Well, it looks like that a certain congressman has expressed out loud what many other Democrat House members have been running in their re-election ads over the last few weeks. That is, when it comes to their party leadership and the Leader in particular.

I know one thing. I would not want to be around Bug-Eyed Nancy come November 4, if I was this guy. That gavel is heavy and if we know Pelosi alright, it is probably spiked to boot.

From The Washington Post: (Hat Tip: Doug Powers)

Yesterday I noted here that some House Dems in tough districts are now aggressively distancing themselves from the Obama/Pelosi agenda, with some Dems taking direct shots at the President and the Speaker.

Blue Dog Dem Bobby Bright of Alabama has raised this to a new level, joking to constitutents that Pelosi might “get sick and die” before he has to support her again for Speaker, a local reporter tells me.

(snip)

So I called the reporter, Cosby Woodruff, and he gave me Bright’s actual quote.

“He had been asked a question from the audience about his support for Pelosi,” Woodruff told me. “He said, `Let’s wait until that comes up. He listed a long list of reasons why Pelosi might not run for Speaker of the House.”

“The last one was, `heck, she might even get sick and die,’” Woodruff told me.

I never thought I would say this, but this is the kind of faux pas that would even embarrass Joe Biden.

• 

• Tweet

While there are many descriptions of what MengeleCare will do to you, to your employer, to your family and to your wallet, sometimes it is better to just use the old adage, “A picture is worth a trillion words”. (Updated for The Age of Obama Spending).

As the below chart shows, there is a minotaur-like maze of new federal bureaucracies, offices, agencies and the like to impose themselves between you, your doctor and your insurance company. Sorry Nancy Pelosi, we now know what is in this bill now. In spades.

From the House.gov site:

“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,”said Brady, the committee’s senior House Republican. “If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all.”

Brownback, the committee’s ranking member, added, “This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn’t take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy.”

In addition to capturing the massive expansion of government and the overwhelming complexity of new regulations and taxes, the chart portrays:

* $569 billion in higher taxes;
* $529 billion in cuts to Medicare;
* swelling of the ranks of Medicaid by 16 million;
* 17 major insurance mandates; and
* the creation of two new bureaucracies with powers to impose future rationing: the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the Independent Payments Advisory Board.

Brady admits committee analysts could not fit the entire health care bill on one chart. “This portrays only about one-third of the complexity of the final bill. It’s actually worse than this.”

Download the PDF version of the map here.

• 

• Tweet

For a change, some good news when it comes to the courts and the fight against MengeleCare.

Virginia’s lawsuit against the new mandates in the health care bill has been allowed to proceed.

A few more wins like this and the states will be the ones rolling back MengeleCare, regardless of what Congress does next year, and regardless of which party rules.

From Yahoo News: (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin)

A judge on Monday refused to dismiss the state of Virginia’s challenge to President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law, a setback that will force his administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the overhaul effort.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state’s lawsuit which argues the law’s requirement that its residents have health insurance was unconstitutional, allowing the challenge to go forward.

Meanwhile, they are not lying down in CO, as evidenced by a referendum that has amassed over 130,000 signatures.

From Channel 9 News:

Coloradans may have the opportunity this fall to weigh in on the recent health care legislation passed by Congress. Roughly 130,000 signatures in support of the Right to Health Care Choice amendment to Colorado’s Constitution were turned into the Secretary of State’s office on Friday afternoon.

To qualify for the November ballot, 76,047 of those signatures need to be matched with registered Colorado voters.

The amendment would prevent Coloradans from being required to buy health insurance and to continue to allow medical personnel to take payments in cash for services.

“We want Colorado to be a sanctuary state for quality health care,” Jon Caldara, the initiative’s chief proponent, said. “This is not just to address the mandate in Obama-care, this is to make sure Colorado never becomes like Massachusetts where government puts a gun to your head and says you will buy a private product whether you want it or not.”

One step and state a time.

• 

• Tweet

If there is one thing this administration and and its KY-Jelly Congress thrives on, it is hiding in the shadows. From MengeleCare to turning over virtually all energy policy-making to the EPA, the last thing they ever want is open debate.

The recess appointment of Dr. Don Berwick to head the Medicare and Medicaid programs proves this point once again.

From FOX News: (Hat Tip – Michelle Malkin)

President Obama intends to bypass Congress and appoint Dr. Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid, the White House announced Tuesday — filling the job while Congress is in recess to get around Republican opposition that threatened to derail Berwick’s confirmation.

Berwick’s supporters say he is the right man in the right place at the right time. But his opponents have lined up against him. They say that while he may be a the highly respected doctor, he is also an outspoken proponent of the British health care system, which they say is all wrong for Americans.

“This recess appointment is an insult to the American people,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Tuesday night. “Dr. Berwick is a self-professed supporter of rationing health care, and he won’t even have to explain his views to the American people in a Congressional hearing.”

…By appointing Berwick now, while Congress is out of session for the July 4 holiday break, Berwick can assume the post of administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services without undergoing confirmation hearings in the Senate. Democrats want to avoid a nasty confirmation fight that could reopen the health care debate. Berwick was nominated in April but no confirmation hearing had been scheduled.

This Berwick character become mildly famous for his mastubatory embrace of Soviet-style Bread line health care policy and saved a special oral orgasm for Old Blighty, whose health care ranks just above Cuba’s for efficiency and money-making for the local mortician.

• 

• Tweet

You know all of those long-running jokes about the British and their rotten teeth? Well, thanks to more unconstitutional meddling by the Moes, Larrys and Curlys that occupy Congress, we Americans can have the same crooked, broken smile as our longtime friends across the pond. Especially your kids.

