A Critique Of Conservative Women

This article, Where Have All The Ladies Gone, by Eva Lorraine Molina has much to recommend it, though it is a bit overdrawn. Still there is truth here. Of course, when she criticizes conservative women, the question of whither conservative men must also be contemplated -- we also have much to answer for. Still, this post is about conservative women.


I truly believe that the world would be so much better if men could be manly and women could be feminine. In such a world the highest virtue of masculinity is the willingness to provide and sacrifice for his wife. In such a world, the highest virtue of femininity is to recognize that her husband daily puts his self-image and even his life at risk for her -- this is the very nature of self-sacrifice. Therefore, his natural role is that of leader since he's the one who will [and ought to] suffer most when things go bad.


Now, if your reaction to this post is negative, please make sure that you understand that being led does not mean being a slave, nor does being a leader mean being a boss. If you don't see the difference between follower and slave or leader and boss, then you are not ready to truly appreciate the God-given and deep structures that characterize the mutual obligations between men and women.

The inability to contemplate, much less appreciate, the physical and psychological differences between men and women has had a profoundly negative effect on civil society. In a society in which females are taught to view males as irrelevant, men are released from the obligations of virtuous manhood, properly understood. Are we surprised, therefore, that men have responded by viewing women as sex objects, the only female-male relationship left to them.

Alas, I am not sanguine about restoring a proper balance to our society. But I sure wish more articles like Ms. Molina's would appear.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est

Do not speak ill of the dead

 

Really? On the contrary, I find compelling the Jewish ethic that permits critical, even negative, speech (lashon hara) about the dead if a higher purpose can be served. Truth is just such a purpose. Even more so, is truth that is spoken to serve moral ends. Here then is the relevant paragraph from Daniel J. Flynn's obituary of Edward Kennedy:

Insulated by the consequences of his behavior, Kennedy was also shielded from the consequences of his policies. He was the champion of busing who kept his own children far from the public schools; an advocate of publicly funded campaigns who bankrolled his political career with his family's shadowy financing; an icon of feminists who used women like Kleenex, serially harassed members of the opposite sex, and spent ten hours attempting to rescue his political career [by delaying the rescue of a] young women suffocating in an air pocket in his Oldsmobile; and the primary booster of socialized medicine who assembled a dream team of neurosurgeons to consult on his treatment for brain cancer. The proverbial limousine liberal was made real in Trustfund Ted.

Read the whole article

 

And what moral purpose does reminding us of Senator Kennedy's all too human failures? It is this: Never having to suffer for the consequences of his behaviors, he continued to destroy his character and to vex the people who loved him. His conscience now stands before God - a conscience that countenanced and advanced the abortion of countless unborn babies. Still, it not for me to condemn this man. Rather, I rail at the euologies that mask the failings of his unrepentent life and hide its effects from those not so privileged.

A Summer of Discontent

Fouad Ajami has one of the keenest insights into the American character of any writer today. Please take the time to read this eloquent and positive view of America's recovery. From his article today, Obama's Summer of Discontent, he concludes:

Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging. Health care is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed. It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation's recovery of its self-confidence.

 

Health Care and Abortion

President Obama claims, now routinely, that the health-care bill now in congress does not provide funding for abortions. FactCheck.org has analyzed these statements and finds them to be disingenuous at best.

 

Obama and Faith

So, what about this idea that conservative politicians seek to impose their moral views on others, while leftist expressions of faith constitute inspiring spiritual leadership? Jonah Goldberg discusses President Obama's use of faith to advance his political agenda and finds it ... refreshing. I do too. However, he concludes his piece with this paragraph

Politics has always been a contest of values, and religion remains the chief source of those values. Our political discourse has long been cheapened by the canard that only conservatives try to use the state to impose a religiously informed moral vision, while liberals are guided by science, reason and logic as well as some secular conception of decency and compassion. No party has a monopoly on such resources, and it's about time we all recognized that.

Would that the left recognize the truth of this claim. It would go a long ways toward enhancing civil discourse.

Too Much Being Spent on Health Care - What the Science Tells Us

In this piece in the Wall Street Journal, Craig S. Karpel contends that we don't spend enough on health-care. By enough, he means that health-care spending, as a percent of GDP (currently 17%), is inconsistent with America's desire for ever increasing quality of life. The article summarizes a number of studies that when...

