Herman Cain Wins South Carolina 2012 GOP Debate

Brian Montopoli - To get an idea of the strangeness of the first debate of the 2012 presidential cycle - the unofficial kickoff to the 2012 GOP race - consider this: Based on the Fox News focus group conducted immediately following the event, Herman Cain is about to run away with the GOP nomination.
If you're wondering who that is, you're not alone: The former Godfather's Pizza CEO, who barely registers in national polls, has never held elected office. And he is seen as having virtually no chance to win the GOP nomination.
But the vast majority of the people sitting in with Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Cain had won the debate with his directness and straightforward delivery. (This despite the fact that when asked about what he would do in Afghanistan, he replied that he would rely on "the experts and their advice and their input." The Fox News debate moderators seemed incredulous that he did not offer a position.) Luntz appeared blown away by the response to Cain, which he cast as unprecedented. "Something very special happened this evening," he said.
Perhaps. But the debate was seen as such a non-event inside the beltway that House Speaker John Boehner spent his evening not watching it, opting instead to have a few drinks at a Washington steakhouse. "I'll read about it tomorrow," he told Hotsheet.
The absence of the biggest-name potential candidates - Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, even Donald Trump - meant the event it generated little attention despite its status as the first debate of the cycle. Among the five men onstage - Cain, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum - only Pawlenty is seen by Washington insiders as having a legitimate shot at the GOP nomination.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the first debate for potential 2012 GOP presidential candidates

(Credit: Fox News)

Pawlenty's goal was to look presidential - despite his relatively unheralded company - and he largely pulled it off. The toughest moment for the former governor was when he was asked to defend his past support for a cap-and-trade energy policy, which got a smattering of boos. Pawlenty explained himself in part by saying, literally, "nobody's perfect."
In perhaps his most interesting response of the night, he notably declined to take a shot at likely rival Mitt Romney over Romney's Massachusetts health care law.
"Governor Romney's not here to defend himself so I'm not going to pick on him or the position he took in Massachusetts," Pawlenty said. The intraparty sparring, it appears, will have to wait.
Pawlenty did find a way to go after President Obama on foreign policy -- despite the boost Mr. Obama got from the killing of Osama bin Laden. He said that while the president "did a good job and I tip my cap to him in that moment," the raid on bin Laden is "not the sum total" of Mr. Obama's foreign policy record. In other areas, Pawlenty insisted, the president has been "weak."
"The issues that have come up while he's been president, he's gotten them wrong strategically every single time," Pawlenty said. At one point, he referred to the United Nations as "pathetic."
Santorum, who was relatively combative much of the evening, complained that Mr. Obama "sided with the mullahs" during the protests in Iran.
"If you look at what President Obama has done right in foreign policy, it has always been a continuation of the Bush policies," said Santorum, who said Mr. Obama has "gotten it wrong" every other time.
The 90-minute debate took place at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina, a key early voting state. The candidates were not asked to engage with one another, limiting the fireworks.

Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum

(Credit: CBS/AP)

The first applause of the evening came for Paul, who said the killing of bin Laden was a good opportunity to end the war in Afghanistan. Johnson, a fellow Libertarian, echoed that sentiment, saying the troops should come home "tomorrow."
Asked if they would support waterboarding terror suspects under certain circumstances - an issue rekindled by the killing of bin Laden, Paul, Pawlenty and Santorum raised their hands. Paul and Johnson did not. Both Paul and Johnson also discussed their support for barring the federal government from making drugs illegal. (Moderators pressed Paul on heroin specifically.) Paul drew another distinction with most of the men onstage when he said all foreign aid to the Middle East should be cut and that America should not be running secret CIA prisons.
Johnson, who supports abortion rights, became frustrated with debate moderators at one point, complaining he was not being asked enough questions. He also received the most frivolous question of the night, asked what his reality show would be about if he were offered one.
Santorum was pressed all night on being an extremist - he denied being "anti-Islam" or too socially conservative to win a general election - and pointed to his past electoral successes to cast himself as electable when debate moderators asked if Mr. Obama is unbeatable. (Unsurprisingly, he left out the 18 percentage point drubbing he took in losing his Senate seat in 2006.)
The also-ran nature of the debate was reflected in the fact that moderators asked a cluster of questions focused on the potential candidates who were not present. Paul was asked if Rep. Michele Bachmann had taken his mantle of Tea Party leader; Pawlenty was asked his thoughts on Huckabee. ("I love the Huck," he replied, awkwardly.)
The economy is the most important issue for a plurality of Americans, and the candidates certainly seized on it. Pawlenty, for one, called the National Labor Relations Board's bid to keep Boeing from building Dreamliner 787s at a nonunion plant in South Carolina "preposterous."
It was a good issue for Pawlenty (and Cain, too, who also cited it), because it allowed them to rail against big government, cast themselves as job creators, and spotlight an issue important to South Carolina voters. That's an opportunity they weren't going to pass up. (Indeed, Pawlenty focused on the same issue in a CBS News interview before the debate.) 
Polls show a wide-open Republican race led by Romney, Huckabee and Trump, and Thursday night's likely-little-watched festivities were unlikely to move the numbers all that much. For the unknown candidates it was a chance to make a splash - and from that perspective, Cain certainly seems to have acquitted himself nicely. But with most eyes focused elsewhere, Thursday night is likely to be remembered -- if it's remembered at all -- as a footnote in the march to the nomination.

House-Senate Mid-Term Elections Porjections " Republican Win House 49 - Senate 7"

After months of partisan wrangling, it is finally time for the voters to deliver their decision on the 2010 mid-term elections in the Congress, as Republicans seem to have the edge today.

Republicans need to gain a net of 39 seats to charge of the House and 10 seats to take over the Senate. Political experts think the first is almost a given, while the latter is still a longshot.

It isn't difficult to get to 39 seats for a GOP takeover, as most political experts are expecting the Republicans to be back in charge of the House.

The big question is how many seats will the GOP win.

One Republican lawmaker told me yesterday that his guess is 55 seats - that's one more than what Republicans won in 1994.

Others though see the chance for a much larger haul - 60, 70, even 80 seats or more. If the "wave" is that high, then a number of unsuspecting Democrats will likely get swept out tonight, as happened in 2006 to then-Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA), even though Democrats didn't even target him.

"You're going to see somebody like that fall this time," says Henry Olsen, an elections expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

"On my list, I have what I call 'Super Upset Specials'," as Olsen and many others around here try to figure out who might be at risk on a night like this.

I should resist making any predictions like that, but I will say that I wonder if the GOP advantage in the state of Michigan could mean that a longtime Democratic lawmaker will go down to defeat.

Where are Democrats at risk of losing seats? I don't mean to be flip - but 'just about anywhere' is the answer, from New England to Blue Dogs in the South, to the Midwest and West.

As of today, Republicans have no seats in New England in the U.S. House. They have a chance to change that in Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Republicans have only two of the 29 seats in the New York delegation. They have a chance to increase that dramatically.

In key states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, the losses could approach a half dozen seats in each state if the wave is big enough for the GOP.

Virginia could see at least three Democrats go down. Meanwhile, Blue Dog Democrats are at risk in Virginia, North & South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi.

In Florida, Republicans think they can win four seats from the Democrats.

Texas could deliver as many as two to four seats for the GOP.

Indiana has three seats at risk, three or four more in Illinois, several in Michigan and Wisconsin could go to the GOP. Iowa has some GOP longshots.

Missouri has two seats that might shift, Arkansas has two or three, depending on the size of the Republican gains. Another one could go in Louisiana.

All three freshman Democrats in New Mexico are at risk, as are maybe four or five Democrats in Arizona. It probably didn't help to have arguments yesterday on the Arizona immigration law, a reminder for voters one day before the elections.

Democrats could lose the only House seat in both of the Dakotas, one in Kansas, three or four in Colorado, maybe one in Utah, another in Nevada and one in Idaho.

The Pacific Coast isn't immune either, as maybe three Democrats are at risk in California, another one or two in Oregon and a couple of seats in Washington State.

What about the GOP? Don't they have some seats at risk? Oh yeah, four or five tops - in Delaware, Louisiana, Hawaii, Illinois and south Florida. You can see how one-sided this election looks at this point.

So will the GOP win big? We'll see what the voters decide.

As for my election coverage tonight, I will be on with live reports starting through the evening, and then at 11pm EDT, I will be hosting several hours of election coverage, focusing on the race for Congress. Please check back on my blog all night, as I will be posting comments as the results unfold.

1-15 Children In U.S. Has Illegal Immigrant Parents

Howard Fischer - About one out of every 15 children in the United States was born to a family where at least one parent is in this country illegally, according to a new report today.

And four out of five of them are “anchor babies,” the Pew Hispanic Center concluded.

The figures, which the organization calculated based on 2009 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, are the best estimates to date of the scope of the issue which has resulted in calls to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny automatic citizenship to children solely by virtue of their birth within this country.

That percentage of children of illegal immigrant parents might be increasing.

The overall figure is about 6.8 percent of all children 17 and younger have at least one illegal immigrant parent.

But the center calculated that about 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States in 2008 were offspring of “unauthorized” immigrants. That computes out to 7.9 percent.

Researchers peg the number of illegal immigrants in the United States at something slightly in excess of 4 percent of the total population.

“But because they are relatively young and have high birth rates, their children make up a much larger share of the newborn population and the child population in this country,” the report says.
The 14th Amendment says that anyone born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of both this country and the state where they reside. Courts have interpreted that to entitle citizenship to those born in the United States regardless of whether one or both parents had no legal right to be here.

