Archive for the ‘Domestic Issues’ Category

Repealing Sound Economic Policies Means Repealing Their Results

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Here’s something to scare the bejeezus right outta you. Congressmen Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

One of the strongest factors promoting recovery from our 10 post-World War II recessions was an unshakable conviction that, regardless of the immediate trouble, the American economy is fundamentally strong. Based on this underlying confidence, recessions and recoveries roughly conformed to the principle of the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom, and vice versa.

Repealing the ResultsThus real growth in the four quarters following postwar recessions averaged 6.6% and 4.3% over the following five years. As the chief economist for Barclays, Dean Maki, said in this newspaper on Aug. 19, “You can’t find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery.”

That may no longer hold. Since the current recession has lasted a record seven quarters—and has been marked by a near-record average GDP decline of 1.8% per quarter—we should be witnessing the start of a powerful and sustained recovery. Yet forecasts of a 2% recovery in growth are only one-fourth as strong as postwar experience suggests. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at a generational high of 10.2%.

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.
:
Anyone who believes the Democratic Party’s recently expressed concern over the deficit should look at the relentless growth of spending on its watch. Total nondefense spending set an all-time record this year—20.2% of GDP—double federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the height of the New Deal in 1934. Even without this year’s stimulus bill and last year’s bailout of the financial system, nondefense discretionary spending authority still grew by 10.1% in fiscal year 2009 and is projected to rise by another 12% in fiscal year 2010. Forty-three cents of every dollar of this spending is borrowed money.

Given the magnitude of federal borrowing, there is good reason to expect higher interest rates and strong inflationary pressures in the future.

It is hardly surprising that many investors are reaching the conclusion that this administration and Congress favor policies that virtually guarantee the economy will not return to the climate of low interest rates, benign inflation and strong growth that we knew from 1982-2007. These investors understand a simple truth that current Washington policy makers fail to grasp: When you repeal the Reagan economic program, you repeal its results.

How do we solve the problem? First, we have to define it.

The fundamental problem with what we are doing right now is an enduring and often unstated belief that expurgation is the key to our success. The economy is just part of our society, and our society is suffering because it isn’t yet pure enough. People in charge right now are giving lots and lots of speeches about things — it seems to be their answer to every single problem that comes along. And I don’t hear very much about people-making-money-helping-other-people in those speeches. I don’t hear much about liberty or freedom.

What I do hear about is other people being the cause of all our problems. Certain types of people. “Wall Street bankers who caused this mess in the first place” is a more familiar phrase than one would expect any intact phrase to be, in a healthy, thinking environment. People clinging bitterly to their guns and their bibles. Sometimes I hear about sacrifice. We are to become rich by first becoming poor…or, forget the rich part, it is our destiny to simply be poor and we shouldn’t want anything more than that. We already got ours, now we have to sacrifice for whoever is behind us in line. The equal distribution of our misery, is much more worthy of mention than the ending of it.

I don’t recall Reagan saying or doing anything like this. I don’t recall him saying anything about fixing the economy solely for the benefit of people who eat arugula…or those who don’t…or people who cling to their bibles, or people who don’t. He spoke of The People as — investors. Stakeholders. Real people, who had every right and reason in the world to expect their representatives to run the government that belonged to them…non-destructively.

We were waiting for the representatives to roll back a bloated and harmful government. To repair a mistake. The way a man might wait for you to roll your car off his foot.

Our current administration came riding in on a white horse as a champion delivering us from a bad situation, as a remedy to past mistakes. But it doesn’t seem to think the representation is what rolled the car onto the poor guy’s foot; it seems to think he stuck his foot under there. Come-uppins seems to be the prevailing theme binding all these speeches together.

We are to be purified of our past sins through pain. Salvation may lie on the other side…things may get better after they get worse…maybe. But no promises there. The pain is the important thing right now. Sacrifice…apologize…grab-a-mop, and I-inherited-this-mess.

What’s the solution? The message that needs to go to our leaders has to be one of expectations within a certain window of time. Things should improve. It’ what they’re there for. If they can expect re-election while things are not getting better, then it is silly to think there’s any incentive for them to make things better.

FDR’s tarnished-silver legacy is going to have to get a little bit more tarnished here, I’m afraid. And it should. There’s no reason for a recession, even a giant, rancid, history-making recession, to drag on over an entire decade. But when a sour economic climate can be used as a foundation for a re-election campaign, as opposed to just for regime-change campaigns — that is what happens. Countries become saddled with cancerous governments, layers of bureaucracy politically invested in that country’s continued suffering.

And then those countries turn into dictatorships. Their people are told what to think. They’re told to believe things are getting better when they really aren’t.

If this is not to happen in America, we need a better job definition for our leaders. The message needs to be expressed that things should be getting substantially better, and soon. Or else. If we ask for them to tell us sweet little lies every election cycle, then that’s exactly what they’re going to do. This would cost us not only our prosperity, such as it is, but our freedom as well.

Ace on “Hypocrisy”

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Out of the mouths of frat boys, comes wisdom:

Hypocrisy does not mean “Establishing a standard for yourself and then failing to live up to it.” There is a different word for that: It’s called being a human being. Or at least a human being who does, in fact, attempt to better herself and set goals and maintain a standard of conduct.

Anyone who sets goals for himself will fail. And what is the alternative?

Hypocrisy is, instead, proclaiming a series of values and vindictively using those values to chastise others for failing to live up to them, all the while gleefully violating them yourself.

Has Prejean done this? I don’t remember a single statement she made about sexual modesty. The only thing I remember her saying about sex at all wasn’t even about sex, per se, but about marriage, and that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Bull’s-Eye.

When the day comes you catch wind of the fact that Carrie Prejean has married a woman, go ahead and give me a call.

Actually, even then don’t expect to find me too terribly interested. Lest anyone forget — Carrie Prejean did not raise the issue of same-sex marriage. Perez Hilton did that. Ms. Prejean simply answered the question that was put to her. After Mr. Hilton brought it up.

Who asked him, anyway?

I have a short list of people who have no business whatsoever judging, or imposing criteria upon, Miss America contestants — or any contestants in any other contest dealing with feminine beauty. I’m thinking children; eunuchs; straight women; gay men.

I’m not entirely sure about the eunuchs and the straight women.

And this is certainly not intended as an insult, either. Do you know how many women have approached me, over the years, about “do you think I should wear these pumps or those sandals?” and I look at them all perplexed, and say “you’re asking me?” And yet the question-mark-pockmarked assault continues. Do these shorts make me look fat. Thread count in the bedsheets. Eggshell or off-white. Oneida or Noritake.

Specialties, folks. All specialists to their specialties. Can’t believe it has to be said, but…when a decision is to be made about which young lady looks best in a bathing suit, this is what straight men are for — and a straight man is what you want. Best looking in an evening gown: Ask a straight man. Singing: Straight man. Talent: Straight man. Sexiest walk: Straight man.

Perez Hilton had as much business there as a pig has in church. It’s not a discriminatory statement. It’s just a fact.

Back to the subject at hand: Yes, we need to revisit what exactly hypocrisy means. It’s not a catch-all trap for you to use against people who have upheld, or embraced, or advocated some standard you personally find unappealing. There has to be an actual contradiction taking place. One set of rules for yourself and a higher one for others. Without that, the H-word has no meaning within that particular situation.

D’JEver Notice? XLVII

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Think of this one (along with all the other d’jever-notice posts) as an inquiry of the “Am I The Only One Who” sort. Not so that I can tell others what they should be thinking…I really do want to know if I’m the only one.

Liberals are working on two pieces of “landmark legislation” right now. You know the drill: They pass “landmark” stuff, everybody else “sets the clock back a hundred years.” I’d sure like to exchange some ideas with them right about now — find out what in the hell is going on in their head, how it makes sense to call a new offense punishable by hard prison time a “public option.”

But it is at times like these that it is toughest to engage them. Going by their words, it is all my fault. I’m at my stupidest right now. I need to pipe down and shut up until the “landmark” is safely on the desk of “basically God” getting that Presidential signature. Then, presumably, I’ll smarten up and I’ll be fit for casual conversation again. They’ll be happy to discuss with me the latest Boston Legal re-run, and what a wonderful job it did of “presenting both sides.”

So am I particularly stupid during these times? Or am I always stupid, and it’s only evident when liberals are in the middle of trying to do something that makes the living of life a whole lot more secure but also a whole lot tougher?

I keep wondering, because when they are in the middle of doing their damage, I don’t get the impression that they think I’m stupid…or that they think it’s evident that I’m stupid. The impression I get is of a subtly different thing. It’s that there is great urgency in audibly pointing out how stupid I am. To sit there silently, nodding, thinking to one’s hardcore-liberal self about what a stupid dolt I am, is decidedly out of the question. It’s rather like an air raid siren. And it competes with others, because anyone else pointing out facts inconvenient to the latest liberal attempt, is just as stupid as I am, and it’s just as urgent an exercise to point out that too.

My God, the energy liberals spend giving instructions to each other on what to think about things. Just the sheer wattage involved. One must naturally wonder if it might not be a principal cause of global warming.

