Where would we be without giant inflatable alligators in Cleburne, TX?
“As more and more celebrities become experts on health care…”
I obviously want to make sure to keep trumpeting the gigantic sucking sound that Obamacare is. Make no mistake, it sucks.
The real point is to take a step back for just a second and recognize that a large portion of our society looks to (or at least tolerates) the likes of , Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Whoopi Goldberg peddling their out of touch perspectives as credible sources… not on lighting, line delivery, or make up application… but on the environment, health care, civics, and most recently, statues of limitations on child rape cases for “creative geniuses” (as if that somehow qualifies or justifies repeatedly sodomizing a protesting 13 year old girl who’s been nursing your Quaalude/champagne cocktail). Sean Penn (not to mention The Nation) presuming that his fawning interview of The Castro Brothers has any significance what so ever, or is useful for anything other than lining cyber bird cages.
A vast majority of celebrities aren’t authorities or experts on the environment, the economy, or human rights. Most of them are experts in entertaining, film creation, or line delivery.
Most politicians aren’t experts on the environment, the economy, or human rights either. Most aren’t experts in health care either. Most are experts in the law, a few are experts in building and growing a business, and even fewer are doctors who ARE experts in health care.
The point? Nancy Pelosi is a career politician, an expert in making people like her.
Harry Reid was a lawyer before he was a politician, an expert in finding loopholes and making people like him.
Barack Obama was a lawyer and community organizer before he was a one term state senator, 1/2 term U.S. Senator, and President of the U.S., an expert in community agitation, campaigning, giving speeches, and making people like him (It’s also rumored that he’s incredibly smart, although I’m still waiting to see practical evidence of that).
Politicians aren’t experts on the things that they decide and impose on the rest of us. That’s why limited government makes more sense than an ever expanding government… the more the government gets involved in, the more likely it is that people who are not experts will make decisions that impact the lives and livelihoods of those who do. 45% of doctors said they would consider quitting if current health care legislation is enacted (72% of them doubt that government can cover 47 million more people with the same care for less money). But why trust the doctors when you can trust Democratic Senator from Montana Max Baucus (who was a lawyer before he was a politician – that’s the loophole/making people like him career track).
I don’t think politicians are inherently evil or foster some mal-intent toward America. Their besetting sin isn’t a black heart, even in the case of Pelosi, Waxman, etc. The besetting sin of big-government career politicians is pride and hubris. They believe that they can and should decide for all of us, and every time we elect them, we foster that pride and cement it.
So look forward to 2010 and vote out an incumbent!
With all the talk about Joe Wilson’s interruption of President Obama’s health care speech, the obvious question hanging in the air is, “was Wilson’s remark in any way racially motivated?” I guess it’s an honest question, but I’ve stumbled onto some video that directly refutes that hypothesis. The clip below shows that not only a lilly-white deep-south-good-ole-boy like Joe Wilson* takes exception with President Obama, but there are even prominent African Americans willing to speak out at the President in extreme moments involving life and death situations.
Obviously I jest. Kanye wasn’t really at the meeting of the joint sessions of congress. It was just about that time that he started taking his Hennesy Cognac straight out of the bottle, and just a few short days before he made an ass of himself and ruined poor sweet Taylor Swift’s night (incidentally, let it be noted that I immediately came to Taylor’s aid by posting this scathing critique of Kanye. I’m a man among men; a tiger among tabby cats. Kanye is reeling. Trust me).
Here’s hoping that we can find common ground in ridiculing the obnoxious antics of an over paid prima donna posing as an “artist.” If all it takes is a dash of shared animosity to bring our two disparate factions together, then I am more than happy to humbly oblige. If not me, who? If not now, when?
When you remember this moment, (and you will remember), may it always come as a reminder that in my heart of hearts, I’m a unitifier, not a dividificationist. That’s how I roll.
Happy September 14th to you all!
*The author and owners of this site neither endorse or approve of the actions of Joe Wilson, whether he was right or wrong, good or bad, purposeful or just caught a unexpected lull in the crowd noise, how about a little decorum, Joe? Contribute to Joe’s campaign here. Tell him that his actions were reprehensible here. Just remember, attack the action, not the man. To do otherwise is to dance with hypocrisy.
