Give this a listen.

See you at a Tea Party.  With, or in front of.  Either one is fine by me.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

I’m disappointed that Betty GAVE her vote away, instead of holding out for more home-state swag, as did her colleagues from Nebraska, Florida, etc.

Well, that’s the difference between prostitutes mercenaries like Stupak, Nelson and Tester, and true believers like McCollum.  The former will fight the battle for their own perceived advantage; the latter does it based on pure zeal for the cause.

As Lefty pundits from the esteemed Paul Krugman to the unhinged Brian Lambert have pointed out, it’s only teh dum ignant racist conservatives who oppose healthcare.

Keep that in mind when you read this detailed takedown – on both liberal and conservative principles – from  Glenn Beck:

UPDATE:  Oops.  I screwed up.  The article and table above wasn’t from Glenn Beck.  It was from Jane Hamsher, writing at usually far-far-far-far-left uberblog Firedog Lake.

And yeah, it’s done with an aim toward promoting single-payer, which is certainly not my goal.

But it’s a decent digest of everything that’s wrong with Obamacare, abortion funding aside.

Obviously stupid racists.

The health care reform bill is making it’s way to the President (you know, the one where the people won and the insurance companies lost) and yet…

For the first time, a CNN poll has found that a majority of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s job performance.

How can this be? Didn’t we win? That’s what the President told us. Shouldn’t we be happy? Are we not good, obedient listeners?

I think the President should be telling us to be happy more. That way we’d be happy.

…and approving.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine combined the radicalism of Alinsky, the corruption of Springfield and the machine power politics of Chicago.

…keep the oven door closed, bake at 500 degrees for a whole weekend, and the result should be no surprise.

It is hard to imagine how much pressure they brought to bear on congressman Stupak to get him to accept a cynical, phony clearly illegal and unconstitutional executive order on abortion. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine was most clearly on display in their public humiliation of Stupak.

He did look like he was about to cry…or had “dropped the soap” in a prison shower.

…is hard to swallow…and it’s probably too late any way. Then again, why do we need that pill now any way? The federal government will pay for an abortion.

America is pissed off, but will anyone be made to pay?

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (…of course if this were a Fox News poll, it would be thrown out by most liberals-JR) found that 59 percent of those surveyed opposed the bill, and 39 percent favored it. All of the interviews were conducted before the House voted Sunday night, but the contents of the bill were widely known.

…to the extent they’ve ever been widely known.

In addition, 56 percent said the bill gives the government too much involvement in health care; 28 percent said it gives the government the proper role and 16 percent said it leaves Washington with an inadequate role.

On the question of costs, 62 percent said the bill increases the amount of money they personally spend on health care; 21 percent said their costs would remain the same and 16 percent said they would decrease.

The poll’s results about the bill’s fiscal impact were particularly stark: 70 percent of respondents said they believed deficits would go up because of the bill; 17 percent felt they would stay the same and 12 percent said they would go down.

…not than any of this was ever about health care. This has always been about a transfer of power to Democrats by crafting a new middle-class entitlement.

President Obama polishes a turd:

“We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people,” the president said late Sunday, beginning his sales pitch from the White House one hour after Congress passed the sweeping measure.

It works “for the people” – 55% of whom oppose the bill.  That’s two percent more than his final vote total in ’08.

He’s like the Cheshire Cat; “”For the people” means what I say it means.  Ummm, no more and, aaaahm, let me be perfectly clear, no less!”

In a story with endless flips and flops, on what may be domestic America’s Longest Day, The Hill reports Pelosi may come up short:

Hours before a scheduled vote on healthcare reform, Democratic leaders don’t have the votes.

The decisions of two Tennessee Democrats, Reps. John Tanner and Lincoln Davis, to vote no has put President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her lieutenants in a major bind.

If every member votes, Democratic leaders can only afford 37 defections. According to The Hill’s whip list, there are 39 Democrats planning to vote no.

“For now”, as Stupak, being apparently more a negotiator than a pro-lifer, says.

While arguing with liberals – friends and otherwise – about Obamacare, I’ve noticed that while most of them are very poorly-informed about much of what is actually in whatever bills are currently in contention, many of them are crystal-clear on at least one key chanting point:

“It’s not socialism!”

