http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/08/13/edwards-love-child-mandatory-gloating-edition.aspx
This guy is a shining example of a lying SOS POS Sleazebag Politician.
Of course, he was almost Vice President ! And had a reasonable shot at the Democratic Party nomination for President.
Great vetting over there on the Dem side ...
Just imagine the coverage of this story had it been a Republican all along instead of Edwards (just look at Palin). The press would have been camping on his lawn for the past 2 years.
A few excerpts from the article:
2) The National Enquirer has been vindicated ....
3) Please do not forget that in his August, 2008 Nightline 'confession,'--"I take full responsibility"--Edwards didn't just deny paternity but said paternity was "not possible" because the affair with Hunter was over when the baby must have been conceived. To do otherwise would have interfered with his carefully crafted modified limited story about the affair--that it involved "a short period in 2006" and ended before Elizabeth's cancer recurred and before he went galavanting around the country advertising his fidelity and good character.
If Edwards is in fact the father this entire fallback edifice of BS crumbles. ... It's worth reading the transcript of the ABC interview--practically every sentence out of Edwards' mouth is a lie. He doesn't know who the baby was in the Enquirer's photos, suggests the photos were doctored, doesn't know whether Andrew Young, the aide who took the fall, is the father, says Rielle Hunter's hiring as a videographer had nothing to do with the affair, etc.. And he does it all sanctimoniously.
4) Why construct this fallback line of lies? There are several possibilities, discussed here. My guess: The idea was not to fool his wife but to preserve his political viability as much as possible. Just a short mistaken affair! He slipped! Happens all the time! I also suspect St. Elizabeth was in on this second set of lies just as she went out and helped him try to preserve the first set of lies (i.e., that there was no affair at all and it was all just tabloid trash).
5) Why admit paternity now? Possible (speculative, not-proven) theories: a) He needed Hunter's testimony to be as friendly as possible; b) Disaffected Fall Guy Andrew Young's tell all book forced the issue; c) Edwards was going to be asked by the prosecutors; d) Somehow this helps keep the sex tape bottled up; e) It had to happen at some point. Rielle wants to be Mrs. Edwards, or at least to have the paternity of her child acknowledged. He couldn't keep her happy forever. f) He wants the story to get buried in all the excitement about Netroots Nation! ...
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
ObamaCare - Wrong for America
does this post mean I get reported to the White House ?
The irony of this is that Obama's best argument - made yesterday - is that he is simply creating another inefficient, costly, cumbersome government bureacracy (THE POST OFFICE) to "compete" with the Private Sector (UPS, FEDEX). Apparently, Obama did not understand the ludicrous words that came out of his teleprompter-less mouth yesterday (memo to Rahm -- always, always, always have that damn teleprompter on !)
Top Ten Reasons Obamacare Is Wrong for America [NRO Staff]
Human Events, with the help of the Heritage Foundation, lists the top ten reasons Obamacare is wrong for America:
1. Millions Will Lose Their Current Insurance: President Obama wants Americans to believe they can keep their insurance if they like. Proposed economic incentives, plus a government-run health plan would cause 88.1 million people to see their current employer-sponsored health plan disappear.
2. Your Health Care Coverage Will Probably Change Anyway: Even if you keep your private insurance, eventually most remaining plans will have to conform to new federal benefit standards. Moreover, the necessary plan “upgrades” will undoubtedly cost you more in premiums.
3. The Umpire Is Also the First Baseman: The main argument for a “public option” is that it would increase competition. However, if the federal government creates a healthcare plan that it controls and also sets the rules for the private plans, there is little doubt that Washington would put its private sector “competitors” out of business sooner or later.
4. The Fed Picks Your Treatment: President Obama said: “They’re going to have to give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier. ... If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half for the thing that’s going to make you well.” Does that sound like a government that will stay out of your healthcare decisions?
5. Individual Mandate Means Less Liberty and More Taxes: President Obama is open to the imposition of an individual mandate that would require all Americans to have federally approved health insurance. This unprecedented federal directive not only takes away your individual freedom but could cost you as well. Lawmakers are considering a penalty or tax for those who don’t buy government-approved health plans.
6. Higher Taxes Than Europe Hurt Small Businesses: A proposed surtax on the wealthy will actually hit hundreds of thousands of small business owners who are dealing with a recession. If it is enacted, America’s top earners and job creators will carry a larger overall tax burden than in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, etc., with a total average tax rate greater than 52%. Is that the right recipe for jobs and wage growth?
7. Who Makes Medical Decisions? While the House and Senate language is vague, amendments offered in House and Senate committees to block government rationing of care were routinely defeated. Cost or a federal health board could be the deciding factor. President Obama himself admitted this when he said, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” when asked about an elderly woman who needed a pacemaker.
8. Taxpayer-Funded Abortions? Nineteen Democrats recently asked the President to not sign any bill that doesn’t explicitly exclude “abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan” or any bill that allows a federal health board to “recommend abortion services be included under covered benefits or as part of a benefits package.” Currently, these provisions do not exist.
9. It’s Not Paid For: The CBO says the current House plan would increase the deficit by $239 billion over 10 years. And that amount will likely continue to rise over the long term.
10. Rushing It, Not Reading It: We’ve been down this road before — with the failed stimulus package. Back then, we also heard that we were in a crisis and that we needed to pass a 1,000-plus-page bill in a few hours — without reading it — or we would have 8% unemployment. Deception is the only reason to rush through a bill nobody truly understands.
'The Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare' [NRO Staff]
John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, begins his op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal with a nod to the Iron Lady:
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
—Margaret Thatcher
Mackey then offers eight reforms that would reduce health-care costs:
• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).
• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
• Enact Medicare reform.
• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The irony of this is that Obama's best argument - made yesterday - is that he is simply creating another inefficient, costly, cumbersome government bureacracy (THE POST OFFICE) to "compete" with the Private Sector (UPS, FEDEX). Apparently, Obama did not understand the ludicrous words that came out of his teleprompter-less mouth yesterday (memo to Rahm -- always, always, always have that damn teleprompter on !)
Top Ten Reasons Obamacare Is Wrong for America [NRO Staff]
Human Events, with the help of the Heritage Foundation, lists the top ten reasons Obamacare is wrong for America:
1. Millions Will Lose Their Current Insurance: President Obama wants Americans to believe they can keep their insurance if they like. Proposed economic incentives, plus a government-run health plan would cause 88.1 million people to see their current employer-sponsored health plan disappear.