I forget where I first encountered the theoretical proposition of a free market solution to federalism, but the e-mail forward I encountered below runs along those lines.
The idea is intriguing: an amicable separation, giving the left half (literally) of the country free reign to implement and practice whatever “progressive” ideological programs and ideals, while the right half of the country is free to practice their limited government, fiscally conservative ideology, ultimately letting the fruit speak for itself.
DIVORCE AGREEMENT
American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists
and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950’s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.
Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but we can surely come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You’ll be free to build a military and police force however you choose. We’ll be happy to consult, for a nominal fee, which you’ll surely be able to afford, considering the aforementioned taxes.
You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them). Also, please take Joy Behar and Whoopi. Since I can’t imagine even you guys wanting Susan and Tim Sarandon, we’ll happily buy them a first class plane ticket to somewhere else. You’re welcome.
We’ll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can populate your social welfare programs with the homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal immigrants. We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks. We’ll cling to our guns and our religion and give you NBC and Hollywood.
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.
We’ll continue to be guided by our Judeo-Christian values, while welcoming all who differ to practice freely, just so long as there is no mistake about our religious historical roots. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain.
You can also have the U.N., but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We’ll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.
Sincerely,
J J. W
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.
The hardest part would be the land divide. But again, I don’t see why the prospect of such free political reign would be anathema to anyone.
I would also stipulate a 5 year window for reevaluation at the end of 25 years. During that window, the two sides can discuss and evaluate the fruit of their labors and join forces again. However, based on the results of our quarter century experiment, certain programs and projects will be forever declared ineffective, stupid, and socially harmful. If both sides wish to continue on, just as they are, they are free to do so.
The questions to you, dear reader, are whether this is a fair and just division of assets? Why would the left support such a move, or why not? Would the right support such a move, or why not?
Ted Kennedy lost his year long battle with brain cancer this morning in Hyannis Point, MA. Kennedy was a long time United States Senator, wielding great power and influence throughout his political career. He was described as the patriarch of the Kennedy family, and a consistent voice of leadership within the Democratic party for years.
Ted Kennedy’s life and legacy will be pored over in great detail in the days and weeks to come. Today, however, is a day of prayer and consolation for the Kennedy family and those who mourn his passing.
If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Obama’s response to the idea of death panels in his health care plan is,
As every credible person who has looked into it has said, there are no so-called death panels — an offensive notion to me and to the American people.
First, what’s the deal with death panels anyway? The extremely simplified, reader’s digest version is as follows.
Health care is extremely expensive, in particular certain treatments such as chemo therapy, certain organ transplants, etc.
In a universal health care system, in particular a single payer system (government sponsored), the cost to care for health care at a national level will be exorbitant.
At some point, cost effectiveness will become an issue under a single payer (government financed) system. There simply will not be enough money to handle all the health care needs in the nation.
In order to cut health care costs, the health care financier (the government in a single payer system) will begin comparative cost/benefit analysis. Chemo therapy for a 25 year old would be a better investment than chemo therapy for a 75 year old diabetic. This practice is also called health care rationing.
The death panels, made famous by Sarah Palin’s facebook entry, would be those government run boards of bureaucrats sitting behind tall oak tables deciding who receives treatment and lives, and who doesn’t receive treatment and dies. Sarah Palin made the point that her son with Down’s Syndrome probably wouldn’t have made it past these government death panels.
Obama’s main defense has been that Palin et al have been raising bogey men to scare ordinary American taxpayers into voting against an otherwise kind and benevolent health care legislation.
Towey’s report, however, raises the question of whether this sort of practice might already be under way, in a sense. Towey shines a light on the Veteran’s administration, which is a government run health care program, auspiciously a model for Obama care, specifically the reintroduction of a new pamphlet called, “Your Life, Your Choices” into the Veterans Administration counseling repretoire.
This is a twenty minute interview, so let me do some of the heavy lifting for you and send you to some hilights. First in the segment with Chris Wallace and Jim Towey:
The exchange at the 1:36 mark, gives you the basic framework of the conservative perspective on where government run health care inevitably winds up:
Wallace: President Obama calls talk of a government run, “death panel a, quote, extraordinary lie. But I want to put up what you said in your Wall Street Journal article this week. `You said the following, “When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?” explain.
