Here’s a great clip of “some common sense” from your average taxpayer:

My “current events” have fallen a couple of weeks behind and I’m playing catch-up, but this gem of a video will still be funny for a long time to come, and so I’m going to post it even though it’s been posted everywhere else already. After all, this is a video that everyone should watch because it really makes you wonder how an idiot like this gets elected…

The Weekly Standard’s Scrapbook writes:

Say what you will about Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District—DeKalb County, for the most part, just east of Atlanta—it has certainly blessed us with some interesting representatives. The incumbent, a 55-year-old Buddhist Democrat named Hank Johnson, was preceded by Cynthia McKinney, the leading congressional conspiracy theorist of her day, who was once celebrated in the pages of the Washington Post for threatening to assault 69-year-old Henry Hyde, R-Ill., on the floor of the House.

Lately, however, Hank Johnson has achieved an enduring fame, in the Internet era, that congressmen of yesteryear could only dream about. It began on March 25 when Admiral Robert Willard, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. A proposal to post several thousand more U.S. Marines (and their dependents) on Guam—an Obama administration initiative, by the way​—came under discussion.

As the millions of viewers on YouTube who have savored the exchange can attest, Congressman Johnson expressed his concerns to Admiral Willard in decidedly unique fashion.

Johnson: This is an island that, at its widest level is, what, 12 miles from shore to shore? And at its smallest level or smallest location, it’s seven miles between one shore and the other. Is that correct?

Willard: I don’t have the exact dimensions; but to your point, sir, I think Guam is a small island.

Congressman Johnson then went on to speculate about the square mileage of Guam—212, as it happens—which led, in turn, to his basic argument:

Johnson: Yes, my fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.

Willard: We don’t anticipate that. The Guam population is, I think currently, about 175,000—and again, with 8,000 Marines and their families, it’s an addition of about 25,000 more into the population.

Johnson: And also, things like the environment, the sensitive areas of the environment—coral reefs and those kinds of things. And I know that, you know, lots of people don’t like to think about that, but you know, we didn’t think about global warming, either.

…Three things impress The Scrapbook about this vignette of life in official Washington. First, we are frankly in awe of Admiral Willard’s ability to maintain a straight face when confronted with a prime specimen of congressional lunacy. Readers need to watch the video on YouTube to appreciate fully the pregnant pause between Congressman Johnson’s line about Guam tipping over and capsizing and Admiral Willard’s deadpan response: “We don’t anticipate that.” That’s military discipline.

Second, we were equally impressed by the fact that, when Admiral Willard admitted that he did not know the exact square mileage of Guam “but I can certainly supply it to you if you like,” Congressman Johnson leaned back in his chair, and responded, “Yes.” [Note: I don't see the leaning back part in this clip, but then again, the camera wasn't on Johnson the whole time, not that it's entirely relevant anyway.] The Scrapbook asks: Is there no one on Congressman Johnson’s staff who can look up such things in the office almanac? Does the congressman really think that the United States commander in the Pacific has nothing better to do with his time than perform insulting clerical tasks for an ignorant legislator?

Which brings us to our third, and not so humorous, point. Guam is an American possession because Marines liberated it from the Japanese during World War II (1,747 killed and 6,053 wounded in two and a half weeks of pitched battles), and it has remained a strategic naval outpost ever since. It is, of course, unlikely that additional Marines and their families will cause Guam to tip over, or cause damage to nearby coral reefs, but Hank Johnson’s questions reflect an underlying attitude toward our armed forces that is both bumptious and infuriating. The presence of U.S. Marines on Guam—apart from the boost they will give the local economy—is an asset, not a liability. The arrival of men and women prepared to defend the United States with their lives is not a malignant invasion of Guam—like the brown tree snakes that have devastated its ecology—but a blessing for which all Americans, including the electors of Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District, can be grateful.

Last night marks one of the worst and most disgraceful events in the history of our great country, the spectacle of perhaps the most partisan Congress in history in full view forcing its wildly unpopular agenda onto the people using shamelessly flagrant bribes, undeniably brazen lies, and some of the most corrupt back room deals ever to be made within the confines of the U.S. Congress.

