Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Environment, European Union, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Freedom, History, Intelligence, Middle East, National Security, Politics, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: Culture War, Democrat Corruption, Liberal lies
The temper out there is quite remarkable, remarkably nasty to be precise. Our current election campaign is quite the nastiest I can ever remember, and anger seethes through the comments of even the most staid columns.
Britain is in the same spot with the battle over BREXIT —Britain’s upcoming vote over whether to exit the European Union or stay in. Only Britain has a scheduled vote, but there is plenty of rumbling in other European nations who are not happy with the influx of migrants, and the response of their governments. The future is uncertain and the people know it and are not pleased with the preparedness.
It’s hard for most Americans to imagine that they would choose to stay in. We’re not much on unelected government passing down laws to regulate our lives, and having no ability to even say ‘Hey Wait a minute! You can’t do that.’ Well, they can and do.
Bureaucrats are the same all over the world. They discover power and that, pushed for, there is no end to the power they can accrue to themselves. They start out intending to do right by the people, and end up establishing a dictatorship, and enriching themselves and their friends and relatives. When people start out promising hope and change, you’d better inquire a bit more deeply into exactly what they mean by the pretty slogans.
We were lucky to be founded by men brought up under English Common Law and the Magna Charta. and all too familiar with the Wars of Religion, but they were soon busy with trying to survive and build communities and deal with wild animals and the native people. A number of the earliest settlers returned to England to fight in the English Civil War with Oliver Cromwell.
In a world run mostly by the divine right of Kings, or Caliphs, or Sultans, or Czars — Democracy and Liberty were an enormous shock to the system, and few expected it to last. The French tried with their bloody Revolution, and ended up with the Napoleonic Wars.
It is particularly interesting then, that the Left, the radical Left, is so determined on eliminating democracy in the name of complete control. It is fairly clear when they want to send “deniers” to prison on RICO charges for disagreeing with their idea that global warming is a huge crisis, when they want to do away with the Second Amendment, as well as the rest of the Constitution, reject patriotism and its traditions — like the Pledge of Allegiance, support open borders and reject our immigration laws.
I have been startled at the way the leftist media speaks the same leftist ‘talking points’ all at once, in the same words with the same exact punctuation, but I never realized what I was seeing and hearing until I posted the video below about “It’s Just What ISIL Wants.” They do it all the time, and we don’t really notice. But that is a very different kind of journalism than we expect in a free country! You can think of dozens of different subjects in which they have tried to set the agenda by repetition of precisely the same words. That is not thought, nor is it journalism — who hands our the talking points? Think Progress?
We have a generation or two of ambitious youngsters who have signed on, not to accurately report events, but to put a label on things before the ordinary person has time to think it through — in the goal of changing the world. I can remember it being reported that the journalism schools were producing young reporters ambitious to change the world. I should have paid more attention. That is really the problem, isn’t it? We are just not paying close enough attention.
Filed under: Conservatism, Democrat Corruption, Humor, Media Bias, News, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Democrats, Liberal lies, Obama
According to the most recent Rasmussen poll, the issues Americans care most about are: the economy, health care, government corruption, taxes, energy, education, social security, immigration, national security, and the war in Afghanistan.
So what do Obama and the Democrat/Media complex have us talking about?
Free contraception for Harvard Law School students, government funding of abortions and a phony “War on Women”, ostensibly waged by Republicans for refusing to subsidize Democrats’ sex-lives. They’re talking about dog carriers, car-elevators, Ann Romney’s clothes, Julia’s American Dream of lifelong government-dependency, gay marriage, and now a Washington Post hit-piece essentially calling Romney a gay-basher. (A ridiculous story that’s already falling apart).
It’s only natural that Obama would try to distract; his presidency has been an abject failure. Those issues about which Americans care most are the very same issues where Obama’s policies have done the most harm.
Real unemployment is in the double-digits. Far from hope, Obama has delivered despair as millions upon millions of Americans have given up even looking for a job. The labor force participation rate is the lowest it’s been in 30 years. As anyone who goes to the supermarket can tell you, real inflation is much higher than what the government is reporting. And that’s just grazing the surface of the first issue. I could write volumes about the failures and corruption of Obama and his administration, but you know them as well as I.
