Libertarian Leanings

Worried - But Still Not Getting It

According to Politico, Democrats are beginning to show some worry over their abandonment by independent voters.  But they don't seem to understand the reason behind their plummeting popularity.  Here's an example.

Pat Waak, the chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, said the party had so far failed to convince independent voters of the steps it had taken to improve the economy.

“I think the economy is at the base of the tension,” she said. “Quite frankly, we’ve got to do a better job of messaging. There’s a lot of work to be done to get independents more comfortable with what we’re doing.”

Here's the thought that hasn't managed to penetrate progressive skulls.  Independents know what Democrats are doing, and they don't like it.  Instead of taking steps that would actually help the economy, like cutting taxes on both businesses and individuals, Democrats have used stimulus money for political payoffs, like transferring ownership of GM and Chrysler to the United Auto Workers union. 

And while the economy continues tanking Democrats decide to push a health care reform bill that will run up the deficit, will not improve care or make it any more affordable, and that a majority of Americans don't want.  It is nothing more than a naked grab for power.  It's hard to believe how Democrat/progressive leaders can be so incredibly avaricious and stupid, but they are -- just plain stupid.  They'll be sure to work on their messaging, though.

Afterthought:  If Democrats are smart enough to figure out their policies, not their message, is the reason they're losing independent voters in droves, they have a simple remedy.  They'll lie about their policies.

So let's be realistic.  Progressives, as leftists like to call themselves, know all this about the single payer systems.  They just won't admit it.  Why is that?  One of the single payer shining stars in the video above is Yale Political Science Professor Jacob Hacker.  He is very candid about the underlying rationale for promoting a public option for health insurance.  It inevitably leads to a single payer system.

'Someone once said to me that this is a Trojan Horse for a single payer.  Well, it's not a Trojan Horse, right?  It's just right there.'

[...]

'One of the virtues of it is that you can at least make the claim that there's a competitive system between the public and private sectors.'

Another who makes her appearance in the video is Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat from Illinois.  A strong proponent of the single payer model, she is even more open about there being another agenda.  To the cheers of her single payer audience she says,

'This is not a principled fight.  This is a fight about strategy for getting there, and I believe we will.'

Ah, but where is "there?"  Just as the public option can be seen as a Trojan Horse for getting to a single payer plan, health care reform itself is a strategy. Barack Obama is pragmatic about getting and keeping power.  The goal is an enduring progressive majority in congress, and the progressive strategy for achieving it has always been to encourage more people to rely on government.  When people depend upon government they will vote for those who favor more of it.  Health care reform is vote buying on a massive scale.  And the beauty of it is that Democratic votes are bought with federal tax dollars.

Think about it for a moment.  When health care reform finally passes and we all depend on Uncle Sam to cure our ills, what will be the more beneficial to progressive politicians?  A health care system that works?  Or one that requires constant attention from our progressive champions in Washington?

Health Care Reform Gets a Failing Grade

Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, Dean of the Harvard Medical School, gave it an "F" in today's Wall Street Journal.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care's dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Fortunately, a majority of voters know all this, thus the strong opposition to it.  Again, health care reform is not about heath care.  It's about extending the reach of government, which in turn builds on what progressives hope will be their enduring majority.

A "Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System" recently declared that the Massachusetts health-care payment system must be changed over the next five years, most likely to one involving "capitated" payments instead of the traditional fee-for-service system. Capitation means that newly created organizations of physicians and other health-care providers will be given limited dollars per patient for all of their care, allowing for shared savings if spending is below the targets. Unfortunately, the details of this massive change—necessitated by skyrocketing costs and a desire to improve quality—are completely unspecified by the commission, although a new Massachusetts state bureaucracy clearly will be required.

Of course a new state bureaucracy will be required.  Gee, I wonder how they'll vote.

Intelligence Bonanza

According to John Yoo, a Bush administration Justice Department official from 2001 to 2003, the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda.

Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives. The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.

This is not hypothetical, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has explained. During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the "blind Sheikh"), standard criminal trial rules required the government to turn over to the defendants a list of 200 possible co-conspirators.

In essence, this list was a sketch of American intelligence on al Qaeda.

It's my personal opinion that this case is going to be tried in civilian courts because it provides a rationale for revisiting the torture controversy.  2010 is an election year.  If the Obama Justice Department can move quickly enough, the front pages of our elitist mainstream press can carry lurid headlines describing KSM's torture and abuse at the hands of George Bush -- just in time for Democrats to make it the centerpiece of their 2010 campaign.  Obama and the Democrats have never stopped campaigning against Bush, and by the looks of things they're not going to now.  The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a bit of election year strategy for a party that is very quickly becoming very unpopular.

