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Nightly Ramble Wednesday

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

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  • ANOTHER LEFTIE DOUBLE STANDARD: I doubt if the gate today, we note, with a laugh, the left trying to have it both ways on healthcare. Observe Sam Stein at the Huff and Puff: [2]

    President Barack Obama, in an interview with The Washington Post [3], said on Tuesday that in the two years leading up to his election he “didn’t campaign on the public option” for insurance coverage.

    Could that possibly be true? A plan for government-run insurance has been the focal point of the soon-to-be-concluded health care debate; the catalyst of white-hot partisan warfare; and the provision that progressive and conservatives alike have deemed the arbiter of whether legislation is a success. Is it possible the political world was, by-and-large, confused when they assumed this was what candidate Obama had wanted?

    Not entirely.

    The Obama campaign clearly did incorporate the public option into its health care agenda. The then-candidate signed a statement put together by the pro-reform group Health Care for America Now, which included the provision [4] as part of its principles for reform. On issue forms Obama filled out for several publications he pledged to “create a new public health plan for those currently without coverage.” His campaign arm, Organizing for America, continues to champion [5] a “public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice.” The White House website says that [6]: “The President believes [public health insurance option] will promote competition, hold insurance companies accountable and assure affordable choices. It is completely voluntary.”

    It does, indeed, seem fair to say that a public option for insurance coverage was a component of the Obama health care agenda. But exactly how serious a component was it?

    Of course, Stein is arguing beyond this quote that Obama was not entirely focused on the government healthcare takeover, otherwise known as the “public option”.  This is downright comical. Seems to me, that it wasn’t so very long ago that the left…. Sam Stein among them… was making an awful lot of noise about the original purposes of the Iraq war as proposed and prosecuted by President Bush. Seems to me that the left, again Stein among them, has been for a long time all fired up about the idea of prosecuting President Bush [7] for getting us into war on false pretext.  Does it surprise anyone that Stein is going to lead to the defense of Obama in this case?  More than granted that there are some major differences between a war and a Healthcare plan.  The defense of our country is constitutionally mandated, for example, whereas the health plan currently being cooked up by the Democrats is not.  Also, of the two, the health care plan is by far the more expensive.

  • BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE LEFT WAKES UP TO OBAMA? An interesting article from Matt Welch over at Reason [8] today.  This situation that he describes, seems to me analogous to the excuses that Sam Stein makes above.  Eventually, even likes of Stein are going to figure out that reality has caught up with The Chosen One.  that their neo socialist what dreams are not going to occur on this one’s watch.

    But the Democrat’s strongest supporters had their eyes glued on the twin prize of repudiating George W. Bush and electing the nation’s first black president. Intra-party policy disagreements just weren’t a part of the conversation.

    That began to change with the steady drip of minor disappointments early in the new administration: delaying closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison, writing a brief in support of the odious Defense of Marriage Act, ridiculing questions about legalizing marijuana, promiscuously invoking state secrets privileges, breaking campaign promises about transparency, and so on.

    Meanwhile, with the economy continuing to spit blood, liberals became increasingly aware of—and irritated by—what libertarians could have told them all along: You can’t credibly claim to be cracking down on Wall Street “fat cats” in one breath while in the other shoveling hundreds of billions into their pockets and letting industry insiders write financial policy.

    Just put that one aside for the moment, and observe Welch’s larger point ;

    But let’s also give some credit where it’s due. Conservatives didn’t get around to hating on George W. Bush until after he’d safely been elected to a second term.

    I suppose, that at least in part this could explain Stein’s reluctance to pounce on Mr. Obama.  But one really must wonder how long that reluctance is going to last in the face of the abysmal performance of the emocrats in both houses of Congress and in the executive branch. In all likelihood, Obama is not going to have enough progress of support to get reelected.  He’s already lost to the center.  What will happen to the left in 2010?     Now, as for the idea of shoveling government bailout money at Wall Street while badmouthing Wall Street……

  • CORRUPTION? YOU DON’T SAY…. It turns out that there he is a direct link between the financial bailout and corruption.  So says the university of Michigan.  Daniel Mitchell at the Cato institute [9] explains.
  • LIFE PANEL: Glenn’s comments [10] don’t cut neatly, so given it’;s a short quote I’ll pull the whole thing:

    PALIN: I Told You So. [11] “It didn’t take long for Jim DeMint’s outrage over highly unusual language protecting a care-rationing board to generate a response from Sarah Palin . . . When government rations commodities, it does so with the force of law. Considering the power it would have had in a completely government-run system to make the kind of decisions now left to insurers in a competitive market, people are correct to be worried about how exactly IMAB would bend the cost curve.”

    It’s not a scary “Death Panel” that determines who’s denied medical treatment and dies. It’s a friendly “Life Panel” that determines who gets treatment and lives! Mostly friends of the regime, I’d guess, based on recent history.

    Forgive me the observation, Glenn, but this appears to be completely consistent with everything that democrats have been doing lately.  If he had apparently is being objected to by the electorate, their solution is not to change the plan, but to change the name.  How many deaths, for example, did Nancy Pelosi, propose for the cover takeover, otherwise known as the “public option”?  Somewhere in the neighborhood of a half a dozen, but I lost count there after awhile. And I’m glad to see that you’re starting to catch on to the question about who gets health care and who does not, will invention Lee Intel questions about what political party you belong to.  I can imagine such conversations being held in Berlin 80 years ago.

  • DEBT LIMIT AND HELATHCARE BILL ON THE SAME DAY: Here it comes… bend over, America.  There are a number of reasons I can think of why are you read would be trying to push both these bills through on the same day.  He likely figures this is going to be the lowest resistance point he’s going to find.  And with that Healthcare bill he’s definitely going to need the increased the debt limit.  I’m going to tell you something, though; there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to be looking at who voted and how tomorrow.  They’re going to be remembering it in the next several elections.  Mr. Reid does not have nearly the support he thinks he does in the matter.
  • BYE BYE RAT: The news from nearby Tonawanda New York was not all that good last week.  The last GM L18 big blockrolled off the assembly line in Tonawanda about midweek. which of course means that there’s 150 more people in Buffalo looking for work. I don’t have to tell you that Buffalo is already been hurting, employment wise.  This is not going to help.   I’ve said it before I will say it again; going green costs jobs.  And for what?  Rather makes one wonder where the RV industries going to be getting their engines, from now on.  For that matter, what about the Corvette?
  • BRITTANY MURPHY REDUX: You will doubtless recall the other day that I mentioned that Brittany Murphy had died in their of anorexia, or of drugs.  It appears my call was not far off that of the experts. [12]
  • HAPPY BIRTHDAY: I am advised via feedback that I forgot birthdays recently, Sissy Willis  being among them.  Hope it was a good one, Sissy. And one to my Big Bro Lee, who celebrated one yesterday.

(edit) DL