At least, he’s claiming that he’s been forbidden it by Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Providence Diocese, and Bishop Tobin hasn’t denied it - and Tobin has denied that he’s ordered priest under his authority to actually deny Kennedy the Sacrament. Bishop Tobin’s office has also released a letter indicating that the bishop has chastised the Congressman on the subject of abortion since at least 2007; which will call into question the accuracy of Kennedy’s accusation that this is all about the Church’s firm line on abortion funding. It’s probably a factor, and it’s certainly true that Rep. Kennedy has been obdurate in his heresy* for some time, so this is merely the latest salvo.

Still, it’d be nice if we didn’t have to deal with this particular legacy Congressman. There’s actually a serious candidate this go-round: John Loughlin. State legislator, business owner, former military; not to be unkind, but Kennedy really hasn’t worked a day in his [expletive deleted] life, and it shows. Like, for example, in Kennedy’s ability to get himself sufficiently in trouble with the Church on this issue so as to actually be denied the Sacrament.

That takes skill.

Moe Lane

*The fact that the Church has neither the ability nor the particular desire to punish Rep. Kennedy (or other avowedly pro-abortion Catholics) for their shared heresy does not make it any less of one.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Sixty Senators voted to proceed to debate health care. There will be another shot at stopping it through filibuster.

Mary Landrieu, after getting $300 million in the bill for Louisiana, voted for it.

Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas not only voted for it, but now favors a public option.

Voters will remember.

Along the way, there seems to be divisions shaping up within the Democratic Party. Amendments will be offered to try to patch up differences.

Republicans should exploit this. Drag out consideration of the bill as those divisions grow, then offer amendments to exploit the divisions.

As I have said before, if Republicans work to improve the legislation, they presuppose its passage. Instead, the GOP should plan for the destruction of the bill by offering amendments designed to divide and fracture the Democrat coalition.

As promised. Short version: DNC beat RNC, NRSC edged DSCC, DCCC edged NRCC, and cash on hand would worry me more if the GOP hadn’t just removed the NJ & VA governorships from the Democrats and essentially handed NY-23 as part of a unfortunate but necessary life lesson to the GOP leadership.

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Eight of them:

Allentown union official Nick Balzano has been a political punching bag all week because he threatened to file a grievance against the city for allowing a Boy Scout to clear a walking path in a city park.

Three days of taking body blows nationally from conservative pundits, a rebuke from the Lehigh Valley’s congressman and even a lashing from his own union led Balzano to voluntarily resign his position Thursday as head of the local Service Employees International Union.

Balzano said he and seven other executive officers of the local SEIU stepped down.

Via HolyCoast.com. Note that the SEIU itself hung Balzano out to dry: when your guys are already out there on camera beating up protesters and gadflies, it’s not a good time to start a fight with the Boy Scouts of America*.  I suggest that the various loyalists of that organization keep that in mind.

Moe Lane

*Not that it’s ever a good time.  Nobody smart in American politics messes with the Scouts. Boy or Girl Scouts.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Senator Landrieu and Senator Lincoln have announced they would give their vote to Senator Reid and the White House to allow ObamaCare to the Senate floor.

For the group of U.S. Senators up in 2010 — the ones facing the independent voters that turned 2:1 against the Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia elections — they will each be tagged all election cycle with providing the one vote needed for ObamaCare to come before the Senate. They could have stopped it, but they did not.

The vote on cloture on the motion to proceed needs 60 votes, and therefore every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Independent can be accurately accused of providing the winning vote for Senator Reid to proceed to the very unpopular bill.

This message, I am certain, will make it into campaign commercials in 2010.

Below is a list of the Democratic Senators up in 2010, and the email contact links for each of their offices:

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• Animation of the rise of unemployment since 2007
  Very interesting to watch. And yes, it has only gotten worse since Obama got elected.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I don’t know if Mediaite deliberately omitted the reason for former President Bill Clinton’s refusal to attend a Keith Olbermann-boosted ‘free clinic event.’  It’s entirely possible that the actual reason (warning: FDL link) - that Clinton thinks that the event in question is a thinly-veiled primary campaign event against Senator Blanche Lincoln (D, AR) and for Democratic Senate hopeful Bill Halter - was simply uninteresting to Mediaite, which is of course that site’s privilege.

That being said, this kind of allegation is newsworthy.  A former President accusing a more-or-less prominent Leftist television commentator of playing internal Democratic party politics with people’s health care coverage?  This should have been front and center on the site.  Heck, it should be above the fold on the New York Times.

‘Should,’ not ‘will.’

Moe Lane

PS: Does MSNBC… approve of this?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

It was this past week in which Barack Obama said that deficit spending could cause a double dip recession. Nonetheless, a “New Consensus Views Stimulus as Worthy Step.” That, at least, is the headline in the New York Times as it tries, on its front page above the fold, to push for a second stimulus.

