Since we still have a few days for the House/Senate conference, letters to the local paper will also help expose this mess for what it is. Calls to Senators and Congresspersons are also good.

You don’t have to be obnoxious about it, but you do have to be firm. Take a cue from Mark I’s interview: this was and is the Democrats’ responsibility, and that’s fine. They won the election, they got the power, they used it, and the results are all because of them.

And when they try to argue the three who voted for cloture, still be polite, but remind people that when somebody with McCain’s track record for bipartisanship says that a deal isn’t bipartisan, it isn’t bipartisan. You can even laugh a little and say that it takes something special for that particular Senator to not snap at the bipartisan hook.

The only hope is that Nancy’s henchmen are successful in making it look more like the House version and the three Senate Rs grow a set of balls among them and flip their vote. I suspect at this point that they are going to support the final bill no matter what, even though Collins left some wiggle room and you never know what Specter will do when the time comes.

past the President’s Day Holiday (which is the 16th). Force the Dems to play ball in conference.

Great list. It gives me, dare I say it, HOPE.
My husband and I were talking last night about what we can do as Americans raising two beautiful girls. We already vote during all elections. We make phone calls, sign petitions, support both our local and federal conservatives. We educate ourselves on the issues. We talk to friends and family. We do all this and will contiue to do so even though we feel like we lost a big one yesterday. We also decided we can continue to improve our own little bubble. We will get the rest of our debt paid off. We will continue to save wisely for our retirement and most importantly we will teach our girls the true value of money, the dangers of debt, and the importance of personal responsibility. Maybe as we educate the next generation (by example mostly), they can be better prepared to handle this crap we are leaving them.

1. We must cogently explain why the economic crisis is more the responsibility of Democrats than Republicans. They encouraged/forced/facilitated bad loans. Republicans did not oppose them with sufficient ferocity. Blaming republicans is akin to blaming the designated driver when the drunk gets the keys and kills someone: yes, we deserve some blame, but let’s maintain some perspective.

2. We must overcome the “Republicans over-spent, too” arguments. This requires numbers, which I do not have at the moment. I believe, however, the magnitude of Republican pork was minor compared to the current bill. Also, surpluses under Clinton (largely an accounting trick) resulted under a Republican Congress. Absent two wars and 9/11, they continued. That is a tough sell without numbers . . . and still tough with numbers, as most people glaze over numbers.

3. We must remind, remind, remind everyone: Geithner cheated on his taxes. So did Emanuel (that free apartment is worse than Daschle). Obama/Rezco cannot go away. We must be ethical and must rid ourselves of those who are not. Then relentlessly point out the moral/ethical flaws of the other side.

4. Fight on judges, but be prepared to lose. This will remind voters where much of the real fight is.

On the current bills, I believe we are too late. We might have prevented this mess two years ago, but we did not. I hope the Obama/Geithner proposals work. I give them a 1 to 2% chance.

We will likely enter a depression, followed by inflation. That will feel good for awhile and we may fall further behind politically. But, inevitably the new inflationary bubble will burst and the over-regulation of the economy/health care/speech will come to light. May be five years . . . or ten. If we are responsible now, we can then pick up the pieces. This is a great country with a great populace. I fear we can do very little now to prevent a lost decade – it is already lost. We must, instead, lay the groundwork for a recovery in ten years. That requires rehabilitating the Republican/Conservative brand. We do that with truth and honor.

In the meantime, relentlessly protect the first and second amendments: without them, we cannot recover. And make no mistake: they are at serious risk.

We need to press Congress for complete, no exception, streak-free Windex transparency. We need a government website that shows where EVERY SINGLE PENNY goes. I want to see not only who the government gives the money to, I want to see exactly how every recipient actually spends the money.

I want to know how every shiny red penny of the $4 billion for community organizers is spent. I want to see how Milwaukee spends the money on school they don’t need. I want to see every “incentive payment” to medical professionaals for going electronic with their files. I want every single recipient of this money to prepare and submit format expense reports WITH documentary backup in the form of receipts, invoices, payroll lists, packing slips, petty cash receipts, etc.

All of this…every expense report, every funds tranfer, every invoice, paystub, recipt, every piece of backup will be available for public review on-line, 24 hours a day with no fees needing to be paid for access, no passwords and no access restrictions.

