While everything else is falling apart, don’t forget about ObamaCare.

In the newspapers we all read that the legislation was passed via reconciliation. Most people do not understand what this represented. What Congress did was to pass this legislation under the Congressional Budget Act of 1984, which allows a loophole to avoid a 60 vote filibuster in laws which refer to changes in revenue and spending amounts; i.e. budgetary issues.

The legislation which Congress passed certainly does affect the budget, but clearly the bill’s intent wasn’t budgetary; rather it concerned dramatic changes for a large portion of our economy: health care. Given the bill’s intent, one can only hope that the upcoming elections bring greater ideological balance so that what promises to be damaging can at the very least be amended.

“Obamacare”, as it is colloquially termed, is financially a disaster for doctors, hospitals, insurers, and will ultimately be a disaster for our nation’s budget. It is also unfortunate for patients needing care.

Obamacare’s proponents tout the legislation’s cost controls, along with expansion of coverage for those who currently do not have insurance. The policy wonks seek cost containment and “efficient” use of resources. More realistically, cost containment could only be achieved if access to care were rationed.

USA Today:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Those surveyed are inclined to fear that the massive legislation will increase their costs and hurt the quality of health care their families receive, although they are more positive about its impact on the nation’s health care system overall.

Supporters “are not only going to have to focus on implementing this kind of major reform,” says Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard. “They’re going to have to spend substantial time convincing people of the concrete benefits of this legislation.”

The risk for them is that continued opposition will fuel calls for repeal and dog Democrats in November’s congressional elections. The bill was enacted without a single Republican vote.

Two thirds? Gee…that’s big, or something, right? A two-thirds vote in Congress can override a Presidential veto. Two thirds of Americans, I was told, think Sarah Palin is unqualified to be President. Two thirds gets into that level where, if you’re part of the remaining third, you should just shut up. That seems to be the opinion of some on the Palin question. Wonder if it applies here.

Actually, if two-thirds somehow doesn’t impress you — how about we got a little bit higher still?

Tucked away inside a new Washington Post/ABC News poll is a key figure — 72 percent. That’s the percentage of voters who disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and the number hasn’t been that high since — you guessed it — the week before the 1994 election.

The Cornhuser Kickback and Gator-aid — two controversial provisions in the healthcare bill — are a couple of attractively named and accessible reasons why people don’t like how Congress operates. And at no point in the last 16 years has that picture been so clear to voters.

Republicans are by no means immune to the dirty politics that permeate Washington. Democrats, though, have brought it to a whole new level. Pelosi promised Americans the most ethical Congress ever — and instead, we got corruption, cronyism, thuggery, bribery, and secrets. Obama promised Americans hope and change — and instead, we got Chicago style corrupt politics as usual. Ethics? Transparency? Yeah, right. It’s no wonder that Americans are furious.

And then, Democrats hypothetically spat in the faces of their constituents, passing a takeover of the American health care system against our will.

Barack Obama’s one accomplishment.

It’s so bad, Janet Napolitano would say it’s perfect.

Update: But don’t oppose it or else you’re a racist.

How’s that socialized health care system workin’ out for ya?

Hospital wards to shut in secret NHS cuts

Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.

The plans have emerged as health chiefs draw up emergency budgets that cast doubt on pledges by Gordon Brown to protect “front line services” in the NHS.

Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.

The proposals could lead to:

* 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.
* The loss of thousands of hospital beds.
* A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.
* Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.

The consistent theme permeating throughout all of the promised benefits of ObamaCare, has something to do with getting-more-for-less.

Has it been modeled on any ingredient that was successful in delivering such a thing?

WTF??

Stupak, from Menominee on the Upper Peninsula, said he and the others “stood on principle,” even if it meant bringing down the health care reform bill that most, if not all, of them otherwise supported.

Just before taking the podium at a 4 p.m. news conference, the White House released the text of an executive order to be signed after the health care reform legislation is passed. It makes clear the president’s intention “to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that federal funds are not used for abortion services” and continues the current prohibition on taxpayer money being used for abortions known as the Hyde amendment.

Update: WTF??