2. Your Health Care Coverage Will Probably Change Anyway: Even if you keep your private insurance, eventually most remaining plans will have to conform to new federal benefit standards. Moreover, the necessary plan “upgrades” will undoubtedly cost you more in premiums.
3. The Umpire Is Also the First Baseman: The main argument for a “public option” is that it would increase competition. However, if the federal government creates a healthcare plan that it controls and also sets the rules for the private plans, there is little doubt that Washington would put its private sector “competitors” out of business sooner or later.
4. The Fed Picks Your Treatment: President Obama said: “They’re going to have to give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier. ... If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half for the thing that’s going to make you well.” Does that sound like a government that will stay out of your healthcare decisions?
5. Individual Mandate Means Less Liberty and More Taxes: President Obama is open to the imposition of an individual mandate that would require all Americans to have federally approved health insurance. This unprecedented federal directive not only takes away your individual freedom but could cost you as well. Lawmakers are considering a penalty or tax for those who don’t buy government-approved health plans.
6. Higher Taxes Than Europe Hurt Small Businesses: A proposed surtax on the wealthy will actually hit hundreds of thousands of small business owners who are dealing with a recession. If it is enacted, America’s top earners and job creators will carry a larger overall tax burden than in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, etc., with a total average tax rate greater than 52%. Is that the right recipe for jobs and wage growth?
7. Who Makes Medical Decisions? While the House and Senate language is vague, amendments offered in House and Senate committees to block government rationing of care were routinely defeated. Cost or a federal health board could be the deciding factor. President Obama himself admitted this when he said, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” when asked about an elderly woman who needed a pacemaker.
8. Taxpayer-Funded Abortions? Nineteen Democrats recently asked the President to not sign any bill that doesn’t explicitly exclude “abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan” or any bill that allows a federal health board to “recommend abortion services be included under covered benefits or as part of a benefits package.” Currently, these provisions do not exist.
9. It’s Not Paid For: The CBO says the current House plan would increase the deficit by $239 billion over 10 years. And that amount will likely continue to rise over the long term.
10. Rushing It, Not Reading It: We’ve been down this road before — with the failed stimulus package. Back then, we also heard that we were in a crisis and that we needed to pass a 1,000-plus-page bill in a few hours — without reading it — or we would have 8% unemployment. Deception is the only reason to rush through a bill nobody truly understands.
'The Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare' [NRO Staff]
John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, begins his op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal with a nod to the Iron Lady:
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
—Margaret Thatcher
Mackey then offers eight reforms that would reduce health-care costs:
• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).
• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
• Enact Medicare reform.
• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Health Care "Debate" - Obama & Democrats - Boundless Hypocrisy
This irritates me to no end. Obama & his Democratic cronies have zero interest in an open and honest debate about health care. Their playbook is a) try to ram it through; b) when that fails; attack your opponents. Their methods are vile and disgusting, calling genuinely concerned Americans "un-American" while avoiding and trying to stifle debate, all the while dissembling.
I could go on and on about this, but I will post just a few tidbits that illustrate what's going on.
The irony is that the Dems could jam through anything they want to given their majorities in the House and Senate, but they know what they are proposing is so egregiously bad, they are afraid to face the political consequences of it all.
Congressman Green’s Hypocrisy [Hans Von Spakovsky]
The unabashed hypocrisy of liberals just never ends. As NewsBusters reports, Democratic congressman Gene Green of Texas is apparently perturbed about the hard time he has been getting at home over his support for a government takeover of health care. So he has issued an announcement on his website stating that “due to a coordinated effort to disrupt our town hall meetings, we will be restricting further attendance to residents of the 29th Congressional District and verifying residency by requiring photo identification.”
Of course, this is the same Congressman Green who is against requiring photo ID for voting. He voted against the Federal Election Integrity Act in 2006, which would have required anyone voting in a federal election to produce a government-issued photo ID. Green wants to verify the identity of every individual who comes to one of his town-hall meetings — but he does not want election officials to verify the identity of everyone who votes in the elections that put him into office. Interesting contrast, isn’t it?
Re: Congressman Green’s Hypocrisy [Robert Alt]
It makes sense for Representative Green to oppose photo IDs for voting but require them for town-hall meetings. After all, it isn’t like there are any reasons to verify who someone is at a voting place. It’s not like there are restrictions on who can vote (or register to vote), such as citizenship or residency, or restrictions on how many times you can vote. It’s just a right, right? It’s not like that so-called “right” to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances — in that case, the government really needs to know who is talking to avoid, well, uppity constituents! And, of course, there is no risk that checking IDs would chill speech. It’s not like the government collects “fishy” information about people with whom they disagree.
On Dishing It Out . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]
What is weird about the liberal hysteria to the obstreperous (and occasionally rude) town meetings is the complete amnesia about what constitutes reckless public discourse.
At one time not so long ago, those on the Left, and mainstream Democrats as well, apparently believed inflammatory language, Hitler parallels, and perverse expressions of real hatred were acceptable means to the noble end of discrediting the Bush presidency.
During the bleak days of Iraq, demonstrators carried swastikas and Hitler portraits of Bush habitually. Nicholson Baker wrote a novel in which characters are contemplating killing Bush. Films were praised imagining the assassination of the president. Michael Moore, courted by the Democratic elite, lamented that bin Laden on 9/11 had hit a blue state — and once compared the killers of Americans in Iraq to Minutemen.
Al Gore customarily used excessive language like "brown shirts." Senators Durbin, Kennedy, and others compared our soldiers to Saddamites, Pol Pot’s killers, and Nazis. Ward Churchill compared the victims in the Twin Tower to “little Eichmanns.” Sen. Robert Byrd likened Pres. George W. Bush’s policies to what transpired in Nazi Germany. Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros agreed with Fidel Castro, the Iranians, and North Koreans in comparing Bush to Hitler.
Jonathan Chait wrote in the New Republic on why “I hate George W. Bush.” Garrison Keillor likened Bush’s Republicans to “brown shirts in pinstripes.” Even old hero Sen. John Glenn said of the Bush agenda: “It’s the old Hitler business.” In 1984, the Guardian’s Charles Brooker declared:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?
