A “SCREW YOU” TO PHIL HARE, THE CONSTITUTION-HATIN’ MAN

Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL)

You may recall that Phil Hare, Democrat Congressman from Illinois, recently made national news by saying he wasn’t concerned with the Constitution when it came to the health care reform debate (i.e., the implementation of Obamacare). “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest,” the dashing and well-spoken Mr. Hare said with a camera rolling, “I care more about the people that are dying everyday who don’t have health care.”

To hear it from Hare (and his single-payer-loving chums), the streets are littered with the rotting corpses of Americans who couldn’t find an emergency room compassionate enough to spare a Tylenol or band-aid. Fat cat insurance moguls, along with assorted Klansmen and Republicans, confer over charts and maps almost daily, deciding who will be lucky enough to receive the tiniest morsels of health care and who will be denied.

You’ll recall that a colleague of Mr. Hare’s from Florida – the angry and always nauseating Alan Grayson – said it was a modern day Holocaust.

Just to be clear, Mr. Hare … everyone in America has access to health care – including illegal aliens. The debate is about health insurance – but I digress.

After Hare made it perfectly clear that he was beyond worrying about such trivialities and annoyances as the United States Constitution, you may also recall that the man holding the camera – blogger Adam Sharp –  followed up by asking him, “You care more about that than the US Constitution that you swore to uphold?”

Hare replied, “I believe that it says we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It was then pointed out to Hare that those words are not in the Constitution, but, rather, in the Declaration of Independence, to which the master parrier, Mr. Hare, retorted, “It doesn’t matter to me.”

I’ll have to confirm this, but, if I recall correctly, the “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness” clause of the Constitution is right after the “Emanations and Penumbras” section – which comes right after the “Separation of Church and State” clause. (Does that mean that in Mr. Hare’s world, abortion is undeniably illegal? After all, there is right to “life” is in his version of the Constitution.)

I digress again …

Running against Phil “The Constitution Doesn’t Matter” Hare in Illinois’ 17th district is Bobby Schilling.

A billboard has gone up in East Moline, Illinois – at 19th Street & 37th Avenue, to be precise – in response to Mr. Hare’s anti-Constitution language, sponsored by veterans who support Mr. Schilling’s bid for Congress.

It is the Roman Around Picture of the Day:

The Constitution matters to a lot of us.

Well done.

_______________________________________

Thanks to Gateway Pundit, via Weasel Zippers.

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RESPECTING A FLAMING LIB

A tip of the chapeau is in order for NBC’s ever-zealous, nitty-gritty, down-to-the-bone political dynamo, Andrea Mitchell. In the spirit of clarity over agreement (as talk show host Dennis Prager is wont to say)  – and at the risk of sounding as if someone spiked my Sunny D with weapons grade narcotics – I believe Mitchell is worthy of some conservative respect.

(insert the sound of eyebrows crinkling here)

No, I am not insane.

No, my little red wagon has not gone chug-chug-chugging around the bend.  

I truly believe she is deserving.

Why?

Too often, journalists claim to be objective, straight-down-the-middle, impartial disseminators of information, reporting the news in an unbiased and fair way.

Unfortunately, reality refutes this fairy tale. The mainstream news media, save for a couple of far-and-few-between outlets, is infected with liberalism. Like dirt in an open blood blister – or Nancy Pelosi speaking in front of any microphone anywhere in the world – it is a pervasively ugly reality.

But that isn’t what irritates me.

The fact that the news media is liberal is not what is so frustrating. That would be like being angry that water is wet. What annoys me are lib journalists (redundant, I know) claiming to be objective and impartial when they clearly aren’t.

That’s why Andrea Mitchell gets my “attaboy” award – or “attachick,” rather – for removing all doubt as to where her political allegiance lies.

She’s hiding nothing … and for that, she deserves a little respect.

Speaking with Congressman Elijah Cmmings on MSNBC late last week, Mitchell said the following:

Bottom line, what happens if you don’t get health care for this president – this is really all-or-nothing for the sense of his power, for his legacy, he’s invested so much in this, in this first year. You’ve got to get this for him.

Cummings said he agreed with her a million percent.

If Mitchell could have said anything that was more pro-Obamacare in that context, I don’t know what it could have been – other than, “Have my love child, you health care God!”

Remember, the issue isn’t whether or not the mainstreamies lean left. The matter at hand isn’t whether or not “journalists” from the alphabets are unabashed libs.

