Remember All Those Who Voted For ObamaCare?

Notice how many of them are no longer in Congress? And We the People still hate it, more now than before it was passed. It’s time for Republicans and those Democrats who like their cushy perks of Office to abort ObamaCare.

Cumulonimbus + AgI = ??

A dark cloud follows him wherever he goes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Farmers obviously need rain for their crops, so there are some who resort to cloud seeding, adding silver iodide to the clouds to try to force rain out of them. But it’s a bad idea to seed a thunderstorm cloud. Cumulonimbus clouds can produce nasty things like hail storms, massive lightning storms, micro-bursts, tornadoes.

And of course, there are those who always bring bad luck with them, like Bad Luck Schleprock, our current President.

 
So, today I am telling you about the seeding of a 3,000 mile wide thunderstorm cloud hanging over the US — and the silver lining that comes with it. It’s painfully schadenfreudig. Painfully schadenfreudig, indeed. (Multiple stacked redundancy intentional.) Barack Obama and the Democrats, very cynically aware that their grand scheme to shove the US headlong into Socialism could cause them to fall out of power, set up a series of Laws and programs that would save most of the very bad results until after the 2012 election. After having blamed Bush for all the Democrat-and-Socialist caused travails, they would have a way of avoiding responsibility for the looming mega-disaster. It works like this:

• Set up a Socialist system with all the false positives front-loaded and all the negatives back-loaded.
• Get possibly voted out of office before the negatives hit, so the Socialist-caused negatives would hit when Conservatives were in office.
• Blame the Conservatives in office for the economic disaster the Socialists caused.
• Get the Socialists re-elected to complete the evil transformation of the Free Market US into a Socialist state, with the Conservatives forever blemished by the results of Socialist actions.

But a strange thing happened along the way. The Socialists got re-elected by a completely ignorant, envious, slothful, free hand-out seeking crowd. And all the back-loaded disasters will hit while the Socialists are in power. (By the way, did you know that tornadoes are also backloaded? They are on the back end of cumulonimbus clouds, and not up front.)

ObamaCare is one such program. As most of it is set to kick in now that the election is over, total disaster is on the horizon. Businesses, who cannot pay the cost of ObamaCare and stay afloat at the same time, will be laying off massive numbers of workers nationwide. Other businesses will be cutting their low-level employees (the working poor) to under 30 hours a week so those businesses can stay in business. Very little expansion will be happening, if any at all. It’ll be full-on contraction.

A nice little poisonberry in ObamaCare — that “make health care cheaper for all” lie — is a 2.3 percent excise tax on all medical devices, such as crutches, wheelchairs, heart stents, etc, etc. And an excise tax is far worse than a profit tax or income tax. It hits the gross revenue and not the after-expenses cost. For example, suppose it costs a business 5,000 dollars for the raw materials to make a single product. Add in the labor costs, the health insurance costs, the retirement costs, the social security tax, the medicare tax, the property tax for the building itself, the electricity cost, the property insurance cost, the transportation cost, the bookkeeping cost, and all other costs associated with getting the already developed product to market and the final cost to the business is 6,800 dollars. The business sells the product for 7,000 dollars because that’s what the market will bear. The business gets a profit of 200 dollars per sale.

In comes the 2.3 percent excise tax. Another 161 dollars off the top. The new profit for the 7,000 dollar item falls from 200 dollars to a whopping 39 dollars (an effective tax rate of 80.5 percent of the profit). Not enough to make the company a going concern. Kill the Research and Development department of the company — the life-blood of all businesses that want to survive, for if a business is not growing and moving forward it is necessarily dying.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, not at all. That same company also has to pay the new, higher costs involved in providing ObamaCare to all its employees (instead of the less expensive insurance plans which were optional, which fair portions of employees did not opt into). That 39 dollars per product, which used to be 200 dollars per product goes negative. It costs more to produce than it can be sold for.

But, again, it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s declaration that electricity costs must necessarily skyrocket and he’ll bankrupt coal-fired electric plants necessarily means the energy-intensive manufacturing industry will get hit hard with skyrocketing overhead costs. Costs that cannot be reduced merely by laying people off. So instead, the companies will shutter its doors and either go off-shore or cease to exist, providing a double-whammy of forcing the products to become far more expensive than they are now and far more difficult to obtain.

