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.

Top 133 conservative blogs.

Iain Murray on ClimateGate.

End User: Windows 7 is looking good so far and avoiding the problems that Vista had at this early stage. I'm still unconvinced.

We all know that many adopted children grow up and search for their natural parents. Never a good idea in my judgment. Here is an extreme example of what can go wrong.

Jay Cost, unlike many commentators I read, thinks deeply and historically about the health-care overhaul.

The evolving health care proposal does not feel like something I'd expect the Democratic Party to produce. Instead, it is starting to seem like something drafted by a bizarre hybrid of the old Federalist Party and the British Labor Party.

Howard Dean: Democrats are in deep trouble over health care bill.

LA Times: Blanche Lincoln is lonely in the middle of the health care fight. But she might get lonelier.

A case study in abnormal political psychology

Rich Lowry: Democrats are delusional.

It's as if they don't realize that they're led by a marginally popular president (dipping below 50 percent public approval in the Gallup poll last week for the first time), are deeply unpopular themselves and are pushing for legislation that is opposed by more people than support it in almost every single opinion poll. But they do realize it -- they just don't care....

If nothing else, watching the Democrats sacrifice so much on behalf of this monstrosity is fascinating, appalling -- and dramatic. Common sense suggests that they shouldn't do it. The basic laws of political physics say they can't do it. And yet on they march.

Arkansas' phantom districts

You know, it's tragic that the residents of the 22nd Congressional District of Arkansas received almost $6 million in funding from the economic stimulus package but not a single job has been created there. Same thing for the 28th District and the 8th District. In fact these are among 9 Arkansas congressional districts that received funding but do not exist. They are phantom districts. Arkansas has only four congressional districts. This is all in the ADG this morning. See also here. More here.

Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday led a interesting discussion yesterday.

Robert Samuelson: Health insurance reform is an assault on the young. I've always believed that once people learn what health-care reform involves they won't like it at all.

How fair is this?

Keith Hennessey: In the Reid bill, 16 million U.S. citizens pay a penalty tax, 8 million uninsured illegal aliens do not.

Ann Althouse has a post on a recent Maureen Dowd column in which Dowd criticizes Obama as a "detached loner" whose animating spirit has "sputtered out." Her comment comparing Obama with Reagan, as I read it, is wrong; Reagan was not just being an actor when he projected empathy, thought his acting career proved to be an asset, not a liability as many originally thought.

Dowd is surprisingly positive on Palin. Overall, very interesting.

Who's out of step?

AP Report: "Senate moderates on Sunday threatened to scuttle the health care bill if their demands weren't met, frustrating rank-and-file Democrats who say their colleagues' views were out of step with Americn voters."

HotAir: Blanche seems to be dug in against the public option.

Brian Walsh and Hans Spakovsky: The PelosiCare bill will criminalize health care freedom.

Who will be included among those subject to civil and criminal penalties if this provision becomes law? For starters, any family of four whose combined income in 2016 is above $102,100 ($88,200 in today's dollars) and that chooses to pay all its medical expenses out of pocket rather than pay the $15,000 a year that the CBO says will be the lowest-priced insurance option for families. Also any healthy twentysomething in a city with high costs of living who chooses to take the risk of going uninsured.

The Corner has the statements from the moderate Senators on voting for the motion today:

Even though Democrats likely have enough votes to get onto the bill, below are quotes from conservative Democrats where they condition their vote on the second cloture motion on changes to the bill.

