Bloomberg: Tomorrow the Mayo Clinic will stop accepting Medicare patients at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona. Medicare pays too little. Mayo Clinic is losing millions of dollars each year on Medicare patients. This shutdown is a pilot project. More to come.

Larry Kudlow reviews the economic news for 2009 and predicts a "mini boom" for 2010. Let's hope he's right. He thinks real economic growth will be 4 or 5 percent, but we will have inflation.

We will have a "blue moon" shining on this New Year's Eve if skies are clear. A blue moon refers to the rarity of two full moons in a month. We've all used the saying "once in a blue moon." It has no astronomical significance and of course it's not blue.

ADG: The Central Arkansas Library System, which is very good, owes Little Rock property owners $1.5 million in a dispute over 2007 taxes.

Reason looks back over the best and the worst of the past decade, which really isn't over yet. The blogosphere is listed both as one of the best and one of the worst developments. But overall I agree with the following:

There are few positive things about that horrid decade that just past, but the rise of blogosphere surely qualifies as one of them. Anything that draws power away from those precious old media types, who for so many years held a monopoly on what and how stories were covered, should be celebrated. Looking back on the media coverage of Iraq, Bush, and the 9/11 attacks, enterprising bloggers of all political stripes helped fact-check the dubious and lazy stories provided by our endangered comrades in big media.

The best bloggers are unsurpassed in giving us the full story behind the news, not just the MSM version.

Do you park like this?

Toby Harnden give Obama an F for protecting Americans.

Ann Althouse: "I miss Bush jokes! (I miss Bush.)"

We are moving to a check-free lifestyle. You can pay bills online and save 44 cents on postage and save on the cost of the checks. Banks don't return your checks and who wants them anyway? Remember when people kept them for years in old shoeboxes or something?

Of course, many banks will give you free checks. You might of course miss the "float" time between mailing your payment and when your bank debits your account several days later. I used to like to write a check for cash on late Friday afternoon if payday was Monday morning. One of the major purposes of electronic banking was to avoid the float time.

Electronic bill-payment services are common but they come with fees.

It would be interesting, as explains in the link above, how far you could go with the check-free life.

Many stores, if not all, don't like to take checks. They prefer plastic, especially debit cards. If you write a check, they convert it to an electronic payment. That means they get their money immediately. This is common in Wal-Mart.

James Pethokoukis predicts that Democrats will lose the House in 2010.

The sophistication of seeing what isn't there rather than what is

Shelby Steele of Stanford University has some of the most profound words of wisdom on race that I've ever read. He argues that our race problem has changed. White racism against blacks is no longer acceptable. We all know that. But...

America's primary race problem today is our new "sophistication" around racial matters. Political correctness is a compendium of sophistications in which we join ourselves to obvious falsehoods ("diversity") and refuse to see obvious realities (the irrelevance of diversity to minority development). I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.

Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If "hope and change" was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency. 

Steele goes on to compare Obama with Reagan, who in contrast worked hard over his career to become known for what he believed, and when American was ready for him, he was elected.
Shhh! Don't tell sociologists about this.

The future of air travel: whole body imaging scanners. If terrorists can't kill us, they can for sure embarrass us.
See also here. 

The LA Times has a summary of recent Arkansas politics. I didn't know they knew we existed.

William Katz compares Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. I miss Johnny too.

Jennifer Rubin agrees with Bob Herbert (see previous post).

Only rare pieces of legislation attract opponents as diverse as does ObamaCare. But this is what comes from passing something, anything, in a mad holiday rush with the purpose of delivering a political “win” for the White House and avoiding a humiliating failure for the Democratic congressional leadership. But as the Left and Right discover what’s in that legislation, there may in fact be a broad consensus building over the need to just start over. There has got to be something that makes more sense than this.

Middle-class tax time bomb

Bob Herbert has an op-ed in the NYT that is highly critical of Obamacare. He calls it a middle-class tax time bomb.

The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.

The tax on health benefits is being sold to the public dishonestly as something that will affect only the rich, and it makes a mockery of President Obama’s repeated pledge that if you like the health coverage you have now, you can keep it.
Those who believe this is a good idea should at least have the courage to be straight about it with the American people.

When people realize what they are facing in so-called health care reform, we will have a revolt in this country.
Ann Althouse has this.

Many people will enjoy the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, Arkansas. They have the largest photo collection in the state. Their website features 10 online photo exhibits.

Katherine Benenati of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette has a story today.

Jeffrey Goldberg comments on the TSA's "stupidity" in announcing that U.S.-bound passengers on international fllights must submit to a "thorough pat-down," including the upper legs and torso.

Thanks for letting us know, TSA, that the search should be focused on the upper legs and torso. As I've said on numerous occasions, pat-downs that ignore the crotch and the ass are useless. We recently saw in Saudi Arabia the detonation of a rectal bomb, so it really doesn't take much creativity to imagine that terrorists will be taping explosives to their scrotums. Of course, TSA is not going to be feeling-up people's scrotums anytime soon, so the question remains: Why does our government continue to make believe that it can stop terrorists from boarding civilian planes when anyone with half-a-brain and a spare two minutes can think up a dozen ways to bypass the symbolic security measures at our airports?

At The Hill, Brad DeLong says:

Yes, the "system" worked. Here, I think, the person to listen to is security expert Bruce Schneier, who says:

Counterterrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better. Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers."

In this case, it was a sharp-eyed and alert passenger who was the "system" that "worked."

That's why I'm still going to avoid airplanes. 

TMZ has a photo that appears to show John F. Kennedy in a boat filled with naked women. Kennedy is apparently seen on the bottom left.

Another flip-flop: It's a hoax.

As you might have anticipated, we have started to argue about when the next decade starts, on January 1, 2010 or 2011. My money is on 2011. You start counting with the number 1, and our numbering system is based on 10. So? However, some people can't wait.

Dr. Helen complains about Comcast and their prices. I agree entirely and I've had roughly the same experience she reports. My price went up and up and I loaded up 3 cable boxes and hauled them across town and said, "I'm canceling."
"Why?"
"It costs too much."
That was it. I've been happy ever since.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano: "The system worked" in the near tragedy on a Northwest flight. What does that tell you about her competence? The passengers had to jump in and save the day.

ABC News credits a failed detonator for saving the flight.
UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson predicts that shortly Napolitano will resign. 

As the new owner of a high-tech vehicle, I am concerned about taking it in for the first oil change. Will the dealer use the right oil, will they overfill it, what about this and that? Yes, that's overly cautious, but then I read articles with headlines like High-tech vehicles pose problems for some mechanics.

The great flip-flop

Florida coach Urban Meyer has resigned for health reasons.
UPDATE: Well, no, he's just on indefinite leave. Funny how these things happen.

This scene is one of my favorites from all movies I've ever seen. But it sounds very topical, doesn't it?

