To quote a commenter from Hot Air today, “It’s almost like a personal vendetta against the American people at this point for the Democrat leadership”.

How true.

From Politico:

After a brief period of consultation following the White House health reform summit, congressional Democrats plan to begin making the case next week for a massive, Democrats-only health care plan, party strategists told POLITICO.

A Democratic official said the six-hour summit was expected to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”

Democrats plan to begin rhetorical, and perhaps legislative, steps toward the Democrats-only, or reconciliation, process early next week, the strategists said.

After the summit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid planned to take the temperature of their caucuses.

“The point [of the summit] is to alter the political atmospherics, and it will take a day or two to sense if it succeeded,” the official said.

Positive statements by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) of late “are early signs the environment is already shifting a little in favor of revisiting health care.”

Democrats plan to take up the president’s comprehensive, $950 billion plan — referred to on the Hill as “the big bill.” The alternative would be a smaller — or “skinny” — bill that would provide less coverage and cost less. But that would amount to starting the complex process over.

I cannot help but wonder what new payoffs, buyouts and cushy appointments will come out of this latest round of hedonistic haggling.

Also, a suggestion to the GOP. Do not emulate the Dems and use the same talking point word over and over. I have heard the term “clean sheet of paper” about 20 times too many since yesterday. Be more direct and accurate and say, “strangle this bill in the crib”.

Being England and all, it should be the Afternoon Tea Party.

In any case, good to see that the disaffection with the usual budget busting, irresponsible Leftist policy is starting to bubble up from under the surface even in Old Blighty.

From Daniel Hannan’s Telegraph Blog – Hat Tip: ASPF)

The inaugural British Tea Party will take place on Saturday in my home town of Brighton, and I’ll be speaking. Do try to come: here are the details.

Labour has raised more than a trillion pounds in additional taxation since 1997. Yet, unbelievably, Gordon Brown has still managed to run up a deficit of 12.6 per cent of GDP (Greece’s is 12.7 per cent). A far lower level of taxation brought Americans out in spontaneous protest last year.

If you happen to be coming to the Conservative Spring Conference, do please pop in: the Tea Party is five minutes’ walk from the conference venue. It is, however, outside the security zone, and anyone is welcome to come. Oh, and this being England, we’ll be serving actual, you know, tea. I hope to see some of this blog’s readers there.

Comments seem rather divided. However, here is one that could have been written by one of Pelosi’s 14 year old interns:

LOL! I expect about 5 people will turn up – all the usual swivel-eyed, frothing Europhobes, public sector-hating Thatcherites.

The deficit is under control. Why do you persist in talking down our economy, thereby undermining confidence?

Here is a sample of the text from a call to action from Hannan.

Simon Jenkins raises a question that has been nagging at me for some time. Why is there no British Tea Party?

Where are the crowds of revenue slaves flocking to London to demand redress for the squandering of their money? Marginal tax is rising to 50%, VAT to 17.5% and state spending towards half the national product. The Treasury has lost control of public finance. So why no furious blue-rinses, bail-out ­haters, bonus-bleaters and embittered VAT victims storming Parliament?

Yeah: why? Some of my US readers believe that anti-tax rebellions are an American speciality, but we’ve had plenty of them in this country, from the Poll Tax Riots of 1381 (the Peasants’ Revolt) to the Poll Tax Riots of 1990. The doctrines that inspired the Boston mutineers – above all, the idea that taxes should not be levied without parliamentary process – were borrowed from English political theory.

Indeed, as Hugh Brogan drily observed in his History of the United States, the taxpayers’ revolt which sparked the American Revolution began on this side of the Atlantic: the Seven Years War had pushed taxes up to 25 shillings a year for the average Englishman as against sixpence for the average colonist, and MPs were determined to export part of that cost to North America.

More power to you, Mr. Hannan. The Dems are absolutely doomed here in 2010. Hopefully we can say the same about Labour soon enough.

As announced via a Russell email update from this morning:

“Since the Governor has announced that the Special Election will be held on Primary day, May 18th,” said Russell, “it makes perfect sense to also be a candidate in the special election. It’s a move that makes sense for the voters and will simplify the process for the thousands of my supporters.”

Russell responded immediately upon hearing of the death of Rep. Murtha by suspending all campaign activity and urging all citizens, Republicans, Democrats and Independents to come together and pray for Murtha family. “Regardless of your political position, you always knew Jack had an immense love and loyalty to his family and the residents of the12th Congressional District,” Russell said in an earlier release.

Russell has now officially resumed his primary campaign and will also unveil a newly designed web site at www.russellbrigade.com, within the next few days.

So, will those Murtha-described “racists” and “rednecks” vote for Russell? I think so, since the pork machine has now been turned off for that district.

As American citizens, we each have a constitutional right to petition our government for redress of grievances. And down through the ages, since the beginning shot of the Revolution, to the last verbal barrage launched at a Tea Party gathering, Americans have engaged in this practice time and time again.