"Viewed from every angle ... support the proposition that both historical and future increases in the health spending share are desirable. . . . [W]e believe it likely that maximizing social welfare in the United States will require the development of institutions that are consistent with spending 30 percent or more of GDP on health by the middle of the century." [my emphasis]

He also takes time to explain that, contrary to political mythmaking, health-care spending is a vital driver of America's economy. By increasing our spending in health-care we can accomplish two great goals: Exercise compassion by encompassing more Americans under the health-care umbrella and supporting economic recovery.

 

I love articles like this that go a long way toward debunking the political myths that so often form the basis of our policy debates.

Death Panel Not In Bill -- Already Exists!

Recent reports are that the Senate has dropped any provision funding "end-of-life" counseling. Of course, the House bill still contains the infamous clause mandating end-of-life counseling for ill seniors. What these reports don't tell you, even from reliable news sources like Fox News, or the Wall Street Journal, is that the so-called death panels already exist and are fully staffed.

 

What most Americans, and probably all of the U.S. Congress, do not realize is that H.R. 1 -- more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the Porkulus Bill) allocates $1 billion to fund something called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). This council constitutes an unelected bureaucracy to determine how to ration health-care services. The seminal idea behind CER is to conduct research to determine the economic effectiveness of different treatment protocols. Federal agencies (can you say Medicare, Medicare) will be required to take into consideration the "comparative effectiveness" of treatments they will fund.

 

In the metaphorical sense, the council is a "death panel" of the sort against which Sarah Palin warns. However, this panel is even more troubling: It sits on Mt. Olympus and delivers its findings from which their is no appeal - Treatment A is OK (it's cheaper) but treatment B is not (it's more expensive).  If your mother would be cured by treatment B, but at a huge expense to the government, how are you (and she) going to feel when treatment B is denied in favor of treatment A.

 

Palin is wrong in one sense: standing before, and appealing to, this panel is not contemplated.

 

One member of the council, Ezekiel Emmanuel M.D., PhD, has long championed denying treatment to terminal patients - especially the elderly. To justify this descrimination against the elderly, Dr. Emmanuel says:

"Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years."

Dr. Emmanuel's advice for saving money on medical care is clear-cut: restrict medical care for the elderly and increase medical care for the young.

 

Then there is Obama's Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein. As regulatory Czar, Sunstein's responsibility is to shepard the legislative language into regulatory laws. A vaguely worded, 1000 page bill, with or without a Czar will explode into the tens of thousands pages of detailed regulations. So, how does Mr. Sunstein view human life?

 

In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies in which he argued that human life varies in value. More specifically, he argues that government should give health-care preference to those with a high rating in something he calls "quality-adjusted life years." Again, if your elderly mother is afflicted with a debilitating disease, is beyond her productive years (i.e., retired), her quality-adjusted life years rating may very well preclude her from getting the treatment she wants.

 

The "death panel" is alive and well. It's just a lot more frightening than Sarah Palin makes it out to be.

 

Prevention Costs More Than Treatment

Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer promise free mammograms and diabetes screening for all. Not only will this make us healthier, they said, it will also save us money. Writing in USA Today, they claim that

Reform will also mean higher-quality care by promoting preventive care so health problems can be addressed before they become crises. This, too, will save money. We'll be a much healthier country if all patients can receive regular checkups and tests, such as mammograms and diabetes exams, without paying a dime out-of-pocket.

Later, Obama sprinkled his fairy dust on a Portsmouth townhall saying that prevention not only saves lives, but also saves money. The audience swooned. Slap the forehead. Doh! Brilliant!

Er, time to back up. Prevention is enormously important and must be a critical part of any solution to the health-care problem -- but only for medical reasons, not economic.

 

How can this be true?

 

Charles Krauthammer (who is also a physician) writes

"Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.

That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality in the United States today? A study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. [CBO Directory Doug] Elmendorf additionally cites a definitive assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine that reviewed hundreds of studies on preventive care and found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs."

Read the whole article here.

Get it? Prevention increases medical costs, never reduces them or saves money.

ObamaCare and Abortion - The Truth!

