Liberals cannot comprehend the conservative mind

It has been somewhat amusing lately to watch the Democrats struggle with the American people's rejection not only of Obamacare, but also the growing unease with the advance of socialism in America.

According to the Democrats' narrative, angry citizens who showed up at town hall meetings were "Astrotruf" (e.g., fake grass roots) manilupated by insurance industry lobbyists. The sole reason behind opposing the president's health care (ahem, health insurance) proposals (depending on who was talking) was either latent racism, or wanting to hand the President a defeat in order to weaken him. Or that Sarah Palin and the Republicans were spreading misinformation about the President's proposals and the American people were too stupid to see the truth being spoken by the President.

In last week's Weekly Standard, Mathew Continetti wrote:

The Angry White Liberal finds it simply incomprehensible that somebody might honestly and in good faith disagree with the Democrats' efforts. On August 14, blogger Steve Benen wrote on the Huffington Post that the "far-right apoplexy is counter-intuitive." After all, "Why would people who stand to benefit from health care reform literally take to the streets and threaten violence in opposition to legislation that would help them and their families?"

Forget Benen's exaggerated claim of threatened violence. Note, instead, that Benen cannot conceive that someone might actually think the costs to the Democrats' program outweigh the unrealized and perhaps unachievable benefits. Hence he divides Obama's critics into five camps: the "partisans," the "tin-foil hats," the "greedy," the "dupes," and the "wonks." The "wonks," we are told, compose the "smallest of the groups." In Benen's view, then, millions of opponents of health care reform have no reasonable grounds for their opinion. That may satisfy the liberal's attitude of intellectual superiority. But it's also awfully condescending.

There really is something to the notion that liberals cannot comprehend the conservative mind. I think the primary (but not sole) culprit is projection.

Liberals tend to project what they know about themselves on conservatives (who probably do the same thing, which is why conservatives give them far too much credit for being sincere). So when Nancy Pelosi dismisses town hall protests of "Astroturfing" she is revealing what she knows to be true of her own movement. How else do "angry mobs" show up at town hall meetings in the middle of the day unless they are otherwise bussed in? That's how ACORN and SEIU do it. This fails to understand that conservatives aren't natural born protesters (most have day jobs in the private sector), and really have to be animated about something before they'll bother to make their voices heard. Besides, who would do the bussing? Not that it really matters, but I'm unaware of any such efforts by FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, the RNC, or anyone else.

To liberals, political positions are largely a matter of gamemanship to be used to obtain political power, and usually not deeply held principles in and of themselves. This is why they can't fathom that anybody could in good faith, oppose, among other things, the public option. Opposition must be because of narrow-self interest, or hatred of the President.

This is reminicent of the Clinton impeachment battle. In October 1998, House Republican started impeachment proceedings against Clinton, but were rudely rebuffed by voters in November who gave the Democrats a gain of 5 seats in the House. This marked only the second time since the Civil War that the party of the president had gained seats in a midterm election.

Democrats were certain this result would discourage Republicans in the House from moving forward with impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Surely the Republicans would not want to further anger voters, and so the Democrats went to sleep, only to rewaken in December when they learned that Republicans would not be dissuaded. Democrats still can't believe that Republican's thirst for justice had overrode the obvious electoral risks in going forward with impeachment.

On the other hand, consider Code Pink and other groups protesting the war in Iraq while Bush was President. But under Obama, when we still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention Clinton's war in Kosovo), their silence has been deafening. It's clear that anti-war protests were much less than about aversion to war than a cynical attempt to use the issue to obtain political power.

Steve Benen classifies conservatives into 5 camps: the "partisans", the "tin-foil hats" the "greedy", the "dupes" and the "wonks." This is because he and other liberals cannot comprend that people (aside from the greedy), would actually vote against their own narrow self-interest. That is, if you're going to get free stuff from the government, you are otherwise irrational if you don't simply shut your mouth.