Towey: I think the fears that Americans have, is that somehow when they are fragile, and they’re vulnerable, and they’re facing serious illness, that a discussion they are going to have with their doctor is going to be biased or tilted in some fashion. Here you have the government that has a financial stake in the answers that they give, and I think that a lot of people are afraid that they are going to somehow going to be steered toward a denial of care…
Towey’s rhetorical question is, what do you do when you have more care than you can care for? The logical answer is that you go into triage mode. The 80 year old diabetic is a much greater actuarial risk than the 25 year old marathonner, so naturally the diabetic grandma is going to be steered toward dying with grace, or as Obama put it, given a pain pill.
Obama promises that it’s not going to happen. Yet, it’s already happening. The VA is a government run health care entity, and it has already employed literature to give veterans the terms on which to choose that maybe it would be better to just pass on and stop being such a burden to those around me. What are some of those conditions, you ask, that might make a trip on the up elevator worth it?
I can no longer walk, but can get around in a wheelchair
I live in a nursing home.
I cannot seem to “shake the blues.”
When a persistent case of the blues becomes reason to consider an advanced directive, that’s too far. This is already happening in America under government run health care. Veterans with a case of the blues are being guided in a process of asking the question, “when is it too much?” With physician assisted suicide already a legal reality in Oregon, the specter of our sad veterans being counseled or led to believe that it just might be better to cash it in and save my precious family all that heartache and expense. It’s already happening, today, in America.
The issue that frames this conversation is a devaluing of life. When life ceases to become sacred, it becomes purely utilitarian. Utilitarian values are measured precisely by their addition to or subtraction from the greater good. Life isn’t utilitarian, it is sacred. A life isn’t something to be evaluated on an actuarial table, it is a story or a potential with inherent value. We can’t create life, but we have unfortunately become culturally desensitized to taking it. Helping people process whether it is “the right time to die” isn’t a question that anyone should have to answer. They should simply be allowed to live until they die. Any person or entity that says otherwise presumes to play God, or at least to participate with him in a way that God never intended.
NOTE: Interview with Tammy Duckworth, the VA’s Public Affairs Chief, begins at 10:22. Wallace has his way with her. It’s interesting, in a sporting kind of way.
You saw that white supremacist holding the assault rifle and pistol, right? Well, you didn’t really SEE him, because the picture was cropped so closely. You can see a picture of the filthy racist here.*
The filthy white supremacist racist Obama hater is black. That doesn’t keep the race baiting idiots at MSNBC from pulling the race card.
Female commentator: The reason we’re talking about this, a lot of talk here Dylan (?) is because people feel like, yes there are second amendment rights, for sure, but also there are questions about whether this has a racial overtone. I mean here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people are showing up with guns strapped to their waist or their chest.
Middle commentator: (stumbling) it sounds simplistic when you put it that way, but it is real, that there is tremendous anger in this country about government, about the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being President…
What a load of drivel!! How can you defend this. The foolish woman just plain lied (supported, incidentally by an extreme close crop in the video). Immediately following the clip, she comments about “white people showing up with guns strapped to their chest and their waist.”
THE MAN WITH THE GUN STRAPPED TO HIS CHEST WAS BLACK!
Of course, her race baiting comrade to her left assures her that there is pent up anger in this country that the government is taking over the country… and because he’s black.
Let me assure you, I don’t give a tinkers damn whether the man in office is white, black, green, blue, or pink. What I care about is that I believe his policies are ruining this country. I also believe that he could put a stop to this if he wanted to. He could correctly quote that 56% of this nation voted for him as President. He could call the country to move past the politics of race and make it about substance. But he doesn’t, and meanwhile, the only people talking about race are the fear mongering, race baiting, liberals who are scattering like cockroaches in the light of the reality that they’ve over reached and aren’t going to be able to do what they wanted.
As soon as I start to wonder if I am too hard on many on the left, I run into this. As soon as I start to think, “you know, maybe the media is just trying to report their ideas and they just have a different world view,” I come across something like this. Barry, Nancy, Harry, Barney and the rest of you, had you an ounce of moral fiber or integrity you’d be crying out in the streets against his, rather than stirring the pot. Shame on the lot of you.