From Sen. Jim Demint via Big Government:

For millions of American teenagers braces are an embarrassing rite of passage, and for their parents, a tremendous cost. According to bracesinfo.com, the average prices of straightening a teenager’s teeth is about $5,400. In South Carolina, where themedian family income is approximately $45,000, the cost of braces for one child can total more than 10 percent of a parent’s gross income for the year.

Because braces are so expensive, many families pay for them through an installment agreement with their dentist. This is often a fair and affordable option that allows families to avoid charging the expense on their credit card and paying double-digit interest rates.

But the Democrats in Washington are clamping down on health care payment plans with the banking bill. As the bill is currently written, health care providers, or any other business that allows customers to make payments in more than four installments or assesses any kind of late fees, will be treated under the same terms as AIG, Freddie Mac and Goldman Sachs. A new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, housed in the Federal Reserve, will regulate their transactions and could subject them to further regulatory burden.

The banking regulation bill was supposed to crack down on Wall Street, but it’s just another power grab that’s going to hurt Main Street doctors, dentists and small-town businesses. And, certainly the families who struggle to find ways to pay for their doctor bills.

From toilets to lightbulbs to automobiles to your own backyard, there is basically nothing you do from the time you get out of bed to the time you go to sleep that the government, at any level, is not sticking it’s nose into. Now they want to get into your mouth as well.

How wonderful it will be when you wake up in the morning and have a blinding toothache or a crown that has fallen out, to find that your local dentist has already used up his yearly allotment of hours and cannot see you or any other patient. Because some nameless, faceless government paper-pusher has deemed it so.

That is how it is done in Britain and why they have some of the world’s teeth. Granted, it is rather fitting, seeing that when it comes to socialism, there is little to ever smile about.

On the other hand, I WILL be smiling at the title of Sen. MAJORITY LEADER Jim DeMint come next January.

• 

• Tweet

You have to give this doctor kudos for imagination and for beating the Left at their own game.

From The Orlando Sentinel: (Hat Tip: News Busters)

MOUNT DORA — A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care “elsewhere.”

“I’m not turning anybody away — that would be unethical,” Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. “But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it.”

The sign reads: “If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.”

Estella Chatman, 67, of Eustis, whose daughter snapped a photo of the typewritten sign, sent the picture to U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Orlando Democrat who riled Republicans last year when he characterized the GOP’s idea of health care as, “If you get sick, America … Die quickly.”

Chatman said she heard about the sign from a friend referred to Cassell after his physician recently died. She said her friend did not want to speak to a reporter but was dismayed by Cassell’s sign.

“He’s going to find another doctor,” she said.

Cassell may be walking a thin line between his right to free speech and his professional obligation, said William Allen, professor of bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine.

Allen said doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but political preference is not one of the legally protected categories specified in civil-rights law. By insisting he does not quiz his patients about their politics and has not turned away patients based on their vote, the doctor is “trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation,” Allen said.

“But this is pushing the limit,” he said.

Cassell, who has practiced medicine in GOP-dominated Lake County since 1988, said he doesn’t quiz his patients about their politics, but he also won’t hide his disdain for the bill Obama signed and the lawmakers who passed it.

A picture of the sign:

Of course, Rep. Alan “If you get sick, America…Die quickly” Grayson had to add his two pesos to this situation:

“I’m disgusted,” he said. “Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ‘Do no good.’ If this is the face of the right wing in America, it’s the face of cruelty. … Why don’t they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?”

But of course, this administration and Congress would never, I mean never use citizen’s health data that is illegally collected from the IRS and the census to deny care for those who did not vote for Obama or Democrats in general. You have their word on it.

By the way, where is that $2500 in premium reduction already? Millions are waiting for it. After all, we are in a “crisis”.

• 

• Tweet

I’ve been wondering this same thing since the “auto-bailouts” took place, so I’m glad someone finally asked the question.

Over at Hotair.com, one of their top bloggers, “Allahpundit”, authors this piece which is related to CNSNews’s article titled “Rep. Burgess: Government Can Force Us to Buy General Motors Products If Obamacare Mandate Upheld in Court”. This is, of course, in reference to the the ‘obamacare’ health bill which mandates (unconstitutionally) that individual citizens buy health care coverage (if they don’t already have it) or face fines or jail time.

Here’s “Allahpundit’s” take over at HotAir blog, which includes a vid clip of Representative Michael Burgess (R-TX) warning us about the issue:

Video: Could the feds require Americans to purchase GM cars?
posted at 8:41 pm on March 29, 2010 by Allahpundit

A fun new entry in CNS News’s “let’s ask Congress an uncomfortable question about ObamaCare” series. I’m not losing any sleep over the GM scenario and neither is Burgess (I think), but it’s a tasty hypothetical given the left’s basically correct assertion that Commerce Clause jurisprudence lets them do anything their hearts desire. Any legal eagles care to weigh in? If it’s constitutional to impose an insurance mandate, i.e. “you must purchase a product from this industry,” why would it be unconstitutional to refine that to “you must purchase our product from this industry”? In fact, assuming that the feds gave you a choice between not buying a car at all and having to buy GM if you did choose to buy one, the GM hypothetical would operate more like auto-insurance laws — which are, of course, fully constitutional — than the true mandate that’s found in ObamaCare. There’s no question, either, that the feds can monopolize certain industries, although in the past I believe it’s taken a specific constitutional grant of authority to enable that. What we’re talking about here is a free-floating monopoly power under the Commerce Clause. If the car hypothetical is too goofy for you, instead try, let’s say, education. Anything stopping the feds from saying, “You’re using our product from now on”? My poli sci is rusty, but nothing springs to mind.

Click the HotAir link above to access the vid, and also access embedded source links within the piece.

• 

• Tweet