1994 v 2010

James Taranto opens his Tuesday BOTWT with an insightful comparison of the 1994 and 2010 political environments.

I was especially struck by this Gingrich-Obama parallel:

Speaker Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, had something of an Obama problem: Having run a stunningly successful campaign, he was too full of himself, overambitious and insufficiently disciplined to do his new job well.

Spot on.

Also, the obvious theme:

Some of the Democrats' biggest mistakes of 2010 have been the result of "learning the lessons of 1994." That year, the Dems failed to enact a ruinous and unpopular health-care "reform" package, and they got trounced in midterm elections. Somehow this year they convinced themselves that if they succeeded in enacting a ruinous and unpopular health-care "reform" package, things would turn out differently.

There is a staggering level of cognitive dissonance, and lack of self-awareness, in thinking that there is something wrong with the voters or their understanding of Obamacare.

The problem is the very idea. Americans would prefer to make their own medical and health decisions, not have them imposed by force by an overbearing federal government. That is something that is unlikely to change, given that decades of propaganda gone into selling the idea to multiple generations has failed.

Although I guess trying to make future generations dumber by giving teachers' unions free reign over education policy is a solid back up plan.

Quick hits

Some political quickies:

I’m sorry, I just fail to see how the exposure of a group of major media figures coordinating efforts to suppress news damaging to the Obama campaign and to propagandize in an attempt to get him elected is news. Are people seriously surprised to hear that this was happening? Could anybody have thought it was not?

***

Looks like one Obamacare lie has been exposed pretty quickly:

The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new "high-risk" insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.

It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.

***

How perfect is it that the president of a former civil rights organization which, having become obsolete, devolved into a garden variety hate and grievance group is named…Ben Jealous? It’s downright eponymous.

***

Tom Sowell echoes my feelings on said organization: “[T]hat an organization like the NAACP, after years of fighting against genuine racism, should now be playing the game of race-card fraud is especially painful to see.”

***

More Sowell: “[Voting for Obama thinking that he would be a post-racial president] was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with.”

***

Jack Kelly on Obama’s curious decision to object to al Qaeda because, of all things, racism:

Objecting to al Qaida mainly because its leaders may harbor racial prejudices is kind of like objecting to Hitler mainly because he gave preference to tall blondes with blue eyes.

Al Qaida is objectionable because of the many murders it commits in pursuit of its Islamo-fascist ideology, which is objectionable enough in itself. The president's comments -- and more so those of his aide -- give the impression he'd think better of these terrorists if they had a diversity officer and an affirmative action program.

Barack Obama pledged to be America's first "post-racial" president. But in office, he's been more obsessed with race than any president since Woodrow Wilson, who imposed segregation on the federal government.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment

I can't imagine why anybody, except of course the members of Congress, would not be in favor of this:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

Especially timely since Congress just got through passing an abominable health care law from which they specifically exempted themselves, their families, and their staffs. Which shows you how they really feel about the coming effects of this law.

It ain't about choice

Fascinating quote from Bart Stupak, on the mindset of Democrat leaders with respect to publicly funded abortion in a health care takeover bill:

[Democrat leaders are saying] "If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more."

What is fascinating is that it lays bare the lie that the political movement for abortion is about "a woman's right to choose." In fact, it is about keeping children from being born. Especially, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg put it, the wrong kind of children.

You always feel a little queasy when the curtain is pulled back and you find out that they really feel the way your worst fears conjured.

Some Health Care Summit tweets

Tweets from the health care summit silliness that bear repeating, with some comments:

@Heritage: Want to talk Medicare? Obama's plan raises the Medicare payroll tax and extends it for the first time ever to investment income. [This is an incredibly disastrous, job-killing proposal - GMC]

@Heritage: The truth, Mr. President, is If govt controls both health benefits and pricing, healthcare is private in name only.

@CatoInstitute: Just because you SUBSIDIZE health care premiums does not make the premiums lower.