I was completely sickened watching it unfold on TV, especially when Nancy Pelosi was apparently unable to even hold back her own laughter as she tried to claim that this bill will deliver all that delicious pie in the sky AND will be “doing all of that by [sic] saving the taxpayer $1.3 trillion!” You could tell she was struggling with her laughter at that line and, despite her attempts, it didn’t take very long for the smile to completely break through. Guess what, America? Nancy Pelosi was laughing at what a bunch of idiots you all would be if you actually do believe her!

I don’t think I understand what these Democrats are really doing, though. Do they really think that the public, which is overwhelmingly against so many aspects of this bill, is going to simply overlook this unabashed rape of our country? Surely they must realize that most of them are going to get their asses kicked out of office come November, no? And, if so, are they really so ideologically committed to this bill that they are willingly giving up their seats like that? Or has Obama and Pelosi managed to convince them that they’ll be somehow miraculously come out unscathed?

I’m just glad that this fight isn’t over yet. The Senate Republicans are challenging this as a violation of reconciliation rules and are supposed to have met with the Senate parliamentarian today. Apparently, the Democrats’ plan to alter the so-called “Cadillac” tax on high-end insurance plans would affect the Social Security trust fund, which is not allowed under reconciliation rules.

Additionally, at least 10 states are preparing to sue over this bill, challenging its constitutionality in terms of its forcing citizens to make what has always clearly been a discretionary purchase. Reports of up to another couple of dozen states filing suit, as well, are also circulating.

All I can say is that I really hope the Republicans are successful in challenging this abomination and I really can’t wait until November. Oh, it’s going to be 1994 all over again… or probably even better.

And, with that, let me leave you with a wonderful video medley of the Liar-in-Chief that will have you wondering when your $2500 is going to materialize!

Naked Emperor News has compiled what has to be one of the most hearty meals of crow that the Dems are going to have to eat right now, as they all continue to babble on about using the “nuclear option” to ram their corpulent health care obscenity through Congress.

This beautiful compilation includes an all-star cast of Obama, Biden, Reid, Clinton, Feinberg, Schumer, Dodd, and more, all of whose words are now coming back to bite them in the ass, as they once attacked the Republicans for considering the option (which the Republicans never ultimately utilized).

How about Biden telling Republicans at the time: I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

Or Obama: He [Bush] hasn’t gotten his way, and that is now prompting, you know, a change in the Senate rules that really I think will change the character of the Senate forever… That’s just not what the founders intended!

Or Hillary Clinton: So this president [Bush] has come to the majority here in the Senate and basically said, “Change the rules! Do it the way I want it done!” And I guess there just weren’t very many voices on the other side of the aisle that acted the way previous generations of senators have acted and said, “Mr. President, we’re with you! We support you! But, that’s a bridge too far. We can’t go there. You have to restrain yourself Mr. President!”

Or Schumer: We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis… the checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don’t get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it’s almost a temper tantrum… They want their way every single time, and they will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution… so that they will get their way.

The most incredible part about this is that these shameless self-righteous blowhards probably don’t even realize how ridiculously hypocritical and idiotic they sound!

These brazen crooks should all be thrown out on their asses, and replaced with people who have actual integrity and honesty. How long are we going to put it with sanctimonious, pompous phonies like this???

Enjoy this hilarious video and pass it along so that everyone can enjoy it to the fullest!

In case you’re wondering why Congress seems so out of touch with “normal people”, look no further than the new report put out by the Center for Responsive Politics, in which they list a whopping 237 millionaire members of Congress.

Politico reports:

Talk about bad timing.

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

CRP says California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest lawmaker on Capitol Hill, with a net worth estimated at about $251 million. Next in line: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), worth about $244.7 million; Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), worth about $214.5 million; Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), worth about $209.7 million; and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), worth about $208.8 million.

…CRP’s analysis suggests that some lawmakers did well for themselves between 2007 and 2008, even as many Americans lost jobs and saw their savings and their home values plummet.

…Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

“(a) Outpatient Hospitals – (1) In General – Section 1833(t)(3)(C)(iv) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395(t)(3)(C)(iv)) is amended – (A) in the first sentence – (i) by inserting “(which is subject to the productivity adjustment described in subclause (II) of such section)” after “1886(b)(3)(B)(iii); and (ii) by inserting “(but not below 0)” after “reduced”; and (B) in the second sentence, by inserting “and which is subject, beginning with 2010 to the productivity adjustment described in section 1886(b)(3)(B)(iii)(II)”.

