The Voice of Experience

 

History Lesson for Obama:  The1935 Congressional Debates on the Social Security Act

 

What would you do if you had just pissed off approximately 150 to 180 million people?  Some pretty serious damage control, that's what.  Hence, His Majesty, King Hussein Obama the First will deliver a speech in Iowa this Thursday to kick off the Democratic effort to avoid a crushing loss in this November's Congressional mid-term elections.

 

Who knows what tortured arguments His Majesty and his minions will try to employ in this seemingly impossible task but I think the Congressional debate from Sunday gives us some idea of how they will try to defend this disastrous reform.  More specifically, several Democrats dismissively brushed aside Republican objections to the healthcare monstrosity by noting that opponents of Social Security and Medicare had similarly made predications of doom and gloom and those predications had not come true.  With disgusting smirks on their faces, these sniveling weasels smugly pointed out that the United States did not descend into socialism or communism, as some opponents predicted, because of the enactment of these programs.  This Democratic argument may or may not be true but it's worth noting that this general argument was hardly the only one offered against the enactment of these programs.

 

I realize His Majesty's knowledge of American history is fairly limited but I don't hold this fault against him since I don't know a whole lot about the history of His Majesty's native land of Kenya either.  So before You try to brush off the Republican arguments by lumping them with the rhetoric of the past, I offer the following prescient objections to the enactment of the Social Security Act in 1935, which are as true today as they were nearly 75 years ago.  The complete record of the debate in the House and the Senate can be found at http://www.ssa.gov/history/law.html

 

***

 

On the floor of the Senate on June 17, 1935, Republican Daniel Hastings of Delaware hit the Democrats with one of my favorite tactics, the use of mathematics.  Using projected earnings and actuarial data developed by the committees charged with writing the Social Security Act, Senator Hastings offered a series of illustrations that proved that the initial enrollees in the plan who were older, generally over 50 years of age would receive more money in benefits from Social Security than the money they and their employer had contributed.  So where would the money come from to pay these enrollees?

 

Senator Hastings continued to offer illustrations and proved that younger workers and people who would start working after the enactment of Social Security would end up covering this deficit since they would receive less in benefits than they and their employer had contributed.  Then he took this argument, which he referred to as a discrimination against the young, to another level:

 

Mr. President, I call attention to the discrimination in this bill not so much for the purpose of emphasizing the argument which will be made by those who shall participate in this fund, who pay the taxes, and who are entitled ultimately to some return from it, but I call attention to it for the purpose of emphasizing that, after all, this is a democratic form of government and what we do here may be changed and will be changed upon the demand of people who have been discriminated against. 

 

Senator Hastings wondered what future Congressman would say when their constituents would come to them and point out that they had paid more into the fund than they would probably receive.  He did not see how the future Congress could deny these claims for relief:

 

We will have no defense at all, because he will not have gone into this plan voluntarily.  We will have forced him into this plan. We will have forced him to contribute to the Federal Treasury 3 percent of his salary and will have forced his employer to do likewise.

 

Bear in mind that Senator Hastings is not just talking about a particular individual but a whole class of citizens.  On the floor of the House on April 19, 1935, Republican James Wadsworth Jr. of New York pointed out the power these citizens might weld:

 

Pensions and annuities are never abandoned; nor are they ever reduced. The recipients ever clamor for more.  To gain their ends they organize politically. They may not constitute a majority of the electorate, but their power will be immense.

 

As predicted by Senator Hastings and welding the political power envisioned by Representative Wadsworth, senior citizens used exactly this argument in the early 1970's when they demanded cost of living increases.  They pointed out that they had paid more into the system than they would ever receive so the Congress should be able to enact these automatic raises.  (As a brief aside, when the dummies in the Congress set down the formula to provide these increases they screwed it up and retirees received double the increase in the cost of living.  This mistake pushed the financially unstable Social Security Trust Fund to the brink of insolvency.  It took the government three years to fix the formula.  And tell me again that you want these fools in charge of your healthcare!)

 

***

 

As many Republicans in the current debate on healthcare pointed out, Representative Wadsworth tried to point out that once we started down the road of providing these benefits, there would be no turning back.  Once again, here are his comments from April 19^th:

 

It launches the Federal Government into an immense undertaking which in the aggregate will reach dimensions none of us can really visualize and which in the last analysis, you will admit, affects millions and millions of individuals. Remember, once we pay pensions and supervise annuities, we cannot withdraw from the undertaking no matter how demoralizing and subversive it may become. .

