Democrats Unlease Their Venom on an Extraordinary Joe

Democrats lost a great deal of credibility from 2000 through 2008 by demonizing George W. Bush and reducing the political discourse in this country to something you'd hear in a bar fight. 


Republicans when debating policy tend to argue from facts. Democrats over the last decade, in absence of compelling evidence to support their positions, have tended to argue from emotion. Thus, every Republican president of my time has been  attacked by Democrats for some alleged personal flaw that has nothing to do with the underlying logic of their policies. Eisenhower? Inarticulate. Nixon? A crook. Ford? Stupid. Reagan? Senile. And stupid. George H.W. Bush? Out of touch. George W. Bush? Just plain stupid.


So in the absence of any Republican of star power right now except Sarah Palin (Viewed by the left as both not a real woman and a bimbo at the same time. Did we mention stupid?) to vilify, Democrats have turned their guns on one of their own--Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman.


Sen. Lieberman's sin is being too independent. Let the record reflect that it was the Democrats themselves who made him an independent by pouring their salon money into the campaign of his primary opponent in 2006, Ned Lamont. (In keeping with their myth of being the party of the people, Mr. Lamont made his fortune the old fashioned way--he inherited from a father who was a partner in   J.P. Morgan and Co. Along the way to getting trounced by Sen. Lieberman in the general election, this man of the people had stops at exclusive prep school Phillips Exeter,  as well as Harvard and Yale.)


So, the Democrat swells who created Joe Lieberman, the independent, now vilify him for being, well, independent. Which brings us to healthcare. Jonathan Chait, writing in the New Republic , says that "Lieberman isn't actually all that smart...there's little evidence that he's a sharp or clear thinker, and certainly no evidence that he knows or cares about the details of health care reform. . . ." Isn't all that smart? Mr. Chait obviously has him confused with a Republican.


He goes on in his article amazingly to suggest that because Sen. Lieberman is a Jew, he benefits from reverse discrimination since the only reason most people probably think the senator is smart because they assume all Jews are smart. Way to go, Jon. Any opinion on Joe's athletic ability?


MoveOn.org , the ultra-leftist racket, is using the anti-Lieberman campaign as a fundraiser for themselves: "Joe Lieberman is single-handedly gutting health care reform. And it's time someone held him accountable. So we're going to make sure every voter in Connecticut knows what he's doing. And then, when he comes up for re-election, we'll make sure we send him home for good. Can you chip in to make Joe pay?" Leave it to a bunch of socialists to figure out how to make money out of the healthcare debate. Time for moveon.org to move on for good.


House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer blames lack of action on the Senate healthcare bill on Sen. Lieberman rather than the bill's many flaws. He shifts the blame for the Senate's ineptitude at failing to pass a bill  to the "psychology of one," meaning Sen Lieberman. If the psychology of one is really the reason the bill continues to be stuck in neutral, then that one is Rep. Hoyer's counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). 


And Rep. Rosa DeLauro  (D-CT) tells POLITICO that "No individual should hold health care hostage, including Joe Lieberman, and I'll say it flat out, I think he ought to be recalled."


James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal reminds Rep. DeLauro that there is no provision for recalling members of Congress. Oops. Not a bright thing to say. Maybe she's a Republican.


This campaign of belittling its opponents smacks of the elitist institution that the Democrat Party has become. Well oiled and well funded by the Ned Lamonts and George Soroses of the world, it tries to accomplish its goals by gutter sniping rather than through reasoned discourse. In doing so, it is attacking a man, Joe Lieberman, more principled than any of them could ever hope to be. 


Just thought you might like to know.

Appointment in Samarra

President Obama appeared this weekend on five television networks to try and save his controversial healthcare initiative. He appeared on all networks, with one exception-Fox News. The radical left wing of the Democrat party that President Obama heads believes that Fox is biased against the president and its policies.

But what's wet for the cat is dry for the fish, goes the old Russian proverb. And what the socialist wing of the Democrat party sees as bias may be just good, old fashioned good journalism.


The job of a reporter is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." President Obama and the hardcore left continue to see themselves as the victims in this debate (See my post from last week on Jimmy Carter.), deserving of comfort. They'd rather be comforted by the media from what they see as the affliction of talk radio and Fox News. I think most Americans want to hear reporters ask tough questions so they can get to the bottom of an issue that continues to polarize the country.


Mr. Obama thought he was going to be comforted, instead of afflicted, when he scheduled interviews with the broadcast networks. But he had his thinking rearranged when he sat down with former Clintonista George Stephanopoulos at ABC News. Take a look:

Stephanopoulos did what good journalists do: He saw an opening when the president equivocated about whether mandating insurance is a tax, and he went in for the kill. President Obama's handlers will try and paint this as "gotcha" journalism, but it was good, clean reporting. It was the President who came across as defensive, surprised, glib, and condescending at the notion that Stephanopoulos would have the gall to back him into a corner on the issue of taxes.