And they’re more or less correct, at the moment, if and only if you observe exactly one, excessively restrictive dictionary definition of “socialism”.

But, in practical, real-world terms, there really are two definitions.

I will try to explain these definitions with real-world examples.  However, as the real-world examples use a few historical terms that tend, shall we say, to inflame conversation and serve as red blankets before bulls, I’ll change the names of those terms to keep things on an even keel and focus on the actual policy and mechanical differences between the two definitions.

Example 1:

Promising that they will make life easier and more tenable to the people, the Bommunist party abolishes private enterprise and makes all businesses state-owned.

These state-owned businesses, answerable only to centralized state planning agencies – operating in what economists call a “command economy” – are utterly divorced from the free market, and produce entirely based on political imperatives from above, rather than market demands from all around them.  Also, absent any of the discipline of the free market, productivity plummets.  Eventually, the system becomes unable to sustain any sort of economic activity.

Example 2:

Promising to make life easier and more tenable for the people, the National Bocialist Party (*) also realizes unfettered free enterprise is a threat to its control – but has learned something from ten years of watching the Bommunist Party flounder and fail.

So the National Bocialists decide to keep the “best” (for their purposes) of the free market – the expertise and disclipline of capitalist businesses and their owners – but put them under centralized control scarcely less complete than that of the Bommunists.  The ideal, of course, was to keep the outward appearances of capitalism and avoid the worst failures of full government ownership – but to make it essentially impossible for industry to do anything other than what government mandated.

(Data on the National Bocialist system fades out after about 12 years, but preliminary results weren’t all that encouraging for anything other than artificial bubbles in things government needed in huge numbers quickly, like – again, hypothetically – Banzers, Bukas and Boo Boats).

Again – the Bommunists and the National Bocialists are completely hypothetical, and any similarities to political parties that existed in the real world is purely concidental.

Except for their economics.

So is Obamacare socialist?

As it is being considered today?  How is Obamacare, with its thin, unconvincing veener of “marketiness”, different from the (utterly hypothetical) Example 2, above?

(more…)

…than this piece by Andy “AAA” Aplikowski…

…well, then you’re the same kind of mental-lightweight doofus that got us into this mess in the first place, voting for a “President” based entirely on curb appeal and superficial “zing”.

You need to read a lot, and get very, very informed, fast.  And that information is not going to come from the media, or the gabbling hamster leftyblogs that are carrying water for Obamacare.

But, that said, Andy’s got it right:

Obama Care is a trojan horse for single payer. It is the first step towards it.Democrats in Washington are so panicked in passing something now before their radical unAmerican butts get thrown out of office…

If I’m sick of one thing, it’s bobbleheaded Obama suppoters chanting “but it’s not socialism!  It’ll actually be cheaper!  It’ll keep private insurance, if that’s what you want!”

Right.  And then, as every American who deserves the right to vote knows…:

1. It will require everyone to buy insurance, against the penalty of having the IRS crawling up your leg.
2. It will require private insurance to cover not only pre-existing conditions, but every kind of care imaginable, from catastrhopic care to drug addiction treatment (to say nothing of abortion)…
3. …which will cause a huge increase in demand for a static amount of services…
4. …which is a recipe, as everyone who ever took Econ 101 knows, for inflation…
5. …even if the services stay static.  They will not.  Which accelerates the inflation…
6. …so that more and more Americans and businesses will not be able to afford private insurance, which will drive insurance companies out of business and drive people over to the federally-subsidize program for “the poor” (which, in the current bill, includes families of four earning up to $88,000)…
7. …which will cause a “crisis” that the government will have to meet by providing the “public option”, assuming it’s even an option by that point…
8. …which, given that private insurance (except for Congress and their union pals) can not survive against the cost pressure provided by the government, it won’t be for long.

That’s not a trojan horse.  It’s a trojan field of horses bolting out of a starting gate.

Andy’s got one thing wrong, though:

…Do you see it yet, our Government now closer resembles the one we revolted from then it does the one established when we were first freed.

Well, no.  Like every dim anal-retentive lefty commentator notes when tut-tutting about the historical and philosophical “accuracy” of the term “Tea Parties”, we do have an elected government.