Update 3/22/10: Double-WTF, and there it is.

Steyn:

[O]ver time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people…there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.

Worrisome times.

I am getting really worried, because if 222 Democrats voted for this unconstitutional, very-unpopular maneuver, doesn’t that mean that all 222 will also vote for the bill itself? Why vote for this if you’re not going to vote for that?

Technically Speaking: Drew notes that this wasn’t a vote on the Slaughter House Rule itself, but on a GOP motion to compel the House to not employ the Slaughter House Rule.

The Slaughter Rule is not yet actually implemented. But the motion to halt it was rejected.

Yes there are lots of possibilities open for phony posturing. But this was still an important vote because it’s the first hard signal about how many in the House are willing to use deem-and-pass. To actually fasten their names to it. So I’m worried along with Ace.

This was not a costless maneuver for them by any means. In fact, they just handed the Republicans the perfect campaign theme for 2010, while they have yet to realize any benefits from doing so.

As I said before, Mark Steyn nailed it. Completely. House and Senate seats are important to them…but delivering the “legislation” is more important than that, if & when the two are in conflict. It isn’t quite so much the legislation as the public mindset that comes with it. The prevailing way of looking at life.

The old “Haven’t Got the Luxury of Loving Freedom” attitude. Opportunity-over-security would be wonderful and titillating if I could afford to prioritize things that way, but I just cannot afford it. Mediocrity for me, as long as it’s delivered on demand, on time.

The spirit that made nothing great.

They want to get that promulgated and propagated. This is more important than anything. This is their mother’s-milk. They know, if they lose seats getting this accomplished, it’ll be a trivial matter to get those seats back again. Conservative spirit is about as useful as a pot without a bottom, in a nation of the helpless. So their eye is on the #1 job.

They are despair.

Update: Something from yesterday. To help cheer you up. Because it’s refreshing hearing a grown-up talk like a grown-up in these worrisome, worrisome times.

Anybody who knows anything about this whatsoever, won’t see this as news. Still and all, it’s like unbending a coathanger and getting that itch under the cast finally, finally scratched. Ahhhhhh…….

One-sixth of the U.S. economy is threatened with a takeover by the federal government on the erroneous rationale that “tens of millions of people in the U.S. are without health care insurance, and therefore are being denied access to adequate health care.” Unjust! Unfair!

This is, of course, an absolute lie. Nor does some large number of people “die every day from lack of health insurance coverage.” That too is a lie.

Access to the health care providers (professional services) and medicine (products) of the best health care system in the world is already universal and available to every U.S. citizen, legal resident, illegal alien, prisoner, detainee, or visitor — regardless of whether anyone is covered by any insurance policy or health plan. For heaven’s sake, even the illegal aliens have figured out that anyone who walks into an emergency room is required by law (EMTALA) to be treated, regardless of the person’s ability to pay.

You can find out more about EMTALA here.

Congressman Freeberg would introduce a rider to repeal EMTALA as a condition of passing ObamaCare…just to be an irascible sonofabitch, to make the right kind of enemies, and to call attention to this obsessive-compulsive layering of safety nets that threatens to suffocate our country. Then he would be burned in effigy and run out of the beltway on a rail. That’s why we do not have a Congressman Freeberg.

The point stands nevertheless. We make society all lovely and perfect and germ-free, make it impossible to ever encounter any kind of personal disaster…we’re never, ever done. It never, ever ends.

This is a good, functional difference between Architects and Medicators. Architects construct a device that is supposed to do a certain thing, and then the thing somehow goes undone. Before they construct a new thing, the old thing m-u-s-t be retired. It is almost like a primal instinct.

Medicators just pile on. Can’t go back, we can only go forward. I suppose this is a fundamental attribute to any chemical addiction, which is what they’re really doing. They’re…well…they’re medicating. And so we have EMTALA, but we still have to have President Obama’s wunder-programme. Can’t go back, we can only go forward.

Oh, so now the dealine is Easter, is it. Seems like just a few months ago it was by Christmas.

Dems are aiming to pass health care legislation, once and for all, by Easter recess. But for all their optimistic talk, one thing remains clear: They don’t have the votes just yet. Then again, they don’t have a bill yet, either.