What you see above is just a sample of what’s included in the 1,990-page, 400,000-word load of crap known as the House health care bill. As Politico points out, it has “more pages than War and Peace” and “has nearly five times as many words as the Torah.” The bill, which is going to cost us almost a trillion dollars, is going to introduce more bureaucracy and more big government that ever before.

And here’s the best part: the Democrats are trying to sneak quite a huge load of it into the bill unnoticed, buried in the hundreds of pages. As Politico reports:

Democrats say the essence of the bill isn’t much different from the three sister bills they moved through committees this summer, which came in around 1,000 pages.

If you read those, they say, you pretty much know what’s in this one.

“It’s almost a complete certainty that we have already discussed and debated almost every element that’s in this bill,” said Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.)

McHenry took issue with the notion that the 2,000-page bill hasn’t changed much from the earlier, 1,000-page versions. To prove the point, he pulled out a Democratic-written summary of the changes.

All eight pages of them.

So, they’re trying to convince us that 900 additional pages of the bill don’t introduce anything new? Who are they kidding? Even the summary of changes takes up 8 pages!

So, when are we going to sweep these imbeciles out of Congress and put in some people who can fix the problem, not make it larger?!?

If you live in Connecticut, you now have another reason to hate your representation in Congress: instead of taking part in–or at the very least paying attention to–ongoing debate, your representatives are keeping themselves quite busy… playing solitaire.

Just check out this picture of Rep. Barbara Lambert (D-CT), and Rep. Jack F. Hennessy (D-CT) playing solitaire Monday night as the House convened to vote on a new budget. House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr. (R-CT), far right, is speaking.

Yes, I know the headline of this post is hardly news to anyone, but how else do you describe it when a senator brazenly attempts to change a law multiple times with the sole objective of retaining political power for his party?

He first did it in 2004, when John Kerry, his fellow Democrat senator from Massachusetts, was running for president at the time. Kennedy didn’t like the prospect of Republican Mitt Romney, then governor, appointing Kerry’s replacement (predictably, a Republican), as the law at the time dictated.

So, what would a Kennedy do in this situation? Of course! He had the Massachusetts law changed to force elections should a senator vacate his office.

Well, if it his objectives weren’t transparent enough at the time, I think his latest efforts pretty much do the trick. Now that he is seriously sick with cancer and his seat could become vacated before the term is up, he’s worried that an election (as per the law that he pushed through himself!) might cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority in Congress. And, guess what: there just happens to be a Democrat in the governor’s office now! And, so, what would a Kennedy do in this situation? Yup, of course! He would try to change the law again, this time to revert the seat selection to the governor’s appointment, thus ensuring Democrat filibuster-proof control!

How clever! If only his partisan motives weren’t so appallingly transparent…

I posted previously regarding the efforts of Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN) and James Risch (R-ID) to press Obama to put pressure on the Arab world.

Despite some rabblerousing by the leftist organization Americans for Peace Now, trying to stop the impact of the letter and trying to counter the initiative with a letter of their own, this original initiative by Bayh and Risch has picked up quite a bit of steam.

(See my original post on this for the text of the two letters.)

According to Arutz 7, there are currently 71 senators who have signed on to this letter:

No fewer than 71 US Senators – including only six of the 13 Jewish ones – sent a letter to US President Barack Obama on Monday, asking him to press Arab states to recognize and normalize relations with Israel. The effort, led by Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), was promoted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The 71 signatories included the Senate leaders and whips of both parties, namely, Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

The letter states that Israel’s efforts toward peace are not being met with equal efforts by Arab states. A similar letter was sent by 226 House members of both parties last week to Saudi Arabia, calling on its leaders to deepen their commitment to peace with Israel…

The letter to Obama lists the various “concrete measures” taken by Israel of late to “reaffirm its commitment to advancing the peace process.” The letter specifies in this regard Prime Minister Netanyahu’s publicly-expressed support for the “two-state solution” and his call for the immediate resumption of peace negotiations, as well as “Israeli efforts to improve the daily lives of Palestinians, through measures such as removing roadblocks, assisting with economic development in the West Bank, and supporting the training of professional Palestinian Authority security personnel… even in the face of continuing threats to its security.”

On the other hand, the Senators ask to “understand what steps you [President Obama] are urging Arab states to take… in the coming weeks and months.” Specifically, the writers suggest that the Arabs could end the Arab League boycott of Israel, meet openly with Israeli officials, establish open trade relations with Israel, issue visas to Israeli citizens, end official propaganda campaigns that demonize Israel and Jews, and more.