Little Known Fact

Maybe not so little known...

All agree that the bursting of the housing bubble caused the financial collapse of 2008. Most agree that the housing bubble started in 1997. Less well understood is that this bubble was the result of government policies that lowered mortgage-lending standards to increase home ownership. One of the key players was the controversial liberal advocacy group, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

Lou Dobbs Leaves CNN

In a statement announcing the resignation of Lou Dobbs from CNN, Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S. said “Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.”  Since I almost never watch CNN or Lou Dobbs, Klein's remark about advocacy journalism seemed odd.  A case of the pot calling the kettle black? 

But Dobbs has mentioned his doubts about President Obama's citizenship and his views on immigration are also not in line with the rest of CNN.  When Dobbs announced his resignation, he had this to say.

At this point, I’m considering a number of options and directions, and I assure you, I will let you know when I set my course. I truly believe that the major issues of our time include the growth of our middle class, the creation of more jobs, health care, immigration policy, the environment, climate change, and our military involvement, of course, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But each of those issues is, in my opinion, informed by our capacity to demonstrate strong resilience of our now weakened capitalist economy and demonstrate the political will to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C.

I believe these to be profoundly, critically important issues, and I will continue to strive to deal honestly and straightforwardly with those issues in the future.

Unfortunately, these issues are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous, empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion. I’ll be working diligently to change that as best i can. And as for the important work of restoring inspiration to our great free society and our market economy, I will strive as well to be a leader in that national conversation.

Dobbs advocacy preferences just didn't match up with CNN's.

Obama's Double Standard

According to NewBusters, while some mainstream media luminaries hewed to the course of political correctitude by withholding inconvenient details from their reporting on the Fort Hood massacre, Lou Dobbs was not one of them.  Dobbs jumped all over Barack Obama, accusing him of holding a double standard for urging against "jumping to conclusions."

According to Dobbs, it was just a matter of compare and contrast - the treatment Hasan got from the President versus the treatment the arresting officer in the Cambridge Police situation got.

"So, there are the two Presidents Obama," Dobbs said. "You pick which one is most palatable to you and you try to explain to me if you will how the more recent statement squares with the previous statement."

But then Dobbs showed he was clearly aggravated by Obama's double standard, especially after the casualties of the Fort Hood tragedy.

"How dare he stand up there and sanctimoniously tell the American people not to rush to judgment, to jump to conclusions," an impassioned Dobbs said. "My God - there are 13 people dead, 29 of them wounded, 29 of our troops wounded at Fort Hood and so I'm going to jump to some conclusions here because all we have are eyewitnesses and surveillance tape and that's all I've got to go on."

And Dobbs wasn't afraid to call this an act of terrorism, as so many others have shied away from doing. The CNN host said he would indeed be jumping to conclusions and encouraged others to do so as well.

I wonder what Obama would have said if the shooter were a Christian?

Democrats Aren't Being Coy About What's At Stake

The Wall Street Journal has the confessions of an ObamaCare backer.

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus."

Health care reform is not a goal, it's a strategy.  The video in this post lays it out.  If you aren't able to watch the clip, here is what you need to know:

One of the single payer shining stars in the video above is Yale Political Science Professor Jacob Hacker.  He is very candid about the underlying rationale for promoting a public option for health insurance.  It inevitably leads to a single payer system.

'Someone once said to me that this is a Trojan Horse for a single payer.  Well, it's not a Trojan Horse, right?  It's just right there.'

[...]

'One of the virtues of it is that you can at least make the claim that there's a competitive system between the public and private sectors.'

Another who makes her appearance in the video is Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat from Illinois.  A strong proponent of the single payer model, she is even more open about there being another agenda.  To the cheers of her single payer audience she says,

'This is not a principled fight.  This is a fight about strategy for getting there, and I believe we will.'

Ah, but where is "there?"  Just as the public option can be seen as a Trojan Horse for getting to a single payer plan, health care reform itself is a strategy. Barack Obama is pragmatic about getting and keeping power.  The goal is an enduring progressive majority in congress, and the progressive strategy for achieving it has always been to encourage more people to rely on government.  When people depend upon government they will vote for those who favor more of it.  Health care reform is vote buying on a massive scale.  And the beauty of it is that Democratic votes are bought with federal tax dollars.

