In Support of President Obama

I've really been dumping on President Obama lately, so I thought I'd take this chance to say some positive things about him. (Be sure to follow the links into Leftyland, and you'll see just how nutty they really are!)

He stiffed his lefty fellow travelers at HuffPo and Salon by brazenly jumping in bed with the evil pharmaceutical industry, known by the nutroots as Big Pharma.

Getting drug companies to throw $150 Million in propaganda support his way was quite a coup for Dr. Chicago.

Most importantly, the president has demonstrated once again that there is nothing conservative, rightwing, or free market about large corporations. Political and economic ideology mean nothing to Big Business; they will play whore to whoever is in charge. The lefties know this, and so they are skeptical. Here are some typical comments:

"But, but, I'm just so happy he isn't Bush, even tho he has continued to do exactly what Bush did, that I'm willing to keep my mouth shut about all the things he said he was going to change and now says he isn't. Just give him another 3 or 4 terms and I'm sure he''l get it all done. You just have to be patient!"

"This sounds like another version of ole Bush's "Part D Medicare drug bill, which created a nightmare for seniors and protected no one, and created a gold mine for Big Pharma!"

"President Obama has shown that he is not a strong leader and this is most unfortunate for the country. He allowed two Republican Senators and Nancy Pelosi to water down his Stimulus Bill... Candidate Obama promised an end to the war in Iraq. What the country got was not a cessation of our involvement there but a ratchetting up of the conflict in Afghanistan..."

Obama's Afghanistan Policy Makes Bush Look Timid
The last commenter brings up my next point. President Obama is bombing the crap out of the Taliban and their AQ allies in Pakistan. His targeted assassination program is sending murderous 7th century obscurantists to their father in hell at quite a pace. The World Socialist Website calls it murder, but what do they know?

The President Has Separated The Left From the Right
Finally, President Obama is a man of principle. Despite murdering little brown people in South Asia and climbing in bed with the drug industry, he is staying true to his uber-liberal, community organizing roots.

In full campaign mode that his Long March requires, he roared out that it was time for the opposition to shut up and get out of the way. That goosed the faithful! That post-partisan crap was just campaign rhetoric.

Yes, he could have been an Eisenhower, eschewing partisan politics and playing the role of mediator in the middle. But no, he faked right and ran left as hard as he could, and I congratulate him for his boldness.

No Mushy Middle
The president has drawn a stark line between left and right. On the left is the president, Harry and the Pelosicrats, and the screaming left-nuts, while a rampaging acorn and americorps go wilding in the background. Ordinary Americans, repulsed by the orgy of spending and government grabs, rejoin sensible Republicans on the right side of the line.

Thank you Mr. President for drawing stark lines and painting the current issues in bold colors!

Your candor has done more to damage your liberal agenda than anything any conservative could have done. The American people see your liberal schemes and dreams for what they are and they don't like it. As lefty Dan Neil said about saving Obamacare in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Sunday Forum,

"It's time to fight dirty."

Of course it is, because the progressive agenda cannot prevail in an honest, open debate. We needed a dose of ideological clarity, and President Obama has provided it.

Dr. Krauthammer's Cure

Health Care is a complex issue. Throwing bureaucratic armies and thousands of pages of new regulations at it will only make things worse.

Charles Krauthammer, brilliant mind, lawyer, medical doctor, and writer who knows how to cut through the crap, has a remedy. He recounts how President Reagan and Democratic Senator Bill Bradley reformed the tax code by stripping out inefficiencies, giving everyone a tax break while increasing the amount of money flowing into the US Treasury.

He contrasts that successful minimalist approach to the hellish freakshow Obama and the Dems are trying to foist upon us.

This is all quite mad. It creates a Rube Goldberg system that simply multiplies the current inefficiencies and arbitrariness, thus producing staggering deficits with less choice and lower-quality care. That's why the administration can't sell Obamacare.

His solution? Tort Reform that includes abolishing the current jackpot lotto system, and Insurance Reform that decouples insurance and employment.

Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).

The health care benefit exemption is the largest tax break in the entire U.S. budget, costing the government a quarter-trillion dollars annually. It hinders health-insurance security and portability as well as personal independence. If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.

The sincere liberal will ask, What about sick people being dumped by their insurance company, catastrophic caps, family bankruptcy due to medical bills?

These are all issues we must address. Krauthammer's rationalizing of the system would put us on a firm fiscal and regulatory footing, allowing us to address these problems without creating bureaucratic monsters and breaking the bank.

You can read his article  here

Rage Against The Machine

How's that post-partisan hope and change working out?