This is not natural. I do, just in my own personal stuff, some “landmark” things now and then. Like anyone else who labors to make things a certain way and wants them to turn out right, I try to avoid it. Go for the smaller, incremental, testable changes first. When a “landmark” thing becomes unavoidable, my readiness, willingness, and ability to engage ideas reaches a high zenith rather than a low nadir. It’s my natural desire not to screw up. When I’m doing “landmark” things I want to make sure they’re being done right. It’s when I’m doing the tedious, mundane everyday maintenance things that I might be inclined to brush off what other people say.

Here liberals are with not just one “landmark” thing, but two — health care and climate — and all of we who are not them, are cresting out in our dumb ol’ chuckle-headedness. Perhaps it is a lack of ammunition that is the liberals’ problem. As Ann Coulter said,

If liberals were prevented from ever calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments…the loss of “dumb” would nearly cripple them. Like clockwork, every consequential Republican to come down the pike is instantly, invariably, always, without exception called “dumb.” This is how six-year-olds argue: They call everything “stupid.” The left’s primary argument is the angry reaction of a helpless child deprived of the ability to mount logical counterarguments…the “you’re stupid” riposte is part of the larger liberal tactic of refusing to engage ideas. Sometimes they evaporate in the middle of an argument and you’re left standing alone, arguing with yourself. More often, liberals withdraw figuratively by responding with ludicrous and irrelevant personal attacks.

And this does seem to be what I’m seeing.

It causes me great concern. There is supposed to be a whole lot of confidence that Nancy Pelosi has slapped together the perfect stack of 2,000 pages of stuff…stuff that’ll fine your ass thousands of dollars if you don’t buy a health plan, and then after that, throw you in the hoosegow if you still haven’t complied.

That it is a liberal idea, concerns me greatly. These never seem to be good ideas, in the long run. Never.

But it causes me much greater concern that it’s being defended by people who argue like six-year-olds. Even if they’re right about me and others being so stupid…does it matter? Stupid people, every now and then, have the right idea. Smart people, very often have the wrong one.

People who argue like six-year-olds, on the other hand, cannot select the right idea any more often than they would by random chance. To make a good decision more often than you would by random chance, you have to be able to evaluate an idea, figure out where it would lead over time, and think rationally and dispassionately on any objections to it. All that might very well, once in awhile, be within the capacity of a stupid person. But six-year-olds lack this ability, and so people who argue like six-year-olds also must lack this ability. Unless they’re hiding some secret skill set, which does not seem to be the case.

If it’s a great, wonderful plan that will help the country, seems to me it should be possible to see it defended that way now & then. But I don’t. The urgency in pointing out my brainlessness seems to always take priority. So is it just me?

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano‘s place.

“We Can’t Make That Up; It’s Right There in the Bill”

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Hat tip to Boortz, who elaborates on the theme of “this bill is more dangerous than any terrorist” which some may find questionable at first:

A government takeover of our health care system will do more than the Islamic terrorists to cause permanent damage to our Republic. The amounts of money we will have to borrow from China and Europe to fund this takeover will be a burden on generations of Americans to come. You can’t say that about the Islamic terrorist attacks. The terrorists didn’t rob tens of millions of Americans of their sense of independence. ObamaCare will. The Islamic terrorist attacks did not permanently reduce the quality of health care in the United States. ObamaCare will. The Islamic terrorist attacks did not destroy health care innovation in the United States. ObamaCare will.

Me, I’m just sick of the blatant lying. Lying about just basic concepts…like…when you’re out of money and neck-deep in debt, what you need to do is spend some money. If you’re worried about not being able to make informed choices about your healthcare, what you need is some laws that say you’re not allowed to make any choices and that’ll fix everything.

There are forty million uninsured. No wait, 35. No wait…43. No wait…30. No wait…50. Look if you’re so worried about it, make a new program that will cover them and leave the rest of us alone. Or how’s this. A lot of them are illegal aliens who broke into our country, right? Make a deal with some other countries to have some form of socialized medicine, so that the illegal aliens who are really worried about gaining full access to health care, can go break into those countries instead.

Oh — wait — what am I talking about. We’re supposed to be living under this big disgrace because we’re the only “civilized” country that doesn’t have socialized medicine. So it already works that way! It’s just like the “recovery” we got from last year’s “stimulus” plan, bound to end with the same lament: “Gee, we coulda got nuthin’ for a whole lot cheaper than that.”

Except this is not “nuthin.” It is a fundamental transformation of the relationship between the governors and the governed. Pass this turkey, and your lives are in the hands of government bureaucrats. You are worthy — maybe — of a new liver, even if you’ve been drinking more than the bureaucrat thinks you should have been. Or maybe not. Maybe you can get the surgery to have a cancerous lung removed, even though way back in your twenties you had a smoking habit. Maybe not. Maybe your daughter can get the chemotherapy she needs…if you’ve been doing your part to support a controversial abortion-rights bill. If you didn’t vote like you were supposed to, when you were supposed to, then who knows maybe some paperwork will get lost.

It's About PowerSeem far fetched? Well look at it this way — why sweat the particulars of how far this control will or might extend into our lives. Isn’t that all just an academic exercise? It is known…provable…that the whole point to the process is to extend the control wielded by those who work in government, into the lives of those who do not. Past the magnitude to which that power extends today. We know this. Beyond any doubt.

So when we discuss how far the power is to extend, we are really discussing the willingness with which government might voluntarily restrain itself. Not today, but in generations to come.

Well, governments don’t restrain themselves. They are like a George Patton Army. They are always advancing, never retreating, never holding ground, always looking for a weak spot in the defense of the “enemy” — that’s you and me, if we believe in limited government — and if they don’t find a weak spot, they’ll attack a strong spot. Scratch the analogy about Patton. They’re like sharks. It’s contrary to their mode of existence to remain static. That line that separates what they can do from what they cannot do, has to be in motion all the time…and generation to generation, it always has to move in the same direction. Our government, that other country’s government…government in general. It’s how they roll.

It’s not their job to restrain themselves. Sure you can say it’s in their job description — the United States Constitution. But does the U.S. Constitution work on the honor-system? No…it does not. That’s why the Second Amendment is in there. It’s there to put the people in charge, so our government doesn’t see the kind of opportunity in this creeping fascism that our government so obviously does see.

The Second Amendment really has nothing to do with guns. It has to do with duty…duty of the people to hold our government in check. And we’re failing that duty big-time right now.

Just Forget About Your “Jobless Recovery”…

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

This looks to be a recovery that will take place at the expense of jobs.

Oh well. Guess we just blame George W. Bush.

Third-quarter estimates this week are expected to show that the economy grew for the first time since the quarter ending in June 2008. Despite the estimated 3 percent expansion and a stock market that has been on a tear since March, hundreds of thousands of people are still being laid off each month.

Eight million jobs have been lost nationwide since the recession began two years ago, and by some measures workers face the worst job market since the Depression. The average laid-off worker has been without a job for 61/2 months, a post-World War II record. Many of those workers will never recover financially.

California’s hole, deepened by a state budget mess and volatile tax system, is far worse: Unemployment is at 12.2 percent, third highest in the nation; and adding discouraged and part-time workers puts it over 20 percent.

“It’s not even a jobless recovery; it’s a recovery with more job losses,” said UCLA economist Lee Ohanian. “The idea of having essentially no net job creation after a remarkably severe recession is a real pathology for the U.S. economy.”

Cantor Nails It

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Bingo, bingo, bingo. There is nothing to actually oppose; nobody genuinely believes in this bullshit.

It is a belief that comes to our shores from some surreal other place where there are no genuine beliefs: The best cure for our ailing economy is a ginormous social program, and we’ll have much better health care in our country when it’s run by the country’s government…just like the Post Office…which is always having problems.

President Obama Himself has said those things, and more. They make no sense. It’s all like saying “think I’ll dry myself off by jumping in this lake” or something. This is, as I’ve written before, the natural consequence of spending a childhood like the little boy who wished people out to the cornfield. When you make it to maturity having never ever been told “no.”

We’re gonna defeat those terrorists in Afghanistan, by not doing anything. Yeah, boy that’ll make ’em sorry.

We’re going to heal the division that has torn our beloved country apart…by making fun of Republicans for clinging bitterly to their Bibles and their guns. We’re going to start a new era of accepting responsibility…by blaming every li’l thing that isn’t turning out the way we’d want, on Obama’s predecessor.

This is the kind of thing that gives me a Lee Iacocca moment. Where in the hell is the outrage?

Update: Silver lining? Maybe the democrat party will be carrying this Bizarro-world logic into the midterms next fall.

Update: Had this in my stack for the last couple of days…Why Obamacare is Failing at the Polls.

According to the Gallup polling organization, the percentage of Americans who believe the cost of health care for their families will “get worse” under the proposed reforms rose to 49% from 42% in just the past month. The percentage saying it would “get better” stayed at 22%.

Many are searching for explanations. One popular notion is that demagogues in the media are stirring up falsehoods against what they say is a long-overdue solution to the country’s health-care crisis.