And while predictable, it’s no less unconscionably corrupt that the media would so blatantly run interference for the administration — indeed, seeming to take their plays directly from the Obama campaign.
That’s where we come in. Something new is happening. Taking their cue from the fearless champion of the underdog, Andrew Breitbart, citizens and (some) politicians alike are standing up to the Democrat/Media Complex and calling bullshit! We saw it in the debates, when the audience had had it with trivial distractions, and started booing the media moderators. Newt, and then other candidates, latched on to this and began — hallelujah — rejecting the moderator’s false premises and calling out their partisan tactics.
And so it goes, today, as I rattle this off, conservatives across blogs and social media are calling bullshit. We aren’t going to allow the media’s in-kind contributions to the Obama campaign, the interference, the activism. We’ll make them the story. We’ll call them out, publicly mock, ridicule and eviscerate them for their hackery, and destroy what little credibility, and audience, they have left. And we’ll ridicule the Obama campaign for even attempting to fool us twice.
It was in this spirit that I whipped up the new Obama campaign slogan above. I think it hits the nail right on the head. If you agree, please take it, like it, post it, spread it far and wide. Mockery is a very effective tool — one of Saul Alinsky’s favorites. And it warms the cockles of my cold, dead, conservative heart to use the left’s own tactics against them.
#WAR!
Filed under: Education, Media Bias, News, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Bigots, Bullies, Dan Savage, Liberal lies, NSPA, Obama
This is Dan Savage. Dan Savage makes me ashamed to be gay. Dan Savage is a vile [warning: when I say vile, I mean it], loathsome human being, far more hateful than any Christian I’ve ever known, and I know many.
Here, he proves that he does not seek to END bullying, but seeks TO bully. He also proves that he has no clue what the meaning of the word tolerance is, not to mention the words irony and hypocrisy.
He uses his position of power and authority over these high school kids, as an invited speaker with a stage, a microphone, and a very real “bully pulpit,” to bully those in the audience who dare to be Christian. He willfully misrepresents what the Bible says, knowingly lies about what Christians believe, dishonestly berates their religion (I know he knows better because I’ve seen and heard Christians explain to him exactly how he misrepresents their religion and beliefs, but instead of correcting his arguments, he keeps right on repeating what he knows to be lies.)
I am SO PROUD of all the kids, of every race & creed who got up and walked out on his bigoted, hateful tirade. I’m only sorry that the camera was zoomed in on Savage so that only one aisle could be seen. There were at least three aisles — probably 5 if you count the outsides, and I’m sure just as many kids were leaving via those aisles as well.
Tolerance does not mean that you must agree with people, or approve of what they do — that is the totalitarian leftist definition: “give us more money & control or you are a ‘H8er’.” If everyone agreed with one another, there’d be no need for tolerance. Tolerance means living in peace with people with whom you disagree — even strongly. Something Savage has never shown any evidence of doing. Something Christians do every day.
Tolerance is what these Christian kids did! (assuming they were all Christian, which may not be the case) — coming to see him speak knowing who he was, knowing he was gay, knowing that he was a hateful, anti-Christian, anti-religious bigot.
And when he started berating them from his bully pulpit, they didn’t protest, they didn’t throw things at him and try to shout him down — as so-called “progressives” regularly do to conservative speakers. Quite the contrary, they let him speak, and quietly left, refusing to sit there and be bullied.
And when these throngs of kids left, what did this “progressive, enlightened, tolerant” man do? He pretended HE is the victim and called these high school kids (guilty of nothing) “pansy ass” (a little self-loathing, internal homophobia there Dan?) for leaving.
The most courageous people in that auditorium were those who stood up and left, in front of an auditorium full of their peers.
Dan was the least courageous. Dan was and is a coward. Bullying Christian kids, knowing full well that the very ‘worst’ thing they would do is possibly pray for him.
He has the GALL to accuse Christianity of teaching that women should be stoned (which shows he doesn’t understand a thing about Christianity Hey Dan! New Testament, Google it!) and to intimate that Republicans might want to do that much or more, cus ‘who knows where they’re going” as he put it — at the very same time his “progressive” president is sending millions to Palestinians who actually DO kill people for being gay.
