No, not Half-Off 'Bama Slammas at Hooters.

The succession bill cleared the Senate, leaving only formalities.

Here are Candidates Number One through Four:

Among the names frequently mentioned by observers are Michael S. Dukakis, the former governor; Paul G. Kirk Jr., the former Democratic National Committee chairman and an aide to Kennedy; Charles J. Ogletree, Harvard Law School professor; and Evelyn Murphy, former lieutenant governor.

In related news, Ted Kennedy has now been sober for a full two weeks.

My mom told me that.

Thanks to PetiteDov.

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (3)
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The Politico:

You knew this was coming. Ranking Republican Chuck Grassley asked a staffer about the penalty for not carrying insurance. "Isn't the penalty here an excise tax and won't it affect people making under $250,000 a year?" he asked Thomas Barthold, the joint tax committee's chief.

"It's structured as a penalty excise tax," Barthold answered. “Yes, we think that some people would be subject to the penalty excise tax when everything shakes out. We would expect that some would have incomes less than $200,000.”

Sensing the political danger of that statement, Baucus suggested that the penalty could be collected through an agency other than the IRS...

Oh well that would make it into not-a-tax, then.

He finished the sentence by saying it would make most sense to collect it as a tax.

Because, you know, it is.

Who is this guy? Well, because the tax laws are too complex for Congressmen to understand, he's the chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. He's the guy that actually writes tax laws, I guess that makes him. As opposed to Congressmen, who just say "more" or "less."

Here's Rangel and other Dems praising him. So he's not a Republican partisan. And he was elevated to his current post as Chief of Staff this year by Democrats, so obviously the Democrats know he's one of them. They're not handing out sensitive postings to Republicans.

So he just said Obama's a liar.

And then he said, "Boy."

I'm 99.9% sure I said that. He either said "Boy" or "Goy." Either way -- Racial slur.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

By the Way: Geoff asks how many people making $200,000 or more per year don't have health insurance already.

Like... 1%? 1% of super-billionaires who self-insure?

In other words, 99% of those hit by the tax (yes, tax) will be making less than $200,000 per year.

You lie.

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (4)
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No, really, this is perfect.

Conyers and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts asked the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service today to provide an analysis on several aspects of ACORN, including any current or previous criminal investigations into the group; a breakdown of any funding received by the group and any violations of the terms of that funding; a report on alleged improprieties in collecting voter registration forms and “the extent … that resulted in people being improperly placed on voting roles and actually attempting to vote,” and the group’s programs to provide housing opportunities.

It also asked for a report on private sting activities “in which individuals have reportedly visited ACORN offices, misrepresented their identities and proposed activities, surreptitiously videotaped resulting conversations with ACORN workers, and widely distributed them.”

The letter went onto say, “Conflicting allegations have been made about the propriety of these activities. Please research and report on the federal and state laws that could apply to such videotaping and distribution of conversations without the consent of all parties.”

Keep fucking that chicken, Barney.

Because, you know, Breitbart really, really doesn't want to be on CSPAN in front of a government panel blasting them about media bias and liberal mendacity.

I mean -- really. He doesn't want that. So seriously, subpoena him. Make him cry.

And O'Keefe I'm sure is quaking in his boots, and Giles won't look like totally adorable on camera, either.

So definitely investigate the people who brought ACORN's lawlessness to the public's attention. People just love seeing whistleblowers hectored and vilified by party apparatchiks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Add Comment
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Those are the numbers for competitive House districts.

Now, they tested "single payer" but I think loosely that's about the same as testing "public option" at this point.

For states with a competitive Senate race, it's the same, pretty much (58% against single-payer, 68% against fine-taxes).

It's actually spectacularly unpopular almost line by line:

A top-to-bottom, government-run health care system is clearly not popular with 2010 voters. Fifty-eight percent of voters in states with competitive 2010 Senate races oppose the creation of a government-run health care system, or "single-payer" system, where the federal government pays for and provides health care for all Americans. Fifty-five percent of voters in competitive 2010 House districts oppose a "single-payer" system.

Less popular with 2010 voters is a key provision in Sen. Max Baucus', D-Mont., recently unveiled health care bill that would require all Americans to purchase health insurance or face a hefty fine. A clear majority of voters in competitive Senate races (68 percent) oppose such a provision, as do 70 percent of voters in competitive House races.

Also unpopular is the so-called "employer mandate," which would require large and small businesses to provide health insurance to their employees or face a fine. Fifty-nine percent of voters in competitive Senate races oppose the "employer mandate," as do 60 percent of voters in competitive House races.

President Obama's proposal for a new government agency called the "Independent Medicare Advisory Council," which some fear would use its powers to deny payments for certain procedures that it deems unnecessary or futile, does not appear to sit well with crucial 2010 midterm voters.

Fifty-nine percent of voters in close 2010 Senate races oppose the creation of such an agency, while only 31 percent would support it. Sixty percent of voters in close 2010 House races oppose the idea, and just 29 percent support it.

Voters also oppose new taxes on employer-provided health care benefits. A whopping 77 percent of voters in 2010 Senate races oppose this tax, as do 80 percent of voters in 2010 House races.

Also tremendously unpopular is the notion of raising taxes to pay for a new government health insurance program to cover the roughly 26 million Americans who can afford to purchase health insurance (but choose not to purchase it for whatever reason) and the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. Seventy-seven percent of midterm Senate election voters oppose new taxes for such a program, and 76 percent of midterm House election voters are in opposition as well.

Good Lord that's a wipeout.

Click the link to see what is popular with voters.

For cowbell, here's a song about heroin in honor of Obama's attempt to get us a little bit addicted to socialism.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:29 PM | Add Comment
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10. JFK: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, you greasy Dago bastard."

