Author: Moe_Lane

House Democrats: half-trillion tax hike for Obamacare.

(Via Texans for Sarah Palin) But it’s tax hikes for the wealthy (540 billion over 10 years), so that’s all right, right? At least, it’s tax hikes for the wealthy today. And what gets redefined as ‘wealthy’…

Key House Democrats decided Friday to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for health care legislation, capping an up-and-down week for President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

[snip]

Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee agreed to a new surtax that would start with households making $350,000 a year and begin in 2011, said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

…well, that’s up to Charlie Rangel.

Have a nice morning!

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Book of the Week: A Wizard of Mars.

It’s not available until April, but what the heck: I’ve always been fond of Diane Duane’s work, particularly her YA So You Want To be a Wizard series. And besides, if I excluded people who more-or-less vaguely hate people like me from these sorts of lists I’d have a very short list with which to work with. As long as I can’t guess at, or be reminded of, the politics from the first fifty pages everything’s golden*.

So, we replace with The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun with A Wizard of Mars, and go on with this lovely Sunday night.

*The besettling sin of the Still Life With Fascists series, alas. The idea is to discuss Why You Think It Would Have Sucked To Have Hitler Have A Peace Treaty With England, not Why The Bush Administration Made So Angry, You Wanted To Strangle A Manatee In The Nude**.

**Bloom County reference.

It’s the little things that make Schlock Mercenrary fun.

Take today’s little quick examination of evil, and how our various definitions of it and its origins is going to run into the thorny problem of created sapience like a sports car running into a brick wall, and how this entire conversation drives practical men mad – since they want to know the answer, yet don’t want to listen to the implications of the question…

Well. It’s Howard Tayler. That Hugo nomination was for a reason.

Annnnnnd Sen. Olympia Snowe (R, ME) comes out against the public option.

Wish I had seen this earlier: it would have changed the last post completely.  Via Drudge:

Snowe Urges Obama to Drop Public Plan to Pass Health Overhaul

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine said there is “no way” a health-care overhaul that includes a public option can pass the Senate.

Snowe, one of six negotiators on the Senate Finance Committee, said that to gain more Republican support, President Barack Obama should explicitly drop the idea of a federally backed insurance program to compete with private insurers such as Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc.

[snip]

“I’ve urged the president to take the public option off the table,” Snowe said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. “It’s universally opposed by Republicans,” Snowe said.

Call me nuts, but it sounds like the Democrats just ran out of possible Republicans to give them cover. Guess they’re going to have to run over their own moderates to pass this health care rationing bill, then.

Moe Lane Continue reading Annnnnnd Sen. Olympia Snowe (R, ME) comes out against the public option.

Sen. Susan Collins (R, ME) rejects trigger for ‘public option.’

(via @seanhackbarth) For the very commonsense reason that you can’t trust the people who would be pulling the trigger. No, really: that’s what she said.

A moderate Republican who has previously broken with her party to support President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill said Sunday that she does not support the idea of using a so called “trigger” on the public health insurance option as part of health care reform legislation.

Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if the use of the trigger would make inclusion of the public option more acceptable, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, unequivocally replied “no.”

“The problem with trigger is it just delays the public option,” Collins told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough, want the public option.”

Note that this doesn’t mean that Sen. Olympia Snowe is going to take the same position (although it doesn’t mean that she’ll be taking a different one, either); but Sen. Collins’ position on this does make it clear that the ‘public trigger’ scenario for a government option in health care is not actually bipartisan. Please also note that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D, NH) apparently needed only eight months as a Senator to forget how to answer straightforward questions in a straightforward manner:

New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen refused to answer directly when asked whether Collins’ position indicated that President Obama should either not fight for inclusion of the public option in the final bill or, alternatively, pursue a legislative strategy that relied solely on Democratic votes for health care reform.

Continue reading Sen. Susan Collins (R, ME) rejects trigger for ‘public option.’

I am of course too refined to approve…

…of such an obvious ploy as Jim Treacher’s.  And I am certain that none of my readers will also approve of this attempt to link one’s base, prurient instincts with a natural disinclination to keep letting the government rack up the federal deficit.

Besides: aren’t they all already that, pretty much by definition?

Crossposted to RedState.

Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009.

Norman Borlaug, agronomist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has died.  A widower, he leaves behind five grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and 245,000,000 people who would have died of starvation without his work in the Green Revolution.

245,000,000 is, by the way, the conservative estimate. It’s been suggested that Dr. Borlaug may have saved up to 1,000,000,000 people with his work in practical agronomy; it’s certainly true that his work put a stake through the heart of the 1980s doomsday scenarios popularized by Paul R. Ehrlich and others.

Moe Lane

PS: Expect the above links to be about the extent of the public acclaim and respect shown to Dr. Borlaug, by the way.  As for accolades from the current administration… well, you tell me whether they’ll honor the man who made Paul Ehrlich look like a purblind fool.

Crossposted to RedState.

Indicted Blagojevich advisor dead.

Death by aspirin overdose.

The man federal prosecutors pressured to cooperate in the corruption probe of ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich died of an apparent aspirin overdose on Saturday, law enforcement sources said.

Christopher Kelly, 51, of Burr Ridge, was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 10:46 a.m. An autopsy is scheduled for today, a Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office spokeswoman said.

Death. By aspirin overdose.

Uh-huhh.

Moe Lane

(H/T streiff)

Crossposted to RedState.