The Senatorial writers also “hope that you will continue to press Arab leaders to consider dramatic gestures toward Israel similar to those taken previously by brave leaders like King Hussein of Jordan and Anwar El-Sadat of Egypt.”

Notably, only six of the Senate’s 13 Jewish members signed the letter: Barbara Boxer (D-Cal.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The seven Jews who did not sign the letter asking for Arab peace gestures towards Israel were Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The quick rollout of the Democrats fear machine against legitimate protests taking place across the nation in astounding numbers is not something to take lightly or underestimate. This new scare tactic of the Democrats in trying to paint those opposed to their rush job on health care as part of “an angry mob” and people “carrying swastikas” is an extremely devious way of first dehumanizing concerned citizens, then trivializing their legitimate concerns, and finally stripping them of their liberties and their rights to protest and speak out against government policies with which they do not agree.

This new scare tactic of the Democrats in trying to paint those opposed to their rush job on health care as part of “an angry mob” and people “carrying swastikas” is an extremely devious way of first dehumanizing concerned citizens, then trivializing their legitimate concerns, and finally stripping them of their liberties and their rights to protest and speak out against government policies with which they do not agree.

This is not just one or two fringe liberals in the Democrat party doing this. This is an obviously concerted effort straight from the top, as even Obama has gotten into the act by urging citizens to report to the government when they see their fellow citizens engaging in these protests. I am not making that up. The White House posted this on its web site:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Perhaps the email address should have been kgb@whitehouse.gov, because this outrageous request by the government asking citizens to rat out this sort of “subversive activity” is unprecedented and reminiscent of Communist Russia.

Starting at the top and working its way down, you can clearly see this organized scare tactic response to the public outrage over Congress’s legislative impudence.

In addition to the White House’s rat-out-your-neighbor KGB hotline, Obama himself sent out the following scare tactic email, as reported by Politico:

In an unusual e-mail appeal, President Barack Obama is asking millions of his campaign supporters to commit to attending at least one community event on health care this month.

Obama writes that opponents of his health care plan are “filling the airwaves and the Internet with outrageous falsehoods to scare people into opposing change.”

“And some people, not surprisingly, are getting pretty nervous,” he warns. “So we’ve got to get out there, fight lies with truth and set the record straight.”

The e-mail shows up as being from “President Barack Obama,” with the subject line: “This is the moment.”

Continuing on down the line, you see it employed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) when she had this exchange:

Reporter: Do you think there’s a legitimate grassroots movement going on here?

Pelosi: I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.

You also see it employed by prominent Democrat senators, such as Idiot Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who had this to say on MSNBC’s “Hardball”:

I saw some of the clips of people storming these town hall meetings. The last time I saw well-dressed people doing this was when Al Gore asked me to go down to Florida when they were recounting the ballots, and I was confronted with the same type of people. They were there screaming and yelling, “Go back to California,” “Get out of here,” and all the rest of it–until I finally looked at them and I said, “You know what? Your hero Ronald Reagan is from California. You should show a little respect.” And then they quieted down.

So this is just all organized. Just go up on the Web site, Chris. You in the media have to take a look at what’s going on here. This is all planned. It’s to hurt our president, and it’s to change the Congress.

And, of course, you see it employed right in the belly of the beast, the DNC, who put out a television ad with the following script:

Narrator: The right-wing extremist Republican base is back.

Birther crackpot at town meeting: He is not an American citizen!

Narrator: They lost the election. They lost on the Recovery Act, the budget and children’s health care. They’ve lost the confidence of the American people after eight years of failed policies that ruined our economy and cost millions of jobs.

Now, desperate Republicans and their well-funded allies are organizing angry mobs, just like they did during the election. Their goal? Destroy President Obama, and stop the change Americans voted for overwhelmingly in November.

Unidentified voice of Sen. Jim DeMint: It will break him.

Unidentified voice of Rush Limbaugh: I hope he fails.

Narrator: This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives. They have no plan for moving our country forward, so they’ve called out the mob.

Same birther crackpot at same town meeting: And I want to know, why are you people ignoring his birth certificate?

Narrator, as phone number of GOP Washington headquarters appears onscreen: Call the Republican Party. Tell them you’ve had enough of the mob.

