Archive for August, 2009
EngSoc: “Cruel and Neglectful Care”
The London Telegraph documents the nightmare that the Democrats want to bring to America:
“‘Cruel and neglectful’ care of one million NHS patients exposed
One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today.
In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with ‘neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel’ treatment.
The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.”
In other words, the inevitable always happens. The “enlightened” British state run National Health Service is turning into a mirror image of what the “little people” receive in Cuban hospitals.
Someday the world will learn (although I harbor no hopes for leftists on this score) that allegedly noble ends cannot be achieved by evil means. As Yaron Brook has forcefully argued, there is not such thing as a “right” to enslave others:
The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a “right” to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a “right” to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as the founders conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.
You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services — no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a “right” to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.
Thomas Paine Comes To Manhattan!!
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have a great surprise for you, Thomas Paine is coming to Manhattan. You heard me right, the founding father and author of Common Sense Thomas Paine, portrayed by Bob Basso from California, will be in Manhattan at the Kansas State Student Union at 7pm on Wednesday September 2nd.
Again, Here is the info: Thomas Paine
Kansas State Student Union Grand Ballroom
7pm Wednesday, Sept 2nd
Cost: Free
There is not much time so tell everyone you know to come see Thomas Paine. Below is a preview of his work:
August 22nd Healthcare Rally
Topeka, KS 66606
Open Letter to the DNC
Open Letter to DNC by Edward Cline:
Jen O’Malley Dillon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee
democraticparty@democrats.org
Dear Jen:
A friend shared with me your letter to him about how evil and anti-democratic Americans are for exercising their First Amendment right to protest the lies and deceptions of the President and the Democratic Party about the health care legislation.
The truth is that the protesters are truly “grassroots,” not being guided, advised, or manipulated by nefarious powers behind the scenes. I took part in several Tea Parties over the last few months. No one asked me to. No one paid me to. I’m not being “funded” by anyone or by any organization. I took part because I do not want socialized medicine to destroy my liberty. I know of no one who has taken part in these protests who was acting as a tool of the Republican Party or an insurance company or some other Darth Vaderish entity, as Democratic propaganda asserts.
The truth is that the protesters are not “organized mobs, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion.” They have every right to shout down any politician who believes he can feed his constituents the same old pap of assurances, promises, and lies about the health care legislation and get away with it. That is what Americans have been told for decades, and they are tired of it. They are smart enough to see a snake in the grass — dozens of snakes in the tall grass of political obfuscation and in the self-serving rhetoric of venal politicians.
The truth is that there is a need for real health insurance reform — to get the government out of the realms of medical, health care, and insurance. In fact, out of the economy entirely. Nothing in the Constitution permits the federal government to take care of anyone. The Constitution exists to protect individual rights, the lives of individuals, their happiness and their property. But several Democratic and Republican administrations have usurped those restrictions and limitations. Americans are beginning to connect those dots. Just as Americans connected the dots in 1773 when they “disrupted” the cargoes of tea and tossed it into Boston Harbor. Just as they connected the dots in 1765 against the Stamp Act, and “disrupted” collection of that tax.
Frankly, I wish the Republican Party would take its name seriously enough to be more forthright in its applause of the “disruptions.” This is, after all, supposed to be a republic of free individuals, not a democracy of mob rule orchestrated by petit tyrants and professional looters.
More power to Americans if they can intimidate presumptuous, power-seeking, sanctimonious lawmakers.
You stated in your letter that “as the President has repeatedly said, health insurance reform will create more health care choices for the American people, not reduce them. If you like your insurance or your doctor, you can keep them, and there is no ‘government takeover’ in any part of any plan supported by the President or Congress.” Who asked you to intrude on people’s choices in the first place? Why intrude, if you do not intend to take over the whole realm of health care? Who are you to care whether or not I like my insurance or my doctor? The only job of an elected representative or senator is to uphold the Constitution and individual rights. Period.
