Ben Nelson: uh, maybe I shouldn’t have voted for health care.

Vote the bums out (sadly this particular bum will be around through 2012).

All you need to know about the left (via NRO Corner).

WaPo columnist Harold Meyerson is distraught that the country is not destitute and miserable enough to implement Obama’s agenda. He is really displaying much of the left’s true colors here. Rahm was right, Obama shouldn’t have let the crisis go to waste. Now that people have some faith in the future, they’re not all so willing to turn their lives over to bureaucrats.

Vodkapundit responds.

Powerful preview of “Let Me Rise”:

Via Glenn Reynolds, a very frightening graphic:

Good thing someone has a plan.

I woke up to today’s Red State morning briefing to see that Erick Erickson had made a classic mistake. From his post “Roll Tide“:

Okay, so this post really isn’t about the Crimson Tide, but there is a crimson tide out there this morning — the Democrat dead pool.

Bill Ritter, the Governor of Colorado, is gone.

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is gone.

Chris Dodd (D-CT) is gone.

These three all announced on the same day and on the heels of all the other Democrats retiring and Parker Griffith switching to the GOP.

Meanwhile Evan Bayh is looking more and more vulnerable in Indiana.

Something is happening. Whatever it is is most definitely bad for Democrats and good for freedom.

Right. Just one problem. The GOP is grappling with 14 retirements in the House and 4 in the Senate.

That said, Chris Cillizza of WaPo’s The Fix blog ranks only 3 Senate seats from red states in the top 10 most competetive races (NH, OH, MO). Four Republican House districts make it into his Cillizza’s top ten most competetive (LA-02, NY-23, IL-10, PA-06).

Cillizza also wrote recently:

A series of national polls released in recent days suggest the American people are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

In a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll just 22 percent approve of the job Congress is doing. Just 38 percent said their Member of Congress deserves to be re-elected while 49 percent said it is “time to give a new person a chance”.

That “throw the bums out” mentality is particularly dangerous for Senate Democrats.

Still, Erickson needs to stay grounded. Red State’s Martin Knight writes this morning:

Undoubtedly, yesterday was a good day.

But that said, let’s not let that go to our heads and make us complacent.

There’s a lot of hard work to be done – NOTE: from now until 01/19, every day is Scott Brown day: donate and volunteer – and we need to realize that there are still ten whole months left before November 2. A lot of things can change in that time … and we should be prepared for any contingency so we’re not ruled by events instead of the other way round.

There’s still money to be raised, volunteers to be recruited, neighbors and co-workers to be won over, precincts to organize and ultimately campaigns to be won. We should not make the mistake of thinking the ND seat as good as won because Dorgan quit, or the CT seat as good as out of reach (as many are suggesting) because we no longer have Chris Dodd to run against.

No seat is out of reach for any party, or any candidate – a Democrat, someone you’ve never heard of, can still win the ND seat and hold it for the Democrats; Dorgan has been on that seat since the 80s and ND’s all Democrat Congressional delegation shows that ND voters are perfectly capable of reflexively sending a Democrat back to replace Dorgan in the Senate. So we really should stop crowing as if it’s a done deal.

David Brooks: Why must the hoi polloi always take issue with the infinite wisdom of the educated classes?

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity…

The Obama administration is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems. Many Americans do not have faith in that sort of centralized expertise or in the political class generally.

Or, perhaps, Americans have seen that empowering politicians and bureaucrats with the power to reshape the economy and the society to their liking leads to disastrous results. Just look at the money pits that were the bailouts and the stimulus. Consider the absolute debacle of Cash for Clunkers. You don’t need to have preconceived notions to see that government planners more often than not fail to accomplish their social and economic goals, and they often make the “problem” worse. This is hardly a case of “the people vs. the smartypants” for tribalism’s sake.

On a somewhat related note, I think that skepticism of the elites’ ability to plan society is a perfectly healthy thing. One of conservatism’s insights is that societies are not rationally planned. Looking at society as a blank slate on which to create something new and better leads to ruin. Societies are not blank; they are built on top of assumptions, traditions, and institutions that existed well before any of us were born. The educated class rejects these foundations at all of our peril. You may be highly intelligent. You may have degrees from elite institutions. But you must possess supreme hubris to believe that your judgment should trump the wisdom of the ages and the verdicts of the marketplace.

Great cartoon by Glenn Foden (via NewsBusters):

TSG on “a heroin how-to”:

Nobody can say that Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t a friend to New York City junkies. The Bloomberg administration is distributing a 16-page brochure offering heroin users 10 handy tips when it comes to shooting up. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene publication is titled “Take Charge, Take Care,” and offers advice on avoiding overdose, preparing your drugs, and taking care of veins in which you inject those illegal narcotics. The brochure, excerpted on the following pages, has been criticized by law enforcement agencies as a primer for addicts. The Bloomberg administration has defended the guide, contending that it would help save lives via the safety tips offered.

Follow the link to see the brochure.

Society of Breast Imaging and American College of Radiology: early annual mammograms save lives. Shucks. We could have saved so much money by denying life saving treatments.

I really thought Glenn Beck would come down on the Palin side of this question (“well, ya know, I wouldn’t mind seeing proof” sort of nonsense). WND reports:

On the air today, popular radio host Glenn Beck mocked “birthers” and claimed there is a concerted campaign to get those questioning Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility onto the airwaves – a strategy Beck said would actually benefit Obama.