·         Senator Nelson:  “Throughout my Senate career I have consistently rejected efforts to obstruct. That's what the vote on the motion to proceed is all about. It is not for or against the new Senate health care bill released Wednesday.  In my first reading, I support parts of the bill and oppose others I will work to fix. If that's not possible, I will oppose the second cloture motion—needing 60 votes—to end debate, and oppose the final bill.”
·         Senator Lieberman:  "I've told Sen. Reid that I'm strongly inclined, I haven't totally decided, but I'm strongly inclined to vote to proceed to the healthcare debate, even though I don't support the bill that he's bringing together, because it's important that we start the debate on healthcare reform, because I want to vote on healthcare reform this year. …  I also told him that if the bill remains where it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage.”
·         Senator Landrieu:  “My vote to move forward on this important debate should in no way be construed by the supporters of this current framework as an indication of how I might vote as this debate comes to an end.  I have decided that there are enough significant reforms and safeguards in this bill to move forward, but much more work needs to be done.”
·         Senator Lincoln:  “In fact, madam president, this vote for or against a procedure that allows us to begin open debate on health care reform is nothing more and nothing less. … I will vote to support — will vote in support of cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill, but, madam president, let me be perfectly clear: I am opposed to a new government-administered health care plan as part of comprehensive health insurance reform, and i will not vote in favor of the proposal that has been introduced by leader Reid as it is written. I, along with others, expect to have legitimate opportunities to influence the health care reform legislation that is voted on by the senate later this year or early next year. I am also aware that there will be additional procedural votes to move this process forward that will require 60 votes prior to the conclusion of the floor debate. I've already alerted the leader, and I'm promising my colleagues, that I'm prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a government-run public option is included.”

I am very disappointed, Blanche.

The Corner: Blanche is voting with her party. It's official.
See also AP report.

Blanche Lincoln is the lone holdout as of now. The Democrats have 59 votes and waiting.

Even David Broder thinks that the Senate bill is a budget-buster. So does just about everyone else except congressional Democrats.

I'm shocked, I tell you, I'm shocked that global warming scientists could fake their data to get the results they want. See Power Line. It's all over the web, and some are calling it ClimateGate.

For a summary of links, see Shout First blog. See also this summary.

The House has passed a "Doc Fix" that restores $200 billion to Medicare. This money was stripped from the recent health care overhaul to "reduce" its cost. Forget that. It's right back again. Smoke and mirrors.

Jay Cost: Have the Democrats just gone mad? The Reid bill is going to savage Medicare, according to CBO. Actually I think they have.

Mona Charen seems to agree.

UPDATE: Cost in a separate post thinks that Lincoln and Landrieu will vote yea.

Bloomberg: Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's vote on health care may have been bought off. She has been given an extra $100 million in federal aid for low-income people in Louisiana. Her vote will be carefully watched.

What will Blanche Lincoln get for Arkansas?

BBC News: Drinking alcohol everyday cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, according to a Spanish study. More drinking produced more benefit. Females did not benefit to the same extent.

Usually we see warnings that heavy drinking can increase the risk of diseases.

But the BBC said that Spain had a relatively high rate of alcohol consumption and low rates of coronary heart disease.

The study involved 15,000 men and 26,000 women aged between 29 and 69, who were asked to document their livetime drinking habits and followed for 10 years.

AP Report: Harry Reid is moving ahead with a vote on health care on Saturday. Blanche Lincoln is in the spotlight. No where to run. The vote at this point appears to be close with no margin for error.

Lincoln is said to have told Reid how she will vote, but no one has disclosed it. I personally think Reid would not go ahead with the Saturday vote if he didn't have the votes, including her vote.

Power Line: Most people know how to create jobs: cut taxes and spending. Why is this so hard for Democrats to understand?

Dick Morris appeared at a rally in Little Rock yesterday calling the health-care overhaul bill "the most serious threat to our lives and our liberties we Americans have faced since World War II."

They group met on the steps of the Capitol, not at the Clinton library. I wonder why.

He cited a new Zogby poll that finds only 28 percent of the state, in Morris' words, "that's demented enought to support this bill, but there is 64 percent of the state tht opposes it." Actually this was a poll of likely voters in Arkansas.

Morris also said that illegal immigrants "should be covered [by insurance], but by a prison  policy."

Tom Coburn (R-OK) will take 34 hours and read it, LOL.

The litmus test

Joe Lieberman on bait and switch in the public option:

“It’s classic politics of our time that if you look at the campaign last year, presidential, you can’t find a mention of public option,” Lieberman said. “It was added after the election as a part of what we normally consider health insurance reform — insurance market reforms, cover people, cover people who are not covered.

“It suddenly becomes a litmus test. I thought Democrats were against litmus tests.”

NY Post: Reid's bill will cost twice what he says it will. The math is fuzzy.

AP: The Senate bill will make government health insurance "widely available." But that does not mean that the government plan would dominate the market. States can opt out. The "budget unpires," presumably the CBO, estimate that only 3 million to 4 million people would sign up, because private insurance plans would be available more cheaply. What the hell are we doing, then?