But, for the last 150 years or so, government has learned that the more they ignore the voice of the “common man”, the more power they can claim for themselves and then feign stupidity when an angry citizenry finally makes enough noise to be heard throughout the halls of congress, the cloakrooms of the senate, and the dark, dusty corners of the White House itself.

Last year, as the Tea Party movement gained steam, it was clear that those in power who haven’t been listening, along with their elitist friends in the media and “entertainment industries”, started running scared. Never had the collective anger of constituents scorned ever been so loud, forceful and relentless.

And to this very minute, that anger continues, growing even more forceful, and determined NEVER to relent.

But, as with all political “movements”, the Tea Party is seeing its share of “growing pains”. These “growing pains” are puzzling to some, and a concern for others. Yet, one must remember that without such “growing pains”, one cannot “grow” in the first place. And THAT is what the Tea Party movement is doing…Growing, by leaps and bounds. It is altogether right and good that this happens.

During this season of “growing pains”, we must remember the Tea Party movement is at it’s best when it is allowed to remain free-flowing, decentralized, and mobile. It is a force for political good…An “injection” of common sense into a political system that has lost ALL sense.

In an upcoming “Weekly Standard”, well-known conservative author and blogger, Mary Katharine Ham writes:

(snips)

Will the tea partiers drag the GOP toward the unelectable fringe? Will the conservative movement tap into the antiestablishment energy of the tea partiers? Will the Republican party adopt the ideas of either? Can they all come together without sullying the grassroots authenticity of the tea party movement? Will they or won’t they form a third party? Is this the beginning of a beautiful relationship, or is someone going to get used?

****

The tea partiers are often portrayed unfairly as either far-right rubes or stealth agents of big business. Talking to those at CPAC, it was obvious that being new to the political process doesn’t mean they’re bad at it.

It is understandable that some folks are now wondering if the Tea Party movement, as a whole, will go to far right,…So far that those who call themselves “moderate dem” or “independent” will shy away from the movement.

The answer should be, and I predict will be: “NO!”

What the Tea Party movement is doing, and will continue to focus on, is to hone itself into the most powerful political force known in modern times. A force that will serve as a CONSTANT “reminder” for both major political parties that Americans are tired of the political BS! They are here to remind government:

Stop spending so much!
Stop taxing so much!
Stop telling individuals that you will help them, only to reach into their pockets and take more in taxes out of their hard-earned paychecks!
Stop taking over private industry and businesses, masking it as a “rescue”! This is the United States of America, not Soviet Russia!
Stop insisting that money in someone’s pocket automatically means they didn’t work their butts off to earn it!
Stop threatening people into buying a product or service they neither want, nor need!

….I could go on, but I think the point is made.

Above all, the Tea Party movement, at its core, is about government accountability.
For far too long, Americans have not held up their end of the “bargain” by holding their elected officials accountable. Our government was designed for a citizenry that REMAINS aware, alert and active in the daily goings-on of government, AT ALL LEVELS, from local to federal. It’s taken a long long time for this “awakening” to take shape, but it is finally happening, in the form of the Tea Party movement.

There is no way on God’s green earth that this movement should be wasted or distracted into forming 3rd parties. And it shouldn’t be gullable enough to become nothing more than a PAC.

No….This is a blinding force of individual freedom and constitutional vigilance.

And this force will either be reckoned with, or it will “clear the road” and make room for those who realize that freedom and liberty are not to be trifled with, and the constitution should be honored, respected and followed.

What have Haitians done to deserve this? Isn’t one earthquake enough?

From USA Today: (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin)

Pelosi leads bipartisan delegation to Haiti

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she is leading a 12-member congressional delegation to Haiti today.

She said the trip is designed to “demonstrate the ongoing American commitment to the Haitian people – that they will not be forsaken or forgotten.”

Others are on the trip include Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and George LeMieux, R-Fla. The House delegation includes Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich.; Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.; Jim Oberstar, D-Minn.; Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas; Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; Donna Christensen, D-V.I.

Indeed, about as “bi-partisan” as a score of termites bringing along a 2×4 to a picnic.

I assume their itinerary looks like this:

1) Drink several bottles of champagne on the 777 on the way to the island
2) Debark and give instructions to the camera crew. Make sure starving babies are tagged for later photo ops.
3) While holding said babies, blame Bush, Haliburton and Global Warming for the quake.
4) Scurry back to their hotel rooms and empty the shrimp and caviar bars. Wash down with Dom Perignon.
5) Depart. Give interviews to slobbering reporters and call the trip one of the “great accomplishments of the Obama administration and the Democrat-led Congress”
6) Return home, go to the microphone and accuse the GOP of being heartless and wanting to throw Haitians out in the street

Best comment:

From AlohaGuy:

…every MRE she’s bringing has an absentee ballot attached filled out with her name…