The first step of what promises to be an arduous process will come when Dem leaders unveil the package of proposed measures to fix the legislation and make it more palatable to some House lawmakers. Once the Senate demonstrates it is able to pass the bill via reconciliation, the House will vote on the Senate legislation.

Still, the math for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Maj. Leader Steny Hoyer and House Maj. Whip James Clyburn isn’t adding up at the moment. In order to keep an ongoing tally, Hotline OnCall brings you our whip count, the list of Dems who may be vulnerable to overtures from Dem leaders and the WH — or to overtures from GOPers who continue to believe they can defeat the bill.

There are just a few important goals here. One, they want a Medicator society, chock full of helpless whelps with unchecked impulse drives and addictive personalities who feel their way around life’s challenges rather than thinking their way through them. They want dependence. That is the way it always has been, and always will be: Medicators, inherently controlling, want everyone else to be a Medicator, to become a Medicator, or go away.

Second, they want an accomplishment. That’s why there really isn’t any final bill as of yet. They just want something with the words “health” and “care.” That second thing is so important to them, that here & there it changes places with the first.

And as a third priority, they want more people to be covered. But that isn’t really honest. If the first two items are achieved, and in the end result there are fewer people covered than there were before, they’ll be happy. Champagne and scrambled eggs for breakfast, and a ticker tape parade down Pennsylvania Avenue from noon until three. Hope nobody gets hurt.

In fact, for a model of what is likely to happen, look no further than the “jobs created or saved” with the so-called Stimulus from a year ago. NET LOSS — but — it’s a good thing we got our bill passed, or the number of people losing their health care coverage would be even bigger. So don’t call it a failure, because our bill never was supposed to fix anything, it was just there to keep things from getting worse. Mission Accomplished.

Any one among them, Republican or democrat, could double his approval ratings in a single instant by taking to the floor of whatever house and saying — “Let’s make it a primary objective in this new bill of ours that whatever covers everybody else, covers Congress as well.” In fact, that’s probably the only proposal anyone could offer at this point that the electorate would generally find appealing and positive.

Somehow…in that mysterious universe called “The Beltway”…it seems such an idea is not likely to gain traction. I haven’t heard of anyone suggesting it just yet. Have you?

Update: Great minds think alike. James Lewis, writing at Pajamas Media, has exactly the same thought. And somehow I doubt like hell we’re the only two.

Obama’s given 34 or 35 speeches now trying to resurrect His monster of a health care bill. Charles Krauthammer is ready to pull the plug and send Igor back to the graveyard to put the pieces where they came from.

…Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments) they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.

George Will, who is so smart that he is opposed to Sarah Palin even though he agrees with all her positions, puts it in terms that even a liberal can understand:

Ever catch a raccoon digging around in your trash? With a flashlight? You know that one-second pause where he looks at you with that “oh shit” expression before he bolts outta there?

That’s Paulie.

Now, why do people, anywhere, think government is going to give them choices? Last night we had dinner with a couple — I used to work with one of them on a government contract — and they were admiring my Android. One of them made the comment that, of course, working on government contracts he’d have to get a Blackberry or else resign himself to hauling around two phones. Indeed he would. Government means “you have to do it like T-H-I-S. Just because.”

I’ve come to view that word exactly that way. Why doesn’t everyone? “Of course, you have to do it XXXXX way or you have to get a XXXXX brand…because of our contracts.”

There is choice, and then there is government.

“Death Panel for ObamaCare.”

It’s a catchy slogan, but it’s a model for what Steele, and the GOP, should not be using. The first time Palin used it, it was a net plus. It got people talking about the power being invested in government — read that as “a bunch of strangers” — over not only end-of-life counseling, but all equally intimate issues involved in the delivery and administration of health care.

Now drop the sound bites.

