Back from my holiday hiatus

Well, I am back after a rather unexpected holiday hiatus. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is enjoying the new year. I am enjoying having my daughter home from college and slowly recovering from a very hectic Christmas.

I find myself struggling to find a story to jump back in the blogging business with today. Tomorrow is, of course, the start of a new Congress and is sure to bring with it quite a bit of news. The media is gearing up to make John Boehner into the bogeyman before he takes possession of Pelosi's broom. Who's crying now?

Our fearless reader is busy wishing someone read his START treaty before it was ratified in the Senate. Another case of passing something so we can find out what is in it? Good thing it was only something as trivial as our national defense at stake this time instead of our health care. Keep up the good work there champ.

START was one of a string of so-called legislative victories that had the left-wing media filled with hope Obama and his agenda were here to stay after his massive defeat in the midterms. Hey, I thought the election was supposed to have been a restraining order. Jon Stewart noticed this as well but disputed the media meme "Obama as the Comeback Kid." Stewart argues he is Luke Skywalker instead. Mediaite explains the twisted analogy:

Just like Luke defeated the Evil Empire and blew up the Deathstar, so too did Obama defy outrageous odds in getting elected as The New Hope. But the celebration quickly ended as the “Republic-an Empire” struck back, with a string of political victories that made the young Jedi knight (Obama) look weak and impotent. There’s even the frozen planet of Hoth with the cave Wampa monster (who like Sarah Palin, can see the planet Tatooine from her cave.)

The twisted analogy ends with Jabba the Hutt and his chosen bounty hunter Boba Fett getting defeated as lameduck Return of the Jedi. (The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Celebrated by dancing Ewoks on the planet Endor!)

This clip is 8 minutes long but Stewart gets to the Obama Skywalker stuff at about the 4 minute mark. As strained as the analogy might be, Stewart makes a point that needs to be reinforced. Rumors of Obama's demise were premature just as rumors health care was mostly dead were in the days after Scott Brown's election. Let's get busy in 2011 finding the candidate who will take this guy out of the White House in 2012 once and for all.


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Boehner pledges to stop ObamaCare

Via Townhall and Hot Air

Boehner's game plan:

Well, there’s a lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of how we can dent this, kick it, slow it down to make sure it never happens. And trust me, I’m going to make sure this healthcare bill never ever, ever is implemented.

In a perfect world Obama would have taken the message from Tuesday that was intentionally sent from voters. Scratch that, in a perfect world Obama would have taken Boehner up on his offer to start over before this debacle was made into law: "We told the president down at the Blair House during the seven-hour Obama infomercial that we ought to stop and start over. And we laid out the eight or nine common-sense ideas we had that would bring down the costs of health insurance." The health care system was badly in need of reform.  Had Obama chosen a wiser path and passed something with the support of the Republicans and the country at large, this issue would be resolved.

Obama and the train-wreck Congress we know as the 111th had ants in their pants, they couldn't do the right thing and start over.  Now Obama is acknowledging his law could do with a tweak while Republicans and a wide swathe of voters want to repeal and replace.  Brett Baier wisely points out, "There’s a big distance between tweaking and repealing."  There is also a good deal of uncertainty in between as well.  This is uncertainty the health care industry and the rest of the economy could do without.  Boehner will have his hands full dealing with this president on this and many other issues.  Fortunately, he doesn't seem to be inclined to shy away from the task:







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A few shrews left untamed

I am ashamed that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace.

The Taming of the Shrew, 5. 2

Eleanor the Curst declares Republicans unworthy of the gift Barack et al have bestowed upon them.  Naturally she sharpens her claws and has a hissy fit:

The upcoming election has nothing to do with the Republicans. They’re the beneficiaries of a completely unearned gift, and if they behave true to form, they’ll squander it. They’re like someone who’s won the lottery. They’re getting a windfall, but they haven’t put forth any serious ideas about legislating, or governing. And why should they? The election is not about them…

I’d like to believe that once the voters know more about John Boehner, the House speaker-in-waiting, they will recognize that elevating him is like buying fire insurance from the guy who lit your house aflame. He’s part of the crowd that spent money and ran up the deficit, and now he’s hawking fiscal sanity. He still smokes cigarettes, and in 1995, after the Republicans took over, he was videotaped passing out checks from the tobacco industry on the House floor while members were considering an end to tobacco subsidies. Judging by his complexion, he spends a lot of time in a tanning bed. Maybe he hasn’t heard of skin cancer, or he thinks that’s another myth, like global warming.