 

Could you imagine the chaos that would ensure if we suddenly stopped paying Social Security benefits today?  Tens of millions of people have planned for their retirements based in part on receiving these benefits.  How many of these people would be reduced to the poverty level?  And consider the people who are currently planning for their retirements, who are in their forties and fifties.  There simply isn't time for these people to increase their retirement savings such that they could replace the income they except to receive from Social Security.  No matter how much damage Social Security inflicts on our fiscal health, we're stuck with it.  It would take decades to unwind the program. 

 

***

 

Representative Wadsworth was the type of Republican modern day liberals would hate.  Born into a wealthy, distinguished family (his grandfather was a General in the Union Army who was killed in action during the Battle of the Wilderness), Wadsworth believed in limited government and individual rights.  While serving in the Senate in 1917 (That's not a misprint.  Wadsworth is one of handful of persons who served in the Senate first and then the House), these beliefs led him to oppose the Eighteenth Amendment and become a vocal opponent of Prohibition, which was not a popular stance in the Republican Party during the 1920's.  Perhaps these beliefs also motivated his arguments against the financing of Social Security on the floor of the House on April 19^th.  Wadsworth's objection was to the investment of the Social Security Trust Fund in government bonds, which is still the practice of the Fund today.

 

Now, that may seem an effective and adequate way to finance the Government's financial activities in all the Years to come. I am trying to look to the future. Heretofore the Government has financed its undertakings primarily and fundamentally as the result of the confidence of the individual citizen in the soundness of the Government's under-taking, but from this point on we are apparently going to abandon that philosophy of public confidence and resort to a very different practice. The Government is to impose a pay-roll tax through one of its agencies, collect the money into the Treasury Department, then the Treasury Department with its left hand on the proceeds of these taxes is to turn around and buy bonds of the United States Government issued by the right hand of the Treasury Department.  Thus the Government of the United States, after this thing gets going, is no longer to be financed directly by its citizens, confident in the soundness of the Government, but it is to be financed instead by arrangements made within the bureaucracy-an undemocratic and dangerous proceeding.

 

Like most people, I've always had a problem with Social Security Trust Fund lending money to the general fund of the government because the only way this general fund can pay back the money to the Trust Fund is to either raise taxes or issue debt to the general public.  In short, my objection is that this method doesn't work because the money isn't invested.  It's just gone.  Wadsworth, however, raises a point that I have never considered.

 

Basically, he's saying that ordinarily, people are free to buy government bonds or not buy government bonds.  If enough people lacked confidence in the operations of the government, which is exactly what is slowly happening in our time, the government wouldn't be able to raise money through selling bonds.  If you adopt this line of reasoning, then all of the money used to finance the government, whether through taxes or the proceeds of bonds, has been provided to the government with the approval of the public, albeit with taxes indirectly having been approved by people through their representatives, who must periodically stand before the public for elections that could be influenced by the tax burden they impose on the public.

 

The money lent by the Social Security Trust Fund to the government, however, doesn't bear this stamp of approval.  The decision to lend the money rests not with the public but instead with unaccountable bureaucrats.  The Congress can spend this money without having to seek its approval, i.e. it doesn't have to raise taxes or sell bonds to the public.  Take a moment and look at the latest financial statements of the Social Security Administration.  http://www.ssa.gov/finance/2009/Financial%20Statements.pdf  On page 92 you'll see that as of September 30, 2009, the Social Security Administration had approximately 2.5 trillion dollars in investments.  Skip ahead to page 102 and you'll find out that these investments consist of bonds issued by the Treasury.  Since our government is already in debt, this means that the federal government, to use Wadsworth's language, has taken 2.5 trillion dollars with the left hand and given it to the right hand to spend as it pleases.  It's also worth noting that this 2.5 trillion dollars exceeds the equity of the fund, called the net position.  Just think of all the earmarks, the pork, and the pet projects our politicians financed over the years with this money without having to raise taxes or seek money in the bond markets at market rates of interest. 

 

***

I'm sure most of the proponents of Social Security dismissed Wadsworth arguments but I don't know how they could have dismissed this argument from Senator Hastings.  On June 17^th, the Senator pointed out that the raiding of the Social Security Trust Fund could happen because... a similar raid had already happened!

 

It must be borne in mind that in order to create this fund there must be annual appropriations by Congress. It is contemplated that those annual appropriations shall be the amount of money collected from the employer and the employee: but does anyone doubt that when the Congress comes to these appropriations there would be manipulations so that the fund would not be accumulated but would he used for current expenses of the Government?

 

Mr. President, we have a fine example of that-very slight, indeed, because of the amount involved-in the case of the civil-service retirement fund. I wonder if Senators realize that, while there is supposed to be something like a billion dollars accumulated in that fund and that the actuaries say there ought to be about a billion dollars accumulated in it, there has been practically nothing accumulated in that fund? I blame no particular person for it; I know when the Government needs money for some purpose the question may readily be asked why should not the Government, when it needs money for other purposes. take out of its till and put in some other place a certain sum of money that is necessary for some retirement fund? There is nothing in the civil-service retirement fund except an I O U.

