Two days ago the New York Times was featuring the above “illustration” of Obama as a Christ-figure in their week in review section article: As Health Vote Awaits, Future of a Presidency Waits, Too. It’s all gone down the NYT memory hole now, but I borrowed this screen capture from Ed Morrissey’s Hot Air piece where Ed writes:

In other words, will the Obama presidency become a political martyr for the progressive agenda? It’s not terribly difficult to discern the subtext, if it can even really be called that, from the Times’ article. What’s rather amazing is that the Paper of Record puts this in its news section rather than Opinion.

Next time, use a photograph. Leave the Nola Lopez “illustrations” for the cartoon section, unless the Times wants to leave the impression that its entire paper is a cartoon … a strategy that, in this case, would be considered a success.

And from CentristNet:

This is nothing new for the NYT, their Obamaphile journalists like Peter Baker and other establishment media, as the cheerleading of the Obama candidacy and then Presidency has been continuous and systemic since the inception of Obama’s campaign for President in 2007. As the clock counts down on perhaps the most important vote in Congress in decades, the House vote on Obamacare, we can expect to see even more frantic Obama worship by the establishment media in the attempt to convince the American public to support the unpopular bill. Centrist, independent and non-ideological Americans are left to wonder what establishment media coverage of the Obama Administration would look like if the narrative-setting giant NYT reported in an objective, as opposed to supportive, manner regarding the Obama Presidency.

Indeed — if there had been any kind of objective press during the campaign we’d have a President Hillary or President McCain . . . instead, we have President Obamessiah — cross, halo, feet of clay and all.

OK — Let’s get crackin’! The House Dems are burnin’-down-the-house tryin’ to get Obamacare passed and made Law of the Land before the Congressional Easter break. Nancy Pelosi and Co. are terrified of the prospect of House members going home and facing the growing wrath of their constituents over this increasingly unpopular legislation. Good ol’ Nanny Nancy is pushing a plan to have the House pass the Senate bill — Without a single member of the House of Representatives Ever Casting A Vote!

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

“It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

This is the so-called Slaughter Solution dreamed up by NY Democrat Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of the “She had to wear her dead sister’s teeth” fame at that sham of a White House Health Care Summit. Gotta LUV them Dems — crafting a way to pass unpopular legislation with zero accountability involved! According to Michelle Malkin, the House Republicans are trying to force a vote on the Slaughter procedure hoping to stop it in its tracks and CA Republican David Dreier is Calling for Cameras in Rules Committee Hearing Room for Healthcare Debate. I won’t hold my breath on that last one — Okie don’t look so hot in blue.

The Anchoress is not very optimistic about this today . . . can’t say that I blame her either:

Barring something completely unforeseen -like California falling into the Pacific- this bill will be “passed”. A hundred rallies by thousands will not dissuade them, because none of this is about you, or what you want, or what you think. It is about the old thing, the same old thing: the illusion of power, and the pursuit of that illusion.

No matter how this vote works out, the Progressives in Congress won’t stop with the reconciled Senate bill. From Pelosi’s lips to our bleeding ears:

“My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive,” Pelosi said, according to an account by Washington Post reform advocate Ezra Klein. “We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there’ll be more legislation to follow.”

As of right now, today, the Democrat House Whip says they don’t yet have the votes, and this fight may go past Easter. From his lips to our bleeding ears!

Remember when we found out last fall that Obama’s Safe Schools Czar had been promoting fisting to 14-year-olds in public schools? Looks like they’ve found yet another use for all those latex gloves!

Wow! Guess this is stirring up the Lefties for a lot o’ reasons. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air ’splains it for all those loony Lucys out there:

No one can accuse two-time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez of holding back — or of Investors Business Daily of a lack of courage in publishing him. His latest take on the Democrats’ headlong rush to electoral oblivion in the midterms, and perhaps beyond, is dead-on accurate. Backbenchers are being asked to blow up their political careers in order to save President Obama’s term in office. But expect people to strongly object to the imagery and the declaration Ramirez uses:

Provocative? Absolutely. But this isn’t insinuating that Obama is a secret Muslim or that Democrats are terrorists. It accuses Democrats of putting Obama the man ahead of their own Constitutional obligations, and their own careers. Perhaps that could also have been depicted as falling on a grenade or committing seppuku, but for this age, the image instantly communicates exactly what the artist intends.

