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Tough Medicine to Swallow

Health care for clunkers. Global normalcy. Insurance devils, and much more.


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Re: Ryan L. Cole's The Reformer's Folly:

Thank you Mr. Cole, for your detailed history of health care "reform." It makes clear this is not so much reform but a steady march towards socialization. It also truly shows that there is nothing new, especially so-called "progressive" ideas, under the sun. Indeed, I've held for decades now that the greatest impediment to America's progress has been such outdated and hoary ideas that are much more akin to religious tenets than practical policy ideas. Social Security and Medicare going bust at 74 and 44 years, respectively? Too bad, we cannot change them. A 100-plus year-old German model of public schooling stalling out at dysfunction junction? Tough luck, we cannot change it. Progressive tax rates counterproductive? So what, we cannot change them. And so on and so on with our so-called "progressives" whose eternal answer to all of their past miscalculations and failures to progress is more of the same. More sincerity, more good intentions, more money and more government and it will work out this time. Given the average age of their big ideas and countless examples of their failure the world around, there are no reactionaries quite like our progressive reactionaries.

As an aside, I thought one line in particular gave a clue as to why this is so until I realized I was in error, sort of. "Senators Robert Wagner and James Murray and Rep. John Dingell (who had previously collaborated on an insurance proposal)...(in 1945)" I thought, "yikes, can it be the same John Dingell, patron saint of another dinosaur, the UAW and who today still pushes the same ancient 'progressive' ideas?" I mean, I knew he'd been there a long time but Holy Cow. After a google search I determined that the current Dingell is the son and namesake of the Dingell mentioned in the article and took his father's seat 10 years later on the senior Dingell's death. This was equally, if not more, dispiriting because it shows the socio-religious fruit does not fall far from the tree and gives "progressive" ideas a half-life long, long past their dotage. So what does this portend for our future with millions of upcoming political and historical illiterates cultivated in leftist college hothouses by doddering "progressive" gray-heads?
--Marc Shepler
Jupiter, Florida

Thanks, Mr. Cole, for that pointed analysis. Here's mine:

Hope springs eternal, then lands in reality.

Anyone who has the delusional notion that the federal government can administer a national "health care system" involving virtually every American (and quite a few non-American "visitors"), costing trillions of dollars, and lasting on even beyond the foreseeable future, should have a look at the C.A.R.S. program (disrespectfully called "Cash for Clunkers").

The feds can't even administer a 3-4-month program involving a few thousands of Americans and a billion dollars. Less than a month into the program, it is already all tied up in Gordian knots made of red tape and administrative bungling.

And the very same know-it-all tinkerers out there want to be trusted with the health care of a nation when they can't even run a used car lot.

And I'm offended when they call my beloved old pickup truck -- more a family member and a faithful friend -- a "clunker." How dare they?

Come to think of it, if they get their "clunker health care" plan, they'll think of beloved old me as a "clunker" fit only for the junkyard.
-- A. C. Santore

Re: Philip Klein's Everything That Rises Must Converge:

How did America get where we are today? Certainly, President Bush did the spade work of extending intrusive government reach, but with President Obama and the Democratic Congress, we have been watching our economy, and more importantly, our freedoms, threatened as never before. Were Americans fooled into this imperial presidency? The American people are generally a trusting people, especially in "fly over country," sometimes to our detriment but more often to our gain. The majority of voters were tired of many of President Bush’s policies. Senator McCain put on one of the worst campaigns since Adlai Stevenson. Senator Obama was able to fake right and left at the same time. Add in that "hope and change" made for such a euphonic vibe, giving The One the presidency just felt right to the majority of American voters.

Now that hope and change have arrived, the American people are finding that the Wizard is really a man behind the curtain and he not all that good at running the machinery.Obama likes to compare himself to the other president who came from Illinois. President Lincoln sagaciously stated, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." The American public, despite the sycophantic mainstream media mob's mantras and misrepresentations, are beginning to see The One and his intentions clearly at last. Yes, the economy is recovering, but it is a jobless recovery and the true and debilitating effects of Obamanomics are only now beginning to be understood by the man on the street. Many of the people who voted for Obama are too young to remember stagflation; ironically, it is a term their children may know too well. The Left's intrusion into health care is also coming into focus and people do not want the government between them and their doctors. Green House Effect? More and more scientists are finding the data to come out and state the sky is not falling.

On almost every issue of importance, the people are coming to understand the difference between rhetoric and reality. The time when Our Dear Leader can fool us is quickly passing. Pain is an unusually strong deterrent to euphoria and the haze that accompanies that buzz. Is The Prince’s reign over? Sadly, he has more than three years left in office, but he will find that ruling will not be as easy as his allies on the left rebel in their own self-interest or are voted out of office for not standing up for the interests of their constituents. If the Blue Dogs roll over and play dead, their conservative voters will swat them with a rolled up newspaper and Obama will face a resurgent Republican opposition in 2010 much as The Boy President did in 1994. If the Blue Dogs stand up now, The One will find himself stymied much sooner. Maybe calling President Obama a lame duck now is not too premature, the time for hope never arrives too soon. Obama may have gotten elected with rhetorical flourishes and promises of hope and change, but in the words of Pete Townsand, "We won’t get fooled again."
-- I.M. Kessel

Re: James Antle III's The Republican Recovery:

James Antle is dead wrong on the Republican recovery. There is no real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. In fact, the Republicans could accurately be characterized as "Democrat lite." They have repeatedly betrayed and sold out their base, and continue to do so. I recently read that Charlie Christ is the leading contender for the Republican nomination in 2012. Please tell me what the major differences are between Charlie Christ and Al Gore or Barack Obama.

