DEFCON 1: ‘What Comes Next? We Fight.’ [Updates Below]

So says Stacy McCain…and he is right: last night and the signing of the Obamacare bill by Julius Obamacus Caesar later this week is merely the end of the beginning.  We have suffered a major defeat.  We are bloodied, but must remain unbowed.  Nil desperandum — Never despair, as Churchill said.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender….

NO RETREAT, BABY, NO SURRENDER.

-More from Stacy’s call-to-arms of this morning:

…what happened Sunday night was not the birth of a new era of liberalism. Rather, it was the death of a kind of “conservatism” that was never really conservative at all. It was the “conservatism” of No Child Left Behind and ethanol subsidies, of unprincipled compromise and cynical self-dealing, of “shamnesty” and kowtowing to CAIR.

If the Republican Party can offer America nothing better than that in the future, the GOP will go the way of the Whigs, passing unlamented into political oblivion.

Now, however, is not the time to dwell too much on that. There’s going to be some long overdue payback in this year’s GOP primaries…but the much bigger target is Tuesday, Nov. 2. We can look forward to that fight with hope. We need fighters for this fight….

-The Hyphenated American, who grew up under Soviet rule, has answered the call:

…The time of reckoning is at hand, brothers and sisters. Obamacare is the last breath of the liberal order – and it’s time to take America back from the party of thieves and looters.

All patriots of this nation must stand together and fight back. United we will win! There is no blue or red America anymore – there are only those that believe in America the beautiful, America the free, America the shining city on the hill – and those that believe in welfare socialism and government servitude. Today, we fight not only for our personal well-being – but for the dignity and honor of this country, for the right to look into the eyes of our children and say – we defended this nation from the perils of socialism. In November 2010, we will answer the crucial questions of our times – are American people worthy of the efforts of the Founding Fathers? Will American people have the right to proudly say “We are Americans” – or will they forever live in infamy and indignity of welfare socialism?

Hear, hear!

-Representative Paul Ryan made a damn fine speech on the House floor yesterday and issued a promise to those who voted ‘Yea’:

This moment may mark a temporary conclusion of the health care debate, but it’s place in history has not yet been decided. If this passes, the quest to reclaim the American Idea is not over. The fight to reapply our founding principles is not finished. It is just a steeper hill to climb, and it is a climb that we will make.

A climb back to that shining city on the hill.

Big tip of the fedora to Darleen Click for transcribing Mr. Ryan’s remarks.

-Pat Austin’s Boudica-like cry can be heard all the way from Shreveport:

It’s time to get geared up for fall elections. Find out who is running in your district. Pick some national candidates you can get behind. Get the right people in Washington to help clean up this mess. Expose all the corruption and kickbacks and bribes and crooked politicians in your district. Write letters to your newspaper. Run for local office! Work in someone’s campaign. Make a donation to a good conservative candidate (but please, not the NRSC or the NRCC!)

…

Don’t sit around wallowing in how bad this is going to be and how we’ve lost our country. That’s not what the patriots did when they decided to form this country and break away from the tyranny of the mother country. They fought.

And so it goes….

Pat Austin addresses a crowd this morning in Shreveport.

-Over at The Pirate’s Cove, William Teach is rolling out the cannons on the USS Constitution [emphasis mine]:

…Republicans and pundits on the right need to continue to beat the drum on this issue right up to the election and beyond. Democrats, once they get done with their gloating, will shift to a mindset that “this is done. It’s passed. We’re moving on. Stop looking in the past.” They will look towards Cap and Tax, amnesty, and other big government legislation. Don’t. Let. Up!

-I’m detecting that Paco is jazzed for the battles ahead:

…let’s not waste time wringing our hands over the “impossibility” of repealing this monstrosity. Repeal is impossible only if one is willing to view this legislation as an act of God. Now, Obama and Pelosi may consider themselves to be, respectively, Zeus and Hera – or, more likely, they both see themselves as Zeus – but we don’t have to. The one thing that is certain is that repeal of the health care bill will be impossible if we don’t try to repeal it.

-Professor William Jacobson has stepped on the bench in the VRWC locker room:

Your hard work has paid off, even if the end result was not what we wanted. But trust me, without you it would have been much, much worse.