Democrats were furious that Rush Limbaugh wanted Obama’s agenda to fail, but I think it was their National Chairman Howard Dean himself who went way beyond Limbaugh when he said publicly, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,” and, “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good.”
Didn’t NAACP chairman Julian Bond once declare of the Bush administration, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side?”
In comparison to all that, the outrage of a few private citizens — none of them in government, prominent in the arts, or political commentators — seems rather mild. In truth, the 2000s marked the liberal reversion to the hateful speech of the 1950s extreme Right, but with a twist. In the 1950s, there were liberal humanists who rose up to deplore the cheap slurs of Joe McCarthy & Co.; by 2001, there were none to object to the above sort of speech.
Leading Conservative Activists Speak Out on Town Halls [Robert Costa]
With Democrats complaining that disorder at recent town-hall meetings on health care is tied to organized opposition groups, NRO asked leaders of prominent conservative grass-roots organizations whether they condemn the disruptions.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, told NRO that he has been “to a bunch of rallies and events” where “the vast majority, 99.9 percent, are civil and expressing their voices and defending their freedoms.” Booing and cheering, he said, is just “good, old American democracy . . . a very reasonable way to respond.”
“Whenever you have a movement numbering in the hundreds of thousands, you will have some people who will do something inappropriate,” said Phillips. “We don’t think inappropriate behavior is helpful.” Phillips cited effigies of members of Congress and physical altercations as examples of possible imprudence. However, Phillips noted that “it is difficult to give an iron-clad definition of what is disruptive and what is inappropriate — but you know it when you see it.”
Former hospital CEO Rick Scott, founder of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, told NRO that “one of the things both sides have to recognize is that everyone has to act properly here.”
“When a congressman is presenting something, he doesn’t have to talk down to the constituent. On the other side, there has to be order, with a process for asking questions and getting things answered. Everyone has to be civil,” said Scott. “We’ve all seen the things on YouTube where it appears people aren’t listening, but you’re only getting a glimpse of what’s happening,” he said. “I’ve presented at a lot of health-care town-hall meetings. My goal is to talk about bills and be direct as possible. What I’ve found is that people are sincerely interested in understanding this stuff. People are showing up with the right attitude. They want to be taken seriously and treated with respect.”
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, told NRO that town-hall attendees “obviously shouldn’t disrupt or push or shove.” Nonetheless, said Keene, attempts to “demonize” opponents to Obama’s health-care plan are “typical” of what he calls “Chávez Democrats” who “don’t argue issues, instead arguing that the people who disagree with them are enemies of the people. In this country, it doesn’t work. Americans don’t like to get pushed around.”
“This idea that anyone who disagrees with you is evil is crazy,” said Keene. “The fact is that democracy, open meetings, and free speech are not always as sedate as one might expect them to be on PBS. Nobody controls this type of thing.” He added that “the coalition that the Obama people put together has been organizing for a year now, and, despite their best efforts, they can’t get people to go to the meetings to argue in support of the president’s policy.”
Adam Brandon, vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, the conservative nonprofit chaired by Dick Armey, said: “If you look at what we put online, which is how we communicate with our members, there is absolutely zero advocation of violence or lewd behavior. We don’t do that, that’s not what we do. We assist activists in becoming educated on policy. We help activists find a location so that they can be the first ones to the microphone so that they’re in-person asking questions — no shouting, no name-calling.”
“The reality of the situation is that town halls are usually very scripted events,” said Brandon, mentioning presidential campaign town halls of all parties as an example. “The congressional town halls have become more and more scripted. A lot of our activists have found that there may be 200 seats, but 194 seats are pre-filled by AFSCME or the AFL-CIO,” he said. “We don’t advise shouting, but it’s understandable when our activists are not using inside voices when they feel they’re shut out of the picture. Even if they’re frustrated, however, there is no excuse for violence. Still, when I look at town halls, violence is not what I see. I’m a Cleveland Browns fan, and passions and voices are multiple times more edgy at Browns games than at town halls. In this country, we celebrate Andrew Jackson. Vocal democracy is vital.— Robert Costa is the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute.
Camille Paglia, Dissident [Edward John Craig]
After expressing her continuing support for Barack Obama in her first Salon paragraph, Camillle Paglia (inter alia) goes on an ugly and un-American rant on Obamacare:
[I] must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, and hope it's a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.
Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.
But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.
As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.
Full story here.
McCaskill Wags Her Finger [NRO Staff]
Democratic senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri hosted a town-hall meeting on Tuesday that quickly became a lecture. The Kansas City Star reports:
About 1,500 people turned out for the sometimes boisterous meeting in Hillsboro, about 30 miles south of St. Louis. Shouts frequently disrupted the meeting, and one man was arrested after allegedly taking a sign brought in by another person and ripping it.
“I don’t understand this rudeness,” McCaskill told the crowd at one point. “I honestly don’t get it.”
Someone shouted out that they didn’t trust McCaskill, a Democrat who was among the earliest supporters of President Barack Obama when he began his run for the White House.
“Beg your pardon … you don’t trust me?” McCaskill said. “I don’t know what else I can do.”
Senator McCaskill asked the crowd to "give her a chance," before griping that she was "so disappointed."
Later on in the day on her Twitter account, the senator found time to issue a mea culpa of sorts:
I've watched some of todays public forum, and I think at times I sounded condescending. My apologies for that.
I could go on and on about this, but I will post just a few tidbits that illustrate what's going on.
The irony is that the Dems could jam through anything they want to given their majorities in the House and Senate, but they know what they are proposing is so egregiously bad, they are afraid to face the political consequences of it all.
Congressman Green’s Hypocrisy [Hans Von Spakovsky]
The unabashed hypocrisy of liberals just never ends. As NewsBusters reports, Democratic congressman Gene Green of Texas is apparently perturbed about the hard time he has been getting at home over his support for a government takeover of health care. So he has issued an announcement on his website stating that “due to a coordinated effort to disrupt our town hall meetings, we will be restricting further attendance to residents of the 29th Congressional District and verifying residency by requiring photo identification.”
