Obama's Immigration Speech: Empty Platitudes

President Obama *could* be cutting through the red tape that is halting oil spill cleanup and plugging efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. But what is he making a speech for now? Amnesty for illegal aliens! Oh, I mean, "An Earned Path To Citizenship."

Like illegal aliens, who saw how they were allowed to stay anyway, will bother to comply with an "earned path to citizenship"? Especially when ACORN and other liberal groups will register them to vote anyway, and when bilingualism allows them not to learn English anyway, and when President Obama will allow the "unscrupulous employers" he talks about to get away with hiring them anyway?

And if they don't comply and don't earn their path, what then? Is any advocate of 'legalization' suggesting jail or deportation? Ineligibility for benefits and educational opportunities? A fine for not paying the fine? A sternly worded letter? What incentive is there for current criminals to take this magical yellow brick road of legalization? We've already been told that any sort of incarceration and then deportation is inhumane. And we've been told that enforcement of existing laws is impossible. But if this new, new monstrosity is passed, magically this will be enforceable?

Drew M. at AOSHQ nails it:

Obama just said something to the effect of 'illegal immigration makes a mockery of those going through the legal process'. Um, so the answer is to jump the illegals ahead of those playing by the rules? I guess my pants aren't sufficiently creased to understand that thinking.

Remember when Obama was considered a great orator? Why was that again?

My God, this is a speech filled with warmed over ideas, straw-men and catchphrases. At least it's being delivered in a low energy, stumbling manner.

I can only hope that this is Obama's "Malaise" speech, revealing the inept policies and empty rhetoric of this Administration. It certainly abounds with enough Obamunist Straw Men.

He says we're missing out on more Einsteins with our current laws. Yeah, that's what we're getting on the southern border. Millions of Alberto Einsteins. Of course, the liberal dupes will call the previous statement "hate speech". Like I am supposed to pretend that at this very minute, a truckload of people, each carrying a knife and a couple pounds of cocaine, are *not* making their way somewhere across the Mexican border.

I suppose he could be talking about the H-1B indentured servants for the tech industries. These are skilled and far better than illiterates (often in Spanish, let alone English) from south of the border.

However, what is happening in technology industries is the upper-class and white-collar version of what is happening in construction and agribusiness. In the tech field, the discouraged mostly white middle class workers have their potential wages bid down by H-1B's and so they leave technology and go work in accounting, finance, business, or now, given the liberal expansion, governmental bureaucracy. New immigrants from Asia, not culturally fluent in Americanisms or well spoken in English, can't follow them there.

In construction, manufacturing and agribusiness, the discouraged mostly black lower class workers have their potential wages bid down by illegals and so they leave that work and head off to welfare and drug dealing.

"Crime along the border is down", the Obamunist says. "It's more secure today than 20 years ago." Wow, news to those of us who live in Cali, let alone Arizona. All that was missing after that statement was a sitcom audience laugh track.

"Illegal immigration makes a mockery of those going through the legal process." Yes it does--and the answer is to make a further mockery of the legal process???

And then he brings up Straw Woman Emma Lazarus. Let us paraphrase it for the 21st century liberals:

Give me your criminals, your pushers, your huddled slavers yearning to run brothels, the wretched refuse of your failed state. I'll give them welfare checks!

In the absence of sensible border controls, that's exactly what we will be getting.

And, speaking of Emma Lazarus, let's remember what Ellis Island -- the Temple of the Immigrant -- really was. It was a processing center, holding facility, temporary jail, and quarantine. If you didn't qualify, you got sent home. Your name was processed through a bureaucrat who only spoke English. If you had any number of diseases, you were locked up until they could either send you home, you died, or you were no longer communicable. Ditto for Angel Island here on the West Coast.

And the biggest straw man of all -- "doing the jobs we won't"! The Obamunist actually has a self-fulfilling point here. If you go to Oak Park or Del Paso Heights around Sacramento here, or any other California ghetto for that matter, and offer the able-bodied high-school dropouts minimum wage plus room, board, and transportation to and from the farms and fruit orchards of "Apple Hill", let alone the orange groves in the San Joaquin Valley for the season, away from the drive by shootings and the violence, they're going to sneer at you. They already get room, board, and some spending money (as well as any drug money they can hustle) for sitting around with their friends and family. They're making a rational economic decision. And you can thank the very same Barack Obama and his fellow travelers for that.

The problem I have with those who spout off about "jobs spoiled Americans won't do" is that when they say that, they are sneering at those of us who *have* worked to get skills and/or education to do more than pick fruit. If they really *believed* that rhetoric, they would be changing welfare benefits and shaming the ghetto underclass so that their rational economic decision is not to sit around the ghetto getting high all day.

(And of course, it's called "racist" to ask able bodied African American Oak Park dwellers to move a short drive out of town to pick fruit, but it's somehow not racist to expect illegally-entrant Mexicans to move a thousand miles or more to pick said fruit).

With the liberals here, the game is "heads they win, tails we lose". They carp about the need for "a living wage", and then they import a massive underclass to drive the wages down. And to vote for more liberal Democrats.

Pete Stark: Pro-Illegal Alien Traitor

Is there any way to un-elect this sack of human waste? Sadly, he gets re-elected time and time again by overwhelming margins. He has mouthed off many times before, and gotten away with it.

Perhaps this is because there is no little or no local press coverage of him at all. The lamestream media don’t report on his creepy statements, and they only barely touched – and quickly dropped - his residency issue, so he just blends in and now has major seniority in Congress. (He was actually next in line to be Chair of the Appropriations Committee when John Murtha kicked off, but his fellow Democrats wouldn’t allow Pelosi to promote him, believe it or not, because of his arrogant actions towards them!)

But now YouTube has him mocking a concerned border patriot:

“Who you gonna kill today?”

This mocking goes on for a few minutes, you think he's done and he continues mocking saying "we'll go down there and you design the wall....We'll start a ladder company"...This is unbelievable.

I know the Bay Area is weenie liberal, but his district (CA-13) is NOT San Francisco, NOT Berkeley, and it’s NOT the Oakland ghettoes. It's the Bay Area, so weenie liberals are the norm. However, Fremont, Hayward, San Leandro and Alameda are *suburban*. They aren’t exactly conservative hotbeds, but they *are not* Berkeley or San Francisco.

If he was like any other Bay Area Democrat, ho hum, nothing new. However, George Miller (CA-07) isn't like this guy, John Garamendi (CA-10) isn't like this guy, Jerry McNerney (CA-11) isn't like this guy, Jackie Speier (CA-12) isn't like this guy, Anna Eshoo (CA-14) isn’t like this guy, Mike Honda (CA-15) isn’t like this guy, Zoe Lofgren (CA-16) isn’t like this guy.

Even Barbara Lee (CA-09) doesn’t mouth off like the creep Stark does, and she’s in a fine district to do so. It *would* make sense if Stark was in Berkeley or Oaktown.

Nancy Pelosi (CA-08) IS like this guy, but hey, that's San Fransicko for you.

Dianne Feinstein said she'd only tax the super-rich....

Guess what? That threshold is dropping daily...

“You could go lower, too — why not $200,000?” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “With the debt and deficit we have, you can’t make promises to people. This is a very serious situation.”