He picks on high school kids whom he knows will do nothing, but doesn’t have the balls to criticize the only religion on Earth that actually DOES stone, hang and burn gays to death in the name of their religion. You, Dan, are the “pansy ass”. The kids who laughed & applauded you at least have the excuse of being young and ignorant.
And lastly, I fervently hope it was more than just Christians who left!
I hope students of other faiths, and no faith at all, got up and left too. Most of all, I hope at least a few of those who left were gay kids who recognized the glaring hypocrisy of this “man” spewing hate and lies in the name of tolerance.
They were RIGHT to leave. Dan Savage is the bully. Dan Savage is the bigot.
[PS: He is supported & endorsed by Barack Obama & Democrats.]
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Health Care, Law, Liberalism | Tags: Healthy Food Initiative, Junk Science, Liberal lies
Sam Kass, who was the Obama’s chef in Chicago, came to the White House with the Obamas. He was known as Mrs. Obama’s Food Initiative Coordinator, but about a month ago, his title was changed to Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives. The new title more accurately reflects Kass’ broad range of duties, as internal and external expert on all things health, kids, and food. Or in the vernacular — he is the “Food Czar.”
So Sam Kass went from being a 20-something Chicago gourmet cook, privately paid to cook for the Obamas, to a big-time White House adviser. Michelle Obama’s healthy nutrition program is supposed to eliminate childhood obesity within a generation, especially in the country’s inner cities. Mrs. Obama claims that childhood obesity is a threat to national security, and a crisis that requires the administration to spend $400 million a year to bring “healthy foods” to low-income neighborhoods and $10 billion to make revisions to the old federal program that feeds tens of millions of poor children at school. Mrs Obama said when launching last month’s “Chefs Move to Schools” initiative — a program to get professional chefs to volunteer in America’s schools:
I think it’s just pretty powerful to see what started out as a few conversations in our kitchen on the South Side of Chicago turn into a major initiative that hopefully will change the way we think as a country, not just about the health of our kids but about our health as a nation,”
I think the ambitions may once again exceed what is possible or probable. Mrs. Obama is enamored of organic produce, local, regional and “sustainable” food. I assume that is not “sustainable” in the sense of the cans of food in the pantry, but in some larger, greener sense. “Sustainable” is very big in the green left, but I haven’t figured out yet just what it means, but is sure is a popular word.
Mr. Kass gave the keynote speech at the Food Marketing Institute’s trade show in Las Vegas, urging supermarket important people to take a leadership role in “Let’s Move.” He told the grocery retailers that it’s time to seize the opportunity to be leaders in creating a generation of healthier kids by being “architects of choice” on the micro and macro level. He gave, according the to blog “Obama Foodorama” “a mini dissertation on how to change the design of markets which ranged from where to position healthy foods, to changing food packaging labels is crucial for parents’ decision making, to why it’s important to build more supermarkets in places that don’t have them.”
There was also a conference with governors to urge them to establish food initiatives in their states and cities. Baltimore has a food czar named Holly Freishtat, and the City of Boston has recently joined in, creating a $75,000 a year position of “Food Policy Director” with an ambitious agenda.
I may not grasp the true meaning of “sustainable” but I do know a bit about “organic” food. “Organic” is a marketing ploy designed to sell smaller fruits and vegetables grown on larger acreages at higher prices. Organic produce has been tested over and over, and there is no benefit in nutrition or freshness. It usually costs about 30% more. Organic designates a method of growing which involves using only ‘natural’ fertilizers (manure) and only ‘natural’ pesticides (like pyrethrums–some of the most poisonous pesticides). No better for you. You can look up the process that farmers must follow to get the “organic” label, but it remains only a marketing ploy.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at that convention of supermarket CEOs being lectured by the Obama’s 20-something cook. But I’m not a foodie, I’m just an ordinary good cook.
Filed under: Energy, Junk Science, National Security, Progressivism | Tags: Liberal lies, No Green Economy, Power Grab
President Barack Obama, on Friday, directed the government to set the first-ever mileage and pollution limits for big trucks and buses, and to tighten the rules for future cars and SUVs. He wants vehicles that run on half the fuel they use now, and give of half the “pollution.”
The nation that leads in the clean energy economy will lead the global economy, And I want America to be that nation.” Obama said.