For over a year Obama has not been able to push through other destructive aspects of his agenda, and the clock is running out before the mid-term elections.

The hard work must continue through the November elections because Democrats know they have just a few more months.

So shake off the gloom, get your asses in gear, get over it, and get to work continuing to fight the worst government policies “since the Great Depression.”

We have no other choice.

Win one for The Gipper.

-Just one half hour after the vote last night, Clifton B. was ready for the fight:

Take a deep breath and forget about that feeling of despair. Tomorrow morning we must all focus on repealing, litigating or defunding this hunk of junk. We can work through the courts, via the states and at the polls. One way or another, we must never allow this nation to be railroaded like this again.

Let’s make some Sherman’s Neckties. [Message to my Lost Cause friends: get over it — these times require whatever tactics will work.]

UPDATE at 1427…

THERE’S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO STAND ATHWART HISTORY AND YELL: ‘STOP!’

-Michelle Malkin notes this interesting statement by Nancy Pompey:

It. Just. Got. Sicker.

12:08am Eastern. Pelosi is holding her victory speech. Gloating about the 220 votes she whipped up, she joked: “No money changed hands, of course.”

Mark those words.

–Mrs. Malkin also reprints a press release from the Susan B. Anthony List:

This Wednesday night is our third annual Campaign for Life Gala, where we were planning to honor Congressman Stupak for his efforts to keep abortion-funding out of health care reform-we will no longer be doing so. By accepting this deal from the most pro-abortion President in American history, Stupak has not only failed to stand strong for unborn children, but also for his constituents and pro-life voters across the country.

Good for them for not giving the award to that cheap crack whore Bart Stupak who is the leader of the Pro-Life Low-Life Democrats.

-In the posting by Pat Austin I quote from above, Pat [aka Boudica] also wrote:

I’m angry at the clueless, yet educated and normally intelligent, people who are gleefully celebrating this shredding of the Constitution and intrusion of government into our lives. …

They may be educated Pat, but were they ever really ‘intelligent’ in the true sense of the word?  I’ve gained more wisdom listening to steam engineers and carpenters and janitors [like my Grandfather] and the like then I’ve ever gained from supposed ‘educated people’.  It seems to be that the more ‘educated’ you are, the easier you fall for horrible ideas like socialism and fascism.

-This is not to say that all professors lack Common Sense, but the one’s that don’t are the exception to the rule.  A good example is Professor Donald Douglas:

But have no doubt: The sun will rise again. And come November we’ll hear for whom the bell tolls.

The man has brains of an Edmund Burke combined with the soul of a Don Cornelius.

-DaTechguy asks two good questions:

…Considering the number of years that it takes to become a doctor and the result this will have on the profitability of that business, will the best and brightest choose medicine? Given what will happen to the pharmaceutical field will the smart young person go that route when choosing a career?

The best in the batch can usually write their own ticket, the government just canceled the tickets to the medical field and unfortunately for me and my sons the primary effects of that cancellation of that ticket will hit when I am of retirement age and when they are my age….

I would also ask a related question: for years now, the talented from other countries who wanted to be doctors came here and stayed, so where will they go to now?

UPDATE at 1703…

-Obi’s Sister has obtained footage of the moment the American Republic died last night.

-Chris, over at WyBlog, fully understands what happened last night:

The 1960s radicals have reached the pinnacle of their power. They tried to destroy America with bombs but then discovered that it’s much easier to subvert the system when you’re running the show.

Barack Obama has proclaimed “Death to America”. Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are giddy with excitement. Freedom died last night.

-They’re not the only ones.  Look at Ho Hoyer and Pompey Pelosi in the picture below:

[Note: I corrected the date]

-The Reaganite Republican is ready for the fight ahead:

Obama has flat-out scammed the American electorate, pretending to be a bipartisan moderate while shaming the naive and shallow into electing a black president, as if this was needed for some race-based reason. Dear Leader is now –with shocking ingratitude– out to rape and plunder all this country has and stands for.