Millions of dual career couples easily pass that new, and lower, dollar per year mark.
And that's not going to be a high enough threshold either. They won't be able to get a budget for FY 2011 done:

The Democrats in Congress believe what Rep. Gerry Connolly told the LA Times, which is that no member of Congress ever lost an election because of a failure to pass a budget. They don’t want to be on the hook for the hard decisions that must come in FY2011, which is either to drastically reduce spending from the binge levels of the last three Democratic Congresses, or to raise taxes to cover it. Spending cuts won’t change voter perception of this Congress at this late date — and tax hikes will make it worse.

And remember, Dianne Feinstein is the more reasonable, more honest and more sane of the two Wicked Witches that make up California's "representation" in the US Senate.

2012 can't come soon enough....

The Estate Tax and the Liberal Mentality

The New York Times waxes indignant about how the estate tax is kaputt for 2010. Never mind that it returns with a vengeance in 2011.

“The ultrawealthy in this country will still be able to pass on enormous wealth to the next generation,” said Chuck Collins, who studies income inequality and has worked with billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates to promote an estate tax. Mr. Collins argues that the tax is a “recycling program for economic opportunity.”

Oh really? A brief history of the National Estate Tax.

Let's understand how the estate tax works. It is a tax on *assets*, not on *income*. There are literally millions of people and businesses who are asset rich, assets painfully acquired over many years nay decades, but still of modest income. Farmers, ranchers, owners of many rental properties, owners of a restaurant or a restraurant franchise, to name a few examples.

Oh, but the Leftists "don't want rich heirs sitting on their asses, and then able to pass that on to their idiot children", in the words of one such Leftist whose name escapes me.

For starters, you simply *cannot* sit on your tush when you inherit a farm or a restuarant (which in more expensive California, a single farm, family restaurant, or apartment building easily passes the proposed 2011 asset dollar limits). Or several rental homes or an apartment complex. You have to manage it. Which is a full time job.

Oh, but the guy or gal might be wealthy enough to hire someone else to run it? That's called giving someone a *management* job! Not a bad thing.

Many of these inherited businesses are family businesses which employ dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, but which throw off modest cash flow. All of a sudden the patriarch dies and the business is inherited by his children, who are now hit with a big tax bill just because daddy died. Sometimes, they can't pay that bill without selling assets, laying people off or selling the business outright. Does that seem fair?

Even if you do think it's fair, when they sell, a productive taxpaying asset is at least temporarily and often permanently taken out of action, and the acquirer usually takes the opportunity to eliminate duplicate positions and there are layoffs. Not good for the economy.

Never mind that income from the inherited asset STILL must be taxed and still is. That is, if you don't break up the productive asset. Instead, out of some communistic notion of "fairness" a productive asset is broken up, reducing its income stream. The only people getting rich from that are the real estate agents and the lawyers. The former might get rich anyway should the heirs sell it on their own.

And the same people who advocate this kind of punitive taxation THEN turn around and complain about "big corporations who gobble up family farms and family businesses"--the very assets families are forced to sell in estate tax!

Oh but some heirs are idle, like the Kennedy brats? So what? Notice how the fortune Old Joe Kennedy built is about run out. If an inheritor is productive with his or her money, it serves him or her; if not, it destroys him or her. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted them. Did it? Or did they corrupt their money?

I don't envy worthless heirs; their wealth is not mine and frankly, I am not sure I would have done any better with it. I don't think that it should have been "redistributed" to load the world with fifty little parasites instead of one big one, or worse still, larding up a parasite government that pays out thousands of ghetto people to be idle.
Meanwhile, their Demunist uberlords use legal talent to set up tax-exempt "foundations" with their estates, which turn around and hire *their* idiot children. But the liberal rank and file doesn't seem to mind that.

California Primary 2010

This guide presumes a Republican Primary voter, although believe it or not, I do know people who vote in the Democrat primaries for "damage control" reasons.

On that note, there is actually a Primary Democrat I wish to endorse for

US SENATE: Democrat: Robert M. "Mickey" Kaus
US SENATE: Republican: Chuck DeVore

Unfortunately, Barbara "AND YOUR LITTLE DOG, TOO!" Boxer has this primary wrapped up, and may well be sent back to befoul us for another six years, but she must be defeated. Not only for the crypto-communist voting record, but also for sheer arrogance mixed with ignorance, as this clip from YouTube demonstrates.

Soldiers are trained to answer, "Yes, Ma'am / No, Ma'am" like they say "Yes, Sir / No, Sir". What a horrid little harpy.

And her condescending discussion with the Black Chamber of Commerce official is also revealing.

Anyway, Mickey Kaus doesn't have a chance, but he's a former Clinton Administration official now a reasonably thoughtful web logger "Blogger" journalist, and he comes from a long lost time when Democrats actually stood for working Joes and Janes, rather than (1) decadent and un-American academic, entertainment and media elites, and (2) ghetto parasites who threaten to riot if they don't get their welfare checks.

On the GOP side, the best of the three prominent choices is Chuck DeVore, followed by Carly Fiorina, followed by Tom Campbell, in that order.

Why DeVore? Because Chuck DeVore has worked his way up from the California State Assembly, and hasn't sold out his constituents in the process, unlike a certain Gubernator I can think of.....

Carly Fiorina, for all her money, is a newbie to the Great Game of California GOP politics, and her tenure at Hewlett-Packard was not a very successful one. I think the current and former employees of Hewlett Packard will unanimously vote against her.

Tom Campbell is a sell-out, go-along-with-the-Demunists-to-get-along, RINO (Republican In Name Only), and a three time loser in past Senate races.

But ANY of them would be better than the evil witch who has befouled California for the last 18 years.

GOVERNOR: Steve Poizner

Actually, originally I was going to go with Meg Whitman, as she appeared to have a more polished campaign and primary rival Steve Poziner was floundering at first. Meg originally had a very positive campaign, with her "Talk To Meg" advertisements. But then two things happened. First, Meg Whitman started smearing her primary rival Steve Poizner, even though she had a comfortable lead and plenty of war chest money. I am sad to see Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner both beating each other up and getting nasty. But since Meg started the nasty smears, I have to primary vote for Poizner. Second, Steve had the courage to support Arizona’s decision to enforce and in fact mimic federal immigration laws when Meg Whitman cut and ran in the face of the usual racial demagoguery.

Either one, however, would be better than former Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown rising out of his political crypt, with his "era-of-limits" (for individuals, but not for nanny-state government), "small-is-beautiful" (but not for the State), "don't build things and people won't come", new-age nonsense. A political vampire indeed. But to defeat him, either Whitman or Poizner will need to stock up on the Holy Water, silver bullets, garlic and wooden stakes.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Sam Aanestad

There are two prominent candidates here: Sam Aanestad and recently appointed by Ah-nold, Incumbent, Abel Maldonado. Abel Maldonado betrayed the solid GOP stand against even more tax hikes for what is already the most taxed state in the land. Abel Maldonado broke his signed taxpayer pledge and bears responsibility not only for the biggest tax increase in California’s history, but also for lack of serious spending restraints in the budgets that ran California off the fiscal cliff. Abel Maldonado also supports the half-baked and demented Proposition 14 (see below). Sam Aanestad is the better choice. He is well liked among his constituents, and like Chuck DeVore above, served them well without selling them out.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: John Eastman

John Eastman is a legal scholar at the Claremont Institute – a public policy think tank devoted to restoring American founding principles to the public policy debate. John is a nationally renowned Constitutional advocate and scholar whose leadership is desperately needed in the Attorney General’s office. Imagine having an Attorney General who not only respects the Constitution but who understands and reveres it, and doesn't give us the "living breathing document" crap which means a rule of whims, not a rule of originally intended Constitutional Law.