@Heritage: Obama's plan creates a govt-run market with price controls. That brings shortages and waiting lists.

@Heritage: President Obama isn't mentioning that putting young people in larger pool increases THEIR costs.

@philipaklein: Harkin compares insurance risk pooling to racial segregation!

@kararowland: Sen. Rockefeller: "You have to clip [the insurance companies'] wings every way you can." [What about government's much bigger wings, sir? - GMC]

@Heritage: Deficts: Obama plan costs $1+ trillion over 10 yrs, raises taxes $414 bill = $600 bill deficit [And the real cost looks more like $2.5 trillion - GMC]

@mkhammer: "Most cynical gimmick in the bill...is doc fix. Provision was taken out & it's been going along as stand-alone legislation."

@Heritage: Sen Coburn makes the salient point – benefits must be paid for with current or future taxes

Lots more good stuff, just look in my twitter feed in the politics list for the relevant time period (Feb 25th daytime).

Such a deal

with his characteristic wit, Mark Steyn sums up what the health care bill will mean in practice:

We were told we had to do it because of the however many millions of uninsured, yet this bill will leave some 25 million Americans uninsured. On the other hand, millions of young fit healthy Americans in their first jobs who currently take the entirely reasonable view that they do not require health insurance at this stage in their lives will be forced to pay for coverage they neither want nor need. On the other other hand, those Americans who’ve done the boring responsible grown-up thing and have health plans Harry Reid determines to be excessively “generous” will be subject to punitive taxes up to 40 percent. On the other other other hand, if you’re the member of a union which enjoys privileged relations with Commissar Reid you’ll be exempt from that 40 percent shakedown. On the other other other other hand, if you’re already enjoying government health care, well, you’re 83 years old and, let’s face it, it’s hardly worth us giving you that surgery for the minimal contribution you make to society, so in the cause of extending government health care to millions of people who don’t currently get it we’re going to ration it for those currently entitled to it.

Looking at the millions of Americans it leaves uninsured, and the millions it leaves with worse treatment and reduced access, and the millions it makes pay significantly more for their current health care, one can only marvel at Harry Reid’s genius: government health care turns out to be all government and no health care. Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

That’s why I believe America’s belated embrace of government health care is going to be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one’s philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you’re a cabinet minister or a bigtime hockey player, you’ll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does. But, even before it’s up-and-running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs, and arbitrary shakedowns.

Me? I think he's too optimistic...

Quick hits 12/19

More links and tweets that have caught my eye, with a bit of commentary:

Telling sentence: “The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care.”

Some encouraging medical news.

The green mind at work: Prince Charles used up seven months’ worth of the average British person’s “carbon footprint” yesterday flying to Copenhagen on an executive jet to make a speech on climate change.

Oklahoma City’s Wednesday night shoes

John Stossel: “Someone will ration health care. In America, insurance companies usually do it. In most of the rest of the world, governments do. Costs skyrocket under both systems. Its time we tried the third option: let individuals use their own money to buy health care.”

John Hinderaker: “Don't fall for the pretense that the international ‘green’ movement is about anything other than anti-free enterprise and anti-American ideology.”

Robert Heinlein: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.”

How many people remember that Obama, during his campaign, promised a net spending cut?

There are still 14 days left, but I’m declaring this the photo caption of the year.

And this the bookstore display of the year.

When the directions say “Roll it on over the head” this is NOT what it means.

Climate change: nature’s way.

Tiger and PC in domestic violence

Why does an attempt to transfer the right to make medical decisions from the people to government surprise anybody? Did you expect a Chicago machine politician to show an enthusiasm for civil liberties?

Foreign Object Damage asks: “Does it concern anyone else that anger is the only emotion that President Obama has displayed in public over the last month?” What, did you think he wasn’t really part of the Angry Left?

Thogocracy update: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) wants to imprison a local critic. This idiot exemplifies the police-state mindset.

John Stossel on the matter: “Bullies like Congressman Grayson illustrate the danger of government power; government is the only entity that can legally use force. That makes government a fearsome master. It can use force to take our money, and homes, and our freedom.”

