Stupak: the Sanctity of Life is Important to Us, Which is Why We Will Slash Care for Old People and Further Enslave Children to Massive Deficits

… The bill uses every account gimmick known to man — including slashing Medicare payments (really humane, Bart) and double-counting the cuts — and invents a few new ones to create a brand new entitlement when the country is already in dire financial straits.

This bill fundamentally changes the relationship between the federal government and the people; and it does so in a despicably evil way …

Congratulations, Bart Stupak and your so-called “Pro-Life” Democrat Caucus, you’ve sentenced the unborn generations of this country to misery, poverty and economic ruin.

Not yet, but on the verge … with a possible Plan B (also here).

Stupak’s cave-in is best seen as the final result of the abject failure of the pro-life movement to make the arguments put forth here last summer.

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UPDATE: Further proof that there is no such thing as a pro-life Democrat — because when it matters, human life is not as important as the advancement of statism. That is in essence what Stupak said last year (HT HyScience) –

UPDATE, 8:35 p.m: Phyllis Schlafly –

“This vote will expose the myth of the ‘pro-life Democrat.’ With this single vote, the Democratic Party will divide our nation into the Party of Death and the Party of Life, and future elections will never be the same.”

“Someone” made the point that there are no pro-life Democrats as long as they support a the most radically anti-life president ever as their standard-bearer back in October 2008.

UPDATE, 8:55 p.m.: Received in a GOP Leader e-mail –

• “If the bill is signed into law, these statutory requirements and defects are not subject to correction or nullification by the chief executive or his appointees, whether by Executive Order, regulation, or otherwise.” (National Right to Life Committee statement)
• “An Executive Order cannot prevent insurance companies that pay for abortions from participating in the exchanges. Further, Executive Orders can be undone or modified as quickly as they are created. This is a blatant attempt to subvert democracy and should be quickly quashed.” (Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President & CEO of Americans United for Life Action)
• “If the Obama Administration continued to falsely believe the Senate bill had no problem on the issue of funding abortion and funding health plans that include abortion, he certainly would not put forth the idea of an EO. Because of an EO would give no protections to the unborn when it comes to funding for abortion in the Senate and Reconciliation bills, FRCAction will still score votes on both in our scorecard for the Second Session of the 111th Congress.” (FRC letter to members of Congress)

UPDATE, 9:05 p.m.: Via Fox (HT Hot Air) —

Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund President Marjorie Dannenfelser said the group was revoking its “Defender of Life” award to Stupak, which was to be awarded at its Wednesday night gala.

“We were planning to honor Congressman Stupak for his efforts to keep abortion-funding out of health care reform. We will no longer be doing so,” Dannenfelser said. “Let me be clear: any representative, including Rep. Stupak, who votes for this health care bill can no longer call themselves ‘pro-life.’”

UPDATE, 10:50 p.m.: Plan C.

UPDATE, 10:55 p.m.: Does anyone think that Mike “ObamaCare Is Stopped Because of My Gang of 14” DeWine would care to comment?

UPDATE, 11:00 p.m.: 219-212 (roll call link coming tomorrow). Stupak’s sell-out made the difference. Current Drudge headline: “Day Which Will Live in Infirmary.”

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Note: This item orginally went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

Update: If we’re to believe ‘em, Congress has abandoned the Slaughter Rule attempt referenced in what follows. But it appears that they are open to using it in other matters in the future (i.e., they won’t “won’t use the tactic of deem and pass for healthcare reform”).

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‘Twas the eve of state health care, and all through the House
The bill was unread even by the head louse.
The statists hung ’round with a faux-festive air,
Hoping their awful “dream” would indeed soon be there.

The USA’s children were snug in their beds,
Unaware of the pain being laid on their heads.
Everyday people opposed to this crap,
Wondered when or if DC’s hypnosis would snap.

When out from O’s House there arose such a clatter,
‘Twas the President’s flacks and their usual chatter.
They showed docs in white coats supporting this trash,
Using children as props as they threw around cash.

The Speaker stood forth for her part in the show,
“It will be when we pass it that you’ll get to know,
The wonders we’re bringing that statists will cheer,
Creating more wards who’ll elect us for years.”

They were led by a punk, not so lively or slick,
Who knew that to pass it the thing must go quick.
For this speed the protests and polls were to blame,
So he called out supporters and hailed them by name:

“Axelrod, Zeke the Bleak,
Plouffe and Michelle!
Pelosi and Reid,
Now unleash health care hell!
Take the world’s best system,
Reorder it all.
Stop doc-patient decisions.
Now we’ll make them all.”

