Vote them out in 2010, 2012, 2014

The entire Congress of the United States is corrupt.

And I mean both Houses and I mean both major parties.

I realize that a few Members of each House are trustworthy, but, as a group they are absolutely the most corrupt bunch to ever disgrace our Nation.

In November of 2010 the entire House of Representatives will stand for re-election; all 435 of them. One third of the Senate, a total of 33 of them, will also stand for re-election.

Vote every incumbent out.

And I mean every one of them.

No matter their Party affiliation.

Let's start all over in the House of Representatives with 435 people who have absolutely no experience in running that body, with no political favors owed to anyone but their own constituents.

Let's make them understand that they work for us.

They are answerable to us and they simply have to run that body with some common sense.

Two years later, in 2012, vote the next third of the incumbents in the Senate out.

We can do the same thing in 2014 and, by that time we will have put all new people in that body as well.

We, the People, have got to take this Country back and we HAVE to do it peacefully.

That's what the Framers of our Constitution envisioned.

I am also suggesting term limits on the new bunch: 8 years for Representatives and 12 years for Senators, no exceptions. The longer they stay in office, the more power they get, and they love it and will do anything to get re-elected.

We have term-limited the President, now lets have term-limits for the Legislators.

I would also suggest that once they leave office they have no retirement benefits other than Social Security!

VOTE THE POWER ABUSERS OUT..........

LETS TAKE AMERICA BACK!!!!!!!

IF YOU LIKE THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING IN OUR COUNTRY,

THEN DO NOTHING..........

Anonymous

Don't believe the criticism of Congress, READ the REPORT on Insurers Rescinded Coverage

Report outlines why and how often insurers rescinded coverage

Prior psychiatric conditions, including depression, were the most common reason for canceling a patient's health insurance.

By EMILY BERRY, amednews staff. Posted Dec. 25.

The draft NAIC committee report is available online HERE

A committee of the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners has released a draft report detailing rescission rates and practices of major insurers across the country between 2004 and 2008.

The report comes on the heels of criticism from members of Congress, and years of state regulatory investigations and fines stemming from alleged improper rescissions of individual health policies.

The NAIC received data from 49 companies that collectively cover 80% of the individual insurance market. Those companies reported revoking a total of 27,246 policies between 2004 and 2008, at an average rate of 3.7 rescissions for every 1,000 policies issued.

In California, where the state Dept. of Managed Care issued fines to numerous companies over their rescission practices, rates began dropping in 2005, when the department's investigation began, the NAIC said.

According to the report, rescission rates nationwide peaked in 2005 and dropped thereafter, with rates at their lowest in 2008. Although the NAIC did not give a reason for the overall decline, it did admit that in California "there appears to be some connection" between the state investigations and fewer rescissions.

The report also found wide variation among states' rescission rates, from 18.5 rescissions per 1,000 policies issued in New Mexico to a low of zero in the five states where guaranteed issue laws bar insurers from rescinding policies.

Nearly half of rescissions were based on preexisting health conditions in four major categories: psychiatric, including depression (18%); hypertension (10%); height and weight, including obesity (9%); or substance use, including smoking (9%).

The draft NAIC committee report is available online HERE

The Geography of a Recession

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 31 million people currently unemployed -- that's including those involuntarily working parttime and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting. "The Decline: The Geography of a Recession," as created by labor writer LaToya Egwuekwe, serves as a vivid representation of just how much. Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 -- approximately one year before the start of the recession -- to the most recent unemployment data available today. Original link. For more information, email latoya.egwuekwe@yahoo.com

Climategate and the SCAM: "the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak"

THE CLIMATE CHANGE SCAM: A CONCISE SUMMARY

December 25, 2009Posted by John at 4:16 PM | powerlineblog.com

In the wake of Climategate, common sense deniers like to say that there is lots of other evidence for global warming, in addition to that which has been debunked by the East Anglia whistleblower. Actually, however, the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak. At Icecap, Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the key scientific evidence with admirable brevity:

It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:

• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.

• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.

• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.

• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.

• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.

We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:

• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.

• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.

• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.

• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the "hockey stick" graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.

• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.

Contrary to many public statements:

• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.

• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.

• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.

• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.

• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.

The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.

Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word "ever" is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean "in the last 20 years," or "the last 70 years." "Ever" means the last 4.5 billion years.

For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, "How long is ever?" The answer is since 1979. And then ask, "Is it still warming?" The answer is unequivocally "No." Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word "unprecedented" cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.

