The Real Idiot Practices Alinsky: What You Knew Already About The 'Debate' Expressed Concisely

Instapundit nails the idiocy that pervades Obama's health "care" obfuscations to the wall using the context of the most recent Robert Reich column's unwitting admission of incompetence:

... Mainly because there’s still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House’s is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

But that’s the problem: It’s always easier to stir up fear and anger against something that’s amorphous than to stir up enthusiasm for it.

Hmm. So it’s like this:

Obama: I’m going to turn healthcare upside down. Not sure how.

People: I don’t think I’ll like this.

Obama: Haters!

Remember how Bush was supposed to be the idiot who went into Iraq without a plan, while Obama was supposed to be the cool methodical one? But Reich is admitting that despite all the Administration hoopla, there’s still no plan. Or, possibly, that the White House has a plan, but won’t tell us what it is. And yet the people who don’t want to see a bill — some bill, doing who-knows-what — rammed through in the dead of night are somehow the ones who are ignorant and being manipulated. Right.

A concise jewel of evisceration, no? RTWT.

The bottom line is that it's all Saul Alinsky all the time with our good friend the Manchurian Candidate. He's going to hide the salami from you in all cases. And when you're gullible enough to wonder where the transparency is that he promised -- never mind the moderation and conciliation -- well the problem is with you my friend. You're a hater and a racist!

And if you're a black or person of color who complains then you're an Uncle Tom just in case you think appearances might cause him any embarrassment. Oh, and by the way, some people of color don't count. Lord knows Americans of Japanese and Chinese ancestry have never suffered any persecution in this country so they don't get any ranking on the race-baiter totem pole.

Hmmmmm, and what was the party affiliation of that president who incarcerated the Japanese again? And did I forget to mention that Asians have higher average incomes than whites in this country? Whoops! Down the memory hole with that inconvenient fact...

Anyway, the two Alinsky rules you must never forget:

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. ...

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

Just in case you were surprised about what was happening to Sarah Palin.

And you.

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Help End The Imperial Congress

A stirring call to action by Bill Whittle. If you've never heard of Bill Whittle you'll be wondering why he's not in congress too.

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Just The Ticket

I've finally figured out just the ticket.

First, we need somebody at the top of the ticket who's not only heard of Thomas Jefferson but can actually quote him with knowledgeable enthusiasm:

That would be Katrina. Just in case you missed her.

Second, we need a VP who understands who's Un-American and who's not and doesn't mince words about it:

That would be Leah. Got your attention didn't she?

Looks to me like it's time to start going door to door. Any questions?

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King O Manufacturing

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Dean Kamen Destroys Obama's Ignorant Healthcare Alarmism

This is a long excerpt of an interview that Popular Mechanics has up with Dean Kamen (H/T Glenn). I strongly recommend that you just click over and RTWT but this is important enough that I'm putting up the conclusion excerpt without hiding it behind a "Read More" jump so you have no excuses.

If you're a free market advocate, you know what Dean's saying in your bones but you maybe haven't heard anyone pull it together into this kind of a concise and devastating argument with market sizes, impacts and comparisons.

And, BTW, Kamen is far from a right wing ideologue. Along with his long list of medical inventions, he's also the inventor of the Segue scooter, which is almost a liberal religious shibboleth! He doesn't flesh this out in Hayekian free market terms because that's not his educational background but you can see there's no fundamental contradiction with his argument and free markets at all. In fact, he's one of the world's pre-eminent medical entrepreneurs. (And ironically, he's one of the founders of the First Lego League robotics competition for elementary and junior high students which I am involved in and find to be heavily staffed with liberal global warming alarmist parents, etc.)

Anyway, here it is:

Kamen: We spent on all pharmaceuticals in the United States last year $260 billion. That means all those vaccinations to prevent diseases, all those pills to treat diseases, all those pills to cure them so we don't have to treat them anymore. We spent in all branches of all our pharmaceutical suppliers, $260 billion.

That's certainly way up from what it was in the early days of the world, but we also spent way more money on computers and other things that didn't exist back then, either, and we don't claim we have a computer crisis. We spent more money on our iPhones last year than we did ten years ago cause there were no iPhones. But let me compare $260 billion to other things. How much did we spend in the United States last year on tobacco? $88 billion. That's a significant piece of 260. It's the reason we spent some of that 260. How much did we spend last year on alcohol? The government doesn't subsidize that, you don't have a right to it, it's discretionary spending and if you were really in trouble you would probably spend a little less on alcohol. We spent $90 billion.