But many of us enraged by Obama and the Democrats' actions since January take a larger view of self-interest. To us, the principles upon which this country was founded (free markets, limited government, rule of law, etc.) are far more important than any free goodies that the Democrats will try to bribe us with.

Likewise, I always thought that Democrats can be divided into three (not necessarily exclusive) groups: A) the arrogant,those who think they know better than us how to run our lives (e.g., Ted Kennedy); B) the stupid, those who actually believe liberal dogma (e.g., Jimmy Carter and maybe Barrack Obama); and C) the cynics, those who don't believe any of that crap but say it because they know that such appeals to the intellectually lazy will get them elected (e.g., Bill Clinton).

Finally, liberals and conservatives fail to understand each other because most liberals think with their left brain, and to them, an argument's greatest appeal is in its emotion. Most conservatives are less suceptible to appeals to emotion and are more interested in facts or logic. As English writer Horace Walpole famously said: "The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy too those who think."

On the death of Edward Kennedy

I won't disparage someone who just became a good democrat.

Public Option - The Road to Serfdom

It can't be put any more simply: If the public option were to pass, we all become serfs. We would be forced into a position as supplicants to the government for our health care. That's assuming that they're even able to keep the promises to provide all with the health care we need (which is extremely doubtful).

I'd sooner give them the business end of a gun before I beg them for health care.

I know that the majority of my posts here deal with the public option in one fashion or another, and I understand the risk of sounding like a johnny one-note. But I believe this to be the fight of our lifetimes. If the public option passes, all is lost. That is why the liberals/socialists are also fighting just as hard on the other side. They understand what's at stake here.

It appears that with each passing day, more Americans are waking up to the idea of what a catastrophe the public option would be. This is encouraging.

It seems that over the weekend, the Obama Administration was waiving the white flag on the public option, only to backtrack after the left-wing of thier party revolted. Maybe walking away from the public option was a very public (and otherwise incompetent) trial balloon. So we haven't won yet. We need to just keep giving voice to the truth.

Public option would mean the end of American exceptionalism

If Congress were to pass, and President Obama ultimately to sign, a health care reform (excuse me, health insurance reform) bill, it would mean the end to American exceptionalism. American would then only refer to the continent we live on. We would have become only another socialist democracy. Of course, this is the unstated goal of the proponents of health care reform.

This health care fight is not about the monetary costs. Even if we had the money, the costs to individual freedom would still be too high.

This fight is not about snitch lists, "un-American" protests, attacking the American people as racist and unpatriotic, Obama's doublespeak, dissimulations and equivocations. Even though that's a fun fight to engage in because the targets are so irresistible.

This fight is about the fact that personal decisions about health care are not appropriate subjects for the body politic.

The term "American exceptionalism" was coined by Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 book Democracy in America:

The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.

Over the next century and a half, the term American exceptionalism has taken on a broader meaning. Wikipedia explains:

The basis most commonly cited for American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States and its people differ from other nations, at least on a historical basis, as an association of people who came from numerous places throughout the world but who hold a common bond in standing for certain self-evident truths, like freedom, inalienable natural and human rights, democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, civil liberty, civic virtue, the common good, fair play, private property, and Constitutional government. The term is also used by United States citizens to indicate that America and Americans have different states of mind, different surroundings, and different political cultures than other nations, and still others use it to refer to the American dream and the slow yet continuous journey of the people of the United States, sharing a nation and a destiny, to build a more perfect union, to live up to the dreams, hopes, and ideals of its founders . . . .

This brand of American exceptionalism was recognized by Lincoln in the Gettysburg address:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Left has always been hostile to the idea of American exceptionalism, equating it with jingoism, thus explaining their earnest efforts to destroy it. In April, President Obama was, depending on your point of view, either oddly (for an American President), or characteristically (for a Leftist) dismissive of the notion:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. . . . There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But American exceptionalism has also been used to describe the strange absence of organized socialism in America. In American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword, Seymour Martin Lipset writes:

The United States has stood out among the industrial nations of the world in frustrating all efforts to create a mass socialist or labor party. This fact has occasioned a considerable literature seeking to explain this aspect of American exceptionalism . . . . Karl Marx and Frederich Engels grappled with the "exceptional" aspects of American society. In so doing, the presented a picture of America as a unique society, not very different from the analyses of Tocqueville . . . .