Of course, this is the same Congressman Green who is against requiring photo ID for voting. He voted against the Federal Election Integrity Act in 2006, which would have required anyone voting in a federal election to produce a government-issued photo ID. Green wants to verify the identity of every individual who comes to one of his town-hall meetings — but he does not want election officials to verify the identity of everyone who votes in the elections that put him into office. Interesting contrast, isn’t it?
Re: Congressman Green’s Hypocrisy [Robert Alt]
It makes sense for Representative Green to oppose photo IDs for voting but require them for town-hall meetings. After all, it isn’t like there are any reasons to verify who someone is at a voting place. It’s not like there are restrictions on who can vote (or register to vote), such as citizenship or residency, or restrictions on how many times you can vote. It’s just a right, right? It’s not like that so-called “right” to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances — in that case, the government really needs to know who is talking to avoid, well, uppity constituents! And, of course, there is no risk that checking IDs would chill speech. It’s not like the government collects “fishy” information about people with whom they disagree.
On Dishing It Out . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]
What is weird about the liberal hysteria to the obstreperous (and occasionally rude) town meetings is the complete amnesia about what constitutes reckless public discourse.
At one time not so long ago, those on the Left, and mainstream Democrats as well, apparently believed inflammatory language, Hitler parallels, and perverse expressions of real hatred were acceptable means to the noble end of discrediting the Bush presidency.
During the bleak days of Iraq, demonstrators carried swastikas and Hitler portraits of Bush habitually. Nicholson Baker wrote a novel in which characters are contemplating killing Bush. Films were praised imagining the assassination of the president. Michael Moore, courted by the Democratic elite, lamented that bin Laden on 9/11 had hit a blue state — and once compared the killers of Americans in Iraq to Minutemen.
Al Gore customarily used excessive language like "brown shirts." Senators Durbin, Kennedy, and others compared our soldiers to Saddamites, Pol Pot’s killers, and Nazis. Ward Churchill compared the victims in the Twin Tower to “little Eichmanns.” Sen. Robert Byrd likened Pres. George W. Bush’s policies to what transpired in Nazi Germany. Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros agreed with Fidel Castro, the Iranians, and North Koreans in comparing Bush to Hitler.
Jonathan Chait wrote in the New Republic on why “I hate George W. Bush.” Garrison Keillor likened Bush’s Republicans to “brown shirts in pinstripes.” Even old hero Sen. John Glenn said of the Bush agenda: “It’s the old Hitler business.” In 1984, the Guardian’s Charles Brooker declared:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?
Democrats were furious that Rush Limbaugh wanted Obama’s agenda to fail, but I think it was their National Chairman Howard Dean himself who went way beyond Limbaugh when he said publicly, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,” and, “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good.”
Didn’t NAACP chairman Julian Bond once declare of the Bush administration, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side?”
In comparison to all that, the outrage of a few private citizens — none of them in government, prominent in the arts, or political commentators — seems rather mild. In truth, the 2000s marked the liberal reversion to the hateful speech of the 1950s extreme Right, but with a twist. In the 1950s, there were liberal humanists who rose up to deplore the cheap slurs of Joe McCarthy & Co.; by 2001, there were none to object to the above sort of speech.
Leading Conservative Activists Speak Out on Town Halls [Robert Costa]
With Democrats complaining that disorder at recent town-hall meetings on health care is tied to organized opposition groups, NRO asked leaders of prominent conservative grass-roots organizations whether they condemn the disruptions.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, told NRO that he has been “to a bunch of rallies and events” where “the vast majority, 99.9 percent, are civil and expressing their voices and defending their freedoms.” Booing and cheering, he said, is just “good, old American democracy . . . a very reasonable way to respond.”
“Whenever you have a movement numbering in the hundreds of thousands, you will have some people who will do something inappropriate,” said Phillips. “We don’t think inappropriate behavior is helpful.” Phillips cited effigies of members of Congress and physical altercations as examples of possible imprudence. However, Phillips noted that “it is difficult to give an iron-clad definition of what is disruptive and what is inappropriate — but you know it when you see it.”
Former hospital CEO Rick Scott, founder of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, told NRO that “one of the things both sides have to recognize is that everyone has to act properly here.”
“When a congressman is presenting something, he doesn’t have to talk down to the constituent. On the other side, there has to be order, with a process for asking questions and getting things answered. Everyone has to be civil,” said Scott. “We’ve all seen the things on YouTube where it appears people aren’t listening, but you’re only getting a glimpse of what’s happening,” he said. “I’ve presented at a lot of health-care town-hall meetings. My goal is to talk about bills and be direct as possible. What I’ve found is that people are sincerely interested in understanding this stuff. People are showing up with the right attitude. They want to be taken seriously and treated with respect.”
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, told NRO that town-hall attendees “obviously shouldn’t disrupt or push or shove.” Nonetheless, said Keene, attempts to “demonize” opponents to Obama’s health-care plan are “typical” of what he calls “Chávez Democrats” who “don’t argue issues, instead arguing that the people who disagree with them are enemies of the people. In this country, it doesn’t work. Americans don’t like to get pushed around.”
“This idea that anyone who disagrees with you is evil is crazy,” said Keene. “The fact is that democracy, open meetings, and free speech are not always as sedate as one might expect them to be on PBS. Nobody controls this type of thing.” He added that “the coalition that the Obama people put together has been organizing for a year now, and, despite their best efforts, they can’t get people to go to the meetings to argue in support of the president’s policy.”
Adam Brandon, vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, the conservative nonprofit chaired by Dick Armey, said: “If you look at what we put online, which is how we communicate with our members, there is absolutely zero advocation of violence or lewd behavior. We don’t do that, that’s not what we do. We assist activists in becoming educated on policy. We help activists find a location so that they can be the first ones to the microphone so that they’re in-person asking questions — no shouting, no name-calling.”
“The reality of the situation is that town halls are usually very scripted events,” said Brandon, mentioning presidential campaign town halls of all parties as an example. “The congressional town halls have become more and more scripted. A lot of our activists have found that there may be 200 seats, but 194 seats are pre-filled by AFSCME or the AFL-CIO,” he said. “We don’t advise shouting, but it’s understandable when our activists are not using inside voices when they feel they’re shut out of the picture. Even if they’re frustrated, however, there is no excuse for violence. Still, when I look at town halls, violence is not what I see. I’m a Cleveland Browns fan, and passions and voices are multiple times more edgy at Browns games than at town halls. In this country, we celebrate Andrew Jackson. Vocal democracy is vital.— Robert Costa is the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute.