The Hill: Blue Dogs warn Harry Reid that they will not accept major changes in health care.

Democratic centrists have informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) they will accept few changes in the final healthcare bill negotiated between the House and Senate.

Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) have made clear there is little room to deviate from the bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve.

What do you want to bet they they will vote for it no matter what?

If you are on Medicare, you are almost up against the deadline to make changes for the coming year.

John Brummett predicts that eventually the Medicaid deal that Ben Nelson got for Nebraska will be every state's deal. So it doesn't matter that Blanche Lincoln didn't hold up Harry Reid like Nelson did.

Professional golfer Helen Alfredsson on Tiger Woods:

"In the quietest water swims the ugliest fish," she said.
Alfredsson, 44, called Woods "cold"

Miami Herald on provisions in the health care bills:

Q: I'm over 65. How would the legislation affect seniors?
A: The Medicare prescription-drug benefit would be improved substantially under both bills, though only the House bill would eliminate the sizable coverage gap called the "doughnut hole" by 2019. Both bills would enable most seniors to get half-price brand-name drugs when they hit the gap. The final bill to emerge from conference might favor the more generous House approach.
Under both bills, government payments to Medicare Advantage, the private-plan part of Medicare, would be cut back. If you're one of the 10 million beneficiaries whom those private plans cover, you could lose extra benefits that many of the plans offer, such as free eyeglasses, hearing aids and gym memberships.
Both bills would make all Medicare preventive services, such as screenings for colon, prostate and breast cancer, free to beneficiaries.

I know of no "extra benefits" for free eyeglasses or hearing aids in my Advantage plan. Only eye exams and hearing exams are covered. Gym membership is free. I have seen such overstatements before. The real effect of health care "reform" for the over-65 cohort will be to force them out of Medicare Advantage plans and into supplemental plans, which cost more. Insurance companies will benefit.

UPDATE: Nelson exempts three Florida counties from cuts in Medicare Advantage plans.

But what kind of earful?

At home for the Christmas holidays after passing health care, what kind of reception will Democrats get? Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell:  "I guarantee you the people who voted for this bill are going to get an earful when they finally get home for the first time since Thanksgiving. They know there is widespread opposition to this monstrosity." According to Harry Reid, however, "We're going to hear an earful, but it's going to be an earful of wonderment and happiness that people waited for for a long time."

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: They predict a backlash from the elderly against Obamacare. They are going to be told "no" when they visit their doctor.

The first “no” will hit the ten million elderly who now rely on Medicare Advantage to pay for the care Medicare itself does not cover. In a payoff to AARP, Obama gutted this program in his bill, ending over $100 billion in federal premium subsidies. These ten million voters will get the grim news that their premiums are going up and their benefits dropping early in 2010. The goal, of course, is to force them to drop Medicare Advantage and sign up, instead, for Medigap insurance — offered, not coincidentally, by the AARP — which provides less coverage at higher cost.

AP Report: The Senate passed the health care bill this moring by a vote of 60-39. All Republicans voted against it.

Merry Christmas. :-(

Louise Slaughter (D-NY): The Senate health-care bill is fatally flawed. She wants the public option.

CBS News: Richard Heene, father of the balloon boy, will serve 90 days in jail for his role in the hoax.

Autoblog: The last GM big block engine rolls off the assembly line.

Michael Barone takes issue with two erroneous statements regarding health care legislation.

1. Republicans claim that never before has Congerss passed such an unpopular bill with such a narrow majority.
2. Obama has claimed that the passage of the bill will settle the health care issue once and for all.

Barone then goes on to cite the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This was the most controversial piece of legislation between 1789 and 1861. Stephen A. Douglas attempted to settle the issue of slavery by legislative "legerdemain and political trickery," to use Barone's words. He adds, "The Democrats' health care bills are an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by partisan maneuver and cash-for-cloture. As Stephen Douglas learned, such tactics can work for a while, but the country -- and the Democratic Party -- can end up paying a heavy price."

The slavery issue was far from settled. A mini-civil war called Bleeding Kansas broke out as people rushed into Kansas to control the vote on the status of slavery, the Supreme Court handed down the controversial Dred Scott decision, and abolitionist John Brown brought the nation to the point of no return at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. In political terms, Kansas-Nebraska split the Democratic party and motivated the creation of the Republican party, resulting in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The price of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was ultimately civil war.

Obama claims he did not campaign on the public option. Fooled me.

Politico: Parker Griffith, Democrat of Alabama, announced that he is switching parties, "saying he can no longer align himself 'with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy and drives us further and further into debt.'"

His district is 5th congressional district located in the Huntsville area, among the most conservative in the country. A radiation oncologist, he cited the health care bill as the major reason for his switch.

Betsy's Page has some comments. 

One question circling the Arkansas blogosphere is why didn't Harry Reid give Blanche Lincoln something for her vote on health care? Apparently every Senator was supposed to get something, you know? Senator Reid himself called Arkansas columnist John Brummett to tell him that Blanche looked out for Wal-Mart's health-care costs. Blummett believes that Blanche gave Reid his phone number.

Jason Tolbert adds, "It seems to me that if an incumbent Senator up for reelection next year hurriedly implores the Majority Leader to call an columnist back home about a blog post he has written, then that Senator is highly concerned on her reelection campaign."

Apparently Blanche wanted it known that she did get something for her vote.

Michael Barone: "In the Bella Center on the south side of Copenhagen and in the Senate chamber on the north side of the Capitol, we’re seeing what happens when liberal dreams collide with American public opinion. It’s like what happens when a butterfly collides with the windshield of a speeding sport utility vehicle. Splat.

Sean Trende predicts how the Senate health-care bill might play out in the House. It will pass.

Political tsunami

Peter Wehner expects a health-care backlash, a political tsunami in the making. He says that "few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care."

Ron Radosh on December 19: "So the bill looks like it will pass—a bill that will change the country’s health system in profound ways, and that was done without one single Republican vote.  It is the opposite of bi-partisanship, that should be necessary when such a major change is presented. Instead, the Democrats have rammed it down the country’s throat, refusing to wait until after the holidays, when everyone- including Republican senators and congressmen-have a chance to read the entire 2000 pages and digest it thoroughly."

Dick Morris sums up the contents of the Reid bill at least where it stands now.

• No public option, so the bill has no teeth
• Relatively few new people will get health insurance. Many young and healthy people will decide to pay the fine. (They are making a good bet in my judgment.)
  
• Rationing may not be as bad as feared since new patients won't flood into the system
• Medicare cuts are proposed but may not ever happen, since Congress will have to have the guts to pass them, which historically they have not. This will run up the deficit.
  
• Medicaid will expand to cover more of the poor and working poor up to everyone making 150 percent or less of the poverty level. In Arkansas, for example, anyone whose income is less than $27,000 will be eligible. This will call for a tax increase.
  
