I should explain the whole "Easy Lover" thing.

Most of my friends and co-workers are lefties. Watching them embrace socialism/statism as embodied by Obamacare is a bit like watching a dear friend go out with someone who you know is NOT right for them. You'd like to yell at them, do something: "She's just going to break your heart!!!" But even if you tell them to steer clear, you know that sometimes people have to make their own mistakes.

Those of us who see Obamacare for what it is -- more government encroachment -- will be stuck with the bad choice as well. Kind of like how your friend winds up bringing that evil pscyhobitch along whenever you hang out.

And so the plea:

Easy lover
She'll get a hold on you, believe it
Like no other
Before you know it you'll be on your knees
She's an easy lover
She'll take your heart but you wont feel it
She's like no other
And Im just trying to make you see

Dude! Don't be fooled! You think Obamacare is all sweetness and light -- you think it's true love -- but you will be crushed when it turns on you. And it surely will. Just like the proverbial frog in a pot of gradually heating water, you won't know it until it's too late!

She's the kind of girl you dream of
Dream of keeping hold of
You'd better forget it
You'll never get it
She will play around and leave you
Leave you and deceive you
Better forget it
Oh youll regret it

Utopia is a seductive bitch. You will be betrayed by the attempt to create it. It's like Franklin once said: "If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both." Just. Don't. Go. For. It.

No you'll never change her, so leave her, leave her
Get out quick 'cause seeing is believing
It's the only way
You'll ever know

Dude, trust me. Socialism is no good for you. Drop that bitch before she burns you.

Thus endeth the lesson.

You know, I was missing my favorite crank. Ever since Obama got elected, he's been strangely quiet on all thing political. Yes, even though he styles himself as an "independent" (which I guess means he doesn't consider himself a Trotskyite or a Leninist) a quick glance at his tag cloud reveals oodles:

Sarah Palin and John McCain have been the target of his righteous wrath far more than the guy who actually won the office. (Interestingly, W. is on par with his little puppet friend. Perhaps he's only recently begun tagging his diatribes. He does have special sections devoted to how Bush is a criminal, how he's a criminal, and -- oh yeah -- how he's a criminal.)

Cranky Pants took a break from making 12 second videos of his puppet to level some heavy duty political criticism at ... Sarah Palin. Brave. Very brave:

UNBELIEVABLE.

This is what I’m calling the voices against health care reform.

These people are either the biggest idiots or the biggest liars (with Sarah Palin, it’s very hard to tell).

So, Palin and others are "scared" there will be these government death panels deciding who lives and who dies based on how sick you are.

Point number one is that NO ONE seems to be against health care reform. There is fairly universal agreement that our system needs improvement. What people are against is more government intrusion into our private lives. Now, back when the Patriot Act was being ramrodded through Congress, Cranky Pants whistled a different tune. So did libertarians and small-government conservatives of good conscience, and for precisely the same reason we oppose a statist solution to healthcare reform:

That Government is Best Which Governs Least.

That's what the debate is about: Should we solve this mess with more state or more liberty?

To digress for a moment, I think I'm done with calling the Obama plan "socialism." That's a soft word. Sounds too much like "social," and who doesn't like being social? Now the word "statist" has a completely different connotation.

Now that we've cleared up what the opponents actually oppose, the second point: McCranky calls opponents "either the biggest idiots or the biggest liars." I wonder what he would call a half-cocked ass who jumps to conclusions without bothering to understand the other side's argument? Well, I know McCranky isn't a liar.

I'm not going to explain or defend the "death panel" bit. Politicians use hyperbole all the time. The fact is, the "end of life counselling" provision in the health care reform bill was real, and is being removed due to pressure from the electorate. Here is a fairly moderate editorial on the matter (note to Cranky: This is what a moderate looks like.) It doesn't sound nearly so onerous as Palin and others made it out to be, but why couldn't proponents of the bill answer the charge? Perhaps because they haven't read the damn thing? Or maybe they realize that once a bill is passed into law, it is placed in the hands of bureaucrats whose job it is to interpret and apply it, and that's where the best laid plans of Rep.'s and Sen.'s often go awry.

Cranky goes on to talk about how private insurance companies have in the past decided to deny coverage for life-saving operations. He cites a whopping TWO examples (I would love to see the actual statistics on this) including the tragic story of Nataline Sarkisyan:

Companies have had this power for years now. Salon.com recently did a piece called "The ‘death panels’ are already here." The Salon piece mentions the case of Nataline Sarkisyan, who died in 2007 after insurance company Cigna dragged their feet because they decided a liver transplant wouldn’t save her life (she later died without the transplant).