“There’s always games being played behind the scenes at a talk radio show,” Beck said. “Rush has always called them seminar callers. But instead of being coy with the seminar callers or with you, I’m just going to expose the game that is going on. Today there is a concerted effort on all radio stations to get birthers on the air.”

“I have to tell you, are you working for the Barack Obama administration?” Beck scoffed. “I mean, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Indeed.

Tom Maguire on torture-loving conservatives and terrorist-coddling liberals:

My guess is that Abdulmuttalab would not have been a candidate for the waterboard under Darth Cheney. However, if Team Obama had put him into the military system as an enemy combatant he would not have been allowed to lawyer up, we wouldn’t be reading about how his lawyer might agree to let him cooperate, and he would be subject to military style interrogation without a lawyer even if other enhanced techniques were not employed.

That suggests an interesting question – do terrorist-coddling liberal elites really believe that prisoners provide just as much (or as little) information whether we observe their rights under US criminal procedures or their rights as detainees of the US military? Do terrorist-coddling liberal elites really believe that all these Miranda warnings and provision of access to lawyers really doesn’t encourage anyone to keep anyone quiet?

Just wondering.

Fistgate update: According to Mass Resistance Boston GLASS, which describes itself as a “drop-in center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning young people between the ages of 13 and 25“, distributed these materials at a GLSEN conference”

Full package:

Photo of the day:

At least 8 dead in Tehran.

Video viaGateway Pundit:

Stephen Hayes: “Engagement didn’t work.”

The problem, it turns out, was not George W. Bush. It wasn’t a lack of American goodwill or our failure to acknowledge mistakes or our underdeveloped national listening skills. The problem is the Iranian regime.

You don’t say?

Ed Morrissey:

Earlier this year, Barack Obama pledged this at the UN:

America will always stand with those who stand up for their dignity and their rights – for the student who seeks to learn; the voter who demands to be heard; the innocent who longs to be free; and the oppressed who yearns to be equal.

Except, of course, when we’re on vacation…

Memeorandum roundup

Crittenden roundup

RealClearWorld roundup

Reflecting on “the Noughties” (via UK Times):

The most shocking, compelling footage shot during the past decade did not come from a studio in California. It was not the product of millions of dollars of special effects orchestrated by a despot director. It was the impromptu footage of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers recorded by ordinary New Yorkers on digital video cameras and mobile phones. The Noughties were the decade in which the drama of real life left the movies in the dust. Cinema has been struggling to formulate an appropriate response ever since.

The voice of John Galt haunts today’s statists (via Big Government):

An epic demonstration of the inverted morality that Rand described was on display in Copenhagen last week as the world’s worst most evil dictators—Mugabe and Chavez—partnered with the world’s most visible and misguided progressives—Al Gore , Gordon Brown, Barack Obama—in an orgy of depravity. Sadly, even the Pope lent his moral support to the lunacy, saying, “Industrialized nations must recognize their responsibility for the environmental crisis, shed their consumerism and embrace more sober lifestyles.”

John Galt, the industrialist hero of Rand’s 1957 masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, refers to those in power who stripped men of their minds, wealth and freedom, as mystics. The mystics of spirit were the religious leaders of centuries past who proclaimed that faith is superior to reason. Galt is no fan of these mystics but it is the mystics of muscle—the progressives who force us to submit to their version of the common good—that Galt despises.

And Barack Obama is a mystic of muscle in its purest form, able to corral the worshipping media, the always superficial Hollywood elites, America hating academics, state-sponsored capitalists (e.g., Goldman Sachs), and grant hungry “scientists” & environmentalists hoping to cash in on a trillion dollar loot of the American people called global warming. These are the pillars of deceit Obama used to get elected. This was how he convinced enough of us to give up our minds for the the mystical concept that Rand called the collective. True to form, Barack, master of the mystics of muscle, has used his power mightily to loot from the producers, and hand it to the parasites, crooks and undeserving (read; SEIU, ACORN, UN Climate Fund, General Motors).

Could health care be the straw that broke the back of the camel that is persistent violation of the 10th Amendment? (wordy, I know, and full of unneccesary metaphors.)

Washington Examiner reports:

According to AP, South Carolina’s Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina’s two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

Attorneys-general in at least four other states are also considering joining McMasters, according to AP. A move by a group of states to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare could reinvigorate the efficacy of the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people all rights not specifically granted to the federal government.

Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn on the national Joker outbreak (via Jim Hoft):

National Review’s Kevin Williamson postulated months ago that if you want to gauge the successes or failures of state governance models, you need only look at the prices of U-Haul trucks in various states. If the prices are high, it means people are moving out, if they are low, people are not. By this measure, he reasoned, Texas has one of the most successful and popular state governing models in the nation.

Sure enough, the Census Bureau reports that the population of Texas has grown faster than any other state during the past year.

Chamber of Commerce on ObamaCare passage:

Despite numerous polls showing the majority of Americans are opposed to the Senate health care bill, sixty senators chose to ignore their objections. The business community has been consistent in calling for health care reform, but the bill that was passed by the Senate today is counterproductive, does little to lower the cost of health care, and it is not reform. It implements crippling new taxes, and hurts our ability to create jobs at the worst possible time for the economy.

At every stage of the legislative process the business community has stood ready to work to improve health care legislation, but at almost every stage our concerns have been ignored.

We recognize that the health care debate is not over yet. We are hopeful that a conference between the Senate and House can bring all stakeholders back to the table. Since employers are the ones who will be responsible for putting this reform into practice, their concerns must be addressed. It is not too late for Congress to stop this bill from becoming law and start over with the goal of truly reforming our health care system.