Last year what did we spend in the United States on soft drinks? $121 billion. Nearly half of what we spend on all of our pharmaceuticals, on soft drinks. I'm not against soft drinks—I think you ought to buy all the soft drinks you want.

Last year what did we spend supporting professional sports? $409 billion.

Now if somebody in this country wants to explain to me that we ought to be spending about twice as much supporting sports as on all of our pharmaceuticals, then stop spending. You don't like that drug? You don't want to cure this disease? Don't buy it. But don't make villains out of people so that we can turn what is a real social responsibility issue into a political debate.

PM: Yet health-care costs do keep rising. Is there a point at which we simply can't afford the most advanced treatments?

Kamen: Diabetes alone, if you include all of the long-term, insidious consequences of a lifetime of diabetes, is responsible for about 30 percent of the federal reimbursement for healthcare. Taking care of the diabetic every day is a small piece of it. But what if tomorrow we could wipe out diabetes, suddenly everybody takes a pill and it cures the people that have it, and it inoculates the other people so they'll never have it? Forgetting what a great life that would give people and their families, you take care of 30 percent of what now we project as this insurmountable problem of healthcare, which they project is going to kill us.

Well, it would kill us if we look at the 30-year actuarial data based on our 19th century confidence in technology. But I'm sure in 1920 if you asked actuaries to say what percentage of our GDP are we going to spend taking care of people with polio, they'd say: "They get polio, it goes to their lungs, they sit in iron lung machines, they could live a whole lifetime with three people watching over them. We can't support them all."

But what did it cost to deal with everybody with polio? Oh, $2 apiece. We gave them the Salk vaccine. But in the 1920s Salk wasn't around yet.

PM: In other words, R&D spending now may save money later?

Kamen: If you project forward these horrific costs of treating everybody and you want to assume we are not going to respond to that by making the therapies better, simpler and cheaper and in some cases completely wiping out the [diseases], well you know what? We might actually get to that situation—if we stop investing in technology, if we stop believing that the future ought to be better than the past.

If we want to sit here and keep assuming we should be fighting, and that we should be striving to spend less of our intellectual power and our money on great achievements to come in healthcare—that we should be fighting to make it a smaller piece of our economy—I want to know what you want to make a bigger piece of our economy. What do you want to see the future look like?

I think this debate shows a fundamental lack of vision, a lack of confidence, a lack of understanding of what's possible. And it's being fueled and fed by vested interests of people that have something to gain by making the general public, frankly, afraid of all sorts of things.

Note his perhaps unconscious reference to the liberal healthcare alarmism in similar terms to free market advocate's notice of how the AGW advocates use alarmism. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Get this in the hands of everyone you know who's falling for the collectivist healthcare lunacy. Now.

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Trojan Horse

Red State has the goods on what's really going on with the mad rush into the health "care" abyss.

Obama (D-IL): “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process” (3/24/07, at SEIU “Universal Health Care Forum”); “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care system” (2003 at AFL-CIO event)

Frank (D-MA): “I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single-payer; that’s the best way to reach single-payer” (7/27/09)

Schakowsky (D-IL): “And next to me was a guy from the insurance company, who then argued against the public health insurance option, saying ‘it wouldn’t let private insurance compete’ — that ‘a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.’ He was right! The man was right!” (4/18/09)

Any more questions?

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The Right To Self Defense

Self Defense in Washington D.C.:

This month, I felt compelled to talk in my gun club news letter about an aspect of gun ownership that many folks probably don’t think about or even want to talk about too much: Defensive gun ownership rights – specifically, the concept of being able to own or even carry a concealed handgun for self defense. So I thought I would re-print that article here as well.
Let me explain: Once again I find myself in Washington D.C. on business. When I have some down time, my mind wanders and I find myself comparing the culture in this part of the country to the culture we enjoy in Colorado. While here, I was often asked by friends and colleagues what I did for fun the evening before. My response was usually along the lines of walking the National Mall and looking at monuments – I love seeing our national monuments, and take the time to visit them every time I am here.

The response:

“You didn’t walk the National Mall at NIGHT, did you?!”

Well – no, but why, I am thinking, would they ask such a thing?

"Because it just isn’t safe!” was always the answer. Well – I knew that, thus my decision for not doing it.