The family is suing Cigna, as they should. It's a hell of a lot more than Gary Reinbach's family can do. He's a 22 year-old who was denied a liver transplant by the National Health Service.

If TheCrank had a shred of intellectual honesty about this, he would own up to the fact that Uncle Sam has sovereign immunity from lawsuits. They only way you can sue the government is if they let you sue them. And how often does that happen?

He then drops this nugget:

So, the next time you hear someone praise the free market for all things, think about this kind of situation.

Friend, what we have is nothing close to a free market. The free market gave you your fancy little electronic gadgets. The free market went from a personal computer the size of a large toaster oven to one far more powerful that fits in your back pocket over the course of thirty four years. The government has given us Amtrak.

One final note:

If we truly believe all humans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, doesn’t the "right to life" mean we have to make sure everyone can get health care?

In a nutshell, no. It's not a right if you have to compel someone to do it for you. Really think about that. Increased personal liberty means increased personal responsibility, but would you rather live in country where the government can compel you to do things against your will? I mean, more than they can already.

Why So Serious?

Just remember: Socialism is an Easy Lover.

On Calvinball and "Astroturfing"

I've been busy doing other things lately, so I've kind of fallen down on the job. I should be posting pithy observations of and poking holes in the opposition's arguments on health care reform, but I'm sort of in the middle of a couple of big projects. Truth is, I haven't subjected myself to the gauntlet of lefty nonsense that I usually immerse myself in (like a social anthropologist trying to understand a backwards tribe cut off from reality ... I mean "civilization.") But, it seems, the duties we assume in life have a habit of impressing themselves on us even though we may have moved on to other tasks.

Such was the case yesterday. I ran across this wonderful editorial by John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods. Whole Foods has always struck me as a hippy-dippy kind of place, a leftist watering hole. Imagine my shock when I discovered that Mackey is an unapologetic and out-spoken libertarian and free-market capitalist! He even hates unions. I think I can forgive a guy for eating tofu if he's also an acolyte of Milton Friedman. So excited was I by this article, I linked to it on Facebook. (Heh. Facebook. Such is our culture, circa now.)

I posted the link with no editorializing, just a three word indication that I agreed with it. Here's what you need to know about Ronnie Gipper: There's a reason I blog about politics under a nom de plume. The majority of my friends and work associates are lefties. Of that majority, a small vocal minority are rabidly so. I like having friends and working, so I keep my political opinions on "low" in my day-to-day, and crank it up to eleven as Ronnie Gipper. (Even at eleven, I like to think I'm a pretty reasonable guy.)

Moments later, one of these "friends" tore me a new one:

Oh for f*$& sake, you're kidding me, right? Eliminate malpractice insurance? Let the companies decide what to cover or not cover, like those peskily expensive cancer treatments? How is that any different than a "gov't bureaucrat" deciding what you can get for coverage?

He went on and on. And on. In all, he left five lengthy comments before I finally pulled the plug on him. And why did I pull the plug? He accused me of being an astroturfer. This guy has known me for three or four years. We're by no means "close;" we're not so much friends as we are casual acquaintances who know the same people. But I post a link to an editorial in the WSJ and all of a sudden I'm on the take from Big Insurance? C'mon.

I played footsie with his objections to the piece. He started out with a straw man -- "Eliminate malpractice insurance?" -- that to my knowledge has never been suggested by my ideological cohorts, let alone Mr. Mackey. My friend flying off the handle from the word go, I could see where this would devolve to, so I tried to stay on point. That's what you have to do when you debate with these people: Keep them on the damn point. Sure enough, he brought up the war in Iraq and Bush's "crimes" as quickly as possible, attempting to deflect my points and reframe the argument so he could claim the higher ground. Ho-hum.

One of the things I linked to to refute his declaration of the superiority of Canadian and UK healthcare was this short video from the Cato Institute:

The bit about the member of Canadian Parliament who opposed opening up their health care system to include private alternatives, and who wound up going to UCLA for breast cancer treatment is quite instructive. The response of my friend?

"Where to begin? Maybe that Cato is an astroturf front?" And he linked to this article on Think Progress' website.

And so we come to the crux of things here: Dissent is being labeled as "astroturf" in order to discredit it out of hand. You see, you don't have to debate (let alone consider) points of view that are "astroturf." It's the same thing these guys do with the label "racism." Label it, negate it. It's an instant cognitive "out."

