for Hennessey and for the couple of million people who in some way, shape or form took part in the protests symbolized by but not limited to the tea party movement.

It is a source of continuing fascination for me to watch the interaction between public opinion, as measured in polls and election results, and the actions of members of Congress, elected in one political environment and looking in most cases to be re-elected in one that may be quite different.

Eleven months ago, after the Massachusetts Senate election, I was convinced that Democrats could not jam their health care bill through because voters had so clearly demanded they not do so. But Pelosi proved more determined and resourceful than I had imagined, and found enough House Democrats who were willing to risk electoral defeat to achieve what Democrats proclaimed was a historic accomplishment.

Pelosi and Barack Obama predicted that Obamacare would become more popular as voters learned more about it. Those predictions were based on the theory that in times of economic distress, Americans would be more supportive of or amenable to big government policies.

That theory has been disproved about as conclusively as any theory can be in the real world, and most of the Democrats who provided the key votes for Obamacare were defeated on Election Day.

Democratic congressional leaders did take note of the unpopularity of their policies when they chose not to pass budget resolutions last spring. Presumably they did so because they would have had a hard time rounding up the votes for the high spending and large deficits that would have ensued.

But had the House and Senate passed a budget resolution, Democrats might have been able to pass their preferred tax policy, raising taxes on high earners, under the budget reconciliation process. So the House vote Thursday night was a delayed consequence of the public's long-apparent rejection of their policies.

Obama told Joe the Plumber that he wanted to "spread the wealth around." November's vote, presaged by more than a year of polls, was, as political scientist James Ceasar has written, "the Great Repudiation" of that policy.

Republicans, having succeeded in holding down tax rates, clearly have a mandate to hack away at spending, and to defund and derail Obamacare, which is at or near new lows in the ABC/Washington Post and Rasmussen polls. And there does seem an opening, as Clinton White House staffer William Galston argues, for a 1986-style tax reform that eliminates tax preferences and cuts tax rates.

How effectively the 112th Congress will respond is unclear. But the outgoing 111th Congress, despite its big Democratic majorities, responded pretty clearly Thursday night.


Full article in new window

Enhanced by Zemanta

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Is Global Warming a Religion? You decide!

Revisiting an old proof (for me!), more definitive evidence that man-caused global warming is nothing but a colossal socialist power grab. HEIL OSAMA!...T

Global Warming Is a Religion

By Walter E. Williams (Archive) · Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Manmade global warming, for many, is an Earth-worshipping religion. The essential feature of any religion is that its pronouncements are to be accepted on the basis of faith as opposed to hard evidence. Questioning those pronouncements makes one a sinner. No one denies that the Earth's temperature changes. Millions of years ago, much of our planet was covered by ice, at some places up to a mile thick, a period some scientists call "Snowball Earth." Today, the Earth is not covered by a mile of ice; a safe conclusion is that there must have been a bit of global warming. I don't know the cause of that warming, but I'd wager everything I own that it was not caused by coal-fired electric generation plants, incandescent light bulbs and SUVs tooling up and down the highways.

The very idea that mankind can make significant parametric changes to the Earth has to be the height of arrogance. How about a few questions because temperature is just one characteristic of the Earth. The Earth's orbit is another. If all 6.5 billion of us, all at once, started jumping up and down for a little while, do you think we'd change the Earth's orbit or rotation? Do you think mankind could change the direction and timing of the ocean's tides? Is there anything that mankind can do to stop or start a tsunami or hurricane? You say, "Williams, it's stupid to suggest that mankind could change the Earth's orbit or rotation, ocean tides or cause or stop a tsunami or hurricane!" You're right and it's also stupid to think that mankind's activities can make globalized changes in the Earth's temperature.

To read the rest follow the link

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/walter-e-williams/2010/01/13/global-warming-is-a-religion/


The New Forced Global Warming Religion = Pseudoscience



The Religion Of Global Warming



John Stossel - is Global Warming Science or Religion pt.1 of 2



John Stossel - is Global Warming Science or Religion pt.2 of 2



Full article in new window



Enhanced by Zemanta

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

That Explains It!

Posted by Picasa
ONE LAST BINGE!

Yeah, that is a typical socialist progressive democrat gangster congress for you! Get voted out in a historic landslide, and respond, in lame duck session, by adding thousands of new IRS agents to harass hard working Americans, and guarantee funds for the very program that got them tossed out on their fat lazy socialist asses! HEIL OSAMA!


Senate Democrats have filed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that would fund the government through fiscal year 2011, according to Senate GOP sources.

The 1,924-page bill includes funding to implement the sweeping healthcare reform bill Congress passed earlier this year as well as additional funds for Internal Revenue Service agents, according to a senior GOP aide familiar with the legislation.


The package drew a swift rebuke from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.

"The attempt by Democrat leadership to rush through a nearly 2,000-page spending bill in the final days of the lame-duck session ignores the clear will expressed by the voters this past election," Thune said in a statement. "This bill is loaded up with pork projects and should not get a vote. Congress should listen to the American people and stop this reckless spending.”

Thune has called for a short-term funding measure free of earmarks to keep the government operating beyond Dec. 18, when the current continuing resolution expires.

Enhanced by Zemanta