No, Mr. Antle, I and many of my friends and family will not be voting for any Republican candidates. We will be voting third party as we did in the last election. By the way, I hope you understand that the selection of John McCain as the Republican candidate was the last straw. And I would like to point out that "amnesty John" did not lose the election because he did not get enough of the Hispanic or Black vote. He lost the election because large numbers of white voters either stayed home because they felt they had no dog in that fight, or voted for a third party candidate like I and my family members.

Gerald Celente is right in his prediction of the rise of a third party. There are massive numbers of white middle and working class voters who feel they have been disenfranchised and have no representation in our present government. We have no La Raza, MALDEF or NAACP. And we certainly have no one in the Washington political class that represents us. Our political elites on both sides of the aisle are too busy lining their pockets with money given to them by the lobbyists of various special interests, including foreign governments.
-- Paul Martell

Re: Ben Stein's The Oil Shortage Hoax:

I wish Ben Stein had commented on regulating the financial products that threw oil prices into a cocked hat. As it is now, this debacle will almost certainly happen again, when, as usual, no one is looking. Monday-morning quarterbacking is only valuable if it produces change. Otherwise, it's the definition of insanity
-- Allan Rabinowitz

Will Ben Stein get up on his hind legs and proclaim that the "free market" that brought us this phony oil shortage (as Enron, Dynergy, et al. did to the California electricity market some years ago) is anything but free and needs adult supervision in the form of government regulations and watchdogs?

While I typically agree with Mr. Stein, I wanted to point out the following Reuters story to him, just so he has the latest from the CFTC.
-- Zoran Naskov
Rutherfordton, North Carolina

After reading about the above, also the health care issue, I can't understand why the American public has not had a march on Washington. I would go there if that occurred. I would like to see Obama out of office. Any possibility of impeachment based on un-American policies?


As a resident of Australia and as an economist who has worked for the Australian Government on environmental issues for nearly 20 years now, allow me to say that the cyclones referred to by Al Gore are not getting more and more violent -- they seem to be about normal, certainly nothing that comes close to the catastrophes that Gore infers. There has been a serious drought in Australia, but against that there have not been serious floods -- both of these events have enough significance in the nation's history and geography that they are mentioned in the National Anthem, written well before Al Gore was even born. The prime determinant of the drought appears to be the El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean currents, but whether that is caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is very debatable. Suffice to say that I have seen references to the impact of El Nino on weather conditions that were written well before anybody even dreamed of global warming. The references to sea level rises are, like most of the "science" quoted by Al Gore, utterly without any foundation other that his overactive imagination. As for the bush fires, that is what happens when you have a large, drought affected continent. There were serious fires here early in the year, in the middle of a very hot summer, but before leaping to conclusions about that, it is best to remember that the major failures that have come to light so far were that the fires were often deliberately lit and the government response to them was poor and confusing and mislead many people into staying when they might otherwise have left for safety. Ignoring these points and screeching hysterically about global warming being the death of all of us is simply ridiculous and has little connection to what is happening in the real world.
-- Christopher Holland
Canberra, Australia

Re: Ben Stein's We've Figured Him Out:

Nobody is willing to look at who or what is pushing this health care bill. Obama and so many more, including Ted Kennedy, are all speaking for the insurance companies.

If this bill passes and becomes law, the insurance companies will increase their customer base by about 100 percent -- what business wouldn't like that? Insurance companies support politicians like Ted Kennedy and Obama and so many others -- if anyone does not believe this, they are choosing to be ignorant.

Insurance companies pay billions of dollars each year for their lobbying efforts around the entire country in every state -- not just in Washington alone. They pay for young lawyers to become judges so these judges will decide in favor of the insurance companies. And this is only a small part of their ploy to manipulate laws and communities in their favor.

Why don't the media report the truth about the insurance companies supporting all these politicians in an effort to promote the insurance companies?

Believe me, if the insurance companies were not behind this health care bill, it would not go anywhere and there would be a strong outcry from them to stop it -- have you heard or seen any effort by the insurance companies to stop this bill? I haven't.

Please report this truth to the American public so everyone will know the truth about how our government is lead by the insurance companies -- The United Insurance Companies of America. Of the insurance companies, by the insurance companies, for the insurance companies.
-- Rick Gregory


We voted for change. We bought the hope.
But we got so much change, we can hardly cope.
Now he's spreading the wealth around,
With fewer and fewer jobs to be found.
And it does no good to plead
Cause it's the toll for "white folks' greed."
-- Neil S.

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