SCOTT adds: The direct link to Gerhard's piece is here.

Watch the true power of a modern binary explosive similar to flight 253 device

A binary explosive or IED

DEM Health Reform aim is "a single-payer system"

The True Intent of Health "Reform"

Posted by Karl Denninger in Health Reform at 15:39 Friday, December 25. 2009

There are two interesting articles in the WSJ relating to the "Health Reform" bill, one by Karl Rove and the second coming from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Let's first talk about Karl Rove:

Taxes start going up now, Medicare cuts begin after next fall's election, and spending for subsidies commences in five years. The price tag is not the first decade's announced $871 billion cost: It is $2.4 trillion. That's the cost of the tax credits in insurance exchanges, and the additional Medicaid costs the reform generates, over the first 10 years it's fully up and running, according to Congressional Budget Office numbers compiled by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.

Take the partisanship out and what you have is the above, basically. On this Mr. Rove is exactly correct.

The tax increases come now, Medicare cuts come after the next election but in point of fact the spending will come never.

I'll explain after I provide some of the second article:

The purpose of this compulsory contract, coupled with the arbitrary price ratios and controls, is to require many people to buy artificially high-priced policies to subsidize coverage for others as well as an industry saddled with other government costs and regulations. Congress lawfully could enact a general tax to pay for these subsidies or it could create a tax credit for those who buy health insurance, but that would require Congress to "pay for" or budget for the subsidies in a conventional manner. The sponsors of the current bills are attempting, through the personal mandate, to keep the transfers entirely off budget or--through the gimmick of unconstitutional taxes or penalties they dub "shared responsibility payments"--make these transfers appear to be revenue-enhancing.

This "personal responsibility" provision of the legislation, more accurately known as the "individual mandate" because it commands all individuals to enter into a contractual relationship with a private insurance company, takes congressional power and control to a striking new level. Its defenders have struggled to justify the mandate by analogizing it to existing federal laws and court decisions, but their efforts do not withstand serious scrutiny. An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented-- not just in scope but in kind--and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.

Congress has a responsibility, pursuant to the oath of all Senators and Representatives, to determine the constitutionality of its own actions independently of how the Supreme Court has previously ruled or may rule in the future. But it is very unlikely that the Court would extend current constitutional doctrines, or devise new ones, to uphold this new and unprecedented claim of federal power.

Got that second part?

Good, because here's my prediction.

Congress will somehow manage to put these two bills together and come up with something that both Houses of Congress will pass, and Obama will sign it.

The lawsuits will come immediately thereafter.

They will succeed, because there is simply no justification anywhere in The Constitution, nor can one be manufactured, to force someone under pain of federal fine and/or imprisonment to purchase something from a private party simply as a consequence of being alive.

This is so blatantly unconstitutional that nobody in The House or Senate can seriously expect it to stand. Therefore, we must conclude that it is not intended to stand - both House and Senate fully expect that mandate to be struck.

When, not if, it is you will discover the what I have said all along is the truth purpose of this so-called "reform" - a single-payer system.

Here's how it will happen.

1. Congress will pass and Obama will sign something containing this "individual mandate."
   
   
2. This will generate immediate lawsuits which will begin their way through the system, headed for the United States Supreme Court. That process will take several years. Note that the so-called "benefits" of this reform will also take several years to show up. This is not an accident.
   
   
3. Meanwhile, the taxes begin immediately. This is exactly what happened in the 1930s by the way - taxes were raised right into the maw of an economic recession, and helped turn it into a Depression. Such it will be this time as well.
   
   
4. Young, healthy people will pay the "fines" under protest and refuse to buy coverage (it's cheaper than complying with a $15,000/year mandate to pay the $750/year fine!) and join said lawsuits in Step #2. This will in turn begin to force private companies out of the system (remember, there are also price controls in there!) as adverse selection will not be eliminated as promised.
   
   
5. At some point the courts will strike the individual mandate. Free to not pay the fine or buy insurance and prevented from raising rates adverse selection will collapse the remaining private health insurers.

At this point you have:

1. Permanently higher taxes (since it is constitutional to tax!)
   
   
2. NO private health insurers left in the market.
   
   
3. The "standards and practices" remaining and impossible to remove (note the super-majority requirements in the bill - intentionally put there to prevent the removal of those standards and practices!)

What comes next? Unable to impose mandatory individual payments to private companies The Government will then have "no choice" but to put in place a Canadian-style system.

