The House of Representative’s health care bill was presented yesterday and it’s a whopping 1,900-plus pages, 1,990 to be exact. Much of it’s in legalese, nearly unfathomable to the layman, let alone those Dem wits that passed this monster. Politico provides such a section:

And for those who cry “read the bill,” beware. There are plenty of paragraphs like this one:

“(a) Outpatient Hospitals – (1) In General – Section 1833(t)(3)(C)(iv) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395(t)(3)(C)(iv)) is amended – (A) in the first sentence – (i) by inserting “(which is subject to the productivity adjustment described in subclause (II) of such section)” after “1886(b)(3)(B)(iii); and (ii) by inserting “(but not below 0)” after “reduced”; and (B) in the second sentence, by inserting “and which is subject, beginning with 2010 to the productivity adjustment described in section 1886(b)(3)(B)(iii)(II)”.

The section deals with “incorporating productivity improvements into market basket updates that do not already incorporate such improvements,” if that helps.

Got that Okie? Yeah, clear as mud! The Democrats are also saying that this 1,990 page bill is virtually identical to the previous three 1,000-page versions so, not to worry. Shoot, what could they have possibly slipped in there in an extra 900 pages? A Jewish deli guy we used to know, recently deceased, once jokingly asked us, “How do you say f___ you in Jewish? Trust me.” I’m gettin’ that vibe here big time.

The Dems are also sayin’ that this bills $894 billion cost guesstimate is below the original $900-billion upper limit set by the Obama administration. They’re gettin’ that from the report by the Congressional Budget Office:

The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday a U.S. House health-care system re-write would extend health insurance to 96% of the nonelderly U.S. population by 2019, and spend $1.055 trillion to do so.

Penalties imposed on individuals who did not purchase insurance, and employers who did not offer coverage to their workers, would raise $161 billion over that time-frame. That brings the net cost of the bill to $894 billion through 2019, CBO said.

Achieving that number requires over $400-billion in cuts to existing programs and over $570-billion in new taxes — Trust Us!

The death panel end-of-life-counseling provision made it into those 1,990 pages:

The Medicare end-of-life planning provision that 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said was tantamount to “death panels” for seniors is staying in the latest Democratic health care bill unveiled Thursday.

The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.

‘Naw, we’d never, ever tell ya when to pull the plug on grandma — Trust Us!”

Let’s wrap up: Good ol’ House Speaker Nanny Nancy wants a full House vote on this mother by the end of next week — 1,990 pages, around 400,000 words, a 10-year cost guesstimate of $894 billion buckaroos — gee, a bit over two bucks plus two bits a word. Cheap, huh? And she’s givin’ them a whole week to read and digest this pup. Didn’t know that your Congress person was a speed reader, did ya?

Nancy, she say — “Trust Us!”

Harry Reid is saying that the Senate version of Obamacare will have a public option but finding the votes looks like a tough gig. Joe Lieberman says that he’ll filibuster that bill! Good for Joe. Why? Check out this info on WSJ from the WellPoint study which is being trashed by the Dems, natch, ’cause a big-bad-ol’ insurance company has mined their own actuarial data and it shows Obamacare to be the debacle that we on the right have known all along:

In fact, what distinguishes the Wellpoint study is its detailed rigor. Take Ohio, where a young, healthy 25-year-old living in Columbus can purchase insurance from WellPoint today for about $52 per month in the individual market. WellPoint’s actuaries calculate the bill will rise to $79 because Democrats are going to require it to issue policies to anyone who applies, even if they’ve waited until they’re sick to buy insurance. Then they’ll also require the company to charge everyone nearly the same rate, bringing the premium to $134. Add in an extra $17, since Democrats will require higher benefit levels, and a share of the new health industry taxes ($6), and monthly premiums have risen to $157, a 199% boost.

Meanwhile, a 40-year-old husband and wife with two kids would see their premiums jump by 122%—to $737 from $332—while a small business with eight employees in Franklin County would see premiums climb by 86%. It’s true that the family or the individual might qualify for subsidies if their incomes are low enough, but the business wouldn’t qualify under the Senate Finance bill WellPoint examined. And even if there are subsidies, the new costs the bill creates don’t vaporize. They’re merely transferred to taxpayers nationwide—or financed with deficits, which will be financed eventually with higher taxes.

Yeah — the Dems are scared of this type of data getting out into the real world, not that Obama’s MSM lapdogs will put it out in mass. But now, you know!

Hugh Hewitt is killing me today as he plays clips from shows hosted by Dean Barnett, who passed away one year ago today. Last year I wrote the following:

Dean Barnett passed away today. Born in 1967, he was a young 41 years old. What a shame, what a loss for all of us.

I first discovered Dean while he was guest posting at Hugh Hewitt’s blog where his opinions and prose entertained and informed with a sense of glee. I used to send him Photoshops and he used one once, and often commented on others that he liked. When I got an email from him that was special. I loved it when he guest hosted for Hugh on the radio. That voice, that Boston accent, the way he had such fun talking with Glen in Texas.

Dean had cystic fibrosis and had already out survived the odds. He had many close calls before, but a new type of treatment gave him hope, and extra months and years. Dean wrote about CF in a blog 2006 post.

CF is a genetic disease, the number one genetic killer in the country. The average age of death is 36. I’m now 39; when I was born in 1967, the life expectancy for a newborn with CF was 8 years.

Yet, he thought that he was a lucky man.

Until I was a teenager, I was mostly asymptomatic. Even after I was a teenager, I enjoyed what is considered good health in the CF community. I’ve certainly been luckier than most CF patients.

After having a serious setback a few years ago and being placed on the lung transplant list he got a chance at being in a test of a new treatment.