This is about a flaming lib letting her leftism bust through without concern for how she would be perceived. 

This is about a lib journalist looking America in the eye and saying, “Yes, I’m leftist. Yes, I want ObamaCare to pass. No, I won’t hide it any longer. No, I am not objective, and I’m okay with that.”

This is about coming clean.

This is about  Andrea Mitchell breaking down a huge barrier the likes of which Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw never had the courage to.

This is about hoping all non-opinion mainstream news media types will step out of their confining charades and declare, “We’re journalists! We’re leftists! And we’re in your face!”

It is in this context, that I tip my cap to Andrea Mitchell. 

Of course, after all of that, if she still believes she is a down-the-middle, unbiased, straight-shooter who doesn’t let her leftism creep into her “objective journalism,” I take it all back.

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BECAUSE IT WILL FOREVER CHANGE THE GAME … THAT’S WHY

It’s all about legacy.

It’s all about making the kind of fundamental change that cannot – and will not – be overturned. It’s all about the willingness to take the political hit now, suffer significant losses, and figure out how to come back sometime down the road.

If victory can be secured now, many will be more than willing to get knocked down and tend to what will be undoubtedly be an ugly wound, knowing full well that time is a great healer.

The fact is, once the changes (i.e., fundamental transformations) are enacted – once seventeen percent of the American economy falls under the heel of the federal government – the chance of seeing things reversed is nil.

And that’s the point.

They’re not stupid.

They know that entitlement programs don’t go away. They never ever disappear.

They know that once ObamaCare becomes law, there’s no way in hell it will be wiped off the books. Once Bammy signs it, the fight in the opposition will effectively die on Capitol Hill. All that will follow will be a whole lot of blah, blah, blah about how it is now the law of land and must be implemented as effectively as possible, along with a boatload of doubletalk about controlling the rate of growth, and so on and so forth.

It sounds so antithetical to the game of politics. Why would one side deliberately pursue legislation that is tremendously unpopular and be willing to fall face first on a sword that will all but guarantee major losses for their party?

Because of the big picture.

If history is any sort of guide, it simply isn’t possible for ObamaCare to be a temporary measure. Once the rot of liberalism sets in, it is a victory for the left that forever changes the playing field. Indeed, the right may win future elections because of Obama’s gross miscalculation, but the default position will be further left. passing ObamaCare is a permanent move toward Camp Socialism.

That’s why the President will take his tired act on the road once again to try and sell something to the American people that they do not want – despite the fact that he said there is nothing more to say about the health care debate.

Unless he says it, I guess.

From Fox News:

With the fate of his signature legislative initiative far from certain, President Barack Obama is taking his last-ditch push for health care reform on the road.

In a speech Monday in Philadelphia, Obama will try to persuade the public to back his plan to remake the nation’s health care system, while also urging uneasy lawmakers to cast a “final vote” for a massive reform bill in an election year.

Obama’s pitch in Philadelphia, along with a stop in St. Louis Wednesday, comes as the president begins an all-out effort to pass his health care proposals. Though his plan has received only modest public support, Obama has implored lawmakers to show political courage and not let a historic opportunity slip away.

I must ask the same question I asked last week: If the bill is such a good idea, and if it will do much to solve America’s health care problems, and if the American people will unquestionably benefit from the bill’s passage, and if it will keep health care so affordable for everyone without compromising quality, why do the Democrats need “courage” to pass it?

I don’t give a damn how “historic” this bill is supposed to be.

President Obama’s election was “historic,” wasn’t it?

Look where that got us.

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AN OFFER HE CAN’T REFUSE?

Scott M. Matheson, Jr.

Maybe the White House was thinking, “It looks so obvious, so blatant, they won’t think anyone could be that stupid. They’ll decide it’s just a coincidence.”

Maybe the White House thinks we are that stupid.

On the other hand, maybe there really is nothing to it.

Maybe it really is just a coincidence.

Either way, it’s a story that will get very little – if any – coverage by the mainstream media. All of the young “Woodward” and “Bernstein” wanna-bes out there in journalistland will be taking a convenient powder.

It’s a shame, because it’s actually an interesting story – certainly one worthy of visiting at least once. In the days when reporters actually did investigating, it might have grown legs.

What am I talking about?

Last night, the President played host to ten House Dems who voted against ObamaCare last year. Clearly, Obama was hoping to convince some of them – if not all – to flip their ticks over to the “yes” column for the good of the country.