It was elected by the same crowd of people who put Jesse Ventura and Al Franken and Keith Ellison in office; people who don’t give a rat’s ass about politics other than every four years, when they may or may not trudge to the polls to vote for whomever they perceive to be a proximate reaction to whatever they believe the media is telling them the “big problem facing America” is, if not just whomever had the best “curb appeal”.

And they are the same Americans who will eventually show Obama and/or his party the door, since while those people are superficial and ill-informed and unjustifiably trusting of a corrupt, in-the-bag media that long ago stopped doing the job of holding government accountable, they’re not stupid.  One year they elected Jimmy Carter as a knee-jerk reaction against Nixon; four years later, they realized that the “cure” was not only worse than the problem, but that there were some real-life issues that needed real solutions.

And maybe we’re getting to that point.  The problem is, corrosive socialists like Pelosi and Reid and Obama, like boll weevils or obesity or flood water, will do a lot of damage while they’re around; prevention is always the best medicine.

But we’re way past prevention.

To get involved with the MN Tea Party, click here, or here.

Jim Oberstar:
2365 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6211
FAX: (202) 225-0699

Collin Peterson
(202) 225-2165

Tim Walz
Washington Office
1722 Longworth House
Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-2472

Michele Bachmann
107 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2331
Fax: (202) 225-6475

John Kline
1210 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2271
Fax: (202) 225-2595

Keith Ellison
202-225-4755

Betty McCollum
1714 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
phone: (202) 225-6631
fax: (202) 225-1968<
Erik Paulsen
126 Cannon HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2871
Fax: (202) 225-6351
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Obama’s relentless push to “reform” health care misses the point – by a mile.

Health care costs in America aren’t attributable to not enough government involvement rather not enough freedom of choice (i.e. free market forces) and even moreso, an epidemic lack of personal responsibility.

Liberals aren’t real big on the personal responsibility deal, and most Americans are oblivious to the fact that a government “reform” of their health care system takes more than it gives – they’re too fat, dumb and happy.

Mostly fat though.

…and it starts with our youngn’s.

Extreme obesity affects about 6.4 percent of children, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that suggests overweight kids are getting even heavier.

What do you suppose the chances are that a fat kid ends up being a fat adult?

Several studies now indicate that obesity in young adult life is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, excessive weight during adolescence predicts a number of adverse effects on health later in life, including increased mortality among men.

What are the results of obesity?

Coronary heart disease

Type 2 diabetes

Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)

Stroke

Liver and Gallbladder disease

Sleep apnea and respiratory problems

Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint)

Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)

Its a list of all the usual suspects of the most costly burdens to our health care system. Meanwhile Barack Obama is vilifying the health insurance companies while Michelle Obama (as much as it pains me to type this) might actually be on the right track in her mission to reduce childhood obesity.

It’s unfortunate that America is being sold the idea that the only solution to health care reform is a massive expansion of government entitlements when the massive expansion of Americans is one of the major factors in our health care “crisis.”

…our friend Angry Webmaster has translated “no” into a slew of languages:

否 nr non nein
αριθ. No
いいえ 아니다
não нет no Ne Ei לא नहीं
Nem Nei Le Ní hea
Nē Не بدون Nu Hapana Nej ไม่ใช่

Hayır Ні Không Dim קיין Nee Jo
لا Няма

Please make sure Congress gets the message…

…for any references to “Deem and Pass”.

A little help, here?

(Via GeeEmInEm.

I just left this message at Rep. McCollum’s website:

———-

Rep. McCollum,

I’m Mitchell Berg.  I’m a constituent of yours, from the Midway.

And while I realize there’s scant chance that you will change your vote, I need to make sure you know that at least one of your constituents is revolted by the current process in Washington.  Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid are making a mockery of House and Senate rules…

…in service of a bill that *will* bankrupt this nation and *will* destroy our healthcare system. 

I realize that it’s pointless to ask you to vote for what’s best for our grandchildren and generations thereafter.  But I’m going to make sure I ask anyway.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Berg
Constituent

Americans have been running the Capitol’s switchboard red-hot this past week, calling by the millions to register their opposition to socialized medicine.