Americans deserve more credit. They haven’t been brainwashed, and they aren’t upset merely over the budget-busting details. Rather, public resistance stems from the sense that the proposed reforms do violence to three core values of America’s free enterprise culture: individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition.

Majority Backs a Public Option?

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Well, well…summer’s over and it’s time to go pick out costumes and pumkins…start up the family squabbles about who travels where for Thanksgiving…and lookee what we have here.

Americans remain sharply divided about the overall packages moving closer to votes in Congress and President Obama’s leadership on the issue, reflecting the partisan battle that has raged for months over the administration’s top legislative priority. But sizable majorities back two key and controversial provisions: both the so-called public option and a new mandate that would require all Americans to carry health insurance.

Yeah sure, that’s just what everybody figured was missing from the American experiment: More excuses for the government to fine people.

So they got the poll they wanted. This is just wonderful, our politicians are now like the little kid told “absolutely not” by his Mother, who then without skipping a beat runs off to ask Dad. Just wait until after Labor Day and take another poll. Problem solved. And you get to say you’re Doing The Work Of The People.

It's Not About Health CareI wonder…what if it was an “or,” and not an “and”? What if we could have a more involved and paternalistic government, a government upon which larger numbers of our so-called “citizens” absolutely, positively depend…or…we could get this “access to health care” for the 43 million, or 30 million, or 47 million, or whatever the magic number is today.

I predict you would then see lots of ObamaCare pushers opposing the coverage for the 30 million, and opting instead to pursue the more paternalistic government. Can it be denied any longer this is where their priorities are? What does a requirement to purchase health care, have to do with making that health care available to people? If that was the hitch in the giddy-up, how come we weren’t told before that this “47 million people without coverage” included so many who chose not to have it?

Why have the public option? With Obama in charge, isn’t it just child’s play to regulate these insurance companies into dealing with their customers more compassionately? How come there is so much priority put on it during the negotiations? Why is it so critically important to certain people…certain people who are inside the beltway? What do they have in mind?

Whatever your answers to those, one thing is certain. This isn’t listening. This is a case of politicians knowing exactly what they want to do from the get-go, and selecting, colluding and conspiring to produce the poll whose answers they would like the best.

Poor suckers. You’re going to be so sore you won’t be sitting down for a week, and they didn’t even kiss you first.

Death Pathway

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Snopes has spoken on the issue of “Death Panels” — sort of (warning, that site is popup-city). They have avoided, perhaps wisely, using or even making reference to that term. The wisdom of that decision depends on what they’re trying to do, and what they’re trying to do is strongly related to why I don’t visit their site nearly as much as I used to.

I don’t blame them for leaning left; we all have our little quirks in that department. But given a decision that would result in edifying the audience on the one hand, and staying out of a shouting match on the other, Snopes will opt to remain cucumber-cool and leave the audience ignorant. A decade ago I wrote an e-mail to David Mikkelson taking him to task about the Al Gore “Created the Internet” page and the high potential the contents had for giving the readership the wrong impression; the reply I got back convinced me the resolve to remain above & outside of shouting matches, must have been Barbara’s. Oh don’t get me wrong, the man’s words were calm, reasoned, logical in their own way — but it left me wondering if you could ask him “scrambled or sunny side up?” without getting scolded. You know the type, I think.

The death-panel page? It’s pure straw-man.

Claim: The health care bill currently before Congress mandates that seniors be given euthanasia counseling every five years.

FALSE

I haven’t heard that one anywhere. How ’bout you?

No, the discussions I have heard have to do with whether socialized medicine has a proclivity of investing life-and-death decisions with bureaucrats who care only about dollars and cents, and perhaps under-value the life that is left in people who don’t quite have one foot in the grave just yet.

And I think I’ll place my trust on that issue in the relatively popup-free Neo-Neocon:

The Times Online reports the case of Hazel Fenton, a near-casualty of the British health care system:

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened…

Read the whole story. It certainly does add a new perspective, I think.

Community Reinvestment — Part Deux?

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Get the word out

“From 1995 on, there was an incredible push by the Clinton and Bush administrations in every way they could — CRA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other ways — to increase the homeownership rate,” says Russell Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University. “What that did was to push up the price of housing, and that made it imaginable to lend money to people you never would have lent money to, on terms you wouldn’t have done before.”

In particular, Fannie Mae began to aggressively promote homeownership using the Community Reinvestment Act to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie went to bankers and said, make as many CRA loans as you can; we’ll buy them and take them off your hands. “Our approach to our lenders is ‘CRA Your Way,’ ” top Fannie executive Jamie Gorelick told the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2001. “Fannie Mae will buy CRA loans from lenders’ portfolios; we’ll package them into securities; we’ll purchase CRA mortgages at the point of origination. …”

Fannie promised to buy billions and billions of dollars worth of CRA loans because it was under pressure to do so from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which in turn was under pressure from Congress, which set ambitious quotas for low- and moderate-income loans.

The policy ended in a lot of people losing their homes. Now, Johnson’s bill would ensure more of that by applying CRA’s lending requirements not just to banks but to non-bank institutions like credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders. It would also make CRA explicitly race-based by, in Johnson’s words, “requiring CRA exams to explicitly consider lending and services to minorities in addition to low- and moderate-income communities.”

Republicans on the Financial Services Committee strongly oppose the plan. “Instead of looking to expand the number of institutions that must abide by CRA regulations, I think we should reassess the role this and other government mandates played in the financial collapse and consider scaling it back,” California Rep. Ed Royce said at the hearing.

It’ll never happen now, but I’d be all in favor of a litmus test for voters that says you cannot vote for a member of Congress unless you can demonstrate your capacity to understand: Things that happen, have a cause-and-effect relationship to other things that happen. We’ve got a lot of people voting who seem to think every single event in life is just either a “gosh darn” or an “oh goody!” — isolated and separate from all other events. Rather like objects in a parade. Clown; float; juggler; guy on unicycle; dancing bear; guy on stilts; life’s just a series of pleasant and not-so-pleasant surprises. There are no side-effects, and in fact there are no effects…apart from that which was primarily intended. Minimum wage goes up, people make more money; guns are outlawed, guns go away; rent controls are imposed, people pay less rent. Niiiiiiice and simple.

We’ve got a lot of harsh words for people like me, coming from both sides, who “see things only in black and white” and fail to capture something called “nuance.” How I wish we had a similar stigma against people who think everything we want to have happen in life, can be made to happen by simple decree. For their own good, I think, they should be gettin’ theirs. Stop them from voting. They don’t really want to make any big decisions anyway. They cannot accept the responsibility.

And if such a restriction were ever to be put into effect, somehow, I envision a Congress that has maybe twenty democrats in it. Tops.

“Mr. Sullivan is Being Treated Differently From Others…”

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

PowerLine brings us (along with many, many other sources) the sordid tale of Andrew Sullivan’s non-troubles with the long arm of the law…

Sullivan was caught smoking marijuana in a National Park and was prosecuted, consistent with the usual policy of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. But Sullivan’s pull with the Obama administration got him a sweetheart deal: the U.S. Attorney decided to drop the charges, even though there evidently is no doubt about Sullivan’s guilt. The issue here isn’t whether marijuana possession should be illegal, or should be prosecuted. It is illegal, and the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts does routinely prosecute such cases. But not Sullivan: Barack Obama and Eric Holder paid him off for his slavish devotion.

The U.S. Attorney’s action in dismissing the case against Sullivan was so extraordinary that it prompted this stinging rebuke by United States Magistrate Judge Robert Collings, who presided over the case:

When the case was called, the Court expressed its concern that a dismissal would result in persons in similar situations being treated unequally before the law…
:
In the Court’s view, in seeking leave to dismiss the charge against Mr. Sullivan, the United States Attorney is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances. …

In short, the Court sees no legitimate reason why Mr. Sullivan should be treated differently, or why the Violation Notice issued to him should be dismissed. The only reasons given for the dismissal flout the bedrock principle of our legal system that all persons stand equal before the law.

I’ll just re-state my marijuana position one more time right now, because I know there are better-than-even odds that I’ll have to say it before we move on. The longest threads at The Blog That Nobody Reads, after all, by far-and-away are the ones that extend beneath the pot posts. And I just don’t get that. It’s a law about controlled substances, one that arguably doesn’t make much sense…but which controlled-substance laws are immune from such an argument? There’s a law. Some folks like the law, some folks don’t, but if you break it then everything’s cool. Until you get caught. Then not.

Some folks think the fact that marijuana is illegal, is some kind of special issue, some notable encroachment upon our freedoms…outside of the blatant violation against the Tenth Amendment. They seem to think there’s some iron-clad human right to smoke whatever you want. I think they’re evolving into liberals and don’t realize they’re evolving into liberals — they’ve tumbled down to the fifth terrace of liberalism. True conservative principles say, if you think you should have a right to do something and your locality prohibits you from doing it — you move. You don’t riot, you don’t claim some “human right” you just pulled out of your ass, you don’t go claiming the Founding Fathers had this vision that you should be entitled to do what you want but they were so distracted by the lack of air conditioning in August of 1787 that they forgot to scribble it down.