One of those in Obama’s sights was Congressman Jim Matheson of Utah.

What makes this otherwise run-of-the-mill, uninteresting political play a bona fide story is the fact that the White House issued a press release yesterday saying that President Obama nominated Scott M. Matheson, Jr. – Congressman Matherson’s eldest brother – to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit … on the same day.

Coincidence?

John McCormack at the Weekly Standard writes:

Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother’s vote?

Consider Congressman Matheson’s record on the health care bill. He voted against the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee back in July and again when it passed the House in November. But now he’s “undecided” on ramming the bill through Congress. “The Congressman is looking for development of bipartisan consensus,” Matheson’s press secretary Alyson Heyrend wrote to THE WEEKLY STANDARD on February 22. “It’s too early to know if that will occur.” Asked if one could infer that if no Republican votes in favor of the bill (i.e. if a bipartisan consensus is not reached) then Rep. Matheson would vote no, Heyrend replied: “I would not infer anything. I’d wait to see what develops, starting with the health care summit on Thursday.”

The real question … Is this necessary now?

Inexplicably, this one seems to have slipped under the radar of the “drive-by media.”

Shocking.

Could this develop into an actual scandal of some kind?

Not likely.

It would first have to warrant a blurb somewhere.

However, one could almost bet a vital body appendage that it would have graced front pages everywhere had these group of players been Republicans.

The timing of this nomination looks suspicious, especially in light Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that he was offered a federal job not to run against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary. Many speculated that Sestak, a former admiral, was offered the Secretary of the Navy job.

I’m not a conspiracist.

Obviously, Court of Appeals nominations are not made on the drop of a dime. I suppose there is some chance that the choice of Scott Matheson, Jr. to the Tenth Circuit is all just a fat and happy coincidence.

But there’s no way – even if the process began before Congressman Matheson’s thumbs down vote in November – that yesterday’s announcement of the elder Matheson’s nomination just happened to fall on the same day ten Democrat “NO” votes visited the White House (including the younger Matheson) to be persuaded by Barack Obama to change sides.

No way in hell.

Somehow, I see a puffy-cheeked Marlon Brando putting his arm around Congressman Matheson in the Oval Office saying, “Congratulations on your brother’s nomination. I hope it all works out for him.”

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PELOSI MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE THAN NORMAL

It’s unclear whether or not it will take a couple of hundred screeching yodelers yelling it from the mountaintops to make her see, or whether having someone beat her with a ten foot Gallup poll will finally do the trick.

Neon signs, subliminal messages and psychotropic drugs are also possibilities.

The question remains: What exactly is it going to take for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to realize that the American people do not want this health care bill passed?

What else has to happen – aside from plummeting popularity, collapsing poll numbers, the ouster of Democrats from office in key states, the tea party movement, and the fact that ObamaCare could not be passed when the Dems had super majorities in both Houses – for this women to get the hint?

Unfortunately, even if she could answer these questions, it is uncertain whether or not the public at large would be able to understand her.

No matter what she says – no matter what comes out of her mouth – she makes less sense than subtitles for an audience of blind people.

Indeed, there is an ever-growing need among Dems to somehow make ObamaCare a bipartisan animal. That way, when it crashes and burns as the utter and complete failure it will be – and the economy is all but destroyed, and more and more people are dependant on government – Dems can point fingers at the other side and accuse them of being obstructionists for not letting the bill go far enough.

It’s the same mentality that affords us such clear-minded thinking as, “The reason more kids are failing school than ever before is that we don’t spend enough on education” and “The reason poverty still exists is we haven’t spent enough on welfare programs.”

Of course, I’m not convinced that Nancy Pelosi is quite that complex. I actually think hers is more of a “Shut Up And Be Happy With What You Got” approach.

She is now peddling the idea that the health care bill is already a bipartisan venture – that the GOP has already left its mark on ObamaCare and should now agree to let the bill move forward to its inevitable passage.

Kim Hart and Jordan Fabian from The Hill write:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that Republicans have left their mark on the healthcare bill and should accept that the bill will go forward.

“They’ve had plenty of opportunity to make their voices heard,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning. “Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint.”

Yes, dear friends … from the party that brought you the toe-tapping, “I voted for the bill before I voted against it,” comes the latest donkey hit “Bipartisan without bipartisan votes.”

It’s got a great beat and you can definitely dance to it.