It’s done. ObamaCare roundup:

Right Wing Nut House:

I must confess that the more I read of the health care reform bill that just passed the senate this morning, the more it grows on me.

Unfortunately, that growth is a cancerous tumor, one that will be impossible to excise once this God-awful monstrosity becomes law.

If the Democrats had stuck to their original intent – covering more people, covering those who are chronically ill and denied insurance, and trying to bend the cost curve on Medicare – I would probably have supported it. These things are necessary goals for America and legislation was desperately needed to address these problems.

But the overreach in this bill is incredible. Non-partisan outfits like CMS are saying that premiums will go up drastically, that the bill won’t do anything to reduce the cost of health care, that the quality of care will go down, and that even cuts in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals (if they could be sustained which they haven’t been over the last 9 years) won’t have any effect on the cost curve.

Bruce McQuain:

Or course the bill doesn’t provide insurance for other tens of millions (but it does provide fines or jail for them if they don’t get it) – the supposed original purpose of the legislation. And the NYT doesn’t report that President Obama, on the day that he signs the bill, will break yet another vow about refusing to sign anything that bends the health care cost curve up. In a disgraceful gaming of the system, Democrats used the 10 year window within which the CBO is statutorily required to work (and other machinations) to present a false picture to the American people of the cost of this monstrosity. And when President Obama signs it into law, he will know full well that he’s breaking his word and has set the future of American health care on a steeper path to insolvency.

Bill Jacobson:

* The mainstream media is going to go back into campaign mode, to see that some form of Harry-Nancy-Obama-care, or is it Obama-Nancy-Harry-care, gets passed. The NY Times already is on the case pressing the big lie: “The Senate voted Thursday to reinvent the nation’s health care system, passing a bill to guarantee access to health insurance for tens of millions of Americans and to rein in health costs as proposed by President Obama.”
* The mainstream non-big media types also will join the campaign. Jonathan Chait at The New Republic is on the case: “Why the health care bill is the greatest social achievement of our time.”
* The blogospheric self-appointed liberal wonks are joining the campaign. Ezra Klein is on the case: “It was the first time the body had been in session on Christmas Eve since 1963. That’s fitting, as it’s arguably the most important piece of legislation the body has passed since 1963.”
* The left-wing Democratic noise machines will join in with background support to make sure the media doesn’t stray. Matthew Yglesias, paying homage to his “boss” John Podesta, is on the case: “The health care bill passed!”

Dan Riehl:

First, he compares it to Social Security. That’s said to be trillions of dollars in debt. Then he goes on to call the health care bill the largest deficit-reduction plan in over a decade. Does any honest, reasonably informed person actually believe that? It’s only that if you view it as the rationalization to tax the nation out of a large portion of its private wealth.

I really can’t take it. We have a WH that is perfectly willing to go out and boldly lie repeatedly to the American people. And don’t give me that Bush WMD crap. Even if I conceded he lied, it wouldn’t be close to the scale of the misguided statements this guy is willing to perpetrate. And the press doesn’t really even challenge him on it. This is getting surreal. He either deserves to be called a liar straight out, or a clueless dilettante who really doesn’t understand how dangerous he is.

John Fund:

Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If so, it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory.

Conferences involving members from both houses are messy things. They are usually conducted in public and often televised, and can produce a compromise version of the bill that leaves rank-and-file members tempted to vote against the final version. That could be perilous in the case of health care since it’s likely to pass without a vote to spare in the Senate and the House’s version passed by only five votes…

Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi would love to come up with a way to bash heads in private and skip any public discussion that further reveals just how incoherent and unworkable both the bills are. Luckily, there is a subterfuge readily available that wouldn’t require the House to swallow the Senate’s bill unchanged but also ducks the traditional give-and-take of the conference committee.

Another Black Conservative:

The Dems have boxed themselves in on Health Care Reform. After wreckless spending and exposing their true views on health care, the Dems have damaged their brand. If they don’t take over this vast part of our economy now, it is never going to happen.

Americans have learned what progressive health care reform looks like and the majority of them want no part of it. It will be a very long time, if ever, before the Dems every get total control of the government again and the Democrats will never be able to speak about health care reform without the public remembering these awful bills.

With a well deserved smack down coming in the 2010 midterm elections, the Dems must either take over the health care industry now or watch their 40 year dream die forever. Harry and Nancy realize this. This is why they have been so underhanded in the first place. Even now, Harry and Nancy are working on the “ping-pong” strategy rather than risk everything falling apart when the House and Senate bills are merged.

Some additional contributors will be joining Leg Aid tomorrow. I hope you enjoy their more libertarian perspectives on the hot topics of the day.

Crony Capitalism. The Washington Examiner reports:

“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. “But we don’t find any correlation.”

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia is one of the nation’s most respected economic and regulatory think tanks and has a Nobel prize-winning economist on staff. The econometric analysis was done using data provided by Recovery.gov — the government website devoted to tracking the stimulus data — as well as a host of other government databases.

Additionally, Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans. “We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.

The Mercatus Center analysis also found that Democratic congressional districts received on average almost double the funding of Republican congressional districts. Republican congressional districts received on average $232 million in stimulus funds while Democratic districts received $439 million on average.

Read the whole thing.

A friendly reminder this holiday season (via Instapundit).

Even David Brooks wants to kill the bill.

