Obama's WMDs

I seem to remember that it was not so long ago — months, perhaps? — that liberal backlash against the Bush administration amounted to "where are the WMDs?" Entire blogs and news-gathering sites were devoted to the idea that the whole reason why we were in Iraq, those pesky weapons of mass destruction, were in fact a figment of Bush's overworked imagination. Obama himself campaigned on that very idea, did he not? Certainly the mainstream media (those husky water-carriers for the current president) loudly trumpeted the fact that Bush's intelligence may not only have been incomplete, but had by that time caused the deaths of thousands of American soldiers.

Now it appears that Obama may have his own "weapons of mass destruction" to worry about.

For months now we have listened to this man and his enablers in Congress proclaim to anyone who would listen (and, of course, to those of us who stopped listening a long time ago) that one of the reasons we need a public "option" (which isn't really an option, by the way) is because of the obscene, immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, and even really, really bad profits of the apparently money-bloated health insurance companies. In fact, to hear Pelosi and Reid spin it, these insurers are even more deadly and rapacious than the people who run TARP-bailed companies and dare to award themselves bonuses for their clever work of driving a company into the ground and then receiving government tax money to keep it alive.

So tell me why, please, it is that the Associated Press, of all anti-conservative news organizations that exist in the world today, is the one to report that, on a list of profit-mongerers in this country, health insurance providers are number 35 on the list?

Here's a thought: if the company that owns the Taco Bell brand is running higher profit margins than the health care insurance companies, why not target putting Taco Bell out of business so our fast-food-driven health problems will go away and hence drive our insurance premiums down as well?

On second thought, leave Taco Bell alone. Their food is arguably healthier than most fast-food joints, and our personal favorite at the moment here at Hacienda Woody. Go after Pizza Hut instead. They're expendable.

Also, while trying their level best to drive insurance carriers out of business, I have yet to hear what constructive devices the Democrats in Congress will employ to make sure that those thousands of people who ultimately lose their jobs in the insurance industry will be able to find employment elsewhere. Not to mention paying for all their health care while they are unemployed because they won't be able to afford even the public option.

So profits of the health insurers will, I predict, become Obama's weapons of mass destruction. He will use them to get us into a war that we on the right don't want to fight, all the while assuring us that "levelling the playing field" is the only way to provide coverage to "millions" of Americans who will die unless we ACT NOW. PREFERABLY BEFORE ANYONE HAS A CHANCE TO READ THE ACTUAL LEGISLATION. Then, if Obama follows the Bush defense, he will shrug and say "we acted in good faith based on the facts we had at the time."

Guess what, Mr. President? We aren't any more likely to believe you than you were to believe President Bush.

O Canada New York!

A Democrat from New York, Eric Massa, represents what is considered to be a "predominantly conservative" district in New York. This begs two questions:

1. Conservatives? In NEW YORK?? (No, really. Same question. Just, um, emphasized.)

2. How on earth did he get elected in the first place?

But of course these questions pale in comparison to the flash flood of conservative angst over the fact that this Democratic Congressman dared state that (gasp!) he would vote in favor of a single-payer health care system despite his constituents' wishes.

Big hairy deal.

Like Republicans haven't been doing that over the protests of their own constituents for years now.

No, the sin here isn't in stating a desire to vote contrary to the wishes of the electorate. As far as representation goes, even registered Democrats (including illegal aliens and dead people) are beginning to understand that they didn't necessarily get what they voted for last November. Also, I beg to point out that numerous delegates to both the Second Continental Congress as well as the Constitutional Convention were known to vote in direct opposition to the stated desires of the people who sent them there. It's how this nation got its start, for better or worse.

The sin, as I see it, is in propounding legislation that half of Congress hasn't even read, yet somehow firmly believes will be this wonderful, magical panacea that will suddenly have health care flowing down into the homes of every American (and millions of non-Americans) in this country. The sin is further exacerbated by not allowing each and every element of this "plan" to be dragged out into public and debated in honest, open forums where both sides can present their cases (using quotes from the actual legislation as opposed to talking points) so that we, the public, can make equally honest, open decisions about which elements of the "plan" to take out into the town squares and flog until their backsides look like so much chopped liver. Then subject them to a single-payer health care system such as they have in Canada, which is apparently so bad that the people charged with running it are furiously trying to figure out just how to "fix" it.

So let's not excoriate Rep. Massa just because he chooses to vote against his own constituents. Let's wait until he actually commits the sin, then apply the appropriate punishment.

Woundup About Healthcare

As I've said numerous times on the Woundup, I'm no legal expert. I could no more sing you the more salient parts of the House health care overhaul plan than you could recite dialogue from Mozart's "Die Zauberflöt" to me from memory. (No, sorry; I haven't worked that one out in my own head yet.)

But I love watching the general reactions to this proposed legislation, just as I've watched the reactions to the misnamed "stimulus" plan with fascination. Even if this bill is voted into law and signed by the President in some carefully choreographed signing ceremony, possibly involving the Arc de Triomphe, it is doomed to fail. Judging, that is, by some of the signs I've been seeing lately:

1. Obama has hauled out the tired "fear mongering" canard again. If you can't convince 'em, accuse 'em of scaring the heck out of people. And yet, is not his statement that "[d]oing nothing means that you’re going to lose what you have... Because on the current trajectory, your premiums are going to double again over the next five to 10 years" just as much a scare tactic as our contention that nationalized health care will take us inexorably down the road to socialism?

Just asking.

