But first I’d like to remark on the ham-handed style in which these talking points were written. The class warfare rhetoric here is more reminiscent of a protest placard than any serious discussion of public policy. But, be that as it may, here we go…

1. Everybody in, nobody out. Universal means access to healthcare for everyone, period.

–Well, it certainly sounds nice, doesn’t it? Of course, we already have such a system as it stands now. If you cannot afford your own care, the government already has programs to cover you. So, essentially, everyone is already “in” to one extent or another. Additionally, the devil’s in the details, we all know, and the main question is not one of if everyone is “in” but what does “in” mean? If we all have the worst care possible, but we are all “in” it, that isn’t very reassuring, is it? So simply the having of universal care is no guarantee that such care will be of good quality.

2. Portability. Even if you are unemployed, or lose or change your job, your health coverage goes with you.

–This is certainly a good point. But it is not one that can only be solved by a single payer, socialist healthcare system.

3. Uniform benefits. No Cadillac plans for the wealthy and Pinto plans for everyone else, with high deductibles, limited services, caps on payments for care, and no protection in the event of a catastrophe. One level of comprehensive care no matter what size your wallet.

–Once again, what is that “one level of care”? Is it the worst possible “level”? If you happen to be able to afford a “Cadillac plan” why should anyone tell you that you shouldn’t be allowed to have it? This is still America, right? This is simple-minded class warfare that has no place in a serious discussion of public policy.

4. Prevention. By removing financial roadblocks, a single payer system encourages preventive care that lowers an individual’s ultimate cost and pain and suffering when problems are neglected, and societal cost in the over utilization of emergency rooms or the spread of communicable diseases.

–Of course, the only way to assure the outcome of this talking point is to have government control what it is you do to “prevent” things. When a patient arranges an exercise, or health regime with his doctor he does so with his own interests in mind. He is free to observe or ignore his doctor’s advice, too. But to fulfill this talking point it will be government insisting on your lifestyle. And if you refuse to take heed of that government proclamation you will be punished by having life-saving healthcare removed from you otherwise the government strictures have no teeth and may as well not be made (is paying taxes a mere “suggestion,” for instance?). Is this the sort of power we want to hand over to government?

5. Choice of physician. Most private plans restrict what doctors, other caregivers, or hospital you can use. Under a single payer system, patients have a choice, and the provider is assured a fair reimbursement.

–This is simply a lie. It is seen over and over in other countries where universal, socialist healthcare is the norm, that doctors are trained by and paid by government, their doctors are placed around the country by government, and they are given specialties by government. Therefore, once a single payer system is well underway, there is no “choice of doctors” except that of the ones government offers. Choice is a chimera that doesn’t really exist because government controls how many doctors are in a given area meaning that the “choice” is government’s not the patient’s.

6. Ending insurance industry interference with care. Caregivers and patients regain the autonomy to make decisions on what’s best for a patient’s health, not what’s dictated by the billing department or the bean counters. No denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions or cancellation of policies for “unreported” minor health problems.

–Currently, government already controls what doctors charge in many respects. Medicare and Medicaid only pays about 40% of the fees that doctors charge and many doctors simply stick to the arbitrary fees as set by government now. So those “bean counters” so thoroughly despised in this talking point are often already under the thumb of government price control policies. This talking point misleads people into imagining the whole price issue is currently free of government meddling already. It is not.

7. Reducing administrative waste. One third of every health care dollar in California goes for paperwork, such as denying care, and profits, compared to about 3% under Medicare, a single-payer, universal system.

–This will likely not change much if government took over all healthcare billing. Again, most healthcare billing is conducted using government guidelines already. Further, what government office is anyone aware of where red tape and administrative costs have ever been reduced? How can we merely assume that such will happen with a government run healthcare system?

8. Cost savings. A single payer system would produce the savings needed to cover everyone, largely by using existing resources without the waste. Taiwan, shifting from a U.S. healthcare model, adopted a single-payer system in 1995, boosting health coverage from 57% to 97% with little if any increase in overall healthcare spending.

–I cannot speak to this statistic used. But I can say that if there is any government program that ever saved money or even came close to estimated costs, I’d like to see it. Medicaid and Medicare went billions of dollars over costs and are still outpacing expected spending. Why would this new plan be any different?

9. Common sense budgeting. The public system sets fair reimbursements applied equally to all providers while assuring all comprehensive and appropriate health care is delivered, and uses its clout to negotiate volume discounts for prescription drugs and medical equipment.