Well, of course, this is the presidency that operates on the theme of “never letting a crisis go to waste.” The Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico makes everyone look at all oil askance — time to jump on some more regulation of little use.
Elsewhere, headlines in the Spanish newspaper La Gaceta:
Spain admits that the green economy sold to Obama is a ruin.
There is no “clean energy economy.” No one, apparently except Obama, has any illusions that any regulation of CO2 emissions will do anything to lower global temperatures. The economic case for the embrace of renewable energy has collapsed. It’s over.
President Obama has cited Spain as an exemplar of an “ecologically sound energy economy” no fewer than eight times. Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada — has clearly established that for every green job created by the Spanish nation’s massive investment in wind and solar, that transfer of wealth to uneconomic activities has cost the economy 2.2 jobs in opportunity cost, as well as direct job losses due to the increased cost of power. The President of Spain’s National Commission of Energy, socialist Maite Costa has called Spain’s energy policies unsustainable.
Obama’s Presidential Memorandum Regarding Fuel Efficiency Standards. From the photo-op, Obama said:
We know that out dependence on foreign oil endangers our security and our economy. We know that climate change poses a threat to our way of life — in fact we’re already seeing some of the profound and costly impacts. And the disaster in the Gulf only underscores that even as we pursue domestic production to reduce our reliance on imported oil, our long-term security depends on the development of alternative sources of fuel and new transportation technologies.
Can we do away with some of the nonsense? We are not “addicted” to oil. Our economy runs on oil. Wind, solar and nuclear energy produce electric power, which, at present, does not power our cars and trucks, nor will it into the foreseeable future, despite Obama’s enthusiasm for electric cars.
You will note just how the disaster in the Gulf has been turned around to somehow be a contribution to global warming, which Obama called “a threat to our way of life.” Sorry, the global warming scare is over — yesterday’s scam.
In spite of all the talk, there is no expansion of nuclear power. Should a new plant be given approval at the federal level, environmentalist delaying tactics and lawsuits would take years. Wind and solar produce energy only sporadically and must have 24/7 backup from regular gas or coal-fired plants.
For example, the Washington DC-based U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is readying a proposal to place much of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off-limits, allowing no economic development of any kind, even on Native-owned lands, which would hamstring native survival. The FWS proposal to place the nearly 1.5 million acres of ANWR’s coastal plain off-limits — could even be permanent.
Here’s another one. The Iraqi government needed to quickly bring its oilfields online. They desperately needed the revenues. They selected the best in the business — Exxon-Mobil. Three senators, John Kerry (D-Ma), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO), wrote a public letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, imploring her to derail the Iraqi deal. The Senators claimed “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even great danger.” They wanted Iraq to have no revenue until they had passed an oil revenue-sharing plan that the Senators liked.
That spooked the Iraqis. Washington politics intruded into the political arguments in Iraq — Iraq just needed a willing partner, without the meddling of American politicians. So they signed up with the state-owned — China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which is now set for the next 20 years in Iraq. China is busily buying up oil all over the world.
What is the President’s real aim? Ending our reliance on oil? Shutting down our economy? Forcing people into public transportation? Or is it just another power grab?
Filed under: Capitalism, Conservatism, Freedom, Liberalism, Statism | Tags: big government, Bureaucracy, Liberal lies, Loss of Will
Conservatives praise the free market. Liberals prefer big government, and many simply do not understand what the fuss is all about.
Alexis de Tocqueville explained it many years ago in his masterpiece Democracy in America. Tocqueville saw the transformation of a free society, not in melodramatic terms like a military coup, but as a slow, creeping death. The power of the centralized government will gradually expand, meddling in the tiniest corners of our lives. We will be immobilized, like Gulliver, by innumerable rules and regulations, hundreds of annoying little restrictions that become more and more binding until eventually we are paralyzed.
Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated…
Tocqueville describes the new tyranny as “an immense and tutelary power,” and its task is to watch over us all, and regulate every aspect of our lives.
It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
We are to be seduced. American democracy will end not with bludgeons, but with the emergence of a vast welfare state that manages all the details of our lives and corrupts our character.