Some foes, including Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, argue those rulings are flawed.

He noted that the amendment makes its provisions conditional on the children being “subject to the jurisdiction” of this country. Pearce said courts, citing that language, concluded for years that did not entitle Native Americans to citizenship even though they were clearly born within the country’s borders.

It was only after Congress specifically altered the law regarding Indians that situation changed.

U.S. Is Bankrupt And We Don't Even Know It

Laurence Kotlikoff - Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.

What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”

But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”

The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.

Double Our Taxes

To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.

Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.

Is the IMF bonkers?

No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.

‘Unofficial’ Liabilities

Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.

For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.

The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.

$4 Trillion Bill

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

Worse Than Greece

Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.

Laurence Kotlikoff - This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.

Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.

My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”

(Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

Gallup Predicts A Republican Party Rout In The Midterms Based On Obama's Popularity Rating

Tyler Gurden - Gallup presents some troubling statistics for the democrats as we approach mid-term elections (a mere three months away). In a nutshell, the party of a president who has a sub-50% rating into midterms, has lost, on average, 36 seats since 1946. Alternatively, presidents with a popularity rating over 50%, lose just 14. As Gallup says: “The clear implication is that the Democrats are vulnerable to losing a significant number of House seats this fall with Barack Obama’s approval rating averaging 45% during the last two full weeks of Gallup Daily tracking. The Republicans would need to gain 40 House seats to retake majority control.”

Of course, the administration (and its dwindling members) is well-aware of this fact, which is why the next three months will likely see a record amount of pandering, populism and outright manipulation of everything that can be manipulated: that includes mortgages rates, and of course, stocks. Which leads us to observe the calendar of FOMC meetings until November: there are two - tomorrow and September 21. However, for a Fed loosening decision to have a material impact, the September meeting is likely cutting it too close to the election date, as the market will likely not have enough time to digest a favorable outcome, or in turn will be into its reactionary phase by the time November rolls around. Furthermore, the traditionally busy post-Labor day docket will likely mean events on the economic front already have to be in motion by then. Lastly, the fact that the Fed will have just a bare minimum quorum of just four directors through September 10 (at a minimum), means that any decision in the 11 days between then and the 21st will likely be far more problematic than one which has to be taken tomorrow. Which is why from a purely political calendar point of view, tomorrow’s Fed meeting is likely seen by the administration as a make or break. The tenuous 40 seat lead which will likely disappear should the current economic trajectory not change, is certainly on the radar for both Obama, and the very independent Federal Reserve.

More observations from Gallup:

On a historical basis, the Democrats under Jimmy Carter suffered the slimmest seat loss of a party whose president was below 50% approval, losing 11 seats in the 1978 midterms. More recently, Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2006 saw their parties lose enough seats in the House to turn party control over to the opposition party when they had less than majority approval.

The president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterm elections, regardless of how well the president is rated by the public. Since World War II, only Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2002 saw their parties gain seats in a midterm. Both men had approval ratings above 60% at the time of those elections. However, the parties of the other three presidents with ratings above 60% (Eisenhower in 1954, Kennedy in 1962, and Reagan in 1986) lost seats.

In general, though, the more popular a president is, the fewer seats his party loses, as presidents with approval ratings above 60% have averaged just a three-seat loss.

Demonize The Tea Party Through Association With Republican Establishment

Steve Watson - Democrat leaders have finally realised that anti-establishment sentiment is the driving force behind the Tea Party movement, announcing a plan to demonize it via a national campaign to associate the GOP and the Tea Party as one and the same.

The Associated Press reports:

“Democratic National Committee sources say the party’s strategy is to pose the November midterm elections as a contest between Democrats and a joint GOP-tea party plan for the country.”

The campaign will see grassroots activists painted as tools of the Republican establishment and the GOP associated with “extremist” ideologies.

The official launch of the campaign was made Wednesday by DNC Chairman Tim Kaine.

A website at www.republicanteapartycontract.com, a play on Newt Gingrich’s 1994 GOP “Contract With America”, along with a crudely produced video, mark the direction the DNC is taking.

The video urges viewers to “GET THE FACTS”, as it outlines a 10-point blueprint on what policies Tea Party candidates would enact if voted into power.

The items on the “Tea Party Contract on America” are:

1. Repeal the Affordable Care Act (Health insurance Reform)

2. Privatize Social Security or phase it out altogether

3. End Medicare as it presently exists

4. Extend the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and big oil

5. Repeal Wall Street Reform

6. Protect those responsible for the oil spill and future environmental catastrophes

7. Abolish the Department of education

8. Abolish the Department of energy

9. Abolish the environmental protection agency

10. Repeal the 17th Amendment which provides for the direct election of senators

These are mostly libertarian rooted positions that various tea party affiliated candidates and incumbents have espoused, except for numbers four and six, which are more direct accusations.

The video features images of Rep. Pete Sessions, who runs the GOP’s effort to elect House candidates, and Republican Caucus Chairman Mike Pence, as well as Senate candidates Rand Paul and Sharon Angle, amongst others.

The idea is clearly to depict such positions as outside of mainstream political thought, yet multiple recent national polls indicate that such a notion is deeply misguided.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has described the campaign as part of an “increasingly desperate strategy that remains ignorant of exactly why independent voters are fleeing them in droves”.

The key flaw in the Democratic campaign is that voters are now painfully aware that it is not the Tea Party and the GOP that are one and the same, it is the two establishment parties.

MSNBC & Corporate Media Says Sharron Angle Calling For Revolution

Democrats and liberals are petrified by the primary win by Sharron Angle in Nevada. She threatens to unseat the current Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and upset the Democrat balance in the Senate and because of this she must be demonized as a dangerous gun nut who advocates violent revolution.

Greg Sargent of the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, warned that Angle is calling for violent revolution. “In an interview she gave to a right-wing talk show host, Angle approvingly quoted Thomas Jefferson saying it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years — and said that if Congress keeps it up, people may find themselves resorting to ‘Second Amendment remedies,’” Sargent wrote.

“You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years,” Angle told radio host Lars Larson. “I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”

“The most charitable interpretation here was that Angle was floating armed insurrection,” opines Sargent.

Democrats and liberals continually avoid the fact the United States was established by a revolution in armed — and, yes, violent — opposition to tyranny. “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” states the Declaration of Independence.

A recent poll reveals 72 percent of voters disapprove of the job Congress is doing. The number hasn’t been that high since the week before the 1994 election. Obama’s weekly approval rating is at an all-time low, according to the Gallup Poll, and it is especially low among those 65 or older, those who are married, and those who attend church every week — in other words, the demographic “progressives” characterize as rightwing nut cases, bible-thumpers and Tea Party supporters.

Justin Elliott, writing for TPM, added an element of hysteria to the growing anti-Angle jihad:

For at least six years in the 1990s before she held state-level elective office, Angle was a member of the little-known Independent American Party, a right-wing party that combines elements of Ron Paul’s doctrinaire libertarianism — pro-gun, anti-tax, anti-bureaucracy, pro-states’ rights — with Christian social conservatism and fear of the “North American Union” and other forms of “global government.”

The Independent American Party is a threat to not only the Democrats but Republicans as well. The party was founded in 1967 by former Republican activist Daniel M. Hansen, who believed the GOP was growing “too corrupt and socialistic,” a fact beared out by the fact both Democrats and Republicans have increased the size of government and increased the national debt owed to the bankers.

“Don’t give up your guns, folks,” Hansen told a crowd. “That’s all we’ve got to protect us against the advance of socialism. America is in a survival phase.”

Constitutionalists continually place emphasis on using the electoral process to take the United States back to the days when it was a republic, but this aspect is almost completely ignored by the government and the corporate media. Chris Matthews, for instance, insists the Tea Party movement consists primarily of nativist neanderthals, racists, and gun nuts bent on violence.

The patriot movement is increasingly faced with calls by so-called liberals to grant Obama dictatorial power that violate the Constitution. For instance, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz has called for Obama to become a dictator in response to the BP disaster. “Don’t you think this is a moment where President Obama has to make sure that he lets everybody know that he’s calling the shots, and almost in words of maybe a dictator, that this is the way we’re going to do it?” said Schultz. “It’s OK tonight to act kind of like a dictator and call the shots saying this is the way it’s going to be.”

Schultz said the country can no longer afford the Constitution. Obama has to put a boot on the neck of those Schultz and the Democrats consider enemies. He made this statement in regard to BP but the mere suggestion of dealing with corporations and people in this way reveals an intolerance for all who would oppose Obama and the federal government.

Is it any wonder patriots are talking about taking back the government by the last resort means of revolution when Democrats and liberals are urging Obama to become a dictator?

Hopefully, so-called Tea Party candidates will realize a big win in November and during the presidential election in 2012. Short of that, other less palatable options may become necessary in order to save the country from tyranny.

Dems Anger Americans With Call For National ID Card

A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday.

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.

The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.

It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.

“The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal.

The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.

“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA,” said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.

“America’s broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms,” Calabrese added.

The ACLU said “if the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted.”

A source at one pro-immigration reform group described the proposal as “Orwellian.”

But Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), who has worked on the proposal and helped unveil it at a press conference Thursday, predicted the public has become more comfortable with the idea of a national identification card.

“The biometric identification card is a critical element here,” Durbin said. “For a long time it was resisted by many groups, but now we live in a world where we take off our shoes at the airport and pull out our identification.

“People understand that in this vulnerable world, we have to be able to present identification,” Durbin added. “We want it to be reliable, and I think that’s going to help us in this debate on immigration.”

Implementing a nationwide identification program for every worker will be a difficult task.