Camille Paglia, Dissident [Edward John Craig]
After expressing her continuing support for Barack Obama in her first Salon paragraph, Camillle Paglia (inter alia) goes on an ugly and un-American rant on Obamacare:
[I] must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, and hope it's a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.
Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.
But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.
As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.
Full story here.
McCaskill Wags Her Finger [NRO Staff]
Democratic senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri hosted a town-hall meeting on Tuesday that quickly became a lecture. The Kansas City Star reports:
About 1,500 people turned out for the sometimes boisterous meeting in Hillsboro, about 30 miles south of St. Louis. Shouts frequently disrupted the meeting, and one man was arrested after allegedly taking a sign brought in by another person and ripping it.
“I don’t understand this rudeness,” McCaskill told the crowd at one point. “I honestly don’t get it.”
Someone shouted out that they didn’t trust McCaskill, a Democrat who was among the earliest supporters of President Barack Obama when he began his run for the White House.
“Beg your pardon … you don’t trust me?” McCaskill said. “I don’t know what else I can do.”
Senator McCaskill asked the crowd to "give her a chance," before griping that she was "so disappointed."
Later on in the day on her Twitter account, the senator found time to issue a mea culpa of sorts:
I've watched some of todays public forum, and I think at times I sounded condescending. My apologies for that.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
NY Times, Israel bashing, Obama connections
The NY Times is at it again ... giving away prime op-ed real estate to Israel Haters, including notorious Obama advisor Robert Malley. (the same Malley who advised Obama while Obama and his campaign were denying he advised Obama on Middle East policy). The co-author seems to be a relative (brother perhaps) of another notorious Obama pal and advisor, Rashid Khalili.
This piece, which implicitly is designed to question Israel's legitimacy, is truly disgusting and reprehensible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5065&adxnnl=1&partner=MYWAY&adxnnlx=1249992179-FT2cdg8iG2DbVD4YBLbjIA
This piece, which implicitly is designed to question Israel's legitimacy, is truly disgusting and reprehensible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5065&adxnnl=1&partner=MYWAY&adxnnlx=1249992179-FT2cdg8iG2DbVD4YBLbjIA
Sunday, August 9, 2009
ObamaCare - No Sale as The Disinformation Rachets Up
Since Obama is trying to sell a crap sandwich to America, they are spinning disinformation like crazy ....
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/The-empty-words-of-a-journalist-turned-flack-52619647.html
The empty words of a journalist turned flack
By: Byron York Chief Political CorrespondentAugust 7, 2009
Linda Douglass, the former CBS and ABC News correspondent who joined the Obama presidential campaign and later the administration, has emerged as the point person in the White House push back against “disinformation” regarding national health care.
She’s one of several former journalists who are part of Team Obama, and her story, in particular, illustrates the difficulties that politically connected Democratic journalists can face both inside and outside the government. (Although a few Republican reporters have joined GOP administrations, this is mostly a Democratic problem, given the left-leaning sympathies of most journalists.)
As a reporter, how does one keep from rooting for the home team? And as a government official, how does one flack for the boss while ignoring the questions any journalist should ask?
This week Douglass undertook to debunk a video going around the Internet showing Barack Obama, before he became president, endorsing a single-payer national health care system. “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan,” Obama said at a conference in 2003, as he was beginning a run for the U.S. Senate. “That’s what I’d like to see.”
A viewer might reasonably conclude that, at least in 2003, Barack Obama was a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan. Not true, said Douglass. In a video posted on the White House Web site, she explained that there was a lot of “disinformation” going around these days about health care reform. Opponents of reform have been “taking sentences and phrases out of context” to create a “false impression.”
“There are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there — they simply cherry-pick and put it together,” Douglass said, “and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.”
A few years ago, Linda Douglass the journalist might have asked just how Obama’s 2003 declaration of support for single-payer health care was taken out of context. Now, Douglass the White House spokeswoman didn’t even address the question.
Instead, she played a clip of Obama as president, at an AARP forum in July, pledging that people who like their current insurance will be allowed to keep it.
A few years ago, Linda Douglass the journalist might have asked what caused the president to change his mind — and why the American people should take seriously what he says now. But Douglass the White House spokeswoman had nothing to say about that. That’s the problem of the journalist-turned-spokesperson.
Douglass experienced the Democratic journalist’s dilemma from the other side during the Clinton years, when she and her husband, lawyer and sometime Democratic fundraiser John Phillips, were close to members of the president’s inner circle. They had been longtime friends of Mickey Kantor, a key figure in Bill Clinton’s political world, and during the 1992 campaign, Kantor introduced them to Bruce Lindsey, Harold Ickes and others on the Clinton team.
Douglass and Phillips also became close with Webb Hubbell, the Justice Department official who stole from his old law firm and cheated on his taxes. Douglass and Phillips dined and socialized with Hubbell and his wife, Suzy, and the couples even took a trip to the Greek islands together.
They remained close after Hubbell got in trouble. Phillips helped arrange for Hubbell to make some easy money during a period when Hubbell was suspected of withholding information from Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr. (A foundation Phillips was connected to agreed to pay Hubbell $45,000 to write an article on public service.)
The friendship ended badly when the full extent of Hubbell’s corruption became impossible to deny. Douglass and Phillips were never suspected of any wrongdoing, and Douglass said she informed her bosses and recused herself when it came to covering Hubbell and Kantor. But the episode revealed the complexities that can arise when top journalists are close to top government officials.
Now, Douglass is experiencing the problems of life on the other side of the divide. She’s free to be partisan — no recusals necessary — but she’s squandering the credibility she built earlier in her career. You can be the most polished communicator in the world, but you can’t make a convincing argument if you have nothing to say.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Remember-when-protest-was-patriotic-52767517.html
"Miss Information"* [Jonah Goldberg]
Byron has a good column on Linda Douglass and her new role as White House flack. One point he raises, that has been bugging me since I first saw her "rebuttal" to the YouTube video showing Obama endorsing single payer, is just how non-responsive Douglas' video is. She makes no attempt whatsoever to prove her assertion that Obama's comments were out of context or irrelevant.