The weakness of socialism in the United States has been a major embarrassment throughout the twentieth century to Marxist theory . . . .

. . . . much of the efforts by Marxists and socialists to account for the failure of the prediction [that America would be an early socialist country] stressed that from sociological and political points of view, the United States was too progressive, too egalitarian, too open, and too democratic to generate massive radical or revolutionary movements on a scale comparable to Europe.

* * *

In analyzing the prospects for socialism in America, Marx and Engels did not limit themselves to economic factors. . . . America was a new nation and society, which lacked many of the institutions and traditions of previously feudal systems and as a result was the most "modern" and purely bourgeois culture. It was also the most democratic country.

The absence of a feudal past and consequent lack of rigid status in the United States in contrast to most of Europe was seen by the Marxist fathers, particularly Frederich Engels, as a source of the political backwardness of the American working class. Thus he wrote in 1890 that "Americans are born conservatives just because America is so purely bourgeois, so entirely without a feudal past, and therefore proud of its purely bourgeois organization."

For the better part of the last century, "health care," (long before it was "health care reform" or most recently, "health insurance reform") has always been the "holy grail" for those desiring to introduce socialism into the U.S. by incremental measures.

In a 1961 speech (the year Obama was born), Ronald Regan, warned:

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people, has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

The dangers of health care reform to American exceptionalism are also obvious to some non Americans: Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament stated recently:

You might find it slightly odd that I come here as a British politician and [extol] the virtues of the original colonial patriot leaders . . . and the people who wrote your constitution. Let me explain why I do so.

* * *
What scares me, is that I come here, to the place where British freedoms in the traditional sense I thought were still flourishing and I see the same tendencies. . . . I see this massive encroachment of the state into not only what should be the jurisdictions of the 50 states but what should be the sphere of the private citizen. In this of all countries! If you hear a clanking sound, that is the noise of the shades of your founding fathers rattling as they look on what's been done in their name to the country they founded. A country based around the maximum dispersal of power, now seeing in the name of contingency, in the name of emergency, this huge power grab by the government, by the state machine. Nationalization, stimulus packages, bailouts, this huge squeezing of the private sector to engorge the state sector, this expansion of the state payroll . . . in this of all countries! It's extraordinary that I should have to come here as a British politician and observe this phenomenon. All of us in the world benefited because the United States has been a strong, prosperous, free country. And that carries with it some burdens and some responsibilities. And one of them is that we all have an interest in your continued success. So if you want to go down this road to British style socialism, it's our problem as well as yours, my friends. Which is why I feel that I have some place in coming here to give a British response to the tea parties.

And let me say this. The expansions of state power that we have seen under the last two presidents, to be honest, I don't want to be partisan about this, are as nothing compared to what is now being proposed in the field of health care.

Ronald Reagan also stated in his 1961 speech that the pretext of providing health care to those who might not be able to afford it was a "foot in the door," "an excuse to bring about . . . socialized medicine."

Reagan continued:

James Madison said 1788 that "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

In this country of ours took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in world's history, the only true revolution, every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. But here for the first time in all the thousands of years of man's relation to man, a little group of men, the founding fathers, for the first time, established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the god given right and ability to determine our own destiny.

Should the public option pass, everything that makes America exceptional, will cease to exist. Maybe not overnight, but it will be the beginning of an irreversible march into socialism, that we have so far, been able to (more or less) resist.

This is the ultimate design of Obama and the Left, and don't let anyone tell you any different. The stakes could not be higher if we had armed Soviets at our doors.

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, I'd rather die from disease because I am uninsured, rather than submit to government run health care. Really.