• Medicare Advantage will be gutted and replaced by Medigap insurance, which costs more. This change will adversely affect 10 million elderly.
  

Mona Charen on the health care bill: "In short, Democrats have done the maximum amount of damage to our system that they could manage under the circumstances."

Washington Post: Blanche Lincoln got nothing for her vote for health care. Lincoln and Michael Bennet (Colo) "could face the blowback from those unhappy with the legislation in their respective states without an accompanying sweetener to make the bill more palatable.

According to a newspaper report this morning, McDonald's will end Wi-Fi fees in the U.S. in January. They are dropping a $2.95 fee for two hours. McDonald's sells coffee and wants to be a destination for people who want to sit and check their email. See here. You can check their Wi-Fi site.

Nick Gillespie: How many Americans will choose to remain uninsured even if insurance is mandatory?

• 18 percent of Americans still don't buckle up
• 15 percent of school children don't get vaccinated for chickenpox
• 15 percent of drivers don't buy car insurance

On mandated health insurance, no one knows the answer, but at first the penalty is only $95. It will go up, of course, because the government wants to throw everybody into the pool to lower costs and raise revenue.

Michelle Malkin on Cash for Cloture. That includes Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, etc. What did Blanche Lincoln get? Nothing?

Bait-and-switch

Michael Goodwin: President Obama, "for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.
Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable bore. The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions. His rhetorical gifts now serve his loathsome habit of fear-mongering."

AP Report: More on Ken Gormley's book The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr. Prosecutors were prepared to seek indictments of Bill and Hillary for their roles in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky affairs. Gormley says that Lewinsky believed that Bill Clinton lied about their affair during grand jury testimony.

Jason Tolbert, political blogger at the Tolbert Report, comments about Blanche Lincoln's health care games. Earlier she voted for cloture on the motion to proceed with the Reid bill, but she wanted to be the 60th vote. This was a move to keep Lt. Gov. Bill Halter from jumping into the Democratic primary for her seat. She planned to vote for the bill all the time. But it's not all over yet.

You may have noticed that Blanche has not been in the spotlight lately, but you can find her latest comments on the bill here.

Nick Saban forgot his anniversary, so he's in the dog house.

"I'm just hoping that I don't kicked, 'cause the dogs get treated better than me when I go home," he said. "It was my anniversary yesterday and I forgot. I didn't know what day it was. Things are not going real well right now for me. I tried to buy a present. I made a nice card. I did a lot of things.
"There's a few things you ought to know. When I go recruiting for two straight weeks, I kind of lose track of the date and the time. I have a wonderful wife. She's very understanding and very supportive ... and I wish her a happy anniversary, even though it's a day late and probably a dollar short."

Megan McArdle:

So there's now about a 90% chance that the health care bill will pass.

At this point, the thing is more than a little inexplicable.  Democrats are on a political suicide mission; I'm not a particularly accurate prognosticator, but I think this makes it very likely that in 2010 they will lost several seats in the Senate--enough to make it damn hard to pass any more of their signature legislation--and will lose the house outright.  In the case of the House, you can attribute it to the fact that the leadership has safe seats.  But three out of four of the Democrats on the podium today are in serious danger of losing their seats.

No bill this large has ever before passed on a straight party-line vote, or even anything close to a straight party-line vote.  No bill this unpopular has ever before passed on a straight party-line vote.  We're in a new political world.  I'm not sure I understand it.

The irony of this is that this bill is great for me personally.  I'm probably uninsurable, and I'm in a profession where most people now end up working for themselves at some point in their career. So mandatory community rating is great news for me and mine. But I think that it's going to be a fiscal disaster for my country, because the spending cuts won't be--can't be--done the way they're implemented in the bill.  We've just increased substantially the supply of unrepealable, unsustainable entitlements.  We've also, in my opinion, put ourselves on a road that leads eventually to less healthcare innovation, less healthcare improvement, and more dead people in the long run.  Obviously, progressives feel differently, and it will never be possible to prove the counterfactual. 

So there you are.  Alea iacta est. I sure hope I'm wrong.

Holy Grail or Moby Dick?

Politico: Since the Truman administration universal health care coverage has been the Democrat's Holy Grail. But Sean Trende says, "I don't think they're close to finding their Grail.  I think the better analogy is probably that they're close to their Moby Dick. And we all know what happens to Captain Ahab once he finally harpoons his white whale."

Ann Althouse: Ben Nelson was bought off.

Ben Nelson has caved in. See also here.

Frank Beckmann: "The government takeover of health vcare will result in rationed care, reduced health care services, and higher costs. Congress is creating a crisis, not correcting one. Only tone-deaf politicians fail to see the damage they will inflict if they successfully force this legislative suppository on the public."

Well said.

6 worst fast-food burgers:

• Wendy's cheeseburger with everything, 700 calories, 40 g fat, 1,440 mg sodium
• In-N-Out Burger Hamburger and French Fries, 790 calories, 37 g fat, 895 mg sodium
• Five Guys Cheeseburger, 840 calories, 55 g fat, 1,050 mg sodium
• Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger, 890 calories, 54 g fat, 2,040 mg sodium
• Hardee's Original Thickburger, 910 calories, 64 g fat, 1,560 mg sodium
• Burger King Triple Whopper Sandwich with cheese and mayo, 1,250 calories, 84 g fat, 1,600 mg sodium

I've never heard of some of these, but gulp! Why isn't McDonald's on the list?

• Quarter Pounder with cheese, 510 calories, 42 g fat, 1,190 mg sodium (link shows all McD info)
• Angus Deluxe, 750 calories, 30 g fat, 1,700 mg sodium. The Big Mac has less calories than the Angus Deluxe, less total fats, and less sodium. Shall I go on?

My current favorite is a Whopper Jr., 370 calories, 21 g fat, 560 mg sodium. It contains 31 carbs, which is good for me. But sometimes they overload it with mayo. At McDonald's the carb counts for the burgers I've listed are in order 40, 61, and 45. The amount of sodium in fast food is absolutely outrageous.

UPDATE: Wendy's Single hamburger with everything, 470 calories, 21 g fat, 940 mg sodium, 43 g carbs. I've eaten a lot of those but I'm scaling back. Add small French fries with 330 calories, 16 g fat, 300 mg sodium, and 44 carbs, and that's 87 carbs. Too many.

Rasmussen:

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide say that it would be better to pass no health care reform bill this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% think that passing that bill would be better.
Middle-income voters are more likely than others to say that passing no legislation is the better option.
One reason for this is that most Americans now believe they will be worse off if reform passes. Fifty-four percent (54%) hold that view while just 25% believe they would be better off.
Senior citizens are more pessimistic than younger voters. Just 16% of seniors think they’ll be better off if the legislation passes while 59% have the opposite view.

Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party—the Barney Franks, the David Obeys—are focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a value-added tax and a permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe.
The entitlement crazes of the 1930s and 1960s also caused a backlash, but liberal Democrats know the programs of those periods survived. They are more than happy to sacrifice a few Blue Dogs, a Blanche Lincoln, a Michael Bennet, if they can expand government so that in the long run it benefits the party of government.
What's extraordinary is that more Democrats have not wised up to the fact that they are being used as pawns in this larger liberal game. Maybe Mr. Obama will see a bump in the polls if health care passes; maybe not. What is certain is that this vote is becoming one that many in his party will not survive.

Politico: In February 2010, Ken Gormley, a Duquesne University law professor, will publish a book entitled The Death of American Virtue dealing with Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr, Monica Lewinsky and Susan McDougal. It will be a must-read. Will Clinton get his historical vindication? Of course not.

Gormley specializes in constitutional law and has written about Watergate and special prosecutors. He is the author of Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation.

The not-so-free lunch

Politics Daily: Here's a guy who will get hit by the "Cadillac Tax" in the health care plan. He's 59, a union man, worked in the same steel mill for 41 years, makes a base salary of $41,000 a year, drives a Ford pick-up, saw his pension slashed in half. He doesn't think he can retire until he's 65. He lives in a house across the street from the one where he grew up.

He and every worker in his plant, he says, will be hit by the excise tax on insurance companies in the Senate bill.

"The middle class can't afford another tax," he said. "Let them get it from the Bush folks, the 1 percent that's been enjoying the tax cuts. Get it from them."

Everybody likes the idea of taxing somebody else.

From a Jonah Goldberg reader:

BUSH:

- Two wars
- Gitmo open
- Don't ask. Don't tell.
- Patriot Act
- Stocks 14,000
- Unemployment 4.5%


OBAMA:

- Two wars. 60,00 additional troops.
- Gitmo open
- Don't ask. Don't tell.
- Patriot Act extended
- Stocks 10,000
- Unemployment 10%

Arkansas News: Senator Lincoln's office in downtown Little Rock has become a battleground in the health care debate.

CNSNEWS: "Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) told CNSNews.com that Congress has the authority to force individual Americans to buy health insurance because the U.S. Constitution “charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.”

"The words “health” and “well-being” do not appear anywhere in the Constitution."

AP Report: Democrats are talking about closing the Medicare coverage gap for prescription drugs, but it seems to me the cost will be too great. They want to include it in their health care bill, which will include slashing Medicare and Medicare Advantage. The Senate has already killed an effort to allow access to low-cost prescriptions from abroad. I'll stay with the donut hole, thank you. But I do sympathize with this woman:

Anna Bollerman, a retired real estate broker, found herself pleading with doctors for free drug samples and maxing out her credit cards when she wound up in the doughnut hole this year.

"It put me in a position where I was totally embarrassed because I had to beg for medicine," said Bollerman, 80, of Bayville, N.J. She's coping with diabetes and a serious degenerative condition that affects her eyes.

A 90-day supply of one of her medications costs $1,496 when she's in the doughnut hole, said Bollerman. Her monthly income is a little over $1,500.

"All my life I was independent, and this is what I'm left with?" she said. "Whoever thought of this, it wasn't a very good idea."

I've done exactly the same thing and felt the same way.

People: Elin Nordegren is looking at de-vorce. People magazine has become the authoritative source on Tiger Woods.

A single-payer health care plan is dead in the Senate. Ben Nelson (D-Neb) is getting credit.

Returned: A library book 99 years 7 months and 12 days overdue. Well, it's about time.

Nancy Pelosi: No health care bill this year. That's a nice Christmas present.

Louis Menard and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University sounds like a good book to me. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Has American higher education become a dinosaur? Why do professors all tend to think alike? What makes it so hard for colleges to decide which subjects should be required? Why do teachers and scholars find it so difficult to transcend the limits of their disciplines? Why, in short, are problems that should be easy for universities to solve so intractable? The answer, Louis Menand argues, is that the institutional structure and the educational philosophy of higher education have remained the same for one hundred years, while faculties and student bodies have radically changed and technology has drastically transformed the way people produce and disseminate knowledge. At a time when competition to get into and succeed in college has never been more intense, universities are providing a less-useful education. Sparking a long-overdue debate about the future of American education, The Marketplace of Ideas examines what professors and students—and all the rest of us—might be better off without, while assessing what it is worth saving in our traditional university institutions.

In my experience, they are dinosaurs just waiting for the comet to hit.

Byron York: Why do Democrats insist on going ahead with an overwhelmingly unpopular bill?

I've wondered why as well.

In the end, perhaps the most compelling explanation for Democratic behavior is that they are simply in too deep to do anything else. "Once you've gone this far, what is the cost of failure?" asks the strategist.
At that point -- Republicans will love this -- he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."
That's it. Democrats are all in. They're going through with it. Even if it kills them.

Politico reporting on a recent tea party: "To paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt," [Richard] Burr [R-NC] said over boos FDR's name evoked, "The only thing we have to fear is... Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid."

Politico: Since Joe Lieberman, an Independent, has take positions opposing the public option and the Medicare buy-in, he's taking the heat off moderate Democrats. Blanche Lincoln ought to thank him. "They won't say it, but Joe is preventing them from taking a series of tough votes," said this Lieberman ally. "If I'm Blanche Lincoln, I'd consider converting to Judaisim just to thank Joe Lieberman for what he did for me."

What about it, Blanche?

Is Wal-Mart a good citizen?

Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has some comments on Marjorie Rosen's Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town into an International Community. The town is, of course, Bentonville, Arkansas.

A good citizen? Well, I check on them every day.

I need a lift, don't you?

From a Jay Nordlinger reader: “Few years back, wife and I got a chocolate lab. Wife named him Duncan, I liked it, cool name. Duncan got a little fat, we called him Chunkin’ Duncan. Duncan was ‘fixed,’ we called him Duncan Nonuts. We’re in the Northeast, overrun with Dunkin’ Donuts — dog’s name’s a hit.”

Are the wheels coming off?

Power Line: The word around Washington is that there is no health care bill that can get 60 votes. "...[I]t's starting to look as though the Democrats' effort to seize control of the health care industries might actually crash and burn."

Megan McArdle predicts that health reform is dead.

Lieberman says no. He will vote against health care legislation in its current form. Ben Nelson says no as well.

When good news is bad

Chicago Sun-Times: "Forty years from now, women will live 89.2 to 93.3 years; and men, 83.2 to 85.9 years — driven by ongoing advances in both treatment of major fatal diseases and slowing of the aging process — according to the report in a journal of health and health policy, The Milbank Quarterly."

Life expectancy today stands at 80 to 81 for women; 75 to 76 for men. So women are projected to live about 10 years longer, and men almost as long.