 

***

 

I agree with all the arguments being offered by conservatives that the new healthcare reform will lead us down the road to a European style socialist state but to be frank, I don't think these arguments are going to work.  Instead, we should focus our arguments, as these two men did years ago, on the specific weaknesses in the law, which are legion.  Under the original Social Security Act, the first payroll deductions were scheduled to start on January 1, 1937, which meant there was only about a year and a half before the passage of the bill and its operation.  We have approximately twice that amount of time to stop this law from taking effect.  We should take advantage of that.  The Democrats seem intent on selling this law to the public.  We should force them to explain it, warts and all.

The Voice of Experience

 

Deem and Fail

 

If King Hussein Obama the First's minions were half as clever at devising solutions to our nation's problems as they were at utilizing arcane legislature procedures, our nation would resemble the biblical land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey.  The latest tactic to thwart the clear will of the American people is known as "Deem and Pass."  I'll try and explain what Deem and Pass is in a moment but if you don't feel like plowing through the minutia of this legislative process, here's a quote from Nancy Pelosi that sums up all you absolutely must know about this latest strategy.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503742.html?hpid=topnews

It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know.  But I like it because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill.

Just stop a moment and let that one sink in for a while.  Even for a complete idiot like Pelosi, this quote is a shocking admission.  Basically, Pelosi is saying that the best way to pass the Senate bill is to use a process that allows Congressmen not to vote on the Senate bill.  At face value, this quote doesn't even make sense.  The perceptive reader, i.e. the non-liberal reader, should be able to deduce that Deem and Pass is actually a way for Congressmen to cover their butts, to deny that they voted for the Senate bill when in fact they did. 

 

So how does that work?  To understand Deem and Pass, we must start in the House Rules Committee, currently chaired by Democratic Congresswomen Louise Slaughter of New York, the author of the Deem and Pass strategy.  You might remember Louise Slaughter from His Majesty's fake attempt to reach out to Republicans last month at the boring health care summit.  She's the buffoon who tried to convince us to pass healthcare reform because one of her constituents was using her dead sister's false teeth.  http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2010/02/louise-slaughter-dead-sisters-teeth.html

 

Over the past year, we've all become familiar with the rules of the Senate such as allowing unlimited debate and the use of the filibuster.  Since the House contains over four times the number of members as the Senate, the use of these rules in the House wouldn't be practical.  To allow 435 windbags to speak forever would effectively grind the legislative process in the House to a halt.  So over the years the House has developed mechanisms to limit debate and guide the legislative process so the House can function.  Hence the creation of the Rules Committee.

 

Every bill that comes to the House floor is considered under a rule that determines such issues as how long the House will debate the bill and what amendments, if any, can be offered.  So for example, when the House considers a bill on education, the Rules Committee might allow two hours of debate.  The chairman and ranking member, the senior member the minority party, of the Education and Labor Committee would each be given an hour to speak on this bill.  In practice, these two Congressman grant blocks of time to members of their party to speak about various aspects of the bill and once the time expires, the House starts the procedure for taking a vote.  So far, this process makes sense.

 

In addition, the rule for this bill might limit the number of amendments that can be proposed on the House floor and the sections of the bill that can be amended.  This idea also makes sense because by the time the bill gets to the floor most amendments have already been considered in committee and/or it's highly unlikely that an amendment would be approved anyway unless a majority of the Congress has already been polled by the party leaders to see if they would vote for it.  It would be a waste of time to propose these amendments only to see them voted down. 

 

Deem and Pass is simply another process that's been developed over the years by the Rules Committee similar to the ones described above to make the legislative process in the House more efficient.  Usually Deem and Pass is used for making technical, non-controversial changes to a bill.  (Before I go any further, I culled this explanation from a number of websites since no one site had a comprehensive one.  Believe it or not, Mother Jones and msnbc actually had the best analysis with The Washington Post getting an honorable mention.)  The Rules Committee adopts a rule that contains the technical changes, i.e. changes the House feels are required, to the bill passed in the Senate.  This rule basically contains two provisions.  The first provision is fairly straightforward.  If the Senate approves the technical changes, there's no need to send the approved changes back to the House because the House has already passed them.  The second provision is the one that is causing all the controversy.  This provision states that the underlying legislation, i.e. the Senate bill, is considered as to be passed by the House even though the vote was technically on the combined package of the bill and its amendments.  In simple English, in most cases, the use of Deem and Pass is the House saying, "We agree this bill should be a law but we feel these minor changes should be made."