It should be noted, for the record, that the “public option” wasn’t “stripped from the bill” because of Republicans, as Pelosi contends.

That doesn’t even make sense.

The Dems have had an inescapable majority in Pelosi’s House of Crud throughout the thirteen months of the Messianic Age. What possible effect could the GOP have had on the bill or its contents?

Honestly … What part of the 2000-plus page health care bill is a Republican creation? Which sections are GOP babies? What exactly was the GOPs contribution to the bill during the ‘who-did-it-and-ran” health care “debates” late last year?

What utter nonsense.

This is all about Pelosi’s impotent leadership coupled with a very unpopular agenda.

To top it all off, Madame Speaker also said that Democrats need ‘courage” to pass health care.

If the bill is such a good idea, and if it will do much to solve America’s health care problems, and if the American people will unquestionably benefit from the bill’s passage, and if it will keep health care so affordable for everyone without compromising quality, why do the Democrats need “courage” to pass it?

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HOW TO WIN? LET DEMS KEEP TALKING

All it takes is shining a spotlight on liberals, and affording them the opportunity to step out from the security of their abstractions, to get people to open their eyes. Once lefties are forced to go beyond bumper sticker rhymes and pretty protest signs and actually elucidate the details of their destructive plans and schemes, Americans begin to see the light.

For years, the notion of having the federal government responsible for the health care of the American people, to many, didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Inasmuch as most folks didn’t invest too much time or energy digging into the matter, on its surface, it really didn’t sound particularly offensive. As a concept, it simply didn’t trouble most to think of someone else (i.e., the federal government) footing the bill for their health care costs. In fact, since November, 2001, Gallup consistently found that a majority of Americans believed that health care was the responsibility of the federal government.

That is, until now.

For the first time since Gallup began asking the question eight years ago in an annual poll, more Americans now say that health care is not the responsibility of the federal government.

How about that?

For eight years, Gallup has been posing the following question:

Do you think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have heath care coverage, or is that not the responsibility of the federal government?

In this year’s poll, 50% said no, compared to 47% who said yes.

As recently as three years ago, nearly 7 in 10 Americans said that it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide health care coverage for all Americans.

Of course, that was prior to the Messianic Age.

According to Gallup:

The reason behind this shift is unknown. Certainly the federal government’s role in the nation’s healthcare system has been widely and vigorously debated over the last several months, including much focus on the “public option.” These data suggest that one result of the debate has been a net decrease in Americans’ agreement that ensuring all Americans have healthcare coverage is an appropriate role for the federal government.

If I may be so bold …

The reason is pretty clear to me: Liberals have had ten months to yak about it – and thus expose it for unsustainable, liberty-eroding, financial disaster that it is.

To that end, I invite all ObamaCare-supporting liberals – from the garden variety, off-the-rack, big-government types to the slobbering post-Clinton, anti-Bush, transformation-happy, Marxist wanna-bes – to keep finding hot microphones to speak into. I encourage all socialized-medicine enthusiasts who have made a lifetime’s work out of repeating insipid platitudes and vapid bromides (without ever having to fully explicate their feel-good, pie-in-the-sky utopian aspirations) to continue yapping into any camera they can find.

I want all Obamacrats to keep on talking.

Let the debate go on.

We’ll all ears.

–

RACISM WINNING?

In the event you missed it, a little more than half of the United States is officially racist.

That little morsel comes from the folks at Rasmussen, who reported yesterday that 55% of Americans oppose President Obama’s health care reform plans – a new high (or low, depending on your perspective). And since opposing Barack Obama’s hard left policies, according to the likes former President Jimmy Carter, is based on the fact that Americans cannot accept a black man occupying in the Oval Office, there is no other conclusion to draw.

A week ago, 44% supported the proposal and 53% were opposed. Following the speech last Wednesday night intended to relaunch the health care initiative, support for the president’s effort bounced as high as 51% (see day-by-day numbers). But the new numbers suggest that support for health care reform is now about the same as it was in August.

And just think … if these free-market-killing, big-government proposals had only come from a white man, health care reform might have already passed both houses of Congress and tens of millions of neglected people would now be able to get rationed, mediocre health care.

I can only imagine how many swatiska-brandishing, negro-hating Americans are sitting around their dinner tables discussing the matter, saying, “I could really go for this big-government, expanding bureaucracy approach if only the guy pushing it wasn’t so dark.”