From @Jeff_Jacoby: Ex-soldier finds a gun, turns it into the police, & is promptly arrested for possessing a firearm. Beyond Orwellian.

Happiest state ranking, Texas a disappointing 16th (Austin must be dragging us down).

Ridiculous photo caption editorializing.

Tweets from the wild Mavs-Rockets game I attended:
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Brace yourself: Mavs found pieces from two Landry teeth embedded in gash in Dirk's right elbow
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Landry taken straight to hospital. Mavs needed 30 minutes to clean up Dirk's elbow just to get ready for X-rays.
From @kpelton: This Houston-Dallas game will not go down as a monument to quality NBA officiating.
From @MFollowill: Hearing stories the process of picking the teeth of dirk's elbow was quite gruesome. Didn't know if it was his bone or Landry's teeth. Wow!

Quick hits 12/15

Some short notes, links and thoughts:

John Hinderaker repeats what I have been stressing: “Having the far left in control of both the executive and legislative branches is a terrible thing, but on the plus side, it is clarifying: people actually have to think about where they stand on the big issue of freedom vs. socialism. Or, in other words, freedom vs. slavery.”

John Edwards: not only a sleazebag, but a common criminal.

Some who live on confiscated money hypocritically do not allow their own to be confiscated.

Ann Althouse: “The strategy for avoiding the label ‘death panel’ is: present the treatments as deadly. Voila: life panels! Now, here’s your blue pill.”

Al Gore busted lying...again.

Big Hollywood: “What’s the Difference Between the Mafia and a Hollywood Leftist? …the Mafia doesn’t go after your family.”

Incompetence update: more uninvited guests get to Obama. This is scary, at some point they won’t be quite so friendly if this continues.

Worst restaurant names ever

Calling Obama a socialist seems a bit overheated, but it does hold up to scrutiny; this is a president who has sought to restructure about 35% of the economy from the top down: health care (17% of GDP), energy (9.8%), and financial services (8%). Socialism is a Utopian fantasy of the academic class, and most of his administration is staffed with academics, so this is not exactly a surprising development.

Always remember: If you don't know who the mark is, you are the mark.

How cool is this?

Stem cell fact: Restrictions on embryonic stem cell research originated with Congress, which, each year since in 1996, has forbidden the use of federal financing for any experiment in which a human embryo is destroyed. What, you thought it was George W. Bush?

Charles Krauthammer:

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There’s the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society — as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based — you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn’t lurking in CIA cloak. He’s knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

Gaming the CBO numbers.

It didn’t take long for people to long for the competence of the second Bush administration, did it?

Martin Kramer makes the superb point that there is really no difference between Bush’s infamous “Bring ‘em on” challenge and Obama’s America deprecation in that each is “effectively an open invitation to America’s adversaries, and even its allies, to elude, evade, defy and confront the United States”.

He also correctly notes that “Middle Eastern states bend in response to displays of power, although as soon as they perceive weakness, they snap back to default position.”

Quick hits 12/14

John Stossel on Harry Reid: “Accusing someone of being a racist is typically a last desperate measure when someone has lost an argument.” Undeniably true.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier demonstrates that Reid had it exactly backward: “Those who fight the health care legislation fear being owned. They fear that every personal decision from cradle to grave will be manipulated by a nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington D.C. They fear easily accessible files, not unlike the IRS, where a government employee can know every private piece of information about the citizen’s life. They fear health care decisions made for financial expedience. In short, those who fight against this health care bill, don’t want to be owned by the government...Harry Reid is all about ownership… the government owns and the taxpayer is enslaved.”

I have used the taxation as slavery comparison before myself, and will again.

Why do people fall under the spell of hyped-up scare mongering like global warmism? Don Surber hits the nail on the head: “a lot of it is a need for religion among irreligious people. The idea of man's sins causing punishment by nature is nearly universal in history...From the ancient Greeks - not exactly a primitive people - to the modern Australian aborigines, the tribes of men share in common a desire to connect their behavior to natural phenomenon.”