That clearly means that these 3 or 4 million insured don't want cheaper insurance now, and have to be forced to sign up. They are probably young, health people who think they don't need it at this point in their lives, or they would have already bought it. The implication is that they can currently afford it.

Just another puzzle. But it could be the downfall of the whole idea.

Greta van Susteren interviews Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) about health care legislation. He thinks the Democrats with their large majorities will be able to pass "something."

Harry Reid has produced  his health care bill that will cost $849 billion over ten years and reduced the federal deficit by $127 billion. But those figures are just preliminary. I guess so. CBO will provide its final analysis soon.

You can read the bill here (PDF). This thing is 2,074 pages compared to a mere 1,990 pages for the House version.

Politico: “Read the bill!” was a rallying cry of some health reform opponents over the summer. And if Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) gets his way, senators will get a chance to hear every word of it. He’s threatening to the read the legislation from start to finish, which by some estimates could take as long as 48 hours.

I hope Coburn does read it; it will be reminicent of Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge reading the Versailles Treaty in the Senate to stall its passage. And it worked.

The Wrong Side of Something

Nicholas D. Kristof of the NYT favors health reform because critics offered the same criticism of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965. Well, so what?

Kristof says critics are on "The Wrong Side of History." History has many sides.

Jeffery S. Flier, dean of Harvard Medical School, has an article in today's WSJ.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care's dysfunctional delivery system.

Roger L. Simon adds: Game, set, match, tournament. But, hey, it’s only the Dean of Harvard Med. What would he know compared to such great clinicians as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? This would be magnificent black comedy were it not our lives and – more importantly – those of our children that were hanging in the balance. The rush to enact this self-serving legislation is pretty much the most disgraceful US governmental act of my lifetime – at least that I can think of at the moment – and, as readers know, I am no longer in my twenties (!).

To me, that ought to settle it.

Politico: Independent voters have soured on Democrats. What to do? Get their health program passed? I don't think that will do anything but make it worse.

Yesterday, I became the proud owner of a new Whirlpool refrigerator. I believe in this brand and regret that I did not buy one before. I screwed up and bought a Frigidaire, which two years later turned to junk. It would have cost me almost as much to fix the old one as to buy the new one — a no-brainer.

In my neighborhood, most people have a refrigerator in their carport as well as one in their kitchen. That's not a scientific observation, but I see them quite often when I  glance into open carports. They moved from the old house with a refrigerator that they discarded, though it was perfectly functional. It was the wrong color. Horrors!

Well, now I have two Whirlpools, white and stainless steel, LOL. However, I understand that some people do this deliberately for extra cold storage. Just like they may want a freezer in the storeroom.

ADG says that Blanche Lincoln is feeling the strain of being a critical vote in the health care debate. Well, I sent her another letter last week to help her along. Oh, by the way, another government program just lost $3.8 billion. That would be the Postal Service.

James Pethokoukis: The Chinese question the cost of U.S. health care reform and how it would impact our huge fiscal deficit. They're worried?

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann explain how health care reform, so called, might play out in defeat.

ABC NEWS: Obama administration created and saved jobs in Congressional districts that don't exist. Well, now.

Brad DeLong, an economist, says that the chance of another Great Depression is now about 5 percent. Before now he said the chance was zero. Well, that's not conforting.

The layaway method of purchasing is making a comeback because many customers are scared of debt. It's the only way they can have Christmas for their kids.

The California Conservative blog, which I've just discovered, says goodbye. Best wishes. One day I will reach that point myself.

AP: Tax the rich to pay for health care, polls say. That's the ticket, unless they define the rich as you.

The Obama administration has screwed up the taxes for seniors this year. I was not looking forward to April 15 anyway.

Douglas Schoen: Obama has lost the political center. Schoem makes the obvious suggestions about how he could get it back. But I don't believe he wants to.

AP: People are beginning to ask how much will Obamacare cost them?

CMS report: House bill will raise health-care costs $289 billion over the next decade. CMS stands for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service.

Washington Post: PelosiCare will slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending and sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and others, according to a nonpartisaon report released Saturday.

Former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for corruption, and the New Orleans Times Picayune sums up the case.