Well – let’s talk about that for a moment. It’s not SAFE to walk the National Mall in Washington D.C.! And this sentiment in a city where the Police Chief, City Council, and Mayor have all made it clear that they do not like the idea of citizens being armed. But yet the Supreme Court has ruled (in the case of D.C. versus Warren and others) that the police do not have an obligation to protect individual citizens. My perception of how dangerous this city is can always be further perpetuated by the events of many late afternoons, when I am walking around the city, and there are police sirens whaling every so often, followed by something looking like a bomb disposal vehicle, followed by fire engines. “What the heck is going on here?” I have often thought. Why isn’t this place safe? What makes a place like this to be widely considered dangerous to walk around at night, but yet those charged with protecting it would regard armed citizens as a bad thing?

In talking with a few of the locals, I most assuredly have my impressions confirmed that Washington D.C. is just widely regarded as having a high rate of violent crime. Now this is not something new – I know that many of you have heard this all before. But what occurs to me every time I come here is that there is a very simple explanation: Citizens are not allowed to have guns for self defense, either in the open, concealed, or just locked in the trunk of their cars. Until last year, handguns where completely outlawed. But even though the Supreme Court has ruled the bearing of arms to be a right that these citizens should enjoy, the city leadership has been throwing up roadblock after roadblock towards allowing these people to arm themselves and put the violent criminals on notice that they want to defend themselves.

Washington D.C. is not unique in this. Cities like Chicago, New York, and some other large metropolitan areas also have very restrictive gun laws, and citizens are deprived of the right to carry concealed weapons or in many cases even own them. What do they also have in common? Very high rates of violent crime! The economy is certainly having an effect on the increase in violent crimes every where¸ but when criminals know that their victims cannot fight back, they are further enabled and feel emboldened to commit these crimes. And in this city in particular, it is even illegal to carry knives and pepper spray. So basically, everyone except the criminals, is rendered completely defenseless.

What does this mean to us as a gun club? We’re all voters! With some very important elections coming up in 2010 and 2012, we need to start NOW in looking for state candidates who will help protect our rights to bear arms, to ensure that Colorado will continue to enjoy the rights we have now with no further erosion of these rights, and national candidates who will take this message to Washington D.C. The current administration is moving at a furious pace to change our country – I am wondering how long it will be before our “privileges” of concealed carry disappear, and our RIGHT to keep and bear arms is taken away for good. Get involved, get the word out, and wake your fellow Americans up.

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Government Is The Real Clunker

Enough to make a numerate person weep.

And just in case you hadn't figured out why a majority of Americans oppose this craziness, here's the video illustration:

Basically, in addition to un-employing teenagers by raising the minimum wage and adding insult to injury by depleting the pool of cars they can afford, we are leaning on people to go in to debt to buy a new car and ... wait for it ... going in the hole on each clunker upgrade energy and CO2/pollution-wise for 4-8 years unless you drive over 20K miles per year.

Sheer genius. Well, if one of your biggest campaign contributors is the UAW it is anyway...

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Iranian Inspiration

OK kiddoes. Here's an update on the protests that don't exist in Iran.

I was inspired by the protestor comment that "they don't even know what to do". That's the mode the Washington Fascists have us in right now as Glenn has been doing a good job of pointing out.

Time to declare solidarity with the Iranian people and follow their example. Time to turn the tables.

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What's Really Going On -- A Cram Course

O Duce is cramming us into slavery. If you want to get the "cram course" on the mechanics of what he's doing, here it is:

Getting it yet?

What's that you say? You feel used like a dirty rug? That would be correct. (H/T Newsbusters)

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Who Recommends It?

And what are those side effects again?

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Ronald Reagan: We Do Not Want Socialized Medicine

Nothing has changed. Except right on plan, everyone has forgotten what Norman Thomas said.

Just substitute Obama and Pelosi for the unfamiliar names on the bills and he has it nailed. (H/T Jonah.)

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The Hill Commenters Take On Health Care

Wow. What are they smoking over at the The Hill site today? Perhaps you missed the provision for euthanasia counseling for instance? Check out this excellent sampling of commenters on what a farce the health care "debate" is (Read More to continue):

13: Perhaps JoeP doesn't know about the provision requiring counseling the aged on euthanasia at least every 5 years (more frequently if they are sick) and therefore doesn't get Linda's reference to President Kevorkian.

Maybe a few of O's defenders are unaware that O openly lied when he said you could keep your plan and your doctor (refer to page 16).

