Conservative Rumblings

Completely expected, of course. Silly things like the Constitution won’t stand in the way of the Progressive agenda. After all, it’s just an outdated piece of paper anyway in the Left’s eyes. The Democrats know they have an avowed Constitution-hater in the Oval Office prepared to do whatever is necessary to pass a takeover of 1/6 of our economy by the Federal government and they’ve mounted a bullet train headed to progressive/totalitarian hell. Unfortunately for us, we’re all in the passenger cars, with armed guards standing between us and the conductor.

From 1 AM votes to insane manager’s amendments that force a 2/3 vote to repeal Obamacare to bribing and threatening senators, this Congress and president have taken massively illegal and unconstitutional steps to ensure that this monstrously destructive bill is voted into law and forced upon an unwilling American public that would rather the government scrap the entire plan than pass ANY ‘reform’ this year.

During a series of seven votes wrapping up the health care debate, Senate Republicans failed in their last-ditch efforts to derail the bill.

The Senate voted 60-39 to reject Sen. John Ensign’s call to examine the constitutionality of a health care mandate central to the overhaul bill.

The Nevada Republican wanted to determine whether it was constitutional for the federal government to require Americans to purchase health insurance.

The Senate also rejected an amendment by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, by a vote of 60-39.

I give kudos to the Repbulicans in the Senate for forcing the Democrats to go on record saying that the unconstitutional individual mandate in the bill is not worthy of being challenged on Constitutional grounds. Obviously, forcing Americans to buy a product (in this case, healthcare coverage) is illegal, unconstitutional and reprehensible. Basically, it’s the embodiment of this Congress and administration’s motto.

The government cannot force someone to buy something. Not only is that not a power listed in the Constitution, it’s also completely against our whole founding principle of freedom from tyranny. One of my illustrious Senators from Illinois, Roland Burris, made the idiotic argument a few weeks ago that it was the same as requiring people to buy auto insurance.

It’s not. I can choose not to drive. Under Obamacare, I cannot choose not to buy an “approved” healthcare plan. The heavy hand of the government rests on my shoulder and orders me to buy something I may or may not want.

If I don’t want to buy health insurance, THAT IS MY RIGHT as a free citizen in the United States of America. No government, be it Federal, State or Local can step up to me and order me to spend my money on a product. I have the CHOICE to not buy it.

Well, technically I DO have that choice…but if Nancy Pelosi has her way, I would end up in jail for not buying a government approved plan.

Hey Congress, you lying pack of socialists: tell me again this bill is Constitutional.

Pathetic. It looks like Reid has his 60 votes to push socialism onto the American public, despite the fact that the majority of Americans oppose the bill.

It appears that the White House threatening to shut down Air Force bases in Nebraska really got to Nelson.

WASHINGTON - With a self-imposed Christmas deadline at stake, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid engineered a last-minute compromise that has won the support of the lone Democratic holdout and clinched the required 60 votes to pass a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. health care system.

Democratic leaders offered Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska a deal similar to the $300 million in Medicaid aid Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana got for her support.

I’m disgusted. Let’s look at what we’ve learned from this Nelson debacle. As with Landrieu and the $300 million bribe she was ‘so proud‘ to take back in November, Nelson has proved that he’s just a smarmy little politician who only cares about his own personal gain.

A bribe is a bribe. As I’ve stated over and over again, Obama has brought a pay to play Chicago politics to Washington and this is just another example of it. What’s scary is the second part, the threat to shut down Nebraska Air Force bases if Nelson didn’t play ball with Obamacare.

Think about this. Barack Obama would be willing to shut down a military installation and put thousands of people out of work…for one vote on a socialist healthcare plan. How completely screwed up is this? He’s willing to endanger our national security and kill jobs. That’s not the actions of someone trying to preserve our country. Those are the actions of someone who doesn’t care about America as it has existed for the last 233 years. Those are the actions of someone who wants this country remade into his image of communist paradise and will stop at nothing to get there.

Democrats physically lock Republicans out of meeting room because they don’t want to take a vote on Countrywide Mortgage’s corruption.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.

Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.

For months Towns has refused Republican requests to subpoena records in the case. Last Thursday Committee Republicans, led by Issa, were poised to force an open vote on the subpoenas at a Committee mark-up meeting. The mark-up was abruptly canceled. Only Republicans showed up while Democrats chairs remained empty.

Change We Can Believe In.

With Cap and Tax and universal deathcare on the table, and an ineffective porkulus proving to be a massive failure as unemployment skyrockets, it seems voters may finally be souring to the Democrats, according to the latest set of Rasmussen polling data.

Republican candidates continue to lead on the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot as Democrats fall to their lowest level of support among voters in recent years.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 40% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would choose the Democratic candidate.

Support for both parties dropped one point over the past week, with Democrats reaching their lowest level support in over two years of polling. Support for Republican candidates is just one point below its highest level over that same time period.