They think your're too stupid to make health care decisions

Because they are losing the health care debate on the merits, Democrats have turned toward attacking the public, or at least that part of it who dares to question the annointed's vision of universal health care reform.

In yesterday's USA Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote:

However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue.

* * *

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.

And, as I wrote on here on August 6 (below), White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs claimed that the anger being displayed by people at town hall meetings toward Democratic legislators was "manufactured" by Republicans and special interest groups.


So we've gone from "dissent being the highest form of patriotism," (remember the Iraq War protests?) to dissent being "un-American," and repeatedly dismissed by the White House and the leadership in Congress as manufactured and inauthentic.

But who's really afraid of facts? Pelosi's concerns would ring less hollow if it were really true that she wanted Americans to "learn the facts." Pelosi and Hoyer also write:

The first fact is that health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. It will allow every American who likes his or her current plan to keep it. And it will free doctors and patients to make the health decisions that make the most sense, not the most profits for insurance companies.

Reform will mean affordable coverage for all Americans. Our plan's cost-lowering measures include a public health insurance option to bring competitive pressure to bear on rapidly consolidating private insurers . . . .

But while this mantra is regurgitated ad nauseum by Obama and Congressional leaders, not even the liberals believe it. Just scan yesterday's blogs and op ed pieces and you will find that honest liberals understand that patient choice will be limited in that private insurance will ultimately be destroyed by the public option (as was its embarrassingly stated purpose caught on video by Barney Frank and President Obama himself). They also understand that costs savings will be obtained through rationing. Further, liberals also appear to understand that adding an additional 50 million patients, without increasing the number of health care professionals, will cause costs to increase.

But according to some, honesty is not a luxury we can afford if were going to get universal healthcare. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a left-wing Democrat and chief deputy whip from the north side of Chicago cited an insurance an insurance company spokesman as saying, "A public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer." to this she added:

My single-payer friends . . . he was right . . . This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there, and I believe we will.

Clearly another who thinks the ends justify the means.

But there is also an element of elitist snobbery in the statements of Obama, Pelosi and Hoyer. Obama stated: "In don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of the talking." (Sorry, LBJ is dead). Pelosi and Hoyer also state: "Health care is complex." In other words: "You're too stupid to be trusted to make your own decisions. Just relax and enjoy it."

This condescending attitude of "we know better than you" is not limited to politicians. In Friday's Huffington Post Bill Maher wrote:

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive.

* * *

Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

* * *

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls.

* * *

"Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway. And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

I'll take whatever test Bill Maher wants to give me (before or after a few Long Island Iced Teas), but I doubt that he'll allow me to make any health care policy decisions because they're not the right ones. Now, as a card-carrying misanthrope, I too share the opinion that most people are stupid. But unlike Maher, I would not specifically single out Americans. St. Augustine, in an early 5th Century version of Jay-walking, would ask priests in the Roman Empire to cite 1 of the 10 commandments (which many could not do).

But ultimately, freedom is about making your own choices, be they right or wrong. Save Maher, most people would be happier making their own choices than having them foisted on them by the government.

The paramount objections to health care reform are not costs, but control. Whether each of us will retain the freedom to get an MRI or cervical cancer screening even if a doctor or government bureaucrat says it's unnecessary. It's not their body (where've I heard that before?).

The Democrats seem genuinely surprised (to the point of disbelief) that Americans would become so passionate about such small concerns as personal freedom. But they should be warned. Some Americans will always fight to preserve freedom. No matter what the cost.

Needing to take a shower after North Korea deal?

I was a signer of the petition to free Laura Ling and Euna Lee from their detention in North Korea, and am genuinely glad to see them home.

But now that they are safely home, I feel that I have to ask the following question:

Does anyone else feel dirty or the need to take a shower because of the efforts (and promises) that were made to free them?

Get on Obama's Snitch List!

On Monday, the following note was placed on the White House website from director of new media Macon Phillips:

These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation,” Phillips wrote. “Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Every right thinking American should consider reporting themselves to the Obama snitch team.