The Booblemann-Tardball Connection

10% unemployment, well-funded brownshirts from americorps and acorn pledging allegiance to The Supreme Leader, a toadie press that demonizes el presidente's opposition for him, a political class impervious to the inquiries of ordinary citizens. I've seen this before. I've lived it. This is not a third-world dictatorship. Far from it. But it has all the trappings.

Thank you President Obama for bringing the third-world to America. It started with the cult of personality and unwarranted hero worship formerly found only in Venezuela and obscure African countries. Now our third-worldization marches on with angry factions shouting each other down over politics, of all things. By the way, what part of The US Constitution authorizes the federal government to take over even one scintilla of the economy?

Divide and Conquer

It's the oldest strategy in the book, and progressives are experts at it. Divide everyone up into little grievance groups, tell them they're powerless, then convince them there is only power in the collective to fight against "THEM," who want to take it all away.

Mobilize the masses. The idealistic college students, the shiftless, the welfare bums, the union workers who get paid to skip work and participate in political agitprop. Ply them with booze and cigarettes and five dollar bills. Bus them in, give them their signs and turn them loose. Best of all, they fund it all by shaking down guilty rich liberals who wouldn't associate with such rabble in their worst nightmares.

Who is to blame for this wave of relatively benign violence we're seeing at town halls and other political gatherings?

A White House that says things like this is to blame:

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,”

The DNC is screaming that the "right-wing extremist base" is out to "destroy" Barack Obama, so it has unleashed "angry mobs . . . mob activity straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives."

This is a scary instance of psychological projection; denying a key attribute of your self and projecting it onto your adversary. Liberals have always excelled at rent-a-crowd tactics and they don't like it when someone beats them at their own game, especially when THEM do it without the benefit of ACORN, ANSWER or bullhorn-wielding community organizers.

Paul Krugman is to blame
Here's the latest twaddle from this educated fool. All these people went to town hall meetings because their insurance company told them to. And he discovered a couple of conservative organizations. He could be the next Giraldo! What a jackass. He should stick to economics, where at least he can hide behind his Nobel.

Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

All The World's A Stage
Remember the anti-war protests of '03? I was down in South America manning the radio room with nothing better to do so I watched the unedited farce on CSPAN. The demonstrations didn't just feature anti-war speakers. There were people speaking out for the gay, lesbian, transgendered, bestiality, Malthusian retro-environmentalism, disarmament, onearmament, man-hating feminists, Latinos, pedophiles, pot smoking, labor movements, indigenous movements, bowel movements, you name it.

Why bring all these groups in to an anti-war rally? In order to get a bigger crowd! All the different agitation groups got their two-minutes rant on a national stage in exchange for delivering their victim group to fill out the crowd. And that is how the Democratic party works.

My favorite speaker that day was a cute little Muslim college girl railing against the oppressive US, castigating us for oppressing women and Muslims. A Muslim woman on national TV claiming Muslim women had no voice in this country. That must have been the comedy relief. I wonder if she'd deliver the same lecture, face uncovered, in downtown Riyadh?

It's Racism!!!!

Anyway, Krugman sees something more sinister in the right-wing mobs: Racism stoked by clever and shadowy Republican operators. He's curiously unable to provide any proof beyond his own fevered imaginings:

Does this (racial fear tactics) sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.

Many people hoped that last year’s election would mark the end of the “angry white voter” era in America. Indeed, voters who can be swayed by appeals to cultural and racial fear are a declining share of the electorate.

So who has divided this country?

Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the Democratic party have divided this country with the most expensive and most liberal agenda in the history of the US, all in the face of unprecedented debt and a serious economic crisis. We're supposed to applaud this stupidity?

Who's dividing us? The unhinged left and their idiotic foam at the mouth rantings, with George Bush assassination fantasies, and Bushitler, Chimpie and a thousand other idiotic names and baseless charges these poop throwing monkey hurled at President Bush, VP Cheney and those of us who had the temerity to vote in such a Hitlerian regime.

The HuffKook-Oglemann-Tardball Axis, abetted by the Democrat Hopium smokers in the press and washed-up TV personalities are to blame. They can dish it out but they can't take it.

When lefties protest it's speaking truth to power sprung spontaneously from the heart of working class American. When the right gets pissed its all neo-nazi, racist astroturf. Someone gives Obama a Joker face and it must be hatefulRightwingHitlerRushLimbaughFoxNewsracism
HalliburtonBloodforOilEndlessWarConspiracy!!!!!!!

Yeah right. People aren't buying that crap anymore. Obama and the Social Democrats are trying their damnedest to flush America down a third-world toilet. But unlike in a rigged third-world system, we can still vote their asses out.