Epic win indeed!

Jonathan Abrams on the challenge that is the triangle.

Lest you think that it was only Washington driving the (largely government created) housing crisis.

John Hinderaker busts Obama pretending that “the world recognized” driving Saddam out of Kuwait was a just cause. In fact, the American and international left were bitterly opposed to Bush the Elder on this and Senate Democrats voted 45-10 (including the current VP) to block it.

That said, he may not be lying here, as he has proven to be ignorant of (even recent) history on so many occasions. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and call it ignorance.

Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to say that they've seen a ghost and more than twice as likely to believe in astrology. Democrats are also more than twice as likely to have consulted a fortune teller.

Kim Strassel points out that the EPA’s attempt to blackmail Congress into passing some form of Cap and Tax is a boon for the legislators; they can call the bluff and avoid the wrath of the voters and leave the administration to own it.

The AP assigns 11 “fact checkers” to Palin’s book, 5 to Climategate. Remember when it was a straight news organization?

Is the 3D TV screen at the Death Star the dumbest idea ever? Because, you know, you’re there, if you want a 3D image WATCH THE GAME.

The Senate health care bill amendment to limit attorney contingency fees on medical malpractice failed by a 66-32 vote. That is conclusive proof that the pro “reform” side has no interest whatsoever in controlling medical costs. A primary goal of these various bills is to transfer wealth from doctors and patients to trial lawyers, as a political favor.

Classic dumb criminal story

Ed Morrissey: “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.”

Least surprising news ever: “New research by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.”

East Anglia CRU is stepping up their hiding of climate data. These people are as crooked as an old catcher’s fingers.

This is what astroturf looks like

Quick hits 12/10

John Stossel on global warmism: “With millions dying from malnutrition, poor hygiene, and malaria, the world’s poobah’s want to spend trillions on a theoretical problem.”

From @gordonkeith: I can't believe Tiger was betrayed by a reality TV chick. They usually are very private and discreet.

Copenhagen hypocrisy: "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand…We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

The Wall Street Journal on what government can do to help create jobs: “If Congress won't reduce taxes, the best stimulus now would be for Congress to stop scaring private job creators by promising to help them. Just do nothing at all.”

Some may find the Obama/Democrat attempt to reduce charitable giving via taxation to be counterintuitive, they being the supposed party that cares about the downtrodden. But in fact it is perfectly consistent with their vision, which is to advance government as the distributor of goodies. Private charity, seen as good thing to most of us, is seen as a competitor to be crushed by those of the statist mindset.

More from @gordonkeith: I would say that I am the Tiger Woods of sexting, but I guess he is now.

Thomas Sowell: “What does ‘economic justice’ mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?”

Along the same line: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your “fair share” of what someone else has worked for?”

More Sowell: “Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it ‘brings down the cost of medical care.’ You pay $500 a year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved?”

And one more: “Government pressures on mortgage lenders to accept less than the full amount they are owed may win votes for politicians, since there are far more borrowers than lenders. But how much future lending can be expected when the lenders know that politicians are ready to intervene at any time to prevent them from getting their money back?”

James Taranto:
Q: How many climate scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There's a consensus that it's going to change, so they've decided to keep us in the dark.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB10001424052748703499404574557583017194444.html

The (British) NHS Cancer Plan has a cut-off age of 70, meaning half of those diagnosed with cancer are ineligible for treatment. See how government health care works?

Stuff Hipsters Hate

Quick hits 12/8

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

I do have to give Obama credit for his sense of humor, in making light of the stimulus job fudging fiasco by following his ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey pardon with “All told, I believe it’s fair to say that we have saved or created four turkeys.”

AARP *opposes* the McCain amendment to block any Medicare benefit reductions, with the explanation "The legislation does not reduce any guaranteed Medicare benefits." They don’t even pretend to care more about seniors than they do about Democrats anymore, do they?

