Party like it's . . .

1962!



Sorry. That was really awful.

*Update: Antidote to the Twizzle: Mountain Greenery. Hulu has it. Fast forward to 17:50. (Actually, Hulu has all 159 episodes of Dick Van Dyke. Go nuts!)

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Change: Making deals with terrorists

Let's face it. Barack Obama is fundamentally incapable of leading or defending our country. From Andy McCarthy:

Today, New Year's Eve, while everyone's attention is understandably on family and friends, we learn (thanks to the ever alert Bill Roggio, reporting on the Standard's blog) that the administration has now released Qais Qazali, Laith's brother, who is the head of the Iran-backed terror network, in addition to a hundred other terrorists. In violation of the long-standing, commonsense policy against capitulating to kidnappers and terrorists because it just encourages more hostage-taking and murder, the terrorists were released in exchange for a British hostage [Peter Moore] and the remains of his three contract guards (whom the terrorists had murdered).

So, as the mullahs, America's incorrigible enemies, struggle to hang on, we're giving them accommodations and legitimacy. And the messages we send? Terrorize us and we'll negotiate with you. Kill American troops or kidnap civilians and win valuable concessions — including the release of an army of jihadists, and its leaders, who can now go back to targeting American troops. [emphasis added]

Jennifer Rubin:

One struggles to understand this mindset. While the Obami prepare to rearrange the checkers on the TSA board and perhaps toss a player or two overboard, we get the sinking sensation that there is some bizarre set of priorities and some very cock-eyed worldview in operation here. Who are we assisting, and how does any of this make us safer?

We struggle to understand the Obama administration because we give them too much credit. Obama has never lived in the real world. His mindset of moral equivalence and Western culpability for all the ills of the world doesn't allow him to acknowledge evil or embrace the basic tenets of self-defense or a just war. As Ms. Rubin wrote back in July:

President Obama, like college student Obama, still fails to grasp the moral and political dimensions of the struggle we are involved in, still lacks any appreciation for the nature of totalitarian despots and of the motives compelling them to seek nuclear weapons. He is still fixated on the notion that weakness can resolve international threats. Unfortunately, the consequences for student Obama were not potentially fatal to his country. The reality is different today.

And the chickens are coming home to roost.

We know we're in trouble when even Maureen Dowd gets it right:

I thought our guard might be down because of the holiday; now I realize our guard is down every day. [. . .]

In his detached way, Spock was letting us know that our besieged starship was not speeding into a safer new future, and that we still have to be scared.

Heck of a job, Barry.

And that was before this possibly illegal swap was made.
More from Hot Air.

Happy New Year!


Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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Rush 'resting comfortably'

According to RushLimbaugh.com:

Rush was admitted to a Honolulu hospital today [Wednesday] and is resting comfortably after suffering chest pains. Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes. He will keep you updated via RushLimbaugh.com and on Thursday's radio program.

Please, take good care of yourself, you belong to us.

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Airline safety suggestions for Obama

Tom Maguire has a couple of good ideas:

Well, rather than beat our collective heads against the wall, let's acknowledge the obvious - we have a President who is much more interested in reforming America than he is in protecting it. So let's work with that! Since Obama only wants to focus on health care reform, here is my suggestion for enhancing the health of all Americans - let's have a government plan to prevent airplanes from getting blown up over our cities. Maybe we could call it the "public safety" option. Just a thought. [. . .]

Right, then, here is my second suggestion for health care reform - help prevent Americans from getting blown up by allowing our military and intelligence services to question enemy non-combatants without awarding them the legal protections available to American citizens. These terrorists are arguably not even entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, but whatever - send this guy to Gitmo II and let the military interrogators talk to him in compliance with the Army Field Manual. Or, go Cheney on him. But not interrogating him at all until his lawyer cuts a deal is daft.

Maybe the House can amend the Senate health care bill to incorporate these ideas.

National security, a.k.a., not blowing up, trumps healthcare reform by a mile. Americans can tell the difference between a real crisis and a political power grab disguised as one.

While we're brainstorming on how to stay alive, here's another idea: forget subjecting harmless travelers to embarrassing body scans and invasive cavity searches (spare us, O Lord). Instead, El Presidente can issue this edict:

Stolen from radio host Chris Plante.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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Various and sundry

Nice Deb is experiencing writer's block (as am I). Nevertheless, she made me laugh out loud with this item:

I didn’t want to make a huge deal out of it… I’ve noticed those lines on the side of Obama’s head, before…and didn’t think much of it – chalked it up to a bad haircut, but now that they mention it, it does looks like scar tissue, and the Freepers are asking if Obama’s had brain surgery

By all means, click over there and read the comments. Samples: "Brain surgery implies a brain" and "That is the scar from having all those sixes removed."

~~~

Jennifer Rubin on MSNBC's plan to earn some news-cred:

“MSNBC will pair Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie for one hour at 9 a.m. in a newsy, nonpartisan look at the day’s upcoming events.” In MSNBC parlance, “nonpartisan” means no “Bush=Hilter” comments.

~~~

Pat Austin wants to attend a Glenn Miller Orchestra performance in Shreveport. (Painful heads-up for Pat: Glenn Miller is dead.) Read RS McCain's helpful advice to Pat in the comments. (H/T: Snaggletoothie) *Update: RSM has moved to a shiny new place. That dreary gray background is gone.

~~~

They're making predictions at NRO. One that rings true for me from John Derbyshire:

The Presidency: Michelle Obama will slip by her minders and say something outrageous. The MSM will not report it. Persons who refer to it will be denounced as racists.

~~~

Maureen Dowd doesn't feel safer:

I was walking through a deserted downtown on Christmas Eve with a friend, past the lonely, gray Treasury Building, past the snowy White House with no president inside.

“I hope the terrorists don’t think this is a good time to attack,” I said, looking protectively at the White House, which always looks smaller and more vulnerable and beautiful than you expect, no matter how often you see it up close.

I thought our guard might be down because of the holiday; now I realize our guard is down every day.

