So, one of my liberal friends says to me, “Isn’t it funny that when people are asked about Obamacare, they almost all oppose it. But when you ask them about the individual provisions contained in the bill, they overwhelmingly approve. Why do you think that is?” This is accompanied by a smirk that says, “I just can’t imagine” with heavy sarcasm.
A liberal woman I know says to me, “Can you believe Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, wagging her finger at a black man like that?”
Just some examples of the ever present racism charge that seems to follow our president and his supporters. It’s always just off to the left, waiting for an opportunity to nudge its way into the conversation. I am starting to imagine it as a person who follows BHO supporters around. He’s in the background so you might not notice him right away. He looks harmless enough, even shy. In my imagination, he is Jon Lovitz. You get the feeling that he really doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t want to talk to anybody either. He just stands there looking at the floor and pretending to not be listening. But listening he is. As you stand in a small circle conversing, somebody brings up the name “Obama” in a less than flattering tone.
Suddenly, he is in the circle. He’s not saying anything yet. He’s just making little attention getting noises, like clearing his throat, or grunting Tourette’s-like. Nobody stops talking, but they are watching him out of the corner of their eyes. Then one of them crosses the line. He says something downright critical of the president or his policies. In a soft, barely perceptible voice he mutters, “Oh, I didn’t know you hated black people.” Whatever happens next, I promise you, it is not a discussion of the president or the policy that was criticized. Mission accomplished.
I sometimes wonder if Democrats planned this all along. Is this why BHO came out of nowhere (well, Iowa is pretty close to nowhere) and upset the Hillary juggernaut? Did Dems know back then that they could stop opponents cold with one word? Well if they didn't know it then, they sure do now. Who are the people who oppose Obamacare? Racists. Who are those "tea party types?" Racists. Who is citing the Attorney General for comtempt of congress? Racists, of course. Four years ago I wrote that a lot of people who had voted for BHO were going to be disappointed. I thought the main source of this disappointment would be with those who voted for BHO in order to prove they weren't racist. But I didn't consider the disappointment from those of us who didn't vote for him. I didn't vote for him, but I did think that once he was elected, the racism charges would subside, not swell. I really think the man has made race relations worse. In fact, everytime race is the subject (think Louis Gates or Trayvon Martin,) he absolutely steps in it.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Pre Existing Conditions
I hate the cliche, but when it comes to health insurance and how Democrats veiw it, there is a real "disconnect."
Lately, there has been a lot of emphasis on the aspect of Obamacare that would prohibit insurance companies from charging higher rates, or denying coverage to an applicant who has a pre-existing medical condition. Of course this has been the practice for years, and according to my concept of insurance, a perfectly reasonable and sane business practice. If insurance companies allowed you to get covered after you get sick, then nobody would ever buy insurance until they were sick. Now everybody understands that would not work for insurance companies economically. They would only get premiums from people who were simultaneously making much larger claims than the amount they are paying in. They would have a permanent and fixed, negative cash flow.
Again, everybody understands how this works and why it must be this way, even liberals! But in their never ending quest to feel better about themselves and what they are doing for (to) the world, liberals cannot see how this plays out. Well allow me to point them in the general direction.
Liberals think that the mandate is what allows them to dictate the rules. If everybody has to buy insurance, they reason, then nobody can wait until they are sick before getting coverage. So now they think they've gotten around all the consequences, right? But when insurance companies got to exclude coverage based on a pre-exuisting condition, then they also got to dodge paying for that illness going forward. Now they can't. So how's that going to work? Well let's see, where do insurance companies get their money? Premiums, of course, but you've just made it illegal to charge the sick guy more, what are you going to do? Oh, I see, just charge eveybody more, what could be simpler?
Lately, there has been a lot of emphasis on the aspect of Obamacare that would prohibit insurance companies from charging higher rates, or denying coverage to an applicant who has a pre-existing medical condition. Of course this has been the practice for years, and according to my concept of insurance, a perfectly reasonable and sane business practice. If insurance companies allowed you to get covered after you get sick, then nobody would ever buy insurance until they were sick. Now everybody understands that would not work for insurance companies economically. They would only get premiums from people who were simultaneously making much larger claims than the amount they are paying in. They would have a permanent and fixed, negative cash flow.
Again, everybody understands how this works and why it must be this way, even liberals! But in their never ending quest to feel better about themselves and what they are doing for (to) the world, liberals cannot see how this plays out. Well allow me to point them in the general direction.