The Social Security Administration has estimated that 3.6 million Americans would have to visit SSA field offices to correct mistakes in records or else risk losing their jobs.

Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the biometric identification provision “will give some people pause.”

But she applauded Democrats for not shying away from the toughest issues in the immigration reform debate.

“What I like about the outline is that Democrats are not trying to hide the ball or soft-pedal the tough decisions,” Kelley said. “It seems a very sincere effort to get the conversation started. This is a serious effort to get Republicans to the table.”

Reform Immigration for America, a pro-immigrant group, praised Democrats for getting the discussion started but said the framework fell short.

“The proposal revealed today [Thursday] is in part the result of more than a year of bipartisan negotiations and represents a possible path forward on immigration reform,” the group said in a statement. “This framework is not there yet.”

Democrats and pro-immigration groups will now begin to put pressure on Republicans to participate in serious talks to address the issue. The bipartisan effort in the Senate suffered a serious setback when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pulled back from talks with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“We call on Republican Senators to review this framework and sit down at the negotiating table in good faith,” Reform Immigration for America said in a statement. “This is a national problem that requires a federal solution and the input of leaders in both parties.”

Durbin said Democratic leaders are trying to recruit other Republican partners.

“We’re making a commitment to establishing a framework to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, and I think it’s a good framework and now we’re engaging our friends on the other side of the aisle to join us in this conversation,” Durbin said.

A NEW "GAS TAX AND VAT TAX" COMING SOON

Get ready to pay even more for gas. If Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Democrat Sen. John Kerry, Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, and “moderate” Republicans get their way an additional 15 cents per gallon will be added to the gas tax.

Market analysts predict the price of oil will continue to rise for the rest of the month. “U.S. stockpiles of crude oil fell for the first time in 11 weeks in the week ending April 9, the Energy Department reported April 14,” Newsweek reports today.

Graham, Kerry, Lieberman and the Republicans are attempting to sell the gas tax increase to Congress as a climate bill compromise. “The Senate climate bill’s sponsors also appear to want the revenue raised from the tax to fund a variety of programs that would reduce industrial emissions, including helping manufacturers reduce energy use or boost wind and solar power installations by electric utilities,” Newsweek reports.

Earlier this week it was reported that wind turbines that are considered part of Obama’s “renewable-energy initiative” will be manufactured in China. The initiative is funded in part by Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

Congress is exploiting the widely debunked climate fraud to increases taxes on Americans.

In March, analysts predicted $3.00 per gallon gas prices in the weeks ahead. “Seasonal influences are strong this time of year and account for much of the expected increase that many analysts say will push gasoline to a nationwide average of at least $3 per gallon this spring,” the Associated Press reported on March 2.

“The higher prices come at a time when most Americans’ incomes are stagnant. Incomes edged up 0.1 percent in January, below analysts’ estimates, according to the Commerce Department,” AP added.

Additional financial burdens on the American public obviously do not concern Graham, Kerry, Lieberman and the Republicans. Congress is determined to push through punitive taxation schemes under the guise of phony climate change.

U.S. Debt Seen Heading For Crisis Level

Health care may have been the last big bang of the Obama presidency.

With ferocious speed, the financial crisis, recession and efforts to combat the recession have swung the U.S. debt from worrisome to ruinous, promising to handcuff the administration.

Lost amid last month's passage of the new health care law, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report showing that within this decade, President Obama's own budget sends the U.S. government to a potential tipping point where the debt reaches 90 percent of gross domestic product.

Economists Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University have recently shown that a 90 percent debt-to-GDP ratio usually touches off a crisis.

This year, the debt will reach 63 percent of GDP, a ratio that has ignited crises in smaller wealthy nations. Fiscal crises gripped Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Ireland when their debts were below where the United States is shortly headed.

Japan's debt is much higher, but most of it is held domestically, and Japan's economy has been weak for 20 years. "I really don't think we want to be like Japan," said UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach.

One advantage the United States has - and it is a big one - is that it issues the world's reserve currency and so can print dollars to service its debt.

The Obama budget will add $10 trillion to the national debt in the next decade and will not stabilize the deficit, the CBO found. Deficits are expected to dip as the recovery takes hold, but never below $724 billion a year. Interest costs alone will consume $5.6 trillion this decade. A balanced budget has been widely ruled out as unattainable.

"The real problem is not just current deficits but where we're heading," Auerbach said. "We're on a trajectory where the deficit's going to go down a little and then go up again. And we have no solution for that."

Deficits won't reverse
No one is advocating big tax increases or spending cuts before a recovery takes hold. The problem is that deficits will not reverse even after a full recovery.

Credit rating agency Moody's warned last month of a possible downgrade in U.S. Treasury debt. This year, Social Security is crossing a long-feared milestone at which it is paying more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. Study after study in the last year has raised alarms.

"In my judgment, a crisis could occur next week or 10 years from now," said Rudolph Penner, an Urban Institute economist who co-chaired a huge budget report sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration. "I don't really think we can go much beyond 10 years."

Polls show rising public alarm - and public refusal of specific spending cuts or tax increases required to change course. A Field Poll last month showed most Californians do not want to cut the largest parts of the state budget, such as education or transportation.

The polling firm Democracy Corps recently warned Democrats that the deficit now tops unemployment as a voter concern. But it also found voters "unenthusiastic" about the options to close the deficit. Voters overwhelmingly prefer spending cuts to tax hikes but reject cutting specific programs.

Republicans promise to make deficits a premier political issue. But during the health care debate, they opposed any cuts to Medicare, the chief source of rising deficits. They also oppose tax increases and defense cuts. In January, they sabotaged rare bipartisan legislation to create a powerful deficit-reduction commission that would have forced action.

Stabilizing the debt without raising taxes, cutting Medicare or defense, or defaulting on the debt would eviscerate everything else, from the Border Patrol to highways. Earmarks constitute a pittance.

The numbers don't add up for Democrats either. For all their railing against the Bush tax cuts that contributed to the current dilemma, Obama intends to extend almost all of them. That will cost $2.5 trillion, said the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Obama also escalated the war in Afghanistan.

And he joined Republicans in sabotaging the deficit commission by creating a substitute commission by executive order that seems designed to fail. It cannot compel action, and its recommendations are postponed until after the November election.

Consensus difficult
Obama and party leaders stacked it with partisans, from Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, to Andrew Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, making it difficult to get the 14 out of 18 votes required to agree on anything.

The executive order is a study in artfulness. It calls for a deficit target in 2015 that will be largely reached through the recovery and opens a wide escape hatch by saying decisions are contingent on the economy.

Democrats are already picking off low-hanging, deficit-reduction fruit to increase spending instead. Led by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, Democrats approved $61 billion in savings last week by cutting banks out of student lending - and used it to expand aid to students and colleges.

Democrats often give the impression that taxes on the rich can fix everything. But the center-left Tax Policy Center ran simulations showing that Obama's budget would have to raise $775 billion in new taxes every year to stabilize deficits at 2 percent of GDP. That means that if Obama keeps his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class, the rich would pay 90 percent of their income in taxes, the center said.

Obama "promised to be honest with the public, and he has a talent for doing so," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the moderate Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Yet he hasn't used it yet to describe what types of hard choices will be involved."

The Coming Obama Dictatorship

I commented on how pleased I’ve been to see Glenn Beck talking about a subject I’ve been writing about: a government-declared state of emergency leading to a “temporary” dictatorship.

Will Obama purposely foment “civil unrest” rather than wait for something like unemployment or runaway inflation to make it happen?

I have long believed that the mathematics of an insatiable entitlement society in the U.S. guarantees a runaway inflation, which likely would be followed by anarchy and chaos – a perfect excuse for government to resort to strong-armed totalitarian measures to “restore order.” My model has always been Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s, where runaway inflation brought Adolf Hitler to power.

I originally believed that the runaway-inflation scenario in the U.S. would play out in the early 1980s, but a combination of Ronald Reagan and an explosion in computers and electronic technology made possible by the remnants of our capitalist system headed it off.

Nevertheless, the threat of a runaway inflation has continued to increase over the years, even while our false-prosperity economy was booming. That’s because the underlying causes (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, insane union and government-employee wages and benefits, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) of our sick economy have never been addressed.

Unemployment is just a symptom; the disease is entitlements. Throughout the false-prosperity years, Social Security did not go away. It got bigger. Medicare did not go away. It got bigger. Virtually no other benefits went away. They only got bigger. So the underlying problem of entitlements not only has remained, but continued to grow.

The big news now is that Social Security may “go broke” this year instead of in 2017, which was originally projected. Really? And here I thought it’s been broke for decades. Ditto with Medicare. These programs were long ago Madoffized. Almost from the start, government has simply taken in new money from “investors” (read, taxpayers) and handed it over to those on the entitlements side of the fence – with a large chunk of the largesse being skimmed off the top for government employees who administer these programs (and vote for those whom they believe are most likely to safeguard their jobs).

All it took to bring things to a head was a shameful spending spree by a progressive Republican president and a Republican Congress, followed by the ascent of a committed Marxist to the presidency (along with a cooperative majority in Congress).

Now, throw on top of all that a huge new tax-and-spending bill (euphemistically referred to as “health-care legislation”), and the end result seems assured. However, with the government’s power to tax, print, and borrow, no one knows how long it will be before the inevitable runaway inflation sets in.

But if BHO truly has his mind set on establishing a dictatorship – and it is my personal belief that he does – it’s too risky for him to wait for a runaway inflation as an excuse to call a state of emergency. He knows that as long as there is a semblance of a free market in place, producers will continue to push back against the economy-killing effects of his policies.