TBO - Protests
STL Today - 6 Arrested
Politico - Punch Back
NYT - Unmitigated Krugman Twaddle
WSJ - Noonan

Cash for Clunkers

This Cartoon reminded me of the Cash for Clunkers program. If it's such a good idea to take money from the treasury to pay people to buy new cars, I propose the following:

Let's create a construction boom by burning our houses down!

Too drastic? OK. Then let's break every window in the nation. That should provide some stimulus to the glass industry as well as to construction contractors.

Still too ridiculous? OK. Then let's pay Obama acolytes to weatherize homes...

For a short treatise on the Broken Window Fallacy, go here.

Progress.org - Fred Foldvary

Dr. Sowell has the Cure

I have great affection for Dr. Thomas Sowell. I eagerly await his columns. I view him as a wise uncle whose wisdom I cherish. He is a self-made man who grew up poor, black and fatherless. That's never a good combination, more so in the 30's and 40's. He overcame life's obstacles, building a stellar academic career after a a stint in the Marine Corps.

In a column from this week he addresses the current health care turmoil and applies a larger life lesson.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether "change," "universal health care" or "social justice."

Let's go back to square one. The universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem."

If we are, then there will be a never ending series of "solutions," each causing new problems calling for still more "solutions." That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of the taxpayers' money and — more important — ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.

Much political hay is made when the latest political snake oil salesman points to some ill and promises to fix it. The problem? In this vale of tears there will always be some ill ready at hand, so there will always be an opportunity for government-sponsored chicanery on your dime.

If someone could come up with a practical, pragmatic solution to bring costs down and keep families from going bankrupt over medical bills, I'd be all for it. But this current carbuncle is an affront to common sense and an insult to the citizens of this country.

It it's so good, why doesn't Congress include themselves in it?

Saving Private Hitler

How would you like to be the medic who saved Hitler's life in WWI? Read the man's short story here.

Healthy Pessimism

Dr. Chicago and his Dirty Fingernail Democrat Assistants

They are ready to ram a big health care suppository up our rear ends, but Americans are refusing to drop 'em and bend over. This has caused much angst in the press

Tempo Fugit
Amy Walter, at National Journal, gets to the bottom of it, citing trust, or a lack thereof in government. She describes a focus group of independent voters she observed. Half the group voted for Obama. Their message: What's the rush?

Once the conversation turned to health care, the overwhelming message was pretty simple: slow down.

One participant worried that Congress couldn't possibly complete comprehensive health care reform in just six months. Another said it "can't be done overnight" and that doing something "too fast" could make things worse.

For independents, then, the issue seems to be less about specific elements of a health care plan -- public option versus a co-op -- than a fear that Congress has created an artificial timetable that is causing them to rush through what should be a thought-out, balanced plan.

Good ideas get better with time -- Bad ideas rot in the sunlight
That is why the Dems are in a fevered hurry to ram this through. But the electorate is not so rash. Essayist Alain De Botton would see nothing wrong with such pessimism. Indeed we are following in the footsteps of Seneca and reverting to our Christian and Stoic tendencies.

Unbounded, unfounded optimism is neither natural nor founded in reality

It’s time to recognize how odd and counterproductive is the optimism on which we have grown up. For the last 200 years, despite occasional shocks, the Western world has been dominated by a belief in progress, based on its extraordinary scientific and entrepreneurial achievements.

But from a broader historical perspective, this optimism is an anomaly. Humans have spent the greater part of their existence drawing a curious comfort from expecting the worst. In the West, lessons in pessimism derive from two sources: Roman Stoic philosophy and Christianity. It may be time to remind ourselves of a few of their lessons—not to add to our misery but to alleviate our injured surprise and sorrow.

Stuff Happens
Botton reminds us of the unbounded optimism we all invested in the Wall Street whiz kids. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid now consume over half of the federal budget. The Post Office is $8 Billion in the red this year. The hole is getting deeper, and we just keep digging.

William Butler Yeats tells us "Things fall apart, the center will not hold." Calamity, disaster, grinding misery and boring drudgery interrupted periodically by some modicum of enlightened civilized peace is the story of mankind. Alain De Botton sums it up well.

We should instead remember the great pessimistic voices of history, of which I cherish two in particular. One is Seneca: “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

The other is the French moralist Chamfort: “A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.”

Chamfort also said:

"If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France."

Oh that we could be so lighthearted about our own current situation. After all, seems like lately Washington has been providing us a toad a day.

National Journal - Amy Walter
City Journal - Alain De Botton