And that's what's sort of interesting to me. Her rebuttal technique is truly Obamaesque, in that she does what Obama himself does: Quotes Obama as proof that Obama is always right. As has been noted many times around here, Obama has this tic where he says "As I've said before" or "As I said at the time" or "I've said repeatedly" etc etc. to make a point. Sometimes Obama is being less than truthful when he says he's said X before. And sometimes the fact that he said X before in no way bolsters the case he's actuall trying to make.
Douglass does the same thing. She simply quotes some boilerplate lines from Obama saying you can keep your own health insurance (which is not exactly true) and apparently that's supposed to obliterate any claim that Obama favors single payer, even though there's extensive evidence that he does favor single payer (he said it many times in the past when he wasn't trying to sell this specific health care bill) and there's serious concern that the public plan approach would lead, over time, to single payer. But rather than substantively deal with any of that, Douglass accuses people of "disinformation" and simply invokes the divine authority of Obama to rebut any criticism.
* The title "Miss Information" comes from one of the commenters to Byron's column.
Update: From a reader:
Mr. Goldberg-I wholeheartedly agree with your comments on Linda Douglass' non-rebuttal rebuttal.Imagine if the left had some clip of Bush before the invasion of Iraq saying he did not believe that country possessed WMD, and then some White House spokesman tried to defend Bush by countering with other statements he had made to the contrary. The outcry would have been deafening .Best regards,
Call 1-800-CHEST-PAIN [Mark Steyn]
Here's one of those anecdotal horror stories from Scotland's National Health Service that we are enjoined by American "reformers" to pay no heed to. From The Daily Record:
A mum suffering chest pains died in front of her young son hours after being sent home from hospital and told to take painkillers.
Debra Beavers, 39, phoned NHS 24 twice in two days before getting a hospital appointment. But a doctor gave what her family described as a cursory examination lasting 11 minutes, before advising her to buy over-the-counter medicine Ibuprofen...
Seven hours later, the mum-of-two collapsed and died from a heart attack in front of her 13-year-old boy.
It's one of those stories that has all the conventions of the genre: The perfunctory medical examination; the angry relatives; the government innovation intended to pass off an obstructive bureaucracy as a streamlined high-tech fast-track ("NHS 24" is some sort of 1-800 helpline). Indeed, in the end, it's all about the bureaucracy: The 1-800 guys don't think you're worth letting past the health-care rope line. So you call again, and ask again, and they say okay, we'll find you someone, but he can only spare 11 minutes of his busy time. And, while you're being carried out by the handles, the bureaucracy insists that all went swimmingly:
NHS 24 executive nurse director Eunice Muir said: "We can confirm Ms Beavers contacted NHS 24 and that her onward referral was managed safely and appropriately."
Phew! Thank goodness for that. I
n The Wall Street Journal, our old friend Theodore Dalrymple writes:
In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to compare the human and veterinary health services of Great Britain, and on the whole it is better to be a dog.
As a British dog, you get to choose (through an intermediary, I admit) your veterinarian. If you don’t like him, you can pick up your leash and go elsewhere, that very day if necessary. Any vet will see you straight away, there is no delay in such investigations as you may need, and treatment is immediate. There are no waiting lists for dogs, no operations postponed because something more important has come up, no appalling stories of dogs being made to wait for years because other dogs—or hamsters—come first.
The conditions in which you receive your treatment are much more pleasant than British humans have to endure. For one thing, there is no bureaucracy to be negotiated with the skill of a white-water canoeist; above all, the atmosphere is different. There is no tension, no feeling that one more patient will bring the whole system to the point of collapse, and all the staff go off with nervous breakdowns. In the waiting rooms, a perfect calm reigns; the patients’ relatives are not on the verge of hysteria, and do not suspect that the system is cheating their loved one, for economic reasons, of the treatment which he needs.
That's because, in their respective health systems, Fido is a valued client, and poor Debra Beavers wasn't.
How Stupid Can They Possibly Be? Part Two [Benjamin Zycher]
Readers of the Corner will recall my earlier post about the “negotiations” over how much the feds will be allowed to steal (at first) as part of the “reform” effort to bring health-care socialism to America, and the utter stupidity of those smart businessmen who tried to induce the White House and congressional alligators to devour someone else first. It was easy to see that this tactic wouldn’t work. Can a deal with the White House be imposed on the Waxman/Pelosi/Reid Axis? Would Obama veto a bill that failed to honor, say, the “negotiated” $80 billion limit on the “contribution” to be made by the pharmaceutical industry? Did those smart businessmen not ask themselves these obvious questions?
So obvious indeed are the questions that they answer themselves.
From yesterday’s New York Times:
“Democrats Say No to Cost Cap for Drug Makers.” Thundered the ineffable Pelosi (through a spokesman): “Ms. Pelosi supports House efforts ‘to squeeze more money out of . . . the pharmaceutical industry.’” Also spake Comrade Waxman: “I think that PhRMA [the drug makers’ industry group] should contribute more than PhRMA wants to contribute.”
“Contribute” is an interesting euphemism for wealth transfers coerced by the federal government. In any event, it is truly amazing that the pharmaceutical industry actually believed that the $80 billion ceiling it negotiated with the White House would not become a floor in a Congress that has not patients but instead interest groups. That observation leads inexorably to the realization that price controls are the real issue to be negotiated, with current patients the winners and future patients the losers. (For my paper on the adverse effects of such price negotiations for pharmaceuticals, go here.)
One would think that those smart businessmen could have see all this coming, particularly after having spent decades or centuries cumulatively inside the Beltway. And one would be wrong.
— Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.
France Gets a Clue [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Just as we lose our minds. From the Wall Street Journal:
France Fights Universal Care's High Cost By DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARSWhen Laure Cuccarolo went into early labor on a recent Sunday night in a village in southern France, her only choice was to ask the local fire brigade to whisk her to a hospital 30 miles away. A closer one had been shuttered by cost cuts in France's universal health system. Ms. Cuccarolo's little girl was born in a firetruck. France claims it long ago achieved much of what today's U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government is trying to borrow U.S. tactics. In recent months, France imposed American-style "co-pays" on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses.
"A hospital doesn't need to be money-losing to provide good-quality treatment," President Nicolas Sarkozy thundered in a recent speech to doctors.And service cuts — such as the closure of a maternity ward near Ms. Cuccarolo's home — are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes could lead to rationing.The French system's fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama's proposed overhaul.