Gulp. Obama's phoned-in reassurances failed to reassure:

But in a mystifying moment that was not technically or emotionally reassuring, there was no live video and it looked as though the Obama operation was flying by the seat of its pants.

Not so mystifying: TV cameras would have forced him to put on a shirt. Recall his appearance on Monday, for which he made the concession of donning a jacket but skipped the shave and the tie.

In his detached way, Spock was letting us know that our besieged starship was not speeding into a safer new future, and that we still have to be scared.

Heck of a job, Barry.

What does it mean when you've lost Maureen Dowd? Let the picture tell the story:

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Oremus: Double murder in Texas

Our blogging friend over at Burning Toast has requested your prayers in relation to a terrible domestic crime in Texas:

With great sadness and a heavy heart I share this unfortunate story:

I spent the Christmas holidays in Texas with Beatrice and her family. In the early hours of Sunday morning we received a phone call from her best friend that there had been a family tragedy. In fact, it was beyond tragedy. Beatrice's friend, who I shall call Emily, called to inform us that her mother-in-law, Betty Jo Frank, and Betty Jo's daughter, Keitha Frank Turner, had been viciously murdered that evening by Keitha's husband, Albert Turner.

BT tells me that the killer hasn't been apprehended. Keitha was a mother of four. Please pray for the children in particular, if you are so inclined. Click on the link above for more of the awful details.

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Chesler on terrorism and the absent father

Today's Washington Post prominently features a story on the background of Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Among the online musings of farouk1986 is this from 2005, when the future jihadist was 19 years old:

"No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems."

"Other problems" indeed. I read that this morning and wanted to comment on it. But I have no insight whatever into the workings of the mind of someone who would weaponize himself and kill 300 innocent strangers. So I was pleased to stumble upon Phyllis Chesler's illuminating piece, The Lonely, Murderous Sons of Allah: A Psycho-analytic View. Excerpts:

One is the 17th son; the other is the 16th son. Neither are the sons of a first wife. One is an engineer; the other was an engineering student. Both have ancestral roots in Yemen. Both are educated and come from wealthy families.

I am talking about Osama bin Laden–the 17th son among 57 children whose father is Yemeni–and the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab–the 16th and youngest son, whose mother is Yemeni. Both men were born “shamed,” disadvantaged, because their mothers were not “first,” or high-status wives.

Both men are lonely sons of Allah, yearning for paternal attention, even affection, in a polygamous culture in which fathers have too many children and little incentive to pay close attention to any one of them. This is devastating, especially to sons, because the culture overly values fathers and men, and grossly undervalues mothers and women. Thus, the attention a son may receive from his mother (if she is not sent away, as Bin Laden’s mother was) does not make up for the missing and longed-for father.

I have often thought that the way many Arab Muslim brothers brutally order their sisters around not only reflects how their fathers treat everyone but is also a measure of their frustration about not being able to bond with their absent, lordly fathers. Thus, for a number of reasons, prison-style sexuality as well as homosexuality and homosexual pederasty is as rampant as it is forbidden in Arab and Muslim culture.

Arab and Muslim sons desperately want their fathers. But their fathers are busy marrying other, younger wives, having other, newer children, and founding financial empires. They want their fathers to redeem them from the shameful fate of living in a world of mainly women–which they do when they are very young; and of course, they want their fathers for reasons of identity and inheritance.

In America Alone Mark Steyn points out that one of the positive things we can do to stop the Islamification of the West is to advocate for the rights of Islamic women. Ms. Chesler concurs:

If Arab Muslims truly want to change the culture in which terrorism flourishes and which includes the master handlers and manipulators (Nancy Kobrin and I call them “serial killers by proxy”), the sexually repressed and permanently “shamed” young men, the permanently endangered women, and the homicide-and-hate preachers—that culture will have to undergo a revolution as far as women are concerned.

Think about what that revolution might look like. Polygamy; forced, arranged child marriage; purdah; forced veiling; female illiteracy; female genital mutilation; female sexual slavery; gender segregation; sexual repression/obsession; in short, everything that characterizes Islamic gender apartheid would have to go.

Read the whole thing.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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Vacation interrupted: Obama's response to failed attack

From Jennifer Rubin:

Meanwhile, three days after the Christmas Day bombing was thwarted by a combination of luck and alert passengers, the Saudi arm of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. And Obama? Oh, yes, he, as the New York Times indelicately put it, “emerged from seclusion“ to tell us he’s being briefed, everyone should be “vigilant but confident” (Who comes up with this stuff?) and that he really gets it that there are terrorists in a bunch of places who want to kill us. Sounding oddly like OJ Simpson, he vowed, “We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.” (Yes, it’s apparently just a giant manhunt for the culprits, in the parlance of the criminal-justice perspective to which the administration clings so dearly.) He took no questions. After all, someone might ask a sticky one, such as “Why Janet Napolitano is still working for you?” or “Why did you think it advisable to release Guantanamo detainees to Yemen?”

Even the Times reporter could not conceal his disdain for the president’s shabby handing of the terror attack:

Pictures of passengers enduring tougher security screening at the airport were juxtaposed against images of the president soaking in the sun and surf of this tropical getaway. Mr. Obama, who put on a suit though no tie for his statement Monday, has ordered a review of the two major planks of the aviation security system — watch lists and detection equipment at air — port checkpoints. Some members of Congress urgently questioned why, more than eight years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, security measures could not keep makeshift bombs off airliners.

Video of Obama's tieless response here. The missing tie is no accident; I can't escape the feeling that he wanted to make sure we didn't forget that he interrupted his vacation for this.

Michelle Malkin calls the statement "bloodless." Jimmie Bise calls it an "apathetic pile of lukewarm nothingness." Read the rest.

Karl Rove speaks plainly on the Obama response: "pathetic." Video of the interview here. (h/t Hot Air) While you're there watch the five-minute interview with Ralph Peters.

Related from NR:
Why can't I just eat my pineapple?
Looking for the real killer?
Allegedly?