1. Truth: These is no text in the ObamaCare proposal that "permits" abortion. The proposed bill is completely silent on abortion.
2. Truth: The Hyde amendment, which is widely understood to prohibit federal funding of abortion, only prohibits funding of abortions through Medicaid.
3. Truth: The Stupak-Pitts amendment is a proposal to disallow ObamaCare funds to subsidize abortion. Stupak-Pitts was defeated in committee 31 nay, 27 yea.
4. Truth: The Capps amendment, passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee, will allow the secretary of HHS to provide abortion coverage through the "public plan" AND requires that people on taxpayer-subsidized insurance plans in the federal exchange to have access to a plan that covers elective abortions.

My Opinion:

 

When politicians such as House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) says, when asked about ObamaCare permitting abortion,

...to my knowledge there is nothing that specifies abortion to be allowed--as a matter of fact federal funds cannot be used to provide for abortion--under the Hyde Amendment[*] that's been in place for a very long time."

She is either ignorant of the controversy within the relevant house committees or simply disengenuous. As a matter of fact, I believe in the latter. Why? Because what she says is technically the truth. ObamaCare is silent on abortion funding. This is a line of argument that is deeply dishonest.

 

 

American College of Surgeons Go After Obama - Ho Hum!

At President Obama's Portsmouth townhall, Obama made the following claims:

1. Physicians are motivated to remove tonsils because they make more money (CNN Video)
2. Surgeons would rather receive $30K to $50K for amputating limbs of diabetics than the pittance they get for preventative care (CNN Video)

While the American College of Physicians had something to say about Obama's understanding of medical practice, it bears repeating that no doctor in their right mind would prescribe pain pills to an elderly patient as an alternative to surgically implanting a pacemaker. How many of us really believe pediatricians have a secret cottage industry for tonsillectomies? Do you take seriously the narrative that diabetics are ignored for years by doctors in order to get them into the chop shop? Still, despite groups like the ACS or the AMA who try to set the record straight, President Obama continues to advance these bizarre scenarios as though he thinks people are going to believe him. Truth be told, more and more Americans do believe him because that's all they hear and read from the major media outlets.

 

Criticizing Obama for being a charlatan is misplaced, if only because I argue that he really believes the truth of his claims. Remember, this man has lived in a Leftist bubble all of his adult life. And while Obama's truths are mere shibboleths to people who know better, he feels passionately that the problems his beliefs convey must be solved -- evidently at all costs! Unfortunately, the President hasn't the first clue about how medicine is actually practiced in America and neither do most Americans.

 

And therein lies the problem: I am just cynical enough to believe that he will be able to fool enough people with his made-up scenarios as to make ObamaCare a reality for all of us.

 

More on "Death Panels"

Here's how President Obama answered a question concerning a woman's elderly mom and the end-of-life counseling she would be have been provided by ObamaCare's 1233 panel (what Sarah Palin refers to as a 'Death Panel'):

[Q] My mother had a pacemaker implanted when she was 99 and is still alive today at 105. Would ObamaCare take into consideration my mother's spirit, her joy of life?

[Obama] The 1233 panel will be instituted to ensure that she and her doctor(s) know that an option exists that would save money if only she would just take a pain-killer.

You can see the whole dialog on video.

 

Anyway, President Obama is entirely correct. The only function of the 1233 panel is to provide financial incentives for health-care providers to save money by "counseling" alternatives other than expensive, end-of-life care.

Death Panel: Sarah Palin Responds

Sarah Palin responds to critics who are "shocked" at Sarah Palin's use of the name "Death Panel".

My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President's chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which "produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated."

Given the policy rules outlined in section 1233 in the ObamaCare proposal, calling the bureaucrats who govern "end-of-life" counseling a "Death Panel" is not out of line. Why? Because the 1233 panel will be required to provide financial incentives to the health-care providers to hold-down health care costs. As Palin observes, Ruben Diaz, a Democrat and a New York State Senator, says of section 1233:

It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner

 

 

 

 

 

Why Support for ObamaCare is Declining

When asked why ObamaCare has become so deeply unpopular, Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal columnist said,

I think the main thing is the Democrats said for many years the health-care problem is about the uninsured -- the 47 million or so. Setting aside the validity of that number, people [agreed] and they said, 'Well, I think I'm willing to help the uninsured.' "

 

Suddenly, in this bill, they discover it's all about them. Everybody's being swept into it and people are going '"Whoa! Wait a minute. I'm pretty happy with my insurance. I don't want to go into a federal system."

