Thursday, August 20, 2009

Is there a doctor in the house?

When I was in India in 2004, there were many, many things that were a culture shock to me. One in particular was the traffic. It's so thick that on the way to work in the evening (I was working the North American schedule – eleven and a half hours behind India) that we never got above 30 miles per hour (at 4 AM it was a different story…). After night after a particularly slow trip to work, one of the people I worked with asked how fast I drive in when I drive to work in the US. I told them that it was not unusual for me to go 80 or 85 MPH. They asked what the speed limits are, and I said that I drive as fast as I can afford. They didn't get it so I elaborated that as long as I didn't have too many tickets on my record I could afford to drive over the speed limit.

"But that is against the law." One of the Indians said to me.

"Yes," I tried to explain, "but as long as I have enough points on my license and I can afford the fine there's no reason to drive slower than I want to as long as I'm not being reckless."

She persisted. "But why would you intentionally break the law?"

Someone came and got me at that point and further saved me from labeling myself a criminal. The conversation has stuck with me through the last few years as an example of the culture clash between a moral relativist society (ours) and a karmic society (theirs). While I was in India I remember seeing several PC monitors with a scrolling screen saver that said "Integrity is doing the right thing – especially when no one is watching." This lesson historically has been lost on me with regard to speed limits (ok, even not so recently…I am going to traffic court at the end of September) and it is lost on much of our society. Most disturbingly, we are led by people at all levels of our government who hold more than just the laws regarding traffic speed with contempt. Witness:

  • Rod Blagojevich (attempted to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat)
  • Tom Daschle (tax problems – only came to light after his name came up as a potential for the DHS cabinet post)
  • Tim Geithner (tax problems – only paid when he was named to the treasury post)
  • Bill Richardson (pay for play scandal – only came up when he was being considered for commerce secretary)
  • Barack Obama (left 15 of 17 parking tickets in Cambridge, Mass unpaid until he got serious about running for President in 2007)
  • Most recently, David Axelrod may be getting $2 million from his former company, Phrma, which just worked a behind-closed-doors deal with Obama in a follow-the-money tale worthy of any Cheney-Haliburton rants the liberals love so much.

It seems the Democrat motto is "Integrity is doing the right thing ONLY when other people are looking."

To be sure, there are people on both sides of the aisle who violate the law or other moral standards. Republican Senator Larry Craig was arrested for lewd behavior in a public bathroom, placing him in the illustrious company of Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens and singer George Michael. No Democrat would ever let us forget Nixon. However, I don't recall such a large number of tax dodgers and bribe takers ever associated with one party, let alone one person.

The Democrats want us to believe that the government is the solution to all of our problems. Obama has said as much in one of his first televised speeches. It seems to me that rather than the solution, government is part of the problem, and this administration keeps pushing more of it down our throats. Obama says that the key to our economic recovery is health care reform (it was the stimulus, but once that passed, the blame had to move to the next bill that needed to be passed). While I agree that our health insurance industry is fraught with issues, I think the government is the system that is sick and needs medical attention. With the number of pols getting caught for their legal transgressions, how many haven't been caught? Like a cancer patient, our government has become rank with tumors and now it's time to operate. Only when we've removed the cancerous politicians and replaced them with healthy, fresh ones who believe you should do the right thing especially when no one is looking, will we have a shot at healing the rest of our country's problems.

The great thing in all of this is that you and I are the surgeons here. We operate with our right to vote, and if we use it wisely we can bring this patient back from the brink of death. Surgery is scheduled for November 2010…will you be ready to operate?

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Who will speak up for us?

The phrase "death panel" is now being bandied about in reference to the Obama health care plan. Sarah Palin coined the phrase in a statement where she said that a system that judges the people's eligibility for health care based on their level of productivity in society is evil. And I agree.