The…sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
I came across a story, of all things, about a maker of bourbon. A company went “green”, but not as demanded by the EPA. Not forced by a mass of regulations and mandates devised by environmental busybodies or by rules passed by Congress “for the children”. Maker’s Mark was faced with the challenge of how to dispose of the spent grains from the distillery process. They turned to a firm called Ecovation. Do read the story of what they did with the thick slop that was once a refuse product.
Innovation? The government will produce innovation. They will create an agency, or perhaps a committee or a commission. They will appropriate funds, issue directions, establish rules, add mandates, a schedule, and a vast chain of command, a hierarchy that must approve each step. Something may be created, but it won’t be innovative or creative, for the impulse for innovation is stamped out by petty nitpicking, and bureaucracy is the home ground of petty nitpicking. In a hierarchical organization the next one up on the ladder must approve, so that the one on the next rung will approve. And so on, and so on. It is how societies die.
That is what the fuss is all about.
Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Taxes | Tags: Democrat Corruption, Liberal lies, Massachusetts Health Care
The health care drama in Massachusetts continues. Governor Deval Patrick kicked off his re–election campaign by rejecting most of the premium increases that the state’s insurance companies had asked regulators to approve. Mr. Patrick rejected the increases, and now claims that price controls are the correct response to “industry greed.”
In Massachusetts, all of the major insurance companies are nonprofits. Three of the largest four posted operating losses in 2009. In an emergency lawsuit in Boston superior court yesterday, they argued that the arbitrary rate cap would result in another $100 million in collective losses, and make it impossible to pay the expected cost of claims. Even the solvency of some companies may be threatened. So, until the matter is settled, the insurers have just stopped selling new policies.
State officials have demanded that the insurers resume offering policies, under threat of fines or regulatory punishment. Amazing! The situation is so bad that the Governor has to threaten companies to make them sell their products at less than market cost.
The state’s Attorney General and his insurance regulators have concluded that the reason why Massachusetts insurance premiums are the highest in the nation is the underlying cost of health care, not greedy insurance companies that Mr. Patrick and Mr. Obama like to cite.
Central to Massachusetts health care are mandates requiring insurers to cover anyone who applies regardless of their state of health or pre-existing conditions, and to charge everyone the same rate. Surprise! This allows people to wait until they’re about to face major medical bills to purchase insurance. Between April 2008 and March 2009, about 40% of new enrollees at Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan stayed with it for fewer than five months and on average, ran up costs about 600% higher than the company would otherwise expect. Blue Cross Blue Shield has had similar experience.
This kind of thing will soon be coming to your insurance market. Democrats chose to regard all Republicans’ warnings about unworkable mandates, underestimated costs and ignored savings as simply more right-wing troublemaking. Keep watching Massachusetts. It will be instructive.
Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Law, Statism | Tags: Liberal lies, Obamacare, Politics
Now that ObamaCare the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is law, will the uninsured really stop going to the emergency room for their basic health care? A basic assumption about ObamaCare is that once people have insurance, they will stop going to the emergency room and make appointments with their doctors instead.
According to Stanley Goldfarb writing in the Weekly Standard, there are several assumptions involved here.
- Insurance payments to primary care physicians will change the habits of those accustomed to using the emergency room for care.
- There will be enough primary care physicians available to take on these new patients.
- The provision of insurance will reduce subsequent hospitalizations and emergency room visits by the previously uninsured.
- The cost for the care of these patients will decline and “the cost curve will be bent downward.”
All of these assumptions are wrong. Yale University researchers studied emergency room use in New Haven, Conn. and found that there was no difference in subsequent visits to emergency departments nor in the number of inpatient admissions. Primary care physicians are not available 24/7 and patients knew the emergency room would be open. In Massachusetts, in spite of requiring insurance for everyone, emergency room use went up, not down.
It takes 17 years from the decision to increase the physician workforce to actually get more doctors in a community. Thirty-two million newly insured will need a lot of doctors, and we don’t know how many will follow through in their plans to quit medicine. New facilities must be built, students recruited, and physicians trained. It all takes time.
Certainly all those folks with financial resources who are uninsured will be happy to pay for their health insurance rather than pay the much smaller financial penalty for not having insurance. Won’t they?
They wouldn’t try to sell us a bill of goods, would they? Surely they are sincere. They wouldn’t lie to the American people about something so important. Would they?