“Change is coming,” said one of the authors of the MacArthur Foundation-funded study, Dr. S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor.
“It’s going to come rapidly, and it’s going to begin in 2011 when the baby boomers begin to retire,” Olshansky said. “It’s going to have a dramatic negative effect on health, the national economy, and key government programs and institutions like Social Security and Medicare.”

When you add longer life expectancies to, what, 76 million baby boomers, wow! Medicare and Social Security outlays will expand dramatically. The United States will be an aging society with people over age 60 outnumbering those under age 15. Sounds like an inverted population pyramid, to me.

The study is apparently not available online.

So we need health care reform to control soaring costs? It turns out it won't save a dime. It would be far cheaper to do nothing, according to the LA Times. Well, then, do nothing.

UPDATE: See also Betsy's Page on bogus cost savings.

AP Report: The Medicare buy-in is running into opposition.

Mark Ingram has won the Heisman, the first for the University of Alabama.

You've heard of Hoovervilles? Welcome to Obamaville.

Adam Graham comes to Huckabee's defense on the clemency issue.

Tiger Woods is dropping out of golf. An indefinite break, he calls it, a hiatus.

Rich Lowry: The Reid bill is tottering. Somebody give it a push.

Robert Costa has more. 

Deroy Murdock is highly critical of Harry Reid for playing the race card in the health care debate. Did Reid funk American history?

If Harry Reid truly believes that Americans who criticize his high-cost, low-quality, deficit-swelling health-care “reform” also hold warm feelings for slavery, he is further detached from reality than anyone to date has feared.

W's comeback

Amazon: John Gibson, How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History.

Ann Althouse: 44 percent of Americans would prefer to have Bush back as president. No surprise there.

Ann Althouse:

Do people who support what the Democrats are trying to do really understand how much money they will be required to come up with to comply?

John Fund: ObamaCare is even less popular than HillaryCare was back in 1993.

Robert Tracinski: You will lose your private health insurance if the Democrats have their way.

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.
By all means, let's debate some of that in the Senate.

Ed Gillespie and Whit Ayres: Those most likely to vote in 2010 soundly reject the Democrats' health care overhaul.

Older voters also rejected the central argument that enacting health care reform legislation would help the economy, with 45% saying it would hurt the economy and only 27% saying it would help. Eighteen percent said it would make no difference.
And when it came to specific proposals to pay for health care reform, opposition to financing provisions under consideration by Congress swamped support:
• 81% opposed cutting Medicare by $400 billion versus 11% who supported it.
• 63% opposed taxing Cadillac health care plans versus 24% who supported it.
• 63% opposed increasing Medicare payroll taxes versus 27% who supported it.
• 60% opposed cutting or eliminating Medicare Advantage versus 14% who supported it.

***

Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid seem to have concluded that failing to pass health care reform legislation will hurt them more at the polls than passing it-that they're less "damned if they do" than "damned if they don't." Today's Resurgent Republic poll is strong evidence that they're wrong.

Politico: Senate moderates are growing increasingly suspicious of Reid's Medicare expansion.

CNN: Support for health care reform collapses.

Washington Post: "The energized "tea party" movement, which upended this year's political debate with noisy anti-government protests, is preparing to shake up the 2010 elections by channeling money and supporters to conservative candidates set to challenge both Democrats and Republicans.

Unintended Consequences

The Washington Post has doubts about the Medicare buy-in that is being proposed.

The irony of this late-breaking Medicare proposal is that it could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market.

Bob Bennett (R-Utah) predicts that Olympia Snowe will not vote for Reid's bill as it stands now. So he will need all 60 Democrats. “I’m not going to predict that this thing will fail, but I’m not ready to predict it’ll pass,” says Bennett.

Ramesh Ponnuru: Thinks that Blanche Lincoln's vote against the Nelson amendment, a strict anti-abortion measure, is very risky, since Mark Pryor voted for it.

On the Nelson amendment, see here.

Power Line adds: 

Senator Nelson has been pretty clear that he won't vote for the Dems' bill without the kind of language he unsuccessfully attempted to insert. Without Nelson and Lieberman, Harry Reid will have to hold onto Blanche Lincoln and win over both of the Maine Senators.
This won't be easy, particularly since Senator Snowe, probably the more woo-able of the two, said today that the Dems are taking their legislation in the wrong direction.

I've thought all along that Blanche would find some justification to vote Reid's way. 

After health care reform

Dick Morris: Can Blanche Lincoln really believe that she is going to return to the Senate?

Atul Gawande in the New Yorker: The problem with medical care in this country is how to control costs. The Congressional plans fail in doing that, so they are not real reform.

But Gawande compares health care today with problems in agriculture at the turn of the 20th century. This is a fascinating insight. I have not read it all yet, but so far I like it. He points out some interesting parallels: small, inefficient units that lacked productivity, they were of course too labor intensive, and more.

At the start of the twentieth century, another indispensable but unmanageably costly sector was strangling the country: agriculture. In 1900, more than forty per cent of a family’s income went to paying for food. At the same time, farming was hugely labor-intensive, tying up almost half the American workforce. We were, partly as a result, still a poor nation. Only by improving the productivity of farming could we raise our standard of living and emerge as an industrial power. We had to reduce food costs, so that families could spend money on other goods, and resources could flow to other economic sectors. And we had to make farming less labor-dependent, so that more of the population could enter non-farming occupations and support economic growth and development.

It's long, but read it all.

FOX News: Harry Reid is under mounting pressure to apologize for his remark comparing Republican opposition to health care reform to supporters of slavery.

In the comment, Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era -- and during the women's suffrage and civil rights movements.
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'" 

The Republican party formed in 1854 in opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat. Republicans also favored civil rights throughout their history. Later it was Democrats who created Jim Crow.

Democrats were slave owners, a Democrat shot Abraham Lincoln. Harry Reid needs a course in American history.

AP: The Democrats with Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor in the lead have agreed to jettison the public option. People 55 to 64 would be able to buy into Medicare. But the public option is still not entirely gone.

The problem with shifting more people to Medicare is that many doctors refuse to treat Medicare patients because Medicare pays too little. I've encountered this problem myself. 

See the NYT story. Olympia Snowe is not happy. See the votes here.

James Carville and Mary Matalin were at the Clinton library yesterday. They claim they don't talk about politics at home. Good idea.

Paul Starr wonders why the government will make people buy health care insurance if they are not otherwise covered. They call it an individual mandate. This will be a major backlash when large numbers of people realize that they will face fines for not buying insurance.

The trouble with the fines is that they communicate the wrong message about a program that is supposed to help people without insurance, not penalize them. Many people simply do not understand why the government should fine them for failing to purchase health coverage when it doesn't require people to buy other products.

AP: Democrats are talking about expanding Medicare and Medicaid in place of the much publicized public government-insurance option. When you read my previous post, this does not soun like a good idea.

Robert Samuelson: Medical spending threatens everything else, including our future. This is very depressing.