They don’t work as well in the conservative realm as they do in the liberal realm. They simply don’t. Anyone who’s sat down to a Thanksgiving meal with one token right-wing curmudgeon at one end of the table, and a liberal counterpart at the other (uncles, grandparents, in-laws, whatever) knows what I’m talking about. The liberal loves to drop sound bites and then smirk smugly. The conservative isn’t quite as likely to do this. That’s because the conservative has some genuine concerns over the idea of strangers in the beltway telling him he has to pay more taxes…or not eat fatty foods…or his bonus was too big…or that only Washington spending can “stimulate” this economy…or that people who’ve never owned slaves, should pay billions of dollars in “reparations” to people who’ve never been slaves.

It’s not that the conservative’s brain is bigger (although that is likely the case). It’s that his motives are more honest. “I want to pay more taxes so the government can give it to people who deserve it more than I do” is simply not an honest thing to say. If it was honest, the guy who says it would be paying his tax liability plus a whole lot more…something I’ve personally not seen, been told about, or believe to have taken place very often.

“I trust myself to spend my money more than I trust the government to spend it” — maybe you think that’s impure, or evil. But it’s honest. And so the conservative argues from the heart. He doesn’t need his party boss to tell him what the focus-group-tested phrases are.

And so, by and large, conservatives do not squeal with delight when they hear their so-called-leaders blossom forward with a new slogan. That’s what liberals do. Anything to avoid actually addressing the logic of this or that thing said at that holiday meal by that asshole on the other side of the family tree.

Conservatives do not adore sound bites, they do not think with them. And so conservative leaders should not use them. “Death panel for ObamaCare” does not have the same effect as Obama Himself saying “We should get out of Iraq with the same level of responsibility we did not use getting in” or what-not.

It’s kind of like a guy-driver crying to get out of a speeding ticket. NOT GOING TO WORK FOR YOU. …and that is just the way life is. All things are not equal. Knights and princesses.

Having said that, where do we go from here? I think everything that needs to be said about health care, has been said. No minds are going to be changed, one way or t’other. Some of us are living our lives to embiggen our opportunities, and we see security as something that will never be complete — it has to be compromised, in some increment, just to get life lived. I referred to these earlier as the Architects, because while we’re living life and trying to increase our options we’re building stuff. Or trying to.

Others don’t give two shits about opportunity, and they see every single marginal potential that something might go wrong, as some sort of unfinished task. They try to get everything they want, and occasionally the message sinks in that that’s never gonna happen. Stunned, they blink a couple times, their throats do that bobbing-up-and-down thing, and then they announce equality must be the new name of the game. It’s called tall-poppy syndrome, or TPS: we all gots ta be equally miserable. These are the Medicators. They go through the motions of thinking through their problems just like Architects, but really what they’re doing is feeling their way around the problems which is why they’re constantly self-medicating. When the whale to your Ahab is something that has to do with eliminating risk, and you’ve lost sight of what you’re trying to do by eliminating this risk…you’re probably a medicator.

Those of us who are into living life, rather than sanitizing it, labor day in and day out to stop those other people from ever learning the horrible secret: The human body is a miracle machine that is built to fall apart. Once the utopia-hype-sanitization-equality people catch onto that, their tall-poppy mania will kick in and we’ll all be living in Logan’s Run City of Domes. It is an absolute certainty. They have to remain ignorant of this, or by the next weekend we’ll all have colored blinking crystals embedded in the palms of our hands.

I’m exaggerating? Think back. These people are never done. They are just as obsessive as any other self-medicating druggie. They don’t compromise. If they do, it’s on the size of the baby-step to be taken today. Once we are agreed on that, the ink won’t even be dry on the signatures before they are planning the next baby step. They just take these baby steps to look moderate, but there’s nothing moderate about ’em. There’s always something left to be done, they’re never happy, and the next “progress” is always in the same direction. That isn’t compromising.

One other thought…

There’s something about being a security-over-opportunity person that causes one to buy into the malarkey that we’ll save money providing health care insurance to whatever-the-number-is-today millions of folks who currently do not have it. Also, they tend to buy into the idea that a tax cut costs money. They’re wrong on both counts, of course. But if that is where the lines are drawn, I say let us then do this:

Bundle whatever monstrosity emerges from this perversion of a process, with a huge tax cut across the board for corporations, small businesses and individuals. Scrap the death tax for good while you’re at it.