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: Brian Fitzgerald

Brian's primary rival, Mike Villines, was another of the sell-out Republican votes on the massive tax increase that crushed what was left of our state’s economy last year, after signing a no-new-taxes pledge.

STATE BALLOT PROPOSITIONS:

Prop. 13 YES - No property tax increase for earthquake-retrofitting old buildings

What Prop. 13 would do: Current law allows owners of masonry buildings only 15 years of exclusion of higher property taxes that are triggered when they do earthquake retrofitting. This policy was viewed as a disincentive by California legislators who unanimously placed Prop. 13 on the ballot. This proposition forever exempts commercial property owners from higher property tax assessment on the basis of retrofitting masonry buildings to survive earthquakes.

Why YES on Prop. 13: Current law financially punishes property owners who do the right thing and reinforce old masonry buildings. Passing Prop. 13 will protect property owners’ wallets and restores basic fairness by exempting these property owners from higher taxes. The result will be more buildings that survive the next big earthquake.

Prop. 14 NO - “Jungle primary” system causing more corruption in California

This half-baked idea was soundly defeated as Proposition 62 back in 2004, but unfortunately this half-baked idea got money for slick and deceptive radio ads, and is rising up again.

What Prop. 14 would do: Prop. 14 eliminates the party primary system and replaces it with a single “jungle primary” ballot for primary elections for most state and congressional offices. The top two vote-getters on the primary ballot would advance to the general election, regardless of party. There would still be partisan primary elections for presidential candidates and political party offices. Prop. 14 was placed on the ballot in exchange for the Feb. 2009 vote of former state Senator Abel Maldonado in favor of increasing the state sales, income, and car tax.

Why NO on Prop. 14: This measure denies choice to voters by allowing general election ballots with no Democrat or Republican candidates. It also allows mischief, for example, by permitting sabotage voters of one party to go urinate in the other party's primary voting pool. More deception will occur when existing Democrat or Republican office holders utilize Prop. 14’s “No Party Preference” designation in both the primary and general elections.

Proponents claim that Prop. 14’s “jungle primary” system will get rid of entrenched incumbents. However, currently, only two states --Washington and Louisiana--use “top-two” elections. In 2008, Washington State had 139 races, but only one incumbent lost a primary. In 1992 Louisiana, the corrupt and entrenched incumbent Governor Evan Edwards used some of his money and supporters to throw support to, and in effect "choose", his primary opponent, the loathsome David Duke. Edwards took the political entitlement and patronage machine that he had built over the last decade and a half, and had a number of his supporters vote for and donate to David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan in Louisiana. The open primary system allows sabotage voters from one party to go urinate in the other party's voting pool, and Edward's political machine did just that. The decent Republican and likely winner in a normal "closed" primary system, Buddy Roemer, was outfoxed in the primary election, and Edwards "chose" David Duke his general election opponent. The voters were faced with the choice of a crook or a neo-Nazi in the general election, and they reluctantly had to choose the crook. Manipulated by Edwards, the Louisiana primary system, which elevates the top two vote getters to the general election, regardless of party, had selected these two slimy creeps to be the choices the voters faced in November.

Now, here in California, some "reformers" want to import this system to California, through Proposition 14, as if we didn't have enough trouble already. These folks claim that our current system is insufficient-that, when you vote in your party primary to choose the person in your political party that you want to represent you in the general election, you don't know what you are doing. So-they want to use the Louisiana-style primary to choose the top two vote getters in the primary elections, regardless of party registration, to go to the general election.

Prop. 15 NO - Government funding of candidates for public office

What Prop. 15 would do: Establishes a new candidate fundraising system where candidates for California Secretary of State can qualify to receive “base funding” and “matching funds” from the state government in exchange for limiting their private fundraising, participating in debates, and submitting campaign expenditure records to the state. This new program would purportedly be funded by increasing lobbyists’ annual registration fees by 2,800%. In effect, this is "Welfare for politicians".

Why NO on Prop. 15: Government funding of political campaigns is not the purpose of government, and opens the door to abuse. Prop. 15 wouldn’t prevent these tax-funded Secretary of State candidates from raising other funds from lobbyists and special interest groups. The measure specifically allows these tax-funded candidates to raise money for “separate accounts” to pay for officeholder expenses, legal defense fees and inaugural parties. And it probably allows these tax-funded candidates to benefit from independent expenditures, another potential loophole. What’s more, if the weren’t enough revenue raised from increased lobbyist fees, this proposition allows the state general fund to be raided to make up the difference and send that money to candidates. Finally, Prop. 15 allows the California Legislature to expand government funding of campaigns to every state campaign, including those of incumbent politicians. Bottom line, Prop. 15 is the proverbial “camel’s nose under the tent” that sets the stage for incumbent politicians and their big-government “farm team” of candidates to dip their hand deep in the public trough and make off with state treasury funds.

California voters have consistently rejected taxpayer-funded campaign financing. In 2006, 74% of voters opposed Prop. 89. In 2000, two-thirds of voters rejected public campaign financing when they defeated Prop. 25. They should say “no” again. (Gee, how many bad ideas keep rising up like zombies who don't get that one shot to the head? California--State Of The Living Dead.)

Prop. 16 YES - Require 2/3rds voter approval for local government-run electricity

What Prop. 16 would do: This measure makes it harder for local governments to start up electricity entities which local residents are responsible to pay for, in addition to their normal utility bills.

What triggered this initiative is when the public power monopolies in Sacramento, San Francisco and Marin tried to take over some PG & E turf. My own public power utility, the Sacramento Metropolitan Utilities District (SMUD), tried to take over utility service from PG&E in the City Of West Sacramento. Where I live in Sac, this was bitterly opposed by we the existing SMUD ratepayers; we didn't want our rates raised to finance this empire building exercise. Nor were the people of West Sacramento (SMUD's targeted conquest area) noticably happy with the proposed change. I'm not sure what happened in Marin County or San Francisco.

The mammoth utility therefore went to the ballot with Prop. 16 to propose that a two-thirds voter approval is needed before local governments get into the electricity business. Taxpayer's right to vote" (on this one little issue only) is an overblown and deceptive slogan, but it is shorter than "Taxpayer's right to shoot down bureaucrats who want to expand their turf and ream their existing ratepayers to do it."

Why YES on Prop. 16: I was initially very skeptical of Prop. 16 due to the self-serving interest of Pacific Gas & Electric. However, Prop. 16 DOES NOT affect private energy companies entering the market should a competitive market for power ever emerge, as it did with telephone service. Moreover, the public power areas are also monopolies in their own little fiefdoms, so the claim that PG&E is somehow squelching public power "competition" is just bunk. As for public-power always being cheaper, nearby Roseville dwellers in the clutches of Roseville Electric might beg to differ, and forcing PG&E and other private utilities to divest their generating capacity back in the late 1990's has a lot to do with that claim.

I'm not thrilled with PG&E. I remember how PG&E financed attempts to destroy marriage and overturn Proposition 8, presumably to curry favor for its power projects with leftist Gay politicians.

However, watching bureaucrats think they can expropriate a private utility, even a regulated quasi-public one like PG&E, is straight out of Hugo Chavez's bandito-land.

Prop. 17 YES - Allows auto insurance companies to offer “continuous coverage” discounts to new policy holders

What Prop. 17 would do: This measure deletes a small part of the state law that currently prohibits automobile insurance companies from providing “continuous coverage” to new customers. This prohibition was a strange part of Prop. 103, which was narrowly passed in 1988 to establish a number of insurance regulations). Even Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature agreed with removing the ban several years ago, but the courts struck that down, ruling only the ballot voters can amend a ballot initiative like Prop. 103.