I could discredit the Think Progress claim. Their mother organization was founded by George Soros, who has also funded lefty astroturfer groups such as MoveOn.org and A.N.S.W.E.R. But now the debate has been effectively reframed. I'm off point, defending a libertarian think tank that has a nonpartisan track record rather than debating the ins and outs of health care reform.

Is it frustrating that the person who forwards the line "Cato is a front for astroturfers" is taking that line from an astroturf front? You betcha. But it's important to not allow the debate to steer down that rabbit hole.

I will close with a quote from QandO. (I figure if I keep sucking up to them, they may someday add me to their blogroll.) The title of the post is "6 reasons why “reasoned debate” over healthcare isn’t called for right now," written by Billy Hollis. His point #5 is "If we play Calvinball, we lose." The point being that we can't play the game where they change the rules to suit their fancy. That Mark Steyn quote from my last blog entry ... I think I'm going to get it tattooed backwards on my chest so I can be reminded of it every morning as I shave: "Tyranny is always whimsical." Keep that in mind. Here's the quote from Hollis:

We can’t afford to get bogged down in the details of the bill through endless talk-talk. What the protestors intuitively understand is that Congressional Democrats (and a few very foolish Republicans) are playing Calvinball. In fact, they’re world champions at it, and the rest of don’t even know how to play the game.

I dropped a link to a reasonable, thoughtful essay on Facebook, to share with my friends and family. I was almost instantly accused of astroturfing, and aligning myself with a front group for astroturfers. The points Mackey made were ignored in favor of straw man arguments. Calvinball. There can be no debate if the other side is unwilling to listen, let alone debate.

It's enough to make you want to scream.

That Obama/Joker Poster

I was not planning on wading into this.

Andrew Leigh's piece on Big Hollywood nicely sums up the blind, stinking hypocrisy on the left. They've spent the last eight years caterwauling about how "dissent is patriotic," and this whole episode is good fun for a guy who's been looking at posters like this plastered all over Los Angeles for as long:


And we're talking literally plastered all over. It gets to the point where all the vitriol just washes over you; like the intense and constant pain of a toothache, eventually you're numb to it.

So I have been watching the mini-circus over the Obama/Joker poster with some amusement. Comeuppance is a hoot, especially when it's not your own. Then I read this article in the Washington Post, by Philip Kennicott. The title: "Obama as The Joker: Racial Fear's Ugly Face" and the subtitle: "'Political' Poster Turns On Violent Symbolism." A quote:

Comparisons to Shepard Fairey's Obama posters, which rendered the president's face a boldly contrasted palette of red and blue above the blunt message "hope," generally tend to favor Fairey's artistry. The exhausted icon of last year's political campaign, now falling off bumpers and fading on T-shirts, had both a subtlety the current poster lacks and a simplicity that it desperately needs. Fairey's image included a clever visual play on red- and blue-state political values (a windmill rendered in red, a tank and dollar sign sketched in blue), but it required only one step of mental grammar: Obama is hope.

First, Fairey should have scare quotes put around the word "artist" whenever he is called one -- just like sluggers who have been caught doping are tagged with an asterisk in the record books. But that's really immaterial to my purpose here. The thrust of Kennicott's argument is contained in this fawning homage to the work of the "artist" Shepard Fairey, to wit: The Obama/Joker poster lacks both subtlety and simplicity.

It is impossible to deny that the poster has a visceral punch. Contrary to what Kennicott writes a bit later, the purpose of a poster -- particularly a piece of propaganda -- is not to "lead on the viewer and tease us with hints about the unseen hand that has crafted the image." He's confusing posters with paintings. Obama/Joker is an instant litmus test and seems to have two major reactions: irrational hatred expressed as a cry of "Racism!" or a hearty chuckle.

The fact is, the poster packs such a punch because of its simplicity: A mash-up of two images, our President and Heath Ledger's Joker, surrounded by a Time magazine-esque red border, over the word "socialism." The Glasgow smile, the smeared make-up, the hollowed-out eyes -- The Joker is a scary motherfucker. A modern-day bogeyman. It's an over-the-top juxtaposition of Obama as the socialist bogeyman, hence the hearty chuckle.

But this poster has a far darker implications for those on the left, those whose liberal consciences have been run through a ringer over the past six months. They say that this poster is encoded racism, but that's just so much mental gymnastics. They get the message, loud and clear, and must provide psychological cover for the subtle message this poster conveys: In the words of Mark Steyn, "Tyranny is always whimsical."