President Obama's critics sometimes say that he is engineering a government takeover of health care or even introducing "socialized medicine" into America. These allegations are wildly overblown. Government already dominates health care, one-sixth of the economy. It pays directly or indirectly for roughly half of all health costs. Medicine is pervasively regulated, from drug approvals to nursing-home rules. There is no "free market" in health care.
What's happening is the reverse, which is more interesting and alarming: Health care is taking over government. Consider: In 1980, the federal government spent $65 billion on health care; that was 11 percent of all its spending. By 2008, health outlays had grown to $752 billion -- 25 percent of the total, one dollar in four....

Obama's health-care proposals may be undesirable (they are), but it's mindless to oppose them -- as many Republicans do -- by screaming that they'll lead to "rationing." Almost everything in society is "rationed," either by price (if you can't afford it, you can't buy it) or explicit political decisions (school boards have budgets). Health care is an exception; it enjoys an open tab. The central political problem of health-care nation is to find effective and acceptable ways to limit medical spending. 

Democrats, Samuelson says, are no better.

LA Times: A Japanese mini-submarine that may have attacked U.S. ships at Pearl Harbor has been found.

Please remember Pearl Harbor day.

FiveThirtyEight: Much opposition to health care reform comes from people who think it does not go far enough.

Politico: National Public Radio is trying to get Mara Liasson, their top political correspondent, to quit appearing on Fox News.

A Fox spokesperson declined to comment on specific questions about Liasson. However, the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said in an email: “With the ratings we have, NPR should be paying us to even be mentioned on our air.”

Hugh Hewitt; Blanche Lincoln is no Abraham Lincoln. But he needs to correctly identify her state.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ariz., is the most endangered incumbent in the United States Senate. Given her destructive lurch into the lowest form of populism this past weekend, she deserves to be tossed out in 47 weeks, and by a wide margin.
Many centrists of both parties had hoped that Lincoln would be part of the coalition of Democrats, including Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who would insist on a much more pared-down, focused set of health care reforms backed by a real threat of filibuster.
Instead, Lincoln lurched left and sponsored one of the most destructive provisions in a bill full of assaults on free markets generally, and the elderly and doctors specifically.
Lincoln authored an amendment targeting the compensation paid to insurance company executives. Lincoln's brainstorm -- with its roots in the AIG bonus smash-up of the spring and in every soak-the-rich scheme the country has ever heard pitched -- would penalize insurance companies paying salaries of more than $400,000 if those companies generated threshold revenue from premiums generated by the health care bill's new mandate to purchase coverage.
"This is a fair policy aimed at encouraging health insurance executives to put premium dollars toward lower rates and more affordable coverage, not in the pocketbooks of their executives," Lincoln said.
Lincoln's prescription will quickly drive the best executive talent out of the insurance business. When you designate and punish a whipping boy, those folks head for the exits. Lincoln's amendment has designated new enemies of the state, and it doesn't take a Ph.D. to realize that health insurance execs are the new big tobacco.
The irony, of course, is that the demonization of insurance execs is occurring as we are learning that climate scientists are actually the new cover-up experts, talented at character assassination and data manipulation in the service of myths dangerous to the public at large.
Lincoln has looked at her plummeting poll numbers and decided that class envy is her only possible strategy. This is a remarkably bad reading of the numbers, and whoever is masquerading as her pollster has sold her on some deep magic not obvious to mere mortals.
According to a Rasmussen poll published last week, Lincoln trails all four of her announced GOP opponents, including the Republican front-runner, state Sen. Gilbert Baker, whom she trails 47 percent to 41 percent.
More importantly, Arkansas voters oppose the health plan by a margin of 65 percent to 32 percent. Sacrificing a few insurance executives on the fire won't change those numbers, but burning the 2,000-page bill might.
Running as a fierce anti-insurance company populist using campaign funds from the plaintiffs' bar won't fool even the most addled of Arkansas voters. An amendment targeting the dysfunctional tort system that forces the cost of medicine up via massive amounts of unnecessary, defensive medicine might have impressed, but not Lincoln's waste of time and effort. Disgust with such high school grandstanding at such a critical juncture is a likely response from all voters, regardless of party affiliation.
Lincoln could breathe life into her faltering campaign if she would boldly declare herself not just against any sort of public option and for the Stupak Amendment on abortion, but also for a return to the table with all of the parties committed to reform.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., appear to have her on their strings, and though these puppeteers would like for her to keep her job, that's not their priority. Lincoln is expendable, though she apparently hasn't figured that out yet.
Senate Democrats still seem to believe that their spin is effective and that the public can be misled about the deep cuts to Medicare, the devastating effect of the bill on doctors and other health care professionals, and the scissoring of home health care benefits.
Lincoln's "kill the beast" pitchfork appeal against insurance execs is the sort of Huey Long rhetoric that wouldn't have worked even in the depths of the Great Depression, much less in an era when the vast majority of the insured like their coverage and don't spend their days in bitter hating of the relatively few execs at the top of the insurance industry.

Jodie Mahony, Arkansas lawmaker with a special interest in education, has died at 70.

Carly Fiorina on mammograms and Obamacare.

It's Alabama and Texas in the national championship game on January 7.

Morris Fiorina's Culture War" The Myth of a Polarized America looks like a good book. Most people are middle-of-the-roaders, I suppose.

Back to the Big Shootout, this article on the 40th anniversary by Terry Frei looks good. See his book called Horns,  Hogs, and Nixon Coming: Texas vs. Arkansas in Dixie's Last Stand.

The Obama White House has no idea where Osama bin Laden is. Well, I guess they can't blame Bush for that. But they will probably try to anyway.

AP Report: In a recent vote, the Senate rejected an effort to restore $120 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage.
ARKANSAS
Lincoln (D), No; Pryor (D), No.

Thanks to both of you. See you in 2010, Blanche.

Back and Forth Blanche

Bill Dupray comments on Blanche Lincoln's recent vote on an amendment that would restore cuts in Medicare home care. Blanche voted "no" on the amendment, that is, keeping the cuts in the bill. Then she switched her vote to "aye," favoring the cuts.

Dupray interprets this switch to mean that Harry Reid had enough votes to kill the amendment without her vote, and make her look good to us poor Arkies back home. Will it work?

Yesterday was a big day in college football. Alabama beat Florida 32-13 for the SEC championship, Texas beat Nebraska 13-12 for the Big 12 championship. Both games were thrilling or disgusting, depending on your point of view. See Cecil Hurt's column on the Alabama-Florida game.

Today is the 40th anniversary of another game, a heart-stopper. This was the Big Shootout between Arkansas and Texas on December 6, 1969. The ADG has a big story about it today. Many Arkansans of that era have never gotten over the last-minute loss to Texas. In their minds the game was between them and us, between light and darkness, between good and evil. Funny thing, today Texas QB James Street and his teammates have turned out to be really nice guys, and they had a lot of respect for the Razorback players.

