http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/05/new-palin-scandal-leno-might-have-piped-in-some-laughter-for-her-jokes/

Keep in mind, this is the Daily Kos we’re talking about.

Too bad this will never happen anytime soon, because it’s exactly what this country needs right now.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/04/spending-limit-amendment-stops-the-cycle-of-broken-promises/

Are we talking about pain or pain? Guess we’ll have to wait and see

By Michael O’Brien - 03/04/10 07:15 AM ET

Democrats plan “pain” for Republicans who seek to slow or block passage of healthcare legislation, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Wednesday night.

Brown said that if Republicans try to offer amendments and use parliamentary maneuvers to grind out the legislative process, Democrats would retaliate with all-night sessions and other methods of fighting back.

“I think they’re going to try to do amendments, as many as they can get away with,” Brown said Wednesday evening during an appearance on MSNBC. “I think we keep them here all night — tonight, the next night, the next night, the next night.”

“If they’re going to try to filibuster in the traditional sense or the more modern sense that they do, they’re going to have pain, too,” Brown added.

Democrats are hoping to move forward soon with healthcare legislation, though Republicans like Sen. John Thune (S.D.) have said the GOP is drawing up a number of plays to try to slow down or halt passage of the healthcare bill.

The Senate is expected to take up a series of fixes to its original healthcare bill under the budget reconciliation rules, which sidesteps the 60-vote threshold needed to end a filibuster and allows the majority to pass an item with a simple majority.

By proceeding with those rules, Republicans’ ability to slow down orblog the legislation would be limited.

Still, Brown said that Democrats planned their own hardball tactics if the GOP were to try to force a prolonged debate on the final stages of health reform.

“They’re going to have to stay, too,” he said. “We’re going to have to have quorum calls, and we’re going to do whatever we need to do to get this passed within Senate rules and within fair play.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/84893-dems-plan-pain-for-gop-if-they-drag-out-health-debate

The Senate Finance Committee today approved the bill to overhaul the United States health care system. For months now the debate has been going back and forth, primarily focused on a federal national option (Which is not part of the bill). The New York Times reports the following accomplishments of the bill:

The bill seeks to provide health benefits to a majority of uninsured by expanding Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor, and creating new state-run insurance options for individuals and families earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level or $44,100 for a family of four.

For many other moderate-income Americans, the bill would provide government subsidies to help them buy insurance through new government-regulated marketplaces.

The legislation also seeks to impose strict new regulations on the insurance industry, including banning insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and it would require nearly all Americans to obtain coverage.

The CBO says that the new overhaul will cost $829 billion over the 10 years, and would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 29 million. The program will still leave 25 million Americans without health insurance, one-third of which are illegal aliens.

The main part of the story is that Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine did vote with the 13 democrats on the committee, the only republican to do so.

Senator Snowe said:

Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it. Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls. And I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time.

Hopefully we can move together on other momentous issues of our time and at least take the the first step towards fixing this nation.

The final vote of the committee was 14-9, with all but one Republican opposed.

The rest of the New York Times article can be read here.

Arlen Specter, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania has decided to switch parties, which spells out huge changes in the way proceedings will take place in the Senate. If Al Franken finally takes the senate seat for Minnesota, which he most likely will, the Democrats will now have 60 seats in the Senate, meaning the power to fillibuster would dissappear. Giving total control to the Democrats.

Sure the Republicans will cry out against the “tyrrany of the majority” and how the Democrats are going to ruin the nation by taking it to the extreme left, while not at all acknowledging their extreme conservative agenda. However, the extreme conservatism is the entire reason why Specter has decided to switch parties. Specter always defined himself as a moderate, and has usually voted so. He is also one of the three Republican Senators who supported the Stimulus Package.

Here is an excerpt from his statement:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

“Why doesn’t he just become an independent you ask, and not side with Democrats?” It’s because Mr. Specter is coming up for re-election in 2010, and would need both financial, and base support from one party or the other. So the new healthcare packages being discussed in Congress right now are going to be extremely hard for the Republicans to fight against.

Oh what a difference one man makes…

Newsweek’s Jon Meacham, writing in the periodical’s April 13 issue, has brought forth the issue of “The End of Christian America.”

In his essay, he argues that Christian America is in decline. He goes by the numbers indicated in the 2009 American Religious Indentification Survey; of interest to many are the following observations:

1)the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent.