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Responses to terrorism: Denial, incompetence, dishonesty

Jennifer Rubin, quoting from the must-read testimony of Roey Rosenblith, a passenger on NWA 253, nails it as usual:

After the flight he learned the details of the plot, that the bomber had real explosives and was associated with al-Qaeda. He tells us that “a harsh and frightening reality suddenly set in as my suspicions were confirmed. I and everyone on that flight had come very close to being nothing but pieces of charred bone and fragments of flesh, identifiable only by DNA testing and dental records.”

When the Obama administration flacks tell us this was only an “attempt” or that it was “foiled,” they should tell that to the passengers on that flight and to their loved ones. The Obama team is now seemingly in the business of defining terrorism downward. We are supposed to celebrate and think that the “system worked” because 300 poor souls were traumatized rather than incinerated on Christmas Day. [. . .]

The desire to not believe there are jihadist fanatics determined to kill us — organized in multiple international venues, not amenable to reason or persuasion, and only stoppable if captured or killed — is so intense that it still ensnares elite sophisticates and those who are charged with keeping us safe. Perhaps the president would do well to get off the golf course and explain that he finally gets it and plans to begin a top-to-bottom review of his approach to domestic terror attacks (not merely our “aviation protocols”).

Never fear: he's on the case, or at least calibrating his response and balancing something or other:

His aides noted another important balance Obama is trying to strike: between work and play, his job as president and his family, his public profile and a personal retreat that has been almost completely private for four full days.

I guess it's more about his "personal journey" than it is about leading our country.

This just in: Napolitano's "the system worked" was "taken out of context." What she really meant was The system failed miserably. OMG.

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The system worked?!?

So says our profoundly unqualified head of Homeland Security, Janet "Bozo" Napolitano.

Michelle Malkin:

If the “system” had “worked,” Abdulmutallab would have been barred from the U.S. like he had been barred from Britain.

The “system,” like Napolitano, was an epic fail.

And as predicted, Napolitano also played the “lone nut” card — dismissing the Christmas Day jihadist as a single operator not part of “anything larger” despite his own testimony to the contrary.

She’s Obama’s biggest joker. And there’s no Blame-Bush loophole
to weasel through anymore.

Jonah Goldberg thinks she ought to be fired. But she insists that everything went "according to clockwork." We can forgive the botched cliché but not her confusion about the meaning of "homeland security."

RS McCain reminds us of Napolitano's real accomplishment:

Yes, but you've got to give Janet Napolitano credit for preventing terrorist attacks by those right-wing extremists, not to mention her perfect record against the Olga Swenson menace. Just imagine what carnage might have been wrought by elderly Lutheran ladies, if not for the vigilance of DHS!

This just in: a second "lone" Nigerian has turned up:

DETROIT - A passenger onboard the same Northwest Airlines flight that was attacked on Christmas Day was taken into custody in Detroit on Sunday after becoming verbally disruptive upon landing, officials said.

A law enforcement official said the man was Nigerian and had locked himself in the airliner's bathroom. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Officials told NBC News the disruptive passenger, who refused to come out of the bathroom for more than an hour, may have had "stomach problems" that prevented him from leaving.

Gird your loins, people. DHS is in denial and our Commander in Chief is golfing. You are the system.



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Steyn: 'The entire bill is a public option'

Mark Steyn predicts:

America’s belated embrace of government health care is going to be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one’s philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you’re a cabinet minister or a bigtime hockey player, you’ll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does. But, even before it’s up-and-running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs, and arbitrary shakedowns.

Bottom line:

My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option — because that’s where it leads, remorselessly. The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill — because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly.

As I’ve been saying for over a year now, “health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture. The unlovely Democrats on public display in the week before Christmas may seem like just a bunch of jelly-spined opportunists, grubby wardheelers and rapacious kleptocrats, but the smarter ones are showing great strategic clarity. Alas for the rest of us, Euro-style government on a Harry Reid/Chris Dodd/Ben Nelson scale will lead to ruin.

Read the rest. It's all bad.

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Underpants bomber is arraigned

His arraignment took place in a conference room at the U. of Michigan Hospital:

Mr. Abdulmutallab smiled briefly but said little in the arraignment. One of his burns was visible. His left hand was cuffed to a wheelchair, and he had bandages on his left thumb. His right hand was bandaged, as was his right thumb and right index finger. He was slender in frame, with tight cropped curls and a baby face unharmed by the explosives.

According to two pool reporters, he was asked how he was feeling and he responded: “I’m doing better.” He added that he felt “better than yesterday.” [. . .]

Investigators are now examining how Mr. Abdulmutallab, at age 23, apparently rebelled against this privileged upbringing to pursue an extremist goal. It was while still in high school that Mr. Abdulmutallab began preaching to fellow students about Islam, according to a report in ThisDay, a Nigerian newspaper.

Mark Steyn:

So once again we see the foolishness of complaceniks who drone the fatuous cliches about how "in this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs". The men eager to self-detonate on infidel airliners are not goatherds from the caves of Waziristan but educated middle-class Muslims who have had the most exposure to the western world and could be pulling down six-figure salaries almost anywhere on the planet. And don't look to "assimilation" to work its magic, either. We're witnessing a process of generational de-assimilation: In this family, yet again, the dad is an entirely assimilated member of the transnational elite. His son wants a global caliphate run on Wahhabist lines.

RTR.

The hero:

[Jasper] Schuringa dove over four passengers to reach Abdul Mutallab’s seat. The suspect had a blanket on his lap. "It was smoking and there were flames coming from beneath his legs."

"I searched on his body parts and he had his pants open. He had something strapped to his legs."

The unassuming hero ripped the flaming, molten object — which resembled a small, white shampoo bottle — off Abdul Mutallab’s left leg, near his crotch. He said he put out the fire with his bare hands.

Schuringa yelled for water, and members of the flight crew soon appeared with fire extinguishers. Then, he said, he hauled the suspect out of the seat.

"I took him in a choke to the first class and all the people were like, ‘What’s going on?!"

"I don’t feel like a hero," Schuringa told the Post as he recuperated with pals. "It was something that came completely natural ... It was something where I had to do something or it was too late."

How about a medal for this man?

On those who minimize the threat, see William Jacobson.
On the security implications of explosive underwear, Ed Morrissey.