What they said ’bout the bill was just lie after lie,
Many wouldn’t support it, and this explains why
They turned to Ms. Slaughter, who took time to note,
That they’d “deem” it a law without taking a vote.

They’d rely on the bill that had gone through the Senate,
Then promised repair (not that they really meant it).
Our dear Constitution they’d turn on its ears,
But they hoped that somehow they’d save their careers.

The American people were fit to be tied,
What about unemployment, the jobs that have died?
What about all the other things you’ve tried to manage,
Like Medicare and FICA, with trillions in damage?

Their emotions transformed into true righteous rage,
At the bill’s loss of freedoms its passage presaged.
New burdens on businesses, families, and workers,
That only might help whiny fakes and tear-jerkers.

They knew their well-being would be second to money,
That “just take the darn pill” was not even funny.
While they saw its supporters on so many channels
Praise what they knew would soon lead to death panels.

The clergy and faithful were late to the game,
Their fetal concerns were important but lame,
Compared to the nightmarish loss of control
Over life-death decisions because of “the whole.”

This weakness gave statists the room to create
A fig leaf of “concern” that might yet save its fate.
If it becomes law it is so sad to state,
That pro-lifers weighed in with too little, too late.

So we’ll lobby and call and send e-mail and faxes,
Objecting to bloat and the myriad taxes.
But it might become law because we didn’t see,
That it’s really about whether we’ll remain free.

Mar 19, 2010 / 03:32 pm

Venerable Chiara Badano will be beatified next fall, the Bishop of the Diocese of Acqui, Italy announced on Friday. She provides a “meaningful” testimony to young people because she never lost sight of God in the midst of her battle with terminal cancer.

Bishop Pier Giorgio Micchiardi and the postulator of the Chiara Badano’s Cause for Canonization announced on Friday that the date for her beatification is set for Sept. 25, 2010, according to SIR news.

Bishop Micchiardi’s predecessor, now retired Bishop Livio Maritano, explained his reasons for putting the beatification process in motion for the girl who died in 1989, saying, “It seemed to me that her testimony was meaningful, particularly for young people.”

According to an official website created in Chiara’s honor, she lived a short, but intensely spiritual life before she succumbed to ravages of osteosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer.

The story of her life reveals an immense love for Christ and an inexhaustible faith in God’s will. From the time she found out about the disease, she was often heard saying “If you want it Jesus, so do I.”

As the disease ran its course over the period of three years, she was never heard complaining. After an operation left her paralyzed and suffering from extremely painful and constant leg contractions, she even said, “If I were now asked if I want to walk, I would say no, because this way I am closer to Jesus.”

Having become a member of the Focolari Movement at the age of nine, she was said to have had a “mother-daughter like relationship” with its foundress, Chiara Lubich, who nicknamed her “Luce” or “Light.”

Stories on the website dedicated to her relate that the young girl often reflected on the words of the foundress, “I’ll be a saint, if I’m a saint now.”

Contemplating the life of Chiara Badano and her example, Bishop Maritano explained, “There is a need for holiness also today.” Her life is a “witness of faith, of strength fortitude” that instigates many people to change their lives, said the Italian bishop, adding that, “we have almost daily testimony of it.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

That’s apparently how Ian Urbina at the New York Times sees it. In a subheadline employed in a front-page article in the paper’s March 20 print edition (relevant portion shown at right) but not used in the online edition’s version, the reporter told readers that the poor, put-upon Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is on the brink of bankruptcy because it was “ATTACKED BY” the streamrolling monolith known at “THE RIGHT WING” (cue the scare music and the blood-curdling scream).

Actually, it was filmmaker James O’Keefe, his investigative partner Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart, the pair’s take-no-prisoners mentor. Three people, hardly “the right wing,” basically did it all. What followed — the de-fundings, the abandonments by former political and corporate friends, and now apparently its imminent financial demise — was largely inevitable fallout from a brilliantly conceived series of stings followed by a savvily managed exposure campaign that ultimately forced holdout establishment media publications, including the Times itself, to play catch-up after days of embarrassing unprofessional silence.