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CHARLIE’S TURN

New York Congressman, Charles Rangel - the Ethical One

I’m convinced; it is hard wired into the liberal brain. It is an automatic – like seeing someone talk to himself on a subway train, or that smell you get at your grandmother’s house. The reflex in libs to demonize and marginalize those with whom they disagree is involuntary. It’s like a back spasm or a reality television program – you can’t control it and it just won’t go away. As one reader of my blog noted, to even bother mentioning this phenonmena anymore is akin to breaking the news that grass is still green.

Yet, I admit to being captivated by it. It fascinates me – like an overturned truck on the side of the highway or an ever-expanding blood blister.

To the liberal mind, opposing a leftist positions can only be attributed to that which is unsavory – such as greed, prejudice  or lack of compassion. There can be no other reason to want to see liberal policies fail, according to liberals. That’s because the conservative is not merely a bearer of a contrasting view; he or she is driven by sinister motives. And because only liberals really care about people, those motives must be exposed to a nation in desparate need of some good old fashioned big government healing.

Nothing soothes the boo-boo like a little liberty-raping liberalism.

Thus, if something is repeated often enough, regardless of how farcical it is, it will just blend into the nooks and crannies of conventional wisdom.

Recently, New York Governor David Paterson blamed a racist media for his failures and unpopularity. The fact that he governs – using the term loosely – a state so prevailingly blue doesn’t seem to matter. It just isn’t possible that he is inadequate. After all, he’s black. It has to be racism.

Last week Congresswoman Diane Watson – a black woman – said that those opposed to ObamaCare wanted to see a President that looked like her fail. It just isn’t possible that the idea of universal health care is a bane to Americans who are paying attention. After all, the President is black. It has to be racism.

And now, added to the simmering bouillabaisse of race-card playing intellectual lightweights is everyone’s favorite corrupt politician – a man whose integrity and ethical standing can be placed on the surface of a diminutive electron with room to spare – Congressman Charles Rangel of New York.

Carl Campanile from the New York Post writes:

Rep. Charles Rangel said Tuesday that “bias” and “prejudice” toward Obama are fueling opposition to health-care reform.

…

“Some Americans have not gotten over the fact that Obama is president of the United States. They go to sleep wondering, ‘How did this happen?’ ” Rangel (D-Manhattan) said Tuesday.

Speaking at a health-care forum in Washington Heights, Rangel said that when critics complain that Obama is “trying to interfere” with their lives by pushing for health-care reform, “then you know there’s just a misunderstanding, a bias, a prejudice, an emotional feeling.”

“We’re going to have to move forward notwithstanding that,” said Rangel, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a chief health-care negotiator.

Rangel then likened the battle over health-care expansion for the uninsured to the fight for civil rights.

For all the nuance and astuteness that liberals are supposed to possess, they regularly expose themselves as nothing more than emotionally-driven wells of featherbrained fribble.

Unquestionably there is bias in the health care debate.

Shouldn’t there be?

Liberals are biased in thinking the government can ride in on a white horse and save the masses from impending doom. Conservatives are biased in thinking that decisions are best made by individuals.

Aren’t leftists, by definition, biased against conservative positions? And vice versa?

What point is supposedly being made here?

Frankly, Charles Rangel is an elitist ass.

He cannot muddle reality or redefine the terms of the game simply because he doesn’t want to accept the fact that Americans are exceedingly well-informed on the subject of ObamaCare and don’t like the idea of a government run system. Rangel and his ilk are in sheer denial that opposition to universal health care is really about defending liberty and preserving the power of the individual. His elitist instincts tell him that people really cannot be opposed to the messianic visions of health care coverage for all. Rather, it must hinge on racial prejudice – it has to.

Yes, Mr. Rangel is correct in saying that many Americans haven’t gotten over the fact that Obama won the White House – but it is not based on his blackness. (It isn’t even based on his half-whiteness). Conservatives marvel at the fact that last November nearly 53% of Americans decided on a leftist candidate with a conspicuous history of Marxist sympathies.

Do liberals ever respond to criticisms of their precious government-expanding agenda with anything that does not involve knee-jerking idiocy?  

And what better way of overloading the aforementioned cultural nooks and crannies of conventional wisdom with emotional twaddle then to tie the health care debate in with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? After all, once you do that, how can any self-respecting, decent human being argue against Obamacare?

Critics of ObamaCare blasted Rangel for taking the low road.

“Charlie Rangel knows that race has nothing to do with the health-care debate. He should not be implying that race has anything to do with it,” said Rep. Peter King (R-LI).

