The first sentence of this Associated Press story really says it all:

After a disappointing new unemployment report, President Barack Obama pushed on Friday for an expanded government program..

No, scratch that – the first half of the first sentence says it all. Unemployment is much worse than President Obama said it would be, so let’s spend more of that stimulus money! Subsidizing green jobs – however the lobbyists and leftists define “green jobs” – is the obvious solution. This is really all Glenn Beck’s fault; if he hadn’t ruined the tenure of sweet, gentle communist Green Jobs Czar Van Jones our economy would be so green right now… you don’t even know!

Speaking of environmental boondoggles, someone remind me to dump all my GE if it gets back around $20. I should’ve learned before I started buying GE that two of the pillars of their business model are:

1. Lobby for government strangulation of things we don’t make.
2. Lobby for government funding of things we make that nobody wants to buy.

I read something this fall about the possibility of a “Cash for Clunkers” sort of racket for buying Energy Star appliances starting early 2010. After talking about it a little with my family over Christmas, I thought I’d poke around The Webs to see what the story was.

Lowe’s has some info on their website, but nothing very useful…

Each state will run its own rebate program and will be free to select which ENERGY STAR appliances qualify along with the rebate amounts. Plus, any state or local utility district rebates will be added to the federal Cash for Appliances rebate, which could add up to even greater savings for you!

States will submit their application for funding along with their appliance recycling plan to the Department of Energy (DOE) by October 15, 2009. The DOE plans to have funds available by November 30, 2009, so start planning and selecting your new energy-efficient appliance from Lowe’s today.

So at this point we know there’s federal money set aside from that oh-so-successful stimulus bill, but the rebate amounts, processes, and eligible products will vary by state. Or in other words, we know nothing. To the Dispatch! They provided a helpful update in a Consumer 10 report from 12/27:

This month, the agency approved Ohio’s proposal for using its share of the funds: about $11 million.

The state’s program won’t be finalized until the first quarter of 2010, but some details are available:

Ohio will give almost 90,000 rebates to residents who buy qualified refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines and water heaters from Ohio retailers.

To be eligible for a rebate, an appliance must bear the federal government’s Energy Star label.

Sounds like a decent deal, if you’re in the market for new appliances – rebates for Ohioans will range from $100 to $250. I’m assuming my appliances have been around for as long as my kitchen, which would make them all 14 years old. Will I be “lucky” enough for something to break during this latest ingenious government plan, or will what I’ve got keep on tickin’ for a few more years?

I’d love if we could keep more of our money, instead of being invited into the shifting miasma of loopholes that high earners must constantly navigate. What will the government reward me for buying or selling this year? How can I take advantage of a maximum number of government programs that are paid for with my money, whether I use them or not? These are questions we should never need to ask, but here we are…

Let your senators know exactly how you feel about Reid’s health care bill! I sent the following to Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s first term Progressive who continues to support support the Reid bill despite its heap of federal programs being less heap-ish than he would like. You can send a message to Senator Brown via the form at http://brown.senate.gov/contact

How do you feel, Senator, about the fact that Nelson’s support for the health care bill is being purchased at cost to Ohio taxpayers? Will you ask Senator Reid to also dedicate federal funds to the cost of Ohio’s increased Medicaid rolls?

I’m a conservative from rural Ohio, and I’m sure there are few policy positions you and I would agree on. But let’s be frank, there are a lot of Ohioans between us on the political spectrum who will wonder why you’ve supported a massive expansion of D.C.’s power that demolishes the state budget. Why commit political suicide for something voters oppose that also compromises your own wishes? Ask Senator Reid to give you all a Christmas break, and see what Ohioans have to say about this bill.

You won’t have Bob Taft and George Bush to whack around like pinatas in the next election, Senator. This is something you really ought to keep in mind unless you’d like to serve just one term.