 

If I lost you on that explanation, try and hang in there as I flesh out the preceding analysis by describing how Deem and Pass would most likely be applied to the current Senate bill on healthcare destruction.

 

·         Step 1 – The House Rules Committee adopts the rule that contains the changes to the Senate bill along with the provision to consider the Senate bill as if passed by the House in a separate vote.

 

·         Step 2 - The House conducts a roll call vote on the Senate bill under this rule and passes the bill.

 

·         Step 3- The Senate bill, without the changes, has been effectively passed by both Houses of Congress.  This bill goes to His Majesty, King Hussein Obama the First, who affixes the royal seal and the bill is now a law.

 

·         Step 4 – The Senate considers the changes to the bill, which is now law, and attempts to enact those changes using the budget process known as "reconciliation."  If these lunatics ever get this far, I try to explain the reconciliation process in a separate post.  For now, the important point to known is that bills considered under reconciliation can't be filibustered so the Democrats would only need 51 votes.

 

·         Step 5 – The Senate enacts the House changes to their bill and these changes go to His Majesty for his royal seal.  Remember there's no need to send the changes back to the House because they've already approved these changes.

 

·         Step 6 – His Majesty affixes his royal seal to these changes and America starts down the road leading to a socialist utopia, with limited freedoms and reduced opportunity.

 

So why are the Democrats proposing to use such a convoluted process?  Well, if you think about it, there's a number of advantages to using Deem and Pass.

 

ü  If the Senate fails to pass the House changes, any Congressman who voted for the Senate bill under this rule can deny that he voted for only the Senate bill.  He'll cry and whine in front of his angry union supporters, telling them that he only voted for the Senate bill as amended by the House.  He'd tell them to go over to the Senate and ask them why they didn't approve the changes. 

 

ü  Since the Senate bill would become a law, it might be possible to use reconciliation and avoid the threat of a filibuster.

 

ü  As long as the Senate approved the changes exactly as approved by the House, there would be no need for another political ugly vote on healthcare in the House.  The stupid House members who vote for this bill could start on the impossible task of trying to explain their actions to their angry constituents without having to defend another wrong vote.  In essence, it would give them more time to patch up the damage.

 

I'll admit that this is a clever approach, worthy of a Bond villain, but I don't think it will work.  If you really think about it, the main lynchpin of this plan is that the American public consists of a bunch of idiots.

 

ü  If your Congressman tries to pull off the big lie, I voted for it but I didn't vote for it, people will see right through it.  John Kerry tried that one and we all know how that worked out.  People will ask this Congressman why they ran the risk of the Senate not approving their changes. 

 

ü  The whole reason the House wants these changes is that the Senate deleted them from the original bill passed by the House.  What makes them think the Senate will change their minds?  Granted, with reconciliation, fewer votes will be needed but I'm not so sure even fifty votes can be secured for many of these changes. 

 

ü  The only way to avoid another vote in the House is for the Senate to approve the House changes without amendment.  What are the odds of that happening? 

 

And on a more fundamental level, how do His Majesty and his deluded minions explain that the only way to pass healthcare reform was to execute the legislative equivalent of doing the limbo under a flaming bar while walking on a tightrope suspended over a shark tank?  I'm sure they'll try to pin the opposition to their reform on the special interests and partisan bickering but the majority of the American public, who have consistently expressed their opposition to His Majesty's plans, won't buy it.  Unfortunately for His Majesty, the serfs are still a little too smart to buy into this "change."  Maybe after four years as the head of our educational system, His Majesty will have indoctrinated enough serfs to take another stab at this one in twenty years.

The Voice of Experience

 

A False Unity

 

As I watched His Majesty, King Hussein Obama the First, deliver his State of the Union address, I got the feeling that instead of hearing a speech on the problems facing our great nation, I was witnessing a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  My discomfort grew with each pathetic attempt of His Majesty to win back the favor of his assembled minions and the nation's serfs with such bromides as:

 

·         We must answer history's call.

·         We do not give up.

·         I do not accept second place for the United States of America.

·         Let's try common sense.

 

And my personal favorite:

 

·         It's time the American people get a government that matches their decency

 

I would not have been shocked if His Majesty would have finished his speech by reminding everybody to brush their teeth before they went to bed.  Of course, the utility of the advice would have been somewhat limited considering that the majority of the viewing audience was probably already asleep by the time His Majesty mercifully stopped talking.