The question I can't answer is why the Democrats are surprised by the allegations. Since there is no single plan in existence, but pieces of several different plans, we're left to draw our own conclusions about what we do know. We know that the Dems are pro abortion, we know that Ezekiel Emmanuel wants to assign worth to people based on their level of genetic perfection (or lack thereof) or their age and has been named to the group that one version of health care reform would have making these kinds of decisions, and in extreme cases (like Peter Singer) we know that they think infanticide is permissible and actually preferred. Obama has responded to the protests by calling on his shock troops (the Service Employees International Union and Organizing For America) to hit back at protestors "twice as hard." At least one town hall meeting led to SEIU members beating a conservative merchant in the parking lot. Nancy Pelosi brings up the specter of Nazi-ism when referring to the protestors, but all the things listed off in this paragraph are tactics the Nazis used in the 1930's and 40's to first grab and then desperately attempt to cling to power. While I am sure that Pelosi uses the Nazi reference as a scare tactic to conjure the horrible images from World War II and attempting to link them to the Republican Party, either she's ignorant of history or simply doesn't care to remember it before defaming her opponents.

The Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Worker's Party and was founded in 1919 prior to Hitler's involvement (though he quickly took it over). The members of the party called themselves "National Socialists" not "National Conservatives." The Nazis, like the Democrats of today, were proponents of eugenics. The Republicans are not. The Nazis, like today's Democrats, had the general public turn in names of people who were spreading dissent. The Republicans have not. The Nazis, like the Democrats, used the nation's youth to strengthen their position and propagandize the Nazi message. The Republicans have not.

Hitler, upon taking over as Chancellor Of Germany, wasted no time taking over the entire government, using the 1933 fire at the Reichstag as an excuse to suspend civil liberties. This is a common charge levied at Bush and the Patriot Act post-9/11. The logic seems completely lost on the Democrats when looking at their own actions. The Cash-for-clunkers web site disclaimer authorizing the government to access your PC – all data, including emails and financial records – doesn't seem to faze the liberals at all. The white house "snitchline" – the request by the white house to turn in people who send emails or engage in casual conversation that is 'fishy' with regard to health care - is redolent of Nazi Germany when there were spies everywhere and no one dared speak out in public for fear of being captured by the SS. What does the white house intend to do with this information? Imagine if Bush had done this! The outrage would have been deafening – but here, the people being vilified by congress and the media are the people who are speaking out and exercising their right to free speech and assembly.

"We are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries…" is a quote that could easily have come from Obama, but it's actually from Hitler. The tactics of class and racial warfare were used effectively in Germany in the '30s and '40s, and are being used in America today. Obama started out pushing for healthcare reform…but as resistance has built against it he has switched to calling it health 'insurance' reform and he has turned to the best club in his bag – the Evil Capitalists (previously it was the oil companies, but having almost reined them in with crap-n-trade, he's attacking, in this case, health care insurance CEOs). He even chastised the health insurance companies, as if this is a crime, for making the most evil of all evils - "record profits" - in the middle of a recession.

Why aren't the profits of Google (which as a percentage were higher than Exxon-Mobile's vilified 'record' profits) being targeted? In terms of people making obscene sums of money, why doesn't he want to go after Oprah Winfrey? She makes more than 10 times the average CEO salary (from the Forbes 400). Why isn't her $260 million income subject to the same scrutiny? George Soros is worth an estimated $11 billion. Why isn't he on the list? Earlier this year, after adding in language to the stimulus bill that allowed payment of already committed bonuses, Obama has encouraged people to protest at AIG executives houses, causing them to fear for their lives and seek police protection. Is it right that our President helped make people fear for their lives? Where's the outage? Apparently, having wealth or earning a significant sum is only bad if you don't directly support the president (though AIG did support him, so it's a double cross that they wound up in the line of fire). Like so many things with the liberals, the traffic only flows one way.

As for racial warfare, well, if you disagree with Obama you are a racist. Just ask Janeane Garofalo – she'll probably call you an ignorant redneck too. She doesn't even need to know what your objections are…if they're not what Obama wants, you're a racist. If you brand his style of government 'socialism,' you're a racist. The word is being used so much it's losing its meaning, and that is a dangerous thing for America.

