Chest pains. I think I heard George Washington U hospital.

Resting comfortably, and sharpening knives.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:36 PM | Comments (142)
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Seriously guys, don't complain. We knew this was going to be a case by case thing going in. We lost him on this one, we'll have him on another. That beats the hell out of Martha Coakley who we'd have 0% of the time.

A modest job-creation bill advanced in the U.S. Senate on Monday as the chamber's newest Republican bucked his party and sided with Democrats on a $15 billion package of tax cuts and highway spending.

Republican Scott Brown joined four other Republicans, 55 Democrats and two independents to overcome a procedural hurdle that sets up a final vote later this week.

Brown was widely hailed as a conservative hero after his surprise victory in Massachusetts last month gave Republicans enough seats to block most Democratic legislation.

..."I hope my vote today is a strong step toward restoring bipartisanship in Washington," he said in a statement.

Uh huh.

Republicans actually wanted a bigger bill (about $85 Billion), that would have included more tax breaks for businesses. The fact that Democrats don't see the connection between lower taxes and increased job growth is simply a sign of their idiocy.

But this is what they think will work.

The smaller measure's centerpiece allows companies to avoid paying Social Security taxes for the remainder of 2010 on new hires who have been unemployed for at least 60 days. Employers would also get a $1,000 tax credit for each new worker who stays on the job for at least a year.

Democrats tout the $13 billion program as a simple way to create thousands of new jobs quickly, though some experts dismiss it as too small to make a significant dent in the nation's unemployment rate.

The jobs bill also includes a one-year reauthorization and infusion of money for the highway trust fund, a provision allowing companies to write off equipment purchases as business expenses, and an expansion of the Build America Bonds program, which helps state and local governments get financing for infrastructure projects.

If 870 some odd billion dollars didn't do the trick, what in the world makes them think that $15 billion more will matter?

As for Brown..to paraphrase Denny Green, "he is who we thought he'd be".

Oh, the other Republicans voting for it were...the Maine Gals (of course), Bond of MO and Voinivich of OH. Both Bond and Voinivich are retiring this year. The lone Democrat to vote with the Republicans was Ben "Please, Please, Please Forget About My Health Care Vote" Nelson of Nebraska.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:45 PM | Comments (292)
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Not going away totally, just running back into the shadows.

"Consistent with what the internal reccomendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency," said the official, citing ACORN's "diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks."

The new organizations, he said "will be constituted under new banners and new bylaws and new governance," he said, consistent with the recommendations of an outside panel.

Much of the group's strength lay in its local chapters in places like New York, which appear to be continuing to operate as normal. New York's City Hall News reported today that the local group there had re-emerged under the name "New York Communities for Change."

They'll be a bit harder to ferret out and to tie together when one chapter does something awful (and you know they will) but the fact that they were forced into this is a great victory for Breitbart and company. A little over a year after seeing one of their kindred spirits settle into the White House, ACORN has had to run off and hide.

As always, vigilance is the key.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:38 AM | Comments (236)
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A combat veteran and accomplished author, David Bellavia is an honest to God American hero. As the US presences in Iraq winds down, he looks at the cost so many paid to make this moment of victory possible and the sad fact so many of our fellow citizens don't seem to care.

Someone is responsible for everything that goes wrong in America. It makes us feel better to know it wasnÂ’t our fault.

The war in Iraq was no different. While many scurried to blame Donald Rumsfeld, General Franks or President Bush for losing the war in Iraq, they bet against the American fighting men and women to turn the tide of the war. “The mission” in Iraq was evil. The troops would never be maligned as they were in Vietnam.

I donÂ’t begrudge these people. They simply will never get it. They are the type of people you need to protect in a society. They are innocent and naive.

It is the job of the warrior to hide them under the bed and tell them it will be okay, before we run off to combat the threat.

The ones that hold my contempt are those who, even today, know of the sacrifice made, the incredible progress gained and still will not acknowledge what was won on the ground in Iraq. They cheapen the sacrifice of how it was earned. Operation Iraqi Freedom is no more.

Operation New Dawn (the exact same name of the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004) is the new name of the deployment to Iraq.

What we achieved in the face of an implacable enemy, overcoming many in our own government willfully ignorant of our struggle, is what I believe to be the defining moment of my generation. The veteran today is the embodiment of what it means to be an American. Even when our valor was used for political sport, we continued to serve quietly.

There's more at the link. Please read his description of a young Iraqi woman who died for nothing more than the right to vote and the sacrifices of his comrades that enabled that day.

Iraq has been at a tipping point for awhile and probably will be for some time into the future. So was America a long, long time ago. It's a comparison that can be taken to far but the fact remains, no nation rises or falls in a straight line. There are ups and downs, success and failures. The final outcome for Iraq will not be known for years, probably decades. It is up to the Iraqis to decide that outcome and it always has been. It's a country with a lot of history going against it but thanks to hundreds of thousands of men and women (and their families) who served in the US military, they have an opportunity to build something reasonably decent by the standards of that part of the world and if they succeed, it will be of immeasurable benefit to us.