 

The King's address contained something for everybody.  If you're a fiscal conservative, the King announced a spending freeze.  If you're a wacked out liberal, the King urged the Senate to pass the cap and trade bill.  Do you need a job?  Don't worry.  The King wants a jobs bill, right now.  Concerned about Iran?  The King's on it.  Are you a gay American who wants to be all you can be?  No sweat.  His Majesty will fight to end the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell."  Yes sir, the King's address had something for everybody, even though a number of these policies are contradictory

 

By the end of the King's speech, I was so numb that I could barely get up from my chair.  Responding to it in any coherent fashion would have simply been impossible.  The numerous commentators and reporters who have since pointed out all the distortions, half-truths, and out-right lies in His Majesty's rambling, convoluted speech deserve our sincere thanks for performing this yeoman's task of dissecting his confusing oration.  My purpose today is simply to add the following observation, which as of this writing has not been discussed.

 

Near the beginning of His Majesty's address, the King reached back into our nation's history to provide examples of how American's have met and overcome great challenges. 

 

It's tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable – that American was always destined to succeed.  But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt…These were times that tested the courage of our convictions, and the strength of our union.  And despite all our divisions and disagreements; our hesitations and our fears; America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, and one people.

 

Now I can certainly forgive His Majesty lacking a full understanding of American history.  After all, I don't know a whole lot about the history of His Majesty's native land of Kenya either.  But you don't have to have a doctorate in history to know that it was impossible for our nation to move forward as one nation after Bull Run because the country was split in two at that time and engaged in a civil war.

 

At this point, I'm sure royalist defenders of the King would point out that this observation is mere sophistry.  The King was not referring to the entire country but simply the North or in other words, that part of the country that remained in the union.  But even in that argument, these royalists would be wrong. 

 

From the beginning of the war, Lincoln faced a strong and determined opposition within the North.  He once said that he was more concerned with opposition behind him than the armies that were in front of him.  Lincoln was savagely attacked.  He was called a buffoon, an ape, a butcher.  Probably no American president was ever subjected, been or since, to such virulent and sustained criticism.

 

With each Union defeat, this opposition, known appropriately by the name of Copperheads, grew stronger.  By 1863, this opposition had grown to such strength that riots broke out in New York City, a notorious Copperhead stronghold, over the draft.  By 1864, Lincoln feared that he would lose the presidential election to former Union General George McClellan, a Democrat running on an anti-war platform.  And Lincoln had good reasons to worry. 

 

The Army of Potomac's march to Richmond stalled at Petersburg.  The army's commander, General Grant, suffered disastrous defeats along the way, including the loss of 5,000 men in less than an hour at Cold Harbor.  The Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Lee, was entrenched outside of Petersburg and all of Grant's effort to break through the Southern lines had failed.

 

In the western theater, the Union armies under General Sherman were on the move through northern Georgia but failed to gain a decisive victory.  Lincoln feared that he would be the last president of the United States.

 

Only Sherman's smashing victory in Atlanta in September saved Lincoln from defeat.  He won a clear victory in the Electoral vote but in the popular vote, a substantial percentage of the public voted for his opponent.  Lincoln received about 2.2 million votes.  McClellan received 1.8 million votes.  In other words, about 45% of the country did not pull together as one, did not support Lincoln and the war, and were willing to vote for a man who would have negotiated for peace with the South.

 

By the way, after the Union defeat at Bull Run, Lincoln's response was to call for 500,000 new recruits to serve for up to three years.  And he didn't tell Jefferson Davis that this army was going to fight as hard as possible until 1862 and then quit.  Lincoln's exit strategy was simple:  victory.

 

His Majesty calls for unity but it is a false unity.  Some ideas simply cannot be reconciled.  In the antebellum period, the belief in a strong federal union was incompatible with the belief that the nation was a loose confederation of independent states.  The belief in enslaving human beings could not exist indefinitely side by side with a belief in freedom and equality.  As Lincoln famously said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."  One set of beliefs or the other set had to triumph.

 

We find ourselves in a similar situation today.  His Majesty's continuous draining of the Treasury is incompatible with our belief in fiscal restraint.  His Majesty's belief in socialism and regulation cannot be reconciled with our belief in the power of the free market.  His Majesty's undying confidence in the power of government to solve all of our problems cannot coexist with our belief in allowing the individual to choose their own path in life.  One set of beliefs or the other must ultimately guide our public policy.  With the recent series of defeats the King and his royalist forces have suffered, it's becoming increasing clear that the people prefer our belief in freedom to His Majesty's belief in despotism. 

The Voice of Experience

 

How's that Narcissistic Rage Working for You?

 

The hippy's broken tambourine lies silent on the ground next to a wilted flower.  College professors whisper softly amongst themselves, wondering why the seeds of radicalism they so carefully planted in their students failed to bloom.  The unionist slams his fist against the wall, cursing the wimpy egghead who promised hope and change.  Camelot lies in ruins, a smoldering pile of shattered dreams.