At one point during my interview, the questioner asked me if I expected to see a cure to CF in my lifetime. I answered no, but that it doesn’t really matter. When you see death up close, a couple of things become clear. One is that we all die, and that death is just part of the deal. The other is that life is such a blessing, that’s it just so great, even though you know the inevitable might be near you still want as many bites of the apple as possible.

None of us know what the future of the salt water treatment might be. My health will maintain its current state indefinitely in the truest sense of the term. The good times could continue for years, or it could all crash tomorrow.

That treatment brought him a bit over 18 extra months of the “good times”.

Godspeed Dean. May God’s grace and comfort be with your family and friends.

I miss Dean . . .

Technorati Tags: Dean Barnett, cystic fibrosis

Over at The Washington Times, Amanda Carpenter’s Hot Button makes note that what Senate Dems and the Obama White House have so far failed to do to the coal industry, the EPA is working overtime to accomplish:

While campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama said his cap-and-trade tax plans would “bankrupt” anyone building a coal-fired power plant. Although those taxes haven’t materialized, the Environmental Protection Agency has put the brakes on 79 surface mining permits in four states since he was elected.

The EPA says these permits could violate the Clean Water Act and warrant “enhanced” review. But the agency went even further last week, announcing plans to revoke a permit for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in West Virginia – a move that has caused anxiety among coal-state Democrats about the future of the industry under the Obama administration.

Mr. Obama’s opposition to coal has been apparent since January 2008 when he told the San Francisco Chronicle he would clamp down on miners by enacting a cap-and-trade system that would make it too expensive to stay in business. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” he said at the time. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Although his favored cap-and-trade bill hasn’t yet been passed, West Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin III, who supported Mr. Obama’s candidacy, called the EPA moves part of a stealth campaign to stifle the industry.

Yeah, just what this country needs right now, another big industry to go into permanent decline — dragging a lot of others along for the ride, not to even mention all the rest of us with much higher energy bills due to the higher cost of coal, or the complete lack of it altogether. All in the name of combating so-called Anthropogenic Climate Change, formerly know as the Holy Order of Global Warming. This secular church is being propped up today with some new rounds of statistics that argue against what most of us have observed first hand — “they” say that the numbers tell us that it’s not getting cooler right now, but it’s still getting hotter.

Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

{…}

“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

“[C]herry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend[.]“ Hmmm, isn’t that exactly what those Global Warming proponents have done for years now with their slavish regard for the discredited “Hockey Stick” graph?

In his LA Times column today, Fido, a.k.a. the climate criminal, Liberal Fascists author Jonah Goldberg puts all the hoo haa about stressing over man-caused global warming into perspective.

Some climate-change activists would take your dog away — and spend trillions on other efforts — rather than come up with solutions that could actually work to offset carbon levels.

{…}

The push in Congress for a huge new carbon tax is a dangerous farce. Yes, it’s true that CO2 levels and global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution, and that’s something to take seriously. But the political reality is that truly meaningful global restrictions on CO2 emissions in the near future simply will not happen, and pretending otherwise is a waste of time, money and political capital.

{…}

Meanwhile, an international bureaucracy pushes “global governance” to combat climate change, heedless of popular sentiment. America’s founders revolted to protest too much taxation and too little representation. The notion that America will sacrifice its sovereignty and treasure — and dogs! — to reduce warming by a fraction a century from now is absurd.

If you cannot afford — politically, morally or economically — the solution to a perceived problem, then it’s not a solution.

So, will the Dem wits in Congress actually cram Cap & Trade Crap & TAX down our throats like the shit sandwich that it is? Will you, Mr. or Mrs. American citizen accept being told by your government to freeze your keester off in the Winter and sweat your gonads off in the summer so that little entrepreneurs in China and India can pump the world full of C02 as they please? Not that doing so would hurt the trees any mind you. Or maybe, like John Holdren, the Obama administration Science Czar, you’re a big fan of the Chinese way of population control — one child per family — enforced however cruelly is necessary?

As Dennis Prager is so fond of saying, “If you don’t believe in God, you’ll believe in anything.”

Yeah, you’ll believe that little ol’ us can actually destroy, or save, the planet Earth . . .

Right! Anyone want to buy a bridge?

Fox has been a member of this pool since 1997, and pays its part of the cost to maintain it. No matter, Obama and Co. said that the other four members were invited to a round-robin interview with the Pay Czar, after the administration’s announcement of the slashing of executive pay at companies that took bailout money, but that Fox News could go eat shit and die or something; just don’t show up!

To their credit, the others, including ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and Bloomberg all told the White House to go pound sand — if Fox was excluded they wouldn’t show up — so Obama backed down. This time.

If the executive branch ever manages to take full control of the media we’re all toast. Obama doesn’t seem to understand this — or yet, maybe he does . . .

On November 16, Sarah Palin will appear on Oprah’s talk show and promote her book, which will be on shelves the following day.

Industry navel gazers speculated Oprah had turned off some of her conservative viewers — or, more accurately, they had turned her off — when she not only endorsed then presidential candidate Barack Obama but even campaigned for him. (Palin, of course, was the running mate of Obama’s rival, Sen. John McCain.)

It was the first time Oprah had stripped off her apolitical veneer and publicly endorsed a political candidate. At the time, Oprah told CNN’s Larry King she did it because “what [Obama] stands for” was “worth me going out on a limb for.”

And her ratings took a tumble, though hers was not the only syndicated show to lose audience last season and she still managed to wind up at the top of the syndication heap at season’s end.

Not sure if this will “help” Oprah, but it sure won’t hurt Palin. Who knows, maybe Sarah will share her recipe for moose stew with all them Oprahettes.

LOL