Obviously, that’s not how Urbina sees it, occasionally with barely concealed bitterness (bolds are mine throughout this post):

The community organizing group Acorn, battered politically from the right and suffering from mismanagement along with a severe loss of government and other funds, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, officials of the group said Friday.

Acorn is holding a teleconference this weekend to discuss plans for a bankruptcy filing, two officials of the group said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

Over the last six months, at least 15 of the group’s 30 state chapters have disbanded and have no plans of re-forming, Acorn officials said. The California and New York chapters, two of the largest, have severed their ties to the national group and have independently reconstituted themselves with new names. Several other state groups are also re-forming outside the Acorn umbrella, and will not be affected if the national organization files for bankruptcy.

This week, the Maryland chapter announced that it would not reopen its offices, which were shuttered in September in the wake of a widely publicized series of video recordings made by two conservative activists, posing as a prostitute and a pimp, who secretly filmed Acorn workers providing them tax advice. In the videos, Acorn workers told one of the activists, James E. O’Keefe III, how to hide prostitution activities from the authorities and avoid taxes, raising no objections to his proposed criminal activities.

After the activists’ videos came to light and swiftly became fodder for 24-hour cable news coverage, private donations from foundations to Acorn all but evaporated and the federal government quickly distanced itself from the group.

Yep, if it wasn’t for Fox News, Urbina apparently reasons, we might have been able to get away with ignoring those dumb videos and ACORN would still be viable. Puh-leeze.

Urbina goes on to try to impress us with a few statistics about the organization’s allegedly noble endeavors:

A network that once included more than 1,000 grass-roots groups, Acorn, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was created in 1970 and has fought for liberal causes like raising the minimum wage, registering the poor to vote, stopping predatory lending and expanding affordable housing. The organization helped roughly 150,000 lower-income families prepare their tax returns and obtain $190 million in tax refunds between 2004 and 2009, Acorn officials said.

As I pointed out last September (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), that supposedly impressive tax stat, amounting to 25,000 returns per year, is really laughably unimpressive (a previous link to King County has been removed because its content has since been changed):

25,000 returns nationwide? That’s … just over 200 per year in each of ACORN’s 110 cities, and likely includes a lot of repeat-year returns that are pretty easy to prepare.

By contrast, here’s just one example of a United Way taxpayer assistance outreach effort out of Washington state (bold is mine):

“In 2009, 530 volunteers dedicated 16,000 hours to United Way of King County’s Free Tax Prep Campaign. Volunteers prepared 13,631 tax returns, helped return $17.3 million in federal refunds back to the community, including $5.2 million in Earned Income Tax Credits, and saved customers an estimated $1 million in tax preparation fees.”

The King County group, in just one metro area, did over half as many returns as ACORN did in the entire country, and provided their services for free.

… reporters should be ashamed that they have ignored the obvious indications that ACORN’s offices really accomplish very little of value on behalf of the poor people they allegedly serve.

It would appear that Mr. Urbina was unaware of how truly pathetic the ACORN performance was, because he was actually touting it. If he had recognized it, he might have asked this critical question: What in the world have these people been doing?

Mr. Urbina wrote up part of the answer in a later paragraph:

In Pittsburgh, Acorn officials said they were trying to continue work while they decided whether to stay with the national organization or form a new one. Maryellen Hayden, the volunteer director of Allegheny County’s Acorn, said the group was continuing to counsel people facing foreclosure and had recently sent two buses with dozens of members to Washington to rally for the Democratic health care bill.

The answer, of course, is that ACORN was really all about leftist activism. Tax return prep, housing assistance, and other services served as fig leafs to conceal the organization’s real aims, which were (and will be, if or when successors get back on their feet) to radicalize communities, test the limits of election control systems, and, when called upon, intimidate vulnerable targets.

The country owes O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart a debt of bottomless gratitude for decimating this once insufferably arrogant and defiant bunch. Too bad Ian Urbina and the establishment media don’t see it that way.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Though the company had told the local press Friday evening that it believe that a non-employee had been responsible for the incident, the Associated Press did not report that critical fact (see picture of 7:03 a.m. report here) until mid-morning on Saturday, leaving its readers up to that point to infer that a company employee had perpetrated the act.

Now, even though the worst you could say about the company is that it didn’t protect its public address system from customer access Associated Press writer Bruck Shipkowski is citing the incident as “the latest in a series of problems the retailer has had in its dealings with minorities and women.” How disgusting.

