"Deem and Pass" Procedure has been "Slaughtered" by Pelosi

Just before President Obama arrived at Capitol Hill Saturday to rally the Democratic troops for the historic vote on health care reform legislation scheduled for Sunday, Speaker Pelosi and House Rules Chairwoman Slaughter announced that the "deem and pass" procedure would NOT be used on Sunday to act on the legislation. As a result, the House will now actually have a separate vote on the Christmas Eve Senate bill with the Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase, Florida Aid and all the other backroom deals that even Obama called "stray cats and dogs" a while ago.

After voting (or before, who knows how this will change again in the next 24 hours) on the Senate bill, the House will vote separately on the "Reconciliation" bill that amends the Senate bill. However, the Senate bill, if passed by the House, will be delivered to the White House for the President's signature tomorrow and the Cornhusker Kickback and other backroom deals BECOME LAW!

Only after the House passes the amendments will the Senate get the "Reconciliation" bill to act on the Democrats' changes in order to eliminate some of the backroom deals. Unfortunately, some of the deals are still in the "Reconciliation" bill, including funds for a hospital in Connecticut, special treatment for sufferers of a specific work-related disease in one town in Montana and a few more that will probably be revealed in the days to come.....

Check out the latest information at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/20/house-opts-deeming-health-care-passed/. Sphere: Related Content

Do We Have "Government of the People, by the People, for the People"?

In November 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Lincoln expressed his goal in leading the nation through a very dangerous time in our history; namely, that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Today, however, President Obama is pursuing his major goal by urging the Congress of the United States to pass landmark legislation, which will transform 17% of the nation's economy, without any input from House members representing the American people who live in 182 Congressional districts.

The major legislation now under consideration will significantly reform the country's health care system and, in so doing, establish a massive expansion of federal entitlement programs that provide medical coverage for low to moderate income children and adults, the unemployed, the disabled and the elderly. To pay for this expansion of government programs, the bills being considered will impose additional taxes and fees on certain segments of our society, such as insurance companies, medical device manufacturers, tanning salon users, higher income taxpayers and those Americans who choose not to buy health insurance. The bills also include significant cuts in spending for Medicare.

I used the term "bills" under consideration because the procedure to be employed in the House of Representatives will be essentially to vote on two bills at once: the bill that passed the US Senate on Christmas Eve and a "reconciliation" bill that includes amendments to the Senate bill. This procedure is known as the "Self Executing Rule", "Deem and Pass" or the "Slaughter Procedure". The last description comes from the name of the Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, Louise Slaughter.

The amendments to the Senate bill came, for the most part, from the White House in order to scrub out many of the special deals handed out to certain Senators in order to assure passage of the Senate bill before the end of last year. These "high-minded deals" have been described as the "Louisiana Purchase", the "Cornhusker Kickback", "Gator Aid" and other glowing terms that express the very special focus given to certain states represented by Senators who seemed to hold out long enough to get the best they could for their constituents before agreeing to vote for the President's signature legislative objective.

Unfortunately, in order to bypass the Republicans in the Senate, the House must now pass the Christmas Eve Senate bill in addition to the White House amendments.... not as one amended bill, but as two separate bills, even though the special Slaughter House rules will allow this to occur with only ONE VOTE. This means that the President will be able to sign the Senate bill into law (with all those special unsavory deals) before the Senate takes up the amendments.

Since many members of the voting public have made known their objections to the backroom deals included in the Senate bill, as well as other objections to the legislation, many members of the House are not sure they want to vote on the Senate bill that has acquired such a tainted image. It was partly to reassure these uncertain House members that President Obama arranged for the White House to work with Congressional leaders to write the amendments that would result in a cleaner bill that could attract a majority of votes in both houses of Congress.

Of course, there are also many House Democrats who intend to vote against the amended bill due to other objections, such as pro-life Democrats who do not believe that the restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortions is sufficient in the amended bill; fiscally conservative Democrats who oppose the size of this new entitlement program, and very liberal Dems who do not like the absence of a public option in the amended bill.