Having said all that, my position is this: The federal government has absolutely no authority whatsoever to be prosecuting these cases. None. In fact, the Constitution clearly says they are prohibited from having anything whatsoever to do with drug laws, except for cases in which a drug-related crime was committed across state lines.

Within the states, the local populace can do whatever it wants. I don’t care. Force people to smoke pot every day. Cut off hands if people are caught smoking it. Discriminate. Let Catholics smoke pot but prohibit Protestants and Muslims from partaking in the evil weed…or vice-versa. Let men smoke pot, but not women, unless the women are topless while they’re smoking it, but not if they’re wearing tassles, unless it’s a Tuesday. Pass out free joints with the welfare checks twice a month. I. Don’t. Care.

Of course if the punishment was stocks in the town square, I’d be thrilled. Not because I want to see pot smoking punished. I just want to see the stocks brought back; I think they would represent a huge step forward in implementing my vision of what a civilized society really is. But pot? In my little village, I’d vote to keep it illegal. The next town down the road can do whatever it wants. It’s a local issue, and there’s absolutely no reason in the world to make it anything other than a local issue.

If there’s a court decision somewhere that finds differently, that decision is wrong.

Regarding the special treatment of Mr. Sullivan? Let us presume, perhaps recklessly, that this stops somewhere short of the top. Some US/DOJ lackey wanted to please his superiors, Holder and Obama knew nothing about it. Presume that, then investigate. Vigorously.

If “mistakes were made,” then heads should roll. The day has come to go spend some more time with your family. This administration, quite frankly, should be looking for some ways to renew its commitment to us that it will be running a transparent, ethical, and equitable form of government. It has been providing lots of compelling evidence lately to indicate this is not the case, and if the administration cannot take the initiative to figure that out for itself then it has fallen woefully short of possessing the intellectual acumen we were promised last fall it would be bringing.

Bill O’Reilly Doesn’t Know When to Argue About Laws

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

I could see both sides of this thing right up until about two-thirds of the way through when Bill and Annie have this dust-up about when it is & isn’t fair to toss something out about the President being a liar. At that point…words fail me. I’m just completely shocked. Not Captain-Renault-shocked, either. Shocked, like finding out an air traffic controller has always believed it’s perfectly possible for two objects to exist in the same space at the same time — you can’t do what you do for a living, thinking such a thing. “If He lies, He loses, if He lies, He loses…If it’s in the bill, He’s a liar! You jump too far ahead!”

Chrissakes, Bill.

I see now that my list of ways to motivate large numbers of people to do a dumb thing without anyone associating the dumb thing with your name later on is incomplete. It’s missing one tactic here…and our President is using that tactic with great aplomb.

It's About PowerI would word it this way: While planting a vision of an object in your audience’s collective head, convince them that their perception of this object trumps truth. I need to work on that wording a little bit. “Convince” doesn’t fit, because what’s being done here is kind of a Judo move, one of encouraging that audience to believe what they’re inclined to believe already. We get these descriptions of what the speaker says he desires the object to be, and from that we become unreasonably hostile toward any other claim about what the object really is.

It works pretty well, even on somewhat intelligent people who consider it their jobs to know exactly what’s going on. Clearly, it even works on 6’4″ leprechauns.

O’Reilly protests calling Obama a liar under this set of circumstances? I see O’Reilly’s point…kinda. Obama is the President, and if the bill doesn’t meet Obama’s expectations when it reaches His desk, He can jolly well reach for His veto pen — and if He doesn’t, The Great One becomes a liar. I get it.

O’Reilly should go back and watch some speeches from Ronald Reagan. Any one from a whole number of speeches, specifically about threatening the said veto. President Reagan never once used this method of deception Obama is using now. Reagan never once came close. He said “When that bill reaches my desk, it better not have…” or “I will veto any bill that reaches my desk, if it doesn’t contain…”

Obama could do that now. It’s a perfect description of what the job of President is. Instead, Obama’s choosing to go the route He is going, while, as Ann Coulter pointed out, these bills are going through the House. And there’s only one reason to do that.

Hat tip to fellow Right Wing News contributor Sharon Soon.

“The Soup is Terrible and the Portions Are Too Small”

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Much of the “governing” that took place in our country throughout the twentieth century, has consisted of a) identifying a problematic social program that had been put in place in some past generation to redistribute money — what in God’s name were we thinking when we put that turkey in?? — and b) putting together yet another one to give our children the same nightmares our parents gave us. We seem to possess a regrettable ability to fail to recognize a Faustian arrangement, right up to the last phases of it, the moment our nose-hairs are tickled by the sulfuric fumes.

Regarding the President’s speech Wednesday evening, I got five things out of them:

No one single plan is finalized yet, so nobody else can criticize it but I can “dispel rumors” by fantasizing about what I’d like to see in the final draft;

I get to call my opponents liars, but when they say I’m a liar it’s a breach of some kind of sacred code of civility;

If my opponents point out something won’t work, you should pretend nothing of value has been said at all, until such time as they can come up with a solution to it — but when I say something that makes no sense whatsoever but sounds good, go ahead and get as excited as you want;

Medicare is broke because it promises things we cannot afford to pay, so the solution is to promise more;

My plans all make it harder for any person or company to make a profit providing the services we say we want & need, thereby making it much less likely that it will happen — but don’t call it that, call it “holding them accountable.”

All in all, a fine and stylish re-hash of all twentieth-century left-wing proposals to “fix” our social-engineering and gimme-gimme programs handed down to us by our parents and grandparents. There’s nothing new added, but all the old stuff has been meticulously covered.

The editors of Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook have gone over the President’s remarks to see what else they can get out of it:

Mr. Obama began by depicting a crisis in the entitlement state, noting that “our health-care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers,” especially Medicare. Unless we find a way to cauterize this fiscal hemorrhage, “we will eventually be spending more on Medicare than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health-care program is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.”

On this score he’s right. Medicare’s unfunded liability—the gap between revenues and promised benefits—is currently some $37 trillion over the next 75 years. Yet the President uses this insolvency as an argument to justify the creation of another health-care entitlement, this time for most everyone under age 65. It’s like a variation on the old Marx Brothers routine: “The soup is terrible and the portions are too small.”

As astonishing, Mr. Obama claimed he can finance universal health care without adding “one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period,” in large part by pumping money out of Medicare. The $880 billion Senate plan he all but blessed this week would cut Medicare by as much as $500 billion, mainly by cutting what Mr. Obama called “waste and abuse.” Perhaps this is related to the “waste and abuse” that Congresses of both parties have targeted dozens of times without ever cutting it.

Apparently this time Mr. Obama means it, though he said this doesn’t mean seniors should listen to “demagoguery and distortion” about Medicare cuts. That’s because Medicare is a “sacred trust,” and the President swore to “ensure that you—America’s seniors—get the benefits you’ve been promised.”
:
Mr. Obama also called for “civility” in debate even as he calls the arguments of his critics “lies.” So in the spirit of civility, we won’t accuse the President of lying about Medicare. We’ll just say his claims bear little relation to anything true.

We’re gerbils on a treadmill, the way we hear these promises about how budgets will be met without cuts being made anywhere. We act like we can look back on some track record that promises accuracy in these rosy prophecies — or at least provides some way to determine accuracy, accurately.

That’s probably the biggest lie that’s been told or implied in this whole issue. These programs don’t cost what we’ve been told they’ll cost; they cost orders of magnitude more. There isn’t even a mathematical formula available to predict how much exploding they’ll do. The only one that’s worked out over the generations has been “>1”. Beyond that — the programs cost every single bit as much money as they want to cost, and when it happens, we’re powerless to stop it. There’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Except of course for one thing: Make more programs, provided the guy trying to get us to make them, is a really good speech-maker.

Update: John Hawkins interviews Congressman Joe “You Lie!” Wilson. You shouldn’t miss it. You know, that whole thing we talk about from time to time…hearing the other guy’s side of the story. Turns out there is one.

I was looking at all of the amendments and I knew that the Democrats had defeated the enforcement amendments about illegal aliens and these would be the amendments that would provide for verification of citizenship. That’s the wording and I’ve actually read the 1,000 page bill. The references to the illegal aliens in the bill didn’t have any enforcement. It was simply fluff.

So in other words, they say illegal aliens aren’t covered at all in the bill all they want, but if they deliberately leave out any enforcement provisions, it doesn’t mean anything because they can still…

It doesn’t mean anything. The verification, as proposed by the Republican amendments, was defeated in committee. I knew that and so I just felt like what I was hearing was not accurate. …So I was just really appalled at this.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Twilight of Honeymoon VIII

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Ewww…as accustomed as we are by now to His Most Exaltedness’ downward slide, it’s still kind of a slap seeing His wonderful speechmaking sliced and diced by — the Associated Press?? Who in the world do they think He is, some midwestern-accented tundra dimwit housewife or something? This just isn’t supposed to happen!

But happen it did. There’s just no getting around it, Mister Wonderful told some whoppers.