Here are key paragraphs from Shipkowski’s POS (pretty outrageous smear):

Police: Boy, 16, made racial comment at NJ Walmart

A 16-year-old boy who police said made an announcement at Walmart ordering all black people in the southern New Jersey store to leave was charged with harassment and bias intimidation, authorities said Saturday.

The boy, whose name is not being released because he is a juvenile, grabbed one of the courtesy phones at Walmart’s Washington Township store Sunday evening and calmly announced: “Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now,” police said.

The teen was arrested Friday and released to the custody of his parents; police did not know whether he had a lawyer.

“This was an extremely disturbing event on many levels,” Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean Dalton said at a news conference. “Any statements like these that can cause harm or grave concern must be addressed as quickly we possibly can.”

Dalton said the case would be handled in juvenile court in neighboring Atlantic County, where the boy lives. He would not say whether the boy has a criminal record, citing the teen’s age, and would not disclose the teen’s race, saying that did not factor into the investigation.

… Although a manager quickly went on the intercom system and apologized for the remark, many customers expressed their anger to store management. Some community members said Saturday that they’ve heard reports of similar incidents happening at the store in recent months that were not reported to police.

… The incident was the latest in a series of problems the retailer has had in its dealings with minorities and women.

There have been several past instances of black customers claiming they were treated unfairly at Walmart stores, and the company faced lawsuits alleging that women were passed over in favor of men for pay raises and promotions.

By no stretch of the imagination does anything in the final two excerpted paragraphs matters in relation to the current incident. Of course it doesn’t. But that’s what passes for journalism at the Absolutely Pathetic Associated Press.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Naturally, most readers will believe that some Wal-Mart associate thought he was being “cute.”

That’s because “somehow” the wire service “forgot” to reveal a key element of the story that as of 7:03 a.m. Saturday had been known for at least eight hours:

A report time-stamped at 8:25 a.m. Saturday at NBC Philadelphia covering the person’s arrest repeats the company’s contention concerning evidence that the person who committed the act was not a store associate.

The story’s placement in AP’s raw news feed (shot taken at about 9:30 a.m.) would seem to indicate that the story’s 7:03 a.m. version was either a significant revision to an existing story or a fresh one:

Gosh, if I didn’t know better, I’d think that the AP was keeping information from its national readers and subscribers in an attempt to make a favorite target of the left look bad during the critical early hours of a story.

Those hallowed keepers of the journalistic flame at the self-described “Essential Global News Network” wouldn’t do that … would they?

Cross-posted at NewBusters.org.

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Cross-posted Update: The AP’s 10:33 iteration carries the company’s contention –

This post went up at 9:54 a.m. at BizzyBlog and 10:06 a.m. at NewsBusters. Hmm.

BizzyBlog-only Update: Are “Officials … staying tight-lipped on the arrest” (per the NBC Philly story) because something about the person arrested doesn’t fit the narrative?

Cross-posted Update, 1:30 p.m.: Bulls-eye, it’s a 16 year-old kid —

Police have arrested a 16-year-old boy in the case of a racial comment that was made over the public-address system at a Walmart store in southern New Jersey.

Police said Saturday the Atlantic County teenager was arrested Friday on charges of harassment and bias intimidation. They say he’s been released to the custody of his parents.

So what is his ethnicity?

Word has it that you’re considering caving and voting yes to support the implementation of statist health care.

Since you claim to be fighting the good fight for life, please consider this undeniable truth: The entire health care enterprise is anti-life, regardless of the presence or absence of abortion funding in its provisions.

Rationing is anti-life, and is a guaranteed result.

“Death panels” are anti-life, and are a guaranteed result of “comparative effectiveness.”

The people who will be running the health care enterprise are militantly anti-life.

Further, once health care is accepted as a government-guaranteed right, the likelihood that the courts would consider abortion to be a form of “health care” that the government would have to pay for regardless of the legislative language is unacceptably high. I would suggest that this result, effectively gutting the Hyde Amendment, is a near certainty.

Please, please hold firm and vote no on any form of statist health care, and encourage others in your coalition to do the same.

____________________________________________________

Related: At Ace’s place — “Stupak: We Won’t Have a Deal Until Nancy Pelosi Commits Her Unenforceable Empty Promises to Worthless Paper.”

UPDATE (as of 10:57 a.m. at the Corner): “Stupak is ‘Finished with Pelosi.’”

The Corner is doing as good a job as any at keeping up with developments.