Small businesses will collapse. The middle class will become working poor. The working poor will become the unemployable destitute. Products the middle class used to be able to afford will become luxury items. Items that were luxuries for the working poor will become nothing but unreachable pipe-dreams. Inflation will go into hyper-drive. Interest rates will climb, making the cost of borrowing prohibitive. And deficit spending, which has been kept artificially low (yeah, I said it), will explode.

How is 1.2 trillion dollars (or more) in deficit spending “artificially low”? That’s a good question. And I have a good answer for that. Two words: “debt” and “service”. Debt service.

Historical view of the Prime Rate from Forecast Chart.com (8 percent line added).

Above is a chart showing the historic levels for the Prime Rate, from Forecast Chart.com. I added a red line at 8 percent for reference. Below is a chart showing the historic levels for the Discount Rate, from a 2009 article on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (data obtained from the Financial Forecast Center). I added a red line at 6 percent for reference.

US Discount Rate From 1950 as found on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (6 percent red line added).

From Apin Talisayon:

As I said, central banks had recently been dropping interest rates, and so we cannot use the abnormally low prevailing interest rates (0.5%). I plotted the historical data of discount rates set by the US Federal Reserve since January 1950 from the Financial Forecast Center[.]

As you can see in the above two charts, the Prime Rate and the Discount Rate differ in levels, but mirror each other. And they’re not only at historic lows; they’re far below historic norms. That means the future necessarily will provide much higher rates on borrowing than today. And the Federal Government’s debt service costs absolutely must skyrocket. Couple that with the US credit rating crumbling — and will continue to crumble — and the interest on the debt will become astronomical. Even a fairly normal rate of 6 percent with our current 16,000,000,000,000 dollar deficit means 960 BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments alone. By 2015, our national debt will be 20 TRILLION DOLLARS and the interest on that debt will be 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s before paying for roads, bridges, high speed trains to nowhere, free birth control pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free abortion pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free ObamaPhones, free health care, free foodstamps, free college tuition, free housing for the poor and forever pregnant single mothers, free Big Bird, free NPR propaganda, bailing out California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, free cowboy poetry, and oh yeah, paying for our national defense.

1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT TO PAY FOR ALREADY SPENT MONEY WE DIDN’T HAVE BEFORE PAYING FOR ANY CURRENT PROGRAMS AND EXPENSES!!!

The Socialist who ascended the throne in DC, along with the Socialists in the US Senate who have adamantly refused to produce a Federal Budget since April, 2009, in direct violation of Federal Law and the US Constitution, have successfully Cloward-Pivened the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The most prosperous nation this world has ever seen has been successfully brought to financial ruin by the Leftists in power who have no use for a document that is “over 100 years old”. The aim? Destroy the Free Market and implement Socialism worldwide.

The silver lining? Conservatives have not been responsible for any of it. Conservatives have not been in charge for any of it. I know, little solace for the loss of a once great and mighty and FREE nation. Will there be anything left to save by 2016? And will there be any conceivable way to save it and return to prosperity from the Abyss of Destitution Obama and the Socialist Democrats have created? Or will it already be too late? I, for one, am not looking forward to the disaster these next 10 years will provide us. (UPDATE: Nice Deb performed her Karnac impression and answered my questions before seeing them. Go to her site to read her answers.)

RELATED
This medical device tax is just not going to end well
Economics 101: Schadenfreude!
Video: What free-market medicine looks like
2013: A Century Of Progress
Gee, why do you think the Obama administration waited until after November 6th to mail these letters?

US House Of Representatives Vote To Repeal ObamaCare

The US House of Representatives voted today to repeal ObamaCare, with five Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with the Republicans. As I predicted, Harry Reid has declared the US Senate will not vote on the bill, just like Harry Reid prevented a similar House Bill from being voted on in the Senate in 2011.

More on this later, as I build the article. And apologies for the lateness as I was in the midst of writing an article responding to the radical Leftist Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware, and his unhinged, fact-free rant about Texas, which included the “severe drought” and how everything was going kaput, when I had to take a 3-hour break due to a strong thunderstorm which caused rivers of water down the gravel drive and heavy ponding in the yard, and caused an internet outage for me.

