Oh, please - DO read it all!

Popehat:

"Terribly sorry about all the English everywhere."

Hang on to your hats.... this does NOT bode well...

Has Germany just killed the dream of a European superstate?:

"EU leaders may yet rustle up a rescue package that keeps the IMF at bay, but alliances are shifting fast. Even Italy has slipped into the pro-IMF camp, knowing that rescue costs can be shifted on to the US, Japan, Britain, Russia, China, and the Saudis, lessening the burden for Rome."

If we vote for it, it is so! Fuck the laws of physics....

It’s NOT a Health Bill, NOT a Medicare Tax and It Can’t Possibly Cost Only $940 Billion:

"If we treated farmers, food companies and grocery stores the way Congress threatens to treat the health industries would anybody expect food to become better or cheaper?"

What else can you really say?

The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform:

"So fantasy in, fantasy out."

Try to remember what Putney Swope said....

But At What Cost?:

"It's being hailed as a major legislative achievement, and in size and scope, it certainly is. But for those of us who do not take comfort in legislation of great size and scope, it's an achievement of dubious merit.

But it's not just the size and scope. It's also that this bill is unlikely to achieve most of the objectives that have been set out for it."

It's called "Facism".....

The New Ledger:

"I’ve always felt that America is the one place where a small number of oligarchs can’t control society, because of the powerful buffer created by popular sovereignty. Government can’t act arbitrarily as long as they feel constrained to act as the people wish. Tonight, a totally different governing philosophy, and one new to Americans, had its first major success: “We’ll give you what WE want, not what YOU want.”"

Just for starters today....

Maggie's Farm:

"Together, in the chilling dawn of the wake-up call that is the bankrupting powergrab sham that is ObamaCare and the sliming of integrity with which it has been pressed, with the abandonment of allies and the kowtowing to foes, the heavy prices will fall most upon them along with the rest of us.

“Damn Dems” will be the next greatest generation’s battle cry. A cross-generational battle cry."

How many "I told you so's" shall I heap upon you?

The AIPAC Crowd:

"An elderly couple from Florida were agitated by recent events. The wife explained she that had fled Nazi Germany as a child for Shanghai. “There are parallels,” she said. “This is depressing. It’s scary.” She said that she had argued with her liberal friends during the campaign about Obama’s associations with anti-Israel figures. “My mother always said where there is smoke, there is fire,” she explained, then added wearily, “They didn’t listen.” She bemoaned the fact that Jews’ political activities are fragmented on issues like global warming. “There are plenty of people to do that,” she said. “Where are they on Israel?”

That’s just a sampling, but it gives you a sense of the angst. This is not a crowd that is celebrating. They are worried. Very worried."

It was over before it even started, really.

The End of Hope and Change:

"Obama’s speeches are what a speechwriter I knew liked to call “cotton candy communication”-sticky sweet and airy, made for children, comforting to the listener as they hear, but melting away, instantly forgettable. Plus, ingest too much of it and you get sick as a dog."

He just loves the sound of his own voice, and he thinbks you'll swallow any drivel he throws at you....

Patterico: "”

What in the heck does “an international order that bends the arch of history in the direction of justice” mean, and how does that have anything to do with what America stands for?"

Can you imagine?

JammieWearingFool

Eh, forget about this being against the law, they've got a presidency to save. To put it in perspective, imagine Bush inundating federal employees with pitches to support the invasion of Iraq and just imagine the reaction to that. But considering the gangster tactics and the promise to do anything necessary to pass ObamaCare, you had to figure this was all part of the plan.

HEH...

Science Proves Liberals Psycho Dirtbags, Too:

"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right."

Pretty succinct...

Michael Gerson:

"First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not convince a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan -- and have largely ceased to try.