He must be resisted by the states, in the courts, on the net… and at the ballot box- as he will be. With Americans about to “find out what’s in it” -and Obama’s and the Dems’ poll numbers already deep-cratered- let there be no doubt who’s side time is on… the Left is in for a precipitous decline, starting right now.

While that’s all going on, the GOP will commence to kicking ass, taking over, and taking names… so let the siege begin in earnest; this is going to be a whole lot of fun.

One quibble: as well as the GOP performed over the weekend, let us not forget that share a huge part of the blame for where we find ourselves now.  While I think the blame game will do us no good in this war, their role in this horrible debacle must be kept in mind so that we never, ever, forget to keep our eyes on them.  The heros of this past weekend could go Vichy next week, or next month, or next year.  I don’t trust the GOP Establishment at all — not their politicians, nor their pundits, nor their staffs.  We are talking about The Stupid Party after all.

-The Mind Numbed Robot has issued his plea to arms:

It is time once again for Americans to recognize a common enemy and combine our strengths to defeat it.

Years ago, a friend of mine who held three black belts, had a quote on his vanity mirror. It read, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” This is closer to the truth than you think, for it is our own greed that will destroy us. If we would live off the fruits of others’ labors then we are doomed to fail. If we would listen to a man that tells us that the cure for problems caused by the Government is more Government, then we are selfish and stupid and are doomed to fail.

Think of your Grandparents and Great Grandparents and the trials they endured in the Civil War, the Dust bowl, the Great Depression and two World Wars in order for us to be here in this time. Is this is how we honor their spirit?

I believe that America is better than this current crop of leadership.

It is time for Americans to once again show that we love our country more than ourselves.

And it’s time the politicians did the same, or got the hell out of our Halls of Congress and the White House.

God Bless America and the spirit of her founding.

-Adobe Walls is already manning the conn [bumped-up from the Comments Section]:

BLOW TO OUR CONSTITUTION-Day+1

Today is the 1st day of the rest of the war to crush the left and eliminate it as a viable force in our political, social and cultural life. Yesterday those who support Liberty and personal Independence in this nation, indeed the world, lost one battle in which the odds against us massively favored our foe. This battle was almost a draw, not exactly a crushing strategic victory for the forces of darkness. The fact that our defeat, which should have been quick, easy and cheap for the left, was forestalled for so long places us on “good ground” tactically for the next and much more crucial battle coming in November. Today we start driving in their pickets and chasing off their scouts.

-Over at The American Spectator, The Prowler reminds us of The Stupid Party’s most recent stupidity:

USEFUL NICE GUYS
Some Republicans will point the President Obama’s Blair House health care meeting with Republicans as the event that enabled Democrats to get to a point where the Senate health care bill could pass. During the event and immediately afterward, some Republicans were given credit for standing up to the President and attempting to get a leg up, but according to a Democrat leadership aide in the House, the event accomplished exactly what the Democrats and the White House wanted.

“It allowed us to create the impression that Republicans had had a hand. It allowed the President afterward to claim he had included Republican proposals in the bill, and gave us a clear path to moving the process along, where before we didn’t,” says the aide. “Your Republican friends will disagree, but the minute they agreed to that meeting, we knew we were at the least back in business.”

A White House aide, who was involved in planning the media sideshow at Blair said, “If the Republicans had actually listened to Rush [Limbaugh] and [Mark] Levin and [Fred] Thompson and not attended, we might have been in different situation. Before February 25, we had no momentum, you just felt it, after the summit, when the President told Republicans that if we couldn’t agree, then we’d just have to move on without them, we had a bit of a opening and no major public opinion backlash.”

The title of that piece should have been: USEFUL IDIOTS AND DUPES.  Never give the Left any legitimacy for any of its schemes; they will take full advantage of your mannered and honorable behaviors because they have no moral sense.  As I’ve been practically screaming for two decades: no quarter must be granted to the Leftists because none will be given by them.

-Over at Washington Rebel, Walking Horse understands the stakes and what in the future we may expect from those who have overthrown the American Republic:

When the powers that be and their SEIU enforcers employ Chicago-style thug tactics with a level audacity unseen in recent memory, we are not obliged to confine ourselves to Marquis of Queensbury rules.