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From The Hill (HT Hot Air):

The five Democrats who supported repeal were Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Larry Kissell (N.C.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and Mike Ross (Ark.).

Matheson voted against the original law but did not vote for its repeal last year.

In a statement after the vote, Matheson, who faces a tough reelection bid, said he had voted against the healthcare bill “at every opportunity” but did not mention last year’s opposition to repeal. He cited statistics showing that healthcare costs are still projected to rise at a greater rate than the economy, indicating the law has had little if any impact.

“With the Supreme Court ruling behind us, and as I reflect on my conversations with Utahans, I think about protecting the future of our economy,” he said. “We must scrap this flawed effort once and for all, start over and do it right.”

Note: Jim Matheson (D – Utah) is up against Truth Before Dishonor endorsed Mia Love, and in a fight for his political life. That could very easily explain both his vote and his dishonest and dishonorable statement after his vote.

Kissell, also in a tough reelection fight, had earlier announced his intention to switch his position on repeal, citing the law’s continued unpopularity with his constituents.

The other three — Boren, McIntyre and Ross — all voted to scrap the law in 2011 and opposed its enactment.

I have updated my ObamaCare Roll Call page with today’s vote, with an extremely modified version of a roll call. If you wish to see the actual Roll Call as provided by the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, it is provided here.

Big Brass Ones

Rock and Roll bands have occasionally acquired added musical support for their “one drum and three guitars” music. Sometimes, the rock bands consist of one drum, two guitars and a keyboard. But they all invariably employ outside help for certain songs and certain sounds. Kool & the Gang employed a very large (for a rock band) brass section, but that brass section was not extra help. It was integral to Kool & the Gang’s sound. Without the alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, trombone, Kool & the Gang would not have their signature sound. That, and the peppy, up-beat sound made Kool & the Gang extraordinarily successful. And it gave them reason to celebrate.

And I have no doubt that song was played in November, 2010, as the TEA Party crushed the Marxist, Maoist Democrat agenda in epic fashion. More House seats switched sides in 2010 than had switched sides since the Great Depression, clearly outdistancing the 1994 Republican Tsunami, itself a strong reaction against radical Leftism in its own right. But that’s not where 2010 ended. Many Democrat-held Governorships were swept under by the breaking TEA Party wave, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and most notably Wisconsin, the birthplace of “Progressivism” (read Socialism).

Again, that’s not where the TEAnami ended. A lot of people in the Socialist Democrat camp and in the Ruling Class Republican camp point to Nevada, Delaware, and Alaska in their mockery of the TEA Party, but they do so because they don’t want people to see Wisconsin’s ouster of a long-term radical Leftist Senator or Utah’s ouster of a mush-mouth Republican or the addition of a Republican in the Illinois US Senate seat previously besmirched by Barack Obama’s, umm, personality. They don’t want any attention focused on the fact over 200 Democrat-held seats in the New Hampshire Legislature switched hands into Republican seats. They don’t want anyone to notice that, for the first time since Reconstruction (or the first time in 170 years, which is longer), Democrats are no longer the majority Party in some southern Legislatures. They don’t want anyone to note that over 700 Democrat-held seats became Republican-held seats and primarily because of Obama-Reid-Pelosi and the TEA Party.

Enter 2012. The Ruling Class Republicans have forced the mush-mouth, three sides to every issue, dishonest Mitt Romney on us. They think they’ve won. But they have two very serious battles on their hands. Orrin Hatch did not survive the Utah Caucus and must face a Conservative challenger in a Primary run-off. The absolute squish Dick Lugar of Indiana (who hasn’t lived in Indiana in over 30 years) has been called out on his lie-filled attacks against his challenger Mourdock by none other than a very well-known and very oft-cited Leftist fact-checker. From the esteemed Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

Lugar now is in the political fight of his life against Richard Mourdock. Lugar is fighting back, as I pointed out previously, with blatantly false accusations calling Mourdock a tax cheat, and absurd race-card plays.

Now even FactCheck.org is calling Lugar out on the numerous lies being spread by Lugar’s campaign and SuperPAC[.]