You state in your letter: “Health insurance reform is about our lives, our jobs, and our families — we can’t let distortions and intimidation get in the way.” What is this our business? I don’t own you, and you don’t own me. There is no such thing as a collective that can legitimately employ that adjective. There is just a collection of individuals, free to associate with each other or not. My business is not your business, or anyone else’s, except in voluntary association or trade. But that’s something the health care legislation would end — by chaining all Americans together in a work gang.
Speaking of distortions, how many millions of dollars has the DNC committed to defeating American opposition to slavery or servitude with smears, lies and glitzy TV ads? And speaking of intimidation, just who unleashed the troglodytes of ACORN, the AFL-CIO, and SEIU (a notoriously communist organization, with international links, of course) on Tea Partiers and others who protest the health care bill? You should warn those thugs: If attacked, we will fight back. Just as we did at Lexington and Concord, and at Bunker Hill.
Your party stooped to a new low when the President authorized an invitation to Americans to inform on each other if they overheard or read a breath of criticism of the health care bill. Well, that tactic certainly backfired, did it not?
Yes, it’s going to be a long, hot August. We, the new Sons of Liberty, will also stand strong together to expose the truth about the indentured servitude you are proposing.
Sincerely, and yours in liberty,
Edward Cline
It Has Begun: Democrats are now sending goons to the homes of dissenters. Mr. Mike Sola gave Senator John Dingell (D-Mich) a piece of his mind about the socialized medicine scheme at a town hall meeting. For his effrontery of asking the old statist questions he couldn’t answer, thugs appeared at Mr. Sola’s home in the dead of night. In the video posted here, Mr. Sola reminded Obama’s union thugs about all of the gun purchases earlier this year. Like a dog returning to its vomit, the Democrats are reverting to their old practice of using night riders to intimidate voters.
Obama’s Email Arrogance
Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:
Yesterday I sent this impertinent message to President Barack Obama when his staff sent me the invitation to inform on other Americans who criticize his and Congress’s plans to impose socialized health care on the country.
“The White House
flag@whitehouse.gov
5 August 2009
Dear Mr. President:
What is your definition of “fishy”? That it is odiferous? Bad-smelling? Unwelcome? Stinky? Ready to bury?
How dare you refer to Americans criticizing your socialist health and economic plans, and the facts they are bringing to light about your whole power-lusting, corrupt regime as fishy? How dare you threaten to abrogate their First Amendment rights?
Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You don’t want to be president of a nation of free men. You want to lord it over a nation of dependent troglodytes, ever grateful for the crumbs you throw them after you’ve eaten the cakes they created through productive work.
If anything can be described as fishy in this country now, it is your administration, and Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank, and the whole crew of your looting parasites.
So, flag this!!
Regards,
A real American and a genuine patriot.”
The key paragraph in the White House’s invitation is this:
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors travel just beneath the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
This was preceded by two other interesting paragraphs:
Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, ‘facts are stubborn things.’
Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to ‘uncover’ the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.
This announcement was posted by Macon Phillips (White House Director of News Media, go here for the career of this non-entity), but bets can be taken that the idea of inviting Americans to inform on each other is not flying too well at the moment, for undoubtedly the “in box” of flag@whitehouse.gov was almost immediately filled to overflowing with emails from outraged Americans, organized or not. This was not a good idea. Phillips and his handlers in the White House should have realized, given the genuine opposition across the country to Obama’s and Congress’s health care bill, that the reaction to it would have been overwhelmingly instant and “negative.”
What were they thinking? Perhaps, given that opposition, which has chiefly taken the form of what White House denizens have characterized as “disrupters” not tolerating the bromides and platitudes of elected representatives’ raucous town hall meetings about the proposed legislation, they are feeling desperate enough to try anything.
In addition to having the gall to quote John Adams, Phillips (or whoever wrote the invitation, it was probably a committee effort) also paraphrased Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” as though that reference to Gore’s discredited “scary movie” on global warming still had some currency among Americans. He also refers to First Amendment communications between bloggers and individuals as “scary chain emails” and videos as “percolating” on the Internet, chock full of “disinformation.” Facts, however, are not what the White House and its allies in Congress are conveying to the American public about the health care bill. They have launched, for the length of August up until Congress reconvenes in September, a campaign of disinformation not only about the contents of the bill, but against anyone opposed to the legislation, whether he is a Republican, a voter, or a blogger.