Furthermore, Senate procedures are also being contorted to assure passage of the amendments to its Christmas Eve bill without the need for any Republican votes. Passing a new amended bill in the Senate normally requires 60 votes to overcome potential filibusters by the minority, but the voters of Massachusetts wiped out the 60 Democratic votes in the Senate in January when they elected Republican Scott Brown to replace the Democratic placeholder appointed after the death of the long-time Democratic "Lion of the Senate" Ted Kennedy. This unforeseen event required the President and the Congressional Democrats to devise a strategy that would allow them to pass the major overhaul of the nation's health care system without any Republican votes in either house of Congress!

This reality has now led to pursuit of the "reconciliation" process that is about to begin in the House over the weekend and then move up Pennsylvania Avenue for the President's signature on the backroom-deal filled Senate bill. As noted above, it is only after the Christmas Tree Senate bill actually becomes law that the Senate will consider the amendments passed by the House under its special Slaughter House rules

By eliminating Republicans from the process and rushing through this major legislation with the votes of only one political party, Americans in 182 Congressional districts have no voice in this historic legislative process. The 182 districts include the 178 districts represented by Republican House members and four districts that currently have vacancies (three due to resignations of their Democratic Representatives and one vacancy due to the death of John Murtha).

President Obama is so intent on making his mark on history with this health care legislation that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get it passed, even without Congressional input from the full range of representatives that would assure that the government continues to be "of, by and for the people". Instead, we have one party rule. That type of government is usually called something else.......

Sphere: Related Content

The Reconciliation Shell Game

In the continuing debate over the health care reform legislation in Congress, the President and the media keep focusing on the reconciliation process in the Senate. The only reason that reconciliation became relevant to this process was because Republican Scott Brown won the open Senate seat from Massachusetts once held by the late Ted Kennedy. Since now Senator Brown said that he would be the 41st Senate vote against health care, if he won, the Democrats knew that they could not pass a final bill in the Senate with a filibuster-proof 60 votes after conferencing with House leaders to resolve differences between the bills passed by each house of Congress before Christmas.

Finding a way to pass a bill in the Senate with 51 votes then became the focus of Democratic strategists. The reconciliation process allows that, if any changes to the previously passed Senate bill are only budgetary amendments within the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee.

In order to sell this procedural sleight of hand to defeat the clear message sent by the voters of Massachusetts, the President began saying that health care has been debated long enough, and it is now time for an "up or down" vote. The reference to an "up or down" vote is apparently his way of saying only a majority (51 votes) should be needed in the Senate to pass the bill.

In other words, the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts, just as all other Republicans in Congress, are not to be considered as part of the process. According to the Democrats in Washington, this legislation is too historic to let Republicans do anything to block it, let alone have any influence over the bill's contents.

So the President, Democratic Congressional leaders and the mainstream media have been focused on Republican efforts to find ways to slow or block the Senate's use of the reconciliation process. This way, they all keep the discussion of the prospects for passage of the health care legislation directed on the "obstructionists" in the Republican Party who are trying to stop the bill.

This approach to the press coverage of the Congressional action underway keeps the unknowing members of the public focused on the Senate shell in their little shell game. However, the real reason that the bill might be derailed is that, in order to use the reconciliation process in the Senate, the House must first pass the exact bill already passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve.

That Senate bill includes the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the union deal to delay new taxes on "Cadillac" health plans and other backroom deals that Harry Reid had to use to get 60 votes in the Senate at the end of last year. Even the President has agreed that these "stray cats and dogs" that got into the Senate bill are unsavory and should be eliminated.

In addition, many pro-life Democratic members of the House do not like the abortion language incorporated into the Senate bill. This means that the House is going to be asked to pass a Senate bill that even many Democrats agree is not very good legislation... before any amendments to eliminate the unsavory "cats and dogs" and to resolve differences between the two bills passed in each house of Congress last year can be offered for a vote.

Now here's the real rub: the Parliamentarian in Congress has ruled that as soon as the House passes the previously passed unsavory Senate bill, it must be taken to the White House for the President's signature before any amendments can be considered.

But once the President signs the bill, it becomes LAW! Historic health care reform will be accomplished! So what incentive will Congress have to adopt amendments that everyone, even most Democrats, agree are needed to resolve a multitude of problems in the Senate bill?