I want the public to be able to sue on behalf of the government when they identify theft, fraud, waste and abuse (which we all know will be massive). In addition to the GAO watching this (ha ha), let the taxpayers keep an eye on this spending. I want the struggling CPA with time on his hands to be able to run the numbers and figure out that someone cooked the books…and get treble damages from the fraudster. I want efficiency freaks to identify whenever anything purchased government money was over priced. If they raised a stink about $10,000 hammers in the 80′s, I want to raise a stink about $2 ball point pens.

Now’s your chance to have the transparency you blathered about for so long Barack…for it has sure been lacking thus far.

I present this without comment (hat tip: Neal Boortz):

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said yesterday that some of the spending in the $819-billion stimulus passed by the House of Representatives last week represented important federal spending priorities needed to “make-up for a starvation diet under the Bush Administration.”

Hidden in that bill are some isolationist policies; the known one being the “buy American” clause but there are others not so easily spotted. I’m still wading through the thing and they have been smart in the write up. They’ve scattered things into several sections so you don’t get a sense of the whole.

Instead of arguing against them, argue for them but challenge them to go “whole hog” and advocate complete isolationism, the reason being that isolationism only works if it’s an “all in” policy (and even then it works only in the very short term).

They’ve convinced me we’re so broken that we can’t do anything anyway and we’re a really bad country,

We close our borders, withdraw from NATO and the United Nations and tell them to find a new home, withdraw all our troops from overseas bases and posts, kill NAFTA, and so on… basically telling the rest of the world its on its own. Perhaps it’s time we withdrew and let the rest of the world manage the rest of the world since we’ve done such a poor job of it.

If they call our dare on it, we’ll have a terrible (and I mean TERRIBLE) time for a few years until they (the rest of the meally mouthed world) learn their lesson but, in the end, I believe we’d be a stronger nation for it.

I don’t believe they will, however, because they’re all set to defer ever more powers to the likes of the corruptocrats at the U.N. rather than reclaim powers we’ve already abdicated. Maybe, just maybe, it will push them to get rid of some of that kind of legislation in the nuclear bomb erroneously called a stimulus bill.

At the least, it can be another delay tactic.

I wish I was exaggerating with that subject, but I’m not (hat tip again: Neal Boortz). Apologies for the lengthy quote.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

…

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

I guess the Democrats are really pinning their electoral hopes on the young, because I can’t imagine any senior citizen voting for Democrats that took away their health care. Unless of course they don’t know that the Democrats are responsible for it– which is now our job to tell them, because the MSM sure isn’t going to.

Hmmm…any parallels between Obama’s rush to pork and Bush “rush” to war? Of course not, Hussein was an actual threat…but that would be a line the media would buy and hash around like it actually meant something. Anything to slow this disaster down…let Obama’s approval rating catch up with the disapproval rating of

I had thought that the right strategy was to let the Dems pass this turkey while opposing it and pointing out to voters what bad medicine this is.

I now have concluded that this thing is so bad that the GOP should expend what little political capital it has and filibuster this thing. Obama thinks it is politics but really it is principles.

I’m working off the books as much as possible. I’ve got to pay down my debt, and I’m danged if I’m going to give half of it to BO to waste before I get to use the other half.

Proper grammar saves lives.

Let’s eat Grandma.
Let’s eat, Grandma.

---

Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

The only chance we have of defeating this monstrosity is for the GOP to stick together in opposition to it. Only with a united front will redstate Democrats get nervous. The more united the more nervous they will be. There is still time to pull back Specter, Collins, and Snowe.

Maybe the press should take a look at the markets reaction to all this mess to see how wrongheaded it all is.

is to post on your boards on MySpace and Facebook. This, in essence shotguns out a message to people you don’t even know.

Maybe no one will pick it up and repost, but maybe they will, and if they do then their entire network of friends see it. Then maybe someone in their network reposts…so on and so on.

Digg it also, same premise.

I’ll first say that given the lack of any sort of reaction from almost any one of my elected officials on awful this bill is, my expectations are very low. That said, I did two things:

First, I wrote to both Michael Steele from the RNC and Senator Cornyn and the rest of the NRSC, and told them that Specter, Collins and Snowe made their bed, and now they must sleep in it. If this abomination passes with their name on it, I demanded that the NRSC withold any help, funding, etc for any of their re-election campaigns. I would rather have a liberal in their place that we can effectively run against that an interloper, which is what they are.

Second, I have sent my two lib Senators, the RNC and the NRSC a link to an article I found on the Hudson Institute web site, which sheds light on yet another ignored provision of this bill, which names a National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, which basically gives the government the mandate to create this new office and system, force doctors to use it or face stiff penalties, and of course, charge doctors for the right to use it. And what is it? Well, the precursor to socialized medicine, of course. I won’t go into all of the details, but go to the Hudson Institute web site and read it….it scared the daylights out of me.

When a White House press corps member asks a responsible question of anyone in the Obama administration, please post it here — embed video if you can. Give us his/her name and news organization so we can send a flood of kudos via phone and e-mail.

You start in Main and work your way to California. I’d say 20s, 50sand 100s would be best.

Crazy?

It would stimulate the economy a lot faster than the Porkzzilla Plan Obama is pushing.

of whatever ranking seats they have on whatever commissions. They’ve failed in their jobs with that vote.

Porkulus, porkulus, porkulus, porkulus, porkulus.

All spending is pork, right? Not to help innocent people suddenly stuck between two economic realties, not to help businesses keep their doors open, but just spending for the sake of spending? If all spending is pork, then let’s cut the Iraq war pork. Saving $10 billion of pork per month will go a long way to restoring the economy.

Why is it that the Democrats can peel off some of the Republicans, but the Republicans do not seem able to return the favor? There were Democrats in the House who voted against that version; surely there must be a couple of votes in the Senate to off-set our dear fiends Specter, Snowe, and Collins.

I’ve have been writing steadily to my Senators, urging them to get some ‘bi-partisan’ support for the Republican position.

And by the way, if Specter, Snowe, and Collins vote for the full bill, they need to be stripped of every committee seat that they currently have. They need to be rendered wholly toothless in the seated Congress.

I know you need your rest, but these are trying times and I think you have your work cut out for you.

Thanks.

I’m curious to know if any of you will write to your governors and mayors to ask them to turn down your jurisdicion’s share of the “pork”?

I googles the New Deal and found from Wikipedia that the debat e over the Social Security Administration lasted nearly SIX MONTHS!!!

In the largest expansion of the federal government since the New Deal, we have been debating this thing for less than one month? This is crazy and says more about the abject cluelessness of those in Washington than those who are suffering.

We need to slow this down, examine all the regulations and fully vet the Conference Report prior to final passage. We know one thing: the Obamacrats will not shed any light on the pork and spending fest.

All due respect to the excellent outside-of-the-Beltway and communications ideas presented above, which should be pursued, the sad fact of the matter is that inside Congress, there is NOTHING that can be done at this point.

The game ended when Benedict Arlen and the Maine Sisters voted with the Democrats to end the filibuster. The bill will pass the Senate, then go to conference, where it will get refilled with even more outrageous provisions, including vastly increased spending, and probalby more of the socialized medicine precursors, along with heaven knows what else, and then come back to the House and Senate for an up or down vote.

The bad news is that you cannot filibuster a conference report. It needs only a bare majority in both the House and Senate. The Dems only need 50 votes to pass the thing now, so what Benedict Arlen and the Maine sisters think is immaterial. The Democrats can go back on every promise made to them, Ben Nelson, or anyone else, and conceivably push the bill to 2 trillion or more if they want. There is nothing the 3 traitorous RINOs can do to stop it, nor the ‘Fake Dog’ Democrats in the House or Senate. They will pass this monstrosity into law with 50 liberal votes in the Senate and 218 House leftists. GAME OVER.

The worst part of this is that Benedict Arlen and the Maine Sisters, as well as Nelson, know this and still allowed the bill to go forward. They are playing a game, voting for the ‘compromise’, knowing the bill will be rewritten, and then for cosmetics for the voters back home, they will vote against final passage and claim betrayal by the liberals, when they fully well know that their vote on final doesn’t matter and it was the vote to end the filibuster and proceed with the debate was really the key one.

All the other good ideas aside, the only thing that stops this from becoming law now is 10 million Americans marching on DC with torches and pitchforks.

Otherwise, be ready, the United Socialist States of America has been born.

If the shoe fits…

On a similar note, we have to start calling this “Obama’s Power Grab” and otherwise stapling it to the foreheads of every Democrat.
That way, when it fails to do any of the things it says on the box, they and the Quislings Three will face re-election hell.