A brief excerpt from Monday morning’s lengthy Morning Jolt:

Hey, thanks for getting our backs in the big health care fight, corporate America. As we watch company after company declare the intense financial hit they’re immediately taking from Obamacare, I can’t help but think how useful this information is . . . if we have access to a Hot Tub Time Machine. Otherwise, it’s about two weeks after when it would have packed the most punch in persuading those wavering House Democrats that they didn’t want to vote yes — too much immediate economic downside, and too much political fallout to go with it . . .

Dennis the Peasant thinks Waxman leaping without looking, and about to have the roughest landing since Super Dave Osborne: “Beyond that, you can bet the staffers working for Democratic Representatives sitting on the Energy and Commerce committee, and especially those involved with Energy and Commerce’s investigation subcommittee are, at this very moment, completely horrified. They’re quite aware, even if Waxman isn’t, that because each of the companies named above have filed a Form 8-K and booked losses related to the event described in the Form 8-K, those companies have documentation that has been labored over by tax and accounting professionals for months, and then reviewed thoroughly by the company’s independent auditors . . .

“What Waxman is now laying himself open to is the charge that he is attempting to force these companies to manipulate their financial data to suit the political aims of President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Since there is absolutely no hope of investigative committee staffers finding evidence that AT&T (or others’) calculations are materially incorrect, Waxman simply comes across attempting to force the managements of publicly held companies to circumvent the law.”

Boy, this health-care bill just gets better and better:

AT&T Inc. said it plans to take a non-cash charge of about $1 billion in the first quarter following the passage of the health-care reform bill earlier this week, according to a filing submitted by the company Friday. The telecommunication giant will also evaluate changes to its health care benefits for employees and retirees.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

And now that the piñata is broken, we see it includes financial doom for the state of Arizona!

Arizona must drop a plan to cut its Medicaid program’s generous eligibility and instead pay an additional $3.8 billion over the next three years under the federal health care overhaul, state officials reported Thursday.

Arizona also stands to pay billions of dollars more in subsequent years than less generous other states would have to pay, even after increased federal funding starts in 2014, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System said in a report.

Gov. Jan Brewer and the Republican-led Legislature included a rollback of AHCCCS eligibility to help balance the $8.5 billion budget for the next fiscal year. The rollback would have dropped 310,000 people, roughly a quarter of the 1.3 million people now served.

But AHCCCS officials concluded Thursday that the health care overhaul’s so-called “maintenance of effort” requirements require Arizona to keep its Medicaid program at current levels in order to keep getting federal dollars. They said the state will incur $3.8 billion of added costs for its Medicaid population before increased federal funding starts in 2014.

Way to go, Arizona Reps. Gabrielle Giffords, Ann Kirkpatrick, and Harry Mitchell!

Fantastic headline for the lone Kentucky Democrat to vote for the health-care bill: “Yarmuth Not Concerned With Backlash Over Health Care Vote.”

This is the Louisville-centered district that Republican Anne Northup represented for five terms until 2006. Iraq and Afghanistan U.S. Air Force vet Todd Lally, financial adviser Larry Hausman, restaurateur Jeff Reetz, and CPA Brooks Wicker seek to replace Yarmuth.

Joel Mowbray comes running to the rescue of state senator Ted Deutch, running to fill the South Florida seat of former Rep. Robert Wexler.

To recap, on Tuesday, March 16, I called Ted Deutch’s campaign office and asked if he had issued a statement on developments between the U.S. and Israel.  Ashley Mushnick, deputy campaign manager for Deutch, said he had not issued any statements on the matter. I left my contact information with her. Later that day, the campaign apparently issued a statement to selected media entities and supporters, and did not contact me. I contacted the campaign again on Thursday, made the same request, and again heard no response. During that week, no media or publication picked up or disseminated the candidate’s statement, and as of Thursday, it was not on the candidate’s web site.

I only heard about Deutch’s statement on March 23, after my article on the candidate had been posted on NRO, when a friend who follows Israeli issues forwarded the statement to me. To this day, I have heard less than bupkus from the Deutch campaign.

Now Deutch tells Mowbray:

Anything I would say about how Jerusalem homes aren’t settlements and that we need to stop discussing settlements only keeps the issue alive. As Prime Minister Netanyahu was quick to point out himself, far more important to Israel is acting to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

How convenient. When the administration stands with Israel, he and every other pro-Israeli Democrat can cheer loudly, but when the president and secretary of state intensify what the Israeli ambassador calls the “worst crisis in 35 years” for U.S.-Israel relations, offering any critical word of criticism of the administration’s course would be “only keeping the issue alive.”

It’s fascinating that when the Obama administration and Israel find themselves in conflict, Deutch contends the best thing a pro-Israel Democrat can do is quote Marcel Marceau.