All of the above scenario can be achieved without any Republican votes. If the House fails to pass the previously passed Senate bill as the first step in the process, it will be because Nancy Pelosi is not able to get enough Democratic members to vote for it. If that happens, health care legislation will probably be dead. But not at the hands of Republicans. It will be Democrats who kill it.

So why is the media buying into the President's shell game of watching the Republicans? Sphere: Related Content

Cracks in the Global Warming Foundation

The IPCC (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) issued its latest report on climate change in 2007. That report has been used as the foundation for the global movement that has been advocating the adoption of very drastic policy measures by governments around the world to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, discussion of what international measures to adopt to address the findings of the 2007 IPCC report (formally called the Fourth Assessment Report) was the primary purpose of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference held in December 2009.

Proposed restrictions to address the climate change problems identified by the IPCC have been considered by many national governments, including the US, in recent years. These proposed requirements have included establishing Cap (the emissions) and Trade (for greenhouse gas credits) systems, shifting billions of dollars of wealth from developed nations to developing nations to allow them to adapt to the potentially dangerous effects of man-made climate change and other requirements that might be more sensible, such as improved energy efficiency standards and increased use of clean energy sources.

The widely quoted basic finding in the 2007 IPCC report that is cited as the reason such urgent global action is needed says that:

"Eleven of the last twelve years (1995–2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850)."
IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

The temperature data used for this conclusion comes from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Here's the temperature graph used by the IPCC, as recently updated on the CRU website (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/) to include 2008:


The head of the CRU was Professor Phil Jones, until he temporarily stepped aside in December 2009 when a University inquiry began into e-mails he exchanged with other climate scientists around the world over many years that were disclosed late last year and created the controversy now known as "Climategate".

In a BBC interview on February 13, 2010, Professor Jones made the following statements:

"....the warming rates for [the following] 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Here are the trends ..... for each period:

Period.......... Length.......... Trend (Degrees C per decade)

1860-1880... 21 years ........................... 0.163
1910-1940.... 31 .................................... 0.15
1975-1998.... 24 ................................... 0.166
1975-2009... 35 .................................... 0.161

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

In other words, Professor Jones has now stated that two periods of 20 to 30 years since 1850 had warming trends that are not significantly different from the trend of the years 1975 to 2009. Furthermore, the warming trend from 1975 to 2009 is slightly cooler (0.161 C) than the period of 1975 to 1998 (0.166 C). For that reason, he reluctantly agreed that there has been "no statistically-significant global warming" since 1995! The only reason that he hesitated in his agreement to that statement is that the period of time since 1995 (14 years) is not long enough to create a 95% significance level.

These statements by Professor Jones, made just days ago, completely contradict the crucial IPCC conclusion of 2007 regarding recent years being the warmest on record since 1850 that has been repeated over and over again as the sound scientifically based foundation for policy proposals that could have potentially cost governments around the world billions of dollars, significantly hampered business operations everywhere and drastically impacted individuals' lives around the globe.

In addition, another one of the most prominent climate change scientists, Professor Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute in Germany's Kiel University, who has been a leading member of the IPCC for years and developed key methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000 feet beneath the surface where cooling and warming cycles start, predicted a new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008.

In an interview in January 2010 with the UK's Daily Mail, Professor Latif said "A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these [cooling and warming] cycles [beneath the surface of the oceans].... They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.... The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling." Read more on this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html#ixzz0fwFXbyzH

Professors Jones and Latif are certainly not climate change skeptics. They have been two very important members of the IPCC scientific team for many years. In fact, they are two of the most important scientists in charge of gathering and reporting the global land and sea temperatures that are used by the IPCC and others in the Church of Climatology to argue that we are in an unprecedented period of global warming caused by human activity that is responsible for dangerous emissions of carbon greenhouse gases.

It is very clear from the recent statements made by Professors Jones and Latif that the science supporting the so-called "Inconvenient Truth" of man-made global climate change is most certainly NOT SETTLED, as so often claimed by Al Gore and his followers!