Still . . . Wow!

[H/t: Obi's Sister -- who, BTW, just turned four -- Congrats!]

Chris Muir’s Day by Day Cartoon

After Speaker-of-the-House Nancy Pelosi’s comment the other day, “But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it”, the Democrats are now planning for the Big Jam Down to happen this coming week, and to keep us in the dark once again, Pelosi’s promise to release the reconciliation bill 72 hours before the vote so that the American People would have a chance to read and understand what the final legislation would contain is not-so-slowly becoming just another Dem-wit lie. To perform this slight of hand, Pelosi’ House plans to use what is now being referred to as the Slaughter Solution — Doug Ross explains:

The Washington Examiner reports that House Democrats appear poised to adopt a rule that would pass the Senate health care bill without actually voting on it.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) is preparing to pass the health care overhaul through the House of Representatives without a vote, as was originally reported by the National Journal’s Congress Daily. Mark Tapscott observes that such a maneuver would be the penultimate refutation of the people’s will.

In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

Thus, Slaughter is preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill “passed” once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes. Democrats would thereby avoid a direct vote on the health care bill while allowing it to become law!

Constitutional attorney Mark R. Levin asks, “They’re going to present a rule, issued by her committee as chairman, that says that the House already adopted the Senate bill when we know it didn’t?”

Go to the Ross piece to read more because he explains that this legislation-by-fiat plan from Louise “She had to wear her dead sister’s teeth!” Slaughter attacks the Constitutional core of how legislation was designed to be crafted and implemented into law. In a later update Ross includes this piece of conversation between Conservative Mark Levin and Constitutional expert Arthur Fergenson:

Levin: I wanted to bring additional firepower on this subject, my buddy Arthur Fergenson, who is a Constitutional expert and who has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, including Buckley vs. Valeo…

What do you make of this unbelievable — that they’re even talking about, this chairman of the Rules Committee — acting as if members of the House voted on something when they didn’t actually vote on it?Fergenson: It’s preposterous. It’s ludicrous. But it’s also dangerous. It’s dangerous because, first, …because [the U.S. Constitution's] Article I Section VII says every bill — and it capitalized “bill” — …it is common sense that the bill is the same item, it can’t be multiple bills, it can’t be mashups of bills. And, in fact, in 1986, Gene Gressman, no conservative, and one of the experts — the expert — on Supreme Court practice… was writing an article that was dealing with a less problematic attempt to get around this section of the Constitution… [Ed: the line-item veto] and he wrote, “By long usage and plain meaning, ‘Bill’ means any singular and entire piece of legislation in the form it was approved by the two houses.”

…the bills have to be revoted until they are identical. Both chambers have to vote on the bill.

If this cockamamie proposal were to be followed by the House and there were to be a bill presented to the President for his signature, that was a bill that had not been voted on — identically by the two Houses of Congress — that bill would be a nullity. It is not law. That is chaos.

I cannot recall any circumstance in which that has happened.

…What we have here is a measure, that if Obama signed it, would immediately affect taxation, it would change rules of practice in the insurance industry, it would regulate 17% of the nation’s economy, and it would be done without any legal basis whatsoever!

Fergenson: It’s like, the closest I can think of is martial law! The President would have no authority — there would be no law! It’s not like it would be constitutional or not. There would be. No. Law.

Levin: What do you make of people who sit around and even think of things like this? To me, they are absolutely unfit to even be in high office!

Fergenson: You’re right, Mark. And I would go back to what caused Gressman to write this… he was asked for his comments by the Senate… because the Senate was trying to do the equivalent of a line-item veto. And, in 1986, you were in the Justice Department under Attorney General Meese… there was a proposal… to take a bill and divide it into little pieces and.. then the President would sign each one or veto each one. That was unconstitutional. A Senate Rules Committee reported it unfavorably.