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Tyranny is more efficient

Obama is one with Thomas Friedman: tyranny is so awesome when a guy wants to get something done. Our president suggests that an excess of liberty may not work in today's world:

"If this pattern continues, you're going to see an inability on the part of America to deal with big problems in a very competitive world, and other countries are going to start running circles around us," Obama warned.

Charles Hurt, NY Post, writes:

What he is saying is that other governments around the world -- those tyrannical states that do not share our respect for the minority -- are better forms of government, better equipped to compete in this modern world.

This is a frightening new side of Barack Obama.

Frightening, yes. New, not at all. Stanley Kurtz was all over Obama's Alinskyist thuggery and distaste for dissent before the election. Back in April, we found this remark ever so revealing: when asked what he found "humbling" in his first hundred days as POTUS, Obama answered:

Humbled by the — humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life, and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can’t just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line.

He still has not accepted this reality. From Jennifer Rubin:

Hurt writes: “His casting aspersions on the very genius of the American government because he can’t get his way is cause for alarm.” But it is nothing new. The Obami have little patience for opposition or dissent, whether it comes from town-hall attendees, Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, or the U.S. Senate. They have mastered the art of the Friday-afternoon news dump on major developments (e.g., KSM’s civilian trial), have stiffed congressmen and an independent commission on inquiries regarding the dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, and won’t release data on Guantanamo recidivism. They need not answer to anyone, it seems. And they have little or no patience with the process of lawmaking so long as they get a bill, any bill, to tout as a win.

It is the impatience of a president frustrated with the pace of democracy, unwilling to explain what his administration is up to, and annoyed that the country no longer falls at his feet. He can no longer inspire or convince with rhetoric so he rails and pouts. Perhaps we should have elected someone with a superior temperament. [emphasis added]

Take that, you effete-elite connoisseurs of the first-class temperament, the perfectly creased pant, and Reinhold Niebuhr pseudo-intellectualism. You know who you are. And thanks for doing your part in electing a man who is the exact opposite of George Washington, the president who wouldn't be king.

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Mele Kalikimaka at $4000 a day

That means Merry Christmas (at least that's what Bing says). And at that price the Obama Christmas is sure to be really, really merry. ABC, via Newsbusters, reports on King Obama's royal vacation digs:

Imagine the outrage if any Republican President went on vacation during a recession and spent $4,000 a night on accommodations. On ABC’s Good Morning America Wednesday, correspondent Yunji de Nies seemed to suggest that President Obama’s family will be spending such an amount renting expensive living space at an estate house in Hawaii for a two-week Christmas vacation. De Nies: "Christmas trees here aren't cheap – neither is staying in this $8.9 million house, which runs $4,000 a night. The Obamas rented this one and the two next door for family and friends. When you spend that kind of money, people pay attention to detail."

De Nies did not specify exactly how much is being spent or where the money is coming from, though the amount may even be significantly more than $4,000 a day as she related that "the two next door" were also being rented for family and friends of the Obamas. The ABC correspondent also recounted that the estate house overlooks a beach popular with royalty: "But it's the master bedroom and its breathtaking view that is the crown jewel. Kailua Beach has been ranked the island's best, a favorite of Hawaiian royalty."

This conspicuous consumption might feel like a slap in the face to financially struggling Americans who are trying to have their own merry little Christmases. Oh well. Let them eat marked-down fruitcake.


Bonus: From Hot Air, hear President Obama call for fiscal responsibility.

Afterthoughts:
I wonder how many chefs they brought along?
Remember his recent condemnation of "fat cats"?
Gateway Pundit has the video.

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Merry Christmas music

Christmas cheer for you courtesy of YouTube. You're bound to enjoy at least one.

Handel's Messiah:
Winchester Cathedral Choir: For Unto Us a Child is Born
Sylvia McNair: Rejoice Greatly

Charpentier: Kyrie from Messe de Minuit

Corelli: Christmas concerto

Jessye Norman: Gesu Bambino

Steeleye Span: Gaudete

Vince Guaraldi: O Christmas Tree

Oscar Peterson: Jingle Bells

Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song

Ella Fitzgerald: Sleigh Ride, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Judy Garland: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Sinatra: The Christmas Waltz

Bing and the Andrews Sisters: Jingle Bells, Mele Kalikamaka



Kay Starr: Everybody's Waiting for the Man with the Bag

Frank and Dean: Marshmallow World

Louis Armstrong: Zat You, Santa Claus?

The Frank and Dean Christmas tree

Related:
Have Yourself a Steyny Little Christmas
Stripedy Candy (audio of John Henry Faulk's Christmas story)
Merry Christmas '08
Also from '08: Mark Steyn's Complete Christmas (and Boxing Day) Package [note: some of the Steyn links no longer work]

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Act in haste, regret at leisure

Yes, the Senate passed something this morning. I hope they feel better now. But the real discomfort may be just beginning. They'll have to go home to face the music and own their votes for this execrable bill. And according to Politico, now that Obama sees that he can't get his healthcare victory in time to bask in its glow via the State of the Union address, he's going to delay further healthcare action until February. This hurry-up-and-wait routine has got to be a bit vexing for those Dems who were in such a frantic rush to sell their souls by Christmas; perhaps some of them are wishing they had held on to them a little longer. Andy McCarthy:

How proud of themselves Senate Democrats must be. As Ed Morrissey notes at Hot Air, now that they've besotted themselves in a historically unseemly exhibition, bribing their way through a Christmas eve green-light for a monstrous 2000-page bill no one has had a real opportunity to digest, we learn President Obama has said, "Never mind."

Though the point of mad-dash cash-for-cloture was to give the President his monumental "achievement" in time to brag about it in the State of the Union address, the administration realizes it won't happen — too much opposition in the House, too problematic on abortion, too much outrage in the country. So healthcare will be tabled until February, giving us all at least a month-and-a-half to find more of its buried treasures, ear-marks, mandates and power-grabs. And it is still no sure thing, shaping up as a brawl between the two chambers. Meantime, Obama will make the "hard pivot" to jobs and the economy, underscoring the shambles he's made of both ... while (as Byron reports in the Washington Examiner) Senate Republicans force Democrats to vote to raise the debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion just days before Obama's big SOTU speech touts the need for ... fiscal responsibility.

