This past weekend I was proud to be part of “we the people” who came down to Washington by the thousands to voice their American rights and freedom to say “no” to what we all knew would change our great America into a socialistic America. With this Obama health care, we will now face extreme hardships in every way and Obama is now more dangerous than ever.

His ego has been fanned and he will stop at nothing to try to pass the cap-and-trade bill and he will force all union members to openly sign their votes. We must never forget this blatant and dangerous arrogance by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi and every Democrat leader that voted for this destruction of our great country.

Let us put memos everywhere to remind ourselves to vote all of these socialistic extremists out of office this coming November and thereafter. (more…)

Politico’s Ben Smith has the bombshell:

The national group ACORN is folding, an official there, Kevin Whelan, said in an emailed statement:

The ACORN Association Board met on Sunday March 21 and approved a set of steps to responsibly manage the process of bringing its operations to a close over the coming months. These include:

* Closing ACORN’s remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1st; and
* Developing a plan to resolve all outstanding debts, obligations and other issues.

ACORN’s members have a great deal to be proud of–from promoting to homeownership to helping rebuild New Orleans, from raising wages to winning safer streets, from training community leaders to promoting voter participation—ACORN members have worked hard to create stronger to communities, a more inclusive democracy, and a more just nation.
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The horse trading went long into the night. In the end the House Democrats bought, cajoled, wrangled and bullied enough votes to pass the health care debacle. The battle is far from over and will range into next November and beyond.

As a far right wing nut job I will enjoy the coming downfall of the Democratic Party. I will enjoy the stunned looks on the faces of those who will lose their union and employer health care plans if this legislation stays around long enough to take effect. I will enjoy the coming revolt of the middle and upper class taxpayers. I could of course, be wrong. Maybe the American people are tired of being free and maybe rugged individualism is dead. Maybe the vast majority of my neighbors are looking forward to the never ending growth of the Federal Government. Maybe everyone except we gun owning, SUV driving, meat eating, smaller government, right wing nut job pro lifers want the nanny state.

So now that the first battle of the “health care reform” movement is over we need to ask some questions. Is that it from the left? Will there be no further movement to start a government option? Will there be no push to get to a single payer system? If you believe that you need to get in the line that starts right behind Rep. Bart Stupak.

Rep. Stupak has become the Neville Chamberlain of our time.

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ACORN, the ultra-secret, keep-the-books-from-the-leadership community organizing group, called the New York Times to say it’s preparing to file for bankruptcy?  The corrupt outfit is choosing now to be transparent?

Or did it seek that opportunity to call an allied newspaper at precisely the moment conservatives were all in a lather about ObamaCare?

Regardless, ACORN leaders “not authorized to speak to the news media” claimed ACORN will soon be filing for bankruptcy.

The move could be an armadillo action so the group’s critics will move on to other things.  ACORN certainly is down.  It has reportedly lost significant private funding.  It’s been booted out of Ohio for good. From the Times article:

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I am an optimist. I see the glass as half full (preferably with beer). So I am keeping hope alive!

There are a couple of ways this can still be stopped. The first is that numerous state attorneys are going to sue.

Virginia will file suit against the federal government charging that the health-care reform legislation is unconstitutional, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office confirmed last night.

Cuccinelli is expected to argue that the bill, with its mandate that requires nearly every American to be insured by 2014, violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

There is a good chance that the Supreme Court will rule the bill unconstitutional based on the mandate for all Americans to buy insurance even if they don’t want it and that some of the bill only helps specific states at the expense of the rest. When it is declared unconstitutional, the Democrats will try to fix it with a new bill. By then we will have had another election. Even without a Republican takeover in the House and the Senate, there will be enough new Republicans to stop Obamacare.

Of course, the Supreme Court could find a way to stay out of the fight and let the bill stand. Then, we’re screwed.

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So where do we go from here now that Obama has succeeded in pushing through a corrupt and bloated healthcare bill?

Let’s start with some good news. This is not the end of the world. If this was 1920, Obamacare would be a paradigm-shifting expansion in the size and scope of Washington. But we do not have a free-market healthcare system today. Government already directly finances nearly one-half of all health expenditures, and the ostensibly private part of our healthcare system is immensely distorted by regulations and tax policy (particularly the exclusion of fringe benefits in the tax code).