Levin: You know what’s interesting about this… Attorney General Ed Meese considered it unconstitutional even though President Reagan had wanted a line-item veto. And President Reagan agreed that it was unconstitutional without an amendment to the Constitution…

…Speaking for myself, I would tell the people who listen to this program that you are under absolutely no obligation to comply with it [this health care bill] because it is not, in fact, law. Do you agree with me?

Fergenson: I agree with you. I believe it would be tested by the Supreme Court. I believe that, under these circumstances, chaos would reign. There is no obligation to obey an unconstitutional law. The courts are empowered to determine whether it’s unconstitutional… it’s not a law.

Under this scenario, the various arms of the federal government will be acting under a law that does not exist.

If that don’t get your blood up to a full-boil, you’re just not payin’ attention — or you’ve drunk the kool-aid and think that Obamacare is totally KOOL! If you’re ears are now smokin’ like a steam kettle on the high burner then hit Michelle Malkin’s piece for all the contact info for the Blue Dogs and on-the-fence Dems that Nancy Pelosi is tryin’ to turn from Nos to Yeses! Pretty cool PhotoShop of Pelosi and Slaughter butcherin’ the Constitution as well.

Lots more Stop Obamacare info and contacts at Hugh Hewit’s site.

It’s not lookin’ good, but it’s not yet too late — call, email, fax those potential wafflers — let them know that this will be the last term in office if they jam this crap sandwich of a health care bill down out throats!

Especially if you are on Medicare, or soon will be — this just might be the difference of whether you ever have decent health care again, or whether the government ignores you and like Scrooge, tells us all to go die already.

STOP. OBAMACARE. NOW.

So easy, even babies can understand it — not sure about cavemen though . . .

Victoria Jackson — gotta LUV her for tellin’ the truth.

With what’s going on today — the Dems deciding to use reconciliation to pass their onerous Health Care bill regardless of the will of the American People, Jackson’s little ditty takes on more gravitas than would normally be granted. November can’t get here fast enough!

Here’s a great Reconciliation PhotoShop from Maksim at The People’s Cube:

However, the tone-deaf folks on the Demmish side of the isle aren’t listening, don’t give a whit, or both! Paul Ryan (R-WI) schools the Prez on why double-counting and offset time frames don’t exactly give one a clear picture of reality.

You can almost see that Obama is playing that scene in The Untouchables where Robert De Niro as Al Capone beats one of his competitors to death with a baseball bat at the meeting’s round table in his mind as he sets his jaw and listens to Ryan score points.

Ha!

Still, bottom line was that Obama threw down the gauntlet and has given the Repubs 4 to 6 weeks to come around and embrace Obamacare or they’ll shove it up our ass via reconciliation! The way to stop this is to convince those Dems that are most vulnerable this Nov. that to vote for the Senate bill — the necessary first step toward that reconciliation process — is political suicide. Hugh Hewitt has the contact list.

Obamacare can be stopped — but it’s sure not dead yet . . . Let’s kill it!

Yesterday the Senate’s cloture vote on its massive 2,000+ page Health Care Bill passed on a 60/39 straight party-line vote. Not one Republican supported this freedom-killing boondoggle. Michelle Malkin is keeping a list of how much bribe money is in the bill to keep a few potential DemWit stragglers onboard, calling it a Demcare bribe list. Michelle also notes that Sen. Olympia Snowe (RINO-Maine) has been pow wowing with the Dems on the final resolution of her vote.

Could someone please save us from all these folks that proclaim that they’re trying to save us? Of course, they really don’t give a flyin’ you-know-what about our health care — all they really want is for the government to take over 1/6th of the nation’s economy — to have a vast increase in Federal power and control over our lives. In his cartoon for today, Chris Muir deftly sums up that concept, showing what Obamacare will mean to all of us.

Chris Muir’s Day by Day Cartoon

As the Chosen One has been jetting around Asia mouthing platitudes about open information, transparency in government, and freedom, his party’s leaders and their minions have been beavering away to ensure that soon, we’ll all be greeting each other thus:

“Achtung comrade — welcome to the collective!”

Elections have consequences — election night 2010 is only 11-1/2 months away . . . if we can survive for that long!

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!