Thus, he needs another excuse to declare a state of emergency, and over the past year I’ve given a lot of thought to what that excuse might be. In previous articles, I’ve mentioned a nuke exchange between Iran and Israel as one possibility. Another is civil unrest due to unemployment rates that could reach 25 percent or more in the not-too-distant future.

These and others still remain possibilities, but last week Glenn Beck came up with one that may be even more likely. Beck believes that Obama will continue to keep the accelerator pressed to the floor – amnesty for illegal immigrants, a cap-and-trade bill that will eliminate the U.S. as a global business competitor, and more – thus enraging an already angry public to the point of revolution.

In other words, purposely foment “civil unrest” rather than wait for something like unemployment or runaway inflation to make it happen. As Beck puts it, just continue to poke people in the eye, then use their predictable and justifiable backlash as an excuse to establish dictatorial powers.

I thought about this issue while attending the recent tea party outside the Capitol Building in Washington. As I crossed Independence Avenue, I noted a somber-looking guard holding a Rambo-style weapon in his hands. I have no idea what it was, but there’s no question in my mind that just one pull of the trigger could have rearranged the body parts of a large number of tea-party people.

The totally peaceful gathering – repeat, totally peaceful – was infested with heavily armed police, but one, in particular, was especially ominous. As the tea partiers chanted “Kill the Bill” on the east side of the Capitol Building, a uniformed, lone figure stood at the top of the steep flight of stairs on the House side of the structure, automatic weapon at the ready, gazing down over the crowd. Sun glasses and all, he reminded me of the “boss man” of Cool Hand Luke’s chain gang.

It gave me the eerie feeling that I was in a banana republic. Had anyone dared to take things beyond mere chanting, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would have become a scene right out of Caracas. All that was missing was Sean Penn.

Yep, I believe Glenn Beck might be on to something. But if the American public refuses to take the bait and doesn’t resort to violence, BHO will have to go to Plan B to have an excuse to declare a state of emergency.

Having said all this, don’t despair. No one, including myself, can predict the future with certainty. In a rapidly changing world, nothing is certain. Which is why I don’t make predictions; I just lay odds. And here’s my odds based on what I know and see today:

• The chances of a declared state of emergency and ensuing dictatorship prior to the 2010 elections: 25%
• The chances of a declared state of emergency and ensuing dictatorship prior to the 2012 elections: 50%
• The chances of the U.S. dollar becoming worthless within three years: 25%
• The chances of the U.S. dollar becoming worthless within ten years: 90%
• The chances of the Republicans cutting back on major entitlements if they regain power in the 2010 elections: Zero
• The chances of the Republicans cutting back on major entitlements if they win the presidency and an overwhelming majority in Congress in 2012: 5%
• The chances of the so-called tea-party people (i.e., everyday Americans who believe in liberty) winning out over the long haul: Hmm … let me procrastinate on that one a bit before I lay odds.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this … but what if I’m right?

MSNBC's ED Schultz Demands The Fairness Doctrine

Ed Schultz, one of the more bombastic “liberals” at MSNBC, has called for “rightwing” talk radio to be shut down.

Schultz is outraged that Rush Limbaugh has called for opposition to Obama and the Democrat theft of one sixth of the economy. Ed thinks it would be ducks if the IRS and government thugs toting brand spanking new sniper rifles rounded people up for their refusal to follow Obama’s mandate that everybody in the country must give their hard-earned money to insurance companies.

Because Rush and the Republicans have not paid fealty to Lord Obama and the corporate whore Democrats who have trashed the Constitution, Ed wants to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. He would like to see Rush Limbaugh forced off the air. Ed dreams of his paltry radio show replacing Rush’s on the airwaves.

Ed reveals what a reprehensible collectivist he is. He is outraged that the Republicans stand in opposition to the monstrosity that is Obamacare. Like a garden variety Stalinist, Schultz believes it is treason to oppose the dictates of the communist party, actually the bankster party. Everybody must support the Leader or face persecution by the state.

Such attitudes ultimately result in almost unimaginable mass murder. Mao killed 40 million, Hitler 30 million, and Stalin around 20 million. Some historians put these numbers even higher. Mao and Stalin killed most their victims because they dared resist the state. Hitler did too, but a lot of his victims were attributed to racist beliefs inspired by eugenicists like Rockefeller.

Hitler, Mao, and Stalin — these were collectivists who believed in the primacy of the state over the individual. Ed Schultz also believes in the primacy of the state and wants to shut down anybody who opposes its criminal mandates. Such mentality eventually terminates in killing fields.

Ed says there is a culture war going on in America. Mao had his own cultural war. He called it the Cultural Revolution. It began when Mao and his lackey Jiang Qing went after the intellectuals. Mao sent his Red Guards around China to intimidate, imprison, beat, and kill those who did not live up to his communist utopian vision. A campaign of fingering traitors swept the country. Between 30 and 70 million people were killed.

If you think Ed is merely a blowhard, think again. As I write this, the Democrats — in league with America’s political police, the FBI and Homeland Security — are preparing to move against the Tea Party movement and all patriots who cherish the Constitution.
Ed Schultz and his fellow apparatchiks in the corporate media are sharpening their knives.

Dems Say That Tea Party Supporters Are Terrorist

The zombified Tea Party created by establishment Republicans and headed up by media darling Sarah Palin is taking heat for a spate of bad behavior around the country in response to the imposition of Obamacare. It is not clear who is responsible for the foul language and threats directed against Democrats but this has not stopped them from blaming their ideological twin, the Republican Party. Dems are demanding the Republicans denounce their creation — the hijacked and transmogrified Tea Party sworn to uphold the Republican platform of big government and endless war against phantom enemies.

It’s not just Democrats who get to play victim. Earlier today House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia held a press conference and said somebody fired a bullet at his campaign office on Monday. Cantor admonished Rep. Chris Van Hollen and DNC chairman Tim Kaine for fanning the flames of hysteria and attempting to gain politically from the media circus swirling around the isolated incidents of outrage over the “socialization” (more accurately the corporate monopolization at gunpoint) of health care.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn went on MSNBC’s “Hardball” this afternoon and characterized the obscene phones calls and emails as domestic terrorism. Clyburn said people are getting “signals” from Republicans on how to behave and that lawmakers need to “disown” the activity before it gets out of control. He suggested his colleagues were culpable. “If we participate in it, either from the balcony or on the floor of the House, you are aiding and abetting this kind of terrorism, really,” Clyburn said.

“I think it’s part of a pattern,” said Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter after an act of vandalism at her office in New York. Slaughter, at the command of Nancy Pelosi, was ready to force through the Obamacare monstrosity without a vote in the House. Such an unconstitutional maneuver turned out not to be necessary because the Democrats twisted arms and promised the moon to get the votes required for passage. Holdout Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, was promised airport grants for his district if he abandoned his opposition. In other words, Stupak sold his opposition to abortion for a barrel of pork at the expense of the American people.

Libs over at the Huffington Post have taken up the domestic terrorism angle. It will not be members of the Borg hive Republican Tea Party that will engage in domestic terrorism, argues Jeff Schneider, but the radical fringe (in other words, the real Tea Party). “While the attack will not come from the Tea Party proper, more radical members and affiliated groups that have allied themselves with the movement are beginning to mobilize,” he writes today. “What began as the corporate funded, Dick Armey led, FreedomWorks organized, anti-health care rallying Tea Party movement has grown into something beyond what its founders intended.”

The Tea Party (if we can call it such) has entered into a series of loose alliances (of convenience or common purpose) with fringe groups like The Oath Keepers, the Committees of Safety, and the Three Percenter Movement (to name a few). While the rhetoric from Tea Party groups is vitriolic, its protests (to date) have been predominantly non-violent — but while many Tea Party protesters may be peaceful, their rhetoric, and the rhetoric of fellow traveler politicians like Rep. Bachmann and former Gov. Sarah Palin, is echoing through the Tea Party to its fringe elements — and the threat of domestic terror from these groups, or individuals who belong to them, has risen exponentially.

Closely following talking points issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Schneider connects the Oath Keepers to white supremacists, the Keystone State Skinheads forum and Stormfront. Schneider insists the “fringe” Tea Party movement is dangerous because it is linked to Gun Owners of America.
Gun Owners of America has over 300,000 members. It is the “only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington,” according to Ron Paul.

The Oath Keepers advocate that its members — who are current and former U.S. military and law enforcement — uphold their oaths of service and pledge to protect the U.S. Constitution. Even though the group is pledged to non-violence, Mother Jones has deemed it the “Tea Party’s military wing.”

The demonization of constitutionalists and patriots (minus absolutely any evidence they are involved in threats and obscene phone calls to the Congress critters who violated the Constitution this week) has moved from a concerted government and corporate media propaganda effort to a possibly more concrete and dangerous level.

“Law enforcement authorities are investigating the discovery of a cut propane gas line at the Virginia home of Rep. Thomas Perriello’s (D-Va.) brother, whose address was targeted by tea party activists angry at the congressman’s vote for the health care bill,” Politico reported yesterday. “While officials are not willing to characterize the exact nature of the incident because of the ongoing investigation, it did not involve an immediate threat to occupants of the residence. However officials are taking the incident very seriously and conducting a vigorous investigation,” Lee Catlin, community relations director for the Albemarle County Fire Marshal in Virginia said in a statement.

The FBI — America’s premier political police force with a long track record of cracking down on groups and individuals opposed to the government — is involved in the investigation.