Cue laugh track. Also see Jennifer Rubin for more on the 360 degree backlash against the Senate healthcare bill. An excerpt:

The bill is so bad it renders Sen. Chuck Schumer mute: “Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Paterson both slammed the Senate bill Monday, charging it would cost the city more than $500 million and rip a $1 billion-a-year hole in the state budget. Schumer, a veteran streetfighter for federal cash, has been suddenly recast as a defender of Washington—and a deal he helped cut that shafts New York. ’He’s being uncharacteristically quiet in part because the numbers don’t look that good,’ said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio. . . [Schumer] bristled at criticism that he stood by as other states won sweetheart deals.” Well, how come Nebraska got more than New York then?

Schumer going silent? It's a Christmas miracle.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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Stuff it

Trolling family for ideas (cuz I got nuthin):

Me: What would you be delighted to find in your stocking on Christmas morning? Aside from cash, that is.

Them:
Diamonds.
Rubies. They're more valuable.
A pony.
Quarters.
Candy.

Me: Aren't you all kind of candied-out?

Them: [uproarious laughter]

Most recent posts here.

Most mercenary Christmas song ever?

Everybody's Waiting for the Man with the Bag (1950)



Kay Starr swings it. I haven't found the name of the band.


Bonus: Click here for a change of pace.

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The coming tsunami?

Peter Wehner:

The populist, anti-Washington wave out there, which is already quite large, will only grow, and grow, and grow.

But the Democrats can't feel it coming:

When it comes to the public outrage that will emerge based on the deals that took place to secure passage of the Senate health-care bill, the degree of tone-deafness among Democrats is nothing short of startling. Senator Tom Harkin calls it “small stuff.” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said, “Rather than sitting here and carping about what Nelson got for Nebraska, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle: Let’s get together and see what we can get for South Carolina.”

And Majority Leader Harry Reid has said, “I don’t know if there is a Senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them. And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”

These people strike me as hermetically sealed off from how most of the rest of the country view this subject. As these backroom deals become more and more widely known, anger will swell up among voters. It is bad enough to jam through a bill on a strict party-line-vote against overwhelming opposition from the public; for it to have happened only because various Members of Congress were (legally) bribed will magnify the intensity of the opposition. And for politicians to take such obvious pride in the pay-off will make things even worse.

He predicts that "culture of corruption" will be the 2010 GOP campaign slogan. Catchy phrase, that.

For their next trick, John Fund predicts a game of ping-pong rather than a messy and revealing conference on the bill:

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.

Read the rest.

*Updated 12/25/09: Jennifer Rubin on the coming tsunami:

And if the Democrats refuse to heed the voters and their own nervous members? Then we will have a major course correction on Election Day 2010. It is now conceivable that the House may fall back into Republican hands and that the Democrats will lose their filibuster-proof majority. And that will be the end of the untrammeled experiment in Obamaism, which can loosely be described as the endeavor to campaign as a moderate and race as far Left as possible until the voters notice.

We will see in 2010 whether the Democrats pull back from that precipice, or whether the voters shove a good number of them over it. Either way, 2010 will be the beginning of a new phase in the Obama presidency. Polls indicate that the public will be relieved, whether that new beginning comes from a voluntary course adjustment or a tidal wave election. [emphasis added]

RTR.

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That inner voice

Wesley Smith is haunted by the death of Terri Schiavo:

So Terri Schiavo remains very much with us. Polls show that most people believe that her dehydration was just and proper because she was so impaired. But perhaps our inner voice, the part of us that never lies, sees it differently. Perhaps the reason Terri Schiavo comes so quickly to mind whenever we hear stories about “miraculous” awakenings, is that we remain profoundly disturbed by what we did to her, haunted it would seem, by her beautifully smiling face.

I think that inner voice is one of the best things about being human. May it never be put to sleep.

Read the whole thing here.

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Deck the halls with Chairman Mao

Poor Stalin and Hitler must be feeling left out. No reports (yet) that their images are hanging on any White House Christmas trees. But there are a lot of trees in "the people's house," and who knows what might turn up next?

Another quick item before undone Christmas preparations take over my mind:

Andy McCarthy: We Interrupt this Socialization of Medicine to Bring You an Abdication of Our National Defense . . .

The original 800 included some marginal figures (to hear the Left tell it, all the detainees were shepherds indiscriminately swept up by the Northern Alliance to win bribe money from the CIA). But now we are down to a much smaller core group — detainees whose cases we've had years to study and whom we've held despite enormous pressure to release them. These are the worst of the worst. We have an absolute right under the laws of war to hold them, and when one of them gets sprung it's cause for grave concern.

But the release announced this past weekend is just appalling. The twelve detainees have been transferred to: Yemen, an al-Qaeda hotbed whose government makes common cause with jihadists (and has a history of allowing them to escape — or of releasing them outright); Afghanistan, which is so ungovernable and rife with jihadism that we're surging thousands of troops there (troops the jihadists are targeting); and Somaliland, which is not even a country, and which offers an easy entree into Somalia, a failed state and al-Qaeda safe-haven. At least one of the released terrorists, a Somali named Abdullahi Sudi Arale (aka Ismail Mahmoud Muhammad), was released notwithstanding the military's designation of him as a "high-value detainee" (a label that has been applied only to top-tier terrorist prisoners — and one that fits in this case given Arale's status as a point of contact between al-Qaeda's satellites in East Africa and Pakistan).

Read the whole thing.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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What part of "We don't want it" don't they understand?

I know -- Congress doesn't care. Yet.

Rasmussen:

For the second straight day, the update shows the highest level of Strong Disapproval yet recorded for this President. That negative rating had never topped 42% before yesterday. However, it has risen dramatically since the Senate found 60 votes to move forward with the proposed health care reform legislation. Most voters (55%) oppose the health care legislation and senior citizens are even more likely than younger voters to dislike the plan.

Ed Morrissey points out that strong disapproval now exceeds overall approval, 46% to 44% among likely voters.