 

That is what's causing a lot of resistance to this bill.

Let's deconstruct Henninger's quote for clarity and emphasis:

1. Most Americans (81%) seem to be satisfied with their own health-insurance.
2. Most Americans agree that the health-care question is "How to provide health-care insurance for the 47 million uninsured."
3. Of these Americans (the 81%) see ObamaCare as ultimately forcing them into a government option.

Check out the full (video) interview.

 

 

Q & A - Will The Health Care Plan Ration Medical Care

Summary of Prof. John David Lewis's reading of HR3200, "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009".

 

Each section of his interpretation begins with a question followed by the actual text of the relevant section(s) in the bill. He then applies his interpretation of the legalese and puts the wording into language a voter can understand. In this post, I'm reproducing only the questions and his summary conclusions. If you wish to read the actual text of the sections the Professor is interpreting, please go his website (linked above).

 

WILL THE PLAN RATION MEDICAL CARE? YES

1. This section amends the Social Security Act
2. The government has the power to determine what constitutes an "applicable [medical] condition."
3. The government has the power to determine who is allowed readmission into a hospital.
4. This determination will be made by statistics: when enough people have been discharged for the same condition, an individual may be readmitted.
5. This is government rationing, pure, simple, and straight up.

 

Two Views From the Left

These two posts, from prominent Leftists, do not so much as criticize the principles and policies of ObamaCare as much as they express profound "concern" at the President's handling of the debate.

 

First, Mickey Kaus, of Kausfiles, "Read My Lipitor"

I still don't quite understand why Obama can't bring hmself to say some variation of a) "There won't be rationing" or b) there won't be rationing under the Kinsley definition–"Any treatment that I, the President, would get you will get," or c) "Medicare doesn't ration now and won't ration in the future, period. There will be no change in how Medicare decides what treatments to pay for. The goal is to get it to pay for more, not less." Read My Lipitor!** No New Rationing. . . .

**–Obama's answer to a questioner who had to "go through two different trials of other kinds of drugs" before being allowed by Medicaid to go back on brand name Lipitor (which he'd been taking for years) was basically that the outcome was good because "once it was determined that, in fact, you needed the brand name, you were able to get the brand name." Spoken like a lawyer! (So you had to fight for a few months or years? You won didn't you? Process costs don't count.)

Then this from my favorite Lefy feminist, Camilia Paglia, writing in Salon, her article "Obama's healthcare horror", contains this:

...I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, and hope it's a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

 

Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. . . . Who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

 

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Ouch!

 

Republican Rent-a-Mobs? Not!!!!

Democrats and their media flappers, led by President Obama, have attempted to call into question the sincerity of the townhall protestors by accusing the Republican party of "paying" activists to be disruptive and of "bussing" them in from out-of-town or out-of-precinct locations.

Check out this video taken at yesterday's town-hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Thank God for Obama...

George Soros yesterday donated $200 to families in Harlem, N.Y. as a "back-to-school giveaway." People queued in lines up to 300 people to get the cash to buy uniforms and book bags for their children.

"Thank God for Obama. He's looking out for us" -- Alecia Rumph, 26, waiting in line for a handout.

Frankly, even though I believe Mr. Soros's giveaway is more a matter of politics than generosity (the amount is chump change to this man), it doesn't matter. Actions, not intent, are what counts in matters of compassion and charity. I say "good for George Soros".

 

However, what I find deeply disturbing is the reaction of Ms. Rumph. If her reaction doesn't bother you, then you may well be lost to any culture that believes in self-reliance, individual accountability, and a government whose authority derives from the consent of the governed.

 

Another Free Market Alternative to ObamaCare

John Mackey, a co-founder and current CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc, has proposed eight policy changes that would immediately make health insurance more affordable and available to a wider range of consumers. Please read The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare to understand the reasoning behind these policies.

1. Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).
2. Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
3. Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
4. Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
5. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
6. Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
7. Enact Medicare reform.
8. Revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

 

Why Not Socialism?