Source: CATO Institute

We have deviated so far from a free market that only 12 percent of healthcare costs are paid for out-of-pocket by consumers. And health insurance, rather than being based on risk and protecting against catastrophic expenses, has morphed into a grossly inefficient form of pre-paid health care.

So what does this mean? The way to think of Obamacare is that we are shifting from a healthcare system 68 percent controlled/directed by government to one that (when all the bad policies are phased in) is 79 percent controlled/directed by government. Those numbers are just vague estimates, to be sure, but they underscore why Obamacare is just a continuation of a terrible trend, not a profound paradigm shift. Yes, it is very bad news. Yes, it will cost more than politicians claimed. Yes, it will reduce the quality of care. All those things are true, but we are going 79 mph in the wrong direction instead of 68 mph.

By the way, the 2008 elections did not make that much difference.

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With this vote, the U.S. House has chosen big government over freedom; bureaucracy over people.

The American Conservative Union has opposed this bill from the start because of its massive cost and red tape. The more we learn and Americans learn about the devil in the details of this bill the more disgust among Americans will grow. Empowering IRS agents to determine if Americans have proper health care coverage is not health care reform. Raising taxes is not health care reform. Massive increases in government spending is not health care reform. Imposing fines on Americans who don’t toe the line with what the liberals want in their personal health care plans is not real health care reform.

History will indeed mark this moment – as some Americans become more dependent on government and government becomes more intrusive in the personal lives and financial decisions of its citizens. This is a moment when government growth took a giant leap toward swallowing up more and more of the hard earn money of Americans. This is a moment when common sense reform took a back seat to liberalism run amuck.

In responding to the Democrat’s claims that spending massive amounts of new money on a new government program would actually lower the deficit, the ACU notes that the Ways and Means Committee estimated Medicare would cost only $9 billion each year after 25 years but that on its 25th birthday Medicare spent $67 billion, or seven times the initial cost estimate. The pattern is consistent in federal spending and the massive health care bill’s cost will likely follow suit.

The American people are not stupid or naive.

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Yesterday was my son’s 9th birthday and for his present, the government jacked his future. As he sat in the floor and happily opened his gifts, Bart Stupak appeared on television and revealed that he’d sold his soul. The joy was sucked from the room, but my son didn’t notice – thank God for innocence. The faces of the adults in the room fell as Stupak held his presser, as Pelosi gained another YES vote for health control.

The scene was an eerie replay for me; eight-and-a-half years ago that same boy sat in his bouncy seat while cooing and kicking his legs as his father and I watched the twin towers crumble to dust on live television. The feeling was the same.

A lot of people ask why I and others do what we do.

The scene I just described is my answer.

Last night the Democrat party died as it drove a spear through the torso of the Constitution and passed legislation that the majority of Americans overwhelmingly opposed. Nancy Pelosi sauntered into the capitol surrounded by fellow socialists, carrying the gavel used in 1965 to pass the now-bankrupt Medicare.

All summer long Americans filled town halls, emailed, called, and faxed their lawmakers, and they were forsaken. They were called Nazis, racists, homophobes; they were threatened, beaten, and called stupid because they disagreed with the minority who feels that the government should run our lives. Our lawmakers unofficially stopped representing us last spring.

Last night, our legislators officially broke the contract with America that is the Constitution. Last night, they ceased to represent us. Last night, a new party was born; the malignant tumor that is the progressive caucus consumed the Democrat party from within and gave birth to the mainstream Socialist Party.

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Census 2010: overreaching and out of bounds. Intrusive. Harassing. I have now received two Census forms and thirteen or fourteen notices from the Census Bureau, and they are still coming.

For the past month I have been called, harassed and visited numerous times by a Pamela Childs of the Census Bureau, who was pursuing me for an interview. Knowing my rights under the law, even under the current Obama coup, I did not respond. I filled out my form — that which is required by law — but still received calls, visits, and notes. Daily.

At one point, I left a message saying I would not speak to her. Period. Mind you, I already filled out and sent in my form the day after I got it.

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It’s time for your weekly dose of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we talk about the end of capitalism and the future of health care.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Daily Caller: Pelosi Rolls Stupak
McArdle: The Future After Health Care
NRO: Executive Order Won’t Work
Mark Steyn: Happy Dependence Day!
CBS News: The End of Hope and Change

This weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ensured that the 111th Congress will live in infamy. Instead of listening to the people she used every procedural trick at her disposal to pass her health care legislation. She must be stopped.