The Afghans’ dilemma (via Hot Air headlines):

“You must understand our culture,” one said. “It’s insulting for you to die for us. We should be dying to take back our country, not you.“

That was the lead in to his demand that the Americans start sending more money and training their way. “One of your soldiers costs a million dollars a year. One of ours costs $6,000. So spend that money on us, and we get 165 of our soldiers for one of yours.” Mullen told him he had a good point, and carefully wrote it down in his green spiral notebook.

Of course, the elders did add that they wanted their forces to continue fighting alongside U.S. forces, because the Americans have air support. “If we are fighting with you, and we need an air strike, it comes right away,” one elder said. “If we’re on our own . . . “

Not so much, he essentially shrugged.

Truly amazing. I cannot help but admire and wonder at the courage of these Afghan soldiers that must themselves, as a matter of honor, fight back the oppressive elements in their nation.

Just when I thought MTV’s sad attempts at encouraging political participation could not get any more revolting, I see this. Barf.

I think “Rock the Vote” can officially be declared the most repugnant slogan of the decade.

Ed Morrissey:

he young people to whom they’re preaching largely avoid buying health insurance, and for good reason. They don’t need to spend $3600 per year (Minnesota’s average in 2007) to cover a couple of doctor visits every year. They’re better off buying catastrophic health insurance, rather than the mandated comprehensive coverage under ObamaCare, and use HSAs to pay for their health care with tax-free cash. That’s what Keith Olbermann does, after all, and he’s a lot older than the RtV target audience.

Who benefits from this push? The young adults don’t; they’re going to pay a lot more than they receive. Insurance companies will benefit by forcing them into the system, reducing the risk and spreading the costs over a wider base. I don’t consider insurance companies evil, but many of the ObamaCare advocates do — and yet they’re pushing their followers to subsidize slight declines in health insurance premiums for the older generations in America. It’s just like Social Security, only with a worse payoff in the end.

Finally, the irony of this campaign is that young adults would probably remain healthier if they abstained in the first place. Maybe sleeping with cougars and hot Columbian women sounds good, but promiscuity in practice means greater transmission of disease, especially during flu season. Don’t tell Joe Biden, but it’s even more risky than public transportation!

YID with LID:

Rock the Vote says their mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country. It uses music, popular culture and new technologies to engage and incite young people to register and vote in every election.

In 2009 Rock the Vote got into Issues advocacy one of which is Obamacare. Its latest attempt to push the President’s health plan involves, foul language and sexual innuendo to get students to advocate for the plan. It features young actors Zach Gilford, and Eva Amurri to suggest to our youngsters that they not “f**K” anyone who does not support healthcare…

Even more important is the question whether it is responsible for a group such as Rock The Vote, to be promoting teenage sex. Because if they say don’t have sex with people who are against Obamacare, they are also saying its cool to have sex with people who do.

In the face of statism, Americans take a step back. Rasmussen reports:

Sixty-six percent (66%) of U.S. voters prefer a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes over a more active government with more services and higher taxes.

That’s the second highest finding of the year: In August at the height of the congressional town hall controversies over the health care plan, 70% felt that way.

Pat Michaels writes in the WSJ of the real consequences of ClimateGate:

Most see the contents [of the controversial emails] as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true).

But there’s something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a “pollutant.”

The bible I’m referring to, of course, is the refereed scientific literature. It’s our canon, and it’s all we have really had to go on in climate science (until the Internet has so rudely interrupted). When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.

That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.

Betsy Newmark:

By working assiduously to prevent critics from getting published, they’ve been able to claim that they represent scientific consensus. And their results then became the basis for the IPCC report which in turn is the basis for the EPA’s recent ruling on regulating carbon dioxide.

Since Francis Bacon, we’ve come to rely on science as based on empirical research and observable facts. That is why the hard sciences has always seemed so much more dependable than the social sciences.

This scandal has damaged that reputation. Unless we see some self-correction from all the scientific agencies and organizations involved, we will never again have confidence in their research on global warming. They can’t pretend, as Al Gore has tried, that these leaks haven’t irreparably harmed the entire field of paleoclimatology. Right now, at Copenhagen, they’re all whistling past the graveyard and hoping that people won’t notice the massive elephant laying a turd right in the middle of their self-proclaimed scientific consensus.

My NewsBusters post on Andrew Sullivan’s use of “ghostbloggers”–and his hypocrisy in criticizing Palin for employing another to help her write her book–is making a spalsh. As I wrote:

Sullivan wrote in 2007, “the term hypocrisy is bandied about far too easily these days. … it means someone who knowingly violates his own publicly professed principles in private.” Right, like criticizing someone for hiring others to write in her name, then doing the exact same thing. In fairness, this definition may have been penned by a ghostblogger.

One of the ghostbloggers responds.

Althouse dismantles the response:

That hardly cancels out the claim that “24 of the 50 posts currently on the front page were written by me.” So what’s with the bullshit about Markay “pretend[ing]“? At least eat your words and don’t blame others.

RedState’s Streiff tears Mike Mann a new one:

Today Dr. Michael E. Mann, professor of meteorology at Penn State and apparent fraud, takes to the op ed pages of the Washington Post to attempt to defend what might be the most significant scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man from its critics. He does so by attacking the leakers, not answering the allegations, and attacking… wait for it… Sarah Palin.

Full disclosure up front, I’m not a scientist and I don’t pretend to be one on RedState, but what I’m going to do here has nothing to do with science. Rather it is nothing more than defending truth and common decency from a man who has a studied, callous, and reckless disregard for both.

Read the whole thing.

Fantastic ad from the RNC targeting Sen. Jim Webb (via WaPo):

The tried and true flip-flopper attack.