Why YES on Prop. 17: If you have been a long-time customer of an automobile insurance company and want to keep your "good driver" and “continuous coverage” discounts, passing Prop. 17 will mean you won't lose those when you change insurance companies. The opposition to this claims that people who let their insurance lapse and stop driving for an extended period of time will get rate hikes, but really, how many people like that are there in California?

Why is Mercury Insurance, one of the smaller California insurance companies, funding Prop. 17? Probably because they think they can win new customers, and that’s just fine. Let’s open up more competition among private insurers, which benefits consumers.

Draw Mohammed Day--What is wrong with these pictures?

Because we must not live in fear. Thanks to S.Weasel!

Here are some very respectful drawings of Muhammed, drawn by---wait for it---Muslims themselves in ancient times.


It turns out that the tradition of not picturing Mohammed is a relatively recent one - one that really only appeared in the 1600's. So for almost a thousand years after Mohammed's death, it was acceptable and even common in some Muslim regions to draw him in full form. During the Caliphate period there were even coins minted with his face on them.

So behavior that radical Islamist savages insist on today in western countries are actually traditions that got added to Islam long after it was founded.

But never mind those pictures--how about these? Cairo University, Class of 1959:

Cairo University, Class of 1978:

So far, so good, eh? Keep going. Cairo University, Class of 1995:

Cairo University, Class of 2004:

What is wrong with these pictures? Look at the women. They're going backward, not forward. By 2004, they are all pressured into wearing covering. See also here.

And if we reject assimilation and push the poison of "multiculturalism", what happens to immigrants from Egypt and other Muslim majority countries in the USA?

The wages of "multiculturalism" is cultural suicide. Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head:

Whenever I give a speech on Islam, some or other complacenik always says, "Oh, but they haven't had time to Westernize. Just you wait and see. Give it another 20 years, and the siren song of Westernization will work its magic." This argument isn't merely speculative, it's already been proved wrong by what's happened over the last 20 years. Compare the Cairo University class of 1959 with those of the 21st century, and then see if you can recite your inevitablist theories of social evolution with a straight face. The idea that social progress is like the wheel or the internal combustion engine -- once invented, it can never be uninvented -- is one of the laziest assumptions of the Western Left.

Why Solar And Wind Power Are Jokes

At least for serious and susbstantial energy. And don't get me started on ethanol either.


As Scotty said in Star Trek: "You cannot change the laws of physics!"

Generation X Enters Middle Age

A surprisingly interesting article by A.O. Scott in the New York Times. Unlike previous generations who had mid-life crises, for those of us in Generation X, it is better called a Mid-Life Disappointment: the realization that we aren't kids anymore, and we really missed many opportunities and made some bad choices along the way. And some recent books and films reflect this:

When markedly similar characters and stories start popping up everywhere, it’s more than a trend. It’s what those of us raised on vintage postmodernism call a historical phenomenon. So an intertextual analysis of “Greenberg,” “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “The Ask” (for starters) yields a startling composite portrait of the Gen X male in midlife crisis. Earlier versions of the crisis were, by and large, reactions against social norms. Members of the Greatest Generation and the one that came right after — the “Mad Men” guys, their wives and secretaries — settled down young into a world where the parameters of career and domesticity seemed fixed, and then proceeded, by the force of their own restlessness, to blow it all up.

This pattern repeated itself in the next decades, yielding variations on a story everyone seems to know. At a certain point, Dad buys a sports car, or starts a rock band, or has an affair or walks out on Mom or quits the law firm to make goat cheese. When this kind of thing happens to Mom, it’s not a crisis but an awakening. In any case, the driving impulse is to shake off the straitjacket of adulthood and find some way to feel young again.

But what if you never gave up adolescence in the first place? What if you donned the binding garment of maturity only tentatively, and accessorized it with mockery, as if it were a hand-me-down from Grandpa or an ugly shirt plucked from a used-clothing rack? And what if, from the start, your youthful rebelliousness had been a secondhand entitlement, without a clear adversary? These are the elements of Roger Greenberg’s predicament, which is shared by Milo Burke and the three 40-somethings who journey back to 1986 in “Hot Tub Time Machine.” They all seem stuck in an earlier phase of life, which wasn’t so great to begin with: Milo’s dorm room bull sessions and sexual escapades; Roger’s rock ’n’ roll dreams; that crazy time at the ski lodge with snow, cocaine, sex and spandex as far as the eye could see.

A far better question is, "But what if the parameters of career and domesticity were tenuous and undefined to begin with?" The midlife disappointment is, more often than not, because of an inability to reach the parameters of career and domesticity that the older generation was rebelling against, but, to many of us in Generation X, seemed just fine, we never having it to begin with. This is particularly true for those who came from broken homes.

What follows that less-than-storied youth is regret, an intimation of lost possibilities that haunts everyone. There is, first of all, the squandered ambition, the professional road not taken. Milo, who was going to be the greatest painter of his time, slowly gave that up and ran aground in the world of nonprofit fund-raising. Roger balked at a record deal and lost his chance at success, just like Nick, the pet groomer in “Hot Tub Time Machine.” And then there are the former and potential girlfriends — the ones who got away but will never quite go away, tantalizing each sad-sack midlifer with visions of a bliss that might have been if he hadn’t screwed it up.

Other exemplary figures pop up repeatedly in these stories, most notably the successful friend (or, in Roger Greenberg’s case, brother) who rubs your face in your own failure and the members of a younger generation on hand to do the same thing by different means.

Students Kicked Off Campus for Wearing American Flag Tees

And to think this happened yesterday in MORGAN HILL!

Students Kicked Off Campus for Wearing American Flag Tees

On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population.

And what is *that* supposed to mean?

Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal's office.

"They said we could wear it on any other day," Daniel Galli said, "but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today."

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts "incendiary" that would lead to fights on campus.

And what have things come to when the American flag, which all students should be able to share in common and rally around, leads to fights? These are the wages of "multiculturalism". But this is what you get when you allow leftists to take over the schools who only think they have "power" when they indoctrinate our children.

"They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended," Dominic Maciel, Galli's friend, said.

The boys really had no choice, and went home to avoid suspension. They say they're angry they were not allowed to express their American pride. Their parents are just as upset, calling what happened to their children, "total nonsense."

"I think it's absolutely ridiculous," Julie Fagerstrom, Maciel's mom, said. "All they were doing was displaying their patriotic nature. They're expressing their individuality."

But to many Mexican-American students at Live Oak, this was a big deal. They say they were offended by the five boys and others for wearing American colors on a Mexican holiday.

But it *isn't* a Mexican holiday. It is hardly noticed south of the border. It was originally for Mexican Americans much as Saint Patrick's Day is for Irish Americans, and Columbus Day for Italian Americans (although the Left has trashed that day too, come to think of it).

"I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day," Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, said. "We don't deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn't do that on Fourth of July."

So this young lady does not think she's an American too? That is truly sad--multiculturalism at work. And with an attitude like that, times many other kids, what does this mean for the future?

The five boys and their families met with a Morgan Hill Unified School District official Wednesday night. The district released a statement saying it does not agree with how Live Oak High School administrators handled this incident.

The boys will not be suspended and they were told they can go back to school Thursday. They may even wear their red, white, and blue colors again, but this time, the day after Cinco de Mayo, there will be no controversy.