OBAMA: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period.”

THE FACTS: …The long-term prognosis for costs of the health care legislation has not been good.

OBAMA: “Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.”

THE FACTS: …The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it…

OBAMA: “Don’t pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. … That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.”

THE FACTS: Obama and congressional Democrats want to pay for their health care plans in part by reducing Medicare payments to providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years…

From Gateway Pundit, which found a few more howlers the AP missed. Hat tip to Linkiest — where, as an aside, The Blog That Nobody Reads is the blog-of-the-day.

How Many Jaydens

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

I’m happy to see the “blogosphere burning up” with posts about Jayden Capewell. President Obama just got done taking His pot shots at Sarah Palin for her “death panels” comment, all-but-naming her in His address to Congress. Foon Rhee of the Boston Globe tried to peel back the armor in advance of the President’s salvo, asserting that Palin’s insinuation, now made twice, has been “rather thoroughly debunked.”

You’re a fool, Foon. Nothing’s been debunked, except with the (quite correct) idea that there’s no one single plan to argue about just yet. But nationalized health care leads to life-and-death decisions being made by bureaucrats who are worried first-and-foremost about their lunch breaks, and how many little stacks of Post-It notes are left in the supply cabinet. That’s just what happens. It’s like heat-plus-fuel-plus-oxygen-equals-fire.

Enter the Jayden situation (hat tip to Rick):

A young British mother has criticized medical guidelines that, she said, resulted in doctors refusing treatment and leaving her newborn premature son to die. 23 year-old Sarah Capewell told media that her son Jayden, born at 21 weeks and five days gestation, was refused intensive care because he was two days under the limit set by the British government’s National Health Service (NHS) rationing guidelines.

Capewell said that her son Jayden cried and lived for two hours before dying in her arms. During that time, his mother took photos of him and pleaded with doctors that he be admitted to the special baby unit at James Paget University Hospital (JPH). Staff at the hospital, in Gorleston, Norfolk, told her that had Jayden been born two days later they would have helped him.

Blogsister Cassy adds:

In Britain, where socialized health care is firmly in place, doing everything you can to save a life is not important. What is important is following regulations put in place to save the government time and money.
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Now, many of you may wonder what this story has to do with us here in the United States. Well, thanks to Obama’s government run health care bill that Democrats are trying to force on us, it’s entirely possible that horror stories like this one could start occuring here. Consider the fact that Obama voted not once, not twice, but three times against a bill requiring doctors to provide treatment to babies who survive abortions. What kind of compassion do you honestly think he would have for babies like Jayden, especially if he’s successful in implementing his government run health care reform? Babies like Jayden would be just like the elderly to him — too expensive, a waste of time, and a drain on the system. It’s one more reason why we need to keep the pressure on lawmakers in Washington to, for once in their feeble, pathetic lives, actually grow a spine, listen to their constituents, and do the right thing.

Blogger brother Rick adds:

Bureaucrats enforcing cost saving measures as to who should be cared for… all in the name of nationalized health care.

Obama will make the upteenth attempt tonight to convince you that this is what America needs to embrace.

Bullsh*t.

Bullshit indeed. All of His slobbering toadies are climbing all over themselves to color and characterize Palin’s now-notorious “death panels” comment as some kind of made-up fable, a fiction, a fantasy, a myth, an urban legend.

And every single time they do that — without exception! — they prove beyond the shadow of any doubt that they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. That, or they’re talking to other people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Update: Sarah Palin knows what she’s talking about, much as that may irk some folks. And of all the possible lead-ins to her op-ed piece, I think Dr. Melissa Clouthier has put together the very best one:

The press alternately calls Sarah Palin stupid or irrelevant. However, both in political instinct and policy substance, it’s clear that she is neither.

Today, her Op-Ed appears in the Wall Street Journal. It’s good. Cogent, clear, and well-written. She’s got a ghost-writer, say lib operatives. Let’s hope! Does Barack Obama write all his own stuff? Surely, libs jest. His college thesis can’t even be found. Why would anyone quibble that Sarah Palin would have a ghost writer? Probably because she makes sense:

Instead of poll-driven “solutions,” let’s talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let’s give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don’t need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats’ proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not “provide more stability and security to every American.”

D’JEver Notice? XXXIX

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

If you wanted to “reform” America’s medical system out of a genuine concern for the welfare of the people being treated, you would care a great deal about the content of whatever legislation is being passed, and not care too much about the timeline.

If you wanted to “reform” America’s medical system in order to change the way America works, to change its monetary system, to fundamentally alter how people exchange goods and services, to shatter its structure, to demolish the marketplace, to transform the country into just another filthy socialist mudpuddle, but you didn’t care too much about the welfare of the people being treated, your priorities would be the exact reverse. You’d care a lot about the timeline but you wouldn’t care too much about the content of the legislation. It would just be the “camel’s nose” to you. Break the ice first, put the “right people” in charge, then get things working exactly the way you want later.

The American Medical Association seems to be much more concerned about timeline than about content:

The same day as President Barack Obama’s healthcare address before a joint session of Congress, the American Medical Association on Wednesday urged lawmakers to pass a reform bill this year. The group had declared support for the administration as early as May, but its letter still gives Obama’s agenda a much-needed lift ahead of a crucial speech.

“You have an historic opportunity to improve the health and well-being of the American public,” the AMA wrote. “On behalf of America’s physicians and their patients, we strongly urge you to reach agreement this year.”

The group said legislation should have essential elements, including provisions that ensure “health care decisions are made by patients and their physicians, not by insurance companies or government officials,” eliminate policies for pre-existing conditions, and reform medical liability as well as insurance claims processing requirements to reduce costs.

It made no mention of a public option but said reform should “expand choice of affordable coverage.” The group previously expressed qualified support for a public option plan, specifically the one passed by the House Energy Committee that allows doctors to negotiate payment rates, thereby “guarantee[ing] voluntary physician participation.”

This seems to dovetail with the President’s sense of priorities as well:

President Obama plans to argue Wednesday night in a high-stakes address to Congress that the country’s health care system is at a “breaking point,” as he urges lawmakers to stop “bickering” and pass comprehensive reform.

“The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery before a joint session of Congress. “Now is the time to deliver on health care.”

Obama is stressing his resolve to bring lawmakers together and clear away hurdles to passing an overhaul package.

“I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last,” Obama said in the prepared remarks, released in excerpts.

James Taranto had a swell time dredging up some humor out of this situation today:

Are you as excited as we are? Can you feel the electricity in the air? Tonight’s the big night! President Obama is giving an address to a joint session of Congress, in an effort to rally support for . . . well, we’re not sure what exactly.

The Hill quotes “a Democratic leadership aide who sat in on an administration briefing Tuesday” and who “said that while Obama will offer support Wednesday for a public option, the president will not insist on it”:

“He’s going to say it’s the best tool for reducing costs,” the aide said. “I think he’s going to be a bit noncommittal.”

The Associated Press reports that the president himself told ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “We do intend to get something done this year.” Politico puts it this way:

Obama will give a STRONG ENDORSEMENT to a public option–or government health-insurance plan–as a route to choice and competition, using phrases similar to his Labor Day speech in Cincinnati. But aides are sticking to their longtime plan: He will NOT draw a line in the sand, and will NOT say that a bill wouldn’t be real reform without it. Obama thinks it would be hard to get to true choice and competition without a public option or a fallback to a public option (the so-called trigger, which would kick in based on the insurance market). But his remarks will leave WIGGLE ROOM FOR HORSETRADING as the bill moves through Congress.

So he’s making a STRONG ENDORSEMENT, albeit a noncommittal one that leaves WIGGLE ROOM FOR HORSETRADING, because he intends to get “something” done.

Remember during the campaign when Obama’s critics faulted him for having voted “present” so often as a legislator? In retrospect, it’s clear that this line of attack was totally unfair. Voting “present” was bold and decisive leadership compared with this.

My, he had fun writing that.

I have a proposal. A proposal for the nation, for the legislators who represent it, for the Republicans who aren’t running it.

Let’s make real sure this gets done right. Let’s do what we should have done with the bailouts. Let’s wait. If that means nothing happens this year, there’s always next year.

Whoever gets angry and upset about that, probably doesn’t have the interests of the country at heart, or of the people who live in the country who occasionally get sick.

And whoever that is, fuck ’em. Fuck ’em right in the ear. Let ’em get as mad as they want.

I’m only calling for what our incumbent representatives should be demanding anyway. It should be intuitively obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention, that this is a good opportunity for someone to get fired. We, the citizens, obviously care about this. A lot. Our representatives, obviously, don’t know too much about what it is we want. Certainly not as much as they thought they did. They need to take time to learn. We need to take time to be heard.

So let’s wait. This thing needs some definition. And I’m not saying that to help Republicans or hurt democrats — it’s just plain TRUE.

Besides, last time I heard “status quo is unacceptable, better to do something than nothing” was that damn stimulus. The time before that, it was those damn auto bailouts. The time before that, it was the damn S&Ls. Not a single one of those has turned out terribly well. Come to think of it, not a single one of them have worked out as well as doin’ nothin’. All three did more harm than good.

