that some no votes were gimmes. Now this brings it out in the open. Thanks!

But I wonder why he didn’t vote? And where was Isakson?

There better be substance behind the cheerleading. Otherwise we’re screwed.

That’s all the repeal talk is – cheerleading. It’s mathematically impossible unless everything goes our way in both ’10 and ’12. There better be substantive plans for what to do next year that involve more than screaming for repeal or nothing.

Now we know who is for and against repealing this dumb thing. I’m guessing the Democrats are all holding hands and jumping off a cliff together.

I take back my comments that this was a pointless vote.

as many times as we can. Don’t let up. Be like a pit bull after a steak. We are in the minority but we are not dead. See how many times you can get Reid to say “I don’t know what they are trying to do”. I wish he could come up with some new script. Dan, how long do you think this can be drawn out?

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, though I’m not holding out much hope. Too bad Lindsay doesn’t have a conservative opponent hot on his tail, I’m sure he’d be wearing his conservative costume just like his mavericky brother from another mother, McLame.

Are failing too.
As this has to head back over to the house again anyway…
Why do the Democrats even stonewall the stuff they would normally dive on and support?
Is it that the points of order patches are clean and do not demand debate?
I still hope they can bury it alive somehow, but realize it is all uphill.
Mark

…can be found here. He’s already getting drilled locally for the inconsistency of his position.

Any word on who got to Mcconnell and told him to shape up and get with the program?

Let’s retire her in 2012, just after Carnahan in 2010.

That is why I was disappointed with the noises yesterday contra voting. To have not allowed a vote would have been an alarm bell, loosing the hounds of primary destruction.

The other side is constantly trying to slaughter the truth of what is and what will actually happen with HCR.

Best that our side understand and keep understanding that this is all out war. There is no middle ground.

Lynn Sweet of the Chi Sun Times was on am radio this morning saying that we will immediately have bans for disallowing pre-existing conditions. Our work is never done.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

Don’t know why I thought there’d even be a question about how Nelson would vote, even though he’s been under an immense amount of pressure here. These types of votes pretty much tell me he’s given up on running in ’12, and is looking to get as much hay out of the Dems while he can, so that maybe he can get something.

Kerrey was worse than this, but I expected it from him. He targeted it so early it wasn’t a surprise. But even Exon from NE didn’t turn traitor to the people in Nebraska like Nelson has.

Great video – Author Kevin Jackson smacks down David Shuster MSNBC; Subject: Breitbart.tv » ‘The BIG Black Lie’ Author Debates MSNBC’s Shuster on Tea Party ‘Violence’

Look for billboard on I-70 in Missouri on “Citizens’ Guide to Revolution”

It will take a minimum of 291 seats in the House and 70 votes in the Senate to repeal this crap. 2/3 of the House and 2/3 in the Senate are needed to over ride an Obama veto. I say 291 in the House and 70 in the Senate because there will always be swishy RINOs who want do it. So, best go for 300 in the House and 70 in the Senate to compensate for the swishy RINOs. 291 and 67 would be the magic numbers, but you will need a cushion.

I had always thought that the taxes kick in right away, but not the benefits. I was reading “the Corner” blog on National Review Online and Jeffrey Anderson was indicating that is not the case. This is the first I heard of that. I thought it would be an important indicator of how easy it will be to repeal.

Any idea how out of all this ugly process Obama still comes in at 48% approval? I want to gag.

ball beginning to get rolling downhill…

http://www.aapsonline.org/newsoftheday/00960

and this letter published at NRO from a doctor to her patients:

My Dear Patient,

As you must know, Congress has just passed extensive legislation governing health care delivery and insurance systems. Whether you agree with what it does or not, we are all now subject to this law and its sweeping changes.

I have always conducted my medical practice with my patient’s best interests as my first priority. Although not legally obliged to do so, I have routinely provided you with a receipt that has all the codes necessary to bill your own healthinsurance company for any reimbursement to which you are entitled. Until now, that insurance company was a free enterprise despite the fact that it was heavily regulated by state and federal laws. Now the situation is quite different. Through the new law’s mandates, regulatory powers and reform, health insurance is and will be largely a government activity which will have an ever larger jurisdiction over how doctors practice, make clinical judgments and are paid.

The new law provides for about 150 new government agencies, many of which are designed to be ‘oversight’ bureaucracies which will have the right to decide what medical care is legal to provide through insurance. Among other things, they will have the right to review my medical care of you and read your medical record. Now, as soon as you submit our economic transaction to your insurance company for reimbursement, you have involved me in these regulations and put me in the jurisdiction of government for my activities, decisions and behavior as your doctor.

No one can have two masters. Either I can serve you as my patient or I can serve the government. Either I can continue to make your welfare and health my only concern, including the protection of your privacy and medical records, or I can abide by ever-increasing amounts of government regulations and dictates to my decisions. I can’t do both. I choose to continue to follow my conscience and practice medicine to serve you.

For this reason, I am responding to the situation created by this new law by exercising my right not to participate in any health insurance program. I will still provide you with the same medical services that I always have, but the interaction will be exclusively and privately between you and me. This means that I will provide you only with a receipt for the services you have paid for, but without the additional information that is required to submit your receipt for reimbursement to your health insurance company. That is the only way I can make sure there will be no conflict between following the law and serving you. Because the law is now in effect, so must these changes be to my practice. (end of letter)

My children’s pediatrician went to fee-for-service years ago and gave us a receipt with which we could get our own reimbursements from our insurance companies. Shortly after that, our family joined a Christian-based, catastrophic only “medical share” plan, so we are used to not having a “middle man” and have paid for own our preventative care out-of-pocket, usually at a 45-50% discount simply because we were paying cash.