Not that that should be construed as me disagreeing with Medicare cuts, but I would like to see them as standalone policy, not as part of increasing government’s role in medical care. The growth of government’s role is one of the primary forces that has distorted the market and gotten us into this inflationary spiral.

From @forumbluegold: RE: Artest and Hennessy. I'm very glad all the stupid s&$#% I did at 19 doesn't end up in magazines. (Amen to that!)

Charles Johnson completes his transformation from right wing extremist to raving moonbat. I’m guessing he went from being a Phillies fan to being a Yankees fan this year as well.

Health care bill gives states incentives to drop out of Medicaid.

A roundup of Tiger Woods jokes.

Don’t know the source of this quote, but it’s money: “You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Stimulus math.

Another thing government should not be doing.

House of cards tumbling: Australia ditches cap and trade in Climategate's aftermath

Culture of Corruption update.

Your stimulus dollars at work.

Paying them to lie

John Stossel on politicians and health care:

When you knowingly pay someone to lie to you, we call the deceiver an illusionist or a magician. When you unwittingly pay someone to do the same thing, I call him a politician. [...]

I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible. [...]

To be deficit-reducers, the health care bills depend on a $200 billion cut in Medicare. Current law requires cuts in payments to doctors, but let's get real: Those cuts will never happen. The idea that Congress will "save $200 billion" by reducing payments for groups as influential as doctors and retirees is laughable. Since 2003, Congress has suspended those "required" cuts each year.

Our pandering congressmen rarely cut. They just spend. [...]

Medicare is already $37 trillion in the hole. Yet the Democrats proudly cite Medicare when they demand support for the health care overhaul. If a business pulled the accounting tricks the politicians get away with, the owners would be in prison.

Quick hits 12/1

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

From @mkhammer: Obama rhetoric flashback, March '09: "So, let me be clear...that cause could not be more just."

From @MoRocca via @freeloosedirt: Obama to send 30,002 troops to Afghanistan (congrats, Tareq and Michaele Salahi! This time you're invited.)

Interesting, as it moves the timeline back: @senatus: Harkin: We will deliver a health care bill to Obama before the State of the Union (on MSNBC). (via @wonkroom)

Bacon: the gateway meat

The Next Right: “please explain why the Downing Street memo was definitive proof of a rush to judgment and Climategate isn't.”

Why Tiger’s not talking

Why the need to rig climate “science”? Money, of course.

Government in action.

Yeah, they know

John Hinderaker:

"Democrats' polling must be showing something similar (to the national polls showing major public disapproval of the health care bills). Otherwise, House members wouldn't have competed for permission to vote against it, Senators wouldn't have demanded nine-figure payoffs to vote for it, and Harry Reid wouldn't have held the vote on a Saturday night."

It also explains the urgency in getting a vote before Christmas break, as they know that it will lose votes rapidly as we enter an actual election calendar year. Which is kind of odd, really, the thought that voters will forget what happened in December but not what happens after January 1.

The Ultimate Bureaucrat

Pg. 132: The Pelosi bill creates the Health Choices Administration headed by the Health Choices Commissioner. Among the commissioner's duties (he will be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate): "establishment of qualified health benefits plan standards," "administration of individual affordability credits under subtitle C of title III, including determination of eligibility for such credits," auditing insurance exchange participants to provide "accountability" for meeting his established standards and billing those insurance companies for the audits, collecting unspecified "data," penalizing, suspending payments to, and terminating insurance plans that don't meet exchange standards, establishing " effective and efficient administration of the Health Insurance Exchange," and "development of standards for the definitions of terms used in health insurance coverage, including insurance-related terms."

Yeah, I want an unelected, unaccountable hack to have this kind of power.