So let’s apply the lesson we learned. God knows we paid enough money for it.

Good Ideas at a Town Hall Meeting

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Two of ’em, by my count: Open up the marketplace, and tort reform. And listening to your constituents like you’re supposed to, by implication, that’s a third good idea.

Why, naturally that’s all just crazy talk.

Hat tip to Noisy Room, by way of blogger friend Rick.

To TPM, It’s All About the Comeback

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

I can promise you one thing right here and now about the “take my $20” lady, Keli Carender. I can promise you that if I went into a crowded room anywhere and got the microphone, and my speech started with “this is all about two competing philosophies” or something like that — which is a good intro to about ninety percent of all the things I’d like to say — there is no way I’ll have the crowd cheering for me, twenty dollar bill or no twenty dollar bill. Typically, I start speeches out that way just before people get tired of listening to them.

Like my uncle used to tell me: “There are two kinds of people in this world, those who want to divide everyone into groups of people, and those who don’t.”

He was right about that, but perhaps not for the reasons he thought. Once people start to make a living off their weaknesses, once “need is the coin of the realm” as Ayn Rand put it — those who are well-stocked in that coin are the first to balk at any such exercise in taxonomy. They want everyone to be the same. It’s how they make their living. Beats the hell out of working.

Well, TPM Muckraker is having none of it. By which I mean…they came up with a meaningful difference between taxing the bejeezus out of us, and just walking up and taking our twenty dollar bills out of our hands, thereby credibly accusing Ms. Carender of engaging in a deceptive and invalid straw-man argument?

No. They just took note of how the democrat congressman smacked down Ms. Carender with his snappy comeback, “winning” the argument. Or how he would’ve, rather, if only their fantasy had come true.

To [Washington State Congressman Norm] Dicks’ credit, he did have the beginnings of a good response in turning down the money: “I can’t accept a contribution like that.” The problem was that his delivery, perhaps thrown off by the cheering Tea Party types, was too weak and apologetic. If he’d been a little more sarcastic, it would have been a great snappy comeback.

So this all-important health care debate, about how to manage a seventh or a sixth of our nation’s economy, some $2 or $3 trillion worth of transactions of goods and services…comes down to snappy comebacks. Guess that’s what we get for putting the kids in charge. This is a fate that naturally awaits us when people walk into voting booths with iPod buds in their ears.

*Sigh*. Some “muckraker.”

The Senator’s Corpse

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

I’m reading the headlines and I’m watching the news on the teevee, and it’s looking more and more definite: Unless someone’s blowing smoke up my butt, it’s a done deal. The democrats are going to take their pig-in-a-poke of a European-style universal health care plan, toss around a few brainless bromides about the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and try to put it over the top. They’re hoping X many members of Congress who are up for re-election in 2010, are going to look at their constituents and figure out they couldn’t afford to vote yes before Teddy Swimmer kicked it, and now that he has, maybe they can say “I voted yea to honor his memory” and get away with it. Tug at the heartstrings a little. Think of the children, think of the guy who needs Viagra and can’t afford it, think of Ted.

Dead Senator's CorpseThink of, think of, think of. Think of everything except whether the idea is a good ‘un or not. As I said this morning…and it is worth repeating…

Every left-wing politician’s argument, it seems, is a distraction away from the “If we do this, that thing will happen” that is central to all responsible planning. Their talking points seem to systematically address all concerns in the universe except that.

And now the nation is supposed to look back on this health care scheme it deplores, and smile upon it, to give a dead narcissist a cheery send-off.

Wonder what Mary Jo thinks of that.

You know why the nation is so unbelievably divided right now? It’s not because Republicans are smart and democrats are stupid. Here is some truth: Our division comes not from a divide over smarts, or even a divide in priorities or a divide in principles. It is, fundamentally, a disagreement in how quickly one should be distracted.

The typical democrat voter is plenty smart enough to understand conservative principles — at least the obvious ones. The ones, like: If you’re a proponent of womens’ rights across the world, you should have supported the invasion of Iraq. Or…if all the guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Or…if you say yes to all the illegal aliens, you really don’t know what you’re saying yes to — because being illegal is all about nobody knowing who you really are, or what you’ve done. Or…if you’re really tired of seeing gas prices go up, fer Chrissakes, drill baby drill.

These are not esoteric belief systems. They’re fairly obvious. They’re like “two plus two equals four” — if you use the part of your brain that specializes in basic, concrete cognitive thought.

And that’s what the ideological split really is. Our liberals don’t disagree with us about what two plus two is. They disagree about “overriding” concerns. To the liberal mind, there is always something that changes that particular play, by slapping the ball out of bounds. There’s always some exception clause being invoked. Something that turns everything upside-down; something that makes wet into dry, North into South, red into cyan, makes the moral immoral and the immoral moral, makes children wise and the elders childlike, makes a school district struggling with seventy languages into an optimal model for efficient education, a plutocracy into an egalitarian society, yesterday’s no-account bum into today’s “working family,” global-warming into climate-change, Hillary Clinton into a smart attractive woman, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into some earthly paradise, John McCain into a divider, Nancy Pelosi into a uniter. Everything is transmogrified into the opposite of what it really is. Because of some kind of right-brain-induced logical hiccup.

They don’t really believe the stuff they say they believe. If they did, they really would be stupid. But most of them aren’t stupid; they’re just distracted, and because they’re distracted they’re jealous of anyone who isn’t.

And now a Senator has dropped dead. It’s just another loophole. Another exception clause. In their world, there’s no way to really show proper respect to the dead, except by turning the rules of the universe upside down. In their world, if I really respect you, and you happen to kick the bucket on the day I’m asked what two plus two is, I have to say three. Or five. If I give the same answer to that basic question that I’d give on any other day, I’m not respecting you. And so when Senator Kennedy drops dead, we have to suddenly pretend a stupid idea is a great one.

But it isn’t. Two and two are still four. And the idea still sucks ass.

Recession’s Over, Business is Booming, Bonuses Paid

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Not out here, quite so much. In there

A month after they voted to punish some corporate executives for taking hefty bonus payouts, members of the House of Representatives quietly gave their own staffers a new potential bonus by making even their top-earning aides eligible for taxpayer dollars to repay their student loans.

The change, which took effect in May, means House employees earning up to $168,411, or the top level, are now eligible for government-funded subsidies to help pay down their student loans.

Hey, you oughta be happy; that’s the economic recovery that got your vote last November. Remember? “Change” and all that?

Best Sentence LXX

Monday, August 24th, 2009

The seventieth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) is hereby awarded to Maggie’s Farm:

Let me get this straight…

We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn’t read it (and who smokes) with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.

What possibly could go wrong?

And don’t you dare say a disparaging word against the government’s ability to “compete” with the private sector, or I’ll call you a birther right-wing whack-job who’s probably a racist.

“Death Panel” is as Good a Name as Any

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Charles Krauthammer exposes an ugly truth about these various efforts we’ve undertaken in the modern age to build our dream Utopian society that works “for the benefit of everyone”: A central pillar to the vision, is now and has always been, one of creating an exclusive club very much like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Unfortunately, he exposes this ugly truth not by realizing it about others and responsibly pointing it out, but by being a part of it.

Let’s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

Speaking of debasing the debate…if you pop that link open and read it, you’ll see the next several paragraphs after this snide little salvo, Krauthammer goes on to most articulately make Palin’s point.

The good Dr. Melissa goes after the good Dr. Charles with some points he should have been able to realize on his own. The truth is, even when Krauthammer makes Palin’s point apparently without consciously realizing he’s making Palin’s point while telling Palin to shut up, he fails to capture exactly how bad things might get. But the point isn’t lost on Melissa Clouthier any more than it’s lost on Sarah Palin.

Taken on its own, Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 is not a death panel. It’s more a death recommendation.

Dr. Krauthammer forgets though, that this isn’t the only death-related provision of the bill or of this health care legislation generally. The counseling is an indicator of intent. While a doctor is financially incentivized to have a death discussion, the government program will, by nature of sheer numbers, want people to choose, as President Obama says, a “pain pill over surgery.”

Further, the government, and a bureaucratic board of 27 appointees will be deciding care for people. That is, 27 people will be answering questions like: who receives care? Who qualifies? Who doesn’t? In what circumstances? It will be a bureaucratic answer and bureaucrats, who cannot be sued and have no incentive beyond cutting costs and appeasing political special interests. Individual needs will get lost in the collective good. Some people will die because of these choices.

This Utopian society we’ve been trying to build that nobody living or dead has actually seen…I’m just fascinated with it. During the planning and construction, someone is always being excluded from something. Old people should just die, former Governors of Alaska should just shut up, those people shouldn’t be in this town hall because they’re too well dressed.

We’re trying to find a way to get “everyone” covered, no matter what, so nobody’s excluded.

Before we talk about that, we should have Sarah leave the room.

She has the annoying habit of pointing out that this plan might give us an incentive to kill people.