I’ve reported this week that all is not well for Sen. Bob Bennett, Utah Republican, according to the anecdotes of turnout and preference at Republican caucus meetings this week. A couple of readers have asked what’s fueling the anti-Bennett insurgency.

Erick Erickson of RedState has been one of the conservative bloggers leading the charge to replace Bennett, and he lays out his case here. High on his list is the senator’s support of an alternative health-care bill with Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, “which funds abortion, has an individual mandate, and which the Heritage Foundation and a host of conservatives point out is a terrible and unworkable bill.” He points to other votes, some going back to the 1990s, on guns, the courts, gay rights, and abortion.

One of his rivals, Mike Lee, suggests that the three-term incumbent is part of the problem on spending: “Congress has created a monster through its seniority system. It’s a bring-home-the-bacon problem. It’s part of the ‘I’ve got seniority so you need to re-elect me’ problem. The longer they’re in, the more they have an opportunity to say, ‘You can’t replace me.’ ”

This morning, a comment from Utah’s Republican governor,. Gary Herbert, seems to be dismissing the senator with faint praise: “Sen. Bennett is a good friend of mine. I think he’s served us well. But I know the other contestants, too. They’re all good friends. They all have strengths, and they all have weaknesses. I’ll let that play out without taking a hand in it.”

Wow: “U.S. companies employed 3.9 million fewer workers in January 2010 than they did one year earlier.”

If you will recall, when touting the stimulus, President Obama and his team declared that ”a package in the range that the President-Elect has discussed is expected to create between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010 . . . More than 90 percent of the jobs created are likely to be in the private sector.”

90 percent of three million jobs would be 2.7 million jobs. Yet we’re 3.9 million lower than when we started.

To meet the goal by the deadline, the country would have to create 6.6 million jobs in the next nine months. or more than 733,000 jobs per month for three quarters of the year.

Finally, President Obama remembers one of our most important allies, and does something to help them out:

With 22 pen strokes, President Obama signed into existence not just a historic healthcare reform law but also monumental piles of paperwork: New member registration forms. More claims. Ever-expanding databases. And on top of that, pressure to cut costs.

The bulge in administrative work may look like a nightmare to American insurance firms and government employees. But to outsourcing executives here in India, it’s heaven-sent. A number of Indian companies are already anticipating an increase in workload thanks to Obama’s healthcare law.

He may not be able to create jobs in America, but this president is doing a bang-up job of creating jobs in India.

Campaign ads don’t come much simpler, or to-the-point, than this one from Michael Allegretti, a New York Republican seeking to unseat Democratic Rep. Mike McMahon.

McMahon actually voted no on the health-care bill this time, but he voted “yes” before.

I suspect that deep down, Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, knows he’s a goner in November. And after the ordeal that his family has endured, he’s probably okay with that; life has much greater misfortunes than losing a reelection campaign.

The latest unemployment numbers in Nevada: 13.2 percent – the second highest in the country. In January, it was 13 percent. In February of 2009, it was 10.1 percent.

An early point about the Obama administration’s new plan to help homeowners by forcing banks and lenders to reduce monthly mortgage payments to 31 percent of income, usually unemployment insurance:

The new push, which the White House is scheduled to announce Friday, takes direct aim at the major cause of the current wave of foreclosures: the spike in unemployment.

As noted in several places, the new health-care bill has already made the cost of employees more expensive and taken away capital that could otherwise have been used to hire workers.

Farm-equipment manufacturer John Deere “said it expects its expenses to rise by around $150 million on an after-tax basis, mainly in the second quarter, as a result of the legislation.”

Verizon “told employees in an email Tuesday that Verizon’s costs will go up in the near term, pinpointing a tax-subsidy reduction for retiree health benefits.”

Heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar “said that its first-quarter earnings will be hit with a $100 million after-tax charge under tax law changes attached to the new health care reform legislation.”

AK Steele Holding Corp., “the third largest U.S. steelmaker by sales, said it will record a non-cash charge of about $31 million resulting from the health-care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama. The charge will be recorded in the first quarter of 2010.”

Valero Energy “will take a $15 million to $20 million charge to second-quarter earnings for the same reason.”

Medical-device maker Medtronic “warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers.”

If you want to reduce unemployment, stop passing legislation that kicks the snot out of employers.

A reader wonders, “Besides the fact that it represents an obvious broken promise, isn’t the new excise tax on indoor tanning services effectively a race-based tax increase?”