The Contradictions of Health-Care Reform [Ramesh Ponnuru]
My column in Time:
There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey.
The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, "the status quo is untenable." Our health-care system is rife with "skewed incentives." It gives us "a whole bunch of care" that "may not be making us healthier." It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is "bankrupting families," "bankrupting businesses" and "bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change."
Obama's second major point is that—to quote from the same broadcast—"if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don't want you to have to change ...
So what we're saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it."
So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?
If Obama Loses Boulder . . . [Mike Potemra]
A delightful ex-girlfriend in Boulder, Colo., sends me some not-so-delightful news for Obama and his health-care plan. Boulder is a notorious liberal stronghold, but the local congressman was mobbed today by constituents — many of whom, in the video posted by the liberal (natch) local paper, appear very angry about Obamacare. And this doesn’t look like an issue of airy theorizing or mere partisanship — of socialism versus free markets, or Democrats versus Republicans. It looks more like a dinner-table issue: If this reform plan becomes a reality, will we be better off four years from now? If Obama’s having trouble selling it in Boulder freakin’ Colorado, you can stick a fork in it.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/The-empty-words-of-a-journalist-turned-flack-52619647.html
The empty words of a journalist turned flack
By: Byron York Chief Political CorrespondentAugust 7, 2009
Linda Douglass, the former CBS and ABC News correspondent who joined the Obama presidential campaign and later the administration, has emerged as the point person in the White House push back against “disinformation” regarding national health care.
She’s one of several former journalists who are part of Team Obama, and her story, in particular, illustrates the difficulties that politically connected Democratic journalists can face both inside and outside the government. (Although a few Republican reporters have joined GOP administrations, this is mostly a Democratic problem, given the left-leaning sympathies of most journalists.)
As a reporter, how does one keep from rooting for the home team? And as a government official, how does one flack for the boss while ignoring the questions any journalist should ask?
This week Douglass undertook to debunk a video going around the Internet showing Barack Obama, before he became president, endorsing a single-payer national health care system. “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan,” Obama said at a conference in 2003, as he was beginning a run for the U.S. Senate. “That’s what I’d like to see.”
A viewer might reasonably conclude that, at least in 2003, Barack Obama was a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan. Not true, said Douglass. In a video posted on the White House Web site, she explained that there was a lot of “disinformation” going around these days about health care reform. Opponents of reform have been “taking sentences and phrases out of context” to create a “false impression.”
“There are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there — they simply cherry-pick and put it together,” Douglass said, “and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.”
A few years ago, Linda Douglass the journalist might have asked just how Obama’s 2003 declaration of support for single-payer health care was taken out of context. Now, Douglass the White House spokeswoman didn’t even address the question.
Instead, she played a clip of Obama as president, at an AARP forum in July, pledging that people who like their current insurance will be allowed to keep it.
A few years ago, Linda Douglass the journalist might have asked what caused the president to change his mind — and why the American people should take seriously what he says now. But Douglass the White House spokeswoman had nothing to say about that. That’s the problem of the journalist-turned-spokesperson.
Douglass experienced the Democratic journalist’s dilemma from the other side during the Clinton years, when she and her husband, lawyer and sometime Democratic fundraiser John Phillips, were close to members of the president’s inner circle. They had been longtime friends of Mickey Kantor, a key figure in Bill Clinton’s political world, and during the 1992 campaign, Kantor introduced them to Bruce Lindsey, Harold Ickes and others on the Clinton team.
Douglass and Phillips also became close with Webb Hubbell, the Justice Department official who stole from his old law firm and cheated on his taxes. Douglass and Phillips dined and socialized with Hubbell and his wife, Suzy, and the couples even took a trip to the Greek islands together.
They remained close after Hubbell got in trouble. Phillips helped arrange for Hubbell to make some easy money during a period when Hubbell was suspected of withholding information from Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr. (A foundation Phillips was connected to agreed to pay Hubbell $45,000 to write an article on public service.)
The friendship ended badly when the full extent of Hubbell’s corruption became impossible to deny. Douglass and Phillips were never suspected of any wrongdoing, and Douglass said she informed her bosses and recused herself when it came to covering Hubbell and Kantor. But the episode revealed the complexities that can arise when top journalists are close to top government officials.
Now, Douglass is experiencing the problems of life on the other side of the divide. She’s free to be partisan — no recusals necessary — but she’s squandering the credibility she built earlier in her career. You can be the most polished communicator in the world, but you can’t make a convincing argument if you have nothing to say.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Remember-when-protest-was-patriotic-52767517.html
"Miss Information"* [Jonah Goldberg]
Byron has a good column on Linda Douglass and her new role as White House flack. One point he raises, that has been bugging me since I first saw her "rebuttal" to the YouTube video showing Obama endorsing single payer, is just how non-responsive Douglas' video is. She makes no attempt whatsoever to prove her assertion that Obama's comments were out of context or irrelevant.
And that's what's sort of interesting to me. Her rebuttal technique is truly Obamaesque, in that she does what Obama himself does: Quotes Obama as proof that Obama is always right. As has been noted many times around here, Obama has this tic where he says "As I've said before" or "As I said at the time" or "I've said repeatedly" etc etc. to make a point. Sometimes Obama is being less than truthful when he says he's said X before. And sometimes the fact that he said X before in no way bolsters the case he's actuall trying to make.
Douglass does the same thing. She simply quotes some boilerplate lines from Obama saying you can keep your own health insurance (which is not exactly true) and apparently that's supposed to obliterate any claim that Obama favors single payer, even though there's extensive evidence that he does favor single payer (he said it many times in the past when he wasn't trying to sell this specific health care bill) and there's serious concern that the public plan approach would lead, over time, to single payer. But rather than substantively deal with any of that, Douglass accuses people of "disinformation" and simply invokes the divine authority of Obama to rebut any criticism.
* The title "Miss Information" comes from one of the commenters to Byron's column.