The Senate’s two doctors (Coburn and Barrasso) discuss ObamaCare:

James Delingpole: Coincidences or conspiracy between CRU, nuclear power, and peak oil

Now you gain control of a climate research business, and begin the task of demonizing CO2, you realize that it will take years but that is OK, there are billions of dollars waiting at the end. Slowly over time you manage to get control of the worlds climate data and begin adjusting it, you use what you have been told by the marketing people to present the information needed in as clear and scary manager as is possible. Remember the two biggest motivators are fear and greed, and in this case, because of the number of followers greed will not work. There are simply too many followers to pay them all off.

So there we have it, a campaign of fear, based on non-science emanating from a few leaders that ultimately drive the followers to do something that would just not have been possible after Three Mile Island.

They are marching in the streets of Copenhagen in support of nuclear power. They do not know this of course, but that is what the plan on the table says. Check it out, look at exactly what are the big technologies being pushed at the summit. I will give you a hint, it is not windmills.

While this is nothing conclusive, let’s see what the strategy of AGW supporters is after Copenhagen. If it’s an initiative for nuclear power I will enjoy the chagrin on all the environmentalists that hadn’t realized there existed vested business interests at the conference.

Byron York recounts his readers’ responses to a column on the congressional logistics of health care.

After the column was published, I heard from many readers with their own ideas. The strategist wasn’t telling me the whole story, they said; the Democrats’ motivations go much deeper. So here are some other theories for the party’s headlong rush into what looks like political disaster.

“The Democrats are playing for the long term,” wrote one reader. “They know that, once they’ve planted a new entitlement, it will grow as fast as they can water it with taxpayer dollars.”

“The only way to fully understand the motivation for pursuing this legislation is that it creates dependency,” wrote another. “The unstated, but ever-present, goal of health care reform is to make as many Americans as possible as dependent on the federal government as possible for as much of their lives as possible.” The reader theorized that the bill’s mandates — requirements for everyone to have health coverage — are designed to create what Democrats “have dreamed of for generations: total dependency and a universal entitlement that can never be voted out of existence.”

It’s been done elsewhere, said another reader, who argued that the Democratic plan is designed “to make it so our conservatives will be like the conservatives in England, where the entire political paradigm has lurched leftward to the point where the only difference in the two parties is who will give you more.”

Other readers pointed to pressures inside the Democratic coalition. “Leadership figures are worried about their position inside the caucus, and they need the support of unions and ‘progressive’ organizations to hold caucus majorities,” one wrote. Added another: “The real answer may lie in the fact that both sides of the political fence have beloved factions that vote much more often than the national average. When energized, a near-100 percent turnout of a particular group of, say, 20 percent of the electorate means a much higher effective turnout.” In other words, Democratic leaders are doing it for their noisy — and loyally voting — fringe.

Yet another reader’s theory: “I think they’re insane.”

I usually don’t put too much stock in these quasi-conspiracy theories, but I think some of these readers might be frighteningly accurate, given the push for the individual mandate.

DeMint slams on the brakes. The Hill reports:

Sen. Jim DeMint said Thursday he is prepared to use every procedural tool to delay a vote on the Democratic healthcare legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning to schedule votes around the clock over the next week to meet a deadline of passing the bill by Christmas. Without the cooperation of Republicans, the marathon schedule would end with a vote on Christmas Eve.

Reid hopes that Republicans will waive some of the procedural formalities so senators are not forced to spend the evening before Christmas milling about the Senate floor.

But DeMint (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Republican Steering Committee and a leader of the conservative opposition, told The Hill he will not yield back any time.

DeMint also said he would force the Senate to return to Washington after Christmas to vote on a $290 billion increase to the federal debt limit. Treasury officials told lawmakers that they need an increase of borrowing authority to keep the government solvent beyond Dec. 31.

Allahpundit:

Because Republicans like McConnell and DeMint are promising to delay by every possible means (even Olympia Snowe wants to slow down, believe it or not), the only way to get the bill to the floor by Christmas Eve is to schedule votes at the first possible moment under Senate rules — which means they could be voting on amendments at 3 a.m. this week. That’s how desperate the most transparent administration ever is to get this done before the next round of polls freaks out even more centrists.

Bill Kristol:

There’s a really big snowstorm coming to D.C.tonight. It would be unsafe to ask all the staffers and Hill employees who’d be needed at the Capitol if Congress stays open all hours this weekend, as Harry Reid intends, to drive to and from work–especially since many will have to do so at night, and they won’t be well-rested. So from the point of view of public safety and personal well-being, Ben Nelson can do everyone a favor, announce today he won’t vote for cloture, and let everyone stay home this weekend.

Furthermore, Harry Reid is maniacally insisting on a Christmas Eve vote on a bill whose final text no one has seen yet. So from a good government point of view, Nelson can say that he feels he has to be against cloture.

And of course there’s no need to vote in December rather than January or February–it’s just that Reid fears the already unpopular bill can’t stand up to more public examination and debate. So from the point of view of respecting democracy and the American people, Nelson can insist that he needs time–once we have Reid’s text–to go back to Nebraska and have some town meetings to let his constituents’ voices be heard.

Avatar roundup: more “hate the white man” propaganda from America’s bastion of hypocritical self-loathing.

Debbie Schlussel:

Despite the out-of-control hype over “Avatar,” the movie is silly, long, boring, and heavy-handed. And did I mention, sleep-inducing? I’ve heard other movie critics and reports say that the 3D animation in this movie is “the most visually stimulating movie I’ve ever seen,” “the best 3D ever,” “Oscar material,” “will change cinema forever,” “a Hollywood colossus,” and even that it “caused motion sickness.”