I am cautiously optimistic about this; voters have short memories. I can only hope this trend hangs on until the 2010 election and voters remember how badly the Democrats have been destroying the economy and endangering their freedoms.

The American Thinker has the disturbing facts: the Democrats are already moving to adopt a Big Brother-esque Internet “security” policy that gives the White House unprecedented power to regulate the Internet. I predicted this rise of totalitarianism, but not this soon. God help us all.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 would, for example, give the President unfettered power to shut down Internet traffic in emergencies or disconnect any critical infrastructure system or network on national security grounds. The bill would grant the Commerce Department the ability to override all privacy laws to access any information about Internet usage in connection with a new role in tracking cybersecurity threats.

The bill, introduced by Sens. John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe, would also give the government unprecedented control over computer software and Internet services, threatening innovation, freedom and privacy. CDT President and CEO Leslie Harris said, “The cybersecurity threat is real, but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy.”

Full text of the bill here (.pdf): http://cdt.org/security/CYBERSEC4.pdf

This cannot be allowed. If the Democrats are allowed to pass this obscene measure, it could spell the end of the Internet as we know it in the United States. The government would be free to regulate traffic and track users in a manner eerily reminiscent to what China does to its citizens. Political dissidents can be cataloged and tracked, their every move monitored and recorded. Every day citizens will be watched as they go about their lives.

Just picture the government being able to pull up your IP address and scroll through a list of every website you visit, every word you type and every email you send. Unnerved yet? You should be; government regulation of the Internet isn’t coming…it’s here and ready to be voted on.

Hello, Big Brother. Goodbye, privacy and freedom.

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One more thing…a good point made by a reader (@Bob_Clark) from Twitter: Didn’t Liberals complain about Bush doing the same thing?

Absolutely, they did…they went nuts about the Patriot Act “stealing their rights” for years, but now we haven’t heard a whimper from them about this piece of work. Double standard? Or stupidity? I say both.

You know it’s getting bad when the liberal media points it out. It’s going to be a fun time to sit back and watch the party gnaw itself to death from the inside out.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration and the new Congress are rapidly giving Republicans the same “culture of corruption” issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.

Democrats’ ethical issues are popping up at a dizzying pace, after less than two months of party control of both the White House and Congress. Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill. is only the latest embarrassment.

What are the other embarrassments, you ask? The Associated Press helpfully gathered them up:

The political mess for the Democratic Party, however, isn’t Burris’ conduct alone; it’s the pattern that has developed so quickly over the past few months.

_The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is the subject of a House ethics investigation. It’s partly focused on his fundraising practices for a college center in his name, his ownership financing of a resort property in the Dominican Republic and his financial disclosure reports.

_Federal agents raided two Pennsylvania defense contractors that were given millions of dollars in federal funding by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

_Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9 on federal charges, including allegations that he schemed to sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder.

_Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, abandoned his bid to become health and human services secretary and the administration’s point man on reforming health care; and Nancy Killefer stepped down from a newly created position charged with eliminating inefficient government programs.

Both Daschle and Killefer had tax problems, and Daschle also faced potential conflicts of interest related to working with health care interests.

_Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed to his post after revealing he had tax troubles.

_Obama’s initial choice for commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, stepped aside due to a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors.

_While the Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm William Lynn as deputy defense secretary, Obama had to waive his ethics regulations to place the former defense lobbyist in charge of day-to-day operations at the Pentagon.

“They’re dying.”

“Let them die!”

According to the RealClearPolitics Composite, Obama is up 7.1 on McCain nationally. This is not surprising given McCain’s JuneSwoon from 45 percent down to where he currently sits at around 40 percent. Maybe it has something to do with his open-borders pandering. Just a thought.

A hilarious number out of that list, however, is Newsweek, which absurdly puts Obama up 15 points, whereas every other pollster (except the blind and deaf LA Times) has it much closer. Hmm…I wonder which is more accurate: a magazine that wrote a fake article about the Koran being flushed down a toilet or six other sources. Silly liberals.

Other notables:

Florida
Rasmussen gives McCain 7 point edge

Ohio
Rasmussen says McCain +1, RCP composite says Obama +4.5

And finally, because it is the best set of poll numbers out there right now:

President Bush Approval Rating: 28.3%.
Democrat-led Congress Approval Rating: 18.5%.

So much for the American people embracing the do-nothing Congress like Pelosi said we would. According to Gallup, 18 percent ties the lowest EVER recorded approval rating for Congress. Good going Dems!

The Senate today passed a bloated, pork filled spending bill by a veto-proof 75-22 margin. The Republicans are getting stage fright and are breaking ranks in a pathetic attempt to save their worthless seats. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this leading up to the election this fall, especially with the Obamessiah atop the ticket turning out hordes of ignorant (but newly registered!) voters.

WASHINGTON - In a stunning vote that illustrated President Bush’s diminished standing, the Senate on Thursday ignored his veto threat and added tens of billions of dollars for veterans and the unemployed to his Iraq war spending bill.