Liberals think that the mandate is what allows them to dictate the rules. If everybody has to buy insurance, they reason, then nobody can wait until they are sick before getting coverage. So now they think they've gotten around all the consequences, right? But when insurance companies got to exclude coverage based on a pre-exuisting condition, then they also got to dodge paying for that illness going forward. Now they can't. So how's that going to work? Well let's see, where do insurance companies get their money? Premiums, of course, but you've just made it illegal to charge the sick guy more, what are you going to do? Oh, I see, just charge eveybody more, what could be simpler?
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Little White Lies
I'm wondering how it would have gone for George W. Bush had a bunch of friendly reporter types revealed that he had embellished some facts and made others up out of whole cloth, in writing his autobiography.
You may not have heard, but respected author David Mariness, has written a book about Barrack Obama and revealed just such liberties with the truth. There are no dead bodies or juicy scandals to see, just little white lies that were designed to boost BHO's image. I mean these are REALLY little ones, about the most inconsequential details. But that is what makes them so telling. One example is a story where BHO says he was racially ostracized along with another black student. Only the student in question was half Japanese, not black, and neither of them were harassed racially. And he told of a "big fight" he had with a white girlfriend over racial attitudes, after she had seen a play with racial themes. Except that she never saw the play and they never had the fight. Then there was the high school basketball coach who didn't start Obama because he, Obama, played "black." Ok, this one made me laugh. Have you ever seen BHO on the basketball court? If there was only one word to describe his game, that word would be "white." He's not the worst player I've ever seen, but he'll never be confused with Jason Williams (aka, White Chocolate, and a guy who really does play "black.)
But notice the pattern. He's just trying to certify his street cred with the homeys that he never hung out with. All the lies are about how he had an authentic "black" experience growing up in a white world. After all, he had to explain how he got into Columbia and Harvard, and it just won't do to suggest that it was because of how white he acted and spoke.
But back to my first thought. How would the press have treated it had we learned that George W. Bush had fabricated a story about how he had done something admirable? Say he claimed to have saved the life of a drowning fellow Boy Scout, but then we learn that he was never in the Boy Scouts. I have a feeling it would be deemed the final arbiter on the issue of the content of his character, don't you?
You may not have heard, but respected author David Mariness, has written a book about Barrack Obama and revealed just such liberties with the truth. There are no dead bodies or juicy scandals to see, just little white lies that were designed to boost BHO's image. I mean these are REALLY little ones, about the most inconsequential details. But that is what makes them so telling. One example is a story where BHO says he was racially ostracized along with another black student. Only the student in question was half Japanese, not black, and neither of them were harassed racially. And he told of a "big fight" he had with a white girlfriend over racial attitudes, after she had seen a play with racial themes. Except that she never saw the play and they never had the fight. Then there was the high school basketball coach who didn't start Obama because he, Obama, played "black." Ok, this one made me laugh. Have you ever seen BHO on the basketball court? If there was only one word to describe his game, that word would be "white." He's not the worst player I've ever seen, but he'll never be confused with Jason Williams (aka, White Chocolate, and a guy who really does play "black.)
But notice the pattern. He's just trying to certify his street cred with the homeys that he never hung out with. All the lies are about how he had an authentic "black" experience growing up in a white world. After all, he had to explain how he got into Columbia and Harvard, and it just won't do to suggest that it was because of how white he acted and spoke.
But back to my first thought. How would the press have treated it had we learned that George W. Bush had fabricated a story about how he had done something admirable? Say he claimed to have saved the life of a drowning fellow Boy Scout, but then we learn that he was never in the Boy Scouts. I have a feeling it would be deemed the final arbiter on the issue of the content of his character, don't you?
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Breaking News
This just in. Filmmaker Spike Lee has announced that should President Barack Obama not win a second term this year, it just might not be entirely due to racism.
It has only recently ocurred to Lee that people may have other reasons to vote against Mr. Obama other than his well established lead in melanin. "People are hurting," the film director pointed out. "They don't have jobs and I don't care what color you are, when you can't find a job, that's a problem." Mr. Lee said that other than the unemployed though, all those opposing the first African-American president are surely racists.