But things are not as they seem.

Remember, Obama says more deficit spending is bad. Then there is this:

Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.

No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation’s debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.

The Times goes on to say that “more dispassionate analysts [have] reach[ed] a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.” But concedes that only “a quarter of the stimulus money [has gone] out the door after nine months.”

If all of this is above the fold in the New York Times, particularly the last bit, why the heck do we need a second stimulus? Only one quarter of the first stimulus has been used and unemployment continues to rise.

Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, convicted on bribery and racketeering charges and sentenced to a Congressional-record 13-year sentence, recently received a couple of significant holiday-season gifts from Judge T.J. Ellis III.

Recently, Judge Ellis decided that Jefferson is not a flight risk and may remain free pending appeal, a process that may take a year or more. During that time, Jefferson must wear a monitor and may not travel without prior court approval.

Today, Judge Ellis agreed that Jefferson’s legal expenses will be covered by the court during his appeal. Jefferson and his wife recently filed for bankruptcy, due in large part to the legal bills incurred during his trial.

Admittedly, Jefferson might have problems paying for new legal bills out of his Congressional pension, estimated to be $40,000 to $55,000 per year. Then again, once he’s incarcerated, he won’t be shelling out a lot on food, clothing or shelter.

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Someone forwarded me this via email and it was too good not to share. I’m not sure of the original source, but if anyone can identify it for me, I’m happy to credit it.

UPDATE: Near as I can tell, the logo at the bottom appears to reference this site.

UPDATE 2 by Erick: The numbers appears to come from the House Republican Conference’s policy shop, which is the group overseen by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN).

5.5 million — Number of jobs that could be lost as a result of taxes on businesses that cannot afford to provide health insurance coverage, according to a model developed by Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer

$729.5 billion — Total new taxes on small businesses, individuals who cannot afford health coverage, and employers who cannot afford to provide coverage that meet federal bureaucrats’ standards

$1.055 trillion — New federal spending on expanded health insurance coverage over the next ten years, according to a Congressional Budget Office preliminary score of the bill

0.7% — Percentage of all that new spending occurring in the bill’s first three years-representing a debt and tax “time bomb” in the program’s later years set to explode on future generations

$88,200 — Definition of “low-income” family of four for purposes of health insurance subsidies

114 million — Number of individuals who could lose their current coverage under the bill’s government-run health plan, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group

43 — Entitlement programs the bill creates, expands, or extends-an increase from H.R. 3200

111 — Additional offices, bureaus, commissions, programs, and bureaucracies the bill creates over and above the entitlement expansions-more than double the number in H.R. 3200

3,425 — Uses of the word “shall,” representing new duties for bureaucrats and mandates on individuals, businesses, and States-also more than double the number in H.R. 3200

$60 billion — Loss sustained by taxpayers every year due to Medicare fraud, according to a recent 60 Minutes expose; the government-run health plan does not reform the ineffective anti-fraud statutes and procedures that have kept Medicare on the Government Accountability Office’s list of high-risk programs for two decades

Zero — Prohibitions on government programs like Medicare and Medicaid from using cost-effectiveness research to impose delays to or denials for access to life-saving treatments

$634 Billion — Amount that could be saved by denying individuals access to treatments that are not “cost-effective,” according to a report by the liberal Commonwealth Fund; Section 1160 of the bill gives bureaucrats in the Obama Administration virtual free rein to develop a new “high-value” reimbursement system for Medicare by May 2012

2017 — Year Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted-an entitlement crisis exacerbated by the bill, which according to the Congressional Budget Office will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care by $598 billion in its first ten years alone

$2,500 — Promised savings for each American family from health reform, according to then-Senator Obama’s campaign pledge-savings which the Administration’s own actuaries have confirmed will not materialize, as the Pelosi health care bill would increase the growth of health care costs

Go here and enter your zipcode. You’ll get a quick talking point and the local office number of your United States Senators.

Tell them to vote NO on cloture.

I’ll be on Sean Hannity’s Great American Panel tonight at 9:30 with Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Rev. Jacques DeGraff.

It’s going to be a really good panel tonight, so I hope you’ll tune in to it.

Consider this an open thread.

From a reliable staffer:

Phone calls are not going through at all now. Try calling my phone or any phone. It is not even the switchboard anymore. The entire Senate phone system has collapsed.

Keep melting the phones!

If you’re wondering where health care dollars go in this country, the invaluable Phil Klein reminds us:

Raymond Raad, a resident in psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and co-author of a new Cato study, presented evidence showing that the United States leads the world in the development of drugs, medical devices, and other advanced treatments. For instance, between 1969 and 2008, 57 of the 97 Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology — or nearly 60 percent — were awarded to people who did their research in the U.S., and nine of the top 10 medical innovations between 1975 and 2000 were developed here. But … once these products are developed in the U.S., they become widely available and improve health care outcomes around the world.