And the Quinnipiac poll finds a very strong distaste for ObamaCare, and an even stronger aversion for taxpayer-funded abortions:

As the Senate prepares to vote on health care reform, American voters "mostly disapprove" of the plan 53 - 36 percent and disapprove 56 - 38 percent of President Barack Obama's handling of the health care issue, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Voters also oppose 72 - 23 percent using any public money in the health care overhaul to pay for abortions, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

It's hard to argue with Michael Steele's assessment of Congress's attitude toward its constituents.

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Have yourself a Steyny little Christmas

You heard of it here first, of course, but Hot Air's Allahpundit has taken notice of Mark Steyn & Jessica Martin's new Christmas CD:

Beloved conservative pundit croons yuletide-ishly:

Author, critic, commentator, … warbler? Believe it, my friends. Not since Charles Krauthammer’s rendition of “Santa Baby” have I enjoyed a holiday tune sung by a hardnosed righty realist quite this much. The EP is on sale now at Amazon.

I don’t want to get people too excited but Ace and I are currently working on a cover of “Christmas in Hollis.” Epic. Click the image to listen.

Yes, Steyn is beloved. And fearless. The Christmas CD, a follow-up to last year's fabulous Marshmallow World (which is included on the new CD), is great fun. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is done more or less straight and works very well, with a swingin Nelson Riddle-esque opening. You can hear the beginning of it here.

Mark co-writes one of the songs, Runnin' On Eggnog. Husband Pundit observed that it contains more lines that have never appeared in any other song than any other song, ever. Got that? Example:

And suddenly you're noggin' and a-goggin' clouds of spice [?]

Then beat six eggs
Until they begs

I said he was fearless.

Needed: 1) A transcription of all the lyrics; 2) The music video!

Don't neglect Mark's freebie Christmas show, either. Aside from its intrinsic appeal as a Steyn production, it contains some authentic musical gems by Dorothée Berryman, Monique Fauteux, and Elisabeth von Trapp. I'm looking for Berryman recordings but there isn't much out there. The carol by Fauteux is gorgeous, with the added interest that its lyrics were composed by one of the awesome North American Martyrs, St. Jean de Brebeuf.

By the way, Persimmon Coxcomb is back. Enjoy.

Now I'm off in search of Krauthammer's Santa Baby.

Update 12/26: I've since listened to the entire two hours of Steyn's Christmas show (some parts more than once) and need to mention a couple more highlights:
- Mark's interview with Hugh Martin, composer of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, featuring the composer's own poignant rendition of the song.
- Berryman, Fauteux, and Steyn's performance of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Ooh-la-la!

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Tyrannical majority tramples rules and rights

Sen. Jim DeMint:

This goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future congresses.

Hold that thought.

It was only a matter of time before the noxious oozings from the Reid bill started leaking out. But this provoked an audible what the what?!? from me this morning:

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.

[RedState:] The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.

[Pat Austin:] Oh, they'll tell you that's not what it means, but they'll also tell you that this bill lowers the deficit, doesn't fund abortions, and doesn't cover illegals.

They lie.

That is one thing we can count on.

More from John McCormack at the Weekly Standard, quoting Sen. Jim DeMint:

there's one provision that i found particularly troubling and it's under section c, titled "limitations on changes to this subsection."

and i quote -- "it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."

this is not legislation. it's not law. this is a rule change. it's a pretty big deal. we will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law.

i'm not even sure that it's constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. i don't see why the majority party wouldn't put this in every bill. if you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates.

i mean, we want to bind future congresses. this goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future co congresses.

McCormack:

According to page 1001 of the Reid bill, the purpose of the Independent Medical Advisory Board is to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending." For any fearmongers out there tempted to call an unelected body that recommends Medicare cuts a "Death Panel," let me be clear. According to page 1004, IMAB proposals "shall not include any recommendation to ration health care"--you know, just like the bill says there's no funding for abortion.

Paging Sarah Palin: the death panel is unkillable.

Update: A friend suggests that Congress could kill IMAB by refusing to fund it. So much for zombie death panels, I guess, for now. Also, the Senate could change the rules to rule repealing or amending IMAB in order. But that would take a 2/3 majority. The Democrats aren't playing by the rules; they may be violating the Constitution.

We already know they don't give a crap about the Constitution. The Senate's dark victory was a triumph over, not of, that quaint document.

Again, you have to wonder: have they finally gone too far?

*Updates:

*More noxious oozings:

According to a Senate legislative aide, the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now could qualify for grants under this provision. ACORN would also qualify for funding on page 150 of the underlying Reid bill, which says that "community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups" may receive grants to "conduct public education activities to raise awareness of the availability of qualified health plans."

Because we know how good ACORN is at counseling citizens in need.

*How desperately is the Senate in need of reform? Reid defends legislation by bribery:

Harry Reid says any senator who didn’t get a “deal” is a sucker. Well, he didn’t quite say it that way — but almost: “I don’t know if there’s a senator who doesn’t have something in this bill that’s important to them. … And if they don’t have something in it that’s important to them, then it’s doesn’t speak well for them.” Next we’ll be hearing that the Cornhusker Kickback is “golden.”

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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Cartoon: Passing something

Regular readers know we're not into scatological humor, and rarely post cartoons, but this from Eric Allie is perfectly a propos:



It brings to mind, again, Allahpundit's quip about Reid, in a different context:

It’s his own coinage, as nasty and awkward as the man himself. And like a two-year-old who’s just crapped on the carpet, he’s curiously proud of it.

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Sense and nonsense

But not in that order.

That insipid moron David Gergen says this about those who are trying to halt the march toward socialism:

In my judgment, it’s a tragedy for the country to have a bill this important, one of the- a stark piece of legislation passed with only one party voting for it. That has not happened. That’s not been our history. I mean, the time I was in the Clinton White House, when President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton were pushing for health care reform- and I remember so well- Pat Moynihan- he was one of my mentors in life. He was a wonderful senator who called me in and said David- and he then sent me all the literature on it- every time we pass major social legislation in this country, we pass it with supermajority, with both parties. It’s so important to building public confidence, just like Earl Warren when he had the Brown versus Board of Education. He wanted to make sure it was nine-nothing on the Supreme Court. He spent lots and lots of time rounding up everybody. [. . .]