Those of us who know what we’re talking about, will look at it like: The economy is going to take this deadly beating from the monstrosity, but with this other item to sweeten the pot maybe we’ll survive it.

Those among us who believe every little word told to them by He Who Argues With The Dictionaries, just because His voice sounds a little bit like Walter Cronkite’s and He says “uh” and “um” so thoughtfully — they can console themselves with the double-falsehood that the tax cut will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but ObamaCare will save so much money that we’ll break even.

If the democrat party really does believe all the nonsense they’re telling people, this could be given some serious consideration at the very least.

Update: Blogger friend Buck dropped this into the comments, and it needs to see light, get around, be seen. Especially by the Medicators mentioned above…and The Blog That Nobody Reads is not the ideal place for that, of course. But still. This deserves a second & third look.

I could say all that needs to be said with a disrespectful and dismissive “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…” Word count: Seven, or five, or three, or whatever. Maybe twenty to capture the sheer magnitude of the blah-blah-blah-ness and get-nothing-done-ness and waste-of-time-ness of the event.

But this would venture outside my sphere of knowledge, for I am not in the Noonan/Chait/Podhoretz camp of folk who suffered through from moment to moment (and now bitterly regret it, I venture to say). I am in the more voluminous set of casual observers who caught a snippet here and there, and then read the re-caps afterward.

It is purely out of respect for the mere concept, not the practicality, that says one should confine one’s remarks to those things about which one knows — that I shall refrain from going out on a limb speculating on what a massive waste of oxygen this really was. Let the record state, however, that in my opinion this would not be going out on much of a limb at all. I’ve attended meetings.

And so I shall quote from persons who are known to me to be experts on their chosen subject matter.

First up, is me. Commenting on meetings in general, in the Architects and Medicators essay. Prescient as always.

Running a meeting is yet another good litmus test. Some meeting chairs do it right: Agenda item, question, answer, does anyone have any objections, next agenda item — boom, boom, boom. Others engage in this ludicrous and time-consuming practice of using the forum to adjust the emotional tenor of the participants, as if it’s a high school pep rally.

The architects, who see the world as a massive assembly of parts, each part further reducible into a plurality of parts and then into atomic parts that can be reduced no further…grind through an agenda. Or blast their way through. If, that is, things are left up to them. The medicators, who see the world as a mysterious orb that gives off emotional vibes, bask in the glow of the meeting and go through this time-consuming cycle of adjusting the emotional tenor, then feeding off of it. Then adjusting it again.

It doesn’t take too much professional experience before one can say one has sat through both types of meetings. Doesn’t take too much wisdom to start to notice the contrast.

The fact that this “summit” took seven and a half hours tells me all I need to know about what kind of meeting this was. And that tells me all I need to know about what sort of person was running the meeting. Let is say none of this comes to me as a huge surprise.

Next expert (who did not attend) to opine is James Taranto, in yesterday’s Best of the Web.

[Wall Street Journal Commentary’s John] Podhoretz…summed it up this way:

My sense of this summit is that President Obama is exactly as he always is — extremely intelligent, knowledgeable about policy details, so certain of the rightness of his views that he has no compunction about declaring the views of his antagonists to be merely politically convenient rather than substantive, startlingly condescending at moments, and even more startlingly long-winded when he gets going. As a result, he both looks good and bad in these settings — good because he’s serious and doesn’t appear to be a fanatic, and bad because of the condescension.

Which prompted this defense of condescension from [The New Republic’s Jonathan] Chait:

Podhoretz calls Obama “startlingly condescending at moments.” How can that be avoided when you’re trying to have a high-level discussion with people who reply either on debunked claims at best and talk radio-level slogans at worst?

Actually, describing that as a defense of condescension is too charitable, isn’t it? It’s an example of condescension. If we didn’t know better we’d think Chait was exaggerating in order to illustrate Podhoretz’s point. And it’s not the first time–not even the first time in a day–that Chait did this. Podhoretz’s post quoted an earlier one of Chait’s:

President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous. . . .