Which, according to Krauthammer’s own words, is exactly right. She’s gotta go.

I would argue that the entire exercise of building this society is, from the foundation on up, riddled with contradictions. It has no clue as to whether it wants to honor the fundamental God-given right of humans to exist and to fight for that right to exist…it doesn’t know. Because its answer to that is both a yes and a no. Both of them rather emphatic. And so it labors under the heavy burden of an inherent contradiction. It ends up fighting itself. That’s why it’s failing.

When Dr. Clouthier cross-posted this at Right Wing News, Commenter CavalierX cut right to the heart of the matter in one deft motion, like a skilled surgeon wielding a sharp scalpel. Every single syllable of his is loaded with wisdom, you know this to be true because every single syllable of it could have been mine.

I generally like Krauthammer, but he’s an ass if he thinks there’s no such thing as a “death panel” just because the words “death panel” don’t appear in the bill that hasn’t been written yet. Someone’s going to have to make decisions on what qualifies people to recieve what treatments, and you can call it a commission, bureau, cabinet, task force or board — they will decide who lives and who dies. “Death panel” is as good a name as any.

For Now, We Dance

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

And we didn’t get here by saying “Oh, we’re willing to compromise and be moderate…that proves we’re reasonable…” We got here by the opposition being unreasonable. And with everyone realizing that on their own.

A certain faithful reader needed to see that. Now then. On with the dancing.

Split It Up

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Two halves; get the camel’s nose in the tent first, and its enormous dingleberry-coated flea-bitten ass in later.

The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.

The idea is the latest effort by Democrats to escape the morass caused by delays in Congress, as well as voter discontent crystallized in angry town-hall meetings. Polls suggest the overhaul plans are losing public support, giving Republicans less incentive to go along.

Democrats hope a split-the-bill plan would speed up a vote and help President Barack Obama meet his goal of getting a final measure by year’s end.

The important person behind this story is one Senator Grassley of Iowa, who has lately upset the democrat talking point about the angry-town-hall-people being just a bunch of drunks and bigots and gun nuts who can’t stand having a black President. Looks like that dog won’t hunt no more.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, a key Republican negotiator in the quest for bipartisan health-care reform, said Wednesday that the outpouring of anger at town hall meetings this month has fundamentally altered the nature of the debate and convinced him that lawmakers should consider drastically scaling back the scope of the effort.

After being besieged by protesters at meetings across his home state of Iowa, Grassley said he has concluded that the public has rejected the far-reaching proposals Democrats have put on the table, viewing them as overly expensive precursors to “a government takeover of health care.”

Grassley said he remains hopeful that he and five other members of the Senate Finance Committee can draft a better, less costly plan capable of winning broad support from Democrats and Republicans. But as the group, known as the Gang of Six, prepared to continue talking via teleconference late Thursday, Grassley said the members may be forced to reassess the breadth of their efforts in light of public concerns.

Lost in the din is the connection between whatever is to be done, and a solution to a problem. Why are we doing this again? Something about the status quo being unacceptable?

How many times in human history has a status quo been rejected because of its unsuitability, so that a “fix” may be implemented that is even more unsuitable…much discomfort ensues, and those with long memories wax nostalgic for the formerly-unsuitable status quo. We like to pretend that’s never ever happened, I notice, when in reality it’s happened quite a lot.

When I listen for people saying “When we do X, it will solve problem Y because of effect Z” all I hear is crickets. The solution itself is entirely undefined, and once it is defined it will be a solution in search of a problem if there ever was such a thing. All that’s been solidified is that action is required, nobody knows what, but the entity to do the acting is Congress. And it’s gotta do something really big, right now.

You know, there’s no way in this universe this can possibly be a good thing.

Kind of like grabbing the stupidest monkey that can be found, strapping him into the pilot’s seat of the mightiest Harrier jump-jet available, making sure it’s gassed all the way up, and doing whatever it takes to get the primate airborne in sixty seconds or less wherever the population density is the thickest.

Update: The Onion presents us with the happenings in an alternative universe in which, perhaps, the situation is just a little bit happier:

After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.

“Both parties understand that the current system is broken,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. “But what we can’t seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue.”

“Ultimately, though, it’s our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve,” Pelosi added.

Failure of Capitalism, Reform, and “Status Quo”

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

BroKen, who blogs at Rick’s place, has somehow made David Axelrod’s e-mail list. He didn’t intend to do that, he’s not sure how he did it, but now that he’s on it he’s damn sure not getting off of it. But that’s alright because he’s getting some great blogger material out of the situation…

The latest word from Mr. Axelrod concerned health care reform. He lists eight ways the reform gives stability and security, eight myths concerning the reform, and eight reasons reform is needed. I agree that reform is needed and he wants me to spread his information around, so here goes.
:
[E]very mandate either limits the insurance company’s income or increases their cost. A simpleton might think it’s great that the government will make those “evil” insurance companies get less and give more. But half a minute’s thought and you realize that the insurance companies will certainly find a way to pass increased costs on to their customers (you and me.) If they don’t, they will go bankrupt. Any reform that drives up insurance costs is really anti-reform!
:
Perhaps the government will not force you to drop your insurance. But if the government sets rules so that private insurance is more costly, most people (most employers) will seek a cheaper alternative. Therefore, the “public option” planned by the government will certainly drive out private insurance leaving only one source for insurance, the government. So, you won’t keep your insurance after all.

Once again, I graciously volunteered my wisdom, although BroKen already nailed down the highlights of what needed nailing down.

A simpleton might think it’s great that the government will make those “evil” insurance companies get less and give more. But half a minute’s thought and you realize that the insurance companies will certainly find a way to pass increased costs on to their customers (you and me.) If they don’t, they will go bankrupt.

Yup, you go to the head of the class.

But it isn’t the case just with the Obama healthcare plan. It’s true of every single piece of “reform” ever proposed by democrats, with regard to anything. And the rocket-fuel for the reform that is the public’s disaffection with the status quo, always seems to have been caused by the failure of “private industry” to provide a quality product for a reasonable price…for years and generations…which, in turn, was caused by…some other legislation that was proposed and negotiated and rammed through by democrats.

I’m speaking generally here. Health care, the tort system, education, auto manufacturing, steelworking, anything with a labor union. democrats throw around those two words “status quo” — and what they mean by that, is “the situation as I and my democrat buddies have made it.” They mean that, whether they realize it or not.

Every single failure of capitalism in this country that has necessitated reform, was caused by something that really wasn’t capitalism.

Now, this is not obscure stuff. As BroKen said, it requires “half a minute’s thought” and it may require even less than that.

One is not entirely sure exactly where to put one’s hopes: Do the democrats intend to wreck the free market one industry at a time, by creating these “failures of capitalism” through anti-capitalist legislation and then using the resulting failures as evidence that even more “reform” is needed? Or are they so stupid they can’t comprehend the history of what’s been going on, what they have been doing, what the eventual result has to be of their new rules that make relatively simple transactions artificially unworkable and expensive?

Do they just plain not give a damn? If not, what else is it they’re trying to get done, that always seems to provide “free” stuff for the desired constituents over the short term, but over the longer term is constantly pushing modest elements of The American Dream further and further out of reach for those who haven’t made up their minds to depend on government for everything?

Or are we dealing with some kind of “protection racket”? Is this just a way of sending a message to those of us who don’t want to be wards of the state? Kind of a “That’s a nice life ya got there, be a shame if something happened to it.”

A Short Course in Brain Surgery

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Single-payer compassion.

As noted before, we’ve been rushing off in a direction from whence those who are already there, are running headlong in the opposite direction — hands flailing over their heads, screaming, for good reason.

Compassionate.

Credit goes to Ed Wallis, Comment #5.

Word Games

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

The democrats have been playing them and Melissa’s been noticing:

Because “government-run health care” — both the phrase and the actuality of the idea — go over like a lead balloon with the American people, the Democrats have chosen new language hoping to obscure their intent to remake the health care system. The new language key word: “reform.”

Reform is a good word. It sounds like making something that’s okay a lot better. You know, get rid of the bad stuff, add some good. Unfortunately, the changes in the system are not reforms which suggest refinements. Rather they’re wholesale changes that will remake the very fabric of American society should they be implemented.

Just as an example, John David Lewis, a college professor read the bill and came up with some questions, the answers from the bill, and the implications.
:
What is described in the bill here is not simply a reform. The tax code, legal system, hospitals, insurance companies, doctors, and the patient experience are radically changed. Radical change does not suggest reform. It suggests transformation.

The administration, by pushing toward taking the “public option off the table,” is taking quite a gamble here but they really don’t have much of a choice. The country simply isn’t going for it. The hope now is to pass a “Camel’s Nose In Tent” bill so that the government can take over this industry at a later time. That’s good for the hardcore fringe statist crowd, but the matter remains about how to get large numbers of suckers and chumps to go for it. The point to the public option was to get “everyone” covered and take care of those 47 million mythical paupers wandering our streets with their inflamed appendices hanging out of their bellies because they can’t get health care.

Now, the pitch has devolved into something more absurd: There is a pressing urgency in getting our health care system screwed with, just for getting it screwed with.