I noticed the Senator’s office is in the Hart Senate Office Building… no relation. T-minus 10 days before an aide sends some boilerplate response thanking me for my stupid opinion.

Senator Nelson, the last neanderthal holdout preventing a floor vote on The Reid Plan for Progressive Paradise, has a price. You wouldn’t know this if you read the LA Times story, but The New York Times at least mentions in passing that our tax dollars will be devoted to Senator Nelson’s constituents:

The amendment also includes a special extension solely for Nebraska: increased federal contributions to the cost of an expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor.

You know Medicaid. Medicaid is that program whose cost to the state of Ohio went from $2.6 billion in 1997 to $4.8 billion in 2006. Medicaid is that program the Democrats in both the House and Senate have chosen to model their horrendous legislation after. Medicaid is one of the several ways President Obama, Senator Reid, and Representative Pelosi have tried to hide the real costs of Obamacare.

But, I’m a conservative. I love war and hate poor people, so I can’t be trusted when I say a new or expanded entitlement program costs too much. How about The Columbus Dispatch?

As Ohio officials try to close an $850 million budget hole, the key U.S. Senate health-care overhaul package could cost Ohio $922 million in additional Medicaid spending in the plan’s first five years.

A shame for the states, but this is about centralizing control in Washington. A bill opposed by the public has to be jammed through before senators are exposed to the disgust of their subjects – and if it takes a little more of our money to get the 60th vote on board, that money is gone. The Washington Post has a quote from Senator Nelson that could easily be applied to the entire health “reform” debacle and attributed to Harry Reid…

“I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree,” Nelson told reporters at the Capitol, of the many changes made at his behest. “But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions.”

My fellow Americans: you don’t want these things, but I do. You can disagree, but you might as well get used to footing the bill. If Harry Reid can’t even cobble together a bill 58 Democrats and 2 Independents will vote to the floor without blatant payoffs, what does that say about his ability to regulate the health insurance and care of 308 million people?

Remember when Barack Obama was running for president, and it was magical because of the cadence of his voice, the unpopularity of President Bush, and the spending habits of the GOP? Remember how millions of moderate voters accepted Obama’s sketchy associations (his America-hating preacher of 20 years, the unapologetic terrorist who helped launch his first political campaign, etc), thin voting record, far-left opinions, and general lack of experience?

Hope. Change. Bull. Sorry, but if you believed a word of it in 2008 you were out of your gourd. If you believe any of it now, you’re… further out of your gourd, I guess? Wonder if he’ll sign the result of this:

WASHINGTON – The Democratic-controlled Senate on Saturday cleared away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill that rewards most federal agencies with generous budget boosts.

The $1.1 trillion measure combines much of the year’s unfinished budget work – only a $626 billion Pentagon spending measure would remain – into a 1,000-plus-page spending bill that would give the Education Department, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and others increases far exceeding inflation.

I will happily agree that congressmen of all shapes, sizes, and party affiliations funnel too much of our money to groups that support them. But when we’re talking about bureaucracy that stifles production and penalizes the most successful through both regulation and the higher taxes required to fund it, which party spends more? And where is President Obama in all this? He promoted himself as the voice of “smarter government” and bipartisanship; as someone who would “trim the fat” and halt runaway spending. With help from a Democrat-controlled Congress, that’s going great:

Maybe I’m too harsh on President Obama: he is changing some things. Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, wrote a great article to that effect this week. A highlight -

Foreign policy? It is still “Bush did it,” not reflection on his own rookie errors.

The economy? Jobs saved by borrowing are better metrics than the old unemployment statistics. Blame Bush again, tinker with the stats, and print more money.

Small businesses? Employers are still “they,” who must and will pay higher income and payroll taxes, and higher premiums for medical insurance. They won’t be thanked for their greater contributions; rather, they owe a sort of penance for doing well and creating the nation’s wealth.