We've reached a new low in this country when a president tries to control information by restricting who can have access to him. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes all confronted their accusers at one time or another. This is another example of how President Obama is ill advised and lacks the instincts and experience to make good choices in how he deals with the American people.

Like the fabled Appointment in Samarra, President Obama fled from one marketplace of ideas, Fox News, only to meet his fate-the devil, in the form of George Stephanopoulos-in another.

Just thought you might like to know.

Routine No. 1

If media powerhouses like talk radio and Fox News are any indication, the wheels are coming off Barack Obama's longtime ambition to nationalize the U.S. healthcare industry. A July 29 Gallup poll shows that only 44% of Americans believe that the President's plan will result in improvements to healthcare. August has proved a hot month for Democratic congressmen who are getting roasted about the President's plan at town hall meetings across the country.

So the President has gone back to the old-time Democratic pol playbook, and called Routine No. 1. Democrat Routine No. 1 says never argue with conservatives on facts; you can't win. Always argue through emotion. 

Be prepared: The White House says expect a new healthcare sales tactic after Labor Day, when Pres. Obama rolls out a new media attack on conservatives. Out are deficit projections, quality life- year studies, and nuances between a public option and insurance cooperatives. In will be gut wrenching stories about heartless insurance companies and heart-tugging tales by little pigtailed girls about how daddy doesn't have any insurance anymore because he got laid off. 

Expect every television news program break to be crammed with million dollar spots produced by Madison Avenue and paid for by the President's unlikely bedfellows on this backroom political deal: the pharmaceutical industry, the American Medical Association and AARP. 

But don't you believe it. The President is a master of creating bogeymen and rallying support by blaming the bogey. As in his lifting the presidential ban on stem cell research: "Rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced...a false choice between sound science and moral values." In this case Pres. Obama painted his predecessor as a medieval mandarin, unable to reconcile science and religion, when the truth was the opposite. (Pres. Bush's ban led to tremendous strides on other types of cellular research that hold great promise.)

When you're carpet bombed with 30-second spots featuring the new Harry and Louise, cute little kids and huggable grandpas, remember the facts: what the President is desperately reaching for has resulted in rationing, backbreaking costs, and a lack of innovation everywhere it's been tried. Those are the facts.

So don't be impressed at this last-ditch effort at socialism. In 1948, at an Illinois campaign stop, a supporter shouted to Harry Truman during his stump speech, "Give 'em hell, Harry." The President's classic reply: "I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell." 

So when they try to hide the facts behind slick commercials and speeches to handpicked audiences, give 'em hell.

Just thought you might like to know.

Talking Healthcare Again

These posts continue to try and inform the healthcare debate, substituting facts for the emotion and wishful thinking of the left. Here is another quick "cheat sheet" on some of the most contentious issues in the healthcare debate and the facts that address them:

• Voters in November made the point they want healthcare reform. Voters in November voted for change and against Republicans who had started governing like--well, like Democrats. Healthcare is part of that change. But there's a big leap between wanting to reform what we have and ending up with what Pres. Obama proposes. In fact the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows the country is pretty much deadlocked on whether it supports the President's plan. Sure, when asked if they favor having government pay for healthcare the answer is yes. Why not? If you ask anyone if they'd rather have someone else pay their bill--whether that means picking up a tab for dinner, buying them a new car, or paying their healthcare premium--of course the answer would be yes. But polls consistently show that most Americans like the quality of the healthcare they currently receive. The consummate Chicago pol, Barack Obama, reads those polls. That's why he's promising to let consumers keep the care they already have. So while most people agree for the need for reform, few people believe in the radical change that the President proposes.
• Healthcare had gotten too expensive. No doubt. What hasn't? In 1977 I paid $5600 for a slick, tricked out car--my first one that hadn't been someone else's first car. The equivalent car today would cost nearly $40,000. But it would come with a power train, safety features and conveniences undreamed of 32 years ago. So it is with healthcare. It costs more and keeps costing more, but we get so much more--new diagnostic treatments, new drugs, and new technologies that save lives, improve the quality of life, and prolong life.
• 46 million Americans are uninsured. OK, we've beaten this to death, but here it is again. When you back out 1) workers who are transitionally uninsured--that is, they were between jobs and without insurance when the survey was taken; 2) the people who are already eligible for a government insurance program like Medicaid, Medicare or SCHIP but choose not to enroll for whatever reason; 3) the number of illegal aliens who aren't entitled to care anyway; and 4) the millions of "invincibles"--largely young males under the age of 34 who think they'll live forever and choose to spend their money on other things--the actual number of uninsureds is closer to 8 million. A much more manageable problem that hardly calls for the radical changes the President proposes. But OK, let's play the leftist numbers game. Let's say 45 million people are uninsured. That means 260,000,000 are not uninsured. The point holds. Are you really going to turn the system on its head for a problem that affects less than 15% of the population?
  