Eleanor girlfriend, can we talk?  Your prince still smokes cigarettes and he talks up fiscal sanity while proposing vast new entitlement programs the country needs like melanoma.  The only reason Republicans are on the receiving end of this "windfall" is because no one believes Obama has a clue what he is doing.

I would have liked to believe that once voters knew more about Obama they might have seen this coming.  I certainly did.   I certainly thought handing the crew who believed there was absolutely nothing amiss with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac the keys to the country was a bit like buying fire insurance from the guy who lit your house aflame.  Let's not pretend the progressive left had nothing to do with driving this country into a ditch.  I guess if you repeat a lie often enough it starts to sound like the truth.

Perhaps the Republicans and Boehner haven't proved themselves worthy of their windfall but voters have less confidence in the group who spent a trillion dollars on jobs that can only be counted like magical beans.  We have to believe it would have been way worse without the dog walk parks, tattoo shops and earmarks for Planned Parenthood.  Guess what Eleanor, no one seems to be buying that.  No one really believes that Obama brought us back from the economic abyss or if we had we only invested in more tattoo shops and dog-walk parks things would be hunky-dory.

 Lastly, no one seems to believe the Senate needed to hold hearings on Christmas Eve for a health care program that neither bends the cost curve downward or puts us in charge of our health care decisions.  No, health care wasn't his "major achievement" two-thirds of the country hates it as much as we hated having it crammed down our throats.  There's small choice in rotten apples, Eleanor. The voters, however, seem to have decided some apples are more rotten than others.  Choke on that in November.

Thanks so much to Dan Collins for linking!
H/T: Hot Air Headlines

Health Care Failure: Leave it to the Eager Beaver

John Boehner and Eric Cantor sent a letter to Rahm Emmanuel in response to Obama's request for a bipartisan discussion on health care.  Boehner and Cantor detail their list of "concerns" about the discussion and suggest they would be reluctant to attend unless the current bills are scrapped.  They asked that reconciliation be taken off the table and wondered whether the special interest groups the administration had negotiated with were going to be there as well.  In short it was a laundry list of the failures of the Obama administration that played a huge role in their inability to pass their signature piece of legislation.

Who better to answer such a letter than Baghdad Bob Gibbs?   The response is a stellar piece of revisionist history and obfuscation:

The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.

The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.

I think the President's historic moment to pass health care has passed, someone drove a truck through it.  Moreover, it is Obama who must show bipartisanship and repair his standing with Independents and he isn't likely to accomplish that by pretending he actually worked with Republicans when the evidence clearly shows otherwise.  He continues to believe he can pull the wool over voters' eyes with flowery words and a tight script.  He forgets he now has a record and frankly Independents are less than impressed with what they've seen.

Now he is signalling he has no intention of abandoning the bills the public has rejected.  I am guessing he thinks he can recreate the House Republican retreat and somehow convince the public they didn't get his point and make the Republicans look the fools in one fell swoop.  He is repeating some of the language he used that day suggesting he will review proposals that meet his "goals" and ones that stand up to objective scrutiny.  He continues to miss the fact his goals aren't consistent with the voters goals and they have looked at his proposals with an objective eye and found them wanting.

Obama is signalling the posts will always be moved here and likely has no intention of negotiating anything but his image.  He needs to put on a show to back up his positioning with lap dog Katie Couric:

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama said. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

so sayeth Eddie Haskell from the White House

Rush Limbaugh wisely pointed out earlier this was all a trap and advises Republicans to just say no.  The Republicans responded by asking that they start over, a position supported by the American people by the way, now Obama has said no.  Well Baghdad Bob said no, technically, as if he wouldn't run that by Obama first.  Obama buys himself a bit of plausible deniability in who backed down on efforts for bipartisanship.  Obama is the supposed eager beaver for health care though and here he proves he isn't serious about bipartisanship.  My advice to the Republican leadership, FWIW, send another letter asking Obama and crew to get back to you when they are genuinely serious about a bipartisan effort to reform health care.  They will be waiting a long time for a serious response.

More on this at Memeorandum