Yes, it's Dick Morris, but given the arrogance the Dems have already shown on this, did you really think they'd do anything differently?

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate leader Harry Reid have all agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are "flipped" and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.

Here's what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate's Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi's deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority that don't like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don't get insurance and offering no income tax surcharge on the "rich"?

That's where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members -- but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

Nah, I didn't believe him either. (h/t: Allahpundit)

Yup. You've already lost the trust of a majority of the American people. Do this, and it's game over for the Dems, Bambi.

Posted by: Slublog at 05:03 PM | Comments (155)
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Doesn't seem too worked up about it. But he does (oddly) suggest the justices erred because of a lack of political experience, not simply a matter of interpreting law and the Constitution. I guess running for county sheriff helps you with all this constitutional law stuff.

On Face the Nation today with Schieffer (I'm not embedding the video cause I ran it up to 4:16 for you, still trying to figure out if you can embed the #t= code in a post, but if you add #t=xxmyys to the end of a youtube link where xx is mins and yy is seconds, you can start the vid where you want it to start. Didn't work when I used it on the embed code though. It's probably me).

Thanks to Michael for reminding me about the time thingy.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:42 PM | Comments (92)
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Thinly veiled hit piece on Palin. And Bush to a degree.

Before John McCain unwittingly picked a tabloid-magazine cover girl for his running mate, I was leaning toward going Republican this time around. I did the second time Bush was on the ballot and I very nearly did the first time, too. But as soon as Palin climbed out of her igloo and onto the national scene, well, there was no turning back for me.

This thing is such a mess I don't even know where to start. For a person who claims to be a "fiscal conservative" she seems just a bit more driven by cult of personality than political ideology. Tear it up for yourselves.

Parting shot, anybody buying her last line about hoping the Republicans can find a "president with experience and savvy, a Commander in Chief who puts our country and its citizens first."?

Not me.

*updated headline to point out this isn't my regret, it's somebody else's

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 02:49 PM | Comments (329)
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I don't know about you but I'm rooting for the Saints...the idea of two weeks hearing about Manning v. Favre is too painful to contemplate. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 02:46 PM | Comments (262)
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Three different White House officials gave out three different numbers for jobs "saved or created" on three different morning shows today. Fools:

Valerie Jarrett had the most conservative count, saying “the Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs,” while David Axelrod gave the bill the most credit, saying it has “created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs came in between them, saying the plan had “saved or created 1.5 million jobs.”

Five dollars says that President Obama uses a fourth number in the State of the Union speech.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:05 PM | Comments (127)
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Presidential memorandum of 20JAN10

...reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) state that Federal contracts are awarded to tens of thousands of companies with serious tax delinquencies. The total amount in unpaid taxes owed by these contracting companies is estimated to be more than $5 billion...

...I also direct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, working with the Secretary of the Treasury and other agency heads, to evaluate practices of contracting officers and debarring officials in response to contractors' certifications of serious tax delinquencies and to provide me, within 90 days, recommendations on process improvements to ensure these contractors are not awarded new contracts, including a plan to make contractor certifications available in a Government-wide database, as is already being done with other information on contractors...

If there were (taking a SWAG) 50,000 delinquent contractors owing $5B, that would come to $100,000 each on average. I'd guess most (again a SWAG) are probably smaller local contractors who wouldn't be able to come up with $100K if you put a gun to their heads. My prediction would be the public takes it in the shorts on at least (SWAG) 80% of that owed tax.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:36 AM | Comments (120)
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Saturday was the Republican Precinct Caucus date for the Iowa Republican Party. Here in Madison County, the County Committee had a unique idea for a "Special Project" to coincide with both the caucus AND the recent ice storm that hit our area. They commissioned a chainsaw ice sculptor to come down from Waterloo and transform a 900-pound block of ice into a frozen likeness of Vice President & Global Warmening Grand Poobah Al Gore. The County Committee is selling raffle tickets for one dollar, and the person who guesses the date and time that the last little piece of this ice block is reduced to liquid form wins 50% of the net proceeds of the raffle (the other 50% will be donated to the local non-profit charity of the winner's choice).

I managed to get a few snapshots of the sculpture during the carving process on Friday, and I also came back on Saturday with an AoSHQ approved snack food. more...

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 08:55 AM | Comments (72)
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Last month the case was dismissed because the prosecutors used coerced statements to bring the charges. The judge wrote a thorough 90 page decision (PDF) explaining where prosecutors went wrong. Obama's DOJ is not ready to give up the chance to convict Blackwater "mercenaries":

The government will appeal a court decision to dismiss charges against Blackwater security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, Vice President Joe Biden said on Saturday.

The U.S. federal court found last month that the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated, angering many Iraqis. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government has hired U.S. lawyers to prepare a law suit against Blackwater, a security contractor now called Xe Services.

With Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at his side at a Baghdad news conference, Biden expressed "personal regret" for the violence in a Baghdad traffic circle when Blackwater guards were accused of opening fire on innocent civilians.

Judge Urbina recently decided not to seek sanctions against the prosecutors, but it seems like it was a close call. This is just the latest of a half-dozen DOJ prosecutions that have been dismissed in the past two years for prosecutorial misconduct. The most notable of those dismissals was the corruption case against Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.

Incidentally: I don't know whether they've been fairly accused or not. That's the problem with trying to turn a war-zone into a crime scene. Unlike a crime scene, it was impossible for investigators to contemporaneously interview witness, inspect the scene, recover evidence from the scene, or even bodies. The politically-motivated prosecution had almost no choice but to use their own statements against them.

And that ends the inquiry, as far as I'm concerned. The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination applies to the guilty as much as it does the innocent. In fact, it's of almost no use at all to the innocent, who necessarily do not need its protection. The prosecutors knew this, in fact they were warned several times by more experienced DOJ prosecutors, but went ahead anyway. Because of the many warnings they received, I'm disappointed that Judge Urbina decided not to sanction them.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:36 AM | Comments (117)
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I'm going with Indianapolis and the Saints.

Not that I'm any good at this.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:52 AM | Comments (178)
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It's been a damn good week so let's cap it off with a little mayhem and debauchery. So everyone gather around the trash can fire and let's clean our crossbows, do some shots, engage in the ritual bluster, and make the hobos and pre-hobos fear the night again.

The .577 T-Rex Is Not for Girly Men
The .577 Tyrannosaur is a custom rifle round developed by A-Square that's meant to be used as a last resort shot for charging elephants/rhinos/hippos/triceratops. It has a whopping 11,000 foot pounds of energy which makes it almost 5 times more powerful than 7.62 NATO rounds and double that of the .458 Winchester.

Now I've shot a .458 before and it definitely had a thump and needed a tight grip to keep the rifle from flying away. And note that the .577 is not the most powerful big game round by far - some of the 19th century elephant guns were so powerful that they were known to cause nose bleeds every time they were fired.

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:34 PM | Comments (1120)
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