2. Obama himself seems to have no clue as to what the legislation contains. The man campaigned on this issue for a solid year and a half. He made it the top priority of his domestic agenda as soon as he booted Bush's booty out of the Oval Office. Do you honestly mean to say he has no idea whether we'll be able to keep buying private insurance because of this bill? (Answer: Yes and no. Yes, he has no idea. No, insurance companies will soon be regulated out of business.)

3. Obama is seriously deluded about how much this legislation is going to end up costing. It certainly comes as no surprise. This is the same man who assumes that millionaires will willingly bear the brunt of the economic recovery by paying even more taxes than they do now. Would that motivate you to become a millionaire? No? Then why should we assume that bright young people will be willing to jump into an industry where there is little or no incentive to devote eight to twelve years of their lives in graduate and post-graduate schooling only to find that there is no money to be made? And that includes the supporting industries such as pharmacology. Brilliant plan, that.

4. So as not to pick exclusively on the President, let's not forget that Congress still has to sell this plan as well. After all, when it comes crashing down around our ears, they need to be able to make loud speeches from the floor of the House and Senate that this was a plan that the American people were BEGGING for; that we wanted it so much we were writing ELOQUENT letters (often in CRAYON with MISSPELLED WORDS) to our elected MORONS every week so that we could have them pass this legislation and get themselves RE-ELECTED so that they, themselves (and their families and cronies) did not have to PARTICIPATE in their own stupidly conceived SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE.

Most unfortunately for Congress, the peasants voters AREN'T BUYING IT, as Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) found to his dismay.

5. Ditto Kathleen Sibelius, who could not believe the temerity of the peasants, 'scuse me, voters who appeared to disagree with her statement of (questionable) fact that employers will be allowed to continue their plans (failing to mention at the same time that this only lasts until their plans go out of business in favor of the new matrix). There appears to be just a smidgen of disbelief among the audience.

6. Or there's the other end of the scale where the servant class, sorry, voters can only laugh at Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-St. Louis) as he expounds the "efficiencies" and "surplus" projected to come from the plan. He apparently elects to completely ignore the rather pointed question from the floor: "If it's so great, how come Congress doesn't have to be on it? (see point 4. above)" accompanied by much clapping and cheering from the audience.

(Questioning the timing: the fellow who posed that pointed question, Kevin Jackson, wrote about his experiences at the townhall meeting, only to have that blog account suspended by the hosting service. I'm sure it's just an accounting thing.)

7. Finally, even Obama's team in the House of Representatives seem to be hemming and hawing over this legislation. Can anyone really blame them? Given the overall reaction to this bill by Republicans and Democrats (both electing and elected), it seems that no one is really all that crazy about having this ill-conceived, badly written, and completely irresponsible legislation ram-rodded down our collective throats. Even Mitt Romney, who appears to be going out of his way not to criticize President Obama directly, is telling the man to "for heaven's sake, SLOW DOWN." And, let's face it, whether or not you agree with what Romney accomplished in Massachusetts, he did have buy-in from just about all the stakeholders in that process.

Something that Obama is not even close to achieving.

Obligatory Health Care Post

On a very old mug in my cupboard you find the following bromide:

Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee — that will do them in.

I have used the committee as a metaphor frequently over the years to denote the dysfunctional qualities of nearly everything the government (taken as a "committee of the whole") puts its hands on.

Welfare. Social Security. Energy. Education. Nothing is immune, and so far as I have been able to discern, there is nothing into which the government has injected itself that is administered in any sort of efficient way. Even something as basic as controlling access to our borders has been handled (if, indeed, someone could use the word "handled" in this regard) in such a way as to make the idea of a border completely laughable. "The border?" one might say. "Sure, we've got one. It's over there somewhere," while waving vaguely in a southerly direction.

But this post isn't about open borders. It's about health care "reform" as currently defined by the President. And therein lies the problem.

It isn't defined.

It's a classic political boondoggle. Obama campaigned on health care "reform" and based his campaign on two pillars:

1. Health care costs are ridiculously high.
2. Poor Americans aren't covered by any sort of health insurance.

Unfortunately, it's always the knee-jerk reaction of a politician — and particularly a Democrat — to make the government the vehicle through which these issues will be resolved. I say "unfortunately" because, thus far, the government has shown itself incapable of fixing anything that it gets its overreaching hands on.

It is Obama's reach, more than anything else, that scares me about the man. Because he won (a fact he is eager to keep fresh in everyone's mind) he feels he has a mandate to "do" things, and do them quickly. However, as evidenced by the mislabeled "stimulus" program, not everything lends itself to a rapid solution.

Obama's approach to governing is the very sort of "shock-and-awe" tactic that Democrats so derisively sneer at when describing Bush's "failures" in Iraq. The idea here is to stun the voters into believing that only immediate action will save the health care industry and make coverage freely available to every American, regardless of whether they work or not. Then, while those same voters are reeling with a sense of futility, the government will quickly put together the actual legislation that implements Obama's "plan" (which isn't really a plan in the classic sense), so that they can be seen to be "doing something." By the time they do, the average voter will awaken from their campaign-induced disorientation to find that they have been legislated right into another financial black hole, from which there can be no recovery. Or, in other words, we will have a health care system in this country that accomplishes exactly the same thing that "No Child Left Behind" accomplishes for huge numbers of students in America: nothing.

That's right. What we will end up with is a "system" that costs far more per person than any reasonable health plan currently in existence today, but will be freely available to poor Americans because Congress will simply pump money into it whether that money exists or not. It's the American way.

So Bradley was at least partly correct. If we consider Congress and the President to be a "committee," then someone will be "finished off." I just fear that it will be the average taxpayer that is, at the end of it all, finished off.