Most the time [sic], this is like watching Lebron James play basketball with a bunch of kids who got cut from the 7th grade basketball team. He’s treating them really nice, letting his teammates take shots and allowing the other team to try to score. Nice try on that layup, Timmy, you almost got it on. But after a couple minutes I want him to just grab the ball and dunk on these clowns already.

Podhoretz’s answer:

Here we have a sterling example of how ideological predilections, his and mine, might color our opinions here. Except for one thing: You can only think Obama is Lebron James playing 7th graders if you are already certain his opinions are right, because the best you can say about this summit so far for him is that it’s a draw, and it’s probably worse than that. And given that only 25 percent of the public wants ObamaCare, he needs to be Lebron James. And Pete Maravich. And Oscar Robertson. And Kareem. All at the same time.

Chait actually makes two distinct claims about Obama: that he has a superior intellect and that he is a superior “communicator.” The first claim could be true, although it is far from indisputable. But the second claim is so absurd as to be delusional.

Obama has spent the past year trying to sell Americans on ObamaCare. He has failed utterly, as Podhoretz notes. Now, maybe Chait is right that opposition to ObamaCare is a product of stupidity. Maybe ObamaCare would be popular if a majority of Americans were as brilliant as Jonathan Chait. But in a democratic republic, elections are not limited to the elect. Shockingly, half of all Americans have below-average IQs. They vote too.

By no imaginable standard can a politician be considered a great “communicator,” or even an adequate one, if he is unable to persuade voters of average-or-below intelligence to back his policies.

Further, is there any evidence that Obama is especially good at communicating with those on the far right of the bell curve? Chait is persuaded, and we’re willing to stipulate that Chait is brilliant. But Chait was persuaded before, and we know lots of brilliant people who oppose ObamaCare.

Obama is very good at making smart liberals feel superior. That is a communication ability, but not a terribly useful one for a politician in a democratic country.

This is a “D’Jever Notice” moment and a “Best Sentence” all rolled into one. The D’Jever notice moment is about conservatives and liberals — supposedly, in spite of their different outlooks on the world, they view each other in more or less exactly the same way. Dimbulbs, on the other side of the divide, who are just plain wrong. Two images opposite from each other. Alike in so many ways, just mirror-image-flipped.

It’s obviously not so. Conservatives — the ones I know — are pretty consistent in their curiosity about what makes sense to liberals and how it might make sense, even for a moment. In a “What in the F*ck Are They Thinking??”, bewildered sort of sense. They become disgusted with it, but only occasionally and only temporarily. They/we are constantly trying to come up with explanations.

This is not true of the liberals. They are dismissive of those who disagree with them. They work at achieving a superlative of this dismissiveness, and they work very hard at it. As if they’re competing with each other, which they probably are.

They are not curious. They are like Jonathan Chait. Just dunk these clowns already!

And the best sentence has to be this zinger at the end about “Obama makes smart liberals feel superior.”

Under what circumstances, as a flawed human mortal being, could my need to feel superior to others trump my curiosity about how lesser human beings think? The only answer I can produce is that something might have happened to make me feel inferior, and I’m trying to compensate for it. But that, again, would venture outside of my sphere of knowledge…and so these skewed priorities of “smart liberals” like Chait, and many others, shall remain a mystery to me.

They must be realizing inwardly, right about now, that it isn’t going to work because it labors under an irreconcilable internal contradiction. The process of deciding what is to be done, is to be an all-inclusive “summit” from which no one will be deprived of the opportunity to participate. This will ensure that the conclusion at the end will be perfect, in some way, having been produced democratically. But! In the process of producing this decision we shall make it a glorious goal of ours to neutralize, to ineffectualize, to practically geld any & all who do not share our correct opinions.

These are mutually-exclusive, oppositional goals.

Barack Obama tried to achieve them both on Thursday, and that is why He wasted so much time and got nothing done.

That’s my take on it, just from what little I know, since I did not attend. I await the words of those who disagree with me and are in a position to so disagree, since they attended and I did not. Should any of them come along, I bow before their superior knowledge.

But I don’t need to dive into the sun to know it’s hot.