And it’s obvious the ruling Democrats don’t want to disturb the Master/Peasant relationship.  “Capital Confidential”, writing at Breitbart’s Big Government blog, tried calling his representative (Rep. John Garamendi (D, CA-10) .  The operator kept hanging up on him.

I called one more time. This time she said, “If you call one more time, we will notify Capital Police.” I asked why my conduct warranted involving federal law enforcement agents. She said I was “harassing” her. I tried to explain that trying to convince a representative to change his or her vote didn’t constitute “harassment.” Before I could fully explain, she hung up again.

I called back. This time, I asked to speak to her supervisor in order to report her repeated hanging up as well as the threat she made. I was placed on hold. Thinking I was holding for her supervisor, I was shocked when a Federal Agent with the Capital Police picked-up the telephone.

Fortunatey, CapCon is a former Marine – not easily intimidated…:

At first, the Agent was curt with me. He claimed I was harassing Mr. Garamendi’s staff by continually calling after being told to stop calling. I asked him when it became a federal crime to lobby a congressman. He said that it wasn’t but it was a crime to “harass” congressional members and staff pursuant to 47 U.S.C. 223.

…and a lawyer, so he can’t be BS’ed about statutes:

 I told him I was an attorney (which I am) and that I would research the statute he had cited.

After researching 47 U.S.C. 223, I called Mr. Garamendi’s office again and asked to be transferred back to the Capital Police Agent. The Agent picked up the phone and I explained to him that the statute he cited was not controlling since it only prohibits people from calling with the specific intent to harass. I further explained that I was simply trying to voice my concerns with the intent of getting Mr. Garamendi to change his mind, not to harass his staff. The Agent eventually agreed with my position and said he would call Mr. Garamendi’s office and instruct his staff that I was within my rights to call my congressman and voice my concerns.

Unfortunately, not everyone who’s calling in is a lawyer:

While I’m fortunate enough to be able to legally challenge what happened today, others aren’t. The sad part is the democrats know this. They know that Americans unfamiliar with federal jurisprudence can easily be silenced when threats to involve federal agents are made. They know that most Americans don’t want trouble and they’ll go away rather than face the possibility of having to explain themselves to federal agents. That’s why I found this tactic appalling, as a Marine, as an attorney and as a proud American.

It’s simple, really; if Americans are afraid to contact their “representatives”, there won’t be any complaints or dissent to report.

November can’t come soon enough.

Nurses in a Brit hospital allow a man to die of dehydration:

Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.

They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.

She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. ‘He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.’

He worked for Waitrose and had been a keen footballer and runner until he was diagnosed with a brain tumour the year before his death

A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police.

So that’s how you get accountability from government healthcare; you die under suspecious and hideously cruel circumstances.

And they say we peasants will have no options.

On the one hand, I don’t know that anybody quibbles about Lori Sturdevant being a bought-and-paid-for (figuratively) tool of the left – someone who is the mirror opposite of the “extremist” conservatives she clutches her pearls and complains about during the course of every single legislative session.  She’s pretty well thrown in with the radical dogmatic left; there’s really no need to argue about it.

Except that she’s still employed by the Strib; there, she writes as a “general” columnist, which might tell the uninformed reader that she’s actually passing on unvarnished, “objective” information, rather than shilling for the DFL.  Sturdevant is no more detached or “objective”  in covering politics than David Brauer or Brian Lambert.

But how would the casual Strib reader know this?

Simple; most of them don’t.  Which is just fine by whomever is paying the bills.

Oh, yeah –Sturdevant favors single-payer healthcare, as she makes perfectly clear in her weekend mash note to Roseville senator John Marty, who I’d say has served as a sort of dimestore Paul Wellstone, except that the left and Sturdevant would likely think of that as a compliment.

The possibility that Americans would join hands and buy health care all together has found no traction in Washington.

[Aside:  Notice with Sturdevant how “bipartisanship” is always something warm and fuzzy like “joining hands” when it’s a DFL initiative like socialized medicine, but some sort of climate of mean hatred when it’s something like tax cuts?]

But at the DFL-controlled Minnesota Legislature, the idea has been quietly marching through committees, three in the Senate, one in the House.