And yes, Pelosi, Reid and O constantly lie to the American people. When the government creates 31+ agencies to control health care, can anyone believe this would be deficit neutral?

When a government can only get $0.35 of every dollar spent for welfare to the actual intended recipients, can anyone believe the government can efficiently administer health care control?

Can a government who has stolen from the social security fund for years to the point of bankrupting it, manage your health care?

Look at any and every government program you know. Is it run well? Does it serve Americans well? Or is it ripe with fraud, inefficiency, bureaucracy, and surly "customer service"?

Lastly - time is not the problem with Congress actually reading bills. I submit they can't stand the stench within these bills and therefore delegate their sworn duties to their underlings. In addition, they want to ram a lot of things through that they will later claim they knew nothing about.

Time is only an issue because they want to make sure the American people don't have long enough to digest the legislation and organize dissent.

Comment by katablog.com — July 19, 2009 @ 9:32 am

18. We should all oppose ANY health care legislation that does not also cover members of Congress and ALL public sector employees, federal, state and local! "OBAMACARE, If It Ain't Good Enough For My Congressman, It Ain't Good Enough For Me!"

Comment by NCBob — July 19, 2009 @ 10:39 am

20: This raises a question in my mind about one of the premises of the whole effort — the need to cover the uninsured. The Census Bureau's raw number of 47 million uninsured is thrown around a lot, but a surprisingly large proportion of these are not too badly off — only 25% are below the poverty line, and fully 47% are at 200% of the poverty line or better. (21% are not citizens, but that is a different issue.) 63% are under age 34.

So, given that dependent children can be covered by Medicaid, there seems to be a strong implication that many of the uninsured are healthy young adults who have made the rational decision not to pay for insurance. And it is rational — in the event of a health catastrophe, the system will not let them die in the street, and health premiums are designed to make them pay for the more intensive older users.

So here is my question — is this whole thing a scam directed at getting the young and healthy into the system to force them to subsidize: (1) Geezers, and (2) Every treatment that can lobby legislatures for mandatory inclusion?

Health care is not my area, except for an interest in innovation, but why wouldn't the whole problem be solved by equalizing the tax treatment of employer and private insurance plans, ensuring the availability of catastrophe insurance, encouraging innovation and the free market, and sending Congress home?

Comment by JVDeLong — July 19, 2009 @ 10:50 am

21. Washington is basically out of it's collective mind. Rep or Dem, no matter. They scurry around, a mass of frenetic energy, while exacerbating the problems that we face.

The biggest favour that they could do for the American people is dismantle a large part of themselves. We don't need new programs, we need them to get out of our lives.

Everything that they touch, goes south, costs insane amounts of money, produces nothing positive and erodes the quality of our lives.

I have never been more unimpressed in my entire adult life than with the bunch that is currently in office.

Comment by JR — July 19, 2009 @ 11:09 am

22. If the administration and Congress are so certain this is the best plan for all us peasants out here (4 out of 5 whom can and have been figuring out how to insure ourselves without government intervention), let them all be required to go on the plan they're proposing.

They won't. It's garbage, and they know it. Obama has said that he wouldn't put his own kids on ObamaCare.

Hypocrites - every last one. Throw the bums out in 2010.

Comment by Good Lt. — July 19, 2009 @ 11:24 am

26. Reform health care ? Why ? The always expanding list of "rights" of Americans is unmatched by responsibility. Reforming the legal profession would be money better spent, since much of the health care cost of this country goes to trial lawyers. Government is less efficient than the private sector. Period. Most Americans can't name any government run programs which they are happy with - or very few anyway.

Americans trust of Congress is at an all time low - so we're going to turn to them for the answers ? And every single time the words "rush" or "hurry" are used to describe the legislative process, you can bet that the legislation is filled with something the politicians don't want us to know about(if they even bothered to read the bill before they voted on it).

Comment by DaveinPhoenix — July 19, 2009 @ 12:05 pm

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Health Care Rally Today

Well today (Friday 7/17) is the health care rally in front of Betsy Markey's local congressional office at College and Mountain in down town Fort Collins at 10am. Be there with your signs!