“As of Wednesday afternoon, the FBI was investigating whether a severed gas line at the home of Congressman Perriello’s brother was related to a comment posted on a local ‘tea party’ website for activists to ‘drop by’ and ‘express their thanks’ for his healthcare vote and to ‘remember exactly what it is their constituents are saying and how they are telling them to vote,’” the Christian Science Monitor reports.

“Should something violent happen, Republicans know it could further discredit the Tea Party movement, and the conservative outrage that is fueling it, in the eyes of the wider American public. That explains, in part, the preponderance of condemnations now being issued by GOP congressmen, including Boehner, and by grass-roots activists,” reports Fox 31 in Denver, Colorado.

“These threats are likely coming from rogue, outside sources,” Lesley Hollywood, the director of the Northern Colorado Tea Party, told Fox. The Northern Colorado Tea Party is affiliated with Glenn Beck’s 912 Project.

The Republican Tea Party and Beck’s 912 Project have nothing to fear. If and when the Oath Keepers, Gun Owners of America, Alex Jones, and patriots not affiliated with establishment “conservative” groups are accused of domestic terrorism and the state responds in typically blunt and brutal fashion, they will be safe.

Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Glenn Beck will not be arrested and detained indefinitely as their friend in the Senate, the neocon Lindsey Graham, has recently proposed.

Obamacare Exempts Congress And Staff

This is so outrageous I’m fairly speechless.

Politico reports:

The Congressional Research Service believes a court could rule that the legislation “would exclude professional committee staff, joint committee staff, some shared staff, as well as potentially those staff employed by leadership offices.”

However, when the combined Senate bill came to the floor, the definition of staff had been narrowed. Both senators filed a second amendment in December restating their original intent, but they say Democrats blocked it.

“The American people will be appalled to learn the health care bill exempts leadership and committee staff. This special deal for unelected staff underscores everything the public detests about the arrogance of power in Washington,” Coburn said. “I tried to fix this inequity along with senators Grassley, Burr and Vitter, but Majority Leader [Harry] Reid obstructed our effort.”

The fascist democrats obstructed an amendment that forced themselves and their crony staff from being put into the same lot with the rest of us.

Of course, why wouldn’t they?

They are a bunch of fascist looting criminal thieves intent on destroying this country at all costs. They have no morals. They have no respect for freedom or liberty. They have no respect for the constitution.

As with all tyrannical governments – laws are for the little people.

Of course, this is just one outrage among thousands. The history of government giving itself more rights than its citizens is nearly endless, even in our supposedly “free” country.

Obamacare The End Of The American Republic?

Obama Care is a trojan horse for single payer. It is the first step towards it.

Democrats in Washington are so excited about passing Obamacare right now before their radical unAmerican butts get thrown out of office. They know passing this current Obamacare bill is simply the trojan horse.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Once people are addicted to receiving care, even if rationed, they know that we will never turn away. When the nationalized retirement through social security, they knew it would be impossible to take away. Medicare, medicaid.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends.

The Democraatcs have managed to pass the Trojan Horse Health takeover bill, it will be just the beginning of the end for our liberty, prosperity, and freedom. Folks, that means the end of America. They fully intend to further destroy the fabric of our nation. You cant fundamentally transform something you truly love. You don’t use corruption to enact the will of the people. You use it to trick the people.

It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

They will regret it if they pass this. America will not sit back and watch its government assault itself.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Recognize the highlighted lines above? Yes, that would be from the document that started it all for us. The Declaration of Independence.

of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Do you see it yet, our Government now closer resembles the one we revolted from then it does the one established when we were first freed.

Wake up America!

Obama And Pelosi Destroyed The Constitution

On Thursday, Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, responded to a question about the so-called “Slaughter Rule” (named after Rep. Slaughter, who sits on the rules committee) that will be used by Democrats to force through Obama’s totalitarian care bill, probably over the weekend.

Gibbs’ answer was deliberately opaque. By not addressing the question, he essentially said “deem and pass” will be used in the future to enact unpopular legislation, including a bill that will legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

It is now official — the Constitution is dead. It may as well be used to wrap fish.

Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution requires that both houses of Congress hold recorded yea-or-nay votes on a bill before it can be presented to the president for his signature and before it can become law.

Obama approves of sabotaging the Constitution. He said he does not “spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are,” in other words violating the spirit and law of the Constitution is not a biggie for him. “What I can tell you is that the vote that’s taken in the House will be a vote for health care reform. And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform,” he told Bret Baier of Fox News.

“These constitutional rules set forth in Article I are not mere exercises in formalism,” former federal appeals court judge Michael McConnell told the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week. “They ensure the democratic accountability of our representatives.”

Author and talk show host Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation plans to file an immediate lawsuit if House Democratic leaders try to use the unconstitutional maneuver to pass the Senate version of Obama’s totalitarian care.

Good for Levin. However, according to constitutional experts, the underhanded procedure is unlikely to be reversed by the courts.

In short, Obama and Congress will not be called to task. The Constitution is now about as relevant as the Sunday funnies

16,000 New IRS Employees To Enforce Mandated Health Care Reform

House Republicans say the IRS will hire more than 16,000 new employees to enforce the so-called healthcare individual mandates requiring people to buy coverage.

Republicans also say the new healthcare bill will require 10-billion dollars to pay for new auditors, agents and employees at the IRS.

Herger says it’s another reason to oppose the legislation.

HERGER: “One-sixth of our entire economy to be taken over by Washington… by the federal government, with the IRS implementing this, enforcing it I should say is just one more outrage among many many outrages.”

Democrats say their overhaul plan will reduce health care costs over time – by making the size of the insurance pool larger. The House is expected to take a final vote on the plan Sunday with no Republican support.

I Sold My Soul To Obama For Healthcare

In Obama’s bizarro world, health care at gunpoint will reduce premiums. Obama went to Cleveland recently and peddled his fantasy world. “You’ll be able to buy in, or a small business will be able to buy into this pool,” Obama said. “And that will lower rates, it’s estimated, by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting. That’s money out of pocket,” reports the Associated Press. “Your employer, it’s estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent, which means they could give you a raise.”

Obama had summoned Kucinich to Air Force One and Dennis kissed the ring.

Or rather money taken out of your pocket by a predatory state.

In fact, according to reality-based experts, Obamacare enforced by cops and SWAT teams will crank up your premiums.

Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say. “There’s no question premiums are still going to keep going up,” said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research clearinghouse on the health care system.

If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don’t look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help cover the cost for millions of people, according to the Associated Press.

Of course, any “tax credit” realized under the scheme will be annihilated in the coming months and years as the federal and state governments raise taxes to cover the losses to their shakedown due to the engineered collapse of the economy.

Obama’s voodoo math was a mistake, according to a White House spokesman. If health care costs dropped by 3,000 percent, as Obama said, government health care would be free many times over. In fact, Obama meant to say $3,000 not 3,000 percent.

Where did Obama get the $3,000 figure? From a report produced for the Business Roundtable, an association of big company CEOs. The report was issued in November and did not consider the final legislation Democrats in the Congress plan to ram through without actually voting on it.

Obama’s claim that an individual will save 14 percent to 20 percent comes from a Congressional Budget Office report based on earlier Senate legislation. The premium reduction of 14 percent to 20 percent that Obama cited would apply only to a portion of the people buying coverage on their own.

In December, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation said people who pay for their own insurance would see a higher bill.

Meanwhile, Obama managed to arm-twist one-time totalitarian care opponent Dennis Kucinich into backing the plan Democrats say they will enact without votes in Congress. Obama had summoned Kucinich to Air Force One and Dennis kissed the ring. “Even though I don’t like the bill, I’ve made a decision to support it in the hope that we can move to a more comprehensive approach once this legislation is done,” he told reporters.

Apparently Kucinich no longer consider Obama’s totalitarian care plan a sham. In October, he said the entire legislative package was “a bailout for insurance companies.” The American people are “being mandated to buy private insurance. If you read the bill, the people are going to end up paying — the insurance companies can raise rates 25 percent right off the bat, if you read the bill,” said Kucinich.

Dennis Kucinich, one of a very small number of Democrats who originally opposed Obamacare, now apparently believes it is fine and dandy for the government to force the commoners to buy health care insurance at gunpoint. He also believes large insurance corporations deserve a monopoly in partnership with the government.

Should we ever trust Dennis Kucinich again? I think not.

Obamacare Supporters Hold Americans In Contempt

President Obama and Congress appear to be holding the American people in contempt. The Dictionary defines contempt as "Lack of respect or reverence for something; disdain; The state of mind of one who despises, the act of despising something." That seems to be the state of mind of a majority in Congress and Obama: lack of respect, reverence and actually despising the American people. It is this contempt that should propel Americans to a second -- but peaceful -- American Revolution to replace elected officials at all levels with those who believe in limited government and individual liberty by January 2013.

Despite overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of Americans are rejecting the proposed government and corporate take over of health care, Congress and the President are demonstrating their abject contempt for the American people in their determination to ram this bill through Congress and have the President sign it into law.

They fail to respect several key demonstrated proofs of America's disapproval. Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts -- taking a seat held by liberal lion Kennedy in large part due to rejection of the health care agenda. They ignore consistent polls showing growing rejection of Congressional plans. Bills passed only by narrow, dark of night votes in Congress requiring back room deals, political threats, and shedding of key policies favored by liberals while completely ignoring reasonable compromises offered by Republicans. The only Republican component included is one that punishes doctors for spending "too much" on their patients -- a hold over from the Bush years: Pay for Performance.