For good or bad, you will get both rationing and a tax-funded medical system in The United States. Private override insurance may remain available and you may be able to continue to buy health care for cash, but neither is assured - neither can be done (for the most part) in Canada, as just one example.

I do not believe this outcome will be an accident - indeed, I believe it is the intention of the Obama Administration and The Democrats all along.

Those who are ascribing some sort of partisan "liberalism" motive - that is, a desire to take over 20% of the economy - are wrong. The real desire is to collapse health care spending to around 9-10% of GDP.

Since neither party is willing to have an honest debate and discussion with Americans relating to the amount of care we can afford to provide people, including but not limited to care as we age, for those who are unable to pay for it on their own, and since both parties have been co-opted by the medical device and pharmaceutical industry who have clamored for "more and more" of GDP (while delivering relatively small incremental "benefits" in the form of extending life, albeit at a questionable level of quality), this is what we're going to get.

Mark this Ticker and come back to it in three or five years - I'd make a fairly large wager that this is exactly what we will not only get but what is the true intent behind this "bill." SOURCE

The Filibuster: 'Protects Americans from a Tyranny of the Majority'

The Filibuster is Essential for Democracy

Posted by Brian Darling (Profile) | RedState | Saturday, December 26th at 3:00PM EST

The filibuster is essential for democracy, because it protects Americans from a tyranny of the majority, whether that majority be Democrats or Republicans. Right now, liberals are angry at Congress because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was not allowed to steamroll the minority party, and moderates within his own caucus, to pass a version of ObamaCare with a public option. The left wants to exterminate the only remaining tool for individual members of the Senate to slow down legislation.

It isn’t enough for liberals to control 60 votes in the Senate, have an overwhelming majority in the House and the Presidency for the next 4 years. Now they are messaging to get rid of the Senate filibuster, so they can cut out moderate Democrats. They want the Senate to be run like the House — with minimal participation by the minority party. I bet these same liberals would be very upset if Republicans had changed the rules during the Bush Administration to expand tax cuts, set up private accounts to wean citizens off Social Security and cut federal spending on government waste (think ACORN). Liberal columnist for the Washington Post, Ezra Klein, writes today:

The modern Senate is a radically different institution than the Senate of the 1960s, and the dysfunction exhibited in its debate over health care — the absence of bipartisanship, the use of the filibuster to obstruct progress rather than protect debate, the ability of any given senator to hold the bill hostage to his or her demands — has convinced many, both inside and outside the chamber, that it needs to be fixed.

By “fixed,” the left means eliminated so that they can throw moderate members of the Democrat caucus under the bus. Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) would have had no input into the Senate version of ObamaCare without a mechanism for Senators to extend debate. Somehow Republicans are to blame for the lack of bipartisanship and for Democrat Senators use of the rules to remove objectionable portions of the health care bill. For Klein, the Democrat caucus in the Senate, including a Socialist and an Independent-Democrat, is far too conservative because it did not take up and pass a version of ObamaCare with a public option.

Klein wrote that “this was a test of whether a party could govern when everything was stacked in its favor” and concluded ”not really.” Klein went on to complain:

And Democrats still could not find a single Republican vote, which meant they had to give Nebraska a coupon entitling it to a free Medicaid expansion and hand Joe Lieberman a voucher that’s good for anything he wants. If the Senate cannot govern effectively even when history conspires to free its hand, then it cannot govern.

First of all, Senator Harry Reid decided to put the Nebraska provision in the bill to buy a vote for cloture. Can’t blame the Senate’s rules for that situation. Klein’s complaint about Nelson of Nebraska and Lieberman’s use of the Senate rules to get what they want is no reason to get rid of the filibuster. Because Klein’s beloved Democrats could not get everything they wanted after months of closed door meetings and no effort to include Republicans, the filibuster has become the reason for public option failure.

Klien quotes a Republican complaining about the filibuster:

In 2005, Senate majority leader Bill Frist nearly shut the chamber down over the Democratic habit of filibustering George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. “This filibuster is nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority,” he said at the time.

It think it is time for conservatives to distance themselves from the Republican attempts to impose the so called “Constitutional Option” to abolish the filibuster for judicial nominees. That argument was based on a flawed logic that, although the Senate consititutionally sets it’s own rules, another provision in the constitution can be interpreted to claim that the filibuster does not apply to judicial nominees. The theory was based on the idea that the Senate, through the use of a simple majority, could change the rules of the Senate by ignoring the letter of the Senate’s rules, to set a precedent exempting nominations from the filibuster rule. Thank goodness Republicans never went further down that path or they would be paying a high price right now. With all due respect to the former Leader, Senator Bill Frist was wrong and not all conservatives supported the idea that the filibuster did not apply to nominations.

