Hostage Demands From The Hostages

Republicans, who now control all three legs of Wisconsin's government, have far more than enough votes to pass Gov. Walker's Budget Repair Bill. The only hold-up, the now minority Demorats lawmakers, in an effort to put the brakes on democracy in Wisconsin, have escaped from the state and gone into hiding so that a vote can't occur. And today, we learn that they have issued a list of demands in a phone call to CNN - in essence, they'll come back when Republicans agree to kill the bill. These poeople are surreal.

This just reminds me so much of the scene from Blazing Saddles where Clevon Little extricates himself from trouble by taking himself hostage and demanding the other side put down their weapons. You know we as a nation are in trouble when our democratic process comes to resemble a Mel Brooks movie.

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The CBO Healthcare Story . . . & The Rest Of The Story

The lead article at the Washinton Post at the moment:

CBO: $940 billion health bill would help cut deficit over 10 years

An emerging compromise on health care between House and Senate Democrats would cost $940 billion over the next decade and expand insurance coverage to an additional 32 million Americans, congressional budget analysts said Thursday. Their preliminary report suggests the two-part legislation would bring the nation closer to universal health coverage than at any time in its history.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure would make insurance available to an estimated 95 percent of non-elderly citizens by dramatically expanding Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, and offering tax credits to an estimated 24 million Americans who would otherwise find it difficult to afford coverage. . . .

And, to borrow from the late great radio personality, Paul Harvey, "now for the rest of the story:"

The Washington Post and Politico are blaring headlines about these claimed savings.

However, House Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan (WI) issued the following statement:

“The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that there is currently no official cost estimate. Yet House Democrats are touting to the press – and spinning for partisan gain – numbers that have not been released and are impossible to confirm. Rep. James Clyburn stated he was “giddy” about these unsubstantiated numbers. This is the latest outrageous exploitation by the Majority – in this case abusing the confidentiality of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office – to pass their massive health care overhaul at any cost.”

I just asked a highly-placed Senate source about the numbers, and why the Republicans weren’t talking about the bizarre assumptions – savings over time that are assumed but won’t happen, rosy scenarios about cost reductions and tax revenues and the like -- that are the only foundation on which CBO could have reached their conclusions.

The short answer is that the Republicans (at least the Senate Republicans) haven’t been allowed to see the report yet.

Maybe Pelosi deems them to have seen it.

And this is American democracy? Find my tar, feathers . . . and perhaps some rope. We need not only to get the progressives in office, we damn well need to visit a few newspaper offices.

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Progressively Surreal: The Gulf Between Words & Deeds

We learn today that the Obama administration - which came into office promising to bring us the most transpartent administration ever - has in fact been far more restrictive in answering Freedom of Information requests than the Bush administration ever thought of being. This from Raw Story:

. . . [A] provision in the Freedom of Information Act law that allows the government to hide records that detail its internal decision-making has been invoked by Obama agencies more often in the past year than during the final year of President George W. Bush.

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law's nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

The AP review comes on the heels of another bit of government transparency news: that the Obama Administration has threatened to veto a congressional intelligence bill because it objects to efforts to increase intelligence oversight.

Among other things, the proposed legislation would subject intelligence agencies to General Accountability Office review. US intelligence agencies are currently immune from review by the Congressional auditing office.

. . . In all, major agencies cited that or other FOIA exemptions to refuse information at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Agencies often cite more than one exemption when withholding part or all of the material sought in an open-records request.

All told, the 17 agencies reviewed by AP reported getting 444,924 FOIA requests in fiscal 2009, compared with 493,610 in fiscal 2008." . . .

Let us not forget, Obama promised that his would heal the divides and even slow the rise of the oceans. He was to lead us into the promised land of post-partisanship. Instead, he seems to be leading us to a period of bitter partisanship not seen since prior to the Civil War.

The left is hypocrisy unbound. Under the Bush Presidency, the left screamed from the rooftops that the Bush administration was warring on the Constitution - essentially because Bush and the right would not grant new Constitutional rights to enemy combatants and because he passed the Patriot Act as a responsible means of balancing the needs for protecting America against terrorist attack. Yet now all of that is turned on its head.