An honest survey of history makes it clear that the logical end to the course upon which the Obamunists and their cohorts have embarked leads directly to clubs and guns directed at ordinary citizens. In the roughly six thousand years of recorded history, we can count on one finger the instances where a government humbled itself before the people governed. That government has been supplanted by what we see before us now. How this unfolds past this point is something none of us can foresee.

For myself, I have children whom I refuse to see turned into serfs. I am damned tired of hearing “progressives” and their fellow travelers congratulate themselves on their tender concern “for the children.”

-Commander of the Washington Rebel forces, Irish Cicero, has up a great posting tracing the history of how we came to this pass and got ambushed.  This part is sad to contemplate:

Why am I telling you all this?

Because the conclusion I came to 20 years ago is staring me right in the face: I have to prepare, like you do, for life in a drastically reduced United States: less prosperity, more State authority.

The possibility of arrests for owning guns? How far away can that be, I wonder?

Prosecutions for criminal thought?

Career selection by a smiling bureaucrat?

Force relocation so we can’t drive?

And just how long will this leftist fantasy last before it crashes into the ground?

Then what?

What will be left?  Who will be left?  God give us the strength to stop this madness.

-July 4th is Independence Day.  Will March 21st be known as Dependence Day?  Here’s Mark Steyn who says he can still see some liquid in the glass, but methinks he’s just being his old sarcastic self and worth quoting at length:

…I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It’s a huge transformative event in Americans’ view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet is that it can’t be undone, and that over time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.

More prosaically, it’s also unaffordable. That’s why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it’s less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we’ll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America’s enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side . . .

Would that ‘bright side’ he speaks of be the side the nuclear bomb explodes on?

-In a posting from today, Mr. Steyn reminds us of an anniversary:

On a cheerier note, today is the 245th anniversary of the passage of the Stamp Act. Just a thought.

Yesterday we witnessed the passage of the Stamp Out America Act.

IS LIFE SO DEAR, OR PEACE SO SWEET, AS TO BE PURCHASED AT THE PRICE OF CHAINS AND SLAVERY?  FORBID IT, ALMIGHTY GOD!  I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY TAKE; BUT AS FOR ME, GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!

-On second thought, maybe what passed yesterday should more fittingly be called The Intolerable Acts?

-Speaking of Nice Deb, she’s been posting and aggregating like mad over at her place.  Do check it all out, but especially this one and this one and this one.

-For all you Immanentizers of the Eschaton out there, Jimmie Bise has a perfect word for the perfect world you’re seeking to create:

Today’s “Word of the Day” from Wordsmith.org seems quite appropriate:

cloud-cuckoo-land or cloud cuckoo land

PRONUNCIATION: (KLOUD-koo-koo-land)

MEANING: noun: An idealized, unrealistic state; a place out of touch with reality.

USAGE: Nancy Pelosi and her coterie of Democrats dragged the rest of America, kicking and screaming, into her cloud-cuckoo-land last night with the passage of government-run health care.

UPDATE at 2101…

-Despite what went on yesterday, Carol has emerged out of her Closet in a fine mood:

An unexpected thing happened this morning. I woke up feeling hopeful. In fact, I woke up feeling downright good.

…

So, today is a new day. I’m ready to get back to work.

-Fresh from surgery last week [glad to hear you’re doing okay], Jamie Jeffords is fixing for a fight and is keeping his eye on the prize:

The bottom line is that the future tax hikes ad budget cuts, along with long lines, doctor shortages, rationing, and fewer medical breakthroughs all rest squarely on the shoulders of the Democrats who did not even bother to learn all of what their legislation was giving them control. Every conceivable problem that will come from ObamaCare is their sole responsibility. Whether ObamaCare can be stopped or not, we have to hold them accountable for the grave responsibility they just insanely took upon themselves.

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE SPARROW

-Fishersville Mike has been posting a lot of good stuff today — do head on over and check them out.  This one is my favorite:

Supply and demand, Congress style

Congress demands.

The people have to supply (or else).

Or else…at the point of a gun.