Wrong. The next day, the story gets worse:

A day after five Morgan Hill students were sent home for wearing American flag t-shirts, the controversy erupted ten fold.

Students at Live Oak High School made a mass and impromptu walk out of class Thursday.... Many support the school's decision and say they were offended by their classmates wardrobe choice.

Many of the students who walked out Thursday held Mexican flags as they left campus. The students walked to City Hall for a loud but calm noontime rally. There were about 200 students taking part in the protest.

"Multicultural Education" at work! The 5th column at home.

Related: Roger Ebert needs to hurry up and die of cancer:

Weird I haven't read anything from Mr. Ebert bashing our horrible, primitive healthcare. I wonder why that is....anyway, I got news for you, Roger. California kids ALREADY have to share tables with other kids wearing hammer and sickle shirts. And big red star shirts. And (of course) Che Guevara shirts. In many upper-middle class California neighborhoods, you can routinely see a few teenagers wearing those three designs. Coming soon, I'm sure: Mao, Fidel, and Ho Chi Minh.

Patriots can't say a word about THOSE shirts, of course. That would be a violation of freedom of expression.

Contessa Brewer can't admit the truth

(audio)

I mean the thing is that- and I get frustrated and there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry. And so there was part of me was really hoping this would not be the case that here would be somebody who is not the defined. I mean he’s accused, he’s arrested you know I don’t want to convict him before it’s time to do so. He’s the guy authorities say is involved. But that being said, I mean, we know even in recent history you have the Hutaree militia from Michigan who have plans to, let’s face it, create terror. That’s what they were planning to do and they were doing so from far different backgrounds than what this guy is coming from. So, the threat is not just coming from people who decide that America is the place to be and you know come here and want to become citizens. And obviously this guy did.

The liberal media really is against Middle America. In their warped minds, they think *we* are secret terrorists, and not the Islamunists that their immigration policies import.

The Hutaree militia were oddballs, but Contessa Brewer doesn't acknowledge that the government's prosecution case against them fell apart and was dismissed. As wacky as some of them might have been, they had no plans to bomb a major city square.

Nor are the Hutaree militia Middle America, at least not until Contessa Brewer's liberal policies put Middle America on the same side of the Hutaree militia.

Toys in "Happy Meals"

When did 3 out of 5 of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors become such WEENIES?
I expect this in SF and/or Berkeley, but Santa Clara County always was a safe enough distance away. Maybe not anymore.
Whenever anyone on the Left cries something about "keep your laws off my body" - just remember that it is the Left that is continuously telling us how to live our lives, what we can eat, what we can drive, etc. And now, what kind of promotional toys a fast food chain can pass out. This micromanagement of our lives is a loss of liberty - many, many small losses add up to a significant loss of our freedoms.

Oh but this is for the good of kids, who aren't adults, they say? Fine. If we're going to regulate what kids can see about sugary cereals and plastic toys in fast food because it might be bad for them, how about we regulate what they see in schools about sex and their bodies?
--No more teaching them that sodomy or other gay sex is perfectly normal, and safe as can be as long as you use a condom.
--No more enabling them to have abortions without their parents' consent.

But will the Left do that? I thought so, or not.

What the McDonald's Corporation should tell these liberal local governments.

Hysteria about the Arizona Immigration Law

Let's get real. The law requires police to check with federal authorities on a person's immigration status, but if, and only if, officers have stopped that person for some *other* legitimate reason and come to suspect that he or she might be in the U.S. illegally. The heart of the law is this provision:

"For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency...where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person..."

Critics have focused on the term "reasonable suspicion", but what fewer people have noticed is the phrase "lawful contact," which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because s/he's already violated some other law. So this law would come into play in a traffic stop, or a burglary, or a robbery, or some other arrest.

As far as "reasonable suspicion" is concerned, there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea, but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking.

For example: human smuggling. An officer stops a group of people in a car that is speeding. The car is overloaded. Nobody had identification. The driver acts evasively. They are on a known smuggling corridor. That is a not uncommon occurrence in Arizona, and any officer would reasonably suspect that the people in the car were illegal.

But what if the driver of the car had shown the officer his driver's license? The law clearly says that if someone produces a valid Arizona driver's license, or other state-issued identification, they are presumed to be here legally and the lawman can go no further. An overcrowded car out on a joyride does not equal illegal alien trafficking in that case.

Is having to produce a driver's license too burdensome? These days, natural-born U.S. citizens, and everybody else, too, are required to show a driver's license to get on an airplane, to check into a hotel, even to purchase some over-the-counter allergy medicines out of fear they may be making meth. If it's a burden, it's a burden on everyone.

Meanwhile, a funny parody, because only the truth is really funny.

And our ever objective lamestream media coverage....

The Obamunist Economic Goal

Eurostagnation. Dick Morris explains:

When Obama took office, he had one paramount goal in mind — to increase the size of the federal government....

Socialism is not an epithet or even an economic philosophy. Whether a nation is socialist or not is determined by a single, simple statistic — what percent of the economy (GDP) goes to the public sector? When Obama took office, the U.S. public sector (federal, state, and local) spent about 30% of GDP. Now it is 36%. If Obamacare lives to be fully implemented, it will pass 40%.

The United Kingdom has a public sector that accounts for about 40% of its economy. Germany is at about 48%. France is at 50% and Sweden at 54%. If Obama is allowed to let the public sector expand to 40% of our GDP, we will become a European socialist democracy, to our everlasting detriment. We will thereby inherit the sclerosis that afflicts Europe — permanently high unemployment and low economic growth. (Again fully documented in our book 2010).

But after his swearing-in, President Obama couldn't say that he was going to raise taxes to move us toward socialism. So, instead, he raised spending to do it and borrowed the money to pay for it. Now, with interest rates set to rise (because the Fed is not printing money as fast as it was), our debt service burden will be so onerous that it will become obvious to everyone that the deficit Obama has created is unsupportable.

Now, we pay an average of 3.5% interest on our $12 trillion national debt. That works out to an annual debt service bill of about $400 billion. While large, it's not impossible. Defense spending, for comparison, is $550 billion, Social Security is $400 billion, Medicare is $300 billion, Medicaid about $200 billion. 

But, when interest rates rise to 7-8 percent — as they must now that the Treasury cannot just borrow newly printed money but must get real loans from real lenders to finance its deficit — the burden will grow to close to $1 trillion, about a quarter of our budget. Put differently, the entire take of personal income taxes in the United States comes to about $900 billion. All of it will go to debt service.

The United States will become just like the subprime mortgage holders who borrowed at low teaser rates only to see their interest grow until they had to sign over their entire paychecks to the mortgage company.

Obama has been expecting this outcome all along. It is how he will achieve socialism in the United States. He will use the pressure his deficit creates to force higher taxes that will permanently expand the public sector.

Reagan increased the deficit to force liberals to stop spending. Obama has increased it to force conservatives to vote for higher taxes.

Once a spending increase is matched by a tax increase, it lasts forever. That is how Obama plans to move the government's share of the GDP permanently over 40% — into socialist territory.

But the Republicans can and must stop him. By refusing to vote for a tax increase and cutting back Obama's crazy spending, slicing his stimulus package and ratcheting back federal Medicaid payments (by zero funding the increases built into Obamacare), Republicans can cut the deficit without higher taxes.

Indeed, the party should commit to lowering taxes by cutting Capital Gains levies to stimulate investment, jobs, and revenues. The only tax that works economically is a tax cut!