 

So what's next?  Perhaps the answer lies in a fascinating article by Dr. Sam Vaknin entitled, "Barack Obama – Narcissist or Merely Narcissistic?"  http://samvak.tripod.com/obama.html  Dr. Vaknin has studied narcissists extensively since 1996 and in this article, most of which he wrote before His Majesty's coronation, Dr. Vaknin methodically lists the main characteristics of a narcissist and explains how His Majesty possesses them.  Then he discusses the usual life cycle of a narcissistic leader.  I think we're just about here on His Majesty's life cycle:

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc.

When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail - the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression.

On Friday, His Majesty, King Hussein Obama the First, delivered an address to the assembled serfs at a town-hall meeting at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio.  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/01/obamas-jobs-speech-in-ohio-the.html?wprss=44  After the usual lies and distortions, His Majesty tries to explain why his healthcare destruction bill failed.

 

The long process of getting things done runs headlong into the special interests, their armies of lobbyists, and partisan politics aimed at exploiting fears instead of getting things done. And the longer it's taken, the uglier the process has looked.

 

Sound familiar?  This speech marks the beginning of His Majesty's "desperate effort" to explain why the serfs have turned against him.  And in a naked revelation of his narcissistic personality, His Majesty said:

 

But this isn't about me. It's about you. I didn't take up this issue to boost my poll numbers or score political points - believe me, if I were, I would have picked something a lot easier than this.

 

Here's the video from His Majesty's remarks.  http://www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2010/01/22/HP/R/28701/Pres+Obama+discusses+jobs+economy+at+ohio+town+hall.aspx  Skip ahead to the 11 minute mark and watch the change in his personality as he delivers the above remarks..  The King is not happy.  He got beat and he knows it.  His Majesty tries to laugh it off but his wounds lie open for all to see.

 

The assembled sycophants in Ohio might cheer His Majesty but the vast majority of Americans are not fooled.  What will happen when the King realizes He's lost the people?  When will His narcissistic rage explode?

 

Scott Brown's victory represents a tough blow to the liberal hydra.  The Republicans beat His Majesty in one of the most liberal states in the nation.  But Brown's victory only means that we have killed the liberal hydra's most beautiful head.  With the desperation of a wounded animal, she'll turn her ugliest face towards us and unleash all her anger.  The banking industry appears to be the first victim of her rage, threatened with unjustifiable, confiscatory fees.  Don't be surprised if conservative talk radio is the next target, beaten down with the "fairness doctrine" or "localism."

 

Now is not the time to celebrate but to work harder than ever to defeat His Majesty.  We must march forward, buoyed by the knowledge that the King can be beat, but realizing that He's not beaten yet.  His Majesty retains significant power.  The royalist majorities in the Congress are still imposing.  We must dedicate ourselves to defeating the King's minions this November.

 

A Republican victory this November is the only way to stop the King from inflicting more damage to this great nation.  We will have to work for years to fix the damage He's already wrought in just one year.  I can't imagine how much more damage is yet to come this year.  And I shudder to think of the wholesale destruction this man could cause if He has four years of largely unchecked power. 

 

Now is our chance to effect real change and we must boldly seize it.  Never forget these words from President Reagan:

 

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

The Righteous Lib

 

A Bigger Man

 

Until yesterday, I never even thought to question a single decision my man Barack has made since he became President but his appointment of that racist, flat-earther Dubya to lead the relief effort in Haiti is a real head scratcher.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100114/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_former_us_presidents_haiti  Sending Dubya to help the Haitians is like sending Jack Daniels to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting.  Didn't Dubya kill off enough of my brothers and sisters in the City of New Orleans?  Why should we give this incompetent boob a chance to finish off a whole country?

 

At least my initial outrage was tempered by the appointment of former President Clinton as his partner in leading the relief effort.  I'm sure Bill will be the real leader of the relief effort.  Dubya is so stupid that he doesn't even know where Haiti is.  From what I hear, when his racist handlers shook him out of an alcoholic stupor to inform him of his appointment he said, "Hate E?  Who's E and why should I hate him?" 

 

I'm sure the Haitians are thrilled to have Dubya in charge of this effort.  I heard a rumor the Haitian government considered breaking diplomatic relations with the U.S. once they heard about it but that turned out to be untrue.  What actually happened was that the Haitian government filed a formal complaint with the World Court about being forced to work with a war criminal.  Dubya probably won't do anything to help the Haitians anyway.  I'll bet you that he'll spend half his time in Haiti looking for a place to construct Gitmo II.

 

When I first heard about this I was so mad that I broke some guy's surf board and threw some old lady on the ground who got in my way as I ran off.  To cool off, I took a walk down the beach.  As I walked along, I noticed Diamond Head looming in the distance.  I thought about that massive, old volcanic cone.  How it dwarfed all the modern hotels that the rich tourists stay in..  Diamond Head was there long before the hotels and will be there long after they're gone.  And I got to thinking.