* I google searched “assault rifle Obama protest” and turned up lots of entries, none with a good image of the man carrying the gun. The best picture that I saw was at the American Thinker page
*UPDATE: Allahpundit at HotAir follows up on the MSNBC response, which is basically, “we were talking in generalities.” That’s exactly the problem you hateful slobbering fools.
* UPDATE 2: Please, God, don’t bring your gun to a protest rally with the President. You exercising your right adds nothing to the larger conversation. In fact, it moves the focus from this atrocious health care debacle to you exercising your right. That’s stupid. Please stop.
*UPDATE 3: Also, please stop referring to Obama as Hitler. Whether you feel it’s true or not, it won’t lead to any positive outcome, and it makes it possible for your very important voice to be marginalized.
… Not only does the country remain handicapped by grossly sub-par arrangements for health delivery, we also are burdened with a president who has been discredited as a progressive dedicated to a betterment of how we conduct public business. [emphasis mine]
It seems that President Barack Obama has been making some closed door, back room deals with big pharmaceutical companies, a.k.a. the devil. Some may remember that on the campaign trail (not the current one, the previous one, while he was still a U.S. Senator, voting “present” all those times) then Senator Obama had a lot of really mean things to say about big drug companies and the role they played in Washington. He even ran a television ad about it (thanks to the L.A. Times for the link). But that was a LONG LONG time ago, before he actually had to get things done. Now that he’s in power, he does whatever he wants to do. In this case, that means closing the doors for secret meetings with big drug companies and cutting a deal that basically takes the teeth out of any Health Care reform he was hoping for.
… the [pharmaceutical drug] industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul.
So while the President demonizes your doctor as someone who will cut out your tonsils or your amputate your foot for a profit, has assured the drug companies that they won’t have to give up their precious profits. Michael Brenner summarizes his perspective on Barack’s handling of the health care this way:
In short, we have gotten from him the antithesis of what we were promised and expected — in the substance and process of policy both. We have instead a conventionally minded politician overly respectful of the status quo and deferential to those who control and profit from it, A man with no apparent fixed convictions.
Brenner, writing at the Huffington Post, is certainly no conservative sympathizer. This indicates to me that our President has not only failed to woo conservatives but also managed to alienate those who supported him.
Here are a few of my problems with this whole scenario…
HE’S A LIAR!!
Seriously, I spent 8 years hearing George Bush demonized as someone who destroyed America and cast this country in a bad light. Barack Obama doesn’t think twice about destroying someone on the campaign trail (PhARMA) and then hopping in bed with them. He has no problem decrying the profits of insurance agencies while at the same time guaranteeing the profits of the drug companies. Which is it, Mr. President, are profits the bane of all existence and the ruination of all that is good and decent in this world, or are they not?
Finally, Greg Pallast (writing again for the Huffington Post, so these are libs talking) takes the President to task for his duplicity, re: Dick Cheney’s meetings with big oil…
When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush’s Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.
Cheney’s secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.
But the Obama crew’s secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.
We know Cheney’s secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth.
Obama grins in your face.
See the difference?
President Obama clearly doesn’t have the problem with big profits that he lets on. First of all, because he takes in quite an annual personal profit himself. Second, because I don’t believe a person can honestly violate their true values. I believe that a person will ALWAYS act on what they truly believe, regardless of what they say. Based on that, it would seem that President Obama cares very little about truth, justice, or the American way. Instead, it would seem that he cares a great deal about his legacy, and his radical ideology. It would seem that his actions and lack of integrity have cost him all of the above.
The whole Nazi slur thing is almost as tired as the race baiting from this fool. The very fact that Nancy Pelosi was the first one (that I knew of) to trot it out only made me more skeptical. Of course, Dick Durbin (D-IL) isn’t afraid to throw the word around when it serves him.
Recently, rather than admitting the fact that people are pissed off about the rape of American Pocketbooks and health care system, (a.k.a. Obamacare in its various and sundry forms) Democrat talking heads and mouth pieces have taken to calling these protesters Nazi’s.
Ed Morrissey at HotAir uncovered a video by Stephen Gutowski documenting the genesis of some of those well known, oft sighted conservative Nazi slingers.