Somehow I love to start sentences with "Former U.S. Rep...." I'm looking for a chance to extend that courtesy to more of them.

Joe Namath's dog is in trouble.

Some proponents of health care reform use the tactic that, well, you already have government insurance in Medicare. Here's what's wrong with that idea. So far this year Medicare has racked up $47 billion in questionable claims.

In recent years, the suspect claims have included Medicare prescriptions from doctors who were dead, and requests for payments for medical supplies such as blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and diabetic shoes for leg amputees.

Very creative.

Elliott West, history professor at the University of Arkansas, is on the short list for best college teacher in America.

There are tricks and devices that can help. For instance: "Never underestimate the power of dead air." Prof. West advises "asking a question and simply waiting for the answer." He has noticed that "people will get very uncomfortable and start squirming, until someone will try." For the really tough crowds, he says, he will surprise them. They think that he is carrying around a cup of coffee, but actually he has candy inside and when someone finally answers a question correctly, he will throw a piece to that student. He smiles slyly: "It's like training seals."

That last part is correct. 

According to this AP report, the Obama administration is planning to haul the 9/11 attackers into court and try them for — I suppose — murder. That is a huge mistake in my judgment. Why didn't we hunt down and try the pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor? We didn't because we were at war, and we have been at war since 9/11.

This was the same mistake that the Clinton administration made when dealing with terrorists. They are not criminals, they are enemies. You prosecute criminals, you kill enemies.

Power Line has a comment about it.

Gallup: More Americans now say universal health care is not the government's responsibility. I never thought it was. In fact, it is government interference in a very private matter.

Want to play Star Trek online?

David Paul Kuhn: White women like the GOP. I'm surprised, but I guess I've heard about the gender gap for too long.

Everyone knows that just a handful of Senators hold the key to health care. Here's a discussion.

These are on the hot seat: Lieberman, Lincoln, Bayh, Nelson, Landrieu, who else?

James Pethokoukis has more on the current status in the Senate.

Kausfiles: MoveOn.org will place ads targeting Mike Ross, among other Democrats, for voting against PelosiCare. I'm sure he will call and thank them, lol.

The Hill: The health-care debate is a boom for Republicans looking to run for the Senate. Senator Lincoln, call your office.

Want a GM (Government Motors) T-shirt?

Obamacare will change everything about health care. "If the Senate votes yes, you'll immediately pay more for insurance, more for bureaucracy and see growing federal micromanagement of health decisions. Family subsidies, a public insurance option and more competition? Well, please stand by.

Are you worried about doomsday predictions? Forget it.

Tony Blankley makes a plausible case for Hillary running in 2012. But wait, she always said she was not interested... ROTFL.

Steven Malanga: We have too much government in health care now.

Charles Krauthammer:

But I think the more general issue about the politics of this is I think Pelosi has led her party over a cliff on this. If, as is less likely, it gets stuck in the Senate and a lot of Democrats are way out on a limb the way they were after the big cap and trade vote in the House, if it passes in a form in the Senate, the Democrats are going to have a healthcare proposal which I think will haunt them for a decade.
There is so much pain in here - increase in taxes, increase in premiums, extra bureaucracy, interference in the medical treatment of patients - which people will be able to feel and to see within months and surely within years. This will be a millstone around Democrats for years if it passes.

Blanche Lincoln is one of the Senators to watch in the health care debate. Well, we knew that.

Bone-headed audacity

John Stossel:

As an American, I am embarrassed that the U.S. House of Representatives has 220 members who actually believe the government can successfully centrally plan the medical and insurance industries.
I'm embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.

Good article.

Politico: The abortion issue will be a major obstacle to health care legislation in the Senate, just as it was in the House.

Asked if NARAL would oppose a final health care bill with the so-called Stupak amendment, [Nancy] Keenan said she was operating on the premise that it will not include the restrictive language but that NARAL would work against the overall bill if it did.

“Absolutely,” she said. “We are prepared to stop at nothing.”

Slate: The health care debate has produced a variety of factions in the Senate.

William McGurn: Bart Stupak (D-Mich), abortion, and health care.

Republican ads are calling Blanche Lincoln a "flip-flopper."