And check out this impressive little screed I just ran across. Here's a snippet touching on both unemployment and heath care "reform":

Why are those 15 million people unemployed? For the most part, they’re looking for jobs, but no one will hire them. Companies very much want to hire more people, and expand – no business wishes to remain stagnant. The decision to refrain from hiring people is a tough one. Business owners don’t make it because they’re cruel and like to laugh at people in the unemployment lines. One of the reasons the economy is contracting is because money – the avatar of time, resources, and entrepreneurship – is being forced to go where it doesn’t want to go. Businesses that should fail are being propped up by reckless deficit spending. The shadow of titanic tax increases to come, including those needed to fund Obama’s adventure in health insurance, looms fearfully large on the horizon – and when money is frightened, it hides.

Hiring people to fill job openings is not the same thing as handing them a check and announcing they’re employed. The health care “crisis,” to the extent one exists, cannot be solved by signing a bill and declaring everyone has health insurance now. Businessmen live at the intersection of theory and reality, while politicians angrily deny that intersection exists at all. That’s one reason I much prefer dealing with businessmen.

Nice, huh? And as he points out earlier in the piece, Barack now owns the unemployment problem: Did you know that with the $787B in Barack's "stimulus" package he could employ every unemployed person in America for a year at $52,000 per year? Or two years at $26,000 per year? But no, that money is slated to scratch the backs of his corrupt political cronies. Do the math. If only we still taught math in this country...

And of course you know that Joe Biden says that we're going bankrupt so we have to spend more money to avoid bankruptcy. Only people that have the power to counterfeit would even consider mouthing such an insanity.

UPDATE: FYI, slow Joe's quote was: “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.” Just remember. He's just one heartbeat away. God help us.

And here's a link to some pics from the rally.

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Jaguars -- An Economic Thought Experiment

If you've gone to government schools like most folks, you may be completely befuddled by inflation -- even while watching your household budget disintegrate on the shoals of rising prices. And how does it all fit together with the banking and economic crisis.

Here's a tantalizing and brief article that will at least make you realize that all is perhaps not as you've been brainwashed to believe. Click through and RTWT -- it's not a lot longer than this snippet:

I am tired of hearing people insist that the Fed can expand credit all it wants. Sometimes an analogy clarifies a subject, so let’s try one.

It may sound crazy, but suppose the government were to decide that the health of the nation depends upon producing Jaguar automobiles and providing them to as many people as possible. To facilitate that goal, it begins operating Jaguar plants all over the country, subsidizing production with tax money. To everyone’s delight, it offers these luxury cars for sale at 50 percent off the old price. People flock to the showrooms and buy. Later, sales slow down, so the government cuts the price in half again. More people rush in and buy.

Sales again slow, so it lowers the price to $900 each. People return to the stores to buy two or three, or half a dozen. Why not? Look how cheap they are! Buyers give Jaguars to their kids and park an extra one on the lawn.

Finally, the country is awash in Jaguars. Alas, sales slow again, and the government panics. It must move more Jaguars, or, according to its theory — ironically now made fact — the economy will recede. People are working three days a week just to pay their taxes so the government can keep producing more Jaguars. If Jaguars stop moving, the economy will stop. So the government begins giving Jaguars away. A few more cars move out of the showrooms, but then it ends. Nobody wants any more Jaguars. They don’t care if they’re free. They can’t find a use for them. Production of Jaguars ceases. It takes years to work through the overhanging supply of Jaguars. Tax collections collapse, the factories close, and unemployment soars. The economy is wrecked. People can’t afford to buy gasoline, so many of the Jaguars rust away to worthlessness. The number of Jaguars — at best — returns to the level it was before the program began.

The same thing can happen with credit.

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Ray Harvey On Mises.org!

Time to click over to Mises.org and read Ray Harvey's excellent "Wind or Nuclear?".

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Obamageddon

No need for further comment. Just watch it.

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You're Probably Making Investment Decisions ...

... based on assuming that this man -- and other economic illiterates that continue to rely on him like Obama -- knows what he's talking about.

What on God's green earth are you thinking?

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Happy 4th Of July ... And We Stand With The Iranian People

I have a long list of grievances with McCain but he usually gets it right in defense of liberty. And he has done so here. Start watching at the 3:00 mark if you're short on time.

And then go read Ray Harvey's post on what happened to those "privileged white men" to whom we owe so much. How's that brainwashing been working out for you? Electing a president who supports tyranny both abroad and now ever increasingly at home? You think you won't end up like this. But you're wrong. And sheep who call themselves people have always been on the wrong side of history.

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Peter Schiff On CNBC Yesterday

Looks like they're ending the recent nutty shutout.

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