Now the left conducts a real war on our Constitution - from Obama's war on private property to Pelosi's plan to Slaughter the Constitution. That does not even begin to consider Obama and the left's larger war on our form of deliberative democracy. Nor the fact that, now that Obama is President, a Democrat controlled Congress, at the request of President Obama, has yet again extended the Patriot Act.

Now Obama, who promised us the most transparent government in office, has pulled down all the blinds on the windows into our government. There was of course his utterly opaque handling of the drafting of Obamacare. But that is one instance. The reality is that, in his first year in office, he has not merely held less press conferences than Bush, he has engaged in an effort to manipulate the press that even radical leftie Helen Thomas, sharply criticized several months ago:

White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. . . .

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.

True, Helen, true. November cannont come soon enough.

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The Washington Post's Primal Scream

The Washington Post is the latest paper to do a liberal primal scream over the failure of Obama to destroy capitalism and enact a full transition to socialism in his first year in office. They find multiple people and acts to blame, but topping the list is . . . wait for it, . . . Republican obstructionism. Who could have guessed that the party holding a minority in the House and with too few seats in the Senate to filibuster could be the cause of Obama's epic failure in 2009? Coming in second for WaPo's opprobrium was Harry Reid and disloyal Senate Democrats:

For House Democrats, who enjoy a 256 to 178 majority, the main obstacle in 2009 was not Republicans, but the Senate. Even with 60 Democrats, Reid was unable to advance the climate-change and student loan bills that the House approved last summer. The Senate regulatory-reform bill is still in the banking committee.

One might think that with this admission, the authors would realize that it exposes the lie of their headline theory of Republican obstructionism. But it seems that one of the great achievements of the modern far left is their ability to hold a belief in the truth of two or more diametricaly opposed thoughts at the same time.

No matter. According to Wapo, the problem was that Republicans unreasonably refused to take any part in Obama's "remaking of America." Obama's proposals amounted to a vast expansion of government, massive increases in deficit spending, and new taxes, whether directly or indirectly on every American. Yet WaPo seems mystefied why Republicans should object to any of that on substantive grounds. Their alternative take on it is that "[s]ome of the bills . . . were perhaps too unwieldy for voters to digest and too easy for GOP opponents to demagogue." Of course, that's it. There's nothing wrong with any of the legislation. It is just Republicans taking partisan advantage of an electorate that is too stupid to understand the great things Obama was doing for America. The arrogance and hubris of the far left knows no bounds.

WaPo also seems to have a dim memory of the facts reported in their paper over the past year. From the very start - indeed, within three days of taking office, Obama told Republicans who attempted to engage and have input into bipartisan legislation - specifically the Stimulus - that "I won." So much for bipartisanship. Facts are such inconveinient things for the left - unless you are very selective about them of course.

The left, from Obama through Reid and Pelosi, felt no need to engage in bipartisanship other than for some minimal political cover. And indeed, when one looks at the internal problems that Democrats had in 2009, the fact is that Pelosi and Reid treated most Congressional Democrats the same way they treated Republicans. Radical legislation was drafted behind their closed doors, only to be unleashed on Republicans and many Democrats alike vitrually on the eve on which they were to be voted. It was not merely bipartisanship that Obama and the Democratic leadership felt no need to consider, it was deliberative democracy itself. And indeed, the reason for that is the that the legislation, from cap and trade to health care to financial regulation, was so over reaching that even moderate Democrats blinked at the degree of the radical changes proposed by Obama-Pelosi-Reid.

WaPo concludes looking at what 2010 holds in store.

Before the Massachusetts loss, the White House officials touted 2009 as the most productive legislative year in decades. Prodded before Tuesday's election whether Obama and his team would change anything about its Hill strategy, Axelrod replied, "I've thought about that and I don't see how."

Lawmakers expect Obama to set a course for 2010 on Wednesday, in his State of the Union speech. Democrats want the focus on one issue: jobs. But on Friday in Ohio, given a few days to digest Brown's upset, Obama defended and promoted the same long to-do list he brought with him to office.

"I didn't run for president to turn away from these challenges," he said. "I didn't run for president to kick them down the road. I ran for president to confront them -- once and for all."

It would seem that Obama and his administration have as tenuous a grasp on reality as do the WaPo authors - though Democrats seeking reelection in 2010 seem to be grasping it well enough. I think it safe to say that we will be hearing primal screams from the left for at least the next few years. No matter to me, at least, as I find them oddly comforting.

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