Energy? President Obama is on his way to Copenhagen — oblivious to Climategate. He ignores the paradoxes of a planet the last decade slighting cooling, when it is supposed to be radically heating. And he does not worry at all about the effects of new green taxes on the country — when the productive classes may soon be paying 65 percent of their incomes in state and federal taxes and increased insurance premiums.

Harry Reid decided to remind us today – lest anyone forget! – what a giant, sleazy windbag he is, comparing Senate Republicans to opponents of women’s suffrage and supporters of slavery. You can see quotes, in Reid’s patented “wino panhandling outside UDF” rhetorical style, at Fox News, which is too partisan to be considered an actual news source.

It seems like the Progressives running our country are on a perpetual acid trip, reliving the hippie glory days of the ’60s and ’70s and oblivious to the world around them. Harry! We’re really sorry, but if you want to be sprayed by a fire hose or repressed by the government, you may have to move to Iran. You could burn your bra and chant “Hell no, we won’t go!” while smoking pot with some of the president’s Weather Underground crew… but gosh, that would be almost as crazy as what you’re actually doing on a regular basis.

Hope, change, and bipartisan fun times were promised by the Obama campaign, and anyone who saw through that b.s. probably supported slavery. Now the slavery-supporting, lady-hating freedom-ruiners lurking around the U.S. of A. are trying to stop Harry Reid from giving all Americans (legal or otherwise) the free health care and taxpayer subsidized abortions they’ve always wanted. We might as well be living in caves, treating women like property, and slaughtering anyone different from ourselves! But then, regions of Africa and the Middle East already have that stuff nailed down.

In other news, Israeli intelligence reports the Iranians are now capable of producing a nuclear bomb. But I’m sure they won’t! It’s not as if George W. Bush is in charge of the United States anymore.

The health insurance debate among Democrats is like my friends and I arguing about what kind of Ferrari to buy: I want a blue one. One of the guys insists on a sedan. Another says we should be pragmatic and stick with a middle-of-the-road model, and go with standard red paint to save money.

Like the health plans offered by Congress, these are all ridiculous and unaffordable options. Unlike Congress, my friends and I can’t make everyone else pay for our stupid ideas. Guess this is what happens when legislation is steered by Progressives whose definition of progress is limitless entitlements at the cost of “the rich!”

This story being reported by the New York Times seems like a start…

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan began legal action on Thursday to seize properties in Queens and across the country where several mosques are located in a broad move against a nonprofit organization that was accused of illegally providing money and other services to Iran.

I’ll take any sign that we’re being serious about our enemies as a good one at this point. There is, of course, concern about Islamophobia.

“Because information is lacking, this might well cause yet another wave of fear in the Muslim community,” said Adem Carroll, chairman of the Muslim Consultative Network, an advocacy group. “It would be sad if word in our community starts spreading that the government will shut us all down. Already some think this is a war against the religion; that is a very unhelpful perception.“

That would be sad, but what’s sadder is that any time something like this happens there always seems to be a Muslim advocacy group ready with warnings and excuses. Know what lends to the perception that there’s a religious war going on? Muslims in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Texas, Chicago, and New York plotting and carrying out the murder of infidels.

Meanwhile, back at the State Department:

She [Secretary Clinton] spoke of “consequences” — tougher international sanctions — if Iran spurned the offer. German counterpart Guido Westerwelle said the six powers’ patience was “not infinite.”

Diplomats say Western powers will reconsider sanctions if there is no breakthrough with Iran by the end of the year.

The UN is so cute! You ignore sanctions, they threaten you with new sanctions unless you’ll talk to them. You string them along for awhile, they say, “hey, you guys had better not stop stringing us along, or we’re going to enforce those old sanctions you’ve been ignoring this whole time!” Then you bat your eyelashes and the UN says, “aw, shucks, what’s another six months among mortal enemies whose spineless diplomats talk like friends?”