 

Most people in Barack's place would have thrown that loser Dubya in jail the first day they took office.  That's what Dubya would have done to him.  You can bet on that.  But Barack's bigger than that.  He's like Diamond Head; strong, silent, majestic, towering over all the racist, flat-earthers like Dubya.  Every day he punishes Dubya by proofing he's the best President we've ever had, a claim that Dubya wouldn't dare make.  Even he knows that he was the worst.  That's why he's drunk all the time.  So instead of slamming the guy like the rest of us would, Barack mercifully gives Dubya another chance, a chance he doesn't deserve, to get something right for once.  And to save his sorry ass from his own incompetence, he teams him up with somebody else who can actually do the job right.

 

After thinking this through, I've learned my lesson.  I'll never doubt my man Barack again.  If he says it's dark in the day and light at night, I'll believe it.  If Barack says dung is nutritious, I'll eat it.  If Barack says CO² is a pollutant, give me a gas mask.  I'll wear it.  And if Barack says he can reform healthcare without ruining the finances of this nation, I'll back every backroom deal and payoff he has to make to get it done.  In short, I'm done thinking.  I'm putting my faith in Barack.

The Voice of Experience

 

An Open Challenge to Liberals

 

Regardless of whether His Majesty, King Hussein Obama the First's healthcare destruction bill passes, you can be sure that liberals everywhere will continue to attack our nation's health insurance companies.  In fact, if this bill passes, those attacks will probably increase in intensity since the King's bill will probably be beneficial to the insurance companies.  As many friends and foes of this bill have already noted, including myself in a previous post, http://delta-man.blogspot.com/2010/01/voice-of-experience.html ,since this bill provides subsidies to purchase insurance for those people who couldn't previously afford it and mandates coverage of those people who have pre-existing conditions which prevent them from purchasing insurance today, our nation's health insurance companies will probably gain millions of new customers.

 

If you're not a wacked-out liberal, you might wonder, what's wrong with our nation's health insurers?  Sure, they can be bureaucratic and filing out their forms can be a pain but are they really that bad.  Most people in this country don't think so.  According to a survey released in 2006 by ABC News, USA Today, and the Kaiser Family Foundation, hardly right-leaning organizations, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their own personal medical care.  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/obama-pushes-national-health-care-americans-happy-coverage/  Besides the obvious good news contained in that statistic, we can also infer that the 11% of unsatisfied Americans represents the upper limit of the hard left in this country.  (For you mathematically challenged liberals out there, 100 percent designates the whole of the population so 100 minus 89 equals 11).

 

So what's the liberals' big problem with our health insurance companies?  Their main arguments are as follows:

 

1.  Health Insurance Companies Refuse to Cover People with Pre-Existing Conditions.

 

Liberals love to use this one.  What could be worse than refusing to help somebody with cancer, or a heart condition, or an incurable disease try to get medical care?  This argument pulls the insurance companies down to the level of Dickens's Scrooge who, when told the poor people were starving, coldly replied:

 

Good.  It will help reduce the excess population.

 

Of course, liberals never offer a reasonable explanation of why the health insurance companies have uniformly adopted this policy.  The usual argument is that these companies are afraid of incurring medical losses or more precisely "medical losses" with the quotation marks added to emphasize the cruelty of this refusal to provide insurance.  Liberals, who can see the good in murders, rapists, and child molesters, only see evil in the actions of the insurers.

 

2.  Health Insurance Companies Try to Deny Coverage To Their Customers.

 

Liberals are notoriously cheap so they really hate this one.  After all, what could be worse?  You pay an outrageous premium for coverage and then when you actually need to use it, the big, mean insurance company drops a huge, unreadable contract in your lap and says, "See, right here in section 156351(e).  You're not entitled to coverage for this procedure."  And unlike the previous argument, liberals have, for them, a perfectly reasonable explanation for this practice.  the health insurers are motivated by profit.

 

To liberals it makes perfect sense that the health insurers would try to deny coverage whenever possible because this practice would increase their profits.  These profits flow through to that other group of evildoers, the company's stockholders.  And to square the liberal circle, this argument only makes sense because everybody knows that the stockholders are only interested in the bottom line.

 

Left unsaid by the liberals is how the health insurance companies could get away with this practice, which runs counter to business practices used in every other industry, and still retain their customers.  Imagine if Ford or Chrysler sold cars that broke after two weeks.  Would anybody buy their cars again?  I guess liberals would.  Treating customers like garbage is usually a characteristic of a monopolistic business, like say, government. 