As James Taranto, of the WSJ’s Best of the Web Today points out:

The ad does not identify the congressman whose town meeting was disrupted by the birther crackpot. It was Rep. Michael Castle of Delaware, a Republican. So the DNC expects us to believe that the RNC has “called out the mob” against its own members! Oh, and in fairness to the crackpot, we should note that she holds a tiny American flag and does not appear to display any swastikas or “symbols like that.”

Taranto sums it up nicely when he writes:

So, let’s review the arguments:

• Republicans are bad, they lost the last election, and they have partisan motives for wanting to stop ObamaCare.
• People who are angry about this are crackpots who display swastikas and other invidious symbols. Also, their anger is insincere, and they are shills of the RNC. They wear nice clothes, and this is not to their credit.
• Some of the arguments against ObamaCare are false, according to Obama.
• If ObamaCare is defeated, Obama would be hurt.

Is there any argument for ObamaCare? In all the material we reviewed for this item, only this, from the Obama email:

Every day we don’t act, Americans watch their premiums rise three times faster than wages, small businesses and families are pushed towards bankruptcy, and 14,000 people lose their coverage entirely. The cost of inaction is simply too much for the people of this nation to bear.

In other words, the “crisis” is so urgent that any thoughtful deliberation would entail intolerable delay. This is the same old argument that has already failed.

If this is the best the president can do, he deserves to lose resoundingly. If that hurts him, there’s always aspirin.

Roll Call has this infuriating report:

Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.

But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.

The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet (price tag: about $65 million) as part of an ongoing upgrade of its passenger air service.

But the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.

Because the Appropriations Committee viewed the additional aircraft as an expansion of an existing Defense Department program, it did not treat the money for two more planes as an earmark, and the legislation does not disclose which Member had requested the additional money.

An Appropriations Committee staffer said the military was already planning to replace its passenger fleet, and the committee “looked at the request and decided they should speed up the replacement.”

The Gulfstream G550 is a luxury business jet, which the company advertises as featuring long-range flight capacity that “easily links Washington, D.C., with Dubai, London with Singapore and Tokyo with Paris.” The company’s promotional materials say, “The cabin aboard the G550 combines productivity with exceptional comfort. It features up to four distinct living areas, three temperature zones, a choice of 12 floor plan configurations with seating for up to 18 passengers.”

The version Gulfstream sells to the military is reconfigured for the government with modest accommodations, not the luxury version sold to private customers, said a source familiar with the planes.

Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) had submitted a request to the Appropriations Committee for a $70 million earmark for one airplane on behalf of Georgia-based Gulfstream, and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) lists the airplane as one of the earmarks that he was asked to request, though his office said he never made the request to the Appropriations Committee.

“The committee saw fit to fund it at that level” without Kingston’s involvement, his spokesman said.

These are the same people writing up huge bills to curb “global warming” and “carbon emissions”. These are the same people lambasting CEOs for taking private jets to Washington when their companies are in dire financial straits. These are the same people who were voted in on the promise of a more “transparent” government.

What a bunch of lowlife hypocrites.

James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today has a great summary of all the heat the Democrat congressman are feeling now, coming home to their constituents, as well as a good take on the Democrats’ diversionary tactics in attempting to deal with all the heat:

Now you can see why President Obama was in such a rush to have his way with your health care. “Angry protesters shouted down Democrats at public events from Texas to Pennsylvania over the weekend, leaving the party only one real hope for getting its message out over recess: a backlash,” Politico reports:

In Austin, Texas, Rep. Lloyd Doggett was drowned out by a group of noisy, sign-waving demonstrators who shouted, “Just say no” as he tried to talk about health care reform.

In an e-mail to Politico Monday, Doggett called the group a “mob, sent by the local Republican and Libertarian parties” that “came not just to be heard but to deny others the right to be heard.”

In Morrisville, Pa., Rep. Patrick Murphy was forced to scrap plans for a one-on-one meet-the-congressman session when people in the crowd started shouting. Murphy switched to a town hall format mid-event and even then had to ask the audience at times to “be respectful.”

And at a health care event in Philadelphia, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were repeatedly interrupted by booing and heckling. “We can shout at one another, or we can leave the stage,” Sebelius said at one point. “It’s up to you.”

“Town halls have become town hells,” Bush White House veteran Mark McKinnon tells the Web site. A Politico report from last Friday described town halls as a “once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors,” featuring “screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety.”

