Code Red healthcare protest summary

by Smitty

Today's Code Red protest was a small vacation-time investment that was well worth it. Nothing like gathering next to the Capitol with a couple thousand actual Americans and yelling "Kill the Bill" a few times over, of a lovely Fall/Winter afternoon, to re-invigorate the body.

When you consider the mindless, zombie-like advance of Progressivism, you have to realize that all of the time for being a typical American goof-off has been expended. The Tommy Boy narrative has run its course over the last century. The subtle, gradual collapse of the Constitutional separation of powers, fed by a deferential SCOTUS and an Imperial Fed means that the US has neither engaged in formally declared war, nor walked back dime #1 of the national debt since the Truman Administration. Get the falafel out of here, say I.

Thus, it is both tactically crucial to keep up the pressure on Congress, but also to drive towards a restoration of meaningful value in our three-tier, three-branch system of government.

Laura Ingraham and then Representative Bachmann, and Senator Coburn, were spot on today:

Rush Limbaugh expands on the disgruntlement with Senator Lieberman. Summary: the Medicare approach is a bait-and-switch. (h/t Rhetorican)

Now, I also think that this Medicare expansion was a ruse from the start. In negotiations, if you've ever been in any involving, say, your compensation or representing a company or something, you always, in preparing for negotiations, you put in what are called throwaways, things that you demand be included in the deal that you secretly will throw away or give away in order to get a final deal, and both sides do this. Except our side. We don't do anything but accept the premise and needle with it around the margins. And I think that this Medicare expansion was a throwaway from the get-go. I don't think they were ever serious about this, and I'll tell you why. Simple logic. There's no way in a bill that cuts Medicare $500 billion you can expand it to cover people down to 55 years of age. The two just don't go together. So what they do, they raise the Medicare expansion as an issue at the last minute when Dingy Harry is having problems, and then they kill it a few days later on the desires of Lieberman.

This gives them cover to get Lieberman on their side, and then others say it's now okay to vote for this, since they got rid of the Medicare expansion. As I say I think it was a ruse from day one, it was a strategy. You put out a false option, you have a Senator object to it, a Senator who is thought to be a moderate -- Lieberman -- with an independent party label instead of Democrat, and he says, "I can't vote for this. Why, there's no way I'm going to vote for that. I'm not going to vote for this with the public option in it, either." So you give in, you give in to Lieberman, you give in to the so-called moderates, you claim there's no Medicare expansion and no public option and you get your 60 votes, and you look like you're compromising, when you're not compromising at all because you never intended the Medicare expansion to be real in the first place. It was just designed to get Lieberman in there and it looks like it works.

Pictures follow, but the last one is the favorite:

This administration has given us so much to puke about. One cannot blame protestors for straying off topic:

The best was afterwards, though. On the steps in front of the Russel building, where many a Senator lurks, stood Death with the Obama/Pelosi/Reid try-dumb-virate. Nancy has a clutch of little embryos in her hand. Death was going on about how easy the was to subvert US leadership. The effect was shocking and revolting, but in a Halloween sort of way. It was provocative without straying too far into theological territory. A woman went up to Death, as he delivered his carnival dialog, and told him she found it offensive. He responded rather graciously that shocking imagery had a long tradition, going back to the Suffragette movement. The bad thing about this is the precedent. As with the Federal government itself, each little brick takes the political dialog further along. Even though I thought these four showed a modicum of restraint, less is more.

May the Almighty bless these United States. May the current passion find tangible expression, leading to the reforms we know we need, yet dread.

Update: Linked at American Power
also,
Tabitha Hale at Right Wing News attended.

Update II: Insta-lanch!

Update III: a few more pics at Left Coast Rebel.