Public confidence?! Poll after poll after poll has shown that the American people don't want this. They have no confidence in it, or in Congress. If Gergen's head weren't full-to-bursting with mush he might see that the bill is beyond bad and those who oppose it are doing the will of the people. Good grief.

And he goes on:

. . . and it’s terribly unfortunate. Donna Brazile [who appeared immediately before Gergen] is right- this is an historic moment. Senate of the United States has never voted for universal access before. This vote tonight- the 60 now ensures that the universal access bill will pass the Senate. That’s very, very important for them.

Universal access? Really? Somebody get the hook and yank Gergen out of the CNN studio. His brainlessness is extremely provoking.


From Robert Costa, Sen. Judd Gregg sees where this is heading: toward socialism:

American government changed last night. “We are now functioning under a parliamentary form of government,” says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) in a conversation with NRO. “An ideological supermajority in Congress, along with a government run by community organizers, has taken over.”

“They’ve taken over the student-loan program, they’ve taken over the automobile system, and now they’re taking over the health-care system. There is no limit to their belief that people should be controlled by smart bureaucrats in Washington,” says Gregg. “They’re putting our country on a path that will reduce the quality of life for the next generation, undermine our nation’s wonderful exceptionalism, and Europeanize our economy to curb its growth.”

Harry Reid’s health-care bill “was purchased,” says Gregg. “Our system of checks and balances is gone. We now have a government that lurches with great speed even though our system is founded upon incremental change.” And don’t hope that the House stops the runaway train, he says. “I think the House is ideologically even further to the Left than the Senate. There are many people there who are committed to taking us down the road toward nationalization.”

“In the future, discretionary dollars won’t be able to be spent on college or a new house, but on this massive new burden for Americans,” says Gregg. “Eventually, at some point, the pressures on the private sector will tip the scales so that employers offering private insurance send people over to the health-care exchange. It’s all part of their ultimate goal to get a vast amount of people subsidized by the government.”

This is an “unsustainable course for our nation,” says Gregg. “We can’t sustain the debt we’re adding. Soon we’ll reach banana-republic status.”

Lots more at Doctor, Doctor!

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Various and sundry

My adrenals must be exhausted; I can't quite bring myself to respond appropriately to Harry Reid's cash-for-cloture outrage. But Michelle Malkin, Mark Steyn, and Jennifer Rubin can. Also recommended: Robert Samuelson and Rich Lowry.

On to other things: sticks and stones will break your bones but snowballs, even those thrown by a crowd of annoying DC liberals, will not break your Humvee. So there's really no need to draw your gun on the them:

Some cars passing by rolled down their windows to taunt the warriors -- and were consequently pelted with snow. Gas-guzzling Hummers became a particular target, Grishkoff said, because of the crowd's political leanings. (A few people, witnesses said, brought an antiwar sign, although the snowball fight was not a political protest.)

Police, at least initially, were tolerant, witnesses said. By some accounts, a D.C. officer asked the revelers to disperse, but when they didn't, he didn't raise a fuss. At one point, witnesses said, the snowball fighters helped push a police car out of the snow.

"You can criticize it for being immature . . . but it was pretty safe," said Matthew Bradley, 28, an amateur photographer who showed up to shoot pictures. "It seemed like everything was what you'd expect."

Then a maroon Hummer pulled up and was hit by snowballs. A man in plainclothes got out with a gun in his left hand.

Get a grip.

On Christmas shopping: Ordering with free Amazon Prime is like a complimentary stay at a luxury hotel. Heavenly. Imagine ordering today and being assured of delivery on the 23rd. Yes, I'm still shopping.

Amazon is out of bacon-flavored popcorn but ThinkGeek still has it. Order by midnight and get it in time for Christmas (with shipping upgrade). Also from ThinkGeek, the Tauntaun sleeping bag and the Annoy-a-tron.

#3 son, who knows I love crossword puzzles, just informed me that today is the 96th anniversary of its birth. Time to start preparing for the big 100th in 2013. One of my most-used Christmas gifts ever was a big book of acrostics. Very challenging.

Check out #3 son's time-lapse of how Snopocalypse '09 made our birdbath disappear. :)

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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CBO and others analyze Reid's monstrosity

A few important commentaries on the what and the why of ObamaCare. First from Yuval Levin:

The story of the day is certainly Senator Ben Nelson’s shameless perfidy—giving up his pro-life principles in return for swindling taxpayers in the other 49 states into paying all of Nebraska’s future new Medicaid costs. The deal he struck would undermine both the logic underlying the Hyde Amendment and the logic underlying the Medicaid system. There is no conceivable policy argument for the way the new bill treats Nebraska, it’s simply a case of a senator’s vote being purchased with taxpayer dollars. [. . .]

The CBO assessment of the bill tells the appalling story. We are going to raise taxes by half a trillion dollars over the next ten years, increase spending by more than a trillion dollars, cut Medicare by $470 billion but use that money to fund a new entitlement rather than to fix Medicare itself, bend the health care cost curve up rather than down, insert layers of bureaucracy between doctors and patients, and compel and subsidize universal participation in a failed system of health insurance rather than reform or improve it. Indeed, this bill will make it exceedingly difficult to fix our health insurance financing system in the future, since it sucks dry the potential means of such reform but leaves the fundamental cost problem essentially untouched (and in some respects worsened.) After all the back and forth, pulling and tugging, it is hard to see what is left in this bill that any member of Congress, liberal or conservative, would want to support. [Read the rest.]

Bill Kristol cuts to the core of the bill's badness as revealed in the CBO report:

"Based on the extrapolation described above, CBO expects that Medicare spending under the legislation would increase at an average annual rate of roughly 6 percent during the next two decades--well below the roughly 8 percent annual growth rate of the past two decades (excluding the effect of establishing the Medicare prescription drug benefit). Adjusting for inflation, Medicare spending per beneficiary under the legislation would increase at an average annual rate of less than 2 percent during the next two decades--about half of the roughly 4 percent annual growth rate of the past two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care."