“Democrats are trying to push back, casting the town hall disrupters as right-wing extremists affiliated with anti-tax ‘tea parties,’ ” Politico reports today:

“The last place Republicans ought to be moving their party is even more to the fringe of the political spectrum,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Added a senior Democratic strategist: “It may be out of necessity, but for Republicans, relying on the fringe elements of the party to be the face of opposition on health care is a dangerous game. The birthers and the tea party folks aren’t controllable, come off as angry and out of control and couldn’t care less about the issue at hand.”

It’s easy to understand why the Democrats are pursuing this rhetorical strategy, but it is a risky one. Yes, the birthers are wackos. The tea-party folks are . . . well, let us say highly enthusiastic. Angry mobs are at best an acquired taste.

But an awful lot of people have misgivings about ObamaCare. According to some polls, opponents already outnumber supporters. That means Democrats have a lot of persuading to do. Assume for the sake of argument that the Democrats make a persuasive case that Republicans are extreme and unhinged. Hell, assume for the sake of argument that Republicansare extreme and unhinged. Does this in any way advance the case for ObamaCare? Is there anyone in America who would turn his health care over to Washington just to spite the birthers?

Yesterday, I posted a couple of YouTube videos showing the heat being turned up on the Democrats in Congress. Here are a couple more for your viewing pleasure:

First, here’s Congressman Steve Driehaus (D-OH) getting read the riot act from one of his constituents… and exhibiting a truly hilarious look on his face at the end of the video in response:

And, next up is Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-MO) getting heckled when his brain actually burps out, “about half of that [trillion dollars cost] comes from savings and efficiencies in the system”. The video also has the smile-inducing ending of someone asking him to a chorus of cheers, “if it’s so good, why doesn’t Congress have to be on it?”:

I recently posted about Senator Arlen Specter’s (D-PA) stupid comments that Congress has “to make judgments very fast” instead of actually reading bills.

A Specter defender out there on the internet tried to claim that:

Every CEO in the country, including Ronald Reagan as President, reads executive summaries of important documents.  The idea that any Senator has to read an entire bill is nonsense.  He needs staff not only to read it but to relate how items on page 3 relate to provisions on page 1009.

Mark Steyn responded with this gem:

Why does anyone need Specter? Why can’t we just eliminate the middle-man and have his “staffers” announce their collective vote like a U.N. Security Council meeting?

Sorry, I pass. Arlen Specter is not a CEO — notwithstanding the vast Gulf Emir-sized retinue to which he has become accustomed. He doesn’t run anything. He has no payroll to make, no contracts to fulfill, no deliveries to expedite. A legislator is elected to legislate — so, if he doesn’t read the law before he makes it law, he’s not doing the only job he has. When you go to see Barbra Streisand, she has an orchestra and a conductor and arrangers and lighting designers and hair stylists, but she’s still expected to do the singing herself. If she stood up and said, “Okay, I’ve outsourced ‘People’ to my intern Kevin and ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers’ to the niece of a friend of mine who needed a summer job and the Yentl medley to some people Kevin met for a breakfast session and said seemed to know what they were talking about,” you’d begin to wonder why anyone needs Barbra.

Why does anyone need Specter? Why can’t we just eliminate the middle-man and have his “staffers” announce their collective vote like a U.N. Security Council meeting?

If a bill is too big to read, it’s a good sign you shouldn’t be passing it. Rule by anonymous technocrats is a form of tyranny, however benign.

[UPDATE: From another correspondent:

Your reader seems to forget that Congress passed the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley* on the premise there needed to be a new law requiring CEOs to read their financial statements and personally face legal penalties in case there are errors.  Maybe Congress would be a bit more cautious if they faced jail time when their 10-year budgets didn't pan out.

*Another hastily drawn piece of must-pass-now legislation that's done wonders for our overseas competitors.]

As “tea parties” proliferate nationwide and Obama finally faces some serious questions about some items on his agenda, Democrat members of Congress are also feeling the heat as their constituents ratchet up the criticism. And now, with Congress’s August Recess here, you can bet that a lot of Democrat congressmen are afraid to go home and face their constituents!

Here are two choice selections recently posted on YouTube.

First, here’s a clip of the crowd going berserk when Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) stupidly says that Congress has “to make judgments very fast” instead of actually reading bills:

And here’s a clip of Congressman Tim Bishop (D-NY) getting spanked by one disgruntled constituent after another: