Video: See You In November

To all the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, and the rest of the socialists who’ve taken off their masks, we’ll remember come November. (H/T: Hillbuzz)

Cognitive Dissonance

Once again, Muslim terrorists have struck; blowing up trains filled with innocent people. This time, it was in Moscow; with at least thirty-seven people dead (no word on whether or not this total includes the two female suicide bombers) and sixty-five injured. Putin has said that the “terrorists will be destroyed“; no word on whether or not this is going to put a crimp in his plans to make Iran a nuclear power. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Nuclear-armed muslims will be a threat to America and Israel, but would certainly never bite the comrade that feeds them, right?

Meanwhile, as this was happening in Russia, back in America the Obama administration was busy going after Christians.

He Can’t Do It If Congress Withholds His Change

I’ve seen many people recommending ways to fight ObamaCare, ranging from lawsuits and Constitutional challenges in court to getting two-thirds of the states to call for a Constitutional convention (in the near term) up to a full repeal and salting of the very Earth under ObamaCare (ObamaCarus delenda est!) if Republicans can recapture the Congress by sufficient margins in 2010, and possibly the presidency as well in 2012. (Impeachment of Obama, prosecution of Pelosi, and so forth are side issues.) Well, somewhere between those extremes is The Hawkins Strategy:

“The IRS might have to hire as many as 16,000 new employees to enforce all the new taxes and penalties the bill calls for! And that doesn’t include all the other government jobs from the 159 new agencies, panels, commissions and departments this bill will create.” What does it take to fund all those government jobs, agencies, panels, & commissions? Tax dollars. Now, who controls the purse strings? Congress. How many votes do we need via reconciliation to make budget changes? 51. So, can we gut Obamacare by refusing to fund it? YES. WE. CAN.

John Hawkins makes the case that this would be far easier to accomplish than a full repeal, which would require filibuster- and even veto-proof majorities in the Congress; after all, the President doesn’t have a line-item veto to make any individual alterations to the budget. (The GOP actually tried to give one to Bill Clinton, but the Dems got it overturned. The last thing they wanted was anyone having the ability to strip pork out of the budget, not even their own President – because then, unlike now, they foresaw a time when they would once again lose the White House and the opposing party would be using the same tools against them.) If a defunding of ObamaCare made it into the budget, the only thing the President could do is veto the entire budget.

…if Republicans don’t back down, we’ve got a stand-off. At that point, it probably comes down to who has the American people at their back. I like those odds.

That still leaves all of the other rules, regulations, and forth, but…

Of course, the ideal is still to repeal Obamacare in its entirety – and that should be our ultimate goal. But, if we can defund it while we’re working towards that end, it’ll be like ripping the engine out of the car that drives the bill – and it’s very doable.

The Democrats will, of course, scream bloody murder (as well as “RAAAAACISM!!”) at the Republicans; but this is a tactic which they themselves have tried to employ in the past – most recently when Bush was President, and they were trying to prevent/end the War on Terror by removing any funds from the budget to be used by troops in the Middle East. Granted, they failed; but back then they were the minority party in Congress, and there were many defectors from their own party. In this case, if the GOP controls the Congress next year, stands firm, and possibly gets some Democrat defectors (who saw what happened to their now-unemployed former colleagues in the 2010 elections) then it is definitely “doable”.

Israel-Bashing Backfires

Michel Gurfinkiel at Pajamas Media has written that “The Obama administration’s decision to treat an ally like a rogue state seems to have backfired.”

Vice President Joe Biden landed in Israel on March 8 … Then, news broke, from an Israeli Interior Ministry source, that Israel was going to build 1600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem that the Obama administration sees as part of East Jerusalem, i.e., an “occupied Palestinian territory.” … It looked a bit like an Israeli blunder, or even a provocation, since Netanyahu had agreed to Obama’s request, some six months earlier, to freeze for some time any settlement building in the West Bank, if not in East Jerusalem. … However, it became clear very soon that there was no Israeli decision at all to expand Ramat Shlomo. … There was only a green light, at a very subordinate bureaucratic level at the Ministry, to review a housing project, without any kind of government commitment. … Clearly, there was an attempt, at some very high level in the Obama administration, to draw political benefit from the Ramat Shlomo announcement. And maybe to engineer such an announcement in the first place. … Either accidental or premeditated, the lynching of Netanyahu, Israel, and Oren probably had something to do with the AIPAC conference taking place from March 21 to March 23. Most American Jews – 77 percent of them – voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Many wonder today if this was the right move. Disappointment may lead to defection, a very bad prospect in a midterm election year. Hence the solution: to turn Netanyahu into a mere provocateur who insults the United States, and Obama into a true friend of Israel. However, the whole operation seems to have backfired. The more people thought about it, the more it was President Barack Obama who insulted Israel – and the American people. Not the other way around. Obama is now willing to meet Netanyahu in the wake of the AIPAC conference. Quite a change of tune from a fortnight ago.