My question is: could one of the unintended consequences of the impending implementation of ObamaCare cause doctors and patients to escape to a more private fee-for-service relationship? I have found it to be both freeing and less expensive than costly insurance premiums. Maybe others will, too. I would love to see America return to a pre-Medicare/Medicaid, no government involved, healthcare system!

Which leads me to another interesting question to ponder: could the passage of Obamacare, AND the resulting chaos of discovering what’s in it, reflecting on the ramifications, and the attempts to repeal and replace it with something better- could this “fruit basket turnover” of an ongoing healthcare legislative struggle finally be the impetus that gives us a new healthcare landscape that doesn’t include Medicare and Medicaid, but free market solutions instead?

I know that’s miles away from where we are now, and there are a lot of “ifs” along that path, but if you don’t have a vision for where you want to end up, you won’t have a strategy for getting there.

Just thinking with my keyboard and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

that this will be eventually repealed. In fact, I think it is almost a certainly for several reasons.

1. Other entitlements that grew over time were popular when implemented. Obamacare was not passed with any bipartisan support and is not popular with the American public. A recent CBS poll shows people want by a 2-1 margin Obamacare repealed!!!

2. Popular entitlement programs like medicare and social security benefit all 300 million Americans. Everyone is either on these programs or has a parent or grandparent on them. The entitlement also taps into America’s strong sense of individualism – you pay into it and then collect it. In fact, there are many Americans that believe (although incorrectly) that the money they will collect from social security is simply the government giving them back what they paid it. These entitlements are nothing more than public annuities – you pay in, and collect on retirement. Obamacare is nothing like this at all. It is a complex web of price controls, regulation, government buracracy, and federal subsidies that will be viewed as an entitlement to only a small percent of the population that does not vote. Most Americans will view this as a tax and a burden – fining them or unfairly burdening them with buying a product they do not want or need to subsidize other people’s insurance. The only people that will actually receive an entitlement are Medicaid recipients (an unpopular program) and the less than one percent of the population who cannot get insurance due to pre-existing conditions. Senior citizens are going to be hit by this, people who have high deductible consumer friendly insurance will have to give it up for a more expensive policy, other people that have no insurance because they do not want it will have to pay a fine or buy the insurance. And if you think the subsidies are a big deal, consider the fact that between 9 and 10 million people without insurance live in a home with a household income above $75K per year. Subsidies decline as they approach $88K and above that are zero. In other words, a big chuck of those that will face fine or a purchase will not be eligible for any subsidies.

Whatever small goodies exist in the bill that mainstream Americans will benefit from will pale in comparison to the outrage over the sting they will feel from Obamacare. For example, which side of the following debate would you want to be on? Obamacare will allow slacker kids to stay on insurance until they are 26, but senior citizens will see significant cuts and care rationing to pay for it.

3. Demographics are not in the democrats favor. Every day for the next 20 years 10,000 new people will enroll in social security and medicare. Who would you rather have in your corner, senior citizens or medicare recipients?

4. Obamacare will not work. As I heard Governor Pawlenty say at Greta last night, Obamacare is trying to install a 1970s General Motors structure (big bureaucracy, red tape, management layers, etc.) in a global economy with Apple computers and Iphones. This labyrinth of bureaucracy will not lower costs but cause premiums to skyrocket. And everything that goes wrong with healthcare from this point on will be owned by the democratic party.

5. The debt is going to explode. The deficit has become a MAJOR issue among voters which is why Obama announced the mendacious spending freeze and delayed implementation of this program for 4 years. Our deficit this year is expected to be $1.6 trillion, or 11% of GDP and our debt is over 90% of GDP. What triggered Greece’s collapse was that there deficit grew to be over 12% of GDP and their debt over 100%. America can handle more debt than Greece, but only for so long. We all know that congress will not deliver against the assumptions in the CBO report (they never do). Therefore, when we get to 2013 and our government looks out over the next ten years, they will see a staggering amount of debt. Washington is going to get pressure from voters, the Fed, credit rating agencies lowering the credit rating of our debt, the international community (who will stop buying our bonds and will continue to push to replace the US dollar as the reserve currency), etc. Medicare and social security will still be pacing to go bankrupt. When deciding what needs to be cut, repealed, rolled back, etc., what do you think will win out? Raising taxes on middle class? Cutting benefits and rationing care to senior citizens? Or rolling back Obamacare’s unfunded mandates for Medicaid and federal subsidies that only benefit a small percent of Americans who don’t vote and have not even received the benefits because they have not even been implemented yet?

Based on the fact that the public hates this, it will only benefit a few while sting the majority, will not work, and will create crushing debt levels, Congress will have to start rolling it back starting in 2013.

Seriously, I by nature am not an optimist but I highly doubt Obamacare in its current state will survive beyond 2013.

67 votes to overturn presidential veto . 67-41 GOP= 26 votes needed. 36 senate seats up for reelection in 2010, 18 of which are DEM . If GOP holds all GOP and take all Dem senate seats ,they will still be 8 shy of 67 needed to overcome an Obama veto until his election in Nov 2012 . Obama will be in office until at least Jan 2013.
Other than symbolism , why waste time on repeal now ? Taking over the House and defunding / investigating as much weird lib stuff as possible is the only real hope . Infighting with those who can win to get this done seems foolish if it gives seats to Dems.