–I like that, “uses its clout,” as if those being “negotiated” with have any choice. In truth there is no “negotiation.” There is only government dictation. Additionally, I like the use of the word “fair.” Who says what the government forces on people is “fair”? What is “fair” based on? It sure isn’t based on any market conditions. No, this talking point is just a load of hogwash. And when we look at what government dictation means we realize that it leaves no room for innovation, invention and improvement. There will be no reward to strive for. In the end, new drugs, new procedures, new equipment will simple end up nonexistent. There won’t be any reason for anything new to be worked for because nothing but what government allows will be extent.

10. Public oversight. The public sets the policies and administers the system, not high priced CEOs meeting in secret and making decisions based on what inflates their compensation packages or stock wealth or company profits.

–And this one is the funniest of all. Of course, this talking point is more class warfare disguised as healthcare advice and nothing else. It is all hate and no help. You see, in a free market system, we all, collectively, already have the “public oversight” that the CNA is talking about. We have it by patronizing or withholding our healthcare dollars from doctors and institutions that work well or don’t work well for us. If a hospital or doctor does not fit the needs of patients, they will eventually go out of business and deservedly so. Additionally, if there is one hospital that is being badly served by the decisions of its eeeevil CEO, patients may go to other hospitals instead. We have all sorts of choices in this way.

But imagine a world were the bad CEO is the national government and there is nowhere in the whole country to go to avoid the bad public policies of the nation’s CEO? That is what you’ll get when government controls the whole ball of wax. You’ll get no choices at all. No way to escape the bad polices. No way to use the power of your healthcare dollars to better effect.

And let’s remember one thing, here. What do you hear from every person you know concerning the federal government and our nation’s politicians? Do we hear constant praise about how responsive they are to the voters? Do we hear a gushing love for Washington? No? Or do we rather hear how our politicians are selfish, disinterested, inside traders that are padding their own pockets instead of doing what is best for the people of the United States? And, now think about just who it will be replacing those eeeevil CEOs out there! That’s right, it will be the very politicians in Washington that everyone says are already so badly serving the country. Only now they will be in charge of our health! Do YOU want that?

I sure don’t.

For a time, many thought it might but cracks in the system are already being seen. These cracks are instructive as a lesson on how Obamacare will crash and burn just like Romneycare is now in the process of doing.

One of the early claims that helped push Romneycare through to law was the insistence by its supporters that Emergency Room visits would fall as more and more citizens became covered under healthcare insurance. Since ER care is far more expensive than a doctor’s care, it was thought that more people with insurance would ease the overcrowding of ERs as well as lower the overall costs of healthcare.

However, a flaw in this logic has been seen throughout the state. As more people became insured, more people demanded the care of doctors. These doctors became overloaded with patients and waiting lists for doctors got longer and longer. As a result, ERs in Massachusetts have not seen a downturn in visits. On the contrary, it seems that ER visits are actually on the upswing in the Bay State. In fact, in 2007 they were higher than the national average by 20 percent.

Then there is another problem unaccounted for by the politicians. You see these citizens newly covered were given no reason to worry that the costs at an Emergency Room are higher than just waiting for their doctors to have room on their schedules to see them. So, off to the ER they went. After all, it’s covered!

Additionally, after initial gains in “reducing care barriers and boosting affordability,” the system is showing signs of reverses in areas that were thought to have been “fixed” by Romneycare.

The percentage of non-elderly adults that claimed they were not getting the care they want initially dipped but as of June of 2009 that success has been reversed back to 2007 levels. The reason? Not enough doctors for the increased demand.

The recent uptick in access issues may be due to increased demand for follow-up care from the newly insured that is not being matched by available doctors, according to the article’s authors. Most of those surveyed who reported problems said they were told by physicians they were not accepting new patients or patients with their type of coverage.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are only so many doctors and they are beginning to be so overloaded that they cannot or will not see new patients.

The same report also shows that some gains in affordability have eroded.

And then the recession hit the state’s tax receipts causing the state to reduce its expenditures to its healthcare plan by $100 million. And guess who was hardest hit? The poorest residents, exactly the sort of people that universal healthcare is supposed to help.

And what has the state started doing to “fix” this latest problem? Price controls, a strategy that has never worked every time it has been tried. And they are considering price controls because costs are skyrocketing.

They’re trying to manage the huge costs of the subsidized middle-class insurance program that is gradually swallowing the state budget. The program provides low- or no-cost coverage to about 165,000 residents, or three-fifths of the newly insured, and is budgeted at $880 million for 2010, a 7.3% single-year increase that is likely to be optimistic. The state’s overall costs on health programs have increased by 42% (!) since 2006.

Simply put the politicians never came clean with the people of Massachusetts about the costs of the plan. All sorts of rosy scenarios were drawn and everyone smiled and backslapped to get these unfunded mandates passed. But now reality is setting in and the system is crashing down around them.

