August 30, 2009

Sounds Familiar....

Democrats win landslide in historic election
...voters swept the opposition to a historic victory in an election on Sunday, ousting the ruling conservative party and handing the untested Democrats the job of breathing life into a struggling economy....ushering in a government that has promised to focus spending on consumers, cut wasteful budget outlays and reduce the power of bureaucrats....The Democrats will have to move fast to keep support among voters worried about a record jobless rate and a rapidly aging society that is inflating social security costs....

Good luck with all that.

August 25, 2009

Tax Me! Tax Me!

What you're not hearing from Obama's young supporters...at least according to Beth Fouhy's WaPo article today.

OK, Fouhy doesn't say that. What she does say is that Obama's younger scocial-networking supporters see health care as an old-folks issue. Fouhy seems to miss the idea that their notable lack of enthusiasm may also be related to more direct causes than slacker ennui. Namely that so many of those young Obamites are among the "healthy uninsured" who would be forced into buying expensive insurance policies they don't really think they need in order to subsidize the ObamaCare system.

Remember, at least a good quarter of the uninsured are healthy young employed adults between 19 and 35 who have made the rational (for them) economic decision to put their income somewhere other than into insurance that is unlikely to show anything resembling a positive return on their investment. These are the fiscal prize for the "universal coverage" crowd -- without those healthy uninsured there's no "free money" revenue pool to subsidize the unhealthy uninsured, for whom we are already paying anyway.

August 23, 2009

The Angry White Liberal


Matthew Continetti has the story.
When things aren't going his way, the Angry White Liberal wails and gnashes his teeth, rends his garments, and hurls invective at the opposition. His rhetoric and prose is so heated, it's gotten to the point where you need to put on oven mitts before opening the paper. He is so convinced of the righteousness of his positions that he lashes out uncontrollably at anybody who disagrees with him. For the Angry White Liberal, dissent is anathema. Antagonism is illegitimate. Only conformity to prevailing liberal opinion is enough to still his rage.

Yeah, I run into them all the time. Disagree with any minute detail of whatever the current Holy "Progressive" Dogma and Doctrine is, and you are automatically a far-right-wing Republican* racist brown-shirt sockpuppet of BusHitler ... or whatever the demon of choice is nowadays.

[* -- I'm a pro-choice pro-2nd-Amendment pro-gay-rights pro-reality centrist pluralist currently registered as a Democrat. To the deranged True Believer "progressive" liberal that apparently make me a far-right-wing Republican. Or maybe just disagreeing with them in any tiny detail does. Don't ask it to make sense.]

August 21, 2009

Woo hoo!

The Vast Right-Wing Conpiracy is BACK!

And you don’t even actually have to be a Right-Winger to be a member. Centrist/pluralists also seem to be welcome. In fact, pretty much anyone who challenges the Holy ObamaDogma in the least degree can qualify, even liberals! At least, judging from the accusations and vitriol poured upon me by liberals about the blogosphere for simply noticing that the words coming out of the Democrats in Congress and the White House seem to be at odds with, well, reality.

That's right, you too can once again be an un-American scare-mongering jack-booted brown-shirted Nazi militia thug and tool of the GOP by un-patriotically dissenting, or even simply not nodding in agreement whenever an Obamabot begins spouting in public. You don't even have to pay any dues, it's all free!

I hope everyone kept their membership cards.

August 19, 2009

Big Brother, with Extra Tofu


Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson points out that in both the House and Senate versions of Obamacare, enforcement of the "individual mandate" requirement would be assigned to the tender mercies of the fine folks at the Internal Revenue Service.
These reporting provisions would allow the IRS to cross-check income tax returns and health coverage filings, and withhold tax refunds or utilize other collection methods for persons who do not have coverage unless they can prove they have acceptable coverage from some other source.

As usual with the IRS, you would be guilty until proven innocent to their satisfaction. Yeah, we just LOVE the idea of the IRS as our national health care enforcer. Professor Jacobson goes on in other posts to point out that under the Senate bill, the amount of the penalty tax would be left up to the discretion of the IRS, and that under both bills this amounts to a tax for merely existing.

As to combining your health information and taxation, those infamous Nazi racist un-American evil-mongering AstroTurfing far-right-wing-extremists at the American Civil Liberties Union have produced a brief Flash film on where letting the government have too much information can lead. Why, there seem to be no limits on the scare tactics this Republican front group is willing to use against Obamacare!