Why is health care reform so difficult? Because most people are happy with the current health care system. Or at least they think reform will make it worse than it is, which is my opinion.

Even the White House is split over how to do health care reform.

Arkansas writer Donald Harington is dead at 73. Perhaps his best known work was The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks. I've also read Let Us Build a City, one of his lesser known works. He suffered from a near-total loss of hearing.

His website is here.

Tear down this wall!

Anthony Dolan, a Reagan speech writer, recalls Reagan's Berlin Wall speech. How I miss Reagan!

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Power Line has this Reagan video.

Obama will not attend the anniversary celebration. I just don't understand this.

WSJ: The health care debate moves on to the Senate, but many Senators don't like it.

List of blue dogs who voted for Pelosicare.

Dick Morris discusses the deals with the AMA and AARP that made PelosiCare possible.

* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

AP: The Pelosi bill has passed with 219 Democrats and 1 Republicanm, i.e., 220-215.

See H.R. 3962 here, all 2,048 pages of it.

The ADG today says that Marion Berry and Vic Snyder voted for it, Mike Ross voted no along with 38 other Democrats. John Boozman, Arkansas' only Republican in Congress, voted no.

See this analysis.

Jennifer Rubin: "The Democrats are now in a lose-lose bind of their own making. Pass the bill and suffer the wrath of the voters. Or don’t pass the bill and suffer untold embarrassment. At such moments a crafty politician would stall. We’ll see how crafty Pelosi is."

55 nervous Democrats are listed here.

Vic Snyder -- undecided

Marion Berry -- leaning no

Mike Ross is not listed, but he's not on a list of confirmed no voters either.

Power Line sums up today's situation.

The vote may be back on. It will be close. I'm looking for some sign of how Mike Ross and other Arkansas congressmen will vote but nothing yet.

Ross is not being mentioned as far as I see. 

Oops. Where are my votes?

AP: Nancy Pelosi has put off the vote Saturday on the health care bill.

Byron York: Just before the vote on health care, Nancy Pelosi does not want Democrats to be in touch with their constituents. But some of them came to Washington to protest anyway. One sign: "Hey, blue dogs. Who wants to be toast?"

Power Line has a video. 

Losing sight of reality

The House Democrats under Nancy Pelosi are moving toward a vote on their health care bill tomorrow.

John Fund has some comments:

More than a few Democrats in Congress are perplexed and worried that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting on ramming through a 1,900-page health care bill on Saturday, just days after her party took heavy losses in Tuesday's elections. "It reminds me of Major Nicholson, the obsessed British major in the film 'Bridge on the River Kwai,'" one Democrat told me. "She is fixated on finishing her health care bridge even as she's lost sight of where it's going and what damage it could cause to her own troops."

"Like Major Nicholson on the River Kwai, they may wake up to find they built a monument to a set of presumptions that were really a form of madness."

By the way she also violated her pledge to post the bill online 72 hours before the vote.

I can't think of anything else to say now except, bring it on, Nancy!

Wall Street Journal: "If the doctor shortage is not addressed and health-care reform is signed into law, millions of Americans will likely find themselves able to obtain insurance for the first time—but may be unable to find a doctor without a long delay. Why? Because expanding the number of insured patients but not the number of doctors will only increase the demand for services that already must meet the demands of an aging population. We must make sure there are enough health professionals to meet those new demands."

Solution: Take a number, have a seat.

The Odd Couple Coalition

Michael Barone: "Economically, the Obama majority was a top-and-bottom coalition. The Democratic ticket carried voters with incomes under $50,000 and over $200,000, and lost those in between. As the shrewd liberal analyst Thomas Edsall has noted, there's a tension between what these groups want. High earners in non-Southern suburbs have been voting Democratic since the mid-1990s largely because of their liberal views on cultural issues; low earners vote Democratic because they want more government money shoveled their way."

Barone also says that Tuesday's biggest loser was the union agenda. 

Change you can believe in

This AP report shows that the most common C4C swap (8,200 times) was a new Ford F150 pickup for an older one, with a mileage boost of 1-3 mpg.

I participated in this program myself, trading in a 1999 Chevy Tahoe with 100,000+ miles that was getting 10-15 mpg for a Toyota Prius which gets about 50 mpg.

Power Line has more on yesterday's election. It's clear that health care was the loser in my view.