You can even visit the website where the entire bill is located - http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.p df. - and then copy and paste a portion of the bill on to the White House snitch list with your comments. Maybe this way, someone will actually be forced to read it.

I love the following letter already sent to the White House by some brave self-reporting soul:

To whomever is in charge until the adults come back to
Washington:

I need to report Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Reid, and a few select others, for submitting frivolous and unconstitutional proposed legislation, and using manipulative tactics and coercion to entice, and/or force, other lawmakers to vote for bills of national significance without first reading it and fully understanding the implication to the American public, i.e., porkulus and health care reform. And worse, deliberately using clouded language to hide the true ramifications of this legislation from the American public. I also want to report the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Timothy Geithner; (I’ve heard from reliable sources that he cheats on his taxes).

I also want to report the Obama administration for encouraging these Soviet style tactics in regards to encouraging Americans to inform directly to their leaders of the free and protected speech of those who may disagree with official Obama policy. Furthermore, I question the motivation of the administration in making this request, and to what purpose the information gleaned would be used. I also question the accuracy of such reports. I suggest that any type of penalty for disagreement would have to be investigated extensively, thereby wasting billions more taxpayer dollars on frivolous bureaucratic BS. I hereby inform you that I do not appreciate the violation of my constitutional right to peaceably disagree with what Washington DC decides to do WITH MY MONEY!

You have my name and e-mail address; also note please that I am a veteran, therefore I believe somebody in your office considers me to be an enemy of the state.

For what it’s worth, I also believe you are all a collection of shameless liars.

I am here waiting to be picked up by the Obamagestapo.

VTY,J. Baker”

Are the children in charge of the White House really that stupid or out of touch? Did they really think we would take this lying down? It's like they can only play checkers, not chess. 100 million of us can all inform on ourselves, copying and pasting portions of the bill (or even Obama's own comments on how a public option will inevitably lead to single payer) - and let them sort it out. By the way, I'd be honored if someone who reads this sees fit to inform on me.

Obama - Palin share some similarities: Bad advisors and thin skins

It occurred to me that President Obama and Sarah Palin share some similarities on at least two points: Bad advisers and thin skins.

This week, the White House, in another unforced error, decided to pick a fight with Drudge (full disclosure, he's a former client of mine) over Drudge's posting of a statement Obama made in 2007 where he concedes that a public option health plan will eventually lead to single payer (something Obama says in another 2003 video that he fully supports).

The White House immediately went on the offensive, stating that Drudge (although not mentioning him by name, even though it was clear that Linda Douglass, Communications Director for the White House Office of Health Reform, was pointing to a headline on the Drudge Report), took the "sentences and phrases out of context and cobbling them together to leave a very false impression."

Even if the White House were right, it would have been a serious mistake to pick a fight with Drudge. But given that Drudge had the goods on Obama, it was just plain stupid. Obama could simply have ignored Drudge, but as it turned out, he egged him on so that Drudge posted an uncut version of the 2003 video, and, you guessed it, it said just what Drudge represented it to be. It was Douglass (and by extension Obama) who were exposed as the liars.

But the White House didn't stop there. Douglass later told the public to report health care reform disinformation to her office. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs claimed that the anger being displayed by people at town hall meetings toward Democratic legislators was "manufactured" by Republicans and special interest groups.

Is this wise? To dismiss the anger directed at sweeping changes in the healthcare system as partisan manipulation? To act as if the substance of what you're trying to accomplish is unimportant to voters? How insulting.

Other examples of ill-planned tactics includes Rahm Emmanuel's letters threatening governors to cut off stimulus funds because Republican senators (like John Kyl of Arizona) have the temerity to state that maybe Congress should reconsider how it will spend funds that have not yet been released. Maybe this stuff works in Chicago, but it's a real turn off everywhere else.

In 2006, Obama advisor David Axelrod told Obama that:

You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched.