State Conservative Party leader Mike Long called Rangel’s comment “outrageous and outlandish” — and suggested the congressman might be trying to deflect attention from his ethics woes.

“Rangel is playing the race card. It’s clear that the congressman is trying to galvanize the minority community that this is ‘us against them.’ It’s going to backfire. A majority of people will see through this,” Long said.

Taking a page from the Paterson, Watson and Rangel Handbook of Politics, Logic and Foot Stamping, I cannot help but ask: Since President Obama is half-white, shouldn’t half of his plan be deemed acceptable?

I suppose the IRS is racist too, demanding all those back taxes from the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Commitee, Charlie Rangel.

–

GO SNITCH FOR US

The White House is asking for help.

As talk show host Mike Gallagher pointed out on his radio program this morning, the Obama administration is asking Americans to step up to the plate and snitch on other Americans.

They’re dead serious.

Rest assured, this is not Obamaphobic paranoia on my part.

The White House is quite literally requesting you to serve as informants against fellow citizens. They’re asking that the vigilant among us comb through blogs, websites, printed literature, fortune cookies, bathroom wall scribbles and any other sources of “disinformation” out there regarding the Obama health care initiative and bring them to the attention of the White House. 

The request comes directly from the White House website blog.

There is even a new e-mail address specifically created to accomodate those requests.

From the White House Blog, Macon Phillips writes:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

I had no idea that the White House actually had a crack staff of web detectives, cyber slueths and information specialists compiling lists of “disinformation” sources on the Obama health care reform plan – a plan that will effectively eliminate the free market health care delivery system in this country as we know it while lavishing incalculable debt on generations to come. 

They must be overloaded.

In all honesty, I’d like to help.

Thus, in an effort to do my part, I am voluntarily turning myself in to flag@whitehouse.gov as one of those sources of “disinformation” I was asked to keep an eye open for.

Here is the letter I have just sent in its entirety:

Dear Flag,

I wish to alert you, as per your request on the WhiteHouse.gov blog dated 4 August 2009, to another blog that has published “disinformation” in regard to President Obama’s health care reform initiatives. The blog is called “Roman Around,” and it is written and maintained by one individual – Andrew Roman.

Since I am, in fact, Andrew Roman, this information is firsthand and should be considered reliable.

At this time, I voluntarily turn myself in (while throwing myself onto your tender mercies) as a direct provider and distributor of such “disinformative” content. I am contacting you of my own free will, being of sound mind and body, as well as an ardent supporter of the free market and private sector.

As one who fully supports the Constitution of the United States, and the Founders’ intent, I must also inform you that I will continue to be a willing and enthusiastic supplier of this health care “disinformation” on the “Roman Around” blog, as well as other forums, bulletin boards, e-mail lists and neighborhood telephone poles.

I can assure you, I have not been “called to action” by right-wing activists, nor have I been recruited by anyone to launch unfounded attacks on President Obama. I am, however, an admirer of this nation’s founding documents, and believe that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are not (and cannot be) fostered by government intervention into a health care delivery system that is still – at least for now – the envy of the world and unparalleled in terms of quality and quantity.

If you have any problems accessing my blog, please let me know. If you type “Obama farce” or “Destroying our nation” in a Google search window, you should find your way there.

Thank you for your time.

Yours truly,

Andrew Roman

http://andrewroman.net

P.S. – Tell the President he can smoke anywhere in that house he damn well pleases, as far as I’m concerned. And if he is arrested for it, there’s no need to worry. The cops will know he is black going in. (See Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)

I’m still waiting for a reasonable response to my question as to why the already existing government health care initiatives, Medicare (for people 65 years of age or older) and Medicaid (for low income and resource families), could not have been modified and/or “fixed up” first before a complete overhaul of the entire system was considered.

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IT IS NOT A RIGHT

I’d like to think that there must be – has to be – among clear thinking Americans, a festering anger waiting to explode into full-blown take-to-the streets outrage. In the hearts and minds of Americans who value the free-market system – the very one that has built this nation into the most successful the world has ever known – there must be a bubbling animus on the brink of detonating.

As the nation continues to be reinvented thanks to its 21st Century Marxist makeover, I simply cannot believe how much my country has been transformed in six short months. And save for a few notable moments over the course of that span (like the hundreds of April 15th Tea Parties held across the nation), there have been agonizingly few public displays of fed-up Americans making themselves heard … and a whole host of reasons why they should be.