This is the fate of Obamacare on the national level.

but what do the people of Massachusetts think of Romneycare? Do they like it? After all, it is they that are forced to foot the bill and they who will elect more politicians to either kill or continue the plan.

According to the Rasmussen polling service, only 26 percent of Bay Staters think Romneycare is a success. Worse, only 10 percent think that their care has improved while a hefty 53 percent say they’ve seen no change in their own healthcare.

Even on a partisan divide, the plan is not very popular. 49 percent of Democrats in Massachusetts aren’t sure if the program is a success. If even partisan party members can’t go for it in a big way that says an awful lot about how bad about this plan.

The universal plan in Massachusetts is an obvious budget busting failure. Obamacare will be worse.

To begin with, it’s shocking that President Obma has nominated for a spot on the Supreme Court a judge whose decisions have been reversed or rejected in five out of the six times her cases appeared before that august body. Additionally and by her own admission, she was admitted to Princeton ahead of other law students as a result of affirmative action despite having lower grades. She once gleefully called herself a “perfect affirmative action baby,” even as her grades were “highly questionable.”

“My test scores were not comparable to that of my colleagues at Princeton or Yale,” Sotomayor once said on a discussion panel during an event sponsored by a non-profit law organization in the 1990s.

(Story from The New York Times on the videos)

All that is bad enough. To be sure, high grades in law school are not in and of themselves any guarantee of an ideal Supreme Court Justice and should not stand as a final qualification at any rate. One must determine a candidate’s judicial mentality in order to find the most important benchmark by which to consider confirmation and it is that mentality that should serve to disqualify Sotomayor immediately. Her judicial philosophy is a far more disqualifying factor in her bid for the highest court of the land than her grades. Her views are racist, simply put. There is no way to construe them otherwise despite what her supporters’ spin may be.

Those most familiar with Sotomayor’s most publicized comment will recognize her infamous 32-word statement.

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Her supporters have said that this quote has been taken out of context and that read in context with the rest of the speech, this single sentence culled from the whole is easily misconstrued. But that is simply not the case. The New York Times helpfully published the entire speech and there is no way, when all is said and done, not to understand that Sotomayor is asserting in a straight forward manner that minorities — “Latinas” in particular — are better judges than white men. She further asserts that white men are less likely to have such experiences that will make them a good judge unless they are fortuitous enough to have reached “moments of enlightenment” that will put them on par with minorities.

Put plainly, she is saying “Latinas” make better judges simply by virtue of being Latinas. That is as perfect an example of racist sentiment as can be imagined.

The whole piece is shocking for its basic assumptions but, aside from the sentence quoted above that everyone is familiar with, the following paragraphs are revealing.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?

The first paragraph taken by itself seems almost sensible. Of course everyone’s experience might tend to interfere in how they perceive things. But taken with the second paragraph, one sees that Sotomayor is saying that only a “Latina’s” experience serves as the best basis for judicial perfection. The most stunning part nestled in this excerpt is when Sotomayor said that white men are less able to judge because of their “experiences” unless, she says, they make some supreme effort toward “enlightenment.”

I quote again from the second paragraph:

For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach.

Her basic premise here is that white men are incapable of being inherently good judges unless they make that effort toward “enlightenment” like “other men… have been able to reach.” Yet, Latinas are simply in the perfect place to judge without having to reach for any such “enlightenment.” They just have it by virtue of being “Latinas” and by the very nature of their “experiences.”

How this cannot be understood as an assumption of racial superiority is beyond me. Maybe I’m just not “enlightened” enough to understand how a bald-faced assumption of racial superiority is not a racist sentiment?

So, this is the person that a President of the United States has proffered to take a seat on the nation’s highest court. A racist with low grades and a sense of entitlement that has been reversed or scolded in five out of the six cases of hers that have appeared before past Supreme Court sessions.

It shouldn’t be so hard to vote no on such a candidate.