Washington Examiner Editorial:

As the clock ticks down to the final decisive vote in Congress on Obamacare, one question stands above all else: Is there one Senate Democrat with the political courage to stand with the American people and say no? Who among the 60 Senate Democrats will put the national interest above partisan politics and say to his or her colleagues that “We must start over and do this the right way”?

It’s an interesting way of looking at it.

The seventy-sixth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes out this Christmas Even morning…to…me.

Me, commenting at Melissa Clouthier’s place, on the subject of Sarah Palin declaring vindication for herself (nobody in the press ever will), what with the supposed urban legend about “death panels.”

Me, commenting on this…parodying the liberal’s everlasting insistence on molding and shaping every single word in a discussion, and how it is to be received by whatever audience is watching…dripping with un-Christmas-y sarcasm:

They aren’t Death Panels, sitting around deciding who’s going to die, you silly Republican goose you. They’re Life Panels, making decisions about who’s going to live.

So we had a water-cooler conversation at work about the health care bill. These are good to have, occasionally. I can’t practice my skills at pretending I’m a “middle of the road” guy if I don’t know where the middle of the road is. And as of right now…your local water-cooler may vary…it seems to me the middle-of-the-road is here:

People are confusing “hope” with “faith.” The centrist position to be taken-up is that Obama’s health care bill will lower costs, because, well, it’s just gotta. To say confidence is shaky would be charitable toward that confidence. It’s like what Gagdad Bob said; science is using the facts to arrive at a conclusion, religion is tailoring the facts to fit the conclusion. So don’t go asking why they think it’ll work. It’s just gotta.

Obama says they’re all right about this, though. Or at least, if we don’t pass the bill, disaster shall ensue.

“If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee,” Obama said. “Your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you … Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year.”

Uh oh. I’m not the first to point out this is exactly what He said about swindle-us.

Here is what I notice about this. To hear the President tell it, we are about to pass a rule that will bring costs down. In my lifetime, I’ve only seen two kinds of rules that bring costs down:

1. Rules that force one targeted demographic to provide a commodity to another targeted demographic, free of charge or at a reduced cost — an artificially redusted cost;
2. Rules that suspend or revoke other rules that existed before.

There is no third category.

So if you do have some of this faith, I guess you’re thinking we’re about to discover a third way to do it.

It doesn’t seem terribly likely I must say. Go through the decades in back of us, and go through the list of regulated commodities. Rental living space; gas; oil; labor; land; legal servics; health care; public education; water; precious metals.

Rules…especially rules signed into law by democrats…make prices go up. It can’t work any other way. It gets harder to provide something, that thing’s cost goes up. That’s how it works, folks.

Quite the little circus going on as Michelle Malkin takes down a Nicholas Kristof column that appeared in the New York Times about a man who needs ObamaCare, because he can’t get any medical treatment anywhere. The whole Malkin column is quite delicious, you should go read it all. But the dessert course is at the very end:

Well, Kristof can’t be bothered to respond to my Tweets directly — or to actually read anything I’ve written about his crappy column — but he did have time to add this update to his blog post tonight:

UPDATE 3: Several readers are asking about a Michelle Malkin account claiming that John was already receiving treatment at OHSU. John had one appointment there. He says he was told to give up, that they could not help him, and he was despairing when he told me about it; their version is different, that he was under “observation.” In any case, he says that after the column appeared, he suddenly got a series of phone calls from OHSU saying that they wanted to see him and could address his needs after all. In any case, it now appears that he will get treated, and other doctors are also offering him assistance.

I didn’t merely “claim” that Brodniak was being treated. The Brodniaks, through OHSU, informed me that John Brodniak has been a patient there for three weeks. Not “one appointment.” Not “under ‘observation.’” He has been a patient there for three weeks.

Note how, once again, Kristof relies solely on Brodniak’s accounts to him (”he says,” “he says,” “it now appears”).

“In any case, it now appears that he will get treated:” Complete disingenuousness.

He has been treated, Mr. Kristof. He was getting treated BEFORE you tried to make a federal case out of him not being treated.

Joe Wilson moment.

Thomas Jefferson apparently knew something about the New York Times:

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

From here.