Look at the facts: Obama has populated his administration with tax cheats and lobbyists. He's reneged on his promise to let five days pass between passage of a bill and signage into law. After decrying pork spending, he signed into law a "stimulus" package full of pork. He's standing by the Iraq withdrawal plan Bush arranged. Gitmo remains a mess. The much criticized practice of issuing Executive signing statements has continued.

Worse: It has become apparent that he's not above using thuggish tactics to get his way: Threatening CEOs with "pitchforks," fishing for "fishy" websites, firing Inspector Generals, etc. In short, he's displaying the sort of tyranny that his election was supposed to end.

McQ over at QandO is fond of quoting the Who classic "Won't Get Fooled Again" whenever he comments on the blatant duplicity of President Obama and his administration. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Obama was supposed to be The One. Instead, he turns out to be very much like any other politician. In this way, he is a bogeyman for the left, much more so than for the right. They believed in him. Little by little, that belief is eroding, and the true face behind the mask is peeking out. The stark mash-up of Obama/Joker rips the mask off and says "Here's the bogeyman. The guy you voted for. And remember how you laughed off the "socialism" charge? Who's laughing now?" The cry of "racism" is a weak cover, an attempt to justify the bile that rises.

One last thing about this poster, regarding the seeming disconnect between the word "socialism" and the image of Obama/Joker. The Joker, if anything, was an anarchist. At least, that's the conventional wisdom on the matter. But the Joker was also a social engineer. Throughout The Dark Knight he plays little games with people, conducts social experiments. "Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order," he says, "and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos? It's fair." This is not all that far afield from Rahm Emanuel's statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." So the Joker creates situations that lead to chaos, which leads to (what he considers) a leveling of the playing field. Remind me: What is Obama doing with health care reform?

Stupid ... Like a Fox?

A screen capture from today's Drudge Report:

"Let the Cuts Begin" links to an LA Times article.

Here's an excerpt:

"If the governor thought that the initiatives were going to win a smashing victory, he'd be in California right now," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).

And this, the paragraph that led off the article:

Reporting from Sacramento -- The "big five" elected leaders -- Schwarzenegger and the legislative chieftains from both houses -- are slated to begin closed-door meetings today upon the governor's return from Washington, where he spent election day after casting a last-minute absentee ballot.

Hmm. The Governor knew that his props were going down, and closed-door meetings have been scheduled for the morning after.

Bear with me a moment. Let's say you need to tighten the old belt, but your wife spends her afternoons and weekends at the mall. (Or conversely, your husband spends his afternoons and weekends buying new toys for the deer woods.) If you approach it head on, you're bound to have a fight. BUT -- let's say you give your spouse this option: "We're in the hole. So I guess that means we'll have to borrow more money, rob Peter to pay Paul, and generally avoid responsibility altogether." You do this in a transparently stupid way (the props were obviously titled in a misleading way) and sit back as your spouse protests the lack of responsibility on your part. You take a little drumming, but emerge in a position to insist on cuts of household expenditures.

In other words, you've manufactured a mandate.

This isn't possible ... is it? Is the Governator stupid ... like a fox?

Oh, Camille Paglia. You amuse me to no end:

"How have we come to this pass in America where the assassination of top government officials is fodder for snide jokes on national radio?"

Let's see ... Air America was founded in March of 2004. I believe Randi Rhodes compared G.W. Bush to Fredo Corleone in Godfather II a couple of months later, saying, "Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw."

I know this because I listened to Air America when it premiered. Yeah, me. A guy whose nom de plume is an homage to the Grandaddy of modern conservatism. I also take in "Democracy Now" and KPFK on occassion. (Mostly during the pledge drives. Boy howdy, does it get nutty during the pledge drives.) It's been a while since I picked up a copy of Change Links, but I've been known to read that with the same sort of zeal as an avowed athiest who collects Jack Chick tracts.

Take note, friends. Most conservatives I know are willing to hear what the other side has to say. We may come to the table with a priori conclucions about the value of their political philosophy, but we're at least willing to humor dissent. Don't believe me? How often over the course of Chimpy's -- I mean Bush's -- presidency did he take Air America to task? Michael Moore? The Dixie Chicks?

The first week of Obama's presidency, he name checked Rush Limbaugh at a meeting with Republicans. How did that go again? Oh yes: "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

Anyway. After eight years of nonstop "Chimpy McBushitler" one would think lefties like Paglia would have a better sense of humor about dissent towards their "Dumbo McObamastalin," et al. Heck, most of them still have "Dissent is Patriot" bumper stickers on the backs of their hybrids. Right next to their "End This War" stickers (do those things come standard?)

Having said all that, Mark Davis is an idiot.