Barney Frank (D – MA, retiring) has publically declared Democrats should not have pushed forward with ObamaCare. While he’s absolutely right about that, he gets all the reasons wrong. But he’s not the only Democrat — outgoing or not — that has declared all or part of ObamaCare to have been the wrong decision to make. A perusal of the above links will show outgoing and one-term Senator Jim Webb (D – VA) agrees, as do multiple Leftists in the media. Again, they arrive at the truth by way of absolutely failed logic, but they do admit the truth: ObamaCare was a wrong thing to pass. And it might not survive, any part of it, the Supreme Court challenge. So the first 2 years in total power down the drain. And a major reason for the 2010 TEAnami.

Will 2012 produce the same TEAnami effects as 2010? Absolutely not. And Ruling Class Republicans and the mainstream media (read Democrats) will proclaim the lack of such a TEAnami to be proof the TEA Party has lost its influence. It will be a lie. If, in the elections this year, the current status is maintained, it will provide a new “normal” in the political world. The TEA Party influence in the US political world will have been quantified and standardized. Meaning the TEA Party is maintaining its influence, however less publicly and less vocally.

But I don’t expect status quo. I expect even more Governors’ mansions will be Republican-occupied as a result of the 2012 elections than now. I expect more State Legislatures will change hands from Democrat to Republican. I expect the US Senate to go decidedly Republican.

When then-Governor Joe Manchin (D – WV), a well-liked politician as evidenced by his sky-high approval ratings ran for special election for Robert Byrd’s seat– What? Oh, that’s right. Sorry about that. Ladies and gentlemen, Senator Brown (R – MA) reminds me it’s The People’s Seat and not Robert Byrd’s seat. When then-Governor Manchin ran for special election to the US Senate after the previous Senator went on to his Eternal Reward (or punishment), he found himself in an unexpectedly tight race as a Republican businessman with far lower name recognition took him to the mat by tying him to ObamaCare. And Senator Joe Manchin (D – WV) has publicly declared he doesn’t know if he’ll vote for Obama this year or no. ABC writer Matthew Larotonda quotes Obama bigshot David Axelrod’s statements on CNN declaring Joe Manchin made a self-survival political decision by publicly being unsure of his vote for President.

One of the Obama campaign’s top men says Sen. Joe Manchin’s recent statements of indecision over whether to support the president in November was for his own political gain.

On CNN today, David Axelrod suggested the West Virginia Democrat made the statements as a security measure while he seeks reelection this fall.
…
“I think he was very candid there,” Axelrod said. “His concern is about his own political well-being.”

Any Democrat politician who has less than a 5 percent lead will be running away from Obama, for “his own political well-being”. Any Democrat politician who trails the Republican will be running away from Obama, for “his own political well-being.” That’s a given. Obama is absolutely caustic to the re-election hopes of incumbent Democrats and the election hopes of Democrats hoping to unseat Republicans. Toxic.

It is said winners of the Presidential Election have coat-tails. Candidates down-ticket win elections they wouldn’t have due to the person on the top of the ticket. The reverse is also true. And the reverse is a whirlpool. Obama is at the center of history’s arguably most powerful whirlpool in the Free World. Successfully tie a down-ticket Democrat to Obama and that down-ticket Democrat loses his or her election bid. And the TEA Party is busily tying a great many Democrat politicians to the Obama whirlpool. To the dismay of those Democrat politicians. And to the benefit of the country as a whole.

Maintaining the status quo in the various State Governments will validate the TEA Party gains of 2010. Maintaining the status quo, or very nearly so, in the US House of Representatives will validate the TEA Party gains of 2010. But I don’t expect the status quo to be merely maintained. I expect further Conservative and Republican (not at all the same thing) gains in the various State Governments, further gains in the US House. I also expect the Republicans to very clearly become the Majority Party in the US Senate. But not only that. I expect the Republican Majority in the US Senate to be clearly more Conservative than the current Republican Minority. Because of the pull of the TEA Party movement and the aversion to the Socialism brought on by Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, et al.

UPDATE
Professor Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has linked to this article as the finale to his Pennsylvania Primary article. Now you have to watch the bilingual Kool & the Gang music video!

But It’s The Gimmicks That Get The Votes!