Update: From a reader:
Mr. Goldberg-I wholeheartedly agree with your comments on Linda Douglass' non-rebuttal rebuttal.Imagine if the left had some clip of Bush before the invasion of Iraq saying he did not believe that country possessed WMD, and then some White House spokesman tried to defend Bush by countering with other statements he had made to the contrary. The outcry would have been deafening .Best regards,
Call 1-800-CHEST-PAIN [Mark Steyn]
Here's one of those anecdotal horror stories from Scotland's National Health Service that we are enjoined by American "reformers" to pay no heed to. From The Daily Record:
A mum suffering chest pains died in front of her young son hours after being sent home from hospital and told to take painkillers.
Debra Beavers, 39, phoned NHS 24 twice in two days before getting a hospital appointment. But a doctor gave what her family described as a cursory examination lasting 11 minutes, before advising her to buy over-the-counter medicine Ibuprofen...
Seven hours later, the mum-of-two collapsed and died from a heart attack in front of her 13-year-old boy.
It's one of those stories that has all the conventions of the genre: The perfunctory medical examination; the angry relatives; the government innovation intended to pass off an obstructive bureaucracy as a streamlined high-tech fast-track ("NHS 24" is some sort of 1-800 helpline). Indeed, in the end, it's all about the bureaucracy: The 1-800 guys don't think you're worth letting past the health-care rope line. So you call again, and ask again, and they say okay, we'll find you someone, but he can only spare 11 minutes of his busy time. And, while you're being carried out by the handles, the bureaucracy insists that all went swimmingly:
NHS 24 executive nurse director Eunice Muir said: "We can confirm Ms Beavers contacted NHS 24 and that her onward referral was managed safely and appropriately."
Phew! Thank goodness for that. I
n The Wall Street Journal, our old friend Theodore Dalrymple writes:
In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to compare the human and veterinary health services of Great Britain, and on the whole it is better to be a dog.
As a British dog, you get to choose (through an intermediary, I admit) your veterinarian. If you don’t like him, you can pick up your leash and go elsewhere, that very day if necessary. Any vet will see you straight away, there is no delay in such investigations as you may need, and treatment is immediate. There are no waiting lists for dogs, no operations postponed because something more important has come up, no appalling stories of dogs being made to wait for years because other dogs—or hamsters—come first.
The conditions in which you receive your treatment are much more pleasant than British humans have to endure. For one thing, there is no bureaucracy to be negotiated with the skill of a white-water canoeist; above all, the atmosphere is different. There is no tension, no feeling that one more patient will bring the whole system to the point of collapse, and all the staff go off with nervous breakdowns. In the waiting rooms, a perfect calm reigns; the patients’ relatives are not on the verge of hysteria, and do not suspect that the system is cheating their loved one, for economic reasons, of the treatment which he needs.
That's because, in their respective health systems, Fido is a valued client, and poor Debra Beavers wasn't.
How Stupid Can They Possibly Be? Part Two [Benjamin Zycher]
Readers of the Corner will recall my earlier post about the “negotiations” over how much the feds will be allowed to steal (at first) as part of the “reform” effort to bring health-care socialism to America, and the utter stupidity of those smart businessmen who tried to induce the White House and congressional alligators to devour someone else first. It was easy to see that this tactic wouldn’t work. Can a deal with the White House be imposed on the Waxman/Pelosi/Reid Axis? Would Obama veto a bill that failed to honor, say, the “negotiated” $80 billion limit on the “contribution” to be made by the pharmaceutical industry? Did those smart businessmen not ask themselves these obvious questions?
So obvious indeed are the questions that they answer themselves.
From yesterday’s New York Times:
“Democrats Say No to Cost Cap for Drug Makers.” Thundered the ineffable Pelosi (through a spokesman): “Ms. Pelosi supports House efforts ‘to squeeze more money out of . . . the pharmaceutical industry.’” Also spake Comrade Waxman: “I think that PhRMA [the drug makers’ industry group] should contribute more than PhRMA wants to contribute.”
“Contribute” is an interesting euphemism for wealth transfers coerced by the federal government. In any event, it is truly amazing that the pharmaceutical industry actually believed that the $80 billion ceiling it negotiated with the White House would not become a floor in a Congress that has not patients but instead interest groups. That observation leads inexorably to the realization that price controls are the real issue to be negotiated, with current patients the winners and future patients the losers. (For my paper on the adverse effects of such price negotiations for pharmaceuticals, go here.)
One would think that those smart businessmen could have see all this coming, particularly after having spent decades or centuries cumulatively inside the Beltway. And one would be wrong.
— Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.
France Gets a Clue [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Just as we lose our minds. From the Wall Street Journal:
France Fights Universal Care's High Cost By DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARSWhen Laure Cuccarolo went into early labor on a recent Sunday night in a village in southern France, her only choice was to ask the local fire brigade to whisk her to a hospital 30 miles away. A closer one had been shuttered by cost cuts in France's universal health system. Ms. Cuccarolo's little girl was born in a firetruck. France claims it long ago achieved much of what today's U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government is trying to borrow U.S. tactics. In recent months, France imposed American-style "co-pays" on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses.
"A hospital doesn't need to be money-losing to provide good-quality treatment," President Nicolas Sarkozy thundered in a recent speech to doctors.And service cuts — such as the closure of a maternity ward near Ms. Cuccarolo's home — are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes could lead to rationing.The French system's fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama's proposed overhaul.
The Contradictions of Health-Care Reform [Ramesh Ponnuru]
My column in Time:
There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey.
The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, "the status quo is untenable." Our health-care system is rife with "skewed incentives." It gives us "a whole bunch of care" that "may not be making us healthier." It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is "bankrupting families," "bankrupting businesses" and "bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change."
Obama's second major point is that—to quote from the same broadcast—"if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don't want you to have to change ...
So what we're saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it."
So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?
If Obama Loses Boulder . . . [Mike Potemra]
A delightful ex-girlfriend in Boulder, Colo., sends me some not-so-delightful news for Obama and his health-care plan. Boulder is a notorious liberal stronghold, but the local congressman was mobbed today by constituents — many of whom, in the video posted by the liberal (natch) local paper, appear very angry about Obamacare. And this doesn’t look like an issue of airy theorizing or mere partisanship — of socialism versus free markets, or Democrats versus Republicans. It looks more like a dinner-table issue: If this reform plan becomes a reality, will we be better off four years from now? If Obama’s having trouble selling it in Boulder freakin’ Colorado, you can stick a fork in it.
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