Don’t believe the hype. This bloated, highly overrated movie is none of these . . . with the exception of the “Oscar material” claims, since we know that the contemporary Academy Awards famously award far-left tripe like this. Did James Cameron really spend years of his life on this rotten stew?

Clocking in at nearly three hours, “Avatar” is an incredible waste of time. It’s essentially a remake of “Dances With Wolves” and every other movie where we evil Americans terrorize the indigenous natives, kill them, take their land, and are just all around imperialistically wicked and inhumane. Oh, and we’re destroying the environment, clearing precious giant trees and natural landscapes and killing rare animals and their habitats, in order to invade and harvest valuable substances under the ground. Sound familiar? Yup, just like a million diatribes from Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and every other far-left outlet about how we invaded Iraq for oil.

Yes, “Avatar” is cinema for the hate America crowd.

NY Press:

Only children—including adult-children—will see Avatar as simply an adventure film; their own love of technology has co-opted their ability to comprehend narrative detail. Cameron offers sci-fi dazzle, yet bungles the good part: the meaning. His undeniably pretty Pandora—a phosphorescent Maxfield Parrish paradise with bird-like lizards, moving plant life and floating mountains—distracts from the inherent contradiction of a reported $300-$500 million Hollywood enterprise that casually berates America’s industrial complex.

Cameron’s superficial B-movie tropes pretend philosophical significance. His story’s rampant imperialism and manifest destiny (Giovanni Ribisi plays the heartless industrialist) recalls Vietnam-era revisionist westerns like Soldier Blue, but it’s essentially a sentimental cartoon with a pacifist, naturalist message. Avatar condemns mankind’s plundering and ruin of a metaphorical planet’s ecology and the aboriginals’ way of life. Cameron fashionably denounces the same economic and military system that make his technological extravaganza possible. It’s like condemning NASA—yet joyriding on the Mars Exploration Rover.

James Cameron:

At whatever price tag, it’s a PSA for global warming — obviously Republican. (laughs) There is a theme … and I think it’s a theme that’s a legitimate one, it’s one that I care very passionately about, and by the way, I think if we want to survive as a species we better all start caring about it.

No need for privacy if it stops piracy (h/t Techdirt).ATR reports:

Last week, the Songwriters Guild of America testified before the New York City Council, expressing their staunch opposition for “Net Neutrality”, as proposed by the FCC. Under the proposed rules, “net neutrality would” create a legal safe harbor for pirates to continue to loot intellectual property, primarily by discouraging network operators from taking actions to prevent such misconduct.

WalpinGate update (via Washington Times):

In the past 10 days, two major developments have occurred. First, Obama administration attorneys continued their efforts to deny Mr. Walpin his day in court. On Dec. 7, they filed reply briefs rearguing their demand that the case be dismissed without even a hearing. Second, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, have openly questioned the honesty of CNCS Chairman Alan D. Solomont. Most explosively of all, dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play “a central role in the national service agenda.”

R.S. McCain:

The inference of a cover-up is obvious, the evidence of an actual crime is less so. However, remember that the FBI has also been asking questions in the Walpin case. If anybody questioned in this case lies to the FBI, that’s a crime. If anybody destroys evidence relevant to a federal investigation, that’s another crime. The question is whether Obama administrations will begin snitching on one another, rather than to risk prison sentences.

I’ve said all along that this story — not just Walpin/AmeriCorp but the other inspector general stories, including AmTrak and SIGTARP — is not going to go away. Whether it results in a takedown of any major administration figure, there’s enough here to keep making news for months to come.

Hollywood doesn’t even need to spend its own money to have you prosecuted THR reports:

Congress agreed to provide $30 million in new funding for the battle against piracy as authorities on Monday also reported success with a recent year-end piracy crackdown code-named Operation Holiday Hoax.

The new funds target personnel and programs authorized by last year’s Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act.

The funds include $20 million for new state and local economic, high technology and Internet crime prevention grants; $8 million for new FBI agents targeting IP crimes; and $2 million for new Department of Justice IP prosecutions.

Nelson’s still not playing ball. Politico reports:

In an interview Thursday with a Nebraska radio station, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said new compromise language on abortion funding is unacceptable.

“As it is right now, without further modifications, it isn’t sufficient,” Nelson told KLIN radio in Lincoln, NE.

This could be a significant blow to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to line up 60 votes in the coming days for the health care bill. Nelson has said he would filibuster the bill unless the abortion language mirrored what was included in the House bill.

Ed Morrissey:

How bad will this get? Barack Obama hasn’t even addressed the issue of abortion with Nelson directly. That’s a pretty interesting picture of disinterest coming from the Oval Office on what is supposed to be Obama’s highest priority on his domestic agenda.

Harry Reid will have to go back to the drawing board on abortion funding, but that may not be possible. His progressive wing is already in near revolt over having to vote for a bill with no government-run plan in it. They wanted a precursor to a single-payer system; in fact, that was the entire point of the health-care reform push. Now they’re going to be asked to kill funding for abortion as well, having worked for months to build a path around the Hyde Amendment. There is no way that will get through to cloture, and no way it will pass in the House even if it did.

Sen. Lincoln needs to study up on her Con Law. CNS News reports:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) told CNSNews.com that Congress has the authority to force individual Americans to buy health insurance because the U.S. Constitution “charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.”

The words “health” and “well-being” do not appear anywhere in the Constitution.