The folks are starting to see things for what they are – a left wing organization has control of all branches of our government, and it will stop at virtually nothing to get what it wants. As Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org said after the 2004 election: "We bought it [the Democrat Party], we own it and we're going to take it back." And so they have. With the American people recognizing what is happening, we now have a fight on our hands. For the first time in my life time, we also have a president who is willing to literally send people out to actually fight us in the streets. He has the unwavering support of the Speaker Of The House and the Senate Majority Leader, who both follow his bidding without question while viewing the American people with contempt, and a media that blatantly fawns over Obama and actively demeans the American people. If this continues, my prediction is there will be real trouble and people will be hurt or killed in the process.

I'll close with a classic poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller (written about Germany in World War II):


They came first for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

With the white house trying desperately to silence dissent over health care, how long will it be before we create a poem like this for our own countrymen? At no time in recent history has an American President been so desperate to silence all voices of opposition and so active in making happen; if he succeeds with this attempt, who is next? Who will speak up for us? Freedoms are lost a little at a time, and once lost they are gone forever unless a rebellion occurs. Everyone should be concerned about the direction in which things are headed.


 


 

Friday, August 7, 2009

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

Ok, I've voted in the CSU vs CU poll (go Rammies!), used up all my stamina and energy in Mafia Wars, gone through my email and deleted all the spam, caught up with everything on the Facebook news feed…Now it's time to work on this week's Howl.

It's hard to talk about anything except the battle over health care. Things have gotten interesting this week as the American people seem to be waking from a slumber and they're cranky. They should be. Not only are We The People about to get a royal screwjie over health care, but for those who dare dissent, the media minimizes us as 'the fringe;' the elite snobbery that is the democrat-led congress says we're not sincere and are only getting angry because we're being paid to do so. Someone please beat Pelosi and Reid with the condescension stick and tell them we're angry not because we're getting paid to be angry, but because we want to keep our pay! What dolts.

We're going to play a game called 'connect the dots.' Ezekiel Emmanuel (Rahm's brother) has said that 'communitarianism' should guide who gets what health care. Why should we care what he thinks? Mainly we should care because he's been named by Obama (can you say 'nepotism?') to the Center Of Comparative Effectiveness Research (that's the first dot). What is the CCER? On page 501 of the House health care bill, the Center is described as (abridged) being responsible for conducting research "with respect to the outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services." Appropriate is the operative word there (second dot). Emmanuel is on record as saying that he feels that a way to reduce health care cost is to deny care to those who are "prevented from being participating citizens…An obvious example is not guaranteeing services to a person with dementia." (third dot) Answers.com has a good definition of dementia. It even provides numbers like the following: "Dementia affects 5–8% of all people between ages 65 and 74, and up to 20% of those between 75 and 84. Estimates for dementia in those 85 and over range from 30–47%." Fourth dot. Chances of developing cancer if you're over 65 are double that of someone under 65. Fifth Dot. Cancer treatment can be very expensive. Sixth dot.

So…Emmanuel is part of the group who decides what treatments are appropriate under the proposed health care plan. Starting at age 65 and rising steeply after 75 the incidence of dementia increases dramatically, as does the risk of cancer. Treating cancer can be very expensive. Emmanuel feels a way to reduce costs is to not guarantee coverage to people with dementia. Are the dots connecting? Can you see the picture forming? Does this sound like we're being set up for rationing of care? It sure does to me.

The libs can see that we're onto them, and they're going all in on this one. Liberal columnist Froma Hanop, writing for the Providence Journal, penned a piece with the fair minded title "Republicans Looking Crazy On Health Care." In it she said that she didn't think it had to be said, but apparently it does: "No one is trying to kill grandma." Well, Froma, Republicans didn't say that. In a roundabout, connect the dots kind of way, Ezekiel Emmanuel did. Well, more accurately he didn't say he wants kill grandma; he just doesn't want to help her live longer; so she'll die sooner rather than later. On the bright side, we'll have lower health care costs, which I'm sure will be a great comfort to grandma's family.

