Mary Katharine Ham notes that President Obama tells ABC:

“Let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals [on health care]. … There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.”

But the Washington Post reported on December 20 that Obama’s top aides were involved in the negotiations with Nelson:

Schumer, who spent more than 13 hours in Reid’s office Friday, said the Medicaid issue was settled around lunchtime, and the final eight hours of the talks focused on the abortion language. Boxer estimated she spent seven hours in Reid’s offices — without ever once sitting in the same room, even though they were all of 25 steps apart.

Reid and Schumer kept up the “shuttle negotiation” between the leader’s conference room and his top aide’s office, Boxer said. Keenly aware how tense the talks were, the White House dispatched two aides who together have decades of experience in the Senate — Jim Messina and Peter Rouse — to work with Nelson. They relayed their intelligence to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who monitored the talks from a dinner in Georgetown.

Perhaps Messina and Rouse just showed up to provide the “Christmas cookies” that Reid and Schumer chowed down to sustain themselves during the tense negotiations, but it’s hard to believe that Obama’s aides didn’t sign off on both the abortion and Medicaid backroom deals.

Michelle Malkin sums it up:

The unmitigated chutzpah here is so blinding that I don’t just need sunglasses to protect my eyes. I need blackout curtains. Watch President Obama blame Congress for Demcare bribery and sabotage of transparency. As if Rahm and all the senior goons in the White House weren’t twisting arms and cracking heads to ensure that the deal met their boss’s timeline. As if the Cadillac tax break for unions hadn’t been hashed out at 1600 Pennsylvania.

For more on this story:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-pretends-he-didnt-sign-off-on-the-shady-health-care-deals-82699357.html

“Let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals [on health care]. … There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.”  But the Washington Post reported on December 20 that Obama’s top aides were involved in the negotiations with Nelson.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

Dec. 6: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talks to the media after the Senate Democratic caucus that President Obama attended on Capitol Hill in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement – even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and it was Republicans who led the charge against slavery.

Senate Republicans on Monday called Reid’s comments “offensive” and “unbelievable.”

But Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era.

“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ’slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right,” Reid said Monday. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ’slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.’”

He continued: “When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right.

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/07/reid-compares-health-care-reform-foes-slavery-supporters/

Face Forward Comments:

I long ago gave up hope that politicians would hit the bottom of the mud pit and not fall any further into mire.  Once again, I can sleep in the knowledge that our political leadership will, when all else fails, resort to name calling and slinging mud.  I will have to give Harry Reid a thumbs up though, I would have never thought it possible that Opposing government owned health care could be equated to slavery.  Nice one, Harry.

I also find it amazing that the Democrats can point fingers at the Republicans with the words slavery on their lips.  As it was the democrats that tried to keep millions enslaved by trying to block civil rights legislation.  Welcome to American politics.

WASHINGTON — Digging in for a long struggle, Republican senators and governors assailed the majority Democrats’ newly minted health care legislation Thursday as a collection of tax increases, cuts in services for the elderly and heavy new burdens for deficit-ridden states.

Despite the criticism, indications were growing that Democrats would prevail on an initial Senate showdown set for Saturday night, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat, crisply rebutted the Republican charges. He said the bill “will save lives, save money and save Medicare,” the main health program for the elderly.

The legislation is designed to answer President Barack Obama’s demand to expand coverage, end insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions, and restrain the growth of health care spending.

Still, Republicans saw little to like Reid’s legislation awaiting the Saturday night Senate vote.

“It makes no sense at all and affronts common sense,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, one of several Republicans to criticize the measure. He added that a plan to expand Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, was a “bait and switch” with states as the victims.

Republican governors, meeting in Texas, agreed. “We all know a sucker play when we see one,” said Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. The bill would expand the Medicaid program, which provides health care for the poor, and leave the states with part of the additional cost beginning after three years. Medicaid is administered by the states.

In the Capitol, Reid answered Republican delaying tactics with an initial vote set for Saturday evening to determine whether he has the 60 votes needed to move the legislation forward. That so-called “supermajority” in the 100-member Senate is required to advance the bill toward full debate, expected to begin after Thanksgiving.

For the rest of the article please go here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/20/republicans-blast-bait-switch-health/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528FOXNews.com+-+Politics%2529

Face Forward Comments:

The health care bill vote is coming.   There are so many back door deals being cut it hard to keep track.  You can bet as each person that once opposed the bill now comes out in favor or you find out they have voted yes on it, they were bought and paid for. 

When Pelosi was pushing her version through the House, Rep. Dan Maffei (D-N.Y.) was among a group of lawmakers that got a package included in the bill to reduce a 2.5 percent tax on medical device manufacturers in his state. And remember the famous Blue Dog Democrats that were supposed to be so conservative?  Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) was loud in his vocal opposition however,  Democratic leaders knew how to lock in his vote. They’d add a last-minute provision authorizing up to $500 million to create medical centers that could benefit a college in Cardoza’s California district. Dig deep enough and every person in the House that voted yes got something.

By JOHN FUND

“It’s one thing to be serene under fire, it’s another to be delusional.”

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.”

Indeed, the Speaker’s take on Tuesday’s off-year elections struck some of her own members as delusive “happy talk.” “From our perspective, we won last night,” a cheerful Ms. Pelosi told reporters, citing her party’s pick-up of a single House seat in a New York special election and retention of another strongly Democratic seat in California.

That’s not how many of her own troops see it. Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama told Politico.com that members are “very, very sensitive” to the fact that the agenda being pushed by party leaders has “the potential to cost some of our front-line members their seats”

On health care, added New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell: “People who had weak knees before are going to have weaker knees now.”

Ms. Pelosi, however, apparently thinks the moment is ripe to use sheer political muscle to pass legislation reordering one sixth of the economy, with zero Republican support. The right mixture of “incentives” and Rahm Emanuel-style pressure, she believes, will bring enough Democrats to heel to vote for the bill.

The obsession Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have with passing health care strikes some Democratic moderates as a completely misplaced priority. Polls show that fewer than a fifth of Americans rank health care reform as the most important issue. Their biggest concern right now is jobs. Only 29% of voters in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll believe the economy “has hit the bottom.”

That the bill would be a job killer isn’t the only concern. Democrats worry about a backlash from the one-fourth of seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage — a program that faces steep cuts in both the likely Senate and House bills.

For the rest of this story please go to:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574517603592213342.html