Think about it for a moment.  When health care reform finally passes and we all depend on Uncle Sam to cure our ills, what will be the more beneficial to progressive politicians?  A health care system that works?  Or one that requires constant attention from our progressive champions in Washington?

Democrats in the House must surely believe they are very close to reaching the critical mass so succinctly described by JOMer, Porchlight, and immortalized in this Day by Day cartoon.

Not a Referendum?

At least that's what Cynthia Tucker thinks of the election thumping that Democrats suffered on Tuesday.

Around the country, Republican strategists are doing a victory dance over an easy victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial race — as well as down-ballot wins in Old Dominion — and a more surprising win in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election. Last night, U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, House Minority Whip, was relentlessly on message: A referendum on Obama! Voters don’t like Obama’s policies! A referendum on Obama!

Yesterday’s elections were no such thing.

Kim Strassel thinks otherwise, and she makes a very persuasive point.

On Jan. 20, Barack Obama began a race against time. The White House knew its liberal agenda would prove unpopular in many parts of the country represented by Democrats. So long as the president looked strong, those Blue Dogs and freshmen and swing-state senators would stick. Show them any sign of weakness, however, and rattled Dems would begin to care more about their own re-elections than they did their president.

Tuesday, the White House hit that tipping point.

To understand why, join some of those "nervous Democrats" who at this very moment are digging into, say, Virginia's returns. Last year, Dems captured three GOP House seats in the Old Dominion as the state voted for its first Democratic president since 1964. This week, those very same districts provided Democrats their first proof that the Obama agenda is a liability.

There's freshman Rep. Tom Perriello, who, buoyed by the big Obama turnout, won Virginia's fifth congressional district by a scant 727 votes. Today, Mr. Perriello's farming and manufacturing area sports the state's highest unemployment rate. The Democrat suffered a furious backlash over his vote for a cap-and-trade bill that will further crush local manufacturing and was then walloped at a series of health-care town halls.

Voters took their frustration to the polls on Tuesday. Republican Bob McDonnell, who campaigned for governor on jobs and against ObamaCare and climate legislation, took 61.4% of the district's vote.

[...]

These are the numbers the 49 Democrats who sit in McCain districts are dissecting. The mass defection in the independent vote, the uptick in the angry-senior vote, the swing in suburban voters, the drop-off in Democratic turnout—the figures have even hot incumbent blood running cold. The White House can shout that this is not a referendum on the president's policies. What vulnerable Democrat wants to take that chance?

The White House and the congressional leadership saw this coming, and it is why Speaker Nancy Pelosi is force-marching her health bill to a vote tomorrow. She's not about to give her members time to absorb the ugly results, or to be further rattled by next week's Veteran's Day break, when they go home for a repeat of the August furies. If not now, she knows, maybe never.

Passage of Pelosi's health care reform bill Saturday could doom the 49 McCain district Democrats, but then they may be doomed already.  Disgust at Washington's blatant disregard of their views or their interests motivated a half a million people to gather at the U.S. Capitol on September 12, 2009.  Whether her bill passes or not, voter dissatisfaction with Pelosi and the Democrats is not going away soon.

Liberal pundits may crow that Republican gains are transitory, and they will be if the party is unable or unwilling to understand the results.  Independent voters sent a clear message to the Democrats:  Don't cram this federal takeover legislation down our throats.  The Democrats won't listen.  The Republicans better.  Those voters plan on showing up at the polls in November, 2010.

And Not Succeeding

FOX News won the election night prime time ratings war on this year. Fox News was the clear winner in the cable ratings last night, averaging 4.04 million total viewers during prime-time, with 1.13 million in the 25-54 demo alone. Fox beat the other three networks combined. MSNBC came in second (974K, 308K), according to Nielsen, with HLN taking third (842K, 341K). CNN, which won the 2008 election night, continues to struggle in prime-time. The network placed fourth for the month of October, and claimed the same spot last night, with 826,000 total viewers and 227,000 in the demo. Campbell Brown has an explanation for CNN's dismal finish.

Campbell Brown says that she and her "colleagues here at CNN are still trying to do journalism." (CNN)

"Journalism" from the network that taught us the term "tea-bagging".  Yes, they're trying over at CNN, but apparently not succeeding all that well.

When In Doubt...

The day after Democrats were trounced in New Jersey and Virginia, President Obama offered his analysis:

MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with -- from the economy to the war in Afghanistan -- are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

He'll be saying the same thing next year.  Pathetic doesn't begin to describe the man.