I remember it well.

President Clinton, John Kerry, China, Russia, the UK, and a slew of others all admitted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Then came the Iraq war.

When no WMDs were found, the liberals conveniently forgot their own worshiped icons, including the UN, were on the record agreeing Saddam did have these weapons. No, it was Bush that lied.

Then came the predictable protest signs: Bush Lied, People Died.

It was the liberals who were lying.

Now many of those same liberals want to use Senator Kennedy’s passing to bludgeon through an unpopular health care bill. To do this requires the cooperation of the press to whitewash the real Kennedy legacy, rename the legislative effort to something which instantiates the memory of the Senator and shove it down our throats. So the media will lie, or conveniently forget the facts, and liberals in Congress will continue their all-out assault on the truth. But nothing in the current or planned legislation will have changed, and all the lies of the left are still present and accounted for.

Therefore, I say it is appropriate at this time for those opposed to liberal liberty stealing solutions to health care to state loudly that Kennedy Died, Liberals Lied. More realistically would be Kennedy Died, Liberals Lied, People Died, but the former shares more in common with the disingenuous messaging from the left concerning Bush.

If a public run option (read government controlled healthcare) is included in the final bill – even in the form of cooperatives which are nothing more than a RHINO creation and a Trojan horse for public healthcare – then all the lies of the liberals still exist. Renaming the bill or invoking the name of the Senator does not magically change the facts. A public option in the end will crowd out private insurers as nobody can compete with the government. What will be left is government controlled heathcare, and nothing can screw things up quite as well as anything government controlled. The current legislation and narrative from the left contains the following lies:

• A public plan won’t be a Trojan horse for a single-payer monopoly
• You can keep you current doctor
• You can keep your insurance
• Rationing will not occur. Want a chill to run up and down your spine? Read this expose from the Wall Street Journal: Obama’s Health Rationer-in-Chief. Still feeling safe?
• Nobody will be compelled to buy coverage
• Government can control health care costs better than the private sector
• A public option is a must to compete with private insurance and control costs
• Allowing for competition only among private insurers will not drive down the cost
• This overhaul won’t cost a penny – it will be deficit neutral. Just like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all shining examples of government run programs and their efficiencies. We will actually save money. Ahem, by rationing. Shhhh, keep that last one a secret

I rest my case.

In other news and opinion:

From the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler (love the picture emperor – hope you won’t behead me for using it here, but this is a visual meme that could very well end the push to use Kennedy as an icon to push through this vile piece of legislation: As Night Follows Day. Now for the picture of the year:

Blair Holt Bill Will Prohibit Ownership Of Handguns By Those Who Have Not Obtained A Firearm License

Obama’s Top Five Health Care Lies

Byrd Wants To Rename Healthcare Bill After Teddy. Say Hello To TeddyCare. So Cute And Cuddly You Just Got To Have It

Meet Obama’s newest Census collectors: Your kids!

Culture of corruption: Bill Richardson edition

Kennedy’s Legacy Is In Obama’s Hands

Pelosi: Ted Kennedy Died? Great! That Ought to Help Us Pass Health Care!

The Obama Clergy Call

More evidence that Nancy Pelosi lied and that the Obamaites are living in a bubble

Code Red: DC Open for Business. America needs a warning system to identify the threats coming out of Washington. (h/t Glenn Reynolds)

No trillion-dollar healthcare tribute for Kennedy

Ted Kennedy, Political Abstraction

Can anyone match Kennedy’s clout?. The whitewashing worship service will continue and be on display for the next month or two. Thank you for attending.

Does Ted Kennedy’s Death Breathe New Life into the Health Care Debate?

Update: The Nightmare That Is The Senate Finance Committee Healthcare Proposal – RINOCare Gone Wild. Are you ready for governement controlled health insurance cartels? Socialized healthcare vs. fascist healthcare, the dangerous bi-partisan compromise.

The endgame is here and the most important aspect that could kill the above linked post concerning the Senate Finance Committee healthcare bill and any other form of ObamaCare is being ignored by not only the media, but major bloggers everywhere. The only other reference I can find other than on the Social Security Institute website (see link below) is from FreedomWorks. Given that these two amendments kill any chance of reconciliation, I am at a loss to explain the complete lack of interest in this topic.