(I wonder if Orwell ever thought that Big Brother could turn out to be the Pizza Boy?)

August 16, 2009

Run Away!!!


The predicted HopeChange™! backtracking has begun.

Public insurance plan not essential: Sebelius
The government-run health insurance option favored by President Barack Obama is not essential to a healthcare overhaul as long as the final measure boosts competition, a top U.S. health official said on Sunday.

...Democratic proposals in Congress for a government-run insurance option have sparked intense opposition from Republicans who argue it would unfairly compete with private plans and would cripple the insurance industry.

The government option has become a key focus of opposition charges that the overhaul, Obama's top domestic priority, would amount to a government takeover of healthcare.

Six members of the Senate Finance Committee -- three from each party -- have been negotiating a reform package that would feature member-controlled non-profit cooperatives instead of the government-run plan.

Translation for those not conversant with RealPolitik double-speak: Now that a massive public outcry has made it clear that a majority of the American public, particularly American seniors, are NOT buying the fairy-dust promises of the Obamessiah and are NOT willing to passively stand by and watch another trillion-dollar-plus pig-in-a-poke crammed through Congress with little or no debate or public scrutiny, the administration has decided that getting anything passed that they can call "health care reform" and claim credit for and save face with is more important than getting the left-liberal dream of completely-government-controlled health care snuck in the back door.

So they are moving to a fallback position, one that still encourages the erosion of the "progressive"-left-hated corporate for-profit health insurors through competition with non-profits, thus preserving some red meat to throw to the left-liberal base to maintain support for any eventual bill.

The "public option" that was the first-order key to sneaking a government-run single-payer system into control of American health care is standing at the curb, and the admin is standing behind it, waiting on that bus now coming up the block. The admin knows that there will be more chances later, but for right now, it's time to give something a well-timed shove and run away.

[Second-order prediction: If the admin can get sympathetic polling for the "non-profit co-ops" the next step will be to place same under some serious gov't regulation and oversight, with an eye to future nationalization and/or complete government control of same. That would be the giant-wooden-badger fallback plan.]

August 14, 2009

What? Behind the rabbit?


Well, that's what it feels like, with some Democratic Senators oh-so-gently suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, this is not the right time to attempt to cram through cap & trade legislation.

Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S. Senators Say
Climate legislation would require 60 votes in the Senate. Most Republicans have said they oppose the cap-and-trade measure, and at least 15 of the Senate’s 60-member Democratic majority have said the House-passed version would hurt the economy and needs to be revamped to win their support.

August 12, 2009

How Things Have Changed

2003:



2009:

"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." -- Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer

We await the "facts" of the several competing health care "reform" bills. The one thing we are positive about is that we are NOT getting them from the White House, or from Congressional Democrats, or from the mega-million-funded Soros appendages and union thugs being bused in to fill the seats before the public is admitted to meetings.

August 11, 2009

The BackTrack Begins


Faced with massive opposition, the Obama admin appears to be about to do something that Pelosi and Reid won't be able to do. Namely, backtracking from cram-down on health care and moving to a "dialogue" position.

Expect some serious reconciliatory HopeChange™ in the near future as the polls and events continue to move strongly against the Dem's steamroller cram-down approach.

UPDATE: Further thoughts from Jennifer Rubin. Money quote:
There is no playbook for the liberal establishment when they are in power while the crowds and much of the new media are in fevered opposition. After all it is the Left that is supposed to be filled with righteous indignation at the “establishment.” Moreover, the intensity is largely now on the side of the anti-ObamaCare forces — quite a reversal from the Bush era.

They can either change the substance (i.e., scrap ObamaCare and start over) or try a different sales pitch. Absent either of those course corrections, it is hard to see how things can improve for the Democratic congressional leadership and the president. Indeed, the longer this goes on, the more likely they are to turn off more and more of the portion of the electorate that is most likely to show up at the polls on Election Day 2010.

Indeed. I think the President while callow and shallow is still somewhat brighter than the average bear, which is why I expect a backtrack in the near future as it becomes more and more obvious that the Dem party is shooting itself in the ass with the ObamaCare cramdown approach. IMHO it's almost too late for any "different sales approach" -- it would have to be brilliant to pull it off, and brilliance has not been noticeably on display. Expect the first major thing on the chopping block to be the stealth single-payer "public option."