With the promised Obama transformation of a country founded on limited government and individualism in full-swing, the tenets of self-reliance and liberty are being pushed aside in favor of a more powerful, intrusive state. It is simply inconceivable to me that reasonable Americans, with any sense of the liberty they are privileged to possess, or with any real understanding of how that liberty exists inversely to the amount of government involvement in our everyday lives, could ever consider the nationalization of health care a legitimate path to follow.

But here we are the day after House Dems disclosed a 1,000 page plan for a mammoth expansion of government-backed health care insurance, dangling a $1.5 trillion price tag, slated to boost taxes on the “wealthiest households” over the next ten years, and all I can think is, “This is America?”

Indeed, I know there are tens of millions like me who cannot begin to believe that the health care system that is the envy of the world – the system that provides the medicines that save countless lives and the doctors that provide the highest quality care on earth – could ever (or should ever) be reconstructed to replicate the inefficient European models that Obamacrats are so enamored with. What is it that is so damn appealing about the rationing of what will evolve into sub par, assembly-line health care?

Indeed, it is an inevitability once the government sets the rules.

A small percentage of Americans who wish to have health insurance do not; that should be enough to have the best and brightest minds figuring out how to improve the system, not overhaul it. As usual, liberals don’t seek to elevate those at the bottom to better their circumstances; they wish to punish those at the top for having more.

At the risk of drawing the barrage of poison arrows I will surely take (and I am more-than-prepared to be branded a heartless, soulless, miserable excuse for a human being) the “health care” situation in this country simply isn’t the dire, cataclysmic national predicament it is made out to be.

Sorry.

The belief that the American health care system is in bad enough shape to warrant a complete change in the way it works from top to bottom is categorically untrue. No evidence exists, and no reason can justify (other than the need to appease liberal emotion) such a catostrophic change.

Is it imperfect? Can it be improved?

Undoubtedly.

To say otherwise would be a lie.

Still, the American health care system – flawed as it is (like any other system developed by human beings) – is simply the best on earth. And if one factors automobile-related deaths and murders out of the equation, Americans have the longest life expectancy of any nation on the planet. It is free enterprise and competition that enable life-saving innovations to take place.

And despite the media spin, the socialization of American health care is not just about taxing the “wealthiest” among us to pay for the distressed few who are without health insurance – because that, too, is a misnomer (which I will explain in a moment).

It is really about the bewildering Democrat notion that health care insurance is as fundamental an American right as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The orifice from which this preposterous concept was drawn from must be as deep as it is wide, because no matter how many hysterical whine-time leftists claim it is so, health care insurance is not a right, nor is it something to be provided by government to the public at large, like police or fire protection.

What next?

The right to have one’s electricity paid? The right to have one’s rent taken care of? The right to a job? The right to have the expensive name-brand chocolate pudding over the generic store-name brand?

And, of course, as with all Obamacratic initiatives, there is no time to waste on frivolous debate and political grandstanding. Those who would oppose health care coverage for someone like a single mom with six kids from the inner city are heartless, cold-blooded, politically-motivated right-wing zealots anyway. These transformations, so we are told, are necessary measures that require implementation as soon as humanly possible, lest millions of people start dropping like anvils in the streets of America.

In reality, Dems are looking to rush this through before Americans get wind of what’s really in there.

From Erica Werner of the Associated Press:

Under the House Democrats’ plan, the federal government would be responsible for ensuring that every person, regardless of income or the state of their health, has access to an affordable insurance plan. Individuals and employers would have new obligations to get coverage, or face hefty penalties.

The legislation calls for a 5.4 percent tax increase on individuals making more than $1 million a year, with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals. Employers who don’t provide coverage would be hit with a penalty equal to 8 percent of workers’ wages, with an exemption for small businesses. Individuals who decline an offer of affordable coverage would pay 2.5 percent of their incomes as a penalty, up to the average cost of a health insurance plan.

The liberal-leaning plan lacked figures on total costs, but a House Democratic aide said the total bill would add up to about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private calculations.

Three House committees will begin voting on the bill Thursday. Changes in the legislation are likely to satisfy a group of moderate and conservative Democrats who are withholding support.

The 1,000-page bill is unlikely to attract any Republican backing, and business groups and the insurance industry immediately assailed it as a job-killer.