Seizing power by force

Jennifer Rubin:

“One would think such an historic and noble action, as the Democrats have styled it, would enjoy robust support from the full spectrum of the House Democratic caucus. But in this case, only those who occupy safe seats (or think they do) can be corralled. If Pelosi gets her 218 votes, it will be unprecedented. It is fair to say that never will a piece of legislation this sweeping (and damaging) have been passed over the opposition of so much of the electorate and on the votes of such a narrow ideological slice of the governing class.”

The contempt for the American people shown by the vote is breathtaking.

Health care according to Robert Reich

From a 2007 speech at Cal-Berkeley that is in the news:

* Younger people should pay more
* Healthier people should pay more
* Older people should just die- they’re “too expensive”
* There should be “less innovation” in medical technology
* You should not expect to live longer than your parents.

Gotta credit him for his honesty.

Patronage in the Baucus Bill

Michael Barone, in a piece on hidden costs in the Baucus health care bill, notes some of its cash transfers from states with less politically powerful senators to states with Senate leaders:

Kimberley Strassel points out that well-placed senators are getting special favors in the bill. Majority Leader Harry Reid gets the feds to pick up Nevada's extra Medicaid spending. Charles Schumer gets many high-cost insurance plans in New York exempted from tax. How long before other members seek similar breaks for their states?

For the bill as a whole

We can reasonably conclude that the Baucus bill -- or whatever similar measure Reid and Schumer concoct -- would vastly and permanently increase public sector spending and impose a crushing burden on the private sector in a weak economy. That burden would be particularly heavy on low earners forced to buy expensive policies or else pay stiff fines, with money they would otherwise receive as wages or salaries.

I don't think anybody seriously disputes (although most supporters will attempt to obscure the point) that any bill will be particularly tough on the middle class and below, as they are the ones least equipped to take on significant increases in their medical costs.

Exposing the con

Kudos to Senator Orrin Hatch for attempting to insert the following amendment to the Senate Finance Committee markup of the Baucus bill:

The purpose of this amendment is simple. If the secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that more than 1 million Americans would lose the current coverage of their choice because of this bill, then this bill would not go into effect.

It seems like a very, very simple but perfect amendment for those of us who have integrity. This amendment is simply trying to safeguard President Obama's pledge to the American people, you'll get -- that you will get to keep what you have.

Not suprisingly, every Democrat on the committee voted "no."

As John at Powerline noted:

One of President Obama's mantras with regard to the Democrats' health care proposal (whatever it turns out to be) is that if you like your present health insurance coverage, you will get to keep it. More recently, when the fraudulent nature of that pledge was revealed, he changed the formula to "the bill won't require you to lose your coverage." That's right; it won't require you to lose your coverage, it will just cause you to lose your coverage.

And, to expand on that theme, it is designed to cause you to lose your coverage and have to rely on government for insurance, as well as cede government the power to make all of the health care decisions that were formerly yours.

Nobody seriously disputes that any of the proposed bills will cause 10's of millions to lose their insurance coverage. The divide now is between those who try to cover up that fact and those who try to expose it.

This is not about health care, never has been. It's about control, a massive transfer of wealth and power from the people to the federal government. People who are dependent on government for survival are easier to control, and their votes are easier to earn since all you have to do is buy them.

This whole debate, like so many others. is about government vs freedom. The people have come down squarely on the side of freedom. The question now is whether the politicians in power will accede to the will of the people, or whether their natural totalitarian instincts will rule the day.

How government works

Another example of what government is all about, and why I'm libertarian:

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that four New Jersey congressmen and its own former commissioner unduly influenced the process that led to its decision last year to approve a patch for injured knees, an approval it is now revisiting.

The agency's scientific reviewers repeatedly and unanimously over many years decided that the device, known as Menaflex and manufactured by ReGen Biologics Inc., was unsafe because the device often failed, forcing patients to get another operation.

But after receiving what an F.D.A. report described as "extreme," "unusual" and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey — Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg and Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Steven R. Rothman — agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December.

All four legislators made their inquiries within a few months of receiving significant campaign contributions from ReGen, which is based in New Jersey, but all said they had acted appropriately and were not influenced by the money.