Ed Morrissey writes:

So much for a fast start to the recover[y] in 2012. A week after announcing the worst durable-goods orders report in three years, the Commerce Department’s report on factory orders and shipments in January show the worst outcome in sixteen months[.] [pdf]

He then explains why — gimmicks which caused people to make their already-planned purchases earlier than they had planned. And he explains why there will be no robust or sustained recovery anytime soon:

Thanks to the ambiguity of tax policy, energy prices, and regulation in the marketplace, perhaps especially the ambiguity in regulations like Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare, capital investors can’t price long-term risk at all. That means that they can’t make informed decisions on capital investment for business expansions and new-business creation, and so their capital stays on the sidelines. Until we quit tinkering with gimmicky, temporary tax breaks and reform the long-term tax codes, we’re not going to see robust and sustained economic growth.

But you see, those are Conservative fixes, nominally Republican fixes, and they won’t get any votes from the Democrat base or the ignorant (do research the dictionary definition of the term) voters, who easily fall for gimmicks out of their own ignorance. And besides, as I have repeated multiple times in the past, Barack Obama is not at all interested in a recovery and a return to robust economic growth; such would devastate his goal of turning the Free Market capitalist Republic into a Socialist tyranny. Obama learned at the feet of Cloward, Piven, Alinsky, Marx, and many other extreme radical Leftists (many who were Soviet operatives, others died prior to Obama’s learning at their feet, but learn, he did) (HT Patterico’s Pontifications and Hot Air).

No, Obama does not want to fix the economy. He wants to Cloward-Piven the government and the economy, so the Greece-on-the-Potomac can collapse, the US economy can collapse and people will be clamoring for the Red Dawn of the coming Socialist tyranny Obama wants to usher forth here in this country. But Obama needs to keep the lemmings placated. He needs to keep selling his snake oil and pretending to be trying to do something in order to keep his job, so he can do his best to complete the destruction of the US from (ostensibly) within.

The gimmicks will only further delay any recovery or robust growth, and anyone with a lick of sense knows this. But the gimmicks will garner a lot of votes from the rabid Left and the ignorant, while simultaneously capsizing the Ship of State. And that’s why he’s doing it.

Of course they were double-crossed! The only surprise is that they didn’t know it would happen.

In debates that I had, primarily on liberal websites, about allowing same-sex couples to marry legally, my primary concern was that including same-sex relationships under the definition of marriage would open a legal hornet’s nest, in which a same-sex couple could sue a church which refused to perform a wedding ceremony for them. My friends on the left ridiculed that idea, saying that the First Amendment would prevent that. Well, the following story isn’t that, but it’s creeping closer:

Obama Administration Mandates Religious Employers Cover Contraception Cost, Catholic Bishops Furious

Posted on January 20, 2012 at 8:21pm by Tiffany Gabbay

The Catholic Bishops of the United States are reportedly furious over what they call the “literally unconscionable” decision by the Obama Administration to require that contraception be included in virtually all health plans provided by religious-affiliated institutions to their employees.

The announcement means that the mandate and its narrow exemption will not change. Rather, there will be a delay in enforcement against some employers.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Much more at the link.

From

Catholics Fight Health Rules

Social-Service Agencies Say They Need Broader Exemption From Requirements on Contraceptives
By KRIS MAHER, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

Catholic organizations have ramped up opposition to new federal health-care requirements to cover contraceptive services, saying the rules may prompt them to drop insurance or shut down.

Beginning next August, employers have to provide coverage for contraception and other preventive services for women such as screening for gestational diabetes and domestic-violence counseling under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, part of the federal health-care law passed in 2010.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services exempted religious organizations that employ and serve people of the same faith from having to provide contraception services, but this exception has been criticized as too narrow by church leaders, as well as some members of Congress.

“Jesus himself, or the Good Samaritan of his famous parable, would not qualify as ‘religious enough’ for the exemption, since they insisted on helping people who did not share their view of God,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.

Catholic social-service agencies, universities, hospitals and nursing homes wouldn’t be exempt because they frequently employ and serve non-Catholics. “The point is we’re being asked to pay for services that go against our beliefs,” said Pittsburgh Bishop David A. Zubik in an interview. “This looks like the government telling us what we can and can’t believe and what we can and can’t do.”