The House passed a bill by three votes in November 2009 that included a public option. The Senate could only pass a Christmas Eve bill without the public option and in its place is a transfer of $350 billion to the insurance companies in Federal subsidy money to buy mandated health insurance. This shows contempt for the liberal base of the Democratic party that wants government control -- not more money and power for the insurance companies. Of course, the creation of a mandate to buy health insurance shows contempt for individual rights and the U.S. Constitution.

The House bill passed ONLY because of a ban on federal money for abortions that was stripped from the Senate bill. Now the House is asked to vote for the Senate bill as is and hope that an abortion funding compromise will occur in the Senate. This is proposed after the President makes the Senate bill the law of the land; no such compromise will occur. Contempt for the principles and the intelligence of those Democratic Congressmen behind Bart Stupak's vote-getting amendment. Disdain for Americans who refuse to allow their tax dollars to pay for abortion.

Speaker Pelosi says that once the bill passes, then Americans will see how good it is for them (and can then see the language). She asks the House to pass a Senate bill on the promise that some sort of revisions will pass later through parliamentary tricks. In fact, Congresswoman Slaughter of New York suggests that the House "deems" the Senate bill to have passed that body without a vote! Contempt for the constitutional requirements of how Congress should pass laws. President Obama states that Americans just don't understand what he wants and they just need another speech so he can enlighten them. Contempt for the basic intelligence of Americans and a demonstration of sheer arrogance.

The proposed "reform" policies themselves show contempt. Buy health insurance or go to jail. Contempt. Medical care practiced by committee and not your doctor. Contempt. Doctors penalized for spending "over budget" on patients. Contempt. Ten years of revenue with six years of spending to "balance the budget". Contempt! The open display of corrupt political deals for votes show contempt: the Louisiana Purchase(Landrieu-La), the Cornhusker Kickback (Nelson-Neb.), Gator-aid (Nelson-Fl). So many political "coincidences" happen simultaneously while yes votes are gained or no votes neutralized: FBI investigations and ethics probes end (Mollohan-W.Va.), brothers gain judgeships (Matheson-UT), a Congressman quits to avoid an ethics scandal (Massa-NY). Strong-arm tactics to coerce votes and contempt for the intelligence of Americans. The most contemptuous policy: A federally appointed, unaccountable arrogant elite panel (the Independent Medicare Advisory Board) to create rationing and committee medical practice directives for doctors. Write into law that no future congress can even consider a motion to abolish the panel (page 1020 of HR 3590 passed by Senate). Contempt for the simple words in the US constitution that Congress writes the laws -- such a power of a future congress can't be abolished by a current Congress. Contempt.

The President holds a Blair House summit with Republicans and Democrats on health care and before the sun sets on that day, the Democrats advise the Republicans in attendance that the Senate bill will be passed using reconciliation and other political maneuvers with no attempt at including Republican compromises. Contempt.

The President claims all meetings on health care will be televised on C-span while the only TV image we get is a closed door in front of a meeting of politicians and special interests. The government shows contempt for Americans when they will have secret meetings with the AMA, AARP, the insurance industry, PhRMA, Families USA, Unions, and other special interests but refuse to listen to or respect Americans in Town halls, in polls or phone calls to congressional offices.

The President convinces his democratic party that without a victory on health care HIS presidency is in jeopardy -as if it is his personal possession. His legacy will be lost. The president thus shows the most contempt for the American people by claiming that his personal position of power and his legacy are more important than the wishes or the best interests of the American people. That is the type of contempt that is demonstrated by kings, dictators and tyrants. It was King George III who said: "I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor."

Now they plan a vote on health care during the week of 3/15/2010. The President delays his taxpayer-funded family trip to Australia and Indonesian childhood stomping grounds to break more arms for votes and Pelosi promises passage. She will likely pass the Senate bill and there will be cheers in Washington elite circles.

But the cheers should be loudest among Americans who love liberty. While Americans may view passage of a government take over of medicine as a defeat, they should instead see it as a motivating and key moment in American history -- when they realized that it is time for a peaceful overthrow of our leadership in government. It is time to reject a hundred years of big government policy and dependency on D.C. that has placed us in the position we are now: flat on our backs with the boot of government on our throats. American liberty has had three major defeats in the last one hundred years: the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and Income Tax; the failed New Deal that started and ended the depression with a 20% unemployment rate and instilled big government as a way of life in America; the Lyndon Johnson Great Society that created the now $38 trillion unfunded liability of Medicare, the failed medical ghetto of Medicaid and welfare programs that had to be repealed in the '90's. We lost those first three great battles and now the fourth attempt of collectivism/big government is upon us in the agenda of Obama. This fourth invasion of collectivism will threaten our national sovereignty with generations of debt owned by foreigners and shadowy bankers. This latest battle against collectivism is one we can't lose as it will mean the end of liberty and property rights in America and America itself.

The Tea Party movement over the last year has been like the Boston Tea Party: a powerful demonstration to the King that free Americans are not going to live under contempt and tyranny any longer. The Boston Tea Party was an event as is the Tea Party movement. It is now time for the next phase: a full Campaign for Liberty. The Liberty movement is here and tea party movement got us started. It has recruited soldiers and found leaders, causes and resources. It has fought and lost and fought and won. George Washington was soundly defeated so many times after he chased the British out of Boston in March 1776 and then himself was chased out of Manhattan and into Pennsylvania. But he had inspirational victories when crossing the Delaware on Christmas of 1776 and Americans fought and stayed with him and finally defeated the British at Yorktown and gained freedom for our country in 1781.

This is our moment for a rebirth of Liberty in America. This is the moment when we must recruit soldiers to the Liberty Movement and fight for the next several years for victory. The victory we need is election of a majority of principled, liberty-loving leaders to Congress, state and local government in 2010 and again in 2012 with an inauguration of a new President in 2013 that will put government where it belongs again. Not with its boot on the throats of the American people, but with the government on its knees before the American people -- begging for its favor and respect. That will be a time when Americans can stop holding their government in contempt and begin again their efforts to bring prosperity and peace to our generation and future generations of Americans.

2009 Voting Ratings: Politicis As Usual

National Journal's annual congressional vote ratings for 2009 show that long-standing ideological divides have persisted -- and even deepened -- in President Obama's Washington.
by Richard E. Cohen and Brian Friel

• The 2009 Vote Ratings Just over a year ago, Democratic and Republican members of Congress gathered on the Capitol's West Front to hear President Obama's Inaugural Address. Like many of his predecessors, Obama called on Congress to change the way it does business. "The time has come to set aside childish things," he said, quoting scripture. "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

But Congress didn't change for previous presidents. And it hasn't changed for this one.

Liberals, moderates, and conservatives stuck to their guns in 2009, whether for ideological, partisan, parochial, or electoral reasons, stymieing much of Obama's agenda. National Journal's annual vote ratings, which have ranked members of Congress on a conservative-to-liberal scale since 1981, found telling consistency in the long-standing ideological divides that define legislative battles on Capitol Hill. Some of those gulfs even deepened as the decades-long partisan sorting of liberals and conservatives into opposing camps continued apace last year.

"The hyperpartisanship has been getting more hyper with every passing year that I've been here," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., who ranked at the embattled center of the Senate in NJ's 2009 ratings. "Look, over American history, we've always had spirited politics, particularly in election years. But for most of our history, that partisan political stuff usually ends for a while after elections. Nowadays, the campaigns never seem to end. That makes it very hard to get anything done."

To compile the 29th annual vote ratings, National Journal used a statistical analysis designed by Bill Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to this magazine. The computer-assisted calculations rank members in each chamber along the ideological spectrum, based on how they voted on key economic, social, and foreign-policy issues selected by a panel of NJ reporters and editors. For 2009, NJ identified 99 key votes in the Senate and 92 key votes in the House.

By design, the ratings highlight ideological differences between lawmakers. The past year in Congress was defined by liberal-conservative battles over economic issues, with health care reform dominating the debate and demonstrating the philosophical chasm between the two parties on the role of government in the nation's commerce. "Health care reform was both a field on which all this partisanship that has now become ingrained played itself out, but it also made it worse," Lieberman noted.

Beyond the health care issue, the sharp divisions between liberals and conservatives in Congress could be seen in Obama's successes -- including the $862 billion economic stimulus package, the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice, new pay-discrimination rules, and a hate crimes law. These differences also helped to stall or sink Obama's legislative priorities on financial regulatory reform, higher education, and climate change.

"The hyperpartisanship has been getting more hyper with every passing year."
-- Joe Lieberman

Ironically, even as lawmakers played mostly to their typical political form in 2009, many voiced growing frustration with the gridlock that frequently resulted. "We can't effectively address any of those issues unless we change the way we do it," freshman Rep. Walt Minnick, D-Idaho, said after Obama exhorted Congress to act in his State of the Union address. Minnick is vulnerable in November's election in a district where GOP presidential nominee John McCain won 62 percent of the vote in 2008.

"We have to bring both parties together at the beginning of crafting a solution to problems, pick up the best thinking of Republicans and Democrats, and make that the core of the way we approach these issues," Minnick added. "That's the principal failure of how this Congress has operated so far, and it's what we must fundamentally change if we're going to make progress."

For many other Democrats who, like Minnick, were elected in 2006 and 2008 from Republican or swing areas, political survival dictates that they worry first about how their votes will play back home, rather than about how they will help advance the broader party agenda. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., a sophomore whose district McCain also carried, said in an interview that he believes that House Democrats' votes on two pivotal bills last year -- health care reform and climate change -- will have a significant impact on how they fare in November.