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Health Care, Taxes | Tags: Another Very Bad Day!, Democrat Demagogues, Liberal lies, Obamacare
Sorry that I have been missing. My computer is in the shop with an as yet undiagnosed ailment. I am suffering from the first cold I’ve had in years –and who suffers more (visibly and loudly) than someone who has contracted the common cold?
This is not a good day to be afflicted with Democrat gloating that they have managed, by foul and dishonest means, to pass an appallingly bad healthcare bill that will damage the economy even more, kill more jobs, and fail to achieve any of the benefits attributed to it by either the president or Congressional leaders. A pitifully disgraceful effort.
As he signed it with some twenty different pens (keepsakes) the president said: “Insurance companies will no longer be able to drop someone because they got sick!”
My point exactly. It has been illegal for an insurance company to drop someone “because they got sick” for years, both by state law and by federal law. This is just another one of the false claims Democrats made to influence people who don’t know any better. The president in full campaign mode,is, as usual, unconcerned with accuracy, but only with getting his way.
Filed under: Economy, Energy, Law, Science/Technology | Tags: Liberal lies, Natural Gas, Renewable Power, Solar Arrays
“The Newest Hybrid Model” is the title of a story on the front page of today’s business section of the New York Times. The article is headed by a dramatic photo of 500 acres of solar panels sitting next to an unimpressive natural gas plant in Indiantown, Fla., owned by Florida Power & Light.
The natural gas plant — which occupies no more than 15 acres — produces 3,800 megawatts of reliable electricity. The mammoth 500-acre solar array next to it (about 3/4 of a square mile) will produce 75 megawatts of electricity at its maximum — that is, on a hot summer afternoon. (Fortunately this is the time of peak demand from air-conditioning).
According to the Times:
The solar array…is an experiment in whether conventional power generation can be married with renewable power in a way that lowers costs and spares the environment.
This isn’t quite right. Solar power depends on— the sun. At night, or when the sky is cloudy, solar power requires backup from a conventional power source. This plant will dispense with the fiction that solar can stand on its own. So you have a 500 acre solar array that will add an additional 2 percent generating capacity onto a stand-alone gas plant. This, the Times claims is a big advance.
The Times enthuses:
The latter is critical if the nation is to succeed in reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide. Power plants account for over a third of domestic greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for global warming.
Why are they doing this when it economically seems to make no sense? Some state legislatures have decided, prodded by the greens, that “renewable energy” is the future. And probably more because they know some other state that is doing it, and they want to seem as “forward thinking” as their neighbors. There is no such thing as “renewable” energy anyway.
This is not science or technology, but politics and hype. With the collapse of the entire “global warming” agenda, and the exposure of the fraud that backed it, it is time for legislatures to catch up and recognize that wasting this kind of money when state finances are in such troubled territory is beyond foolish. Most legislatures, however, would rather raise taxes.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Freedom, Health Care, Law | Tags: Ego, Liberal lies, Liberty, Old Tired Ideas
Do you remember Representative Parker Griffith M.D. of Alabama, who was elected as a Democrat in 2008 and was part of the House Democrat caucus until last December 22, when he became a Republican?
Mr. Griffith’s unusual perspective — he is a doctor, with 30 years experience as an oncologist — gives him some insight into why the White House and the Democrat leadership in Congress continue to push forward on a national health care bill that most Americans oppose. Byron York notes in the Examiner:
It’s gotten personal, Griffith says. “You have personalities who have bet the farm, bet their reputations, on shoving a health care bill through the Congress. It’s no longer about health care reform. It’s all about ego now. The president’s ego. Nancy Pelosi’s ego. This is about personalities, saving face, and it has very little to do with what’s good for the American people.”…
As Griffith sees his former colleagues, Democratic leaders have become so consumed with the idea of achieving the historical goal of a national health care system that they are able to explain away the scores of opinion polls over the last six months that show people solidly opposed to the Democratic proposal.
The polls are wrong, they say. Or the polls are contradictory. Or the polls actually show that people love the health care plan. And even if the polls are right, and people hate the plan, real leaders don’t govern by following the polls. So just pass the bill.
It isn’t wise to assume that Americans won’t take this personally. Americans don’t take kindly to those who threaten their freedom.
American Elephants 