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

-- Margaret Thatcher

 

About Those Evil Insurance Companies

In today's Wall Street Journal, the editors note rightly that President Obama has reframed the debate from a health-care issue (which was never an issue since the U.S. has the best medical care in the world) to a health-insurance issue. This is a very informative article, if only because the editors describe the experience of the 9 states who have imposed rules similar to those advocated by the Democrats governing health-insurance. In those 9 states, the private insurance market has been essentially driven out of business. They also observe that two other states tried these same rules but quickly repealed them whenthe insurance companies fled the state. Now, the editors say, ...

ObamaCare would impose on all 50 states rules that have already proven to be failures in numerous states. Because these mandates would raise the cost of insurance, ObamaCare would then turn around and subsidize individuals to buy the insurance that the politicians made more expensive. Only in government could such irrationality be sold as "reform."

 

Very Persuasive Argument

Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism

...or so said the protestors during the Bush presidency. Now, with geezers rallying to the Townhall meetings in droves, Pelosi, Reid, other congressional Democrats are enraged because these folks have the effrontery to protest Obamacare. Truth be told, being angry when someone protests something in which you deeply believe is not surprising. Anger rightly controlled expresses passion and deep conviction. But passion and conviction are not reasons to support a particular policy. To base an argument on emotion -- anger, fear, anxiety -- even unknowingly is the polemic of children, not adults.  Surely the anger expressed by Pelosi et al, as directed at the Townhall protestors, immediately locates the debate to the elementary school playground where the most clever insult, the cutest slogan wins.

Of course this is not at all odd since the political Left does not inhabit the world of ideas but rather lives in a world of emotion. In such a world, the value of a policy is measured by how deeply one feels, not about its underlying principle. Reason is, and always has been, the enemy of the Left because reason does not identify with love or hate. Thus, a reasoned response to an emotionally-held conviction is almost always always viewed by the Left as a personal attack.

Bereft of ideas, many on the Left best advance their arguments by manufacturing imagined insults. For example, throughout the eight years of the Bush administration, more than a few Democrats concocted the complaint that Republicans called them unpatriotic. When challenged to cite a single Republican in Congress or the administration who made such an accusation, they could not. Ironically, many on the Left are manifestly unpatriotic as this slide show I've put together illustrates. The protestors pictured here are repulsive, vile human beings who, for eight years, were defended by Democrats in Congress as illustrating the highest form of patriotism. What is unforgiveable is the hypocrisy of elected representatives defending these people as exemplars of traditional American patriotism and attacking Grandma for asking a question of an elected representative in a loud voice. 

Admiral Hyman Rickover once said "Weak minds think about people, mediocre minds think about events, great minds think about ideas". Pelosi et all are consumed by the people protesting Obamacare while the protestors are consumed by the American ideals of self-reliance and exceptionalism. What does this tell us about the ability of our congressional leadership to reflect deeply about, and lead from, the principles (ideas) to which America has historically looked?

Environmentalism vs Health-Care Socialism - What's a Liberal To Do?

A shortage of, technetium-99m,  a radioisotope produced as a byproduct of nuclear energy production has, according to radiologist Robert W. Atcher of the University of New Mexico, become "...one of the greatest threats to our profession of modern times." The shortage arises because existing nuclear reactors are not being replaced and, of course, new ones are not being built. Read more about this issue in today's L.A. Times - Isotope shortage means a healthcare crisis"

 

 

Seniors Will Bear Expense of Obamacare

Betsy McCrory reminds seniors that the payment for Obama's health-care plan is slated to come from cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. As she says in this [video] interview with Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal,

"It's going to mean reductions in hip replacements, knee replacements, bypass surgery, angioplasty; major procedures that have enabled this generation of the elderly to avoid disability, avoid deteriorating in nursing homes and lead active lives."

 

When the Government Runs Your Bathroom...

According to this report, Cuba is running short of toilet-paper and will be unable to meet demand till the end of the year.  Do you suppose this falls under the category of what President Obama would term "The Fierce Urgency of Now".

 

France Comes To Her Senses

As Democrats desperately seek to impose a France-like health care system, the French government has begun to move toward a more market-oriented, U.S. style of health-care. In a report today by David Gauthier-Villars, he notes that after decades of experience with universal health care achieved via socialized medicine, France is calling it quits. As France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy remarked, "A hospital doesn't need to be money-losing to provide good-quality treatment".