Here are the key ten words: "reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care."

More on the CBO scoring from Jeffrey H. Anderson: CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion:

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion. They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill's pledge to cut doctors' payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up -- which would reduce doctors' enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019. Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How's that for "reform"? [Read the rest.]

Mark Steyn on why the Dems are willing to take a brutal electoral hit:

Kathryn, re your Facebook friend who asks, "Can we officially retire the phrases 'blue dog' democrats and 'pro life' democrats? Because there is no such thing:"

As I wrote back in the summer, "Put not your trust in Blue Dog Democrats." It was folly to bet the Republic on the likes of Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and other "moderates" who are, by definition, trimmers and accommodationists.

By contrast, Barney Frank and the more ambitious Dems are thinking long-term. And, if it's a choice between getting government health care or keeping Ben Nelson, it's no contest. Not to keep quoting myself ad nauseam, but as I said to Hugh Hewitt a couple of months back:

I think the administration is willing to take the hit. In other words, to get health care, they would be willing to reduce their majority, and perhaps even lose their majority in the House and the Senate, because they know it’s a game changer. Now to sell that to individual Senators and Congressmen, you’ve got to have something up your sleeve for them... There are strange elements in play here. But they’ve factored into the whole business a potential, I think, a potential significant loss in the year 2010, in next year’s elections.

I've been saying for a year now, in NR and NRO, that the object for savvy Dems is to get this thing passed in whatever form because, once you do, there's no going back. Kim Strassel in yesterday's Journal gets it:

So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party—the Barney Franks, the David Obeys—are focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a value-added tax and a permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe.

Just so. And that's worth whatever hit they have to take in 2010. Every time I make the point, someone says, oh, Jim Webb this or Byron Dorgan that, or have you see Harry Reid's numbers in Nevada? Oh, please. We've just seen what happens when you make Ben Nelson your Maginot Line. The Dems are thinking strategically; the Republicans are all tactics.

How very fitting it is that the unborn must be sacrificed to the gods of socialism. It couldn't be otherwise. But it is possible that the statists have finally gone too far; if Americans notice this they will be outraged. Sen. Tom Coburn's denunciation of this deal should be distributed far and wide.

And at the risk of repeating myself, it's not over. Again, from the prophet Isaiah, via our Christmas novena:

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the weak knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.

But only if we continue to fight. Bill Kristol has your marching orders.

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Reactions to sickening Senate deal

Jonah Goldberg:

It profits a man nothing give his soul for the whole world, but for Medicaid funding carve outs....

Senator Tom Coburn:

“This reprehensible and deceptive agreement is a historic and radical shift in policy that will require taxpayers to pay for abortion. The American people will be outraged when they realize this so-called compromise is a farce. I can’t imagine there is a single pro-life taxpayer in Nebraska, or any other state, who would agree to pay to end the lives of the unborn for a never-ending Medicaid earmark or tax breaks for insurance companies. Unfortunately, Senators Reid and Nelson disagree,” Dr. Coburn said.

“The fact that the most ardent pro-choice Senators support this agreement while pro-life groups, such as the National Right to Life Committee, oppose it should send a chilling signal to taxpayers in Nebraska and across America. Majority Leader Reid wants to rush this phony agreement through the Senate precisely because he does not want the American people to have time to understand its implications. Yet, in spite of these efforts to mislead the public, the American people will grasp and understand this decision and they will hold accountable anyone who defends sacrificing the unborn on the altar of political expediency,” Dr. Coburn said.

“Senators Reid, Nelson and others are using Enron-style accounting gimmicks to justify this radical shift in policy. Their claim that federal dollars will be separated from private dollars paid by premiums is a farce and they know it. In reality, the dollars will be fungible and mixed just as Social Security ‘trust fund’ dollars are used to finance other areas of government,” Dr. Coburn said. “The fact is this agreement, which was allegedly reached after weeks of gut-wrenching negotiations, is an elaborate charade. This new language is identical to, or worse than, the underlying abortion language in the Reid bill. Senators Reid, Nelson and others will have great difficulty convincing taxpayers that they were working to accomplish something other than carving out special favors for particular states.”

Hot Air:

So strange have the bedfellows become that this story is breaking almost at the same time that this one is. Pro-life and pro-choice, united at last!

But John McCormack takes NOW's reaction with a grain of salt:

I would chalk up NOW's opposition as token outrage to help abortion amendment seem like an actual compromise. As a Democratic aide wrote today: "Pro-choice Dems are cool with it;" that includes Barbara Boxer and Maria Cantwell.

The left's devotion to abortion knows no bounds.

Also read He's No Stupak by James Capretta and Yuval Levin:

The new Reid language that Senator Nelson now finds acceptable would allow federal subsidies to flow to plans that cover elective abortions in the insurance exchanges. Senate Democrats try to create the impression that only the enrollees' premiums will pay for the abortion coverage. But it's an artificial bookkeeping exercise. Taxpayer funding would support the same insurance policies that pay for abortions. Senator Nelson is touting the fact that states can enact laws which prohibit elective abortions in the exchanges (the so-called "opt out"), but that was already permissible under the previous Reid language. And in any event a state can't protect its taxpayers from financing abortions beyond its borders. Senator Nelson's "compromise" leaves Nebraska's voters entirely vulnerable to paying for California's and New York's abortions.

What's worse, one of the two "national" plans overseen by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and offered in the state-based exchanges would explicitly cover elective abortions unless a state fully opted out.

Michelle Malkin invokes the spirit of Paul Revere:

Now, make sure to take time out of your busy Saturday before Christmas and burn up the Capitol switchboard (202-224-3121) with a clarion message for your Senators:

No. Hell no.

Say it louder and often. Spread the word. Sound the alarm. They are pretending not to hear you yet.

A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!

Bill Kristol goes back a little further but his message is the same. I'll toss in this from Isaiah, part of our Christmas novena:

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the weak knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.

Remember, this is not yet a done deal.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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