In fact, Altmire made a comparison to the 1994 election, which he said also turned on two important votes: the August 1993 approval of President Clinton's budget, including a controversial tax hike; and the May 1994 passage of the assault weapons ban. That election proved devastating for congressional Democrats, and Altmire had an inside view as a House staffer.

Of 21 centrist House Democrats who voted for both the Clinton budget and the assault weapons ban, 15 lost re-election in 1994 and three retired; only three won another term. A separate group of 20 centrist House Democrats who voted against both of those bills did far better: 17 won re-election and two retired; only one was defeated. Another three dozen centrist House Democrats who voted for only one of those two bills split about evenly in their election outcomes.

Altmire believes that his votes last year against both the health care and the cap-and-trade climate legislation provide some political insulation from GOP campaign attacks. "Republicans will try to make the case tying me to an unpopular president," he said in an interview. "But intuitively, that's a hard case to make."

Senate Democrats: Inevitable Infighting

In the summer before the Democrats' 2008 election sweep, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., offered National Journal a prescient warning about the dangers of one-party control of the White House and Congress. "The infighting is almost inevitable when you have everything," he said. "You have petty jealousies and power games that go on within the ruling party that lead to some pretty bad consequences."

NJ's vote ratings show how difficult it would have been for Senate Democratic leaders to avoid the feuding within their caucus in 2009. Democrats held 58 seats in January and 60 seats by summer, after Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania bolted the GOP on April 30 and Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota was sworn in on July 7. That huge majority -- the largest that either party enjoyed in the Senate since 1978 -- spanned a vast ideological spectrum of Democrats, from such die-hard liberals as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and four others who had perfect liberal scores in the vote ratings, to conservative Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Evan Bayh of Indiana, both of whom had scores to the right of the most liberal Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. With Senate Republicans largely united in opposition, Democratic leaders had to undertake fractious negotiations all year long to try to bring together Whitehouse, Bayh, and all their party's members in between, thus slowing progress on major legislation.

Despite their ideological breadth, Senate Democrats were, to an unprecedented extent, united on foreign policy, which accounted for only a few key votes last year. Three-quarters of the caucus had perfect liberal foreign-policy scores. Members were more divided on social-policy issues, most of which came before the Senate in the form of GOP-sponsored amendments to unrelated bills that were intended to drive a political wedge.

For example, gun-rights advocates racked up considerable victories last year, winning votes to allow guns in the District of Columbia, guns in national parks, and guns on Amtrak trains. In the process, the vote ratings of several traditionally strong liberals who have pro-gun views, such as Feingold and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., moved toward the center. Last February, Feingold was among the 22 Democrats who voted for an amendment repealing the District of Columbia's gun control laws, a poison pill that scuttled the underlying bill that would have given D.C. a voting House member.

It was economic policy, however, that dominated the 2009 agenda and formed the main ideological battleground within Senate Democratic ranks. Issues related to federal spending, the proper size and role of government, and business regulation divided the caucus.

Take the climate-change issue, one of Obama's top legislative priorities in 2009, along with health care reform and the stimulus bill. During the budget debate last spring, Republicans offered an amendment to bar the use of fast-track reconciliation procedures to pass climate-change legislation. The amendment cleaved the Democratic caucus in two; 31 Democrats voted against it and 26 joined Republicans and voted for it. Although many senators suggested at the time that regional differences were at play, the vote tracked the split between the moderate and liberal wings of the Democratic caucus in NJ's ratings: 21 of the 25 most moderate Democrats voted against fast-track climate-change legislation, and 22 of the 25 most liberal Democrats voted for it.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a liberal who voted for the fast-track option on climate change, said that the Senate must alter its rules to allow the majority party to get things done. Obama "is right to be pointing out that Congress has basically become dysfunctional," Harkin said. "It's now become tit for tat. It's almost like the Serbs and the Bosnians. They go back to the 11th century about who started what first. With every change of party power here, it ratchets up more and more and more. We've got to stop before it consumes the entire Congress."

"We can't effectively address any of those issues unless we change the way we do it."
-- Walt Minnick

Sanders also voted for the fast-track procedures. But he gave Democratic leaders headaches by voting with conservatives against the confirmation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, against increased support for the International Monetary Fund, and against the release of bank bailout funds to the Obama administration. Sanders's renegade populist economic votes, coupled with his pro-gun votes, pushed him to a surprising 38th place among liberal senators, despite his self-proclaimed socialist preferences.

The liberal half of the Democratic caucus is dominated by senators from states that voted Democratic in most recent presidential elections, including both senators from each of the solidly blue states of California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island.

Among them was Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who tied with three other senators in 2009 as the 11th-most-liberal. She had perfect liberal scores in the economic and foreign-policy categories, and voted against the liberal bloc on only one key social-policy vote -- a measure reaffirming community service requirements for public housing recipients. Gillibrand previously represented a GOP-leaning upstate district in the House, and her vote ratings in 2007 and 2008 were more moderate. After her appointment to the Senate in 2009 to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gillibrand shifted dramatically to the left, reflecting the more liberal politics of New York state as a whole and her need to fend off liberal primary challengers in a special election this year.

The past two elections wiped out much of the moderate wing of the Senate GOP caucus and replaced it with a mix of Democrats. Five of the 13 Democrats who succeeded Republicans in 2006 and 2008 landed in the liberal half of the caucus in the vote ratings. Whitehouse and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who both succeeded moderate Republicans in 2006, received perfect liberal scores in 2009.

The eight other Democrats who won Republican seats in the past two cycles have settled in the more conservative half of the caucus. The class of 2008 moderates, including Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Mark Begich of Alaska, and Mark Udall of Colorado, tended to stick with their liberal colleagues a bit more than the class of 2006 moderates did. Sen. Robert Casey, a 2006 winner in Pennsylvania, voted with liberals consistently on economic issues, but his anti-abortion and pro-gun views pushed his social-issues score to the right of most in the caucus. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri regularly dissented on fiscal matters, while maverick Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia had the most conservative rating among Democrats who replaced Republicans in the past two cycles.

Webb was the fifth-most-conservative Democrat overall in 2009, behind Feingold, who sided with conservatives on many fiscal matters; party-switcher Specter; and red-staters Nelson and Bayh. Specter voted with liberals 90 percent of the time on NJ's key votes after his party switch at the end of April, but before that, he split his votes evenly between the left and the right. Nelson and Bayh were the two most conservative Democrats in the 2008 ratings as well. When Bayh announced his retirement from the Senate on February 15, he cited the inability of centrists to prevail in Congress.

Given the wide range of Senate Democrats, it's a wonder that Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., managed on Christmas Eve to get all 60 of them to vote for the health care reform bill, the signature achievement of the caucus's supermajority, which came to an end when Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected in January to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. But it took Reid most of 2009 to get all 60 on board for that fleeting victory. By the beginning of 2010, many moderate Democrats felt that their party had gone too far to the left and had tried to do too much last year. "I have been one of the Democrats that have said some in our party overreach," said Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

Senate Republicans: Solid Minority

As 2009 began, Senate Republicans were a bruised and battered bunch, down from 55 members at the end of 2006 to just 41 members. Obama, who had run on the promise of bipartisan cooperation, hoped to divide their ranks by peeling off Republicans on issue after issue. At least early on, that strategy was somewhat effective.

In January of last year, Democrats won the support of five Republicans -- including all four women GOP senators -- to support a change in pay-discrimination rules. Ten Republicans came to Obama's aid to confirm Geithner, offsetting liberal dissenters. And nine Republicans -- including Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee and Richard Lugar of Indiana -- voted with liberals to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

The GOP split was even more pronounced on the February 2 vote to confirm Attorney General Eric Holder. Twenty-one of the 30 most-conservative senators in the vote ratings -- including Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Mike Crapo of Idaho -- voted against Holder. Nineteen Republicans, including the eight most-moderate GOPers such as Lugar, Snowe, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, voted for Holder.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, who voted to confirm Holder, contended that such bipartisanship is normal in the chamber, especially on lower-profile issues. "There's always bipartisanship in the Senate," he said. "It is simply incorrect to believe that everything is partisan."

Nonetheless, bipartisanship went downhill from there last year. After that early support, Senate Republicans mostly unified against Obama's top legislative goals, starting with the stimulus package, which smacked against their conservative principle of limited government. As the stimulus negotiations went on, moderate Republicans backed away from the president, ultimately leaving only Snowe, Collins, and Specter (still wearing his GOP hat) to vote for the giant package of spending and tax cuts in February.

"It's almost like the Serbs and the Bosnians. They go back to the 11th century about who started what first."
-- Tom Harkin

Over the rest of the year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had much less difficulty keeping his ranks unified than did Reid -- in large part because McConnell had a much narrower ideological spectrum to bring together. The depleted GOP ranks ranged from James Inhofe of Oklahoma -- the only senator with a perfect conservative score in 2009 -- to Snowe, the most moderate Republican. For much of the year, Snowe was the only member of her caucus willing to consider supporting Obama's health care reform legislation, making McConnell's job all the easier.

The next-most-moderate Republican in the vote ratings, Lugar, made it clear early in the year that he thought Congress should focus on jobs and the economy, not health care. Lugar had been a mentor to Obama in the Senate, and his moderate scores in 2009 largely resulted from his support of the president's nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and several controversial Justice Department appointees whom conservatives tried to block.

A Lugar spokesman said that the senator tends to back the appointees of both parties' presidents. Lugar also voted against the conservative wing of his party on most foreign-policy issues, because of his willingness to work with Democrats as the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Interestingly, Lugar tied with his Democratic home-state colleague, the retiring Bayh, in the 2009 ratings.