Sotomayor’s Cases Before the SCOTUS

• Ricci v. DeStefano 530 F.3d 87 (2008) reversed on a 5-4 vote. Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that ruled to uphold a lower court’s decision in favor of the City of New Haven’s decision to ignore results of an exam for promotions in the fire department. Promotions were denied because no blacks and only one Hispanic passed the test. White and Hispanic firefights fought the ruling.
• Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) – reversed 6-3. Sotomayor, writing for a three-judge panel, ruled that the EPA may not engage in a cost-benefit analysis in implementing a rule that the “best technology available” must be used to limit the environmental impact of power plants on nearby aquatic life. The case involved power plants that draw water from lakes and rivers for cooling purposes, killing various fish and aquatic organisms in the process. Sotomayor ruled that the “best technology” regulation did not allow the EPA to weigh the cost of implementing the technology against the overall environmental benefit when issuing its rules. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor’s ruling in a 6-3 decision, saying that Sotomayor’s interpretation of the “best technology” rule was too narrow.
• Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) – reversed 8-0 In a 2005 ruling. Sotomayor overturned a lower court decision and allowed investors to bring certain types of fraud lawsuits against investment firms in state court rather than in federal court. The lower court had agreed with the defendant Merrill Lynch’s argument that the suits were invalid because the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 required that such suits be brought only in federal court. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned Sotomayor’s ruling, saying that the federal interest in overseeing securities market cases prevails and that doing otherwise could give rise to “wasteful, duplicative litigation.”
• Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) – reversed 5-4. Sotomayor, writing for the court in 2000, supported the right of an individual to sue a private corporation working on behalf of the federal government for alleged violations of that individual’s constitutional rights. Reversing a lower court decision, Sotomayor found that an existing law, known as “Bivens,” which allows suits against individuals working for the federal government for constitutional rights violations, could be applied to the case of a former prisoner seeking to sue the private company operating the federal halfway house facility in which he resided. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor’s ruling, saying that the Bivens law could not be expanded to cover private entities working on behalf of the federal government.
• Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) – reversed 7-2. As a district court judge in 1997, Sotomayor heard a case brought by a group of freelance journalists who asserted that various news organizations, including the New York Times, violated copyright laws by reproducing the freelancers’ work on electronic databases and archives such as “Lexis/Nexis” without first obtaining their permission. Sotomayor ruled against the freelancers and said that publishers were within their rights as outlined by the 1976 Copyright Act. The appellate court reversed Sotomayor’s decision, siding with the freelancers, and the Supreme Court upheld the appellate decision (therefore rejecting Sotomayor’s original ruling).
• Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) – upheld but unanimously rejected the reasoning she adopted In 2006, Sotomayor upheld a lower tax court ruling that certain types of fees paid by a trust are only partly tax deductible. The Supreme Court upheld Sotomayor’s decision but unanimously rejected the reasoning she adopted, saying that her approach “flies in the face of the statutory language.”
• Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136 (2005) affirmed on a 5-4 vote. Sotomayor ruled against a health insurance company that sued the estate of a deceased federal employee who received $157,000 in insurance benefits as the result of an injury. The wife of the federal employee had won $3.2 million in a separate lawsuit from those whom she claimed caused her husband’s injuries. The health insurance company sued for reimbursement of the benefits paid to the federal employee, saying that a provision in the federal insurance plan requires paid benefits to be reimbursed when the beneficiary is compensated for an injury by a third party.

The story penned by Lois Romano comes on the heels of Michelle’s dismissal of her chief of staff, Jackie Norris, who was replaced by 61-year-old Susan Sher. Apparently, this switch is supposed to mark the arrival of the new Michelle Obama, the one that will have “impact” at the “fulcrum of power and policy.” To pursue this new “power” Michelle has hired a full-time speech writer and has told her staff to think “strategically.”

Impact? Power? Strategically? I have but one question: who elected you to this “power,” Michelle? I also have an answer: no one.

What a presumptuous, arrogant woman this wife is! I can’t believe I am going to say this, but here goes… Michelle, if you want legal and legitimate power do it the right way like Hillary Clinton did. Actually get elected to something. Don’t steal it illegitimately like Hillary tried to do when she was First Lady. Go gain what you imagine is your rightful place at the seat of power the proper way. Run for something.

Now, don’t misunderstand me here. I am neither saying that wives are unimportant nor that a first lady should hide her light under a bushel for the entire time she is in the White House. But a first lady, Michelle, does not direct policy, nor serve as an official advisor in government, nor have “deliverables” to promulgate, nor have much of a role with czars and “advisory boards.” That, little lady, is for the actually, legally empowered, officials.

To put it simply, dear, you ain’t no official.

Aside from the arrogance of Michelle’s “vision” of what her “official role” is to be, one is struck with the monumental waste of the taxpayers money this “role” of first lady has become. It has been a money pit for a long time, of course. Mary Lincoln spent a King’s ransom on curtains, china and furniture when she sashayed into the White House in 1860 and all of Washington tsked her for it. Nancy Reagan was tweaked for her expenditures as well, as were many other first ladies of history.

But a close reading of this Washington Post article shows and incredible array of high powered former business execs and whatnot taking spots on the “staff” of First Lady Michelle “the Empress” Obama. And guess what, folks? We are paying for this nonsense.