There’s also this:

Reps. Driehaus (D., Ohio) and Dahlkemper (D., Penn.), two Stu-Packers, just went into Pelosi’s office. Of the meeting, Dahlkemper says “we’re still working on it.”

Mr. “Allegedly Pro-Life (but not really)” Driehaus, the original post above is also for you.

Published: 01:05 a.m., Friday, March 19, 2010

Last summer, two young lifeguards who never had to administer rescue breaths or CPR during all their summers of lifeguarding, had to do both when a man started to sink under the water at Burying Hill Beach. The Vietnam veteran’s life was truly in the hands of Gordon Kempler and Cooper Whiteside, who were not yet of voting age. They had practiced for a moment like this so many times in the past, but practice often doesn’t truly prepare one for reality.

“When it first happened, I was holding myself back,” Kempler said, “but then I had to take a deep breath, a second where I had to realize, I can’t panic.”

Kempler and Whiteside were successful in sustaining life and for their efforts, they are being honored by the Connecticut Chapter of the American Red Cross at the Lower Fairfield County 2010 Heroes Breakfast March 25 at the Trumbull Marriott. The man’s head, neck and feet were blue after he was pulled out of the water onto shore. He had a very weak pulse, and would actually lose his pulse, but Kempler and Whitestone provided the crucial aid that kept him alive prior to the arrival of a police officer.

Kempler, a 2008 graduate of Staples High School, said the man made a really miraculous recovery “because in my opinion, when I saw him on the beach, with EMS working on him, I didn’t think he had a good chance of making it.”

Unlike Compo Beach in the summer, where there are five lifeguards on duty and five on break all the time, Burying Hill Beach only has two lifeguards at all times. And when one goes on a break, that leaves only one watching the beach.

Whiteside was in the lifeguard chair when he heard a woman scream for help. Kempler was by the lifeguard shack that sits on the top of a hill. Whiteside got to the man first and Kempler called Compo Beach, telling his superiors to send an ambulance. He also grabbed an automated external defibrillator (AED), oxygen and medical kit before making his way down to the beach.

Whiteside said the man had a weak pulse but was not breathing, and so he administered a couple of rescue breaths to get air in his lungs. By this time, Kempler had arrived and the man was coughing up a good deal of water. Both lifeguards turned him over on his side to get all of the liquid out. He was subsequently put back on his back, and was found to have no pulse, which is why Kempler began administering CPR, and did so for about six minutes. Then an officer took over, performing more CPR before EMS got to the scene. Later, EMS personnel hooked the man up to an AED and intubated him. In the end, the man’s life was saved. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Werner’s work was conveniently accompanied by a heavily downplaying headline — “Final health bill omits some of Obama’s promises” — while her rundown of the specifics in reality ended up being “all but two”:

It was a bold response to skyrocketing health insurance premiums. President Barack Obama would give federal authorities the power to block unreasonable rate hikes.

Yet when Democrats unveiled the final, incarnation of their health care bill this week, the proposal was nowhere to be found.

Ditto with several Republican ideas that Obama had said he wanted to include after a televised bipartisan summit last month, including a plan by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to send investigators disguised as patients to hospitals in search of waste, fraud and abuse.

And those “special deals” that Obama railed against and said he wanted to eliminate? With the exception of two of the most notorious – extra Medicaid money for Nebraska and a carve-out for Florida seniors faced with losing certain extra Medicare benefits – they are all still there.

For the White House, these were the latest unfulfilled commitments related to Obama’s health care proposal, starting with his campaign promise to let C-SPAN cameras film negotiations over the bill. Obama also backed down with little apparent regret on his support for a new government-run insurance plan as part of the legislation, a liberal priority.

But was it all the president’s doing?

In the cases of the insurance rate authority, the Republican ideas and the special deals, it came down to Obama making promises that Congress didn’t keep. He can propose whatever he wants, but it’s up to Congress to enshrine it into law.

Arguably, the president could have foreseen that outcome, and was making a low-risk p.r. move by floating proposals – dismissed by critics as insubstantial anyway – whose demise he couldn’t be blamed for.

While the White House worked hard to trumpet Obama’s plans for the rate authority, his embrace of bipartisanship and his opposition to special deals, the administration hardly advertised the lack of follow-through. Understandable, certainly, but perhaps not the new way of doing business that Obama promised to bring to Washington.