Over the last year, the American people have witnessed a Speaker who will stop at nothing to achieve her vision of a Leftist government. She believes that she is no longer accountable to congressional rules, and national laws. Those are just guidelines that can be tossed away on a whim if determined they will prevent her from accomplishing her goals. On Sunday, she cast them aside with reckless abandon and forced through her government takeover of health care.
Nancy Pelosi has no regard for public opinion. Even in a hostile electoral environment, she asked members of her caucus to fall on their swords so that she might add another achievement to her increasingly shameful legacy. Her actions are deceptive, dishonest, and simply unconstitutional, but she shows no remorse. To her, the ends justify the means.

Let there be no doubt: Nancy Pelosi’s sole priority in this entire health care drama has been authorizing a government seizure of the American health care industry and nationalizing a full one-sixth of our economy. She ignored the cold hard facts of the federal budget. Plainly put, you cannot add $1 trillion dollars to the budget and then claim that it’s revenue neutral, cut $500 billion from Medicare, and won’t affect recipients. The math simply doesn’t work. But Nancy Pelosi doesn’t seem to have any problem with fudging the numbers when it’s to her advantage.
Worse yet, Speaker Pelosi has claimed that she would preside over the most ethical and transparent Congress in history. She has repeatedly denied Americans their Constitutional right to know what Washington is doing in their name, because she knows that if they find out, they will hold her caucus accountable.

For the sweetheart deals and arm-twisting tactics; for this unconscionable dereliction of her duty; for this gleeful defiance of the Constitution; and for the utter contempt with which she has repeatedly treated the American people, Speaker Pelosi MUST be fired.

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Back in 1946, an ingenious advertising executive named Karl Frost suggested a simple, straightforward political slogan to the Massachusetts Republican Committee: “Had Enough? Vote Republican,” it read. This slogan was soon found on billboards all across the country, and in November of that year the Republicans picked up fifty-five seats in the House and twelve in the Senate, seizing control in both chambers.

By that November, the country had suffered under the New Deal for fourteen years, and Americans, understandably, were fed up. Moreover, as Michael Barone pointed out last May, “After World War II Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls, all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans  . . . won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.”

Were I in the shoes of Michael Steele, I would buy up billboard space all over the country and slap up the same slogan – for something similar should be possible this November. The healthcare debate was over some time ago. When Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in January, it was made abundantly clear that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party had lost that debate decisively. Now, in the face of fierce public opposition, they have jammed the bill through Congress, and they have done so without the cover of a single Republican vote. For this – as William Daley, the mastermind of the Chicago machine, warned in an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post on Christmas eve – they will pay dearly and not just this coming November.

Abraham Lincoln once observed, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” It is possible, of course, that events will intervene between now and November. It is conceivable that the healthcare bill and the manner in which it was passed in both the Senate and the House will be forgotten. But this is not likely. If the Republicans stick together, mount a principled opposition to the Obama administration on all fronts, and recruit first-rate candidates to run in every district at both the state and the federal levels in November, it is highly likely that there will be a political earthquake in this country on a scale not seen since 1932.

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Today, in 1765, the British Parliament enacted the Stamp Act. It was eventually repealed. It gives us hope today. We have 8-9 months to create a GOP that will have the stomach to repeal the legislation that passed last night. They don’t have the spine for it now….but they will before the year is out.

Last week, while trying to rally support for last minute maneuvers designed to push his health care “reform” scheme through the House of Representatives, President Obama made a revealing statement.  “We are going to make history!” he exhorted a crowd at George Mason University.

Just like that comforting, exhilarating little buzz his brain experiences each time he takes a drag on his ubiquitous cigarettes, and like the electrical surge he probably felt during the days when he experimented with “blow” in his youth, President Obama has found a new addiction to satisfy his undisciplined cravings:  The President is addicted to making history.

In a way, it’s understandable.  Imagine being a state senator from Illinois and within four years you stand astride the world as the most famous political figure of your time.  It’s a rush, baby… here… take another hit, dude.