Worse than the money is the assumption of privilege that this first lady and her high-powerd staffers seem to be accruing to themselves. Look at where these “first lady staffers” are ending up in the White House on a daily basis:

Every morning, Rogers and Sher attend White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s 8:15 staff meeting. Johnston, a newcomer to Obama’s circle but a White House veteran, and Katie McCormick Lelyveld, the first lady’s press secretary, sit in on White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’s daily message meeting. As part of the president’s domestic policy team, Frye meets with its staff weekly. Senior aides David Medina and Trooper Sanders work on national service and international issues, and Norris remains close to the office in her new job at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Chef of staff meetings, press secretary meetings, senior aide meetings, domestic and international policy issues? Why is a first lady staffer in on any such meetings? They have no role to play in these meetings nor does their “boss,” the first lady.

Chillax, honeypie. Read a magazine, watch the kids, and leave the policy to the real officials, will ya?

There is one more tidbit in this story that reveals the angry, unpatriotic, mean-spirited Michelle we became so familiar with during the late campaign.

She also intentionally served a formal dinner to the nation’s governors on mismatched china — 28 years after Nancy Reagan famously complained because nothing matched and proceeded to spend $200,000 on a new set of Lenox.

Wow. What a creep. She went out of her way to cast aspersions on former first lady and wife of one of America’s most beloved presidents? Why? What purpose did this serve other than to be mean spirited? No wonder she was never proud of her country in her adult life. She is too hard hearted to have it in her.

But, it appears that the SEIU is a tad unhappy that so many of its California members would quit to form a new union. And so, in order to stop the rival union’s birth, the SEIU is using what the L.A. Times is snickeringly referring to as “anti-union tactics” to stop the bleeding.

For years, the powerful Service Employees International Union has played a lead role in the campaign for a landmark federal law that would allow workers to join a labor organization simply by signing petitions.

Now, as part of a high-stakes battle in California, the union is urging federal officials to throw out petitions signed by tens of thousands of its own members who have asked to be represented by a rival upstart group.

The irony is rich, isn’t it? Maybe not irony. Maybe just straight out hypocrisy.

The SEIU, it appears, is doing its level best to quash any possibility that hospitals and healthcare outlets that currently operate as SEIU union strongholds in California might be permitted to call a vote on whether members wish to stay with the SEIU or to join the fledgling new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

In fact, according to the LATimes, the SEIU is using the very same argument that many businesses use to disparage unionizing efforts: that the NUHW is “intimidating or misleading workers” during the decertification vote. And the SEIU wants federal officials to stop the attempts at voting on the matter.

SEIU President Andy Stern said his union has a legal responsibility to object to the elections because it believes the leaders of the new group have violated labor laws. He accused them of stalling wage-and-benefit negotiations with employers to keep contracts open and leave the SEIU vulnerable to membership raids.

The irony is not wasted on the members of what might be a new union:

“The SEIU is advocating free choice for every employee in the United States, unless you’re an SEIU member,” said John Borsos, an interim vice president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which says it has enough signatures to represent nearly 100,000 employees. “The only reason the SEIU doesn’t want elections is that they know they would lose.”

What’s the saying? “It all depends upon whose ox is getting gored”?

There is another very amusing thing the SEIU is doing and it smacks of desperation. The SEIU is accusing the new union of being “dominated by employers” because one of the consultants for the NUHW is a fellow named Clint Reilly. It turns out that Mr. Reilly employs some janitors that happen to be members of the SEIU in some commercial real estate he owns.

But check out Mr. Reilly’s pedigree:

Reilly, who once ran for San Francisco mayor and has a decades-long record as a pro-labor Democrat, said he has worked alongside the SEIU in the past. He has managed political campaigns for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both of California. During the 2008 presidential election, Reilly said, he hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton in a building that he also made available to the new union’s leaders, who at the time were still in the SEIU.

This guy is a long-time Union hack, yet the SEIU, the most powerful union in the country, is trying to paint him as an adversarial “employer” to stop its own members from deciding what union they want to belong to? Now THAT is desperation.

So, one might think that the biggest slave to unions that ever set foot in the White House would be intent on getting this settled. Think again. Barack Obama has allowed his National Labor Relations Board to sit on this, to slow things down, to try and run out the clock giving the powerful SEIU all the time it needs to kill the new union movement.

Quid pro quo. The SEIU donated millions to Obama and Obama is helping the union destroy its rival… even if it does mean that another union is the target and even if he is making sure the worker’s voices cannot be heard.

It isn’t about the workers with Big Unions. It isn’t about helping the economy with Barack Obama. It’s about control of the huge pot of dues