And Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said this:

You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

One would think that being members of Congress, they would have some sort of inkling as to what went in the bills to begin with.

As for what she meant by prevention and diet and how it will be exciting, anything will be speculation on my part on how she thinks she can control the dietary choices people make.

The ‘Two Heartbeats Away’ is a bit inaccurate. I should have said a heartbeat and a brain aneurysm away. That’s the safe money bet.

The latest on the Government Takeover of the Health Care System is that it’s not going anywhere just yet. As soon as the Democrats will whip up the votes, the Senate version will be moved to the floor of the House for a vote. Then it can go straight to the White House for a vote. Scott ‘41′ Brown and reconciliation will be rendered moot at that point.

As it is, there is a bipartisan effort in voting ‘No’ against the bill (One of the few times I like that word, ‘bipartisan’). If any of the standouts are names you recognize, please call and tell them to keep holding fast to their no vote.

Speaking of the Government Takeover of the Health Care System (I’m doing what I can to avoid calling it ‘Health Care Reform’ when what it will lead to is a government ran system. My own personal War with Words.), if this isn’t illegal, it should be. At the most, unethical. Or as it’s usually called: Chicago Land Style Politics.

Back to being overwhelmed. Republican Bob Corker is helping his BFF Chris Dodd in passing another sort of ‘reform’.

To get them coming and going, a new bank tax going into effect. Who benefits? GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who by curious coincidence, happen to be owned — entirely or with a partial take — by the US Government.

And finally, jobs loss. . . As being “Really good”?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama’s budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.
[. . .]
The Obama administration estimated its policies would lead to an average annual budget shortfall of $853 billion for the next 10 years.

The difference is that Obama’s estimate expects more tax revenue.
[. . .]
The budget office said Thursday the deficit for the first five months of the fiscal year, which starts in October, was $655 billion, an 11 percent increase over the same period in the last fiscal year.
[. . .]
Corporate tax revenues fell by $11 billion because of lower profits and a tax break in the stimulus that allowed companies to use current losses to offset taxes on past year’s profits.

The two ways to bring in more cash-flow is to cut back on expenses or increase revinue. Seeing how cutting back is not in this administrations vocabulary, odds are it will be the Government’s answer to increasing their cash flow. By raising taxes in the middle of a depression. Which was one of the things that the Tea Parties and 9/12 was trying to warn against.

Or if you are a hard core progressive ideologue, those protests happened because Barack is our first black President and everyone involved is racially motivated.

Cross posted here At The Point Of A Gun.

Keep that in mind if the Frank Rich of the New York Times tries to use Bedell to smear the entire Tea Party movement.

UPDATE: And right on schedule from the Christian Science Monitor.

John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.

Now we will see just who will put their ego and their job on the line and vote for this bill. It’s a waiting game now. If they had the votes for sure, it would have been passed by now.

With the biggest power grab by the US Government over people’s lives, of course they aren’t going to back down without a fight.

Via Michelle Malkin.

When any elected official says they want to do something for the environment, it end up costing the public in general. In this case, it will affect the Personal Property Tax for some residents of Virginia.

If you own a truck or SUV and live in Chesterfield County be prepared. The value of your vehicle could be higher than last year, meaning a bigger property tax bill.
[. . .]
[N]ot all SUV’s trucks or crossovers saw a drop in value. Thanks to Cash for Clunkers used gas guzzlers are now a hot commodity.
[. . .]
Chesterfield County bases its values on the NADA used car book. It’s been that way for decades. With fewer trucks and SUV’s on car lots the value of those used vehicles goes up [Emphasis mine].

To give you an idea of how values have changed for trucks and SUV’s, we’re going to use a 2003 Ford Truck. In 2008 its value was assessed at $12,000. Last year it was assessed 30% lower, dropping to $8,350. This year the value was driven up to $9,100.

So for whatever reason why you didn’t turn in a ‘clunker’, be it not wanting a new car, taking on new debt in a time of depression or keeping the old truck around because it’s still a good truck, chances are it will cost you.

Cross posted here At The Point Of a Gun.

This analogy is one of the best.

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers.

Now, do you understand ?

So far, it’s been Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid lecturing Republicans. And they let Lamar Alexander speak once.

UPDATE: Keep this in mind. If Obama’s proposal is supposed to ‘lower’ premiums, they why have a federal law mandating price caps for those premiums?

According to a presentation obtained under subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Relations committee, Toyota referred to the “changing political environment” as one of its main challenges and anticipated a “more challenging regulatory” environment under the Obama administration’s purview.

That’s just Toyota going along with the prevailing wisdom.

By piggybacking the [Government Takeover of the Health Care System] legislation onto a budget bill, Democrats would be able to advance the bill with a simple majority of just 51 votes, averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

[. . .]they can use the aggressive and contentious tactic, known as reconciliation, to pass a far-reaching health care bill in the Senate without having to face the GOP. Democrats lost their ability to block filibusters when Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a Senate seat last month.

Reconciliation is the process of passing a bill in the Senate with a simple majority, 51 votes. The rules were changed a few years ago when the Democrats wanted a super majority (60 votes) in order to approve nominations for Federal Judges. For some reason, Democrats didn’t want someone named Miguel Estrada nominated for a position on a circuit court. Seemed kind of racist to me at the time.

The scariest aspect of reconciliation? It could be all up to Joe Biden.