-Speaking of Dave C, he must have been listening to The Carter Family’s Keep On The Sunnyside Of Life because he’s a bit cheery:

This shouldn’t be a time to despair. Look at it this way, ObamaCare was supposed to be passed in the middle of last year. It was delayed and delayed until last night when the Democrat Leadership in Congress couldn’t push back the hot potato any longer. The Tea Parties and others who helped pressure Congress did some good.

-I had to swipe this picture from Dave [not, by the way, at the point of a gun, but like a Democrat…er…thief in the night]:

-The Left Coast Rebel reacts:

I never would have thought this evil would have reached our shores.

It’s been here for over one hundred years and was first know as The Progressive Movement.  We all, for too long, failed to realize that it was cancer not a benign growth.  It’s now metastasized.

–Moe Lane must be ingesting some happy pills [come on, be a pal Moe and sent some along to Bobby Bel]:

OK, time to start rolling this monstrosity of a health care soon-to-be-law back… what’s that I’m being told? It can’t be done? We’re stuck with it forever? Can’t cut entitlements in this country, at all, at all? Well, that’s very interesting: being told that we can’t do something, that is. Shall I tell you some of the other things that I’ve been told, over the last year and a half…

He then goes on to roll out a long list.  A few highlights:

•I was told that the Tea Party movement would never become more than an annoyance to the ruling party. Which would be running the show for a generation, remember.

•I was told that it was absurd to think that the GOP would gain seats in the Senate in 2010.

•I was told that it was absurd to think that the GOP would gain more than a dozen seats in the House in 2010.

•I was told that the House GOP would only Hold The Line once, then cave.

-From Interesting News Items [tip of the fedora to Little Miss Attila] we learn that cheap crack whore Bart Stupak has been ‘reclassified’:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Biologists have downgraded former anti-abortion congressman Bart Stupak from the Chordate subphylum Vertebrata, or creatures with backbones, to invertebrate status. Stupak once opposed the health care bill because it funded abortions, but switched to ‘yes’ in exchange for an executive order exploring the abortion issue and written on good bond paper. Said Dr. Sonia Riley of Scripps Institute: “By trading his vote for a legally meaningless eo [executive order], Mr. Stupak chose to jettison his spine. Scientifically, we must now classify him somewhere between comb jellies and the sea sponge.”….

-Over at No Sheeples Here, Carol is channeling Scarlett O’Hara:

Gone with the wind will be the vitality of American enterprise and a free society. Gone also will be the quality and choice of American medicine. Medical care will be rationed by politics.

–Enoch Root has found a rather fitting song.  A few lines of the lyrics:

And I’m going down, all the way down
I’m on the highway to hell

Reading those lyrics made me think of a line from another AC/DC song, Night Prowler:

And you can’t feel the steel ’till it’s hanging out your back

-At first, Russ over at That’s Right was feeling low, but now he’s back standing up and in his fighter’s stance.

-GatorDoug brings us some Reaganspiration.  Thanks, I need that.

-The Classic Liberal has a fine aggregation going here.

-Paco has been doing a specific kind of aggregating:

Greetings, comrades! Did you all do your government-mandated push-ups this morning and eat your taxpayer-subsidized oatmeal? No? You refuse to let a paternalistic government make life-and-death decisions for you, and tax you for the privilege?

Excellent. Then you have decided to fight back. You are not alone, fellow citizens of this once and future Great Republic. Get your blood up with these calls to action…

Thanks.

-Speaking of Paco, he’s done it again and somehow obtained a transcript of the goings on in the Oval Office last night.  A highlight:

Obama [Rubbing his hands together vigorously]: Finally! The health care bill has been passed and my legacy is secure. And I want to thank both of you for your invaluable assistance. Nancy, I’ll be reaching out to you for help in the House on several other important initiatives, soon.

Nancy: I’ll be ready, Mr. President.

Obama: And Harry…er…enjoy your retirement.

Reid [Looking at the president with that expression of a befuddled goat for which is he is so well known]: Why, what do you mean, Mr. President? You assured me that, if I supported the health care legislation, you’d see to it that I was taken care of if I lose my reelection bid.

Obama: Oh, of course, of course. Heh. Just kidding!….

-And finally…

WOLVERINES!