Such a defiant stand, in the face of withering criticism from the media, economists, and the Federal Reserve, can only be made by hardy souls. Indeed, such a stance by a Republican Congress will lead to exactly the same sort of government shutdown — when Obama vetoes the budget — as discredited the GOP in 1995-1996 and led to Clinton's re-election. 

"Pre-Existing Conditions", The Tea Parties, and responsbility

So the leftists mock us for warning what Obamacare will bring:

But the rot and ruin is already on the way. I had an interesting conversation with a health insurance agent the other day. The costs of all of our health insurances are going to increase substantially--on average, by $1200 per person for the coming year.
 
Why? Because insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for "pre-existing conditions".  Oh, how wonderful? Those *evil* insurance coverage can't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions?  Think again. Your car insurance doesn't cover accident damage you incurred *before* signing on with them, and for the same reason. If someone is facing a massive increase in his premium, but no one can deny him coverage for pre-existing conditions, why shouldn't he just wait until something bad happens and buy insurance then? Sure, it would likely be more expensive then, but that's assuming he kept paying for it after the crisis passed.  Without the pre-existing condition rules, why not sign up when you get sick, drop it as soon as you get well, and sign up again when you get sick again?  Oh, Obamacare has a fine for those who do not buy insurance you say? Penny ante. And that's not until 2014. When it comes, why not just pay the relatively small fine everytime you drop insurance and continue gaming the system?  Only one thing stands in the way of everybody doing this: personal integrity.  That's the same personal integrity that keeps me paying my mortgage when I could hop on the government bailout wagon. It's the same integrity that compels me not to spend money I don't have on things I don't need, instead of maxing out a credit card and weaseling out on the debt — by way of one of those companies whose advertising consists of telling people they can get a fifty percent discount on what they owe "predatory" credit card companies.  In theory, good government is supposed to discourage "moral hazard," that is, taking bad risks and otherwise behaving badly because someone else will pay for it. But the Obamunists and the rest of the liberals encourage it, from bailing out companies "too big to fail" to underwriting every American who considers himself entitled to walk away from an underwater mortgage, not because he can't afford it, but because he feels no compunction whatsoever to honor a contract he signed.  People like me? The message is crystal clear: integrity is for suckers — sucker.  And this is what fuels the Tea Party Movement. Those of us who play by the rules are tired of being made into suckers by the Obamunists and the Left. It seems in American politics today, there are three types of people in the world: (1) those who do the right thing, namely, the Tea Party members, (2) those who don't, namely, the Obamunist liberal Democrats, and (3) the "low information voters" who straddle the fence with their finger held aloft to see which way the wind is blowing.  Right now there's a massive Category 5 hurricane gust of wind blowing in the direction of the Demunist takers, whose despicable sense of entitlement ought to be shame-inducing.  But it's not. And every time government pats these people on the head and tells them it's "not their fault" for anything, the fence-sitters head down the path of least resistance, knowing that safety in numbers is the best defense for the indefensible. Or as any grade-schooler would put it: Everyone else is doing it, why not me?
People can rationalize anything. From the (black) street thug who sells crack because "the (white) man is keeping me down" to the shyster lawyer who pockets millions after running a business into the ground because "he's earned it" — to a government which justifies destroying incentive because "it's unfair that equality of opportunity doesn't yield equality of results" — we are constantly reminded that we, the good guys, are taking a beating across the American landscape.  And yet people are fighting back. The Tea Party movement is many things, but the premise behind it is simple: we will not yield to moral anarchy being promoted as "social justice". We will not mortgage the future of the country to underwrite the selfishness and irresponsibility of the present. We will not accept expediency as a viable substitute for the rule of law, the most glaring example of which is illegal immigration "reform."  We will not "do it," just because everyone else is.  "Progressive" Leftist Commiecrats think they can shout down such a movement and discredit it with smears. Good luck, comrades. Good luck telling Americans with integrity that they're bigots, racists, red-necks, etc. Good luck selling "flexible" morality to people with clear consciences and pure hearts.  Good luck persuading them that "clinging" to their faith, their families and the Second Amendment is a fool's errand.  Despite what "progressive" liberal Demunist Commiecrats think, not every American can be compromised — not with a handout, an entitlement program, or anything else which necessitates abandoning one's integrity for security. Those Americans will not be gulled by the false promises of government-sponsored "happiness" — or the inducement of progressive guilt which posits that life is a zero-sum game in which every winner requires an equal number of losers or victims. They will never feel ashamed for being decent, hard-working, law-abiding Americans, who believe in the Constitution, capitalism and American exceptionalism. That is why "progressive" (anti) America despises the Tea party movement. "Progressive" Demunist Commiecrats will never understand the true greatness of America. They will never understand how a nation which gave the rest of civilization a two thousand year "head start" vaulted past every other country to the top of the heap in less than three hundred years. For them, America is an ongoing blank-ist and blank-ophobic tragedy in which the only remedy is atonement — an atonement which requires Americans to lower their hopes and expectations for the future in order to "align" themselves with the Turd world.  That's what the Leftist Democrats are selling as hope and change, my fellow Americans.  The Tea Partiers aren't buying. And the bet here is a substantial majority of Americans aren't either. Those Americans may not be officially aligned with the Tea party phenomenon, but they are with it in spirit. It is a spirit that scares the hell of out those frantically trying disparage it by any means necessary.

The femi(commu)nist mentality explained

Thanks to Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom.

What kind of insanity is this?

Organizer Ty MacDowell said the point of the march was that a topless woman out in public shouldn’t attract any more attention than a man who walks around without a shirt.

And actually, the leftist “womyn” in the cartoon above *does* make a certain dreadful sense.

It's part of "deconstructing" standards and meanings, distorting the reality of human nature and natural law, to the point where what is right and good is whatever *they* say it is, and what is wrong and bad is whatever we, the sane American patriots, think, do and say.

Every communist revolution has it's reign of terror to follow, where any potential opposition is cowed into walking on eggshells.

Already heaven help the male co-worker who makes an innocous remark that may somehow be misconstrued.

Obama's legislative process

The Left's mantra is that: "Bush was running one of the least accountable and most duplicitous administrations in history! Doing things with extraconstitutional means! Waah!"

But this doesn't seem to bother them at all:

That's from Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group. Check them out. 

Despite blunders like Amnesty and Medicare entitlement expansion, yes, I guess I do.

The Innate Immorality Of The Lib Left

If your father went into his grandson's room, found his wallet and took all the money in it, what would you call it? I know what I'd call it. It's exactly what I'd call a twelve trillion dollar IOU run up by the Baby Boomers who will be long retired — and sucking even more money out of the system — when the true measure of such a monstrous lack of morality gets realized.  It's called stealing, and I can't think of a single moral code on the planet which condones it.  Let me explain something to the hand-wringers who decry the "lack of compassion" in Americans who believe they're entitled to the lion's share of their own labor. There is no such thing as compassion in government-mandated wealth redistribution. When I hear so-called religious leaders talking about the sanctity of such, even going so far as to say, "that's what Jesus would do," it makes me gag. Perhaps the only thing worse are secular leftists invoking Christ's name to promote some freedom-killing concept, despite the fact that most of them despise religion.  Memo to the terminally misguided: the entirety of Judeo-Christian principles is based on the concept of free will, not coercion. Genuine compassion consists of voluntary giving, aka charity. And by the way, conservatives give far more to charity than liberals. Liberals idea of compassion is giving your money to their pet causes, after siphoning it through government, and skimming a little of the top as payment for their oh-so compassionate ways.  Furthermore, Christ wasn't a leftist, which is exactly why leftists attempt to denigrate, control or eliminate religion whenever they acquire enough power. Leftists know that religious-based morality is beyond government control and in direct competition with the totalitarian demands of complete fealty to the state.  Make no mistake: the neo-Marxists in Washington, D.C. — and that's exactly what they are — want as many Americans as possible to be totally dependent on government.  Such dependency is completely immoral. The condition of our inner cities is a testament to that reality. We've always had poor people. What we didn't have prior to the Great Society was the virtual destruction of the nuclear family and the virus of unconscionable behavior that destruction abetted — despite the fact America was far more racist in the past than it is now. We didn't have legions of unapologetic nihilists with no concept of dignity, self-reliance, or hope for the future. We didn't have hucksters promoting eternal victimhood — for which there is no remedy other than government.  It's absolutely amazing that the American left has never been taken to task for this ongoing, orchestrated tragedy. And spare me the "best intentions" excuse. Results count, and the expansion of the welfare state has been an unmitigated disaster.
What's more immoral than having a vested interest in maintaining a certain level of human misery?