Read the whole thing, and remember: that’s the system the Democrats are trying to tear down and replace with one more like the European countries that depend almost as heavily on American medical and pharmaceutical innovations as they do on American military protection. In both cases, the arguments for the superiority of a European model that is unsustainable on its own depend on somebody else assuming the role of America. And nobody’s volunteering for the job.

Michael E. Hammond is one of three mentors I have been lucky enough to work for during my career. When I worked for him, he was the General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee. He has run for Congress twice in New Hampshire and is now the General Counsel of Gun Owners for America. He is one of the two smartest political strategists I know. He is brilliant, a genius (literally, scored perfect on his SAT.) And the only thing I know about his work in the Army is he cannot talk about it.

REDSTATE WEB EXCLUSIVE

November 19, 2009
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Michael Hammond
RE: The Reid Bill: The Mandates, Public Option,
Regulation, Rationing, and Taxes

EDITORS NOTE

Harry Reid’s objective has been to secret the provisions of the most important piece of legislation in our lifetimes until he could cram it down Americans’ throats because there was insufficient time to analyze and mobilize against it. To some extent, he has succeeded. I have done what I could, given the need to disseminate this at least a day before the Senate moved to cloture on the motion to proceed. I have therefore focused on the mandates, the public option, regulation, rationing, and taxes.

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Got this from a high level source:

I just came from dinner and recognized the voices beside me. It was Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and three other Democrats. I knew the other faces but names escape me.

They were strategizing on how to raise the gas tax. Congressman Blumenauer said he knew a way to get at least 20 Republicans on board a gas tax increase. The place was loud and that’s about all I could make out. They talked about other times when they manages to split us. It was not fun nor easy to hold back.

Over the last few days, speculation concerning Rudy Giuliani’s plans for 2010 has run rampant.  I have seen stories variously claiming with certainty that Rudy will run for governor, that he won’t run for governor, that he hasn’t decided whether to run for governor, that he will run for Senate, and that he hasn’t decided anything yet.  Provided that Rudy hasn’t already made up his mind and is just being coy with everyone, this poll released today from Marist (.pdf) may perhaps be informing his thinking. 

It indicates, among other things, that Rudy would plaster current sitting governor David Paterson.  However, Paterson is pretty much a dead man walking at this point, and the general assumption is that Andrew Cuomo will get the D nomination.  Against, Cuomo, Rudy currently trails by 10, 53-43.  Both men are relatively widely-known quantities in New York, so it’s difficult to imagine a radical shift in either’s favor. 

On the other hand, Rudy’s path to the Senate appears substantially easier.  First, the Marist poll indicates he would easily win a hypothetical primary against Pataki (71-24), and that he holds a substantial lead (54-40) over Gillibrand. This would seem to indicate that if Rudy enters this race, it would promptly become one of the GOP’s best pickup opportunities in 2010, perhaps better than NV, AR, CT or DE. 

In talking to several New Yorkers, most of them would prefer to see Rudy run for the Governor’s mansion, where his talents would be put to a more direct use.  However, as a matter of pure political calculus, Rudy can doubtless see where the easiest path back to elective office lies. And if he has designs on a run for 2012 or beyond, the Senate might be the best place for him to mend fences with the portions of the national GOP electorate that cost him the 2008 primary, as well.

Call your Senator right now. Use this link to bypass the congressional switchboard.

Tell your Senator to vote NO on cloture for the motion to proceed to debate.

If the health care legislation goes to debate, Harry Reid will start offering amendments to pick off votes.

Call your Senator right now. Tell them both that a yes vote on cloture is a vote for the health care bill. The Congressional Research Service’s latest study proves that.

Roger Hedgecock has the top story at Human Events today.

Though private fraud gets the bigger headline (think Bernie Madoff), fraud in federal government programs is now so pervasive that even the Obama press is taking notice. The scope of fraud in all federal programs dwarfs the corruption in the private sector the media loves to sensationalize.

Consider the fraud in the Wall Street bailout. Here’s just one example.

This past week, the Inspector General for the TARP $700 billion bailout reported that taxpayers will “almost certainly” lose money on their investments in the “too big to fail” financial institutions.  One reason, it’s safe to say, is contained in Neil Barofsky’s revelation that he is conducting 65 separate investigations of possible fraud involving TARP funds.

Keep up the calls!

Quoting the email:

CIO Customer Service Bulletin – Problem Notification —
Assistant Sergeant at Arms; Chief Information Officer

Date: November 20, 2009
Time: 11:30 AM
Affected Service: Telephones

Problem/Symptom/Status: We are experiencing a high volume of calls which is having an impact on call transfers and voice mail. We are continuing to monitor the situation. Whenever possible offices are encouraged to retrieve and delete messages from the voice mail system throughout the day and evening.

Affected Location(s): All
Master Ticket Opened: No
Estimated Time to Restore: Unknown