Posts Tagged ‘conservatism fights back’

Sarah Palin right again on death panels…

Posted: December 23, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
Tags: , , ,

Our friends on the left continue to call it the “lie of the year” but for some reason these non-existent death panels are being protected by specific and extraordinary legislative language:

“it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”

What does that section deal with? The Independent Medicare Advisory Board. These guys are going to determine what will be covered and what will not, who will get treatment and who will not. Dare I say it a “death panel”?

Sarah Palin dares to say it. Explicitly:

In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?

The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:

“It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.”

Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.

Amazing how this stuff that doesn’t exist keeps being propped up by the democrats in legislation. Her willingness to stand out front and say these things aloud is the primary reason why she is so hated and why she must be destroyed.

BTW look at google news, isn’t it odd that a a readers survey of a web site is being trumpeted as fact in paper after paper?

Rules? We don’t need no stinken rules!

Posted: December 17, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , , , ,

I’m detecting a pattern here:

Your candidate dies before the election, decide “he” still qualifies for the ballot and appoint someone else!

You candidate is about to lose an election in the Senate? Fudge the rules and put a different one up, deadlines be damned!

Want to push Global warming and grab a big chunk of the worlds money? Fudge the data and the info.

Acorn supports your candidates but congress votes to cut off funding? Rule that Acorn has a constitutional right to those funds.

Conservatives use the rules of the senate to slow things down? Ignore them.

…about three hours into the reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment, and this stopped the reading of the bill — even without unanimous consent.

“In allowing Sanders to do that, it appears the parliamentarian has broken the standing rules of the Senate,”

The rule in question?

“Reading: Under Rule XV, paragraph 1, and Senate precedents, an amendment shall be read by the Clerk before it is up for consideration or before the same shall be debated unless a request to waive the reading is granted; in practice that includes an ordinary amendment or an amendment in the nature of a substitute, the reading of which may not be dispensed with except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order; interruptions of the reading of an amendment that has been proposed are not in order, even for the purpose of proposing a substitute amendment to a committee amendment which is being read. When an amendment is offered the regular order is its reading, and unanimous consent is required to call off the reading.” (Riddick’s Senate Procedure, P.43-44)

Notice a pattern here? Over and over the rules or the laws or the standards are not amenable to their liberal cause. So rather than changing the law, or the rules or the standards our liberal friends decide to ignore them or fudge them.

There is an important lesson for conservatives here. If in the senate they are willing to play with the rules to stop delaying tactics they will be willing to change the rules to pass this bill or any other. The only rules are to win right now, immediate gratification.

And realize this doesn’t just apply to republicans, remember the misogyny and the tactics used against Hillery Clinton during the primaries in 08? If conservatives had used them we would have been pariahs.

Conservatives better understand the rules of engagement because if we bring a shield to a sword fight we are going to get cut.

I really think this is symptomatic to a decision made just over a decade ago but I think that is a post for another day when I want to make a speech.

If it’s worth proposing it’s worth reading

Posted: December 16, 2009 by datechguy in fun, opinion/news
Tags: , , ,

Democrats are shocked and Angry. Bernie Sanders proposed a 700+ page amendment and Tom Colburn objected to the waving of the reading of it.

So right now on C-Span 2 the entire 700+ page Amendment is being read aloud.

To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents. At this current pace, it will take 38 hours to get through the entire amendment.

I wonder how many more amendments will be offered with Colburn on the floor. I strongly suggest tuning into C-Span 2. You will hear the words amendment of the amendment quite a lot. This is actually important.

What happens in the federal code is that the origonal code gets amended in a law, rather than listing what the existing law is in the bill it say: This section is amended as follows. Often a bill is amended so many times that you have an amendment amending a bill as amended to change one or two phrases. Or something described somewhere else.

If the congressman is not familiar with the existing law, or the existing amendments then one can easily make huge changes to public law affecting millions with a sentence that is almost totally unintelligible to a person reading it.

I’d say it’s watching the sausage factory at work but as I said before that would be an insult to sausage makers like Mike Romano.

As you might guess I love it!

I think if the senate rules allow it, he should call for a quorum call to force all the senators to be attend said reading.

The time is even more important than they know

Posted: December 13, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , ,

Red State quotes Churchill in warning that we have to fight and push while the advantage is ours.

The most powerful words in the Senate are “I object.” Senate Republicans should have been shouting those two words on the Senate floor early and often from the moment this bill was considered, instead of the complete silence we have heard – other than to constantly agree to conduct business through unanimous consent. Here are just a few ways those words can (and should) be used in a very effective way:

He then lists rule after rule that republicans have eschewed that could be used to advantage.

Robert Stacy notes this and point out the time and timing make such a difference in general::

Had more conservatives jumped onto the Hoffman bandwagon in August — when Erick Erickson did — maybe Scozzafava could have been driven out of the race a couple of weeks earlier. Instead, she got about $1 million from the RNC and NRCC and hung in until the last weekend before Election Day, then endorsed Bill Owens, making just enough difference to elect the Democrat by a margin that, in the end, amounted to about 3,200 votes.

Republicans are instead allowing things to go forward Bill Kristol pointed out on Fox News Sunday today that the ideal is for this to be passed 60-40 so every democrat can be made to blame for the unpopular bill.

If your goal is to gain a political advantage that argument might hold water, but silly fellow that I am, I think the idea of voting conservative, or republican is because you believe in certain principles, and want those principles to advance for the common welfare.

If the only purpose of voting republican is to give republicans power and the only purpose of that power is electing republicans then what’s the point? It’s political Sola scriptura and it’s just as circular.

Let’s bottom line this: If “Health Care Reform” passes in ANY form it will NEVER be repealed. As the years go by whenever the democrats have the opportunity or the votes they will amended it little by little, in increments so tiny that as each amendment passes we will not see what it does all we are worrying about and more comes to pass.

This was the political genius of Ted Kennedy, he understood this and was able to use these tactics to reshape the country. That’s why he got along so well and compromised so much. He knew that every time he made a small compromise he pushed us one little bit closer to the dependent society that would vote democratic to keep the checks coming and those he made defendant would worship him for it..

I’m sorry but I’m not in favor of risking passage because we hope for an extra 5 house and/or 2 senate seats in the midterms. I’m not going to risk disaster because we are afraid of what a media that doesn’t like us and never will might say. As Cleveland said: “What’s the use of being elected or Re-Elected if you don’t stand for something?”

Erickson and McCain are right, we should use every single rule in the senate and in the house that we can in our favor. If we don’t and we lose, then those couple of extra seats are going to be small consolation for a mess we could have prevented.

It will be our own fault and future generations of Americans will rightly not forgive us for it.

Older Entries
Newer Entries