 

3.  Health Insurance Company Executives Make Too Much Money

 

Most liberals are barely qualified to run a paper route and they certainly couldn't run a Fortune 500 company.  When they see an executive from one of these companies, including the health insurance companies, making tens of millions of dollars, their blood boils.  To liberals, these outrageous salaries are just one more reason that health insurance is so expensive and one more indication of the harsh business practices of these companies.  How could a health insurer on the one hand deny somebody coverage for a medically necessary procedure and then turn around and give some MBA, who is probably a son of privilege, educated in our nation's elite institutions, millions of dollars that they probably don't even need?

 

Once again, left unsaid by liberals is that these high salaries are the norm for the executives of these types of large businesses.  We could argue another day about whether these salaries should be higher or lower, but that argument would not change the current reality of these salaries being at this level.

 

4.  Health Insurance Companies Make Too Much Money.

 

Profit is a dirty word to liberals.  The modern liberal looks at profit as unnecessary, a needless addition to the cost of a product or service.  And in the case of healthcare, profit is akin to extortion.  To liberals, the health insurance companies are cruelly extracting a profit from a public that desperately needs medical care.

 

As you might expect, liberals never offer a suggestion as to what a reasonable profit might be.  Furthermore, liberals never explain why other people with capital haven't been attracted to that high profit and formed a competitor to try to make a similar profit.  Isn't this practice common is our capitalist society?  Why would you invest in industry X when the profits in industry Y are twice as great?

 

In short, for liberals, health insurance is a major problem.  And I say to them:  where some people see problems, others see opportunity.

 

Years ago, the only way to communicate with somebody without talking to them was to send a letter.  Then Samuel Morse perfected the telegraph.  This invention allowed people to communicate over great distances but required the use of Morse's Code, a cryptic system for converting the letters of the alphabet into dots and dashes.  For many people the telegraph was good enough but Alexander Graham Bell thought we could do better.  While still a young man, Bell quit his job and worked solely on inventing a new device for long distance communications:  the telephone.  Generations of Americans, especially teenage girls, could not imagine life without this simple device.

 

From the beginning of time, human affairs were governed by daylight and the absence of daylight.  Men used candles and oil lights to provide some light at night but the light from both were poor.  Most people didn't complain about this lack of light and planed their affairs accordingly.  Thomas Edison thought we could do better.  Using the theories of others, Edison worked tirelessly, trying a thousand different methods, to perfect an incandescent light bulb.  In 1879, Edison successfully tested his invention, which provided light for 40 hours.  Generations of Americans, especially the residents of Las Vegas, could not imagine life without this simple device.

 

I could go on and on but I think you get the point.  Where liberals see a problem, I see a lucrative business opportunity.  Accepting the liberals' arguments, you have an entire industry that:

 

1.      Refuses to sell its service to some customers

2.      Provides bad service

3.      Pays its executives too much

4..      And charges too much in order to generate outrageous profits.

 

If the liberals formed their own health insurance company that didn't deny coverage to people with pre-existing coverage, didn't deny care to people who needed it, paid its executives less money, and charged less for its insurance because they could accept a lower level of profit, that company would attract millions of customers and its liberal backers might get rich to boot.  How could it fail?

 

Of course, the liberals would offer up a million excuses for why they couldn't start such a company.  It would be too hard to start an insurance company they'd say.  But how do they think we got the insurance companies we have today?  Did they fall from the sky?  Of course not.  Somewhere, at some time, somebody had to form these companies.  The evil health insurer CIGNA, for example, traces its roots back to a group of prominent citizens of Philadelphia who formed the Insurance Company of North America in 1792.  If a bunch of racist, white guys can start an insurance company, why can't a group of enlightened liberals do the same thing?

 

Oh, it would cost too much money.  True, nobody claimed it would be cheap, but didn't the late election of the King prove the ability of liberals to raise large sums of money?  Back in 2008, the liberals told us that the King was able to raise so much money because millions of people donated to his campaign.  Supposedly, over two million people gave money to the King's campaign.  If each one of these people would buy, on average, $250 worth of stock, the liberal insurance company could start with a capitalization of half a billion dollars.  Granted, that amount would pale in comparison to the equity of a giant like CIGNA but who knows, maybe a few rich liberals might through in a few extra dollars.  Does the name George Soros ring a bell?

 

So I challenge the liberals to put their money where their mouth is.  I'm not asking for much.  Just start a health insurance company in any state and I'll be satisfied that you actually believe what you say.  After all, health insurance is regulated at the state level so it would only make sense to start the liberal company at that level.  And this conservative approach fits in well with the liberals' well-known policy of prudence and restraint.  I couldn't imagine liberals just jumping into something, spending money like crazy without regard to the consequences.  That would NEVER happen.