 

Who Are The Uninsured?

A few years ago, Michael Moore's screed against America's health-care system, SICKO, made the rounds. One of the few claims made by the films that has some truth is the claim that approximately 47 million Americans are uninsured, or about 15% of our population. This number has been effectively advanced as an argument against a cold, aloof, and profit-driven private sector and as THE PRINCIPAL MOTIVE behind the proposal for the government to take over the health-insurance industry. Its effectiveness as an argument has been profound, especially among Democrats who generally confuse emotion with critical, analytic thinking.

So, just who are these people? Would you be surprised to know that the U.S. Census Bureau issues an annual report detailing the demographic breakdown of those Americans who, for one reason or another, do not have health-insurance.

Now, if you're of an analytic bent, you can wade through the data and the charts and answer such questions yourself. However, if you're of a less disciplined nature, Michael Ramirez the IBD cartoonist synthesized the thousands of words and charts from the Census Bureau into this one picture.

If you're a Democrat whose compassion has gotten the better of your intellect, for which of these poor, troubled souls should we have government take over an additional 23% of our economy?

If you're thinking that the "between jobs" category deserves my tax dollars, I have one word COBRA!

Conservatives Criticized For Organizing - Krauthammer's Take

This from Charles Krauthammer on Fox  News yesterday

There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority -- when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, put 'em on a bus to City Hall in order to express what they believe...

So, it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. [When conservatives protest, orchestrated or otherwise] it's called a mob. If it's a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves. Remember, just a year ago under the Bush administration, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. And today it is ... either organized anger, it's a facsimile of anger, it's unpatriotic, it's whatever.

Look, there is a genuine revolt against the idea of remaking a [health-care] system when over 80 percent of Americans have health insurance. Five of six of those are happy with their health care, and four of five are happy with their health insurance.

You have an administration arrogantly deciding it is going to tear it all up, start all over, and people are surprised that there are protests, and [claim them to be] manufactured? Of course it is spontaneous. [But If] people go together on a bus, that's also entirely legitimate, and it ought to be encouraged.

The underlined text is my emphasis.

Tax Revenues Crater - Raise Taxes

The Obama administration and Democrats in both House and Senate are contemplating imposing new taxes on the middle class. Also, don't forget that the the Bush tax cuts expire next year.

Don't bother hanging on to your wallet. There's nothing you can do about it.

The Great Reconciler

If this doesn't make you laugh, you're in deep trouble...

The Nanny State

The health care debate is one of kind with others in which those who believe centralized authorities are better at delivering the common good than individuals seeking their own self-interest. The argument that the centralists use are always moral ones. One of the most famous centralizer argument, the one that truly hits home with the soccer moms is "for the good of the children".

 

If left to the centralizers, like President Obama and the Left, they will come to regulate human affairs in every particular. It's only a matter of time before we have a "Secretary of Children Affairs" who will "help" parents, particularly those with "problem children". I can see it now...

Headline, Washington Post

The Secretary of Children Affairs has allocated $2.5 billion dollars to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour TV surveillance in their own homes. They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time, and eat proper meals.

 

Doh! Slap the forehead moment.. I almost forgot -- This from London's Daily Express

The Children's Secretary set out £400 million to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

In 1949, when George Orwell published his book "Nineteen Eighty-Four", the book was classified as fiction.

 

Health Care Bill - Who Lives and Who Dies?

Opponents of "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009" need to tell the truth. A criticism of the AAHCA that's cruising around the Blogosphere is that the act contains a provision that details a mechanism by which care for people near death is rationed. Called "Advanced Care Planning" this provision is claimed by some critics as providing authority to Physicians to determine who gets advanced care and who does not.

 

The specific provision in question is described on pages 425-430 and, as far as I can tell, is perfectly innocent. By my reading, the Advanced Care Planning section of the AAHCA merely bureaucratizes what today we call a DNR (Do Not Resusciate) directive. To be sure, there is some foggy language about being only able to participate in an ACP session once every five years (with exceptions if the patient takes a turn for the worse). But, by my read, this particular section most definitely does not ration end-of-life care.

 

If one is going to oppose this bill, and I emphatically oppose it, let's begin my making sure we are telling the truth.

 

Fearmongering Government Healthcare

This is worth watching...