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that in the entire history of the United States the federal government has never mandated that Americans buy any good or service. Both the House and Senate health care bills, however, include provisions that require all legal residents of the U.S. to purchase health insurance, a provision whose constitutionality has been qiuestioned by, among others, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It’s a bad sign when the representatives of the superior chamber don’t know the document they’re pledged to uphold.

All you need to know about Copenhagen (via the Australian):

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ – “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

ABC News:

Bolivian President Evo Morales, the Andean nation’s first indigenous leader, said that the capitalist system itself bore blame for climate change.

“Climate change isn’t a problem of technology or financing,” he said at a press conference, referring to key demands of developing nations from leaders of wealthy states.

“It’s an issue of way of life and a result of the capitalist system and if we don’t understand that then we’re never going to resolve these problems,” he said.

The anti-capitalist theme was picked up on by Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s veteran President, who is the target of Western sanctions over alleged human rights abuses.

“When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

When will we stop letting murdering socialist dictators lecture us on our proper role in the world?

Wonderful. Iraqi insurgents are hacking into the video feeds of US military drones.

WSJ reports:

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

Max Boot:

The U.S. has certainly sprinted to a lead in utilizing Information Age technology for military (as well as civil) purposes. But there is no room for complacency. Every new weapons system or surveillance platform we introduce only heightens our reliance on digital networks that are in turn very vulnerable to disruption. Wars of the future will have an important cyber aspect and it will be a major challenge for the Industrial Age bureaucracy known as the Department of Defense to adjust. The latest news about the hacking of the Predator feeds shows just how urgent is our need to stay ahead of our foes on these virtual battlefields.

The ClimateGate plot thickens. Reports the UK Telegraph, “What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.”

John Hinderaker:

The “data” relied on by global warming alarmists are shot through with this kind of cherry-picking. Russian records are of course very important simply because of the size of Russia’s land mass. Just last year, Russian weather data figured in another scandal. NASA’s global warming unit, headed by alarmist James Hansen, hid the current decline in global temperatures by the simple expedient of recycling Russian temperatures from a year earlier.

Let’s hope Secretary Clinton’s proposal goes nowhere.

Confederate Yankee:

In short, the Russians are claiming that the Hadley CRU cherry-picked and manipulated data, essentially faking the appearance of temperature change across Russian territory.

This seems entirely consistent with previous revelations discovered when the East Anglia CRU hack triggered Climategate by showing behind the scenes attempts by climatologists and their computer programmers to manipulate data and then cover up both their manipulations and real but conflicting data.

If the Russia’s can prove their claims, then this will be another compelling argument that the climatological community is part of the largest scientific fraud in human history. It would also mean that these same untrustworthy scientists have destroyed the credibility of the scientific community, and no doubt severely undercut what we know or think we know about climate change.

Bruce McQuain:

In anyone’s world, that’s “fudging the numbers”. And this is a different crew than that at the University of East Anglia’s CRU. In fact, as you recall, the UK’s Met announced quite recently that in light of the CRU emails, it was going to do a 3 year study of all the temperature data from the last 160 years. You have to wonder if, in fact, they’d already internally uncovered this charge by the Russians (or knew it was coming) when they made that announcement.

To put this in perspective, Climategate just got a whole lot bigger. And again, we’re talking about fundamental data here – the basis for all of the AGW claims can be found in the data of these two institutions.

Bill Briggs:

What makes this delicious is that the stations Hadley chose had large chunks of missing data, and the stations ignored had uninterrupted records. This makes sense: it’s easier to homogenize data that isn’t there. The explanations to come will no doubt provide for some light comedy.

Vox Popoli:

I don’t read Russian, but as far as I can tell, in order to calculate global land temperatures the CRU used only 121 of 476 Russian stations, 73 of which were among the 78 stations that had been moved, presumably because of proximity to heat-producing urban expansion. This would explain why the purported increase in temperatures that could not be observed in the United States, Asia, or the rest of Europe was appearing in Siberia, which accounts for about 12.5 percent of the global land mass. The upshot is that this would eliminate 31.1 percent of the reported global warming. So there is not only no statistically significant global warming from the long-term perspective. There has been a lot less of it in the short term than was previously claimed.

As for the reported consensus, it is now obvious that scientific consensus should be given no more credence than real estate consensus, economic consensus, or stockbroker consensus. Intriguingly, it is now clear that the climate scammers have at least known that the Russian data possibly incomplete for five years. Phil Jones, the suspended director of the CRU, incriminated himself in an email to to Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame in March 2004:

“Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.”

Ah yes, and here we also see the way in which peer review is so conducive to good science.

Atlas Shrugs:

It was proven to be junk science long ago. But it is not about the weather. It’s about enslaving you and your children and making made politicos like Al Gorge and the international patronage clients and business rich, rich, rich.

But with the marxist in the White House, it’s about redistributing your money to third world nations. Redistribution of the wealth on a global scale. The anointed one is on his way to Dopenhagen right now.

YID with LID:

While the Moonbats were playing a denial Climategate got much, much bigger. The Russians just dropped this huge bombshell just as the world’s big-shots are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing the developed world back into the stone-age. What the Russians found out is that Dr, Jones and the folks at CPU weren’t using all the data from Siberia. In fact they threw out all of the Russian Data except for the 25% that helped them prove their case.Read this from the RIA Novisti Newswire.

The European Foundation’s 100 reasons why climate change is natural (I’m not going to list them all here. Go read them. They’re powerful in their simplicity).

