IRS chief: Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

Individuals who don’t purchase health insurance may lose their tax refunds according to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. After acknowledging the recently passed health-care bill limits the agency’s options for enforcing the individual mandate, Shulman told reporters that the most likely way to penalize individuals that don’t comply is by reducing or confiscating their tax refunds.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, Shulman downplayed the IRS’s role in enforcing the recent overhaul of the health insurance industry by claiming the agency would not aggressively target individuals who don’t purchase coverage. He noted that the health-care bill expressly forbids the agency from freezing bank accounts, seizing assets or pursuing criminal charges, but when pressed said the IRS would most likely use tax refund offsets to penalize those that don’t comply with the mandate. The IRS uses refund offsets to collect from individuals that owe the federal government a delinquent debt.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » What’s taking the CBO so long for its analysis? Update: $940 billion?.

You see, they chose that number because it puts it just under the TRILLION dollar(s) figure that we know will be scored by the CBO..

I didn’t get a chance to post this, but out of the all the crap spewed by NoBama yesterday, this was the most honest portion:

Obama on Slaughter strategy: “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the … rules are”; Update: “Combative” video added

In a “This Week” interview with ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, Pelosi said,

“We share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as — it just has to stop.  And that’s why I’ve fought the special interest, whether it’s on energy, whether it’s on health insurance, whether it’s on pharmaceuticals and the rest.”

Pelosi held to her skepticism about what is behind the movement.  “Some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters,” Pelosi said.  She also added that, “Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

HA

Fannie and Freddie are at it again | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

– Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are dating again. And word has it they’re seeing way too much of each other. Because their Congressional “parents” cannot be totally unaware of what Fannie and Freddie have been up to, individual incumbents in both chambers are either consciously avoiding their personal oversight responsibility—to provide adult supervision—or, may actually condone the various schemes carried out by the two government-controlled mortgage finance companies

Bayh is out.. Bayh to Obama: take this job and shove it.
Is Senator Mikulski of Maryland the next to retire?

Here is what he had to say back in January:

As election returns came in Tuesday night, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) said it’s clear that voters wanted “a whipping boy” for all the lost jobs and foreclosed homes.

“It’s like in Roman times, they’d be trotted out to the coliseum and the lions would be brought out,” Kennedy told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday night. “I mean, they’re wanting blood and they’re not getting it so they want to protest, and, you know, you can’t blame them. But frankly, the fact is we inherited this mess and it’s becoming ours.”

And today:

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election to Congress, saying his life is “taking a new direction.”

Hopefully the direction is not toward a bottle of booze or pills… Don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you

White House Hits Palin with Open Hand Slap | TMZ.com.

Just a reminder

People will complain that this is petty and beneath the dignity of the office, but (a) Gibbs partly redeems himself by winking at the ubiquity of their moronic “hope” and “change” buzzwords, (b) Palin is an Al Qaeda accomplice, so she sort of had it coming, and (c) as we’ve discussed before, the White House press briefing is one of the lamest, most useless spectacles in American politics. How can this be beneath the dignity of an office that has no dignity to begin with? The only time the briefing’s worth watching is when Gibbs is forced to defend something especially stupid that Biden said, or when something bad’s happened in the Middle East that sets Helen Thomas up for a “question” about whether we maybe had it coming. Lacking either of those contingencies, if the guy wants to resort to some hackish partisan Mencia-esque schtick to liven things up, I say go crazy.

Ignore the Sham Budget

The real action will have to be next year, after the mid-term elections. But even then, it’s not clear whether our political system can deal with the crisis of deficits and debt, or whether it will take our foreign creditors, on whose lending we are totally hooked, to administer the shock we need to get our financial foundation on a sound footing. I suspect the latter. They wouldn’t have to do much, just a few public pronouncements in Beijing that China’s central bank plans to invest excess reserves in a different way than it did in the past. In other words, there would not have to be withdrawals of foreign investments, just no increases to feed our ever-growing needs, to induce widespread panic in the markets and in Washington.

If I suspended my instincts about how the crisis would ultimately be resolved, and make an assumption that our political system could rise to the occasion—an assumption of historic proportions—what would Washington have to do?

When you are finished reading that link, go to this NYT article about the ‘Volcker Rule’..another must read

“I think it’s confused the issue considerably, because he’s basically fanned the fires of populism and in a lot of instances, populism doesn’t give you either good regulatory activity or strong markets.”

In Ohio, Obama vows to ‘never stop fighting’

PAPER: Obama's fortunes set to deteriorate further...
Bernanke under pressure; Faltering support for Fed chief...
Dow Suffers Worst Week SInce Last March...
Obama seen as anti-business by 77% of investors...
Europe welcomes bank plan, won't imitate it...
White House nightmare persists...

RASMUSSEN:
Obama Approval Index: -19
Strongly Approve 24%
Strongly Disapprove 43%
Total Approval 44%

THE DAY HEALTH CARE DIED

Many rank-and-file Democrats said their stunning defeat in this week’s Massachusetts special election — in which Republicans captured the Senate seat held for decades by the late Edward Kennedy — meant it was time to seek more modest health legislation.

It would be “problematic” to persuade House members to approve the Senate measure, Pelosi said, though Democrats haven’t completely ruled out trying to do so. Many of them say the Senate bill does too little to help people afford health coverage.

“In its present form without any changes I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” Pelosi said, adding, “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.”

Any effort to reshape the health legislation could well be a lengthy process — despite Democrats’ desire for a quick election-year pivot to address jobs and the economy, which polls show are the public’s top concern. Lawmakers have already been working on the issue for a year.

“We’re not in a big rush” on health care, Pelosi said. “Pause, reflect.”

Several Democrats said they should refocus the legislation onto popular proposals like barring insurance companies from denying coverage to sick people.

via DRUDGE REPORT 2010®.

WALL ST CHILLED...
MORE JOBS LOST...
Democrats propose $1.9 trillion increase in debt limit...