It has only recently ocurred to Lee that people may have other reasons to vote against Mr. Obama other than his well established lead in melanin. "People are hurting," the film director pointed out. "They don't have jobs and I don't care what color you are, when you can't find a job, that's a problem." Mr. Lee said that other than the unemployed though, all those opposing the first African-American president are surely racists.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Hoover Damned
Recently, a lot of liberal bloggers and pundits have been reviewing lists composed by various historians and "experts" of the best and worst presidents in United States history. They are all truly nonsense. Some will try and add an air of scholarship to it by measuring something nonpartisan like "leadership" or "effectiveness in implementing their agenda." But that's just a smoke screen. The score is what matters and every measure is of something that is completely subjective to the writer. You might find one you like, but if you dig, you'll likely just find that it was composed by someone with whom you happen to agree politically.
But there are some constants even between lists made on the right and the left. One is that Richard Nixon will rank near the bottom and another is that FDR and Ronald Reagan will rank near the top. But the guy who always gets the short end of the stick is Herbert Hoover. The All In The Family theme song had a line that went, "Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again." Of course the line was sung by the redneck bigot Archie Bunker while also praising his old LaSalle, just in case you didn't realize how out of touch he was. A while back I was having a political debate by email, and sent the guy a link to a column by Thomas Sowell, a man I consider to be nothing less than brilliant. The liberal responded by ignoring the content of the column and just pointed out that Sowell was employed at the Hoover Institute. "You remember Hoover don't you?" It was as if that was response enough. Apparently being at the helm of the ship of state when the stock market crashed is unforgivable and negates anything else you might have done.
Ok, Hoover did make some missteps in trying to jump start the economy. The biggest one was that he tried to jump start the economy. He thought government intervention would be a good thing, but he wasn't able to turn things around in time to save his job. Government spending did not stimulate much of anything through 1931 and '32 and by then he was out of office. I guess it wouldn't bother me so much that Hoover gets the blame for putting us into a prolonged depression, if it weren't for the fact that FDR seems to get all the credit for lifting us out of it. The fact is that FDR came in and tried the exact same failed strategy as Hoover. Moreover, he stubbornly stuck with those interventionist policies for his entire presidency, 13 years. During that span, he managed to drive unemployment up to twice what it had been under Hoover. And he kept it in double digits for a decade, until World War Two bailed us out. Amazingly, he kept getting re-elected as he made things worse and worse. I have to believe that had Hoover been re-elected to three more terms that he would have, at some point, realized that it wasn't working and changed course. Not FDR. He kept at it until he died and yet somehow came away smelling like a rose. Hoover is banished to the dust bin of history for implementing bad economic remedies for a two year period and not getting results. FDR implements the same policies for 13 years, makes things far worse, and ends up on top of the historians all-time greatest list.
But there are some constants even between lists made on the right and the left. One is that Richard Nixon will rank near the bottom and another is that FDR and Ronald Reagan will rank near the top. But the guy who always gets the short end of the stick is Herbert Hoover. The All In The Family theme song had a line that went, "Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again." Of course the line was sung by the redneck bigot Archie Bunker while also praising his old LaSalle, just in case you didn't realize how out of touch he was. A while back I was having a political debate by email, and sent the guy a link to a column by Thomas Sowell, a man I consider to be nothing less than brilliant. The liberal responded by ignoring the content of the column and just pointed out that Sowell was employed at the Hoover Institute. "You remember Hoover don't you?" It was as if that was response enough. Apparently being at the helm of the ship of state when the stock market crashed is unforgivable and negates anything else you might have done.
Ok, Hoover did make some missteps in trying to jump start the economy. The biggest one was that he tried to jump start the economy. He thought government intervention would be a good thing, but he wasn't able to turn things around in time to save his job. Government spending did not stimulate much of anything through 1931 and '32 and by then he was out of office. I guess it wouldn't bother me so much that Hoover gets the blame for putting us into a prolonged depression, if it weren't for the fact that FDR seems to get all the credit for lifting us out of it. The fact is that FDR came in and tried the exact same failed strategy as Hoover. Moreover, he stubbornly stuck with those interventionist policies for his entire presidency, 13 years. During that span, he managed to drive unemployment up to twice what it had been under Hoover. And he kept it in double digits for a decade, until World War Two bailed us out. Amazingly, he kept getting re-elected as he made things worse and worse. I have to believe that had Hoover been re-elected to three more terms that he would have, at some point, realized that it wasn't working and changed course. Not FDR. He kept at it until he died and yet somehow came away smelling like a rose. Hoover is banished to the dust bin of history for implementing bad economic remedies for a two year period and not getting results. FDR implements the same policies for 13 years, makes things far worse, and ends up on top of the historians all-time greatest list.
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