Then there's Sarah Palin. In no way do I mean this to be Palin-bashing. I wish her the best. I only hope that this might lead her to seek better advice than she was getting from the obviously not-so-ready-for-prime-time players in Alaska.

There is really no good reason for Palin to respond to every pundit or celebrity that criticizes her. She should have ignored David Letterman and Ashley Judd. (Although I applaud her response to a joke about her by Senator John Kerry saying in effect, of all the governors that could have disappeared (referring to Mark Sanford) why couldn't it have been the Governor of Alaska? To which Palin responded, "Hey John, Why the long face?") I also think she should adopt as her own the really cool nickname ("Caribou Barbie") given to her by Maureen Dowd.

Also, Palin's resignation announcement was a horrible act of self-inflicted cutting:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would beapathetic to just hunker down and "go with the flow". Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow.

Oh I see. It is the people who finish their terms who are the quitters. And it is just the opposite for those who quit their terms.

Puhleez. Her advisers should never have either written that line or allowed her to utter it. It's as bad an example of Orwellian newspeak as Obama claiming to mean the opposite of what he plainly said.

I think he's too arrogant to learn from his missteps. I hope she's not. We'll soon see.

Obama Joker poster - Why so serious?

On July 8, 2009, I posted on this blog a piece entitled "Joker in the White House?" I view The Dark Knight as the movie of the decade that deals with the primary issue of our time: How far do we compromise our own values to stop the terrorists?

My primary point in that post was that a quote from The Dark Knight where Alfred the Butler told Bruce Wayne regarding the mob's hiring of the Joker "and in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand" sounded strangely appropriate.

I immediately thought of the situation in this country where voters turned to a man who (unexpectedly, at least to some) appears to be leading the U.S. headlong into socialism.

Apparently this idea was not unique to me. Over the weekend, posters of Obama made up like Heath Ledger's Joker have been appearing in Los Angeles.

Liberals are becoming unhinged. The liberal L.A. Weekly stated: "The only thing missing is a noose." Los Angeles Urban Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson stated that the poster was "politically mean spirited and dangerous." Others have called the poster "racist" because of the white clown make up. Some bloggers have called the poster a "threat to national security," while others wondered "how do we punish this."

For the record, these guerrilla art posters have been appearing in L.A. for decades and have depicted every president since Reagan. Vanity Fair put a similar picture of George W. Bush as the Joker on its July 29, 2008 Politics and Power Blog. Where was the liberal outrage then?

I would like to ask all the liberals wetting themselves over the poster: "Why so serious?"

On further reflection, there are other appropriate lines from The Dark Knight presently applicable to Obama:

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan."

"Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos."

"All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class of criminal and I'm gonna give it to them."

"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

One last question: Is dissent still the highest form of patriotism?

Freedom to choose is "what's so great about health insurance"

In today's L.A. Times, Michael Hiltzik writes "What's so great about health insurance." Here's my response:

To begin, this was one of the most disingenuous articles I've ever read. Hiltzik writes:

members of Congress, some of whom believe that the public option will give the government unwarranted power over healthcare, . . . all of whom enjoy government-provided healthcare that's a lot better than what most of us get.

This is largely untrue. Members of Congress (like other Federal employees) are enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program ("FEHBP"). The FEHBP includes dozen of health insurance choices from straight insurance to HMO's. An analysis of this plan can be found at www.heritage.org/reseach/healthcare/bg1123.cfm.

For an extra fee ($300 for House Members, $600 for Senators, with another $2 million kicked in by taxpayers), Members of Congress get additional perks that could loosely be described as "public health care." There is a Member's only pharmacy in the Capitol and doctors on stand by in case someone busts a gut during a filibuster. They can get many diagnositic procedures without ever having to leave work.

But this plan, of course, is not the one they contemplate giving ordinary Americans. Congress has refused calls to enter the same plan they craft for us.

Hiltzik also writes:

So it's proper to remind ourselves what that American way entails. For if the insurers have proved anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution.