9. FDR: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, fear, and the mixing of the races. Mostly the latter. Fear doesn't crash your property values."

8. Bill Clinton: "I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Sheeney McHebrewstein."

7. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I have a dream, that one day, all Americans, black or white, will be judged not by the color of their skin, but of the number of Kool & the Gang albums they own, and whether they subscribe to Vibe."

6. Will Rogers: "I never met a man I didn't like. On the other hand, I don't know any chinks."

5. FDR: "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by a pack of Puerto Ricans armed with tire-irons and bike-chains."

4. Abraham Lincoln: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

3. Gloria Steinem: "A woman needs a man like a Pollack needs a slide-rule."

2. Richard M. Nixon: "I. Am not. A Jew."

...and the Number One American Political Quotation, as Recollected by Maureen Dowd...

1. America's All-Time Longest-Serving Senator, Democrat Robert Byrd: "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds." [quote unaltered]

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (1)
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I'm not as sanguine that more troops means victory is possible in Afghanistan as some are but I think it's important we all deal with the same set of facts.

When it comes to the recent dust up over General McChrystal's request for more troops, Obama is being disingenuous. Some, myself included, might even go so far as to say he's lying.

On his tour of the Sunday shows the President says he won't commit to more troops until there's a strategy in place.

"The only thing I've said to my folks is, 'A, I want an unvarnished assessment, but, B, I don't want to put the resource question before the strategy question,'" Obama said. "Because there is a natural inclination to say, 'If I get more, then I can do more.'"

Here's the thing, Obama supposedly answered the strategy question back in March

According to Secretary of Defense Gates, Gen. McChrystal's appointment was the direct result of that new strategy.

“I believe that our mission [in Afghanistan] requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders,” Gates told reporters. “Today, we have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership is needed.”

Now Obama and his minions seem to be saying there's some sort of review of the strategy due after the Afghan elections. Funny but Obama said nothing about that when he introduced his new strategy back in the spring.

Even if he always meant to do that, it's silly.

Look at the time line. He announces his strategy in March, there's a new military commander named to carry out that strategy in May (though he didn't even get on station until mid June). So Obama is saying he did this top down rethink of a seven year old war and he's giving that strategy essentially 3 months to play out before he considers abandoning it? 6 months if you start from the day it was announced, not when the new military commander took over.

That's simply ridiculous on its face.

McChrystal's report (pdf) was about how to implement and resource the new strategy, not whether or not is was working.

For Obama to pretend he's not holding back on resourcing the effort is simply a lie.

(Credit where it's due...I heard some of this mentioned before but I couldn't remember where. This Corner entry reminds me it was Charles Krauthammer on FNC last night who started the ball rolling in my mind).

Posted by: DrewM at 11:58 AM | Comments (3)
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What O'Keefe said: That he was animated to go after ACORN because the organization was single-handedly getting politicians elected and no one was holding them accountable for their criminality.

What the Post claimed O'Keefe said: That he was animated to go after ACORN because they sign blacks and Hispanics up to vote.

That's not even up to the level of Maureen Dowd -- at least she admitted she was inserting racial slurs into quotes.

Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge: MayBee points out the crabbed and begrudging nature of this retraction:

Yeah, but look at how they corrected it. He didn't "specifically" mention those groups. Not specifically...

But we all know he meant to say "boy" somewhere in there.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (1)
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Yes, so I imagined. While Glenn Greenwald, for example, was accusing those on the right of being "chickenhawks" for not serving in Iraq, he was never quite able to explain why he wasn't accumulating Congressional Medals of Honor and Taliban tooth-necklaces in the war he supposedly supported, Afghanistan.

The liberal blog Hullaballoo admits what has been obvious all along.

And no, this isn't just about some seedy, nasty liberal bloggers.

It's about our lying POS POTUS, too.

Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

There have been many campaign promises "adjusted" since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of "pragmatism."

But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?

You... um... voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?

We won't forget, champ. And we won't let you forget, either.

Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it's safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.

Via Ed Driscoll's twitter feed.

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (16)
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A week and a half later and it's still funny.

Thanks to Enas.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (4)
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Misunderstanding. Criminal behavior. Potato, potahto. Move along, nothing to see here.

"The point of the call was to encourage voluntary participation in a national service initiative by the arts community," White House spokesman Bill Burton told ABC News. "To the extent there was any misunderstanding about what the NEA may do to support the national service initiative, we will correct it. We regret any comments on the call that may have been misunderstood or troubled other participants. We are fully committed to the NEA's historic mission, and we will take all steps necessary to ensure that there is no further cause for questions or concerns about that commitment."

...Today White House officials are meeting with the chiefs of staff of the executive branch agencies to discuss rules and best practices in this area, a conversation during which they will be told that that while White House lawyers do not believe that the NEA call violated the law, "the appearance issues troubled some participants," Burton said. "It is the policy of the administration that grant decisions should be on the merits and that government officials should avoid even creating the incorrect appearance that politics has anything to do with these decisions."

8 months in to their term and they are just getting around to the "don't break the law" seminars for appointees? That's comforting.

Over at Big Hollywood, they have a story about how the NEA's website is pushing people to an organization lobbying in favor of health insurance reform.

The Holder DoJ isn't going to do anything about this, they are too busy letting Black Panthers go free and trying to railroad CIA agents to get mixed up in this so I'm not sure where it's going to go in a legal sense.

The most important thing is keeping track of this stuff, finding more and using it to beat the hell out of Obama and the Democrats next year. Even a moron like Sheriff Joe Biden knows Hope and Change may be strangled to death in a little more than a year.

It's also very important that this stuff be kept as visible as possible, it will make it harder for Democrats in Congress to support Obama as much as they might otherwise because they don't want to be caught up in this toxic crap.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:33 AM | Comments (5)
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