This article, which I merely summarized (read the whole thing!) does a good job in exposing the Obama administration’s dishonesty and hypocrisy in their reaction to Israel’s insult; that hypocrisy is even more blatant if you consider the context (which Gurfinkiel did not get into) of the various other “insults” against America and/or Israel which all happened this month, which did not cause President Obama’s Administration or Hillary Clinton’s State Department to shriek up to DefCon One. These include Russia and Iran continuing to move forward on their nuclear ties, increased terrorist activity against Israel (much of which appears to have been caused by Obama’s gambit, to the point where many in and out of Israel are referring to the “Obama Intifada“), and so forth. One could also speculate that the good press Obama had hoped (in vain) to gain from his Israel-bashing might have helped to balance or distract from all of the negative attention that ObamaCare was getting at the time. In any event, the truth is out, and Israel knows who she can trust and who she can’t. Hopefully American Jews are also learning this lesson on the way to midterm elections in November.

Magic hate ball: Barack and Hillary’s foreign policy machine.

Recall, Replace, Repeal

Who Else Wants To Lose Their Job?

Democrats: the best representatives that money can buy.

Crunch time is in just a few hours, and the Democrats are still trying desperately to beg, borrow, and steal those last, magical votes. Of course, nobody wants to be that final vote that pushes it over the top, opening themselves up to extra blame and recrimination. Nobody wants to follow in the footsteps of former Representative Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-PA).

Sunday Videos

Gateway Pundit has provided video proof that nobody yelled racial epithets at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and that another Congressman, Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), was also lying through his teeth when he claimed to have also heard the shouts, and when he upped the ante by claiming to have been spit upon as well. So it’s not just left-wing bloggers and the mainstream media, but also members of Congress who are lying through their teeth in an attempt to discredit the anti-ObamaCare protesters. (Imagine my surprise. Go ahead. It shouldn’t take long.) And, just for fun, here’s another video, a very short clip this time, showing us just how much the Democrats care about procedure and the Constitution. Alcee Hastings (D-FL):

Other Accounts

I guess I didn’t miss much after I left (see my pictures and account of today’s Tea Party event in DC here). According to Mark Hemingway at The Washington Examiner:

As part of today’s rally to stop the Democrats’ health care reform legislation thousands of protesters descended on the lawn of Capitol building. But many more were also using the occasion to visit the their congressional representative and tell them what they think of the bill. However, Capitol Police recently stopped allowing any of the peaceful protesters to enter into congressional buildings.

There were tens of thousands of people there, actually. One of the speakers told the crowd that NBC was reporting two thousand people at the Capitol, and suggested that they were getting their numbers from the same people who claimed that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit. In another example of the MSM making things up about today’s protest, CNN’s Capitol Hill reporter Dana Bash reports today of personally witnessing [racial and gay] epithets being used towards John Lewis (D-GA) and Barney Frank (D-MA) by protesters that had been identified earlier as “Tea Party people.” Naturally, there is no evidence in any of the footage broadcast to support this allegation; and lacking that, he had no business making the claim.

Anyway, here are more pictures, from HillBuzz, InstaPundit, Gateway Pundit, and Michelle Malkin.

Tea For…

I made my way into DC for the Tea Party rally in front of the Capitol. I couldn’t stay there all day, but I did spend a few hours listening to the speakers, talking to other attendees, cheering and yelling, and shooting pictures and video.

The Metro parking lot was almost full, as was the station. The lines were long and slow, as there were many people there from out of town who hadn’t ridden the Metro before.