What's more immoral than liberals taking pride in how many people they've put on government programs? Isn't genuine morality defined by how many people one can get off government programs?
It sure as hell ought to be for many reasons, even if one of them is purely pragmatic: we're literally going bankrupt promoting the faux-morality of liberalism.  Which is why morality itself must be re-defined by liberals. Government confiscation and redistribution, no matter how onerous, is hailed as "social justice." Anyone who lacks anything, whether or not such lack is due to irresponsible behavior, is deemed "worthy" and automatically entitled to compensation. Anyone who has "more than his fair share" is inherently evil. Even the religiously-inspired idea of "be your brother's keeper" becomes "be your brother's keeper — or else."  In the coming weeks, Democrats and their media shills will be in full pitch mode, telling the American public what a great idea health care reform is. What they won't tell you is nobody said it wasn't. But this bill wasn't about health care reform. If it were, Democrats wouldn't have had to bribe members of their own party to pass it. They wouldn't have to force people to buy insurance, or fudge the CBO numbers to make it seem like this bill was deficit neutral. They wouldn't have left out tort reform, or exempted themselves from it. They wouldn't have front-loaded the goodies and back-loaded the economically destructive poison. The wouldn't have seen unrelenting resistance by a majority of Americans, or a total lack of support by Republicans.  They wouldn't have to keep selling it after they've already passed it.  A Fox News poll shows that 79% of Americans believe the economy could collapse. It also showed a substantial majority doesn't think that "elected officials Washington, D.C. have ideas for fixing it." Absolutely, totally wrong, my fellow Americans. Of course the politicians know how to fix it. But all of the fixes require a reduction of government power and the expansion of individual freedom. The Obama administration, and a Democratically-controlled Congress will never countenance that. Never. Better to rule in hell, as it were.
And that's utterly immoral.

Republicans Beware: The Health Care "Fix" is really a Cover-Up

Now that this bloated, bankrupting, health care debacle has passed the House and will likely become law in the next several days, the statists who supported it are now laying the rhetorical groundwork to convince Republicans to come on board. The Democrats need cover. They are well aware that they've jumped over a political cliff and they are anxious to make sure they don't have to face gravity alone. (Politics is one of the few venues where suicide isn't fatal if you can convince others to fall on their swords, too. They know that the people aren't ready to throw everyone out at once.)

Their tactic will be pretty straightforward, "The bill passed and you crazy libertarians, and conservatives, and defenders of the Constitution, and proponents of fiscal sanity, and others we characterized as "extremists" didn't like it, so help us make it better." To wit: this is the time to Fix It. I'm warning Republicans: Don't fall for the gimmick, don't go back to the pre-Tea Party, Beltway mindset that "doing The People's work" means passing legislation, even if it's bad. The People's don't want more government and the best work to be done is opposing more government. The legislators who opposed the extraordinarily unpopular bill that just passed must understand that popular opposition to this bill isn't simply because of all of the undeniable corruption involved in its passage. That provided some sound bites, but the opposition goes far deeper than that. The bill is fundamentally flawed because there simply is no way to make health care more affordable by giving more control over health care to the most fiscally irresponsible player ever to enter the field, the U.S. government. Miraculously, people saw through the statist baloney and understood that a government takeover was a bad idea. That takeover is the essence of the bill that passed and it can't be fixed by rearranging the pork used to tempt Democrat holdouts. Any attempt to recast the fundamental problem with the bill as simply embarrassing pork or some other form of mere political excess is a betrayal of that understanding and the many tens of millions of voters who got it. To define the problems of this bill in the typical Beltway terms of this or that political misstep is to really misunderstand the popular opposition that it spawned. And, such opposition will drive the 2010/2012 elections if the GOP doesn't fumble the ball.

So, don't go along with the Fix It bill. In fact, don't even use that terminology. The upcoming legislation to "correct" things like the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, etc. isn't a Fix It, it's a Cover-Up. The GOP message on this should be: We didn't commit the crime and we won't take part in the cover-up. Let those who passed this corrupt pig stand alone in putting lipstick on it. You Dems passed the bill without any Republican support and the bill you passed is an abomination, both in process and in substance. We warned you and the American people warned you and you arrogantly defied that warning. Don't ask us to give you cover so that you can pretend you didn't vote for a corrupt bill. You did. We gave you better options and you ignored them. The bill that passed is entirely yours. You will be judged on that bill in November, not on some other bill.

Meanwhile, if the changes the Dems are proposing are such obvious improvements, then the coalition that passed the original legislation should have no trouble getting "the fix" passed. (Though it begs the question of why the original bill was so bad if a better version was politically viable...) Maybe the tricks used to get the original through will help get the cover-up through. Of course, using pay offs and arm twisting to cover up pay offs and arm twisting may not be such a great idea, but one expects the corrupt to stick to their strengths. Whatever approach taken to pass the cover-up, the GOP would be downright stupid to lend legitimacy to it.

Socialized Medicine is voted in....

Evil Otto sums it up:

Well, they did it. The House passed that 2000 page monstrosity called "health care reform." They had to sell their souls to do it, they had to go against the will of the American people, they had to pull in every favor and twist every arm they could, but they did it.

What is amazing about the supporters of this bill is just how gullible they are. In arguing with them, they're either complete Kool-Aid drinking idiots, or they're simply liars. I'm more and more convinced that it's the latter. They know what this will result in, but they can't say it. they can't tell the truth about what they want, because they know how horrifying it sounds to the Average person. Here's what they claim, with s straight face:

•This program will reduce the deficit. Despite there being no government entitlement program that has EVER reduced the deficit even one dime, this one will. Despite Obama having run up the largest annual deficit in United States history, this care program will reduce the deficit.

•This program will not destroy the private health care insurance industry or result in a single payer system, despite Obama and numerous other Democrats flatly saying that that is their ultimate goal.

•This program won't be expanded beyond all measure, despite every other government entitlement program having been expanded beyond all measure over time, and despite future congresses not being bound in any way by the rules set forth in this one.

•This program will result in more people having access to more and better health care, without rationing or so-called "death panels," and without increasing the deficit (see above), despite increasing the number of people on Medicare and decreasing the payments to doctors on Medicare, insuring rationing.

•The American people are in favor of the bill, despite numerous polls that say exactly the opposite.

•That this won't violate our civil rights, despite rules that one must either buy health insurance, pay a fine, or go to jail.