Interesting. So the violent outbursts at Townhall meetings was started by pro-Obamacare SEIU thugs, and now those screaming Nazi are the ones in favor of Obama’s health-scare plan. That’s strange.
What’s interesting is how MSNBC failed to pick up on that. Maybe they didn’t so much “fail” to pick up on it as “choose” not to pick up on it. I can always count on Olby & Rachel Maddow for even, level headed
UPDATE – New revelations from Caleb Howe: The gentleman holding the now famous Adolf Obama sign is a supporter of John Dingell (D-MI) who thinks townhall meetings are like a Klan rally.
I don’t think he hates ALL democracy. I think he LOVES the part that got him elected, he just hates the parts where the other side has the right to speak their mind and be a part of the process.
“We’ve got some work to do. I don’t mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I’m the president,” Obama said. “But I don’t want the folks that created the mess — I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. ”I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking,” Obama said.
I wonder which people he was talking about? Was he talking about the Democrat controlled House and Senate for the past two years? Was he talking about Harry Reid & Nancy Pelosi, who have spent themselves silly since 2006? Maybe he was even talking about himself, passing a $787 Billion “stimulus” package for “shovel ready” projects that are yet to materialize.
No. I’m sure that’s not it. I’m sure he’s talking about the previous administration. Even there, when you look close, the final things Bush did came at Obama’s behest. Things like the auto bailout… lobbied for by the President-elect Obama. Medicare prescription drug benefit, co-sponsored by staunch conservative Ted Kennedy… wait a minute.
I’ll be the first to admit that Dubya was by no means a fiscal conservative. I’ve often said that there hasn’t been a fiscal conservative in office since January 20, 1989. But now, as if Obama has been the picture of fiscal responsibility, he wants the other side to, “get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.”
In case you wondered, cleaning up the mess means sending union goons to rough upthose who would speak out against Obamacare. It means breaking his promise to allow 5 days of public comment before voting on a bill, especially when they come at a cost of $787 Billion, or at the cost of the energy industry in this country via Cap-n-Tax.
In case you hadn’t figured it out, Obama has all the answers, knows how to fix every problem, and romps with the unicorns in a pixie dust laugh storm. He just doesn’t give a rip what you think or have to say. This isn’t, after all, about you. This is in every way about him. It always has been, and as long as he’s in office, it always will be.
I love Krauthammer. He’s a no nonsense clear thinker, and he tackled the health care problem in today’s Washington Post. His ideas begin simply, and leave infinite room for growth as needs be.
Krauthammer begins with simplicity. Rather than totally remaking 1/6 of our GDP, why not start by stripping away the most egregious excesses. Krauthammer boils that down to two things: tort reform, and employer based insurance coverage.
Tort reform amounts to a reformation of the legal system that supports what Krauthammer calls “casino malpractice suits.” You’ve heard the story of the guy who’s ingrown toe nail surgery gets infected, he has to miss a week of work, so John Edwards takes his case and sues for two million dollars in punitive damages (not an actual case). This addresses a major problem behind rising health insurance costs. Many doctors admit to practicing defensive medicine (which costs insurance companies and you and I more money) so as to avoid malpractice suits. Krauthammers suggestion to stop this problem:
Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds. The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. [emphasis mine]
Krauthammers solution punishes the truly negligent, rather than all of us. The problem is that trial lawers are big Democratic supporters, so good luck getting Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the like to bite the hand that feeds them.
Krauthammer’s second solution is to break the tie between employment & insurance.
The health-care benefit exemption is the largest tax break in the entire U.S. budget, costing the government a quarter-trillion dollars annually. It hinders health-insurance security and portability as well as personal independence. If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.
Insurance was linked to employment post-WWII, but that’s no longer necessary. The problem is that the exemption was promoted during the campaign by McCain, and Obama savaged it. There’s no way Obama could propose that without paying a potentially insurmountable political price.
Charles postulates that:
Just half that sum [from the tort reform legislation] could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant — $20,000 for a family of four — to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).
It’ll never happen because it’s everything antithetical to the Democrats. It checks trial lawyers and it requires Obama advocating something he railed against. Although, by this time in his administration, he’s no stranger to changing positions, so why not this time? Probably not.