Oh, he dabbled with some street-level stuff in his youth.  First African-American Editor of the Harvard Law Review?  Yeah, that’s some good stuff.  That’ll give you a good buzz for a while.  But then, he had to settle for some real retro-grade stuff.  Community organizing on the South-side of Chicago?  Man, that’s like Marion Barry level stuff.  That’s not going to satisfy a guy who was raised around all that “Maui-wowie” notoriety.

But then he got a bit of an upgrade with his election to the Illinois statehouse.  But he was clearly bored with that job.  It’s just not history-making enough to be an African-American State Senator of an African-American district in Chicago.  His next big fix was the U.S. Senate.

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UPDATE: Reconciliation passes, 220-210, along with the government takeover of the student loan business.

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UPDATE: Bill passes 219 to 212.

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Tonight, the House of Representatives will conduct a series of votes that will result, most likely, in the passage of the greatest expansion of government in our nation’s history. The vote is the outcomes of side deals, winks and nods, and the closest our system can come to open bribery. Democrats in Congress may think this is the end of the health care debate. It is only the beginning. Tonight marks a low point in our nation’s history, but, let’s draw inspiration from one of its highest points. (Check here for updates throughout the night.) The battle starts anew tomorrow.

As America’s largest grassroots pro-troop organization, Move America Forward has been privileged to support our troops and their mission against Islamic terrorism. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin , Dr. Laura and so many other talk show hosts have given unselfishly to this noble cause.

From time to time they are attacked, usually by leftist anti-war extremists, but sometimes even conservatives make the mistake of joining the circular firing squad against one of their own. There have recently been unfair attacks against Sean Hannity, but we know he has been a total champion in supporting our troops and we are honored to stand with him.

Since the beginning of our organization in 2004, Move America Forward has been a pro-troop grassroots organization that has worked tirelessly to give our troops a voice and serve them as best we can. It is a difficult and often frustrating endeavor, and there is never enough money to help the many brave men and women in America’s armed forces who need and deserve our assistance. Sean Hannity has been a friend to our organization and has helped us greatly in serving our troops and their families.

His generosity in supporting our troops is legendary. He personally gave $100,000 to the Wounded Warriors Foundation and over $200,000 to the Freedom Alliance. When we had a group of Gold Star Parents who had lost a son in Iraq, Sean provided the funding so we could take them to Iraq and see where their children died in the cause of protecting American freedom. They could see with their own eyes the progress that had been made in turning Iraq into a democratic country that would no longer harbor terrorists or threaten peace.

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I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute:

counter –

I was actually at the Tea Party march against the health care bill in Washington, D.C. yesterday. I don’t attend political events on the Jewish Sabbath, so I simply decided to go and observe, lending a quiet voice of protest. I was in our nation’s capital for the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and wandered down by myself to Capitol Hill after morning services at the historic 6th & I synagogue.

I saw thousands of people–fifteen thousand, I guessed at the time–gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol building. There were American flags and lots of Gadsden flags (“Don’t Tread on Me”). I noted some of the more humorous signs (“I’m not wee-wee’d up, I’m pissed off”), as well as some of the more esoteric ones (“Restoration, not Transformation”). Almost all of them were home-made with poster-board and marker.

I did not see any comparison of Obama to Hitler, nor any sign advocating violence of any kind. I did see two signs bearing a hammer-and-sickle–which I personally find just as offensive as the swastika, though it is bizarrely trendy to some Americans. There was one sign with an image of Obama and the words “undocumented worker,” which was the only hint of Birtherism I witnessed. The rest of the signs were straightforward slogans: “Kill the Bill”; “Start Over.”

The crowd was far from uniform. There were black people, white people, Hispanic people–both in the audience and on stage. One of the speakers invoked the example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as an inspiration–and the crowd roared its approval, as it did for mentions of Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. A few of the speakers invoked religious sentiments about abortion. That was as edgy as it got.

At one point, the crowd to the right of the stage started to boo loudly. It was impossible to see exactly why, from where I was standing, but soon a group of people–members of Congress, apparently–ascended the stairs to the Capitol. If media reports are to be believed, that was the moment when racist and homophobic language was hurled at Rep. John Lewis, and a protestor was arrested for spitting at Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

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From The Hill:

Democrats have reached a deal on an executive order on abortion that could hand them a victory on healthare.

“Eight or nine” Democrats, including Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), will announce the deal at a 4 p.m. press conference, according to an anti-abortion Democrat.

“We’ve changed [our votes],” said Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio).

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