It’s a perfect storm: the Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide health care coverage, and the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to push regulations which would require religious organizations to include items to which they are theologically opposed. And it’s also the perfect double-cross: the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops supported President Obama’s health care reform legislation, with only the proviso that freedom of conscience exemptions be included; they were very happy with the Stupak Amendment, which specified that the ACA would not require abortion coverage. The Stupak Amendment was required to get a sufficient number of Democrats to vote to pass the legislation, but then it was stripped out in the Senate. The Bishops who had given their support to the bill as long as abortion wasn’t included. Then, in March 2010, well after the Senate cloture vote in December of 2009, they had to send a statement to parishioners, because the language prohibiting the forced coverage of abortion had been deleted:¹

As long-time advocates of health care reform, the U.S. Catholic bishops continue to make the moral case that genuine health care reform must protect the life, dignity, consciences and health of all, especially the poor and vulnerable. Health care reform should provide access to affordable and quality health care for all, and not advance a pro-abortion agenda in our country. Genuine health care reform is being blocked by those who insist on reversing widely supported policies against federal funding of abortion and plans which include abortion, not by those working simply to preserve these longstanding protections.

• On November 7, the U.S. House of Representatives passed major health care reform that reaffirms the essential, longstanding and widely supported policy against using federal funds for elective abortions and includes positive measures on affordability and immigrants.
• On December 24, the U.S. Senate rejected this policy and passed health care reform that requires federal funds to help subsidize and promote health plans that cover elective abortions. All purchasers of such plans will be required to pay for other people’s abortions through a separate payment solely to pay for abortion. And the affordability credits for very low income families purchasing private plans in a Health Insurance Exchange are inadequate and would leave families financially vulnerable.
• Outside the abortion context, neither bill has adequate conscience protection for health care providers, plans or employers.
• Congressional leaders are now trying to figure out how the rules of the House and Senate could allow the final passage of a modified bill that would satisfy disagreements between House and Senate versions.

The Catholic bishops are trusting souls, and they are in the forgiveness business; perhaps they never expected that President Obama would double-cross them, but more worldly Catholics knew all along that such would happen.

And now the bishops are complaining that the Affordable Care Act will force them to abandon the Church’s position on artificial contraception, but those oh-so-compassionate and forgiving clerics brought it on themselves! By supporting increased federalization and control of health care coverage, for the good and noble motive of seeing to it that everybody had coverage, they put themselves and their Catholic institutions under the authority of people who have absolutely no qualms about abortion or paying for abortion or artificial contraception, and mandating its inclusion; the bishops gave to Democratic politicians and federal bureaucrats who believe that the Church’s position on contraception is ridiculous authority over health care insurance offered by Catholic institutions.

The bishops are pretty much left with two options: they can support the Republican presidential nominee, since every Republican candidate has promised to do away with the health care reform legislation, or they can pray that the Supreme Court, which has taken the case and will decide on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, will declare it to be unconstitutional. With five of the Justices being Catholics,² it’s always possible that the Obama Administration’s position on this will be more encouragement for them to toss out the whole abysmal thing.
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Also writing on this:

• William Jacobson at Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion
• Darlene Click on Protein Wisdom

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1. The link is to Ed Morrissey’s column on Hot Air discussing it, because the internal link directly to the USCCB has expired. ↩
2. Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy are the Catholic Justices; they are also the most intelligent and conservative ones. ↩

Obama A Drag On WV Gov Race

Another day, another special election where the Republican ties Obama to the Democrat, dragging the Democrat down. This time it is in West Virginia, where the Republican is tying the Democrat to ObamaCare. And it has caused the undecided voters to swing heavily for the Republican. Both sides of the race have stated the Republican Governors Association ads tying the Democrat to implementation of ObamaCare have tightened up the race.

What should’ve been a standard issue Democrat win, with Acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D) filling the unexpired term of former Governor Manchin (D), who the Mountain State sent to Washington, DC to fill the unexpired term of the late Senator Byrd (D) has now become a close race, all due to the Obama Factor. As Aaron Blake at the Washington Post notes, should Republican Bill Maloney win today, it will be an upset.

Democrats now expect the race to be decided by a margin in the low single-digits, while Republicans hold out hope that they can pull off what would be a pretty significant upset but say that have nothing to lose, given the state’s heavily Democratic — if conservative — tilt.

It would indeed be a significant upset because, even as Republicans made big gains elsewhere in 2010, West Virginia stuck by its Democratic roots and returned large Democratic majorities to its state legislature, along with sending Manchin to Washington, despite national Republicans’s best efforts to beat him. And gubernatorial races, which are often decided on state issues rather than national ones, are more insulated from the national winds.