As of this writing, a president who seems willing to interrupt prime-time programming on the slightest pretext has not scheduled a speech from the Oval Office to make his final health-reform appeal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working her parliamentarians overtime to achieve the congressional equivalent of the Virgin Birth -- a law without a vote. One gets the impression that Democrats would prefer health reform to slip by the House in a procedural maneuver on a Friday night during the NCAA basketball tournament -- which it might.

The most visible Democratic domestic priority of the past 40 years must be smuggled into law, lest too many Americans notice. Politicians claiming the idealism of saints have adopted the tactics of burglars. Victory, if it comes, will seem less like a parade than a heist."

When all else fails - blame the Jews!

The New Republic:

"Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas's 'day of rage' over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority's call to gather on the Temple Mount to 'save' the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City's Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident?

The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem at the center of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less.

...As I listen to police sirens outside my window, Obama's political intifada against Netanyahu seems to be turning into a third intifada over Jerusalem."

Hard to argue...

The fake U.S.-Israel crisis:

"'...tough on your friends, weak with your enemies' is neither a common trait among great leaders nor is it a particularly good campaign bumper sticker."

This actually makes sense to lots of people.... Oy!

What Do Detroit, the Postal Service, and Health Care Reform Have in Common?:

"To repeat, the postmaster general wants to reduce service in an effort to staunch red ink. That’s service as in mail delivery, the U.S. Postal Service’s bread and butter. Imagine a hamburger joint announcing to its customers that it plans to stop selling hamburgers a day or two a week to cut costs. Of course, a hamburger joint wouldn’t limit the sale of hamburgers to keep its costs down. The guy who owns the hamburger joint would get creative in his marketing and pricing to sell more hamburgers. He might trim costs operationally but not at the expense of selling as many hamburgers as he and his help could flip. Why the difference? The hamburger joint can go out of business. The U.S. Postal Service, being immune to risk, cannot."

Quote (sort of) of the Day:

The New Ledger:

"But now our govt’s policy is to do by itself all kinds of things that the private sector can do. Building automobiles was last year’s thing. This year, we’re taking over student loans. And then there’s still healthcare, the energy industry, and the least sensical govt monopoly of all, education.

So if we’re paying govt prices for more and more of the things we should be doing ourselves, there’s no way to avoid getting poorer and poorer over time. We’re living like a person without a job who goes to expensive restaurants every night when she should be buying macaroni and cheese, and then compounds the mistake by putting it all on her credit card.

Chris Dodd is proposing standing up a new consumer protection agency to keep “predatory” bankers from lending money to consumers who shouldn’t be borrowing in the first place. Implicitly Dodd is saying that consumers aren’t smart enough to know when they’re living beyond their means. What we really need is a government protection agency, to prevent predatory bond market investors from lending to the US government."

The only winner was Washington, D.C.!

Losing the War:

"On one hand, it is true that, since the beginning of the War on Poverty, the material living conditions of the poor have improved; even the federal government cannot spend $16.7 trillion without having any impact whatsoever. But, in terms of reducing the “causes” rather than the “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed utterly. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of prosperous self-sufficiency than it was before."

Fall off your seat funny....

The science is settled: Environmentalists are dicks:

"That’s weird, huh? You mean environmentalists tend to be unethical jerks who justify their behavior by telling themselves it’s for the greater good, and they’re better than their victims anyway? Huh. It’s a good thing we have science, or we couldn’t figure that out based on evidence we see every. Single. Day."

If the thunder don't get you, then.....

Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation:

"Indeed, 90 percent of the world’s wheat has little or no protection against the Ug99 race of P. graminis. If nothing is done to slow the pathogen, famines could soon become the norm — from the Red Sea to the Mongolian steppe — as Ug99 annihilates a crop that provides a third of our calories. China and India, the world’s biggest wheat consumers, will once again face the threat of mass starvation, especially among their rural poor. The situation will be particularly grim in Pakistan and Afghanistan, two nations that rely heavily on wheat for sustenance and are in no position to bear added woe. Their fragile governments may not be able to survive the onslaught of Ug99 and its attendant turmoil."