I remember the game well, and I was upset at the outcome, but I got over it. Many people still can't accept it. See here, for example. The DG has some stories today about how contemporaries recall their reaction to the game.

See this Google search.

Catastrophic effects

Dr. Edward Miller, dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Md., warns:

We'll meet the demands placed on us because serving poor and disadvantaged populations is part of our century-old mission. But without an understanding by policy makers of what a large Medicaid expansion actually means, and without delivery-system reform and adequate risk-adjusted reimbursement the current health-care legislation will have catastrophic effects on those of us who provide society's health-care safety-net. In time, those effects will be felt by all of us.

Liam Clancy has died at 74. I didn't remember his name, but I well remember his song, "Those Were the Days My Friend. We Thought They'd Never End." Listening to it again, it seems to be a sad song. It makes me think back over the years, about how things have changed. That generation did not always win even when they thought they did.

Monticello High school beat Camden Fairview 38-7 for the Class 5A state championship last night. Three players rushed for more than 100 yards. The Billies ran up almost 500 total yards. Monticello is 14-0 on the season.

John Fund: Why are Democrats so obsessed with health care? I've wondered that too.

... [M]any in the trenches are uneasy about the sprawling, complex bill they privately acknowledge has no bipartisan support, doesn't seriously tackle soaring costs and will increase insurance premiums. That may explain Majority Leader Harry Reid's haste—he has ordered a rare Sunday session this weekend to hurry up the debate. Public support for the bill averages only 39.2% backing in all polls compiled by Pollster.com.
But buried in the surveys is an explanation for the Democratic obsession to pass the bill: An overwhelming 76% of Democrats back it. "They believe the liberal base expects them to deliver and will punish them if they don't," says Democratic pollster Doug Schoen, who worked for Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

They believe that passing health care will bail them out. I don't believe it will at all. When people find out what it really means for them, they will react in horror.

Power Line comments on the recent cut in Medicare funds passed by the Senate. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor both voted in favor of the cut.

Yesterday, the Senate defeated an amendment proposed by John McCain that would have stripped the Democrats' health care legislation of cuts to Medicare (more than $400 billion of them). Sen. McCain's amendment was defeated by a vote of 58-42. Ben Nelson and Jim Webb were the only Democrats who voted to prevent the cuts to Medicare.
This leaves a large number of Democrats who will have to explain to their constituents why they voted to slash Medicare so drastically. Some of these Dems will be facing substantial challenges in 2010.
The honest explanation is that the health care legislation cannot reasonably be funded without these cuts, except by running up too much debt for some Democrats to swallow. But this explanation isn't very helpful because the underlying health care legislation lacks broad popular support.
As something of a senior citizen myself, I can't say I'm pleased with potential cuts to Medicare. However, I take solace from the fact that the Dems will, at last, rid Medicare of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.

 LOL

James Antle on a recent Bob Dole quotation:

"I figured it up the other day," Bob Dole memorably snarled during the 1976 vice presidential debate. "If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans -- enough to fill the city of Detroit." It wasn't Dole's finest moment as an orator, but it should be a cautionary tale for a Democratic president seeking bipartisan support for a "surge" in Afghanistan.

Blanche Lincoln has voted to keep Medicare cuts in the Senate health care bill. The vote was 58-42 with two Democrats joining the Senate's 40 Republicans to restore the cuts.

Most endangered

Power Line has these comments on Blanche Lincoln and the 2010 elections:

Blanche Lincoln continues to be the most "endangered" of all Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2010. The latest Rasmussen poll shows her trailing all of her potential Republican opponents, and she trails the probable frontrunner, Republican state senator Gilbert Baker, by 47 to 41 percent (our friend Tom Cotton decided not to run). According to Politico, this result is consistent with what other polls have found.
To make matters worse, 36 percent of Arkansas voters view Lincoln "very unfavorably." Only 19 percent have a "very favorable" opinion of her.
Lincoln's decisive vote to bring the Senate Democrats' health care reform bill to the floor for debate surely will not help her in Arkansas. 56 percent of Arkansas voters say they "strongly oppose" that plan.
Lincoln's vote on the actual legislation -- as opposed to whether to debate it -- should tell us how she reads the situation back home. If Lincoln votes against the bill, it probably means she thinks she can win next year, not an outrageous assumption if she is only trailing by six percentage points now. If Lincoln votes "yes," it probably means she is resigned to not being in the Senate after 2010, and has been promised a desirable post by the Obama administration.

I wrote her two letters trying to encourage her to vote for her constituents, but whatever. Up to you, Blanche.

Obama's approval rating is now below his disapproval rating. This link has all the polls.

2010 Arkansas Senate race

Rasmussen: Blanche Lincoln is running behind four possible GOP challengers.

The two-term senator, who was reelected with 54% of the vote in 2004, appears more vulnerable because of her visible and pivotal role in the Senate debate over health care. Lincoln was the last Democrat to vote for allowing the debate to formally begin, and she has taken pains to point out that a vote to begin debate is not a vote for the bill.
Looking at the data, it’s easy to understand Lincoln’s concern. Against all four Republicans, she leads by wide margins among those who favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. The senator even leads by a wide margin among those who Somewhat Oppose the legislation. But among those who Strongly Oppose the health care plan, Lincoln trails every potential Republican challenger by more than 50 percentage points.
The really bad news for Lincoln is that 56% of Arkansas voters Strongly Oppose the congressional health care plan. Just 18% Strongly Favor it.

NYT: Democratic governors are worried that Obamacare will hit their state's budgets hard. It will certainly saddle them will millions of dollars in additional Medicaid costs.

David Gratzer, a psychiatrist, says that Medicare cuts won't happen. Congress has threatened to cut Medicare before. "Medicare cuts are like Santa Claus and his flying reindeers -- often talked about, never actually seen."

The Hill: "Democrats had known there was an “intensity gap” between angry conservatives in the Republican Party and the unexcited Democratic base, and in a midterm election, base turnout often determines who wins the night. Yet no one suspected it was this bad."

AP: Obama is going to send more troops to Afghanistan and spend more money. But guess what? Nobody's happy.

Bill Kristol:  Obama is a war president now.

Dan Calabrese, a Christian evangelical, on Huckabee: His political career is finished.

He will never be president. He will never be elected to anything. He can keep hosting his show on Fox News – and he’d better – because it’s the closest to politics he’s ever going to come.
This is a good thing. Huckabee is a good man but not a person who knows how to responsibily handle the authority of public office.

The Haunting

The AP has more on the shooting of Maurice Clemmons and the Huckabee fallout. This story has become the talk of the internet. On Fox News last night, according to the report, Mike Huckabee asserted that Clemmons was released because prosecutors failed to file Clemmons' paperwork on time. Now, that is lame. No doubt Huckabee has been hurt. No way around that.

