The Super Majority

Pelosi, Reid Plan Secret Plot for Obamacare

Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have 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.

Read the full article at Newmax

Obama Needs to Stop Legislating and Start Leading

How bad do things look for Barack Obama? Some historical perspective is useful. His approval ratings after one year in office are about the same as Ronald Reagan’s or Jimmy Carter’s and, in fact, are a bit higher than Bill Clinton’s. The Bushes fared better than all three of them, but for unusual reasons: 41 because he presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union in his first year in office, and 43 because the nation rallied around him after 9/11. As the economy improves, Obama’s numbers will surely rebound somewhat.

Still, last week’s special election in Massachusetts is a sign that Obama has a big problem. The public has clearly registered a protest vote against him, congressional Democrats, and their signature policy proposal: the health-care bill. The size of the swing, the issues raised during the campaign and in exit polls, and the migration of independents all suggest that Obama is confronting not just generalized anger but dissatisfaction with the course that the ruling party has taken. How he responds will shape the rest of his term.

Read the full article at Newsweek

Republicans Balk at Obama’s Debt-Cutting Commission

The Obama administration’s bid to make a bipartisan debt-reduction commission the centerpiece of its budget plans received a serious blow Wednesday when leading Republicans blasted the idea.

Underscoring the problem, the Senate is poised to vote to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion, just weeks after a $290 billion increase at the end of 2009. The debt currently stands at $12.322 trillion.

Less than a day after congressional Democrats and the White House reached a tentative deal to use an executive order that would establish a bipartisan commission to tackle the problem, the effort appeared to be on life support.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal

Obama Stuffs Geithner in Back Seat in Favor of Volcker

For much of last year, Paul Volcker wandered the country arguing for tougher restraints on big banks while the Obama administration pursued a more moderate regulatory agenda driven by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Thursday morning at the White House, it seemed as if the two men had swapped places. A beaming Volcker stood at Obama’s right as the president endorsed his proposal and branded it the “Volcker Rule.” Geithner stood farther away, compelled to accommodate a stance he once considered less effective than his own.

The moment was the product of Volcker’s persistence and a desire by the White House to impose sharper checks on the financial industry than Geithner had been advocating, according to some government sources and political analysts. It was Obama’s most visible break yet from the reform philosophy that Geithner and his allies had been promoting earlier.

Read the full article at the Washington Post

10 Reasons Obama is Falling Investors

A year ago, millions of Americans — investors, taxpayers, consumers, voters — came together uplifted by the “audacity of hope,” inspired by a vision of “change we can believe in,” by “bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world.”

“Yes, we can” was the rallying cheer. You were the game-changer after the Bush-Cheney fiasco. What happened? Today we just don’t see, or expect to see, any real change we can believe in. America is more polarized than under Bush’s GOP, dysfunctional as both parties tragically undermine our great nation.

There are many reasons future historians may rate your presidency average, or even a failure, at least based on the gap between the promise a year ago and the reality today, certainly for investors.

Read the Full Article at CBS Marketwatch

Brown Win Could be Death Knell for Obamacare

A stinging loss Tuesday in Massachusetts has cost President Barack Obama and the Democrats the 60-vote Senate majority they’ve relied on to push a historic health care overhaul to the verge of enactment.

Now what? It’s miles of bad road in any direction.

Democrats splintered on how to salvage the president’s top domestic initiative even before the results were official. Republicans said don’t bother: The election of state senator Scott Brown sent a message that the health care bill should be scrapped.

Read the Full Article at MSNBC

Political Blunders Doom Obama’s White House

If Scott Brown should defeat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election tomorrow, it will be a fitting metaphor for the political trajectory of President Obama’s first year in office. A year ago Democrats were talking about Obama as the next Franklin Roosevelt, and suggesting that they were on the cusp of an enduring majority. Today, they are struggling to hold Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat.

Coakley will rightly get most of the blame should Brown actually pull off what once seemed to be an impossible victory. Yet much of the responsibility will have to rest with Barack Obama, who has guided his party so poorly that it is having trouble making an appeal to voters in Massachusetts.

To put it bluntly, the Obama White House has been politically inept in the last year. It has made serious miscalculations, and today it is paying a price.

Read the Full Article at Real Clear Politics

Democrats Survey Underhanded Methods to Push Through Obamacare

First, Democrats in Massachusetts rammed a bill through the state Legislature after Ted Kennedy’s death allowing the Democratic governor to appoint a caretaker Democrat to fill the seat until a special election could be held — ensuring a 60th vote for President Obama’s healthcare reform. It was assumed that in Massachusetts, with a 3-to-1 Democratic edge in voter registration, a Democrat would win.

But now, given the sudden prospect that Democratic Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley could lose to upstart state Sen. Scott Brown, Democrats in Washington are plotting how to save healthcare.

Read the Full Article at Los Angeles Times

American Public Gets to Foot the Bill for Unions’ Healthcare

Congressional Democrats received another $68 million from unions in 2008, and $21 million more so far this year. And that doesn’t count the value of “in kind” contributions like phone banks, poll volunteers and independent advertising.

Looks like the unions are getting their money’s worth — with a sweetheart deal worth billions.

For most American workers, beginning in 2013, if your health care insurance plan is worth more than $8,900 for an individual and $24,000 for a family, that plan will be hit with a 40% excise tax. While technically the tax falls on the insurer, virtually all economists agree that the cost will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Moreover, because the threshold for the tax is indexed to ordinary inflation rather than the higher rate of medical inflation, even if your plan doesn’t get hit today, it may well be taxed in the future.

Read the Full Article at the New York Post

Robertson’s Stupidity on Display as he Smites Haiti

Most Americans are not in the smiting business. No matter what our line of work, we’re basically in the live-and-let-live business.

But here on Earth, the smiting business is reserved for that TV evangelist and Haitian earthquake expert, the Rev. Pat Robertson.

The rest of us might get angry at someone or something. But few of us call down the wrath of the heavens upon someone, unless, of course, it’s some football coach who doesn’t make the playoffs.

The smiters are different. They’re angry. Many of them are radical Islamic clerics who call on Allah to destroy the Great Satan for our sins of Americanism, like not keeping our women in burqas and siding with Israel, and for watching those sultry commercials where Padma Lakshmi eats a greasy cheeseburger and so forth

Read the Full Article at Chicago Tribune