One might wonder where Obama and Company get their arrogance. They get it from the fact that the have gotten away with lies and disinformation for so long.
What is worrisome — and that is the kindest term I can think of at the moment — is that all the emails, friendly or not to the idea of informing on fellow Americans, can be collected and used somehow to punish or reward, whether or not the health bill legislation passes. Remember the outrage of the news media over President George W. Bush’s “lost” emails? Even the ever-loyal news media is stammering its reservations about the informant program.
Senator John Cornyn raises this issue in his letter to Obama about the impropriety of asking Americans to inform on others.
“Furthermore,” Cornyn wrote, “the collection of e-mails could amount to the White
House amassing various forms of personally identifiable information.”
Among other things, Cornyn posed this important question to Obama:
At the very least, I request that you detail to Congress and the public the protocols that your White House is following to purge the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in “fishy” speech.
It will be interesting if Cornyn gets an answer to any of his questions. Read the whole text of his letter here. There is some comfort in seeing that not all politicians are clueless or indifferent.
But, make no mistake about it: If Obama and Company are willing to stoop to so low a tactic as inviting Americans to inform on each other, even in “casual conversation,” what else would they be willing to do? Aside from all the lies and disinformation conveyed to the public over the last six months about not only the health care bill, but about TARP, the cash for clunkers program, and even Harry Reid’s pet project, a magnet-train link between California and Las Vegas (!!!), this tactic reveals the core, evil soul of Obama and his supporters in and out of government in their quest for total power. Germans were asked by Hitler to inform on their fellow Germans, and tens of thousands of Germans wound up in work camps or concentration camps.
Will Americans follow suit, or are there still enough of us alive to put a brake on our march to fascism?
America’s Mobocracy
Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:
There are three overlooked or un-emphasized facets of the Obama administration and Congress’s breathless rush to seize everything in the country that is not nailed down — health care, car production, the used or “clunker” car market, executive pay — the list may prove to be endless, and there may be nothing that is not nailed down exempt from their avarice. These facets should be the principal foci of critics to the point of obsession.
A minor facet of the Obama administration itself is the Chicago “gangster government” character of his White House staff and his cabinet and departmental appointees. Not all of his appointees are from Chicago. They just have that odor about them, of professional political parasites who have scurried in and out of sight and up and down the totem pole of Washington politics over the years as their chosen career choices, to a soul advancing or pimping for collectivism, most of them never having worked a productive day in their lives. Heading the list is chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, who has all the charm and savvy of Meyer Lansky. (One can legitimately wonder if the grandfather of “community organizing,” Saul Alinsky, and Lansky traded pointers on political activism. They were Chicago contemporaries.)
The President and his wife, Michelle, of course, live like royalty and behave like it. There are the appointed thirty-two “czars” lording it over the American economy, and then there are Michelle’s twenty-two staffers who aid her in her “social” life, all of whose salaries are paid by taxpayers — not all of them in Chicago.
The first major facet is that, if there is a crisis in any realm over which the government seeks to expand its power to control, the problem can be traced to government controls in the first place. The minuscule, hardly noticeable controls of yesteryear, when men wore handlebar moustaches and labored to write laws in un-air-conditioned chambers, have grown into a forest of lacerating rose bushes without the benefit of roses. This facet has been admirably dwelt on by better analysts than me, but it has not been emphasized by Tea Party organizers or critics to the level it deserves. It does no good to be preoccupied by cost analyses and projected debt and the like, if they are not accompanied by the moral argument. After all, if mere facts had the power to persuade the minds of our governing elite, why are they so immune to and proof against those facts?
If emails, faxes, hand-written letters, unruly townhall meetings, and demonstrations outside of legislators’ offices and the like are beginning to cause some Senators and Congressmen to think twice about the feasibility of their grandiose plans to transform the country from a republic of free individuals to a highly policed and costly hospital regime, forcing them to acknowledge the role of force and fiat law for the “public good” and how that presumptive power has exacerbated existing problems or has simply created them out of whole cloth, ought to underscore the unlikelihood that if they vote for the hospital regime in any form, they in turn will be voted out of office. Our elitist cadre will be obliged to contemplate being forced to make a living in the private sector which they once presumed to “manage,” but which their actions have helped to tie into several Gordian knots.