Michelle Malkin: The AARP is preparing to endorse Obamacare. Well, what else is new?

See this AP report.

Wake up call

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia, a swing state that Obama carried last year, demonstrates that marginal Democratic Congressmen cannot survive Obamacare. A vote in favor of Obamacare is a career-ending vote.

Michael Barone: "First, in the governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidate ran far behind Barack Obama’s percentages in 2008 and the Republican candidates ran ahead of George W. Bush’s percentages in 2004."

"The 2009 election results are certainly not going to make it easy for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to round up the needed 218 votes for Democrats’ health care bills."

More comments and links from Glenn Reynolds.

Election reactions

Glenn Reynolds: Obama has lost his magic.

The truth is, Obama wasn’t ready to be president when he ran in 2008. When he started, he probably thought he had no real chance — he himself admitted upon entering the Senate that he wasn’t qualified to be president — and that his first run would simply be a PR effort that would lift him to the top ranks of Senate Democrats.

Betsy's Page: "Toto, I don't think we're in 2008 anymore."

Harry Reid won't commit to passing Obamacare this year.

I think the tea partiers will get some good news tonight.

The tea parties have died down but one in Houston, TX, has drawn over 10,000 participants.

Brooks Blevins has a new book entitled Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, & Good Ol' Boys Defined a State (UA Press, $29.95).

It's about the idea of Arkansas or Arkansas' negative image. Blevins, a native of Izard County, teaches at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo.

Arkansas has long been portrayed as a land of illiteracy, bare feet, slow trains, and double-wides. These images are in part true, but greatly exaggerated. Politicians have used them to garner votes, entertainers have made money with them, and most Arkansans have reacted to them defensively.

The title itself plays up the state's dual nature: Arkansawyer vs. Arkansan. This duality goes all the way back to the Arkansas Traveler and to pioneers like Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who wrote in 1818, "In manners, morals, customs, dress, contempt of labour and hospitality, the state of society is not essentially different from that which exists among the savages."

Somehow the state never turned its reputation into an asset like Tennessee has done.

In the ADG this morning, Blevins says he expects he will be accused of insulting the state. If so, I doubt that it will amount to much. 

I also strongly recommend another Blevins' work: Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image (2001).

Wal-Mart health clinics

I was surprised to learn that Wal-Mart is opening health care clinics in its supercenters. They are for people who need immediate care, but who have non-emergency problems like the flu or upper respiratory infections, etc. The Wal-Mart on Base Line Road in Little Rock has one of the clinics, and another is under construction in the Cantrell Road store.

The Cost of Medical Care

Thomas Sowell: "We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is "too high"-- either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed by the government is likely to lower those costs, and much that is being proposed is almost certain to increase the costs."

And: "Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them."

Everybody who is interested in politics will be watching the elections in New Jersey and Virginia tomorrow for whatever they might mean.

William Kristol
Mike Flynn 
AP 

Wall Street Journal: The Pelosi health-care bill may be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

Salena Zeto: Writing about the elections coming up this Tuesday, she says, "One thing is certain: Wednesday morning will pose a hangover for both parties as they assess going forward." Both parties will find out for the first time what the mood of the electorate really is.

Michael S. Malone affirms these beliefs:

1. Never trust luck to get you through.
2. Don’t assume the best-case scenario.
3. The laws of economics, like the laws of chance, always triumph.

He is pessimistic about the our economic future, but another lesson he affirms is to trust the integrity of everyday folks.

What Arkansas thinks

John Brummett has a new column on an Arkansas opinion poll put out by Talk Business Quarterly, a new publication. Here are some of his analysis of the data:

Blanche Lincoln faces an uphill battle for re-election because the people of Arkansas don't want a government health option. Despite the fact that they have Medicare, etc, they are not totally sold on government health insurance, is my guess. Brummett says that Lincoln's current negative rating is 46 percent compared to a 42 percent positive rating. Her new chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee has actually hurt, rather than helped her. Besides Republican opposition, she may face a Democratic challenger, lieutenant governor Bill Halter.

Underwhelming

The AP reports that once PelosiCare's public option is full implemented only 6 percent of Americans under 65 will sign up for it. Then why have the Democrats made such a fuss about it?