From the AP report:

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons' parole in 2000 and 2004, said Huckabee's comments were "red herrings." "My word to Mr. Huckabee is man up and own what you did," Jegley said.

See Huckabee video on commuting Clemmons' sentence here.

Maurice Clemmons has been shot and killed.

Senate bill consequences

Philip Klein:

In another blow to Democrats' health care claims, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis on Monday projecting that the Senate health care bill would raise premiums by more than $2,000 on family policies compared to what the cost otherwise would be if Congress were simply to do nothing.
The report, prepared at the request of Sen. Evan Bayh, found that premiums on policies individuals purchase on their own or through the government-run exchanges would cost 10 percent to 13 percent more in 2016 than under current law. In dollar terms, in 2016 an individual policy would cost $5,800 and a family policy would cost $15,200 if the Senate bill were enacted, according to the CBO, compared with $5,500 and $13,100 under the status quo.

Dick Morris: State taxes will go up dramatically under Obamacare because states must expand Medicaid eligibility. Arkansas, for example, will have to increase spending by $402 million.

UPDATE: The WSJ has an article on future premiums. As usual, information is conflicting.

Thomas Sowell is always thought-prevoking.

Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it "brings down the cost of medical care." You pay $500 a year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved?

Power Line has a comment on Huckabee's attempt to blame the system in the Clemmons case.

Seattle Times: Maurice Clemmons' troubling criminal history, including in Arkansas.

Mike Huckabee's statement on the Washington state shootings. Basically he blames the system.

Uh-oh

Michelle Malklin: The man sought in the Lakewood, Washington, police shooting had his prison sentence commuted by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. The AP also has that information in their report. I always thought that Gov. Huckabee was too quick to grant clemency and disagreed with all those that made the papers. For example, the Wayne Dumond case was highly publicized. I may be wrong but I recall that Gov. Clinton did not make such mistakes. (Yes, he made other mistakes.)

On Huckabee's record see here.  From 1996 to 2004 he used his clemency power 703 times, compared to 624 times for the combined total in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. Huckabee made a routine use of his clemency power, commuting sentences of a dozen murderers.

In the Washington shooting, the man's name is Maurice Clemmons, age 37. He has a long criminal history. Huckabee commuted his sentence in May 2000. Michelle has the full details.

See more on Confederate Yankee.

AP: Senate will open health care debate today.

Salena Zito writes about the pople of Bedford Falls, the town in It's a Wonderful Life.

Main Street America has entered an era of populism that embraces neither party. People are tired of government bailouts, spending and unchecked corruption, as well as the media's perceived lack of curiosity or investigation into all three.
They are really tired of being told their values and way of life are not politically correct.

They don't believe in elitist and snobby answers to their problems. They don't even want other people defining their problems for them. Buzz off!

John Brummett, an Arkansas columist, writes about Dick Morris.

Growing backlash over Obamacare.

Slate has a fascinating article on FDR's health leading up to his death in April 1945. He is commonly known to have been ill in 1944 during his last campaign but his problems were hidden from the public just like his polio was covered up. The public knew he had polio but they never saw how bad it was.

The author Barron H. Lerner claims that Roosevelt died of cancer. Roosevelt had a melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, which spread to his brain. Earlier photos show a skin lesion above his left eye, which later seems to disappear. See below. He also had congestive heart failure and hypertension. In other books I've read, he was in denial about his health. Howard G. Bruenn, his cardiologist, may have focused on his heart and missed other problems. Photographs of Roosevelt in this period show a dramatic weight loss. At Yalta in February 1945 he looks like death warmed over.
 

The new book on this subject is Eric Fettmann and Steven Lomazow's FDR's Deadly Secret. It will be released in January. Got to be a must read.

The actual state of Roosevelt's health was covered up by his doctors, and concealed by historians. If he had stepped down in 1944, Tom Dewey would have presumably won, Truman would never have been president, and the Cold War would have unfolded differently.

Now we have a jobless gender gap. Unemployment is higher for men than for women.

Peggy Noonan:

Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong—he can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on. Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama's rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.

She cites an article by Elizabeth Drew that is found here. 

The origin of the term Black Friday: "Black Friday gets its name because it traditionally was the day when huge crowds would push stores into 'the black,' or profitability." I did not know that." 

Out of a hat

Charles Krauthammer on health care reform: "The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool."

Launching the holiday season

Today is Black Friday. I'm not shopping, but lots of people will be watching the turnout today for economic signs. But we have already put up a Christmas tree.

WSJ: ClimateGate may have been rigged from the start. If you find one mistake, then you can't believe any of it.

Aerial photographs from Allied secret missions in World War II.

Reason: Blanche Lincoln  will vote yes in procedural votes in an effort to conceal her real intention. For example, the cloture vote, which ends the debate, will probably be the critical vote, but it's not the vote for final passage. However, it's the one to watch. Blanche could vote yes on cloture but no on final passage, and try to have it both ways. The Senate leadership may not need her vote for final passage, only for cloture.

Nice trick if she can make it work and fool everybody back home.

Other commentators see her ruse as well.

Happy Thanksgiving.

It has been a hard year, very hard, but I still have blessings I am thankful for.

Hot Air: AARP may be backing away from the public option. Well, AARP is, most of all, an insurance company.

Michelle Malkin recaps the turkeys of the year.

1. The stimulus
2. President O-bow-ma
3. Green jobs czar Van Jones
4. The New York Times on ACORN and ClimateGate
   
5. Tea Party-bashers
   

Angelina Jolie thinks that Obama is a socialist in disguise.

Ann Althouse: "Newspapers just aren't what they used to be, when the readers can instantly talk back."

I've noticed this too, because I like to read the comments. Readers are vicious at times. 

Blanche Lincoln: “I am not thinking about my reelection, the legacy of a president, or whether Democrats or Republicans are going to claim victory in winning the debate.” LOL.

That's in the Christian Science Monitor.

Newsweek magazine is in a free fall. I'm surprised that so-call news magazines are still in business at all.

As I remember, Michael Barone bailed out of Newsweek earlier. 

For the past two days, the ADG editorial page has been highly critical of Blanch Lincoln for her vote on Saturday. The editorial writers point out that she is trying to have it both ways, satisfying Reid and the lefties while at the same time appearing to oppose health care. She is playing a very dangerous game.

Paul Greenberg is the editor of the editorial page.

See also this link in which a letter writer tells her to enjoy her last year as Senator -- she has earned it.  

Wal-Mart, the mightest retailer in history, has only one rival, Amazon. Well, I buy from both, more from Wal-Mart, of course. But I also go to Amazon to check out all major purchases.

Newsbusters: Looks like the MSM has a boycott going on about ClimateGate. Let's see, Charles Gibson did a nice piece about Oprah's show.