The second facet is that when the White House and Congress prescribe socialism (a.k.a. “progressivism”) and legislate to that end, they do it for free. It costs them nothing. They do it with taxpayer money. And, whatever destruction they cause, they are indemnified from the consequences. Ted Kennedy will die without ever having been punished for his crimes. Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer and Henry Waxman will return to California and live the high life on a pension and enjoy health care packages few productive persons could ever afford. Barney Frank and Bernard Bernanke will fade into comfortable retirements and, like Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, embark on lucrative speaking careers. Barack and Michelle will traipse back to their Chicago mansion on a pension, as well, and begin to solicit donations for the Obama Presidential Library.
This will ever be a conflict between the “governed” and the government for as long as fiat powers are sanctioned or tolerated by the electorate. It is an unfair contest between the government and the electorate. Those who advocate and pass laws destructive of freedom, property, happiness and the ownership of one’s life, work on the money extorted from those who are the subjects or targets of the destructive law. It is time that the thinking electorate woke up to this rigged game and forced the culprits to acknowledge the fact, as well. Think of it: It cost legislators nothing to regulate or ruin your life. You, on the other hand, must, with countless others, invest time, effort, and money in opposing their plans, besides paying their salaries and getting the check for all their fringe benefits, including first-class health care. And you invest your time, effort and money with no guarantee that it will accomplish anything. Ayn Rand called it the “sanction of the victim.” General Patton might liken it to supplying Nazi artillery and Panzer tanks with ordnance with which to blast advancing American forces.
The culprits should be forced to stammer transparent irrelevancies and more obvious lies, and plot to rush undetected from home to office and back again, to avoid being cornered by the citizenry’s cattle prods and pitchforks. They should be compelled to feel, for once, powerless, redundant and extraneous. They should be forced to feel mean, small and despised beyond redemption and reclamation.
The third facet concerns the motivation behind all the coercive legislation passed, most recently under the reigns of Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II, and now Bush III (a.k.a. Obama). Tea Partiers should make the key connection between “reform” of the health care system (or of “reform” of anything that attracts a Congressman’s attention, for he has nothing else to do in Washington or a state capital or a municipal headquarters but to think up “crises” needing “reform”), and the compulsory nature of such “reform.” Why would politicians bother with “reform” if force were not the key ingredient in the “reform”? There would be no point in their debating “reform” if they did not assume they would have the power to coerce everyone into participating in it. They are not working to extend liberty, but to put fetters on it or to extinguish it altogether. Be warned: Any “compromise” between the Blue Dog Democrats, the Republicans, and the Democrats must by necessity retain the element of coercion, no matter how watered down or conciliatory or “humane” they word the compromise.
Further, the element of coercion or legalized extortion in such legislation should be the main tip-off. Tea Partiers should ask: If the proposed legislation is so efficacious and practical, why, for all the puffery about it being voluntary, would it rely on force? Why would its advocates insist that participation be made mandatory? A secondary tip-off is the fact that those proposing or voting for such legislation notably ensure that they are exempt from all its provisions. Organizers should ask themselves: If this idea is so good, why do Congressmen keep their distance from it? Why do they not want to take part in what they wish to force everyone else to participate in? Is there something so seriously wrong with it that they no more would want to buy it than they would a used car from Richard Nixon?
Yes. There is something wrong with it. The element of force guarantees its impracticality and its character as a moral and economic fraud — just as robbing a bank or a 7-11 is immoral and an impractical way to “make a living.” Waxman, Pelosi, Dodd, Obama, Frank and the rest of the “progressive” crew, all know this. They are not idiots. The only village idiots party to the fraud are those members of the news media who shill for the plan with looks of urgency — an urgency that does not dwell on the insidiously evil aspects of the plan, chief among which are its compulsory provisions.