Werner also continued the wire service’s annoying habit of saving some of the more important news for the very end when she quotes a health policy consultant who says that “Democrats will have three years to tinker with health reform before universal coverage goes live.”

Geez, after 2,000-plus pages in heaven knows how many Senate and House iterations, with who knows how many new bureaucracies, taxes, mandates, fines, and penalties, we will have to endure another three years of “tinkering” until we know what we’re really going to face in 2014 if the current madness disguised as legislation “passes” this weekend (”passes” is in quotes because the constitutionality of attempt is extremely dubious)?

If so, this will mean that the length of the Wall Street Journal has called “the uncertainty economy” will bear quite a resemblance to how certain not-free countries used to run things, — i.e., five-year plans — while endless establishment press protection prose continues to proliferate.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Has there ever been a political spectacle like the final throes of ObamaCare? We can’t recall one outside of a banana republic, or, more accurately, Woody Allen’s 1971 classic “Bananas.” Capitol Hill resembles nothing so much as that movie’s farcical coup d’etat in San Marcos as Democrats try to assemble the partisan minimum of 216 House votes—if only for an hour or so at some point on Sunday—and no bribe is too costly, no deal too cynical, no last-minute rewrite too blatant.

… Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually told reporters this week that “nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill,” but she’ll do what it takes to impose it anyway.

… Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced on Tuesday that central California would get extra public water allocations. This was apparently the price for Democrats Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa to vote something other than their consciences. We will hear about many more in the coming days.

… By the way, to make the deficit numbers “work,” Democrats decided at the 11th hour to increase their new tax on investment income to 3.8% from 2.9%. Congratulations.

White House budget director Peter Orszag quickly declared that “The CBO score today should leave no doubt that we are operating in a new fiscal era,” and no kidding. One thing the score also made clear, however, is that Mrs. Pelosi’s reconciliation fixes could easily be blown to pieces in the Senate. While the Democratic strategy is already a wholesale abuse of the traditional reconciliation process, it now bids to violate the actual rules of reconciliation as well.

… Even the political panic over the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program, amid an incipient financial collapse and a Presidential election, looks like regular order compared to this ObamaCare mayhem. That the White House and Mrs. Pelosi are still running into such resistance after a year of pleading reveals what an historic blunder ObamaCare really is.

Are we sure that the tax on “investment income” is not also a tax on “retirement distributions”?

________________________________________________

UPDATE: We know that the 3.8% tax hits annuities (HT TaxProf Blog), which is one form for taking retirement distributions:

The rate is higher than the 2.9 percent President Barack Obama proposed in February. The new tax would apply to income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, capital gains and rents for individuals who earn more than $200,000 annually and joint filers reporting more than $250,000, according to the legislation.

“It’s a big deal,” said Clint Stretch, a tax analyst for the consulting firm Deloitte Tax LLC. “It extends dramatically the reach of the Medicare hospital insurance tax.”

Note that it also hits landlords. Anyone who doesn’t think this will affect apartment rental costs is kidding themselves.

A TaxProf commenter (direct link to comment not available; just scroll down), Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute, says that qualified plan distributions will not be hit with this tax. Fine, but it’s also the kind of thing that has been known to drop out of final bills (if there even is to be such a thing in this case).

Anyone seeing this video from 2008 knew that Carpetbagger Boccieri would sell out his alleged pro-life beliefs when it mattered:

UPDATE: A suggestion from Pete Hoekstra (HT to an e-mailer) —

For health-care opponents getting a busy signal when calling the capitol, Rep. Pete Hoekstra has a message for you:

All politics is local, so swamp the phone lines of the state legislators too.

“If the people in Washington aren’t willing to listen, if the Democrats aren’t willing to listen, then call your local state elected officials and tell them that you’ll hold them personally accountable to what Nancy Pelosi is going to do the American people in Washington this week,” Hoekstra told The Daily Caller of his “Make it Local” idea.

…

Reports from the statist health care battlefield range widely, from Fox’s 214-217 to the 192-211 at Ace’s Place, which apparently substantially agrees with a far-lefty blog whose proprietor at one point opposed ObamaCare because it wasn’t radical enough.

Polite, relentless pressure remains the order of the day.

_____________________________________________________

If they need a reason to avoid using the up-down vote-avoiding Slaughter gambit, Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the 222 congresspersons who voted as they did yesterday might consider the points made in a promised lawsuit by Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation lawsuit that would be filed if it’s used to force statist health care down our throats.