What Republicans have done, though, is transformed the national issue that is Obama’s health care bill into a state one. And given Obama’s approval rating in the state — which has stood in the low-30s for some time — that could be a winning strategy.

Julie Sobel and Sean Sullivan at National Journal add:

Hot-button federal issues aren’t typically at the center of governor’s races. But in West Virginia, businessman Bill Maloney and national Republicans are tying acting Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to President Obama late in the race on the president’s signature health care plan. And the issue is likely to surface again in 2012’s most competitive governors’ races. In some places, it already has.

Unlike other issues that have roiled special elections this year — Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan, the debate over raising the federal debt ceiling — the states have a role to play in the ongoing battle over the health care law. Twenty-six have joined a legal challenge to the law, and the Republican Governors Association’s final ad in West Virginia focuses on Tomblin’s refusal to join the protest.

Maloney is spending the final stretch arguing that Tomblin’s inaction against Obama’s health care plan is a major reason voters should take a stand against him. “He said early on he didn’t like Obamacare, but now he seems to be okay with it,” Maloney said of Tomblin in an interview with National Journal after a Lincoln Day Dinner appearance in Harrisville. “I’m going to sue, and we’re going to be the 27th state to sue and try to get rid of Obamacare. He’s not going to do that. So that’s a stark difference right there.”

They go on to recite a list of other states where Democrat Governors are being tied to ObamaCare with good results — for the Republicans. It will definitely be an issue in the 2012 Governor, Senate, House, Presidential races, and it will definitely be a drag on all Democrats that are tied to it. Obama and ObamaCare will most certainly cost many Democrats elections.

Pass the popcorn.

Numbers Democrats Don’t Want You To See

There are a lot of numbers Democrats don’t want you to see, and many of those numbers are poll numbers on various Democrat pet issues. Because those numbers show the Democrats are decidedly in the minority. But the Democrats don’t want the people to be aware of the fact they are actually in the majority and not, after all, “extremists” or “far-right” or any other personal attack the Democrats use from day to day to villify most of America.

Let’s start with the fiscal and social values of the population. According to multiple Rasmussen polls spanning multiple years, the population is overwhelmingly more conservative and overwhelmingly more moderate on fiscal issues than liberal, despite the outright liberal position held by the Democrat Congressmen. These same Rasmussen polls show a three-way split in the 30s on social issues, with the Conservative position being the position of plurality. Again, despite the Democrat politicians’ nearly lock-step Liberalism regarding social issues.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Likely U.S. Voters remain conservative on both fiscal and social issues, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Just 10% say they are fiscal and social liberals. Sixty-one percent (61%) are some other combination. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

These findings are consistent with surveys back to November 2007, as is the continuing pattern that voters tend to be more fiscally conservative than socially conservative.

Forty-four percent (44%) describe themselves as conservative on fiscal issues such as taxes, government spending and business regulation. Forty percent (40%) say they’re moderate when it comes to fiscal issues, while only 11% claim to be fiscal liberals.

But just 35% say they’re conservative when it comes to issues like abortion, public prayer and church-state topics. Thirty percent (30%) are moderate in this area, and 31% are social liberals.

It is very clear that, over a span of several years, the US population is far more Conservative than the leaders of the Democrat Party. This is why the Democrats don’t want people to know they’re not alone and that the population does not actually support the Democrat position on much of anything. Let’s just repeat that information the Democrats don’t want you to know. 44 percent of the US population is fiscally conservative, 40 percent of the US population is fiscally moderate, while a miniscule 11 percent is fiscally liberal. And that extreme minority fiscally liberal position is precisely where the Democrat elites live. The Republican elites aren’t much better, living in the fiscally moderate position, leaving the plurality of the people essentially without representation. This is why the likes of Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer and the so-called “conservatives” in publications like the New York Times need to derisively dismiss actual Conservatives. They can’t let the word get out, either.

On to the next issue: Illegal immigration. And do get the facts straight, it’s not about immigration; it’s about illegal immigration. 65 percent of We the People want border control dealt with first and foremost while 59 percent of the population believes the US Government’s policy favors illegal immigration in direct contradiction with the wishes of We the People.