From the signs, t-shirts, and conversation, it was clear that most of us were going to the same place (albeit by different routes – I stayed on the green line and got off at the Archives-Navy Memorial station).

One of the things I passed while walking from the Metro to the Capitol was the Newseum, which has the first Amendment to the Constitution writ large on its face. A good omen, says I.

Oh yeah? Well I was anti-Obama before it was a banning offense!

Sumter on Sunday?

Republican Whip Eric Cantor offered a privileged resolution on the floor of the House denouncing the Democrat Leadership’s deceptive use of the “Slaughter Solution.”

Tea Party Coalition ups the ante, to hold rally in DC tomorrow.

For those of you who can make it to the rally in Washington DC tomorrow we encourage you to make the sacrifice. There are vans heading to Washington D.C. in the next 24 hours from St. Louis in response to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s emergency plea for opposition to Obamacare. Contact I Heard the People Say for information.

“High crimes and misdemeanors.”

…The Slaughter Solution is a poisoned chalice. By drinking from it, the Democrats would not only commit political suicide. They would guarantee that any bill signed by Mr. Obama is illegitimate, illegal and blatantly unconstitutional. It would be worse than a strategic blunder; it would be a crime – a moral crime against the American people and a direct abrogation of the Constitution and our very democracy. It would open Mr. Obama, as well as key congressional leaders such as Mrs. Pelosi, to impeachment. The Slaughter Solution would replace the rule of law with arbitrary one-party rule. It violates the entire basis of our constitutional government – meeting the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” If it’s enacted, Republicans should campaign for the November elections not only on repealing Obamacare, but on removing Mr. Obama and his gang of leftist thugs from office. It is time Americans drew a line in the sand. Mr. Obama crosses it at his peril.

British Health Care

Israel Update

Obama’s attack on Israel has backfired. Many people speculated that Obama was attempting “regime change” on ally, either attempting to get the current government replaced en masse or at least to pressure them into replacing one or more members. However,

Most Israelis – especially those in the center and left – have rallied around Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Judging by the media – especially television talk shows – Netanyahu’s popularity has soared following the rebuke from Hillary Clinton. Even those who usually berate him have come to his defense. American Jewish leaders and Congress are also pushing back against Clinton’s hysteria and Obama’s stern reprimands. … To then call Jewish neighborhoods – in Jerusalem – “settlements,” to dispute the right of Israel to renovate a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, to scold Israel for wanting to enforce building codes and demolish illegal Arab buildings built in an historic, archeological park, is beyond appalling. To use Hillary’s word, it’s “humiliating.” And to paraphrase her again, it is a deliberate attempt to humiliate the Jewish people. …

On the other hand, all that Obama has to do is stall and delay Israel until his new “partner in peace” Iran achieves nuclear capability. Israel is the only one with the spine and common sense to want to stop Iran from going nuclear, and Obama will do everything in his power to block Israel – including blocking the delivery of bunker-buster bombs to Israel.

Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. … Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama. Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E. “All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010,” a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. “This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly.”

Indeed, Obama is even arranging to block the Iran sanctions bill, which passed Congress with rare (these days) “massive bipartisan backing”.

…congressional leaders have bottled up a hugely popular Iran sanctions bill that passed both houses with overwhelming support. At precisely the moment that the Islamic Republic is expanding and perfecting its nuclear capabilities, the highest levels of the US government have stalled on one of the few remaining mechanisms for peacefully resolving the impasse, and thus have abdicated their responsibilities to Israel, the subjugated Iranian people, and the rest of the free world. … The House of Representatives passed the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act by a 412-12 vote, signaling the body’s prodigious bipartisan resolve to stifle Iran’s nuclear progress. … All that remained for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, to make the bill a law was to “reconcile” the slightly different language in the separate Senate and House versions into a single piece of legislation. But instead, Reid and Pelosi have bottled up the measure and refused to allow a blending of the bills. Why? Because the Obama administration asked them to.

While they’re willing to “deem” a health scare bill to be passed without even allowing a vote, they’re blocking the passage of a bill which really was passed, and by an overwhelming majority. Of course, one can always count on anti-semetic idiot Jimmy Carter to provide comedy relief by claiming that the Obama administration is still “too attuned to Israel’s sensitivities.” One wonders exactly how far Obama would have to go against Israel before Carter would be happy. One hopes we will never find out.