Sadly, I’m not real sure infinity minus one is a threatening deadline. Ah, well… two steps forward, three steps closer to being nuked. Israel, far more likely to be on the receiving end, has less infinite patience.

Wouldn’t you know it, we elected the guy despite conservative complaints about his apparent lack of interest in all things military, and his “policy” after nearly 10 months in office is still to whine about everything President Bush did wrong. From the Los Angeles Times:

President Obama and his war council today plan to review four basic strategy options for Afghanistan that could increase the number of U.S. troops there by as many as 40,000 or fewer than 10,000.

The White House insisted Tuesday that Obama has not decided how many additional troops to send or how he will deploy them, though the White House has narrowed the options to those outlined by his national security team, the Pentagon and Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan.

So now, in mid-November, President Obama is going to convene a meeting to have a discussion about making a decision based on General McCrystal’s recommendation from early October. Good news though, they’ve narrowed down the list of options to… the list of options being considered a month ago. Lest we forget…

When Obama took office, he ordered an Afghanistan review of his own. Led by former CIA official Bruce Riedel, the Obama review team looked at Afghanistan and made its recommendations. On March 27, the president announced his new Afghanistan strategy–one that included many of the recommendations of the Bush administration’s review. And that is another indignity. Not only did the Obama administration understand full well that the Bush administration had conducted a comprehensive assessment of Afghanistan, and not only had Jim Jones asked that the Bush review be withheld from the public–but Obama’s “new” strategy bore an uncanny resemblance to that prescribed by the Lute review.

The next time some hippie is bashing President Bush because he finished reading to children on the morning of 9/11, remind ‘em that President Obama took nearly a year to develop a policy for the “necessary war” that President Bush allegedly ignored. Don’t even bring up the transparency thing, because only fascists like George W. Bush should be taken to task for the sort of things Obama’s people do on a weekly basis.

Veterans, God bless you, and thanks for all you’ve done. Men and women currently in uniform, we can only pray for leadership worthy of your service…

…voted tonight to pass a 2,000 page bill none of them has read. 219 Democrats and 1 Republican would like to demolish our flawed health insurance system and replace it with one where bureaucrats decide what coverage is acceptable, what we should be charged for it, and the rates at which care providers will be compensated. No word as to how any of the above will be paid for, why companies who can save money by shunting employees into a government program will do otherwise, or what sort of masochists will choose to be doctors in such a rigged system.

But don’t worry! The Pelosi plan will guarantee the prompt, effective health care of over 300,000,000 people without adding to the deficit or limiting choice! We should not rule out the possibility that some of those two thousand pages are blueprints for medical robots that cost nothing to build, cost nothing to operate, and cost nothing to maintain.

Democrats easily voted down Republicans’ attempt to pass their own bill, which would have more narrowly expanded health insurance and cost $61 billion over a decade.

A $61 billion dollar overhaul is not nearly a big enough overhaul. The GOP is the “party of no” ambition! Republicans simply lack the dedication of Democrats who know how to run every damn thing on earth better than the industry professionals who do so for a living.

Democrats portrayed their legislation as a moral imperative that would achieve a goal sought by presidents since Theodore Roosevelt. They argued it would fix the worst aspects of the medical system by preventing insurers from denying coverage to the sick and protecting consumers from financial ruin caused by medical bills.

At long last, the United States can be free from the tyranny of risk and reward! Every man, woman, and child shall have their own Aflac duck to pay for all their needs with someone else’s money. Next up: cause and effect. Cause and effect are assholes, and it’s morally incumbent on Congress to use pretend dollars to make them go away.

“It is testimony to how we care for our fellow citizens,” said John Larson (D., Conn.). “It is at the very core of all that America stands for, and why we came here to serve.”

Bankrupting America is at the very core of all that America stands for. Or did I miss the Paul Krugman essay on how $1,500,000,000,000 is no big deal? The fight’s not over yet, but it looks like there are plenty of House Democrats willing to flush their careers for this insane leftist cause.