To the contrary, two of the IPCC scientists responsible for reporting the global temperature data on which the IPCC conclusions are based have now said that there currently is NO GLOBAL WARMING (regardless of the extent of any man-made carbon gas emissions). One of these, Professor Jones, says that there has been no significant warming since 1995. The other, Professor Latif, says that there is likely to be global cooling for decades.

If key scientists on the IPCC team have come to these conclusions from the very data used by the IPCC, on what data is the iconic hockey stick graph shown above based? Is it the fantasy of an environmentally brainwashed Gore worshipping graphic artist? It certainly cannot be based on well-settled world class science since the IPCC scientists responsible for analyzing the global temperature data on which the climate science is purported to be based have now contradicted the 2007 conclusions of the IPCC. Sphere: Related Content

The Power of Palin

The mainstream media and left wing bloggers are obsessed with Sarah Palin. She is no longer a public official nor currently running for any office, but whenever she writes a provocative article or a catchy phrase on her Facebook page, the MSM and lefty pundits raise a storm of protest. This, of course, causes Republican officeholders, Fox News and conservative bloggers to take note of the point she made. All of this attention keeps her in the news, helps sell her book and makes her a speaker of demand on the Tea Party circuit.

Let's look at a few examples. Last summer, Palin posted an article about the health care reform bills under consideration in Congress at the time as potentially creating "Death Panels" that would cause people seeking public health care to have their need for health care determined by bureaucrats who would weigh the relative value of such people against the value of others in need of care. This Palin comment raised questions about a health care efficiency panel to be established in the Department of Health and Human Services and a provision to provide end-of-life counseling to Medicare beneficiaries every five years or so.

Sarah Palin's use of the term "Death Panels" created an outcry from Democrats denying that any bill under consideration would create such panels. However, this comment did put a focus on the end-of-life counseling provided for in the legislation. The Democrats said it was just voluntary and only clarified that Medicare would pay for such consultations between doctors and patients. Republicans responded to the various comments on this provision and occasionally used Palin's term "Death Panels", which led many Democrats, including the President, to say that Republicans in general were misrepresenting the bills as creating "Death Panels".

No matter what side of this discussion anyone is on, it cannot be denied that Sarah Palin's little article on Facebook got a lot of politicians talking about a provision in the pending legislation that most Americans did not know was even in the bills.

Similarly, when a major newspaper revealed that Rahm Emanuel called some very liberal Democratic members of Congress "F***g Retards" during one of those closed door meetings on health care legislation without any Republicans present, Sarah Palin posted a Facebook article urging Emanuel to resign for being so insensitive to mentally challenged people by using the "R word". Some might suggest that all extremely liberal Democrats are "mentally challenged", so I was actually surprised that the White House Chief of Staff would say something that many conservatives would agree with, if it had not been for his very crude manner of speaking.

The outcry about Palin's call for Emanuel's resignation got immediate attention at the White House, and Rahm was required to call Tim Shriver, the Chairman of the Special Olympics, to apologize. Other organizations representing the handicapped group in question, however, quickly pointed out that calling a member of the Kennedy clan, who happens to run the Special Olympics, does not make the apology sufficient for all those so handicapped. This meant that Rahm had to meet with representatives of these other groups to apologize.

What is amazing about these Emanuel attempts at redemption for his crass remark is that none of the phone calls of apology or meetings to apologize would have occurred if Sarah Palin had not written about it on Facebook!

Now the MSM and left wing bloggers are all excited that they found out that Sarah Palin wrote some notes for her speech to the Tea Party Convention on her hand! Wow! How shocking! Chris Matthews of the lefty MSNBC questioned whether such a "palm reader" could ever be President. It appears that the leftists think only Ivy League Teleprompter-dependent liberals should be President!

What is really amusing to me is why Sarah Palin stirs up so much angst among the MSM and left wingers. Why do they spend so much time and attention on a private citizen with a Facebook page?

It certainly can't be because she was the losing candidate for Vice President on a major party ticket.

The last unsuccessful VP candidate on the Democratic ticket, someone named John Edwards, got no attention from the MSM and left wingers, even while he was running for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, when he fathered a "love child" with his mistress while his wife was being treated for cancer... until the National Enquirer broke the story!