Who's crazy here? Conservatives, for wanting to have freedom of choice in their health care? Or liberals, who are so desperate to control every aspect of our lives that they are telling us that this plan will give everything to everyone, it won't change anything already in existence and won't cost a nickel more. This plan sounds an awful lot like the Shmoo.

The name calling is typical of liberals. Liberals probably think that Hanop showed remarkable restraint by not prefacing 'crazy' with 'bat-shit' when naming her op-ed piece. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. And that brings me, finally, to my point.

Liberals operate from bizarre world, where everything is the opposite. Or maybe they've been brainwashed reading 1984 and think newspeak is a GOOD thing. In either case, what they're really practicing is called 'projection.' Freud coined the term to describe someone who, rather than deal with their own undesirable traits, motivations, actions, feelings or desires will assign them to someone else. Liberals do this with constancy and precision. Witness:

  • Obama recently sent an email saying that the GOP would be resorting to scare tactics to stop the health care legislation from moving forward. He then used a scare tactic by saying that if we don't pass the bill, "health care costs will double, millions more will lose their coverage and state governments will go bankrupt."1 In practically the same sentence he predictively accused (Minority Report anyone?) the GOP of using a tactic he himself used in the next sentence!
  • People like Joy Behar say that Republicans need to get over the fact that we lost the election, but can't stop complaining about the President's actions. President Bush, that is. Um..Bush isn't in office any more. Who needs to 'get over it?'
  • The recent town hall meetings that have been interrupted by people who are fed up with being lied to are labeled by the left as being 'planned disruptions' and that the people are planted by the evil insurance captains of industry (whenever a liberal needs a villain, they just use class warfare and conjure up a CEO somewhere. In their mind he probably wears a top hat and has a waxed handlebar mustache and walks around saying "you MUST pay the rent!" But I digress). They can't fathom that normal everyday people would take time from their day – at their own expense – to go voice their opinion. The reason they can't fathom people doing this without being paid is that they pay people to do things like follow the Americans For Prosperity bus from stop to stop, or bribe young people with college grants if they will be community organizers.
  • The people disrupting these rallies are filled with hatred and violence…yet no one has been hurt and no windows have been broken. But there are plenty of examples of violent liberal protests.2
  • Obama in a speech asked that Republicans not engage in 'revisionist history' – then went out on the Apology'09 tour, telling various nations that:
    • Russia 'helped us' get to space. If by helped he meant 'competed against' I guess he's right. Is he next going to tell the Germans that they helped us win World War II?
    • The cold war ended because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe decided it would end peacefully, completely omitting the Reagan 'peace through strength' doctrine or his speech at Brandenburg Gate.
    • America has an interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Unless you mean in Iran. Or North Korea. Or Burma.

When you see the mass of things the liberals actually do that they imagine that the Republicans are guilty of, you begin to think that they actually are clinical in their projection. Saul Alinsky even taught this pathology. Rule number 5 of his "Rules For Radicals" states that "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." Hmm….maybe they're not as crazy as I think….

Maybe they're more cagey than crazy. It's important that we recognize this tactic for what it is, and not be intimidated by it. Take ridicule away from Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher or Janeane Garofalo and what do you have left? They have nothing else in their tool kit. They're just sad, angry people still punching at President Bush and looking for the next conservative boogeyman to lash out at. Just remember, it's all projection. They ridicule conservatives because they're intimidated by them. Use that to your advantage. Stand firm on a fact-based argument and all the projection in the world cannot save them in the end.

1 I turned this 'fishy' behavior in to the whitehouse.gov snitchline.

2 http://www.republicanoperative.com/forums/left-vs-right/13087-documented-cases-liberal-violence-intimidation-vandalism.html

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Healthcare Rally Had Great Turnout!

The Americans For Prosperity 'Hands Off My Healthcare' rally was great! I'll post pictures and video (if I can figure out the editing piece) later on.