Here’s the essence of the complaint:

Landmark has already prepared a lawsuit that will be filed in federal court the moment the House acts. Such a brazen violation of the core functions of Congress simply cannot be ignored. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution is clear respecting the manner in which a bill becomes law. Members are required to vote on this bill, not claim they did when they didn’t. The Speaker of the House and her lieutenants are temporary custodians of congressional authority. They are not empowered to do permanent violence to our Constitution.

If statist health care is passed using the Slaughter gambit and the President signs such “legislation” as presented to him, the President and every congressperson will have attempted (if the courts do their duty and stop it) or actually done “permanent violence to our Constitution.”

Regardless, both congressional “passage” and the President’s signature would represent clear and irrefutable violations of the oaths they have sworn to uphold the constitution. Such offenses raise the possibility of — no, they really demand — impeachment and removal from office. Congresspersons who did not commit these offense would have the presumptive perogative — no, really the constitutional duty — to bring articles of impeachment against each and every one of them, and to remove each and every one of them from office. Each and every one of them will have demonstrated that they are unfit for the offices they hold. Their continued presence in those offices would represent a clear and present danger to our form of government.

The only open questions are whether there would be majorities in the House and Senate legitimately interested in doing their duty, and whether there would be the political will to do it. Given the developments in genuine grass-roots activism during the past 14 months, it would be a huge risk to assume that it won’t be there at crunch time.

Update: Jeffrey T. Kuhner at the Washington Times —

The Slaughter Solution is a poisoned chalice. By drinking from it, the Democrats would not only commit political suicide. They would guarantee that any bill signed by Mr. Obama is illegitimate, illegal and blatantly unconstitutional. It would be worse than a strategic blunder; it would be a crime – a moral crime against the American people and a direct abrogation of the Constitution and our very democracy.

It would open Mr. Obama, as well as key congressional leaders such as Mrs. Pelosi, to impeachment. The Slaughter Solution would replace the rule of law with arbitrary one-party rule. It violates the entire basis of our constitutional government – meeting the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” If it’s enacted, Republicans should campaign for the November elections not only on repealing Obamacare, but on removing Mr. Obama and his gang of leftist thugs from office.

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If statist health care dies in the House, accurate history may end up concluding that President Obama put the nail in its coffin in his horrible “rope a dope” interview (transcript here; video here) with Fox News’s Bret Baier Wednesday.

If there were a Pulitzer for interviewing, Baier would get one. As it is, at least in the short-term, he appears to be in the running for leftist Public Enemy Number One. There’s a price to pay for exposing an ignorant punk for what he really is. Fortunately, Baier works for the network that is, in the word of his predecessor Brit Hume, “fair, balanced, and unafraid.”

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Sunday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

The original inspiration for the write-up was Nancy Pelosi’s statement last year that she wanted the House to make state-run health care a Christmas present to the American people. I don’t take kindly to people who tell me, “Here’s your gift, and here’s what you and your children and grandchildren owe me for it.”

Mar 19, 2010 / 01:06 am (CNA).- Chinese Catholics are preparing for the Feast of St. Joseph with “great celebration.” Looking to Joseph’s example as a holy man and father, religious communities are preparing for final vows and immigrant workers have been invited to church. “Humility, generosity, unconditional devotion, enlivened by a genuine spirit of service, living in poverty, absolute obedience and chastity, all these virtues that distinguish St. Joseph, which the Church celebrates on March 19, are so relevant for men today,” a Beijing priest told his flock during a Lenten retreat, according to Fides.

Parishes dedicated to St. Joseph are especially preparing for the feast. The Parish of St. Joseph in downtown Beijing dates back to a church built by two Jesuit missionaries, Fr. Louis Buglio and Fr. Gabriel de Magallanes. The two were successors of pioneering missionary Fr. Matteo Ricci.

Marking the 400th anniversary of Fr. Ricci’s death, the parish has tried to unite the event with the figure of St. Joseph.

The diocesan religious congregation in Beijing dedicated to St. Joseph is preparing for the final vows of some sisters to be held on the feast day, Fides reports.

Priests have invited immigrant workers to help celebrate the patron saint of workers.

“Dear brothers and sisters, workers, the Church is your home, where you are received and where you breathe spiritual oxygen not only in the days of the Feast of St. Joseph, but all year,” they commented. …

Go here for the rest of the story.