If something is “quietly marching” – just like Martin Luther King! – then  it must be a great idea, right?

Well, no – the DFL, which never met a spending program that didn’t make a tingle run up its leg, has a supermajority in the Senate and an almost-veto-proof margin in the House.

The Minnesota Health Plan is propelled in the Senate by former and current DFL gubernatorial candidate John Marty, a seven-term legislator from Roseville. Marty recognizes that with GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty in office, a single-payer health plan has no chance to become law this year.

But health care politics will change rapidly in the next few years as the status quo becomes increasingly untenable, the senator predicted.

The whammy here is that the system by definition can only get less tenable – because it is perfectly tenable today.  Sturdevant, being a bobble-headed repeater of DFL talking points, likely doesn’t know it, but John Marty does, and is lying; 92% of Minnesotans have insurance already, of one kind or another.  And insurance in Minnesota, regulations aside, is fairly affordable compared to states like New York or New Jersey.  And of the 8% who don’t have insurance, the vast majority either don’t want it, which should be their right, or are part of a relatively tiny minority who actually can’t get any insurance.

His plan will gain adherents because it would cure more of what ails the costly health care system. It would insure everyone, cover all medical needs, provide the purchasing clout needed to reform the way medicine is practiced, and thereby drive down premium costs.

If I can perform no other service in this debate, I want to make sure you, gentle reader, who is likely to go to a healthcare protest,can read behind the code words Sturdevant just used.

• “Insure everyone” – even if you don’t want it, orif you like the plan you have now just fine!  Even if you move here strictly for the free health care (with no intention of paying anything meaningful into the system).
• “cover all medical needs” – they do mean all medical needs; viagra for 68-year-old real estate agents; chemical dependency treatment; sex change operations; since John Marty and the extreme left wing of the DFL is involved, abortions will be part of the package at some point or another.
• “provide the purchasing clout needed to reform the way medicine is practiced” – which is a nice, benign way of saying “provide a monopoly that can dictate prices to doctors”.  Who, inevitably, leave the business.  Which, inevitably, constricts the supply of care.  Which either means the state raises what they pay, or start rationing the care that is available.  Which is precisely what has happened in every single state, county or nation that has ever socialized healthcare.
• “drive down premium costs” – in the same way that union healthcare plans “drive down co-pays” – by passing the costs on to other people.  And when it’s government involved, you know where the buck stops starts, right?

Sturdevant:

Marty pegs the savings in total state health care spending, public and private combined at 20 to 25 percent.

Provided the conditions of the “pegging” stay static – which never, ever happens.

That claim faces a mountain of skepticism, even from his fellow DFLers, because he is talking about “government-run health care.” But his notion isn’t to put the Legislature in charge. It’s to create a quasi-governmental agency with a board selected by nonpartisan county commissioners, empowered to contract with local and regional providers of health care services and manage their care.

Sturdevant, knowing she can’t dazzle you with brilliance, is baffling the gentle reader with – well, Sturdevant.Again with the code words:

• “Quasi-governmental agency” – Being “quasi-governmental” is like being “quasi-pregnant”.
• “nonpartisan county commissioners” – Please.  County commissioners are as non-partisan as, well, Lori Sturdevant.
• “Empowered to contract with providers and manage their care” – A phrase that is so carefully crafted as to be almost dazzling in its misleading brilliance.  But if this board is “empowered” to compete against private health insurance companies, they do it with government subsidies, which drive down the apparent cost (because everyone’s premiums appear cheaper if someone else is paying for them!) and increase at least the initial fund of money available.  Which puts the private companies at a disadvantage and eventually drives them from the market.  Which leaves the “quasi”-public plan as the main player in the market.  Which, as more people flock to use the artificially-low-priced services, costs the taxpayers more.  Which means the board will “negotiate” lower prices with providers.  Which means providers leave the business (as they have in Canada, Sweden, the UK, France and every other place where socialized healthcare has been attempted). Which means that either the wait for services grows longer (as they have in Canada, Sweden, the UK, France…), or the “board” gives in and pays out higher prices, but then either has to make up the difference by charging higher premiums (which nobody can afford by themselves because, remember, you’re paying for Honest Eddie’s little blue pills and Dave’s sex change as well as little Raymond’s appendectomy), or raising taxes – which won’t solve the problem right away anyway, since replaceing doctors and nurses takes years, and doesn’t work if you’ve made medicine a wretched government job anyway.

