Fatal Flaw

Well, the fun’s about over. We’ve exposed this health care scam from the beginning. Obama and the rest of the left-wingers of his party offered up a monster of a bill which none of them read but which BO thought he could ram through in a few weeks - "trust me". Pretty quick, a few citizens called him on it, knowing they were about to be had. Neither he nor any of his cronies could explain or defend their bill, while most of the unwashed knew it was nothing more than an effort to emulate the failed Canadian system.

Want to understand the source of BO’s failings? Then recall our warning of last year - his critical flaw is that he has consistently demonstrated a lack of judgement. It is that simple. Take away the glib talk and slick presentation and you have near emptiness - a lack of preparation, a lack of research, a lack of focus. Couple that with his radical progressivism, and you know you’re in trouble. He does not understand America; he does not understand Americans. He gave the party’s far left the chore of sculpting the so-called stimulus bill. Stupid. He outsourced the health plan to the partisan left-wingers of his party who are key House chairs. Stupid.

Now BO looks to emulate and celebrate Senator Kennedy’s late presence in the effort the resuscitate his failed bill. This is no wonder - Kennedy anointed BO as the Fifth Kennedy Brother during the campaign. This will prove to be only one more mistake. From Michael Beran, a contributing editor of City Journal and author of The Last Patrician: Bobby Kennedy and the End of American Aristocracy, "Obama may find it to his credit -- and his country’s – benefit to fix his gaze not on Ted, but on Jack. For in addition to his more superficial graces, President Kennedy possessed a degree of wisdom, which might be defined as grace of judgment. John Kennedy’s sentiments were liberal, but he knew that a wise president must have the country in his bones, must feel, as by instinct, the temper of the people, and must know what they will bear and what they will not. He was annoyed by those who, like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., urged him to be another FDR. Schlesinger, he said, wanted him to act as if it were 1932. But ..... the mood of the people, President Kennedy knew, had changed." For Obama, "At so critical a juncture he needs to emulate, not the intoxicated extravagances of the late senator, but the sober moderation of his older brother....."

Well put Michael.

Robert Craven

The Big Gun?

BO’s fatal flaw, transcending even his radical politics - lack of judgement. Presto. He misread his mandate, misjudging the public’s appetite for government control in their lives. Obama and the rest of the far left just can’t believe the masses won’t acquiesce to herding. Witness Representative Eric Massa of NY, a big fan of the nanny state, who admits, "I will vote...against the interests of my district...if I actually believe it will help them." Look up the word "representative" Eric.

But even if he does own a dictionary, it likely won’t help. He and the rest of the anointed actually think they can make better decisions than ordinary people are capable of making for themselves, whether about medical care, child rearing or whatever.

Obama miraculously escaped from his past words, deeds and associations and so figured, heck, they’ll go for just about anything if that didn’t matter. But white guilt has it’s limits and Obama just ran into one. Americans aren’t as stupid as he figured.

As we illustrated in an earlier sketch, since Obama can’t defend his latest attempt to get between people and their decisions, and since the health proposal’s opponents have exposed the facts, he and his cronies have resorted to slander - it’s all about a right-wing conspiracy. Pretty quick he’ll find out that dog don’t hunt and guess what? His handlers will pull out the big gun - Race. If we oppose this guy, we become racists.

First out of the gate - NY gov Paterson, who whines it’s racism because a growing number, Dem’s included, don’t want him to run next year. He claims the next victim will be Obama. What a handy tool huh? As Jonah Goldberg explains, "No one should be surprised. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, liberal Democrats have to accuse their opponents of racism." To most of us, race is incidental; to these clowns it’s primary.

Robert Craven

The Scoundrels Seek Refuge

Today BO accused the Republican leadership of a partisan end run. "I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, 'Look, let's not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, '94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook," the president said. Well heck, we hadn’t thought of that, but hey.....

This ploy, this partisan attack, played in different forms on the airwaves, in the many pro-Obama health care ads, spotlights to all but the willfully a party caught with their pants down, again.

Opponents of health "reform" resort to specifics - case histories, examples of what rationing could look like, citations to news articles, stubborn facts about the spending involved. Supporters don’t refer at all to the bills involved or explanations rebutting critics’ claims. Just listen to a few and decide for yourself. Instead they focus on politics, as our president just did today. Wonder why? They’re caught and they know it.

Robert Craven

Nice Try. Now A Solution.

Mark Schmitt is executive editor of the liberal American Prospect. Schmitt tells us that from the very beginning, "the public option was part of a carefully thought out and deliberately funded effort to put all the pieces in place for health reform before the 2008 election." The left convinced candidate Edwards, who told ‘Meet The Press’ that this would be the key to his program. "The rest is history," says Schmitt. "Following Edwards’ lead, Obama and Clinton picked up on the public option compromise. … It was a real high-wire act — to convince the single-payer advocates, who were the only engaged health care constituency on the left, that they could live with the public option as a kind of stealth single-payer, thus transferring their energy and enthusiasm to this alternative."

Too much. The fact that Schmitt admits that the public option was always "a kind of stealth single-payer" should come as no shock to our lefty friends. (But we’re upset they stole our byline, recent sketch). All of us know that Barney Frank, Jan Schakowsky, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and Paul Kurgman have all been caught on video telling single-payer advocates that the public option is nothing but a stepping stone to the Real McCoy.

Nice Try. Didn’t fly with most Americans did it BO?

Now what? How about fine-tuning that which works?