A majority of Republicans broke ranks with Bush on a veto-proof 75-22 vote while adding more than $10 billion for various other domestic programs, including heating subsidies for the poor, wildfire fighting, road and bridge repair, and health research.

Our party has forgotten where it came from and who elected them. We may as well just lose those seats in November and get Democrats in there, because half the sitting senators are voting with the Dems anyway. At least then we’d know what we’re getting, instead of a bunch of wimpy RINOs who duck and cover as soon as the going gets tough.

It’s no fun when we have Republicans who campaign under one flag and then cower like hurt puppies when the vote is actually called. Our party is losing this election one vote at at time, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

That’s it ladies and gentlemen…I am jumping ship to the winning team.

No longer will I cry out for justice for criminals; live and let live is what I say. If they want to come here against our laws, who are we to stop their personal ambitions? It would be wrong and mean for us to insist that our laws are followed when it would harm the personal expression of a foreign national.

I’m also upset about taxes; I don’t think the government is taking enough of my money. After all, I really need them to watch over me and hold my hand as I move through life. How can they do that if we don’t give them enough money?

Speaking of money…I’ve just about had enough of businesses making money. How dare they embrace a capitalist society and make a profit through hard work and innovation! It’s wrong to penalize everyday citizens just because because they haven’t had the chance to found a company like Microsoft! I think we need to evenly distribute all the money these bloodthirsty, greedy companies earn every quarter to everyone in America, just to even things out.

Of course, first we have to make sure we put a cap on their profit margins. If they earn more than the government says they can, it’s time to cut them back! No more of this silly “work hard” stuff; those who have worked hard just did it so they can share it with everyone else!

The Right’s foreign policy doesn’t make sense either. Why are we not sitting across the table from the evil dictators of the world trying to understand their feelings? Maybe their dictator-ness is just a by-product of how they were raised! We can’t judge people on their backgrounds! We need to give everyone a fair chance, no matter how many innocents they have killed or how many rights they have trampled on.

Al Qaeda is really just misunderstood; we need to have a little afternoon of tea with Osama bin Laden, explain our side of the story, and I’m sure he’ll be reasonable enough to call off his jihad. After all, they are only trying to kill us all because we are not the same religion as he is; that can’t be THAT big of a deal, can it?

In the spirit of good faith, I agree wholeheartedly with the Democrats on disarming America. If we mothball all our weapons, dump our nukes in the ocean and throw our rifles at the feet of the extremists bent on trying to kill us, I’m sure they’ll be so moved by our gesture of solidarity that they’ll drop their sticks of dynamite, climb out of their caves and shake our hands, ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity for the entire world.

For all of their bluster and their lies that they want to help protect the country, they just took another huge step towards destroying it.

Since President Bush signed H.R. 2764 into law, it will essentially repeal the Secure Border Act of last year, and it means that there is longer be any legal requirements to construct ANY fence whatsoever.

Keep in mind that the places along the border where the double layered fence were installed,illegal crossings were seriously reduced:

As part of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform Act (P.L. 104-208), Rep. Hunter authored the legislative language mandating a 14-mile triple fence along the San Diego-Mexico land border, which augmented the single layer fence he had built with surplus landing-matt in 1989. Since then he has worked, most notably against strong opposition of the Clinton Administration, to see that project completed. Since construction of the San Diego fence began:

Illegal alien apprehensions along the fenced region dropped from over 202,000 in 1992 to about 9,000 in 2004. Further, it is estimated that the apprehensions vs. attempts ratio increased to over 90%;

With the establishment of the San Diego border fence, crime rates in San Diego have fallen off dramatically. According to the FBI Crime Index, crime in San Diego County dropped 56.3% between 1989 to 2000;

Vehicle drive-throughs in the region have fallen from between 6 to 10 per day before the construction of border infrastructure, to only 4 drive-throughs in 2004 and those occurred only where the secondary fence is incomplete;

The fence has forced drug smugglers, who once easily crossed the San Diego border, to attempt to enter the U.S. through major ports of entry instead. This significantly increases the likelihood of discovery and seizure of illegal narcotics entering our country.

As a result of the success of the San Diego fence, Rep. Hunter authored the provisions of the Secure Fence Act calling for the construction of 854 miles of border fence along the five most prolific smuggling corridors on the Southwest border. While construction of the Secure Fence project is not moving as rapidly as Rep. Hunter would like, the Administration is moving forward and as of September 30, 2007, 70 miles of new border pedestrian fence has been constructed. Congressman Hunter remains engaged in ensuring that the Administration meets the mandates put in place by the Secure Fence Act and secures our borders as rapidly as possible.

http://www.gohunter08.com/inner.asp?z=4

This is typical of the Democrats, though. These provisions are just snuck into the bill as well. If you read the whole thing, you’ll see that it is mostly a spending bill, with the border defense destruction hidden way down deep.

On top of the immigration fence problems, the whole thing is totally full of pork…but that’s a whole other topic.

I’m so sick of this Congress.