There were two amendments offered by Senator DeMint prior to the health bill conferences and debate in the Senate – a point-of-order amendment and instruction to conferees. The following is taken directly from an email Mr. Uhler received from Dr. Lawrence Hunter of the Social Security Institute that was forwarded to me and placed in the first link above. Dr. Hunter also has a very long and distinguished career and served as policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan during Reagan’s second term. He also served as a Member of the Board of Advisors for the NTLC:

During deliberations on the Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced a point-of-order amendment that would require a 60-vote majority to pass “any bill, joint resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report that eliminates the ability of Americans to keep their health plan or their choice of doctor (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office).” The Senate approved the DeMint Amendment unanimously.

Subsequently, before the Senate Budget Resolution went to a Conference Committee where differences with the House Budget Resolution were to be worked out, DeMint offered a motion to instruct the Conferees not only to insist on retaining the 60-vote provision in the final Conference Report but also to widen the scope of the provision to cover any provision and so forth that decreases the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance while increasing the number enrolled in government-managed, rationed health care. The Demint motion to instruct passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote of 79 to 14.

As a matter of congressional comity, the House ordinarily would have been expected to accede to the Senate provision since it affected Senate rules that applied only to the Senate. Remarkably, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad, allowed the Demint 60-vote requirement to be removed from the Budget Resolution in Conference.

Prior to the above statements by Dr. Hunter is information of great importance:

However, with a united Republican front in the Senate, Democrats would be hard pressed to jam a bill as comprehensive and detested as ObamaCare down Americans’ throats. Current polls indicate that more people oppose ObamaCare than support it. Moreover, Senate Republicans stand on very strong procedural grounds for resisting a bum’s rush on government-run healthcare through the Reconciliation process. It would take an act of extraordinary arrogance and recklessness for the Democratic Leadership to use Reconciliation this way.

If agreed upon to be enforced, the Demint amendments would in effect kill the reconciliation process and force 60 votes to pass ObamaCare in its present form – even with the co-operative option, which is nothing more than a Trojan horse for what ultimately will become a single-payer system. Mr. Uhler has identified five Republican Senators that need to align themselves with the party and forgo their proclivity to reach across the aisle. If this story goes national and pressure is brought to bear on these five Republican’s to stand firm with their party, then it is reasonable to assume the above conclusion from Dr. Hunter to be correct. Under these circumstances I do not believe the Democrats in the Senate would have the votes to commit “an act of extraordinary arrogance and recklessness”. However, wide public knowledge of the amendments and the subsequent pressure on Senators to follow their own rules requires national exposure. The average American is completely unaware of the procedural hurdles that Senator Jim Demint placed to block the ramming of a very unpopular plan onto the American people.

One could reasonably ask themselves why the public must follow rules, where the Senate can choose to ignore them. It will focus attention on the contempt that some Senate elitists have for the public. However, to date no major conservative talk show, media outlet, or think tank has covered this tactic. Everyone is talking about Blue Dogs killing the legislation. While certainly one strategy to pursue, I personally believe Blue Dogs have a habit of growling but, at the end of the day, many of them will roll over. I prefer a multi-pronged strategy that would include the above approach outlined by Dr. Hunter. On the legislative front, what is called for is combining public pressure on the Blue Dogs in the House and placing pressure on five Senate Republican’s to stand firm with their party and not negotiate ObamaCare Lite with the cooperative option replacing nationalized health care. Instead the public should insist the Demint rules be followed. This could very well kill the bill as it exists today. We could then press the reset button and start talking about real reform.

Using Reconciliation to force feed ObamaCare to an unwilling nation would backfire in ways that Democrats will find difficult to imagine. That is the type of atmosphere some liberals, such as Chuck Schumer are willing to create now and for the foreseeable future.

Here is the link to the story on the Social Security Institute article from Dr. Hunter:

In other news and opinion:

As the Byrd Rule Flies: Why Dems Can’t Use Reconciliation to Pass Radical ObamaCare

Co-ops a federal-subsidy trough

From Moe Lane at Redstate: Howard Dean threatens primary challenges on public option ‘no’ votes.

Is ObamaCare Constitutional?

Blue Dog: Hey, maybe we should start over on ObamaCare. Won’t happen, but this can be killed in the Senate. I am still astounded nobody has picked up on this yet.

ObamaCare: Does the media matter?