I look at the “faith” people seem to have in state run health care, and I notice every single one of the advocates either have some kind of exit strategy which would spare them from having to put up with it for their own health care needs, or else they live in another country that has state run health care already. I can’t escape the notion that perhaps, when your own system of values burps out only a tiny bit of value for human life, your tendency is to become resentful of anyone else who places more value on human life. I also can’t escape the notion that this entirely explains this push toward a government/healthcare intermixing that doesn’t really offer anyone any benefits that anyone is willing to openly discuss.

I’m pretty pleased at this point with America’s current, if only momentary, return to her roots. Bureaucrats deciding for us what crooks can enter our homes, what organs will exit our bodies, and later what thoughts are in our heads? No thanks, this is America! And not a single tear shed over how many other “wise” countries have already accepted what we’ve rejected. Well done, America. Let’s lock it in place: How about a “Separation of Hospital and State” amendment? Maybe it’s time.

What Exactly Is a “Strategist” Anyway?

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Coulter and Serpenthead.

Amputations

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Yeah, we’ve amputated something alright…

Demagoguery. It can be a subtle thing. Who can possibly argue against the wisdom of preventive medicine?

I’d sure like to know where Our Holy Savior is getting His numbers.

Leave Barack Alone!

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

On Thursday, James Taranto discussed the Obama healthcare plan and how it was being “promoted”…

If the plan were good, you would expect its proponents to be staking their arguments on its merits. Instead, they are turning this into a debate about the plan’s opponents. A telling video clip of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) on MSNBC’s “Hardball” has been making the rounds:

So all of this is a diversion by the people who want to, frankly, hurt President Obama. You’ve heard the Republican senator Jim DeMint say it: Let’s make this “Obama’s Waterloo,” let’s break him. That’s what this is about.

And by the way, I saw some of the clips of people storming these town hall meetings. The last time I saw well-dressed people doing this was when Al Gore asked me to go down to Florida when they were recounting the ballots, and I was confronted with the same type of people. They were there screaming and yelling, “Go back to California,” “Get out of here,” and all the rest of it–until I finally looked at them and I said, “You know what? Your hero Ronald Reagan is from California. You should show a little respect.” And then they quieted down.

So this is just all organized. Just go up on the Web site, Chris. You in the media have to take a look at what’s going on here. This is all planned. It’s to hurt our president, and it’s to change the Congress.

Most of the ensuing criticism has centered on Boxer’s weird fashion commentary. This may reflect no more than a regional difference: Californians tend to be more casual in their sartorial standards than regular people. Still, it’s a head-scratcher why Boxer would think it is to her opponents’ discredit that they are “well-dressed”–i.e., that they look respectable.

This golden-stater says — hey waitaminnit. Don’t go looking to me for an explanation about what my aging-hippie-girl senator was raving about. In fact, if DeMint is looking for a way to hit back, if you’re ever in conversation with the gentleman from South Carolina Mr. Taranto, you might recommend to him that the campaign commercials be made to directly address this strange culture war we have raging under the surface. Who deserves attention? People who request it respectfully, dressing like they have something important to say that’s of interest to more people than just themselves? Or the folks with whom Boxer apparently feels more of a kindred spirit, the assholes who block bridges with bicycles during rush hour? She seems to live in a world in which you don’t deserve attention until & unless you dress down. This is an apt illustration of the decision that was made last November, to put the kids in charge of the dinner menu, what’s on teevee, bedtime, et cetera. Remind the voters again, please. Boxer looks like she’s ready to help you remind everyone what she & hers are all about.

Taranto continues…

But what caught our attention was the plaint that ObamaCare opponents want “to hurt the president.” It reminds us of those hilarious “Leave Britney alone!” videos that were the rage on YouTube a couple of years back. How exactly does Boxer expect this to persuade anyone to support the legislation? Just imagine the thought process: I don’t want higher taxes and government rationing of medical care. But doggone it, I’m for it anyway, because I don’t want to hurt the president!
:
So, let’s review the arguments:

• Republicans are bad, they lost the last election, and they have partisan motives for wanting to stop ObamaCare.

• People who are angry about this are crackpots who display swastikas and other invidious symbols. Also, their anger is insincere, and they are shills of the RNC. They wear nice clothes, and this is not to their credit.

• Some of the arguments against ObamaCare are false, according to Obama.

• If ObamaCare is defeated, Obama would be hurt.

Is there any argument for ObamaCare? In all the material we reviewed for this item, only this, from the Obama email:

Every day we don’t act, Americans watch their premiums rise three times faster than wages, small businesses and families are pushed towards bankruptcy, and 14,000 people lose their coverage entirely. The cost of inaction is simply too much for the people of this nation to bear.

In other words, the “crisis” is so urgent that any thoughtful deliberation would entail intolerable delay. This is the same old argument that has already failed.

If this is the best the president can do, he deserves to lose resoundingly. If that hurts him, there’s always aspirin.

If I wanted to motivate large numbers of people to make wrong decisions on a regular basis, I would take this list of ways to make such a thing happen and start fleshing it out.

I’d demand people support my dumb ideas, for any number of conceivable reasons that had nothing to do with the content of the ideas. Prove you’re not a racist. Don’t hurt that guy. So-and-so might get mad at you if you oppose my dumb idea. We’ll have riots…

I’d end up behaving exactly the way the democrats really do behave. All the time. It seems to always be a question of “here’s today’s reason why you should do this…and notice I’m not discussing what’s going to happen if it goes through, I want to talk about everything else.” I miss the days when the bullshit was of a different grade, one that pretended to be concerned about what was going to happen to us. “Don’t let Reagan stockpile more nukular weapons, he’ll get everyone blown up” comes to mind. What happened to that?

To repeat: Is there any argument for ObamaCare?

Krugman on the Town Hall Rent-a-Mobs

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Paul Krugman does his bit to make sure the powerful have a voice that will prevail against the powerless…

There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Where to begin?

I always took it as a given that the painting was about “ordinary” citizens, once given the courage to find a voice, being entitled to use it. The man speaking, after all, is in casual clothes that indicate a humble working and social status, and it’s obvious that this was central to Rockwell’s intent. But of course it isn’t central to the intent of Krugman, who wants to champion the cause of the poor, powerless and oppressed Congressmen who are determined to vote bills into law that they haven’t read.

Secondly, if the argument is one about anecdotes that suggest one side or the other is connected to some kind of organizational structure, with the matter settled upon the discussion of the first or second such anecdote, verified or not — that isn’t much of an argument, is it? Is this how the nation’s most prestigious economist decides things? I suppose that beats the snot out of “every single idea on the ideological spectrum is better than the idea to its immediate right, but not as good as the one to the immediate left” which is how I previously thought Mr. Krugman decides what’s wonderful and what’s odious. But it seems to me the former forensic method is simply a thin, purely cosmetic justification for the latter. Could someone place a call to the New York Times and inform Krugman that some of these mobs on the left have been known to benefit from central coordination as well? Judging by his remarks here, it should come as quite the learning experience.

Thirdly, I notice Krugman’s logic defeats itself. If these are isolated cases of nutbars and whack-jobs speaking out at town hall meetings, interrupting these poor, poor oppressed legislators who want so badly to vote on bills they haven’t read…but the real mainstream Americans understand what a wonderful idea it is to have this universal healthcare (in this bill the Congressmen haven’t read)…the solution is quite simple. Just stop holding the town hall meetings. Stop talking to us. Just pass the whole mess into law, and in the next election cycle the constituents can decide whether they thought that was a swell idea or not. After they’ve spent two to four years living with the consequences and had an opportunity to receive the benefits of that wonderful, wonderful state-provided health care.

Stop talking, start doing. That would shut down the enemy’s propaganda machine right then & there, wouldn’t it?

I realize it’s become cliched to ponder “What Would The Founding Fathers Think of X” and everyone wants to resurrect the gentlemen who gave us Independence within some mythical bubble, in which the old white guys in knee breeches and wigs, who seldom agreed with each other on much of anything, magically march in lock-step with whoever’s speaking about it. It’s not an honest way to argue about anything, and we try to stay away from it. Still and all, in this case, I have to wonder what Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams would have to say about what so obviously weighs on Paul Krugman’s mind here — the right, and the ability, of the powerful to speak out over the objections of those who lack any real power to stop them, and are committed to living with what results from the decisions of those powerful people, be it good or bad.

I try to envision a train of thought any one of them would use, just before announcing “and so this economist you have, Paul Krugman, is absolutely right and you should listen to him.” I’m not having much success with this. Such a train-of-thought would suppose that this nation was put together to make sure our elected representatives would be able to pass poorly-thought-out laws upon how the rest of us live out our lives — how our bodies are to be maintained — with an absolute minimum of fuss, hassle, thought or challenge.

Many’s the Krugman column that has inspired me to question: Upon what planet does this fellow live? This one’s just more of the same. Planet Propaganda, I guess. Krugman’s a shill, but that’s just stating the obvious.

It’s a bitch when those democrat-party paychecks don’t clear, huh Paul?