Sturdevant:

That should sound familiar to the 13 rural (and Republican-dominated) counties of PrimeWest Health, a county-based health care purchasing system for low-income people that’s been turning in impressive cost savings in recent years.

But if it sounds familiar, it’s just the voices in the listener’s head, because there is virtually no similarity.

While PrimeWest Health may well run into exactly the same pathologies that we noted above, and for exactly the same reasons – like the Massachusetts health system did – it is at least something that makes more sense than Marty and Sturdevant’s fantasy; it attempts to solve the real problem (uninsured low-income people) rather than the imagined one (insuring everyone for everything).

That, indeed, has been the greatest danger of the healthcare debate lately; aided and abetted by people like Al Franken in last week’s rally, and Lori Sturdevant in the media, the left-voting crowd in Minnesota is chanting less “public option now!” and more “it’s just like free enterprise!”, without knowing just how wrong they are.

Did you see this?

“Hiding spending does not reduce spending”

…it’s everywhere, but you have to see Ryan’s calm but complete takedown of the President and his policies regarding health care reform.

It’s become a media meme in recent years; grassroots conservative activists are crude, inarticulate, ignorant and prone to outbursts of anger.

Reality shows quite the opposite, of course; from the SEIU thugs beating the guy at the Carnahan Town Hall into the hospital to the whinging infants who threw bricks and bleach during the Saint Paul Republican National Convention, the left has the genuinely checkered record.

Sad to say, today’s Franken rally in Minneapolis was no exception.

Early in the rally, a guy carrying a “Teamster for Conservatism” stood at the entrance to the parking lot at the rally site (the Labor Temple, in northeast Minneapolis).  I never did get his name.

He was standing on the curb next to the driveway.  One of the attendees in a Toyota apparently saw him, yelled something, and gunned his engine, forcing the protester to get out of the way.  The driver parked in the parking lot and went into the rally – but the protester and a couple of witnesses got the license number and called the police.  When the rally ended, the Minneapolis Police – who’d been waiting around the event – pulled him over.  Nobody was hurt, and there were no charges to place, but the cops did give the little fella a good talking to, and then made him shake hands with the protester.

As I noted in my previous post on the subject, there weren’t many pro-Obama counterprotesters.  They were pretty standard-issue stuff; not very articulate, not very well-informed, and pretty harmless.

This guy was both of the above – but he brought an element of stupid to the proceedings that livened things up for all of us.  We noticed him when he stood on one of the corners across from the Temple, bellowing “Teabaggers!  Teabaggersj!” over and over again.

That’s a spine.  With a couple of putative testicles, ready for “Teabagging”, which the protester (whose name we got, but which I’ll keep offline) had helpfully affixed. (Because we have all been assured that when lefties yell about “Teabaggers”, they’re referring to the people who sent bags of Lipton to Congress.  Of course).

As I noted in my previous post (“It’s Fun Being Outside The Alamo For A Change“), not only is it fun outnumbering the other guys out on the streets for the first time I can remember – but I hate to think what it’s like for the lefties being stuck inside the Alamo with some of these whackdoodles.

The truism about conservatives throughout my cognitive life is that we just don’t do protests.We have day jobs and families, for the most part; standing around waving signs rarely rises to the level of “something we’re interested in”.

I remember throwing counterdemonstrations at antiwar rallies that drew 15 people against 3,000 neocoms.  I did another to counterprotest a big pre-RNC warmup rally in Saint Paul in September of ’07 that drew maybe 50 people against 600 or so of the other guys.  And while 15 against 3,000 is a fair fight, I was never interested in being fair.

But the Obama Administration changed all that.  Last April 15, 600,000 workadaddy, hugammommy conservatives turned out to protest government spending.  More still turned out at subsequent rallies – and, hardest to believe of all, thousands went to congressional Town Hall meetings to show powers that currently be that not everyone is enamored of the Hope and Change we’re being presented.

In other words, there’s been a huge change in the way conservatives see public activism.

