Tag: health care

Obama compared to… LBJ?

Ouch?

Ah, the first “Is [INSERT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION HERE] [INSERT PRESIDENT’S NAME HERE]’s Vietnam?” article written about a Presidential administration.  Always a magical time.

Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

Naturally, the NYT is mostly concerned with Afghanistan as it relates to American domestic policy – the idea that the situation might have either national security or humanitarian implications that might affect the decision-making process is carefully ignored – but that’s not unexpected. As the article itself references (but does not admit), the Left has never been interested in Afghanistan as Afghanistan: it was a convenient club with which to try to beat the (Republican) President with, and now that there is no (Republican) President in office the progressive wing is abandoning the illusion of caring, with happy sighs all around. Continue reading Obama compared to… LBJ?

It’s not even a ‘Battle’ of the Signs. No contest.

This video by Short for Ordinary (via Breitbart TV) contrasting the sign-acquiring strategies of the folks against health care rationing vs. those of the ones for it:


(For those without ready video: the 1000+ demonstrating against health care rationing at the Tuscon Recess Rally [Giffords*] made their own; the 200 demonstrating for it were generally handed them at about the same time that they got their juice and bagels)

…is illustrative of two things: first, all the creativity and energy seems to be flowing through the folks who are trying to stop health care rationing. The folks brought in to astroturf support for it are… dull**. Second: screaming names at these people doesn’t seem to be stopping them; they instead look like they’re using the insults as a reminder of why they keep going out there to say their piece. Which is as good a reason as any to conclude why they’re not going away.

While I am not of course privy to the thoughts of the President, I suggest that perhaps this is not the community he thought that he’d be organizing once he took office…

Moe Lane Continue reading It’s not even a ‘Battle’ of the Signs. No contest.

Again: they’re *angry*, not afraid.

Dan Collins – who has by the way moved Piece of Work In Progress: update your links – has a post about the opposition to the President that shouldn’t be excerpted, but must be.  A taste:

…they get stonewalled at town halls packed deliberately with union supporters, or find that their Representative has literally decided to phone the meeting in, and they are accused of being astroturfed, even as they watch people from out of state bused in to support the health care fiasco.  They see Lyndon LaRouche wackos carrying Obama Nazi signs characterized as right-wingers.  They hear that their concerns are those of a small and demented minority.  They see videos cropped to make it seem as though they’re racists. They are told that their opposition to Obama’s policies springs from racism on talk shows and in editorials.  They receive unsolicited emails from Axelrod after being told that their information’s not being kept by the White House, and then it’s blamed on advocacy groups across a broad political spectrum.  They recall that there were 8 years of BusHitler rhetoric that went unchallenged in the MSM, which suddenly is up in arms about the extraordinary incivility of such comparisons.

[snip]

Oh, yeah, they’re angry.  But it’s not because they’re stupid.  It’s because “Trust us; we despise you” isn’t really very civil, is it?

Read the whole thing, and let me add one more of my own: Continue reading Again: they’re *angry*, not afraid.

So, where’s Joe Biden?

This is a pretty critical point for the health care rationing bill, and VP Biden’s supposed to be this hyper-useful kind of guy when it comes to Congressional issues. Goodness knows, we got told often enough that he was smarter than his opposite number in the campaign – you know, the one who is currently helping to drive the debate, to the administration’s detriment – so it seems odd that he’s not more involved in helping his boss chivvy scared Democratic legislators back into line.

Very odd…

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE: Half down, half to go. Veep Biden, touting health care reform at a Chicago fundraiser declared, “We provide about 50 percent of the health care already.” Great. And untrue. A fourth of Americans are covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Two-thirds are covered by private insurers. That’s according to the federal census.

Ah. Yes. Of course.

Silly me.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Moderate Voice points out a Republican health care plan, gets savaged for it.

The article itself (via Hot Air) is reasonable enough, but the real fun is watching the screaming in the comments sections from various of TMV’s commenters – said screaming partially because there’s nothing shriller than an Online Left commenter having one of their treasured talking points demolished, but mostly because the Online Left commentariat hates conservatives, and wants us all to die in fires.

Oops, did I just type that out? Whoops! For some reason, we’re expected not to make that rather obvious observation.

Moe Lane

PS: Anybody who can comment here is generally considered an exception to that designation. My general rule of thumb is whether they can type out “Republican” without mutating it into a slur.