I can't even really get angry at the lying bastards in Washington who passed this... it's what they are. Like the old tale of the scorpion, it's their nature. I get more angry at the useful idiots who believe them, and who spout their falsehoods with a straight face and somehow expect you to be as fooled as they are.

Why Obamacare will be ruinous

The House just passed the Senate health care bill, sending it to the President for his signature. To their credit, all Republicans, even Joseph Cao, who was wavering in his attempt to stay elected in his ghetto district where he won in a fluke because the incumbent Democrat was so foul and corrupt, said hell no. But they are not enough and will not be enough until November 2010, or should I say January 2011.
The Senate bill is costly and ultimately unsustainable, creating a new $938 billion entitlement. Its drafters say it is “paid for” but have engaged in all manner of budget gimmicks that would make Bernard Madoff blush, such as including ten years of tax revenue to pay for only six years of benefits. The bill includes new taxes and penalties, special deals for certain states at the expense of other states, all the while doing nothing to decrease the cost of health insurance premiums. It does nothing to address the cost of health care delivery in this country.

The Senate bill virtually guarantees that many Americans will have to forfeit their existing coverage, contrary to the President’s promise that everyone who likes their current health care plan can keep it. Under the Senate proposal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many as nine million people who are enrolled in employer-based plans now will have to find some other way to get health care coverage.

The Senate bill imposes a one-size-fits-all approach to health insurance. Congress will now dictate the types of insurance plans that can be purchased. Many popular health plans, including Health Savings Accounts that allow individuals to pay for health care services with pre-tax dollars, will be limited under the bill. The bill forces all Americans to purchase government mandated coverage, regardless of their individual needs and preferences.

The Senate bill inflicts heavy tax burdens on small businesses and families at a time when we need to do what we can to foster job growth today. And we need to ensure that changes we make to our health care system do not undermine the prospects for sustainable, long-term economic growth.

Why do I say all this? Because of a fundamental misunderstanding of how "health insurance" works.
Here is a simple comparison between auto insurance and health insurance illustrates why healthcare "reform," as Congress has just adopted it, will probably bankrupt the country:

• Two weeks ago we smashed the side view mirror on our car and had to take it to the shop. A replacement was $250, the deductible.
• This week at the dermatologist the doctor took a biopsy on one spot and sent if off to the lab. If it's malignant, I'll have to go back and have a bigger chunk of my cheek removed. The cost of all this? Zero. No deductible.

As far as auto insurance is concerned, we have it like almost everyone else. It covers major damage only. Back when I was younger, I had a minor fender bender. The insurance company paid my repairs but my premiums shot up until I turned age 25 and they went back down. That's what "underwriting" is about. After one accident I got moved into a higher risk category. It's what you might call a "pre-existing condition."

As John Goodman and Robert Musgrave wrote in their brilliant analysis, Patient Power, what we are calling "health insurance" is not insurance at all. It is prepaid medical benefits. Insurance is a way of pooling the risk for major expenses. Prepaid benefit plans try to cover all medical expenses, no matter how small.

Instead of getting a grip on benefits and substituting a policy of health insurance, the Democrats have decided to extend the same unrealistic benefits to everybody.

The Wall Street Journal recently informed us that once Obamacare passed, three big changes would materialize within six months:

• Insurers wouldn't be allowed to cancel policies just because a person became sick or to place lifetime caps on care.
• New insurance plans would have to pay full cost of certain preventive care and exempt such care from deductibles.
• Children could stay on their parents' insurance policies until their 26th birthday.

The last may help the insurance companies since young people are generally healthier -- except that people probably won't sign up until their children get sick. There's that "pre-existing condition" problem again. What would car insurance cost if you could wait until just after an accident to sign up for it? The first two items, however, are a recipe for insurance company disaster. The first will encourage people to wait until they're sick before buying insurance. The second will encourage extraordinary overuse.

The results will be insurance company bankruptcies. At that point we'll have to have a "public option." There will be no one left selling health insurance.

The only way to avoid this road to bankruptcy for the entire country is to restore individual responsibility in the system. Allow everyone $3,000 tax-free savings account to pay for their basic routine medical costs. Then let them buy so-called "catastrophic insurance" -- which is really just ordinary insurance - to cover serious medical expenses.

Socialized Medicine "Reform": Goodbye, doctors

Some doctors will flee the profession. For those who remain? Perhaps "doctor lines" can be to the 2010's what "gas lines" were to the 1970's. Or perhaps the government will license unqualified people, like the "barefoot doctors" of Mao's Red China.

That will be the end of new wonder drugs and surgeries too, as profits are now evil and there is no reward for innovation.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Mark Steyn declares it "American Dependence Day" and grieves:

Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be "insurers" in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that's clear we'll be on the fast track to Obama's desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Their bet is that it can't be undone, and that over time, as I've been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada and elsewhere.

More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the US is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side...

Ace of Spades says it is now do or die for the Congressional elections of 2010 and both the Congressional and Presidential elections of 2012:

He also aims to make Republicans partners in the destruction of America, by making us endorse his cataclysmic irresponsibility -- when we take back Congress, we will be faced with two vicious choices: Raise taxes ruinously, or allow the country to repudiate its debt and go bankrupt. Because the best option -- repealing the bill -- will be impossible until a real President is installed and next-to-impossible thereafter.

Oh, but those Eeevil insurance companies! You sure showed them, didn't you?

Los Angeles Citizens About To Get Reamed

As if L.A. does not have enough problems and isn't costly enough, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa now wants to jack up their power rates for bogus "green" initiatives. I almost preferrred Mayor Villaraigosa when he was a MEChA "Reconquista" traitor.

Households that get their power from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) could see their electric bills go up between 8.8 percent and 28.4 percent, depending on where they live and how much energy they use, under a plan unveiled Monday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

• Villaraigosa said the proposed increases would ensure that the DWP meets his goal of securing 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar by Dec. 31.
• The increased revenue would help pay for new environmental initiatives, including more aggressive conservation programs and a solar initiative designed to create 16,000 jobs.
• But it also would address the DWP's failure to collect enough money to cover the cost of existing renewable energy initiatives and the fluctuating price of coal and natural gas, utility officials said.

How revealing.

Under the plan:

• Households that use the smallest amount of electricity -- technically known as Tier 1 customers -- would see an average increase of 8.8 percent; those customers make up 58 percent of the DWP's residential ratepayers.
• Tier 2 customers, who use more power and make up 36 percent of the utility's residential customers, would see an average increase of 16.8 percent to 18.9 percent.
• Tier 3 customers, who use the most power and make up the remaining 6 percent, would face hikes in their electric bills of 24.4 percent to 28.4 percent, according to documents provided by the mayor's office.

Businesses would see increases in the average bill ranging from 20 percent to 26 percent.

 

Mike Eveloff, president of the Tract 7260 Homeowners Association, criticized the mayor for seeking more money at the same time the DWP is providing at least $220 million annually to balance the city's budget. "As long as the DWP is showing a surplus, then they have no rational reason for seeking a rate increase," he said.

But you don't count, Mike, especially with a surname like "Eveloff". You are one of the evil "rich" businesses or white people to be punished by an odd coalition of Watermelons and Ethnic Tribalists.

Once all the increases are in place, the DWP will receive an additional $648 million per year. Villaraigosa said the money would help pay for the hiring of "green doctors" to evaluate the energy efficiency of homes and make residents obtain energy-efficient lightbulbs and refrigerators.

Sure it will, Tony. Sure it will. It might go to new hookers for the mayor too. That scandal wasn't that long ago.