But even that observation didn’t prepare me for what I saw today. I attended a protest outide an Al Franken pep rally for Obamacare in Minneapolis today.

I parked a few blocks up Central, and walked toward the Temple; seeing a crowd gathered at Central and Uni, I steeled myself to walk a gauntlet of “Public Option Now”-chanting, preprinted-placard-holding Obamacare supporters.

And I practically fainted when I saw the assembled crowd; close to thirty anti-Obamacare people, holding homemade signs.  They were in a jovial mood.

There were perhaps three Obamacare supporters.  One was a very articulate guy and fellow User Interaction designer – yes, we talked a little shop – who stated a coherent case with not a few protesters on his way in and out of the meeting.

Another – a tallish fellow who looked like an extra from “The Crazies”, scuttled about with a big sign that said “Yes, there are Death Panels; they’re called Insurance Companies”.  I asked him “So that means Sarah Palin wasn’t lying or crazy?”, I asked him (this is basically the same thing I wrote last spring);  His eyes wobbled a bit, and he scampered away.  His idea of an argument seemed to be “you people are the minority!”.  Over and over.  And over.  Again.

And there was one more.  (Article about him to come shortly).

It was a pretty low-key time, until the rally let out.  A few hundred Obama supporters, clutching pre-printed placard that they no doubt had spent the last hour waving on cue, milled out across the sidewalk.  For the most part, they navigated the jovial, happy gauntlet of protesters without incident.  (Again, one big exception coming shortly).

But a few of them?  You could tell how bitterly they detested seeing dissent; their eyes burned with a thud-witted hatred that said, without speaking, “you were all supposed to go away after the election”.

I’d try to recap most of the arguments – but for the most part, they were ripped straight from the preceding pep rally, and made my eyes glaze over.  People say conservative talk radio is dumb!  (Actually, there’s another blog post in there, somewhere).

All in all, it was a lot of fun!  Hope we can see you at the next one!

Nancy from Freedom Dogs was there, too.

“An area in the Healthcare debate where Republicans and Democrats agree!”, NPR’s “Marketplace Money” trumpeted last night.

“Only in the most trivial possible way, I’m gonna guess“, I thought, turning the radio up.

Am I ever wrong about these things?

Naturally, the Democrats favor a form of “competition” that has all the “competition” regulated out; essentially, the Tic version of the idea looks more like “privately-administered socialized healthcare”, only marginally less noxious than Obamacare itself.

The Republican plan would allow insurance companies to sell across state lines, more or less the say car, boat and motorcycle insurance works today.

Naturally, it’s sparking debate; conservatives welcome competition…:

Proponents of the idea say that the tangle of state regulation drives up costs, particularly in states with heavy mandates, and that a quick and easy way to reduce prices would be to allow people in states where insurance is expensive, like New York or Massachusetts, to buy policies in low-cost states like Minnesota.

Mr. Shadegg, who sponsored legislation to allow insurance sales across state lines in 2005 and has championed the idea ever since, likes to illustrate the lack of competition by pointing to how different the market is for automobile insurance.

“If you turn on the television station at night,” he said, “you see Allstate and Geico and Progressive and State Farm pounding each other’s heads in. ‘Drop your policy and come get a policy from us, and we’ll do two things — we’ll save you money and give you better service.’ You never see that kind of advertisement for you and I to go out and buy health insurance.”

But Mr. Shadegg adamantly opposes the Democrats’ take on the idea. He dislikes their requirement that states pass laws to create health care “compacts,” and he rejects the Democrats’ efforts to impose tight new federal regulations on insurers. Replacing many knots of state rules with a big knot of federal rules would defeat the purpose, he said.

Democrats: “But if you allow people to choose their own insurance, some of them will choose insurance that costs less and has fewer regulations!”.

No, really:

President Obama and leading Democrats, however, warn that without new regulations, private insurance companies would race to set up shop in states with lax regulation, minimal benefits requirements and the fewest consumer protections.

The nerve of those peasants – picking out the insurance they need and can afford, rather than insurance that’s larded up with all sorts of costly mandated coverage that just might not apply to them.