Crossposted to RedState.

Trust a Salon writer to get it wrong from the start.

(Via The Other McCain.)

I’m sure that the guy thinks that he’s trying to be helpful, but he flunks out by the subtitle.

You won’t win the healthcare debate by calling people stupid racists

Elite right-wing foes of healthcare reform are telling lies. The folks listening to them are mostly just scared

Dude. They’re not scared.

They’re pissed off.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Steny Hoyer goes off-message on health care rationing.

Assuming that there’s any sort of on-message at this point. Via Hot Air, here’s the latest cloud of ink from a Democrat perhaps worried about the way things are going:

Hoyer (D-Md.) emphasized his support for a public option in a teleconference call with reporters, but also said he wants to ensure Congress sends a bill to the president.

“I’m for a public option, but I’m also for passing a bill,” he said. Democrats believe the public option is necessary, useful and important, he added, “be we’ll have to see.”

No doubt we’ll soon enough get a clarification of the explanation of the correction of the restatement of whatever the heck it is that the Democrats want to do this week. Although what are progressives going to do with Steny, anyway? Give money to Charles Lollar?

Well, they should. But that’s just the Marylander Republican talking.

Moe Lane

PS: In other words, it is not yet time for me to publicly join in the Crowder Victory Dance.  And I am sure that the world finds this delay much to its liking.

That being said, drop some money in the tip jar and I’ll think about doing it and taping the results.

Heck, drop some money in the tip jar with the message “Don’t. Please, Moe: DON’T!” and I’ll think about not. I’ll be happy to start a bidding war; it’s all going to go towards assemblingmy blogging wish list, anyway.

Crossposted to RedState.

Steele to Democrats: You have the votes, and you won, remember?

So stop wasting everybody’s time with pretending that you want Republicans for anything but cover and pass your cursed health care rationing bill.

Actually, that’s pretty much what he said:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Thursday dared Democrats to try a one-party push to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Steele told reporters that he thinks if Democratic senators think they have the votes, they should try a tactic that would allow them to get around a bill-killing filibuster without the 60 votes usually needed. Steele said he didn’t think Democrats would do it because of potential voter backlash.

“Get it to the floor. Up or down, baby,” Steele said at a news conference at the state GOP headquarters. “Put it on the table. And if you don’t think you’ve got enough votes to get to 60, you’ve got the nuclear option. You’ve got 51.”

(Via Hot Air Headlines)

Democrats who are surprised by this shouldn’t be: this is the natural and inevitable result of the Democratic House leadership deciding to freeze out House Republicans in writing bills this session. That particular bit of hubris then means that we feel that we’re under no obligation to give the Democrats political cover for a blessed thing now – and if the Democrats are feeling upset over that, well, good. They should direct that upset towards the people who actually caused it – which is to say, Pelosi, Hoyer, Murtha, Waxman, Frank, Obey, and every other House leader who let their sense of entitlement and need for petty revenge override their good sense. Continue reading Steele to Democrats: You have the votes, and you won, remember?

I think MSNBC is trying to get the President shot at.

(H/T Ace of Spades, NewsBusters, & Hot Air) I’m aware that’s kind of an inflammatory statement, but hear me out.

OK, remember last weekend, when there were a bunch of reports of armed people at the Arizona town hall? Lots of stories of bemused reporters trying to get their heads around the notion that in Arizona you can wander around with an AR-15 –

Which is not a fully automatic weapon, by the way. You can’t buy fully automatic weapons in the USA*. I mention this because this is apparently news to our journalistic class.

– anyway, lots of bemused reporters, not least because of this picture (via here):

Health care rationing protester, by the way. See also this video, and stop at about 0:28.

OK, yup, same guy. Now watch this: Continue reading I think MSNBC is trying to get the President shot at.

The – translated – Gibbs PhRMA/Axelrod payola video.

Video via The Conservatives: it’s of Gibbs ducking and weaving away from a question about why Axelrod’s former company’s getting that sweet, sweet ad money from the White House’s new friend PhRMA, so I thought that I’d annotate it. Particularly note the snide comment about free markets at the end.

Yes, there’s a small problem with the bottom-half text. Windows Movie Maker, remember? I do what I can with the tools that I have – and I know that the tools that I have aren’t the best.  Hence, the Wish List.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.