But the rising costs of healthcare are not created by insurance companies, but by underpayment in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements by the government (which is already a huge portion of health care dollars spent in the U.S.). This is the reason why hospitals charge $10 for a Tylenol tablet. I learned this while working for an oncology clinic for 5 years while in college, which raised its prices because the reimbursements it was getting from Medicare were too low (to which the government says take it or leave it - what's an oncology practice to do if it can't treat old people?)

Hiltzik saves his biggest whoppers for last:

Anyone whose condition is even slightly out of the ordinary knows the sinking feeling of entering health insurance hell -- pre-authorizations, denials, appeals, and days, weeks, even months wasted waiting for resolution.

Does anyone reading this actually know anyone who's had such an experience? I have a mother with post-polio syndrome, who doesn't report these problems even with her HMO. I had a daughter who was born three months premature (whose hospital bill reached almost 1 million dollars), but did not experience anything like this.

Hiltzik also resorts to phony straw man arguments where he says:

Their only alternative right now is the individual market, where insurers scrutinize applicants' medical histories, looking for reasons to turn them down or charge them exorbitant premiums. Have hay fever, asthma, a cholesterol pill prescription? Are you a woman of child-bearing age? You're virtually insurable at an affordable cost.

Is he kidding us? Denying insurance to women of child bearing age? Where is this happening? To whom? Denying coverage to people with hay fever? If this were true, almost no one would have coverage.

The Blue Dogs are not worried about being accountable to insurance companies, but to the voters in their districts, most of whom voted for McCain. Like Charles Krauthammer said about the public's rejection of the House's proposed health care reforms: "The dog won't eat the dog food."

The rank dishonesty of this article proves the arguments Hiltzik makes are pitifully weak. Single-payer is an attempt to socialize (either incrementally or all at once) one-fifth of the U.S. economy under the pretext of insuring the uninsured. I suppose using deceit to obtain universal health care is an example of the ends justifying the means.

What's so great about private health insurance? FREEDOM! If you don't like your insurance company, you can (usually) get another. But if you don't like the government health care, you'll probably have to do without or travel abroad.

So under the proposed plans, one has an unfettered right to an abortion in the first two trimesters, but cannot have an MRI unless the government says so. So what if your doctor doesn't think it's necessary (or maybe he does but the government doesn't)? It's not his body, but yours.

What would Lincoln have thought of Obamacare?

When President Obama took office in January, it was just weeks before the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, so even if the main stream media (why do we still call it that?) didn't hail the new President as the Obamessiah, comparisons to America's greatest president would have nonetheless been inevitable (so much so that CNN even morphed their faces).

In his earliest recorded speech, a 28 year-old Lincoln stated:

It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?--Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.--It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Which brings us to Obamacare. Neither I, nor most Republicans, object to legislation that would prevent insurers from dropping sick people. I'd even be willing to consider legislation that did not allow insurers to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions if it would kill the public option. (Even this is like buying car insurance after you have an accident).

But as I have written previously, insuring the uninsured is simply a pretext for the creation(either incrementally or all at once) of a public option that would (as Barney Frank frankly admitted) inevitably lead to a single payer system.

This is where the "man of ambition" (you know who I mean) will not emancipate slaves (that's already been done) but "enslave[] freemen."

As Mark Steyn wrote in NRO, this would have the effect of permanently changing the political culture to a left of center one that would redefine the relationship between the citizen and the state in matters as personal and as basic to personal liberty as one's own body. Your health care choices would ultimately be left of to Congress, special interest lobbies and the courts. (One might have the unfettered right to an abortion, but could not get an MRI if she so wanted unless she went to Mexico or China). Are you really free if you can't get an MRI or some other medical treatment, regardless of its usefulness unless the government says so?

Toward this end, Lincoln also warned:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

We will have committed suicide (both figuratively and literally) by failing to just say no to "free stuff" from those whose design it is to ultimately make us dependent on the government.