Sphere: Related Content

Common Ground?

The media has been full of analysis of President Obama's State of the Union address on Wednesday. His commitment to "stay the course" on health care reform while putting new emphasis on creating jobs has been well covered, as well as his continued attacks on lobbyists just before the White House offered special interests off-the-record conference call briefings on the speech's topics on Thursday and his renewed call for bipartisanship after a year of locking Republicans out of Congressional discussions on major legislation.

There is obviously much that pundits from both the left and right can praise or criticize about the President's speech depending the critics' political leanings, but I was struck that he actually advocated a course of action on new domestic sources of energy that both parties should be able to agree to pursue:

".... to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies."

All of these areas of increased domestic development of new energy sources would lead to reduced dependence on foreign sources of oil. This goal has been called for by candidates of both political parties during election campaigns for decades. Unfortunately, the Democrats have usually advocated achieving this goal for the most part through solar and wind technology without supporting (and even opposing) efforts to increase use of nuclear energy, offshore oil and gas exploration or clean coal technology.

With a Democratic President advocating these approaches to such a longstanding problem, the Republicans should stop attacking him and his party long enough to realize that we have a unique opportunity to make real progress on a problem that has long been out of the grasp of our political system.

Obama repeated these positions in his remarkable meeting with Republican House members in Baltimore yesterday. It is also reported that the Administration's annual budget for 2011 to be released on Monday will include a significant increase in government guaranteed loans for nuclear power plant construction.

Not only would these actions help the US increase the domestic production of energy without worsening emission of greenhouse gases (whether global warming is a real problem or not), but it would also be the source for more jobs in the US that cannot be exported since the whole point is to produce more energy in the US. The President should be supported for taking these positions in his address to Congress and for taking action in the proposed budget for next year that backs up his rhetoric.

Common ground is very difficult to find with all the partisan bickering that characterizes Washington politics in modern times. Our leaders should seize this opportunity and work together on expanding the pursuit of these new sources of energy in the US!

Sphere: Related Content

The Audacity of Spin

41st Republican Vote Against the Democrats' Health Care Reform Bill!

Last week Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican (a rare breed of politician), won the US Senate seat left open by the passing of Ted Kennedy after 47 years in office. Brown campaigned on the theme, among others, of promising to be the 41st vote against the pending health care reform bills in order to have the legislation reconsidered. The health care bills had been pushed through the House and Senate at the end of last year with only one Republican vote in the House and without much time for any members of Congress to read through the bills that both exceeded 2,000 pages. Brown also campaigned against excessive federal spending and the lack of bipartisanship and government transparency that, contrary to the promises of Barack Obama when he ran for President in 2008, has characterized Washington politics over the past year.

The next day, President Obama was interviewed on ABC by George Stephanopoulos. When Stephanopoulos asked the President for his reaction to Scott Brown's election, Obama said:

"Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office, people are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."

Obama seems to be saying that those who voted for Brown share the same views as those who voted for Obama for President in 2008! Really?? The photo above of protesters in front of the US Capitol was taken in 2009, not 2008!

And who is that man campaigning for Brown's opponent in the photo above? It would logically seem that his supporters would vote for the candidate he urged them to vote for, rather than for Democrat Martha Coakley's opponent.

The only common theme to the voter anger that swept Obama and Brown into office is that the voters are angry at their federal government and their President. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, the President that voters were angry with in 2008 was George W. Bush. The President that voters in Massachusetts were angry with in 2010 is Barack Obama.

It often seems, as Obama has gone to town hall meetings around the country over the past year making promises that he does not keep, that he thinks he is still campaigning against other people in office. He says things like federal spending is too high, people need jobs and special interests are running Washington, without any hint that he recognizes that he and his party are in charge of Washington now. It's the Democrats that are spending too much money now. No Republicans voted for the Stimulus bill that is costing billions of dollars without much return in terms of new jobs. It's the Democrats, including the President, who are now holding closed door meetings with special interests, such as the unions, AARP and the AMA.

So who does Obama think the voters and protesters over the past year are angry at now? Wake up, Mr. President.

It isn't 2008 anymore!!!!

Sphere: Related Content