“If you go to full interstate shopping, you are going to need some consumer protection,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, a supporter of the idea. Still, Mr. Wyden said he believed that compromise with Republicans is possible. “There is a lot to work with here,” he said.

In addition to bringing better, less expensive insurance to more people (even left-leaning “All Things Considered” noted that while Minnesotans might not see much benefit because our insurance is already relatively cheap, over half of the people in New York and New Jersey could find better insurance cheaper under this plan.

Presuming they can do with fewer benefits and less regulation, anyway…

….but I’m smarter than you.

Enough about about Health Care reform. What do you think about Health Insurance Reform?

Obama reminds me of the guy that says

“Enough talk about me. What do you think about me?”

There are many and several ways America has expressed it’s disapproval of reform of health care reform via an ever-expanding liberal government growth plan.

It’s been three weeks since Massachusetts voters elected Scott Brown to the Senate, in large part because of his opposition to the health care confusion Democrats have sown. It’s been even longer since Americans at tea parties and lawmakers’ town hall meetings plainly told Washington they wanted no part of the health care elixir that Congress was peddling.

Still, our political elites, impressed by their own intellects, insist that the public will get the health care system they want the public to have, not the health care the public wants.

This was confirmed by the president when he told Couric he would not throw out the proposals that are stalled in Congress and start over, even though public opinion (see chart) strongly indicates that he should.

Everyone’s heard the message loud and clear save one man.

Unfortunately he happens to be the President of the United States.

“Just in case there’s any confusion out there, let me be clear,” Obama said. “I am not going to walk away from health insurance reform.”

You see what he did there? He smuggled the word insurance into his monologue. Make no mistake, a man of words, and only words, chooses them wisely. Also of note, Jimmy II also threw in his signature and so very very tired “let me be clear,” mantra; a sure sign he intends on being anything but.

America cares about jobs and the economy at the moment and for the time being the majority are satisfied with their health care and are dissatisfied with the size of their government. Obama is increasingly making himself an island on both fronts.

There was immediate skepticism from Mr. Obama’s own party that the forum would break the impasse. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said he had reached out to Republicans “on several occasions” last year to seek their ideas and feedback. “I was, however, disappointed that these meetings did not result in any serious follow-through to work together in a bipartisan fashion,” he said.

So, it’s the Republicans’ fault that health care reform is pushing up daisies?

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said he welcomed the outreach. “Obviously, I am pleased that the White House finally seems interested in a real, bipartisan conversation on health care,” he said in a statement. “The problem with the Democrats’ health-care bills is not that the American people don’t understand them; the American people do understand them, and they don’t like them.”

At least someone’s listening.

Tangent warning!

Riddle me this: if you could remotely control the President and somehow direct his actions to further derail his Presidency, and really light up Americans who are quickly growing angry at their government’s expansion into issues no one believes in or cares about, what might you do?

This?

Amid the growing fight over the accuracy of climate data, President Obama is seeking to have the federal government put its imprimatur [screeeeeeeeeeeeeeechhhhhhhhhh!-JR]

…that means approval; consent. I had to look it up.

on the science by calling for the creation of a new federal office to study and report on global warming.

Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat: “This service will be a vital part of our growing body of knowledge on climate change, and will be held to the highest standards of scientific integrity and transparency”

Right.

Sir, is that the Nancy Pelosi definition of transparency or the Barack Obama variant?

…oh, and re the “highest standards of scientific integrity”…is that the IPCC definition or the Al Gore version?

I thought so.

Barack, we love ya. You’re making all the right moves…you know…for the one-term-and-out deal.

Sadly, you’ll be a one-term president, and a mediocre one. At best.

Thank goodness Canada’s got socialized healthcare!

As we are constantly told by lefties who are trying to englighten us about our own dismal healthcare system, all Canadians (and Britons, Swedes, French and Japanese) love their healthcare system, and would never, ever trade for our medieval, benighted healthcare system.

Like Danny Williams, premier of the Canadian provinces of Labrador and Newfoundland, who’s getting some much-needed medical attention:

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week…

Wow.  Best of luck, Mr. Williams.  Glad to see that you are covered by Canada’s first-class healthcare system, which serves the health needs of its citizens so very very well…

…in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

Oh.