The business groups also warned that the U.S. health care system could be damaged by adding a government-run insurance plan and a federal council that would make some decisions on benefits, as called for in the legislation. Thirty-one organizations signed the letter, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable representing top corporate CEOs and the National Retail Federation.

And of course, the idea that “taxing the wealthy” (at the heart of a liberal’s conception of “fairness”) will somehow make this fairy-tale, one-and-a-half-trillion-dollar government phony band-aid an effective elixir to help curb the ills of the current American health care system is as disingenuous as anything that has ever escaped the lips of any Obamacrat anywhere.

This fantasy-land leftist snow job is predicated on the theory that employers, medical providers and “the rich” will be footing the bill, keeping it all “affordable” to regular, everyday Americans.

But medical providers will almost assuredly raise their rates. Employers will then be forced to cut salaries, or even jobs. The “wealthy,” who create and own the businesses that employ people, will scale back operations as their costs grow.

And in the end, who will wind up paying?

The very people Obamacrats are trying to “help” with their socialization of the American health care system – the everyday taxpayer.

Thus, costs go up while quality of care goes down.

Plus, if “everyone” is to be covered, limitations are inevitable – from time and resources, to medications and providers. The bureaucracy that would be guaranteed to follow would be almost incomprehensible.

Rationing is guaranteed.

In short, $1.5 trillion doesn’t just grow on the trees of the wealthy. This potentially economy-crushing disaster cannot be paid for by just taxing the so-called “rich.”

And if there is anyone who really believes that the cost of such a destructive plan will cost only $1.5 trillion, I’d like to offer you a tunnel to go along with that bridge the Dems are peddling.

The bottom line is, this is not about health care reform, or even fixing the economy.

This is only about having more people dependant on government.

Nothing else.

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KEEP ON SMOKING … FOR THE CHILDREN

Paying for the S-Chip bill all by himself

Being a Democrat can mean several things – possessing the ability to emote as a means of creating policy, having the facility to substitute feelings for wisdom, or the innate instinct to never think what happens next. It’s a cushy intellectual life, to be sure.

Take the President’s signing of the so-called S-CHIP bill into law last week – a measure which expands (fancy that) the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by roughly $35 billion over the next five years.

President Obama may not have asked anyone to read his lips, but you’ll recall he did promise no new taxes of any kind to those making under $250,000 a year.

Well, feel free to add another tick into the Obama-lama-ding-dong column of Lies and Redefinitions.

Back on September 12, 2008 – when the word “trillions” was still more freely associated with how many reality shows were on television than with bailouts and stimulus – the President said:

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

One fourth of all smokers are below the poverty line.

Respectfully, the President can take his ” firm pledge” and put it in the same place his “no earmarks in the stimulus bill” promise rightly belongs.

The only thing “firm” is the grip America has had on its ankles since January 20, 2009.

To pay for this idiocy, the federal excise tax on tobacco will increase 62 cents per pack of cigarettes. In short, Obama is taxing smokers to pay for the healthcare of children – many of whom have absolutely no business being covered by this nonsensical piece of … legislation.

But Democrats are so cute.  They do everything in their power to make cigarette smoking as morally deplorable as possible, systematically legislating it from American life “for our own good,” yet rely on it to save the children.

Taxing cigarettes, as we’ve been told, is a genuine deterrent to purchasing them. Once the price gets too high, it stands to reason that less people will smoke. Yet without those who do smoke, many of America’s children will apparently be deprived of the healthcare they deserve or can afford. Without these yellow-fingered, second-hand smoke producing, nicotine fiends feeding their disgusting addictions, innocent kids across the map will be shut out of the medicine supply line and forced to exist (somehow) on antiquated home remedies and penicillin derivatives made from household bread mold.

Is the risk of what would essentially amount to the government having to support some cigarette smoking – and thus condoning the infliction of second-hand (and third-hand) smoke on an innocent population, which we’ve been told kills tens of thousands annually – worth funding health care for those children who would otherwise be forced to rummage through garbage cans for Robitussin residue and half-sucked Halls cough drops?

What a predicament to be in.

Maybe what the government should do is raise the excise tax by twenty-thousand percent on each pack of cigarettes and buy up all the smokes needed to fund the S-CHIP bill themselves.

Viola! Instant funding!

That’ll keep the mint busy.

(And it’ll take only forty-two generations of Americans to pay it back).

Then, perhaps the government can sell their newly acquired smokes back to the public at a discounted price, thus generating even more revenue – or to China.

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