• American business could be much more competitive if it could shift the cost of employee healthcare to government. You hear this frequently from corporate whiners. They say that they're disadvantaged because European and Asian countries in effect subsidize their global competitors through nationalized healthcare. This is the same corporate foresight brought you Enron, Worldcom and the Fannie Mae economic meltdown. The truth is that the cost of health care in these other countries is just shifted from premiums to taxes. And so what those companies don't pay to insurers they pay to their governments. At least right now U.S. business has some control over how their money is spent on healthcare. When Uncle takes over they'll still be paying for healthcare, only this time it will be through the IRS and they won't have a clue or a say in how the money is spent.
• Nationalized healthcare will simplify healthcare and reduce its cost. Does the IRS simplify paying your taxes? Does the EPA, with its thousands of pages of environmental regulations,  simplify conservation? If government makes healthcare so simple, why do many doctors refuse to take Medicare assignments? If Medicaid is so cost-effective why are up to 40% of its expenditures in some states fraudulent? This one is so stupid as to not require a response.
• A "government option" plan will provide competition for the private insurers. There are 1500 healthcare plans of various stripes out there. If that's not competition, I don't know what is. The issue isn't that there is no competition in our current system. The issue is that the cost allocation mechanisms are all wrong. The true cost of Medicare and Medicaid treatment is partially allocated to those of us with private insurance. The cost of jackpot justice lawsuits are allocated in the form of higher malpractice premiums to providers with no history of litigation . The true cost of employee health insurance is allocated mostly to the employer's customers as healthcare costs are passed on to you and me in the form of higher prices for everything. These misallocations of cost skew the system and negate the consumer advantage of having 1500 companies competing for your business. The one thing we don't need is a government which can't deliver the mail on time, can't educate our children properly, can't secure our borders, and can't balance its own budget putting itself in charge of your health. 

Bottom line, when the President says that he's going to "reform" health care by providing a "public option" and by ensuring that his new system will lower healthcare costs, improve care and still allow you to keep your own insurance, reach for your wallet and hold on tightly. As my mother would say, if it seems too good to be true, it is.

Just thought you might like to know.

The Truth about Healthcare in America

Needless to say, we'll be hearing more and more about healthcare "reform" over the next year. Pres. Obama made healthcare reform the tall pole in his campaign tent over the last two years. But reform that's not real, just makes a bad system worse. I'm the first to admit that our healthcare system is badly broken. Pretty soon you're going to be hearing proposed solutions from Democratic Washington. But don't take the politicians' word for it. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it generally is.

If you want to get a balanced view of healthcare, download Sally Pipes' book, The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care.Just click here and it will take yout to the download site. It's completely free and a must-read for anyone who wants an informed opinion on healthcare.

You'll hear a lot of proposed solutions over the next several months. Ms. Pipes looks at 10 of them and exposes them for the myths that they are. Here are three:

• Government healthcare is more efficient. Proponents of a government-run health system say healthcare will be more efficient if the government eliminates the "middleman" and directs it all from Washington. But who's a bigger middleman than Uncle Sam? Think about it...what does government do that's more efficient than you or I or the private sector can do? What's government's efficiency track record? How efficient is our tax code? How about our schools? The government runs most schools. How efficient are they? What results to they produce, compared to private schools? How about our government's current experience with healthcare: Medicaid and Medicare. Every try to fill out Medicare paperwork? Ever read about Medicaid fraud? So why would we trust these people with our health?


• Healthcare costs too much; the government can reduce the cost. I suppose Uncle knows a thing or two about overspending, I'll give him that. But why would we think that a national healthcare system would spend less than we spend now? Healthcare costs a lot because you get a lot for it. The average life span increased 30 years over the 20th century. Over the last 50 years death rates from heart disease--our number one killer--dropped by 60 percent. The issue isn't how much we spend on healthcare; the real issue is what we get for it. And we get a good return: dads who live to walk their daughters down the aisle, grandpas watching their grandkids playing Little League, and great grandmas holding a fourth generation baby. Not a bad ROI. Expensive? Yea. Worthwhile? You bet.


• The cost of drugs is driving up the cost of healthcare. Actually, the opposite is true. It takes 15 years and costs over a billion dollars to bring one drug to market in the U.S. But these drugs drive down the cost of healthcare in the long run. Why? Because, for example, the cost of cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor are cheaper than open heart surgery, that's why. Ms Pipes explains how, for every dollar spent on drugs to fight high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes, $4.00 to $7.00 are saved in clinical costs.

There's a ton of scientific evidence and just plain common sense in The Ten Myths of American Health Care. Over the next few months, I'll be blogging about them. But just remember, when somebody tells you something that sounds too good to be true--like nationalizing healthcare will improve coverage, improve quality and lower cost--it probably is.

Just thought you might like to know.