A brief excerpt from Friday morning’s lengthy Morning Jolt:

We haven’t heard Democrats and their affiliated talking heads making a concerted effort to paint all of those who disagree as backwater white supremacist biker gangs in, what, six months? I’m tempted to think this will be about as successful as their summer 2009 effort to insist that hordes of angry senior citizens with fanny packs and Gadsden flags showing up at town hall meetings represented a menace on par with Hezbollah. But who knows? I think one factor playing in Obama’s favor with the health care bill’s passage is that the apolitical types think the noisy debate will go away.

But I suspect the same “just go away, you bore me” instinct of our nation’s apolitical Muggles works against the liberals in these circumstances. While being called a violent racist mob is adding insult to expensive and over-regulated government-controlled treatment of injuries, the impact of accusations of racism and hatemongering has to constitute the most intensely declining currency since the Weimar Republic.

Colleen Hanabusa, one of the Democrats running for the House in Hawaii’s special election, has a television ad up, pledging to create jobs. Of course, in May of last year, as the recession raged and Hawaii’s unemployment rate was double what it had been a year earlier, Hanabusa voted to increase the state income tax from a top rate of 8.25 percent to 11 percent, and she voted to permit Hawaii’s counties to impose a sales tax on property. And she began the year by arguing that canceling a 36 percent pay raise for state legislators was “unfair and unconstitutional.”

I don’t know about Hawaiians, but pledges to create jobs from folks who hike taxes in a recession make me volcanically angry.

Republican Charles Djou – who has a much better-than-usual shot in a three-way race — debuted his first television ad last week.

Boy, voting “yes’ did wonders for Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D., Pelosi Suicide Squad):

Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas took some heat from callers for her health care reform vote during a telephone town hall on the issue Wednesday night.

More than 4,000 people called into the event, and many of them let her know they didn’t like her yes vote.

Most of the callers were civil.

“What did you do about tort reform?” asked one man. “I don’t see anything in the bill.”

But a few callers like this man from Port Orange didn’t hide their disgust. “How can a Congressperson that has been elected by the people just ignore the will of the people and allow their party to buy and bribe and extort votes to pass a bill that nearly 70 percent of the American public did not want?” he asked . . .

Kosmas said she understood his frustration, but he was wrong about her vote.

“First of all, I didn’t change my vote,” said Kosmas. “The bill changed. I think it’s an important distinction because when I voted no in November I voted no because I didn’t think that the bill before us was fiscally responsible or did enough to rein in costs.” . . .

Kosmas told one voter against the bill that calls to her office are running 50-50 on the issue.

Well, I’m sure the gubernatorial bid of Alex Sink and senatorial campaign of Kendrick Meek will help carry Kosmas over the top . . .

I’m sure you remember this pledge, and how there were no hedges, no exceptions, no “maybes” in his promise on the campaign trail:

“No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.”

Hey, guess what?

Take a look at what’s coming down the road, starting with provisions that take effect first:

• A new 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services that takes effect for services provided after June 30, 2010.

Expiration date achieved, again.

I’ve offered quite a bit of criticism of Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana, and probably will offer heaps more between now and November. So I want to take a moment to salute his spokeswoman for her words of perspective in recent threats sent to the congressman:

The threats have come through calls and letters as the office is flooded with contacts about Hill’s vote in favor of the federal health care bill. Some of the threats appear to be coming from Hill’s 9th District in Indiana, but spokeswoman Katie Moreau said they are a small percentage of the calls.

“These are very rare instances and they don’t reflect on the people of Southern Indiana,” she said. “I quite frankly think folks back home find this disturbing.”

Most people who call and write are respectful, she said.

“It’s an emotional issue,” Moreau said. “They voice their opposition or agreement.”

Take a large enough group of people, and you’ll find a nut. The problem is that everyone wants to define the movements they don’t like by the nuts.

Relatively great news for Rep. Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota Democrat: he’s only a little bit worse off than before his vote to pass the health-care bill.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state, taken Tuesday night, shows Republican Rick Berg leading Pomeroy by seven points, 51% to 44%. Just one percent (1%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and four percent (4%) are undecided. Last month, in Rasmussen Reports’ first Election 2010 survey of the race, Berg led Pomeroy by six, 46% to 40%.

President Obama is in Iowa City, Iowa, today, selling the health-care bill that is signed into law and thus traditionally not seen as something that needs to be “sold.”

The unemployment rate in Iowa City in January, the most recent month for which figures are available, is 3.9 percent. With the national rate at 9.7 percent, that looks pretty good, and compared to August’s 4.4 percent, it is.

But the local unemployment rate was 2.8 percent in December 2008, and never went above 3.3. percent since January 2005. In other words, even where the economy isn’t that bad, it’s still been worse for almost every month of Obama’s presidency than it was for most of that “awful” Bush presidency.

Health-care reform: Castro-approved!

I think Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should mention this to the Cuban-Americans in her Broward and Miami Dade district.