The narrowing of the Senate Republican caucus's ideology shows up in the change in the vote ratings from 2008 to 2009. In 2008, Lugar was the 12th-most-moderate Republican and the 37th-most-conservative Republican. His ranking shifted only two places -- to 39th-most-conservative in 2009. But seven of the 11 GOPers who were more moderate than he dropped out of the rankings -- four were defeated for re-election, two retired, and Specter switched parties. The Republicans who were more moderate than he was in 2008 were replaced by Democrats in 2009.

One symbol of Senate GOP unity last year is McCain's vote rating. Although McCain was initially among the more-conservative senators after his election in 1986, his annual ratings shifted to the center from 1994 on as he developed his maverick voting pattern, culminating in his most liberal rating in 2004, when he tied with Specter as the third-most-moderate Republican. In 2009, however, McCain returned to his conservative roots. His composite score of 84.3 made him the 21st-most-conservative senator. He split with conservatives on only seven of the 99 key votes, four of which were confirmations. McCain's closest neighbors in the 2009 ratings were Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. McCain faces a primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

McCain argues that Democrats could have scored more bipartisan victories if they had tried harder to seek Republican input on legislation. "Their strategy has been to pick off one or two Republicans and call it bipartisan," McCain said. "That's bogus, and everybody knows it."

House Democrats: Wiggle Room

In contrast to the gridlock that often besieged Senate Democrats, their House counterparts were relatively productive and efficient in getting their work done in 2009. To be sure, House Republicans rarely offered support on the highest-profile and most-contentious legislation, and House Democrats didn't suggest even the pretense of bipartisanship on most issues.

But with the Democrats' majority reaching a high-water mark of 258 seats last year, they had the relative luxury to prevail even if as many as 40 of their members abandoned ship. Consequently, on many legislative showdowns on top party priorities, Democratic leaders focused on winning just enough support in their moderate flank to succeed while allowing other skittish centrists to take a pass and vote no, as Altmire did on the health care reform and climate-change legislation.

As a group, the 35 House Democrats with the most-conservative composite scores in the 2009 vote ratings met several common criteria. They were primarily junior (13 are serving their first full term and eight are sophomores) and primarily Southern (16 hail from Dixie). This group includes Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, who voted all year as a Democrat but announced on December 22 that he was switching to the GOP. In addition, 30 of the 35 are members of the Blue Dog Coalition, whose members style themselves as "independent voices for fiscal responsibility and accountability."

Not surprisingly, these members were a persistent source of opposition to Obama's prime agenda items. Of the 23 Democrats who voted against both the cap-and-trade bill in June and health care reform in November, 19 were to the right of the House's center in the vote ratings; the others were Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, liberal maverick Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, and first-term Reps. Larry Kissell of North Carolina and Eric Massa of New York. Of these 23 dissidents, 17 are from the South and 18 represent districts that McCain won in 2008.

"I represent my district, and the district clearly didn't support health reform or cap-and-trade," said Altmire, whose suburban Pittsburgh constituents gave McCain 55 percent of their votes. "It's a hard case for my opponent to articulate that I am a lapdog for [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi.... Your voting record does matter."

But Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, cautioned that centrist Democrats might nonetheless face problems in November. "Members who constantly voted no may be criticized as part of the problem, not the solution," Lilly said. "And the big problem that Democrats may face in the election is getting Democratic voters and liberal-leaning independents to turn out to vote."

The vote ratings reveal an interesting disparity between the large freshman and sophomore Democratic classes, which have built the party's current majority. Of the 28 members who replaced Republicans and are serving their first full term, the average composite liberal score was 53.6. By contrast, the 26 sophomore Democrats who took GOP-held seats had an average composite liberal score of 60. In part, that result mirrors the greater number of second-term Democrats who have become politically secure at home.

Democrats' "strategy has been to pick off one or two Republicans and call it bipartisan. That's bogus."
-- John McCain

The freshman Democrats disproportionately filled the vote-ratings slots at the ideological center of the House in 2009. Of the 16 House members -- all Democrats -- with the most-centrist scores last year, 10 were first-termers. That result is comparable to the 2007 vote ratings, when six of the eight members at the center of the House were in that year's freshman class.

In 2008, Altmire, then a freshman, was at the precise center of the House. But with the influx of additional Democrats, he moved nearly 20 slots to the right in the 2009 vote ratings.

Two members, both New York Democrats, are tied at the dead center of the House this year: sophomore Rep. Michael Arcuri and freshman Rep. Michael McMahon. Told about the result, McMahon said he was "pleasantly surprised." He said he hopes that his votes reflect his district centered on Staten Island, where George W. Bush got 55 percent of the vote in 2004 and McCain won with 51 percent in 2008.

"It is not hard for me to figure out the right vote. But I sometimes have to explain it to my colleagues," said McMahon, who voted for last year's climate-change cap-and-trade bill but against health care reform. "Some Democrats tell me that I should vote for the greater good of the party. I tell them that I vote for my district and its interests."

With 80,000 of his constituents working on Wall Street or elsewhere in the financial industry, McMahon has been especially vigilant to represent those interests. On March 19, he was one of only six Democrats to vote against a bill to impose a 90 percent tax on some Wall Street bonuses. "Tip O'Neill's old adage that all politics is local is confirmed to me every day," McMahon said. "Sometimes I feel that I am the only one in the New York delegation who stands up for the financial industry, in making the case for reasonable legislation."

In attempting to keep these swing-district members safe, House Democratic leaders try not to press them too hard to act counter to local interests while still corralling sufficient votes to pass legislation. "If members feel that something will put them in jeopardy with their constituents, it's not my job to substitute for their judgment," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who works closely with freshman Democrats as assistant to Pelosi.

As 2009 progressed, however, the number of House Democratic defections on key votes increased. Early in 2009, only seven Democrats voted against the stimulus bill and 20 voted against the budget resolution. By December, Democratic leaders struggled to secure passage of the debt ceiling and jobs bills, which 39 and 38 Democrats opposed, respectively.

At the other end of the House Democratic spectrum, the 40 most-liberal members in the 2009 ratings had high representation from the California delegation (nine members were in this group), the Congressional Black Caucus (13 members), and the Hispanic Caucus (six members). Also among the most-liberal members were five House committee chairmen: Reps. Howard Berman of California, Foreign Affairs; Robert Brady of Pennsylvania, House Administration; Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Financial Services; Louise Slaughter of New York, Rules; and Henry Waxman of California, Energy and Commerce.

House Republicans: Lockstep Opposition

House Republicans lost 55 seats over the past two elections, which essentially decimated their moderate wing of mostly Northeastern and Midwestern members. In 2006, 14 Republicans who had composite conservative scores below 60 in that year's vote ratings left the House -- either in defeat or by choice; eight more with comparable scores exited in 2008.

In the 2009 ratings, only a handful of House Republicans had ratings to the left of the most-conservative Democrats. The most liberal Republican was Rep. Michael Castle of Delaware, who is running this year for an open Senate seat; he was followed by Reps. John McHugh of New York, who resigned in September to become Obama's Army secretary, and Dave Reichert of Washington.

Eight other Republicans are just to the left of Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama, the House's most conservative Democrat. Seven represent states in the arc from Illinois to New Jersey, and the eighth is Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana, who won what many observers contend was a fluke victory in 2008 over then-indicted Democratic Rep. William Jefferson.

The starkly conservative House GOP Conference that remained after the loss of their moderates voted in lockstep opposition against much of the White House's agenda last year. House Republicans sent a strong message in the early days of Obama's presidency in January, when they united in voting against the stimulus bill.

A few displays of bipartisanship cropped up, such as wide GOP support for funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the vote by eight Republicans -- six from the Northeast and the Midwest, plus Reichert and Rep. Mary Bono Mack of California -- for the cap-and-trade bill. Overall, though, Republicans contended that House rules and the Democrats' large majority, plus Pelosi's often ironfisted control of debate, left them little opportunity to influence what they contend has often been bad legislation.

"It's a hard case for my opponent to articulate that I am a lapdog for Nancy Pelosi."
--Jason Altmire

"It took tremendous courage to vote against the stimulus bill when our members did," said Mike Steel, the spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio. "The president was at the height of his popularity. It turned out to be the right vote, though it wasn't easy at the time." Steel cited a CBS News/New York Times poll this month showing that only 6 percent of the people believe that the stimulus bill has already created jobs.

Boehner and the two other top House GOP leaders were among the chamber's 40 most-conservative members in the 2009 ratings. This group at the conservative end of the House's ideological spectrum also includes a familiar component: 10 Texans.

Boehner, the 14th-most-conservative House member in 2009, has a reputation for occasionally moderate voting behavior, partly because of his often-bipartisan work as chairman of the since-renamed House Education and the Workforce Committee from 2001 to '06. He has been consistently conservative since taking over as minority leader in 2007, however. "Some people still ally Boehner with the centrists," a House GOP aide said. "But these results show that he is a leading conservative."

By contrast, the ranking GOP members on key House committees mostly had less conservative scores than the party leaders. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., who took over last year as the top member on Ways and Means, ranked in the one-fourth of House Republicans with the most-moderate scores; Camp has been viewed as a mainstream conservative who is comfortable with Boehner.

With their largely unified ranks, House Republicans have typically kept their eyes glued on the Democrats and their growing defections. Having suffered their own painful loss of the majority in 2006, Republicans are mindful that the political fates sometimes trump legislative machinations and independent votes. As a House GOP leadership aide noted, "Many of their freshmen know that they are in difficult districts. But their votes won't help them at the end of the day."

Research Associate Peter Bell assisted in compiling the vote ratings.