Jim McConalogue of the EF (via YID with LID):

“This demonstrates how tenuous, improper and indeed false the scientific and political claims are for man-made global warming, from claims that climate change can be controlled by human activity to the proposition that CO2 emissions represent a severe threat to our way of life, when in fact there is little evidence to support any of these claims,” said McConalogue

He warns the Copenhagen climate summit was likely to lead to “nonsensical targets” to reduce emissions, which would result in a “burdensome regulatory agenda”, After Copenhagen, voters “will see what travesty has been done in their name, as foolish politicians and indifferent industry associations have engulfed their countries in emissions legislation”.

Wow. DNC Chairman Howard Dean: Kill the Senate bill!

In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me.

Dean said the removal of the Medicare buy-in made the bill not worth supporting, and urged Dem leaders to start over with the process of reconciliation in the interview, which is set to air at 5:50 PM today on Vermont Public Radio, political reporter Bob Kinzel confirms to me.

The gauntlet from Dean — whose voice on health care is well respsected among liberals — will energize those on the left who are mobilizing against the bill, and make it tougher for liberals to embrace the emerging proposal. In an excerpt Kinzel gave me, Dean says:

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

Dan Perrin: “The question is whether Senator Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Burris (D-IL) or any other Senator agree, and I suspect the answer to that is a big YES.”

Matthew Continetti:

Nevertheless, it’s pretty hard to see liberal outrage translating into liberal Democratic votes against a health care bill. As Byron York points out, Democrats have talked themselves into a corner. Passing health care legislation has become an end in itself. Most likely Democrats will listen to their inner Paul Krugman, who “grudgingly” agrees with the idea that Congress “should just pass the thing and try to fix it later.”

Of course, there’s always Roland Burris. The unelected, unaccountable liberal senator from Illinois could go rogue and scuttle the bill. And he holds Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. Wouldn’t that be ironic.

Allahpundit:

I’m skeptical that there are any Senate liberals willing to be the 41st vote against cloture — Burris made some noise this morning about demanding a public option, although even his language was qualified — but there’s a huge bloc of House progressives that will take this under careful advisement. Remember, Pelosi’s bill only passed by five votes; the more momentum there is on the left for the idea that Reid’s bill is a grand sellout, the more precarious this gets. No wonder Democratic pundits were rushing out pieces this morning urging liberals to take the deal.

As for Dean-o’s point about reconciliation, after all the damage this process has done to Democrats among independents, the left’s big vote-winning plan now is to have Reid … cram the public option down America’s throats using an arcane parliamentary procedure? With Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, Bayh, Pryor, and possibly one or two other Blue Dogs screaming “no way”? We may have actually reached the point where true-believin’ progressive ObamaCare supporters are so desperate to have their dream bill that they’re willing to trade the House majority for it. Which is well and good, but someone had better let Pelosi know pronto.

Greg Sargent, who reported Howard Dean’s statement, writes:

…it breaks down as a disagreement between operatives and wonks.

The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements.

In the former camp are bloggers like Markos Moulitsas, former House candidate Darcy Burner, and the Firedoglake crew. They mostly deride the bill as a giveaway to the insurance companies that does nothing for consumers…

In the latter camp are wunder-wonk types like Ezra Klein, Jonathan Cohn, and Nate Silver. They all make expansive arguments that the current legislation contains real reform and indeed represents a fairly immense progressive achievement…

It’s interesting that the battle is breaking down along operative-versus-wonk lines. At risk of overgeneralizing, operatives tend to see such fights as political wars that are either are or aren’t worth fighting and dying in. Wonks tend to see them as chapters in a longer tale of ever-evolving social policy. That might go some ways towards explaining the divide, even if the substantive differences between the two camps are real and serious.

Time for a purity test.

Senate Dems are threatening Bill Nelson with the closure of an Air Force base in his district to get him to vote for the federal health care takeover with abortion funding included. The Weekly Standard reports:

While the Democrats appease Senator Lieberman, they still have to worry about other recalcitrant Democrats including Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. Though Lieberman has been out front in the fight against the public option and the Medicare buy-in, Nelson was critical of both. Now that those provisions appear to have been stripped from the bill, Lieberman may get on board, but Nelson’s demand that taxpayer money not be used to fund abortion has still not been met. According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line.

Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.” They are “threatening to close a base vital to national security for what?” asked the Senate staffer.

Indeed, Offutt is the headquarters for US Strategic Command, the successor to Strategic Air Command, and not by accident. STRATCOM was located in the middle of the country for strategic reasons. Its closure would be a massive blow to the economy of the state of Nebraska, but it would also be another example of this administration playing politics with our national security.

Ed Morrissey:

The Obama administration has little left to use for leverage. Why not national security? After all, if we’re going to bring terrorists into Illinois, what does it matter if we put the US Strategic Command on wheels for a few years?

One reason for the extortion attempt is that the latest version still hasn’t won any converts among the GOP. Susan Collins (R-ME), once considered a likely supporter of ObamaCare, announced today that the elimination of the public option and the Medicare buy-in isn’t enough to rescue the bill…

Collins’ colleague from Maine, Olympia Snowe, is not likely to contradict her, and no other Republicans will cast a vote for this monstrosity. Without the language prohibiting abortion funding, Nelson’s not likely to go for it, either, which leaves Reid at 59 votes — maybe. He may face some rebellion from the progressive side of his caucus, several of whom pledged not to vote for a bill without any kind of public option. Getting Lieberman on board may wind up creating just another problem for Reid … unless the White House intends on threatening more base closures and disruption for national security.