2) while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.

Who would have guessed that the homeland of the Puritans and witch-burning – the very wellspring of American religion – would have lost its soul?

Now, we find ourselves seriously considering the prospect of a post-Christian America. As Meacham notes, anti-theocratic liberals are rejoicing and expressive religious conservatives are less than gleeful. And while we have yet to see what effects this will have on public policy, such as Roe v. Wade, it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

Is Nietzsche’s God slowly dying?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford is doing what few politicians of any political persuasion are willing to do: reject stimulus money.

Granted, he’s not rejecting all of it, but still a substantial amount. Sanford is engaging in political retroaction. The year, you ask? 1964.

Not since Barry Goldwater has the Republican Party seen such a principled budget cutter as Sanford. This stripe of conservatism breaks sharply with the supply-side brand in the sense that although both cherish “limited government,” the supply-sider is willing to run-up large (usually military) spending deficits, while the budget cutter never spends more than he has, which sometimes forces him to forgo a tax decrease.

The caveat to all of this, of course, is that Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run failed miserably. Hopefully Sanford will not make the same mistakes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04sanford.html?_r=1&hp

The book is “The Age of American Unreason”. The author is Mrs. Susan Jacoby. I am Michael Jaskot. Can I stop writing like this? Tonight I viewed with optimism the self-proclaimed rationalist that is Susan Jacoby. Mrs. Jacoby has made a fine living writing countless books on public affiars and politcal science and a biography of Alger Hiss is in the works. I attended a speech by the former Washington Post writer at my Ohio State University. However, I was utterly disappointed in many of the talking points that ensued.

I was expecting a full blown critique of American culture, or as Mrs. Jacoby refers to it: infotainment. (I can’t believe the computer recognizes that as a word). Besides telling me, just like Barack Obama, that parents need to take control and turn off the video games, I learned very little. Futhermore, when I asked the author what my generation can do about the so called “culture of junk” she failed to give me a decent answer. Once again, I had hoped for a vibrant discussion on common sense in America, possibly incorporating chats on absurd legal matters and how it is rational to think the opposite of certain American norms. Didn’t happen.

Actually, something interesting did happened. A gentleman asked if Mrs. Jacoby agreed with Ayn Rand’s objectivist school of thought, as he thought the two had much in common. Mrs. Jacoby responded, “I think it’s a crock”. The crowd cheered. Wow, openly lambasting Ayn Rand requires courage. The other thing that is needed when attacking one of the foremost capitalist authors of our day is a strong, detailed opinion that can persuade the audience to believe you. Mrs. Jacoby did not provide any “ensightful” (EM shoutout) information to help me understand the contemporary American fascination with “unreason”.

Just one day after forcing the CEO of GM to resign, President Obama is outlining an ultimatum to the ailing US auto industry.

Dictating the top leadership of a private company is dangerous enough, but committing taxpayer dollars to a venture that should be handled in bankruptcy court is just irresponsible.

Bankruptcy court was set up for this specific purpose: to orderly restructure weak companies in hopes of preventing them from collapsing. The main difference between Obama’s plan and bankruptcy court is that bankruptcy court doesn’t cost the taxpayers billions of dollars.

Michael Kinsley makes a very valid point on yesterday’s Washington Post Op-Ed page:

“The cure for everything these days, especially in the business world and also in the government, is thought to be “transparency”: no secrets. Let people know everything, and abuses will self-correct. But transparency requires more than just supplying the information. What good is putting it all out three if it’s too complicated to understand?”

This worthwhile yet seldom articulated argument runs counter to everything our politicians and business leaders tell us. Perhaps transparency shouldn’t even be considered a component of regulatory reform—never mind a cure-all—since the vast majority of the public (myself included) will never adequately grasp the “exotic” concepts of credit default swaps, as the media labels them.

If you subscribe to this belief, you’re left with basically two choices: expand the regulatory apparatus or allow the markets to pick the winners and losers.

If you believe that regulation should be increased, you have to reconcile the “moral hazard” argument. If you believe that that government should bend to the will of the marketplace, you have to reconcile the possibility of future AIG’s.

This is one of the crucial decisions of our generation, and I’m fearful that we don’t know how to address the problem because we don’t even know what we’re dealing with.