Far too many people were wrong about the Iraq War and don't have the decency to admit it now. Thankfully, we have men like David Bellavia, the guys at This Ain't Hell, Blackfive and a host of other proud veterans who continue to serve by reminding us of what they and their comrades, especially those who didn't survive, did and to tell their stories. In the long run, they will win again and take their well deserved place of honor in our nation's history.

In the meantime, the least we can do is remember what they did, celebrate their victory and challenge those who would deny what these heroes accomplished for our country.

Oh and we can say thank you.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:46 AM | Comments (120)
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However, 63% of the Political Class think the government does have the consent of the governed.

In polite company, this apparent complete disconnect is known as "cruising for a bruising". In less polite company, they're molesting the poultry.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:47 AM | Comments (510)
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If you are too young to remember it, there's really no way to explain what it meant. We were in the depths of the Carter malaise and the Soviet Union seemed to be on the rise. Then in the pre-professional player (well the Soviets were pros), pre-internet, pre-cable tv era a bunch of college kids did the impossible. They beat the Soviets. It would be nearly a full year before Ronald Reagan took office and the light at the end of the tunnel appeared but this was something to hold the nation over until the cavalry showed up.

Trivia...this was not the gold medal game. The US had to comeback 2 days later and beat Finland. They were down going into the 3rd period of that game and had to mount an amazing comeback to complete the true "Miracle on Ice".

Now about the 2010 USA hockey team... more...

Posted by: DrewM at 08:46 AM | Comments (152)
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Straining the idea of better late than never, Obama has finally laid out his version of health care reform. According to most reports, it's sort of the Senate bill on steroids.

The new White House's proposal would cost $950 billion over 10 years, more than the bill approved by the Senate but less than the House measure. It was posted on the White House Web site Monday morning.

The proposal increases penalties on business that fail to insure their workers and individuals who fail to get health insurance, as would be required under the new law.

The Obama plan calls for giving the federal government authority to block insurers from making premium-rate increases. A new Health Insurance Rate Authority would lay out what it viewed as reasonable rate increases, and those considered unjustified could be blocked.

Ah, price controls. What could go wrong with that?

The Obama plan also raises the threshold for what constitutes a "Cadillac Plan" and delays the tax on them for everyone, not just union members. That means lost "revenue" that is made up by, you guessed it, new taxes.

There's nothing the Republicans have proposed that already isn't in the Senate bill so no tort reform or ability to buy across state lines.

There's lots of talk about the reconciliation route being the way for Democrats to go. I still don't see it happening. The fight has always been among Democrats not with Republicans. Pelosi passed the House version by the barest of majorities (which she doesn't have right now...Murtha's seat is empty and Abercrombie of Hawaii is going to resign this week and Wexler of Florida won't be filled until April), can she shove this through?

All the old fault lines are still there. If reconciliation was the path to the land of milk and honey they could have done it quite sometime ago. There are reasons (political and procedural) they didn't, I'm not sure why those have gone away.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:21 AM | Comments (254)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:27 AM | Comments (160)
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Love him or hate him, Glenn Beck has emerged as a force in the Conservative universe. His closing remarks at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), part history lesson, part sermon, part call to action, took the audience by storm. Once again Beck hammered home the points that the Progressive movement is the biggest threat America faces. Progressivism infects both parties and that the Republican Party needs to flush it out of their party and return to traditional Conservative ideals.
Marxism forces its political and societal changes via armed revolution, Progressivism forces its changes via slow, incremental evolution Beck said. With both movements, the end result is that a country has the same form of oppressive government.
The video is an hour long with Beck beginning to speak at the 5:08 mark.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:56 AM | Comments (197)
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Doesn't seem to be any truth to it, but her colleagues were worried.

Back to dial tone. Speechless:

Several people with connections to the university’s biology department warned that Dr. Bishop, a neuroscientist with a Harvard Ph.D., might have booby-trapped the science building with some sort of “herpes bomb,” police officials said, designed to spread the dangerous virus.

Only people who had worked with Dr. Bishop would know that she had done work with the herpes virus as a post-doctoral student and had talked about how it could cause encephalitis. She had also written an unpublished novel in which a herpes-like virus spreads throughout the world, causing pregnant women to miscarry.

By the time of the reports, the police had already swept every room of the science building, finding nothing but a 9-millimeter handgun in the second-floor restroom.

But the anxious warnings reflected the fears of those who know Dr. Bishop that she could go to great lengths to retaliate against those she felt had wronged her.

Jebus.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:02 PM | Comments (146)
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