The filibuster is nothing more than a tool to allow the minority to have the right to extend debate. If one understood the Senate rules, they would remember the famous movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where one Senator was allowed to talk until he dropped. The Senate got rid of that tradition and rule. Now Mr. Smith can be shut up if 16 Senators sign a petition and 60 Senators vote to shut off debate after two days. A filibuster is 60 Senators saying that they are going to limit debate — nothing more and nothing less. If the majority can’t get 60, then nothing prevents them from trying to shut down debate again with a new cloture petition. The only way a failed cloture vote becomes a vote that kills a bill is when the majority fails to file cloture again and again to shut down debate. A filibuster does not kill legislation, the will of the majority not to force vote after vote to shut off debate does.

President Barack Obama, a man who as Senator participated in Democrat filibusters of Bush judicial nominees, is now changin his position on the filibuster. According to TPMDC:

“[A]s somebody who served in the Senate, who values the traditions of the Senate, who thinks that institution has been the world’s greatest deliberative body, to see the filibuster rule, which imposes a 60-vote supermajority on legislation - to see that invoked on every single piece of legislation, during the course of this year, is unheard of,” says President Obama in a yet-to-air interview with PBS.

The President must have a short memory, because he participated in filibusters during his short time in the Senate. Paul Krugman in the New York Times repeats the absurd argument that, notwithstanding the passage of ObamaCare in the Senate, our legislative process is broken because the left didn’t get everything they wanted:

And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional. After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster — a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule — turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill.

The bottom line is that the liberals want to change the rules so they can completely ignore Blue Dog Democrats in the House, moderate Democrat Senators and anybody with an R next to their name so they can rule without dissent. The advocacy of the rewriting of the rules in the Senate to abolish the filibuster is the utmost in hubris and “I am smarter than you” attitude of the Obama Administration and leaders in Congress. They want more and more power and can’t stand the fact that they can’t pass their whole left wing agenda in the first two years of the Obama Administration. They know that their left wing legislative window is closing because next fall democracy kicks back in and likely will kick out many of the moderate Democrats in the caucus for the sins of the far left of their own party. Source

Obamacare sparking 10th Amendment rebellion

...action in seven states

By: MARK TAPSCOTT | Editorial Page Editor | 12/22/09 6:01 PM EST | washingtonexaminer.com

Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina's attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader's office.

According to AP, South Carolina's Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina's two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

Attorneys-general in at least four other states are also considering joining McMasters, according to AP. A move by a group of states to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare could reinvigorate the efficacy of the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people all rights not specifically granted to the federal government.

Graham has been all over cable news today visibly angry about the vote-buying by Reid that secured the votes of Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as possibly other senators as yet unknown.

DeMint has also been active, especially on the issue of the Reid amendment's provision seeking to bar future congresses from changing even a single word of Section 3403 on the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB).

The IMAB will become the federal health care ground zero under Obamacare if it becomes law. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a link to DeMint's floor speech on the issue and additional information, analyses, and links.

Nelson's deal with Reid has attracted the most attention because it exempts Nebraska from paying its share of Medicaid expenses in perpetuity. Medicaid expenditures are among the most expensive federal mandates on state governments, and the Obamacare bill will significantly increase costs for all other states that don't somehow wangle a similar deal.

It also raises a constitutional issue, which McMasters explained in a statement issued earlier today:

"The Nelson provision is unusual in that there is not cut off date or phase out. Many provisions in federal law have a sunset date -- say 2, 5, 10, or even 20 years-- but this provision will continue in perpetuity. Quite obviously, this issue raises very serious concerns about equity, tax fairness as well as the constitutionality of having federal tax levies and mandates that treat one state differently from all the others.

"If the Nelson provision is not unprecedented, I feel comfortable in saying it is an exceptionally rare occurrence. States generally are treated in a similar manner. In this case, Nebraska will be treated in a widely divergent manner than any other state.

"Beginning today, I have instructed my attorneys to begin looking into the constitutionality of this provision and exploring the options that may be available to South Carolina and other states to defend taxpayers should this provision ultimately become law."

My colleague David Freddoso wonders what might happen if the governors of states bordering Nebraska - Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Iowa, and Missouri - announce that they are no longer funding their Medicaid programs and encourage those needing Medicaid services to visit the Cornhusker state. source