Reform what we have - the very best health care system in the world. Expensive? Fine, start with the Democrats, who have blocked tort reform without fail. Why? Because of the incestuous relationship between this party and trial lawyers. What fool doesn’t know that? Trial lawyers helped create a medical crisis through malpractice suits that raise costs while driving doctors from their practices. The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers says about 10% of the cost of medical service is attributable to medical malpractice lawsuits. Roughly 2% is caused by direct costs of the lawsuits; an additional 5% to 9% is due to expenses run up by defensive medicine. Too much. Such an irony that our lefty friends here in Marin whine about health costs.

Availability a problem? Fine, you could fix that by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden. Instead, the fruitcake left thinks it can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. You know - "single payer." Stop regulating insurance companies for goodness sake. Make them compete.

That was easy.

Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday's NYT’s saying: "A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn't known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died." (Well, might have had something to do with the cancer.) Anyway, in a free market such an insurance company couldn't stay in business.

Are we launching a satellite? How tough is this?

Robert Craven

Obama's Lesson In Domestic Politics

BO’s plummeting approval ratings indicate that many of the Americans who voted for this guy have discovered he’s not the package they thought he was.

Very few Americans have much in common with Obama (even less so with his wife - "this is a downright mean country"). OK, but not a deal breaker necessarily. And it is no secret that Obama had zero executive experience. Fine. Not necessarily a deal breaker either. What should have been a deal breaker is the fact that Obama was the single most partisan of any Democratic senator, that he was/is nothing if not a radical progressive (although he camouflaged that in the campaign). What also should have been a deal breaker is his cozy relationship with radical anti-Americans like Wright and Ayers, his history of eliminating his senatorial rivals through leaked divorce records, the fact that he was a cog in the Chicago banking/mortgage shake-down machine, and that along with others he blocked reform at Fannie/Freddie - ground zero. How do these things translate to a qualification? Simply overlooked? Certainly they were trumped in the election by white guilt (and BO’s master leveraging of his preferred half color), a sour economy and a lunatic-like hatred of Bush.

Yet it only took nine months for Americans to say "enough," exercising in fine style the First Amendment. BO got a pass in the election; he did not get a pass on his attempt as president to further nationalize US economic resources in the guise of health reform.

Obama can gain from this experience. He has just been told that he was hired to empower Americans, not government.

Robert Craven

The Stealth Operation That Nosedived

Obama’s health plan was a stealth operation that of course failed to make it under the radar. Why? Obama does not understand America; Obama does not understand Americans.

One need only witness the now-fabled town hall meetings. Providing cover, deflection, refuge to the left are the few individuals that resort to shouting - granted, bad behavior. But thank goodness for the Democrats they have that distraction to latch onto - other wise they would be stark naked, holding hands together in the dark.

Wait a minute. What about 99% of the town hall meeting goers? They’re respectful and unlike BO, they’ve begun the read this monster of a bill. And they are naturally upset; that’s called dissent. Hey, didn’t every other Volvo we’ve followed here in fruitcake Marin county carry the bumper sticker - Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism? Yes it did. As Mark Steyn observed recently, that bumper sticker must have expired Jan/20!

Who are these town hall meeting goers? Here’s an example, sourced from the AP: Waiting for Specter’s meeting, Nancy Snyder says she kept quiet when abortion was legalized and prayer in schools was eliminated. Not this time. "They did it for prayer, they did it for abortion, and they're not going to do it for our health care," the 70-year-old nurse from Philipsburg, Pa., said Wednesday as she and her husband Robert, 74, a retired coal miner, waited in a long, snaking line for Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter's town hall meeting. "We're not standing back this time," Snyder said. "I don't want someone else to select and say this is what you can and can't have," Snyder said. "Nobody told us to come," she added. "I float my own boat." "This is all being pushed way too fast. It's just being rammed down our throat," said Bette Jackson, a retiree from State College. "I agree we need health care reform, but I don't want the government taking over."

Why the rush; why the snake oil, the fabrication; why the outright lying? We know the answer, as do our readers. But most Americans aren’t as concerned with BO’s motivation as much as with what it is he is trying to jam down their throats. They caught on to this bill in one heck of a hurry. BO tells them they can keep their doc and can keep their insurance. He thinks he is speaking to morons. What if my doc is not the one appointed by the government medical board for ruling on my access to tests and specialists, they want to know? What if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its gov’t-bankrolled competitor, they ask? Finally, a few of these unwashed have read section 440. Whoa! No one wants gov't agents coming into their home and telling them how to parent - the very signature of the Democratic party - getting between you and your kids.

Sorry BO - not this time.

Robert Craven

AMERICA

We intend to close the pattern ahead of most other observers. We first highlighted health care in a mid-July sketch. Some comments reside under "US Economy" as the debate has taken us there and back. We have isolated major points of weakness in the administration's bill and instances of less-than-truthful behavior by its proponents. Now these key flaws to BO’s plan are front and center.

We have often considered it a miracle that we have retained a republic, that founder James Wilson’s sense of natural law is still sacrosanct, because fully one third of Americans don’t give a damn, a third are pre-programmed to knock their country, and a third are real patriots - a mirror image of Revolutionary times. How in the world have we survived as a star for others to emulate? We feared we would not, or could not any longer, until that is - THE TOWN HALL MEETINGS! America, when pushed too far, will accept no more. Out of the closet they come. The Germans and Japanese found out the hard way. So will Obama. Americans have smelled the acrid scent of a social state, more, of a fascist state. They have demonstrated they are not stupid. They may not own a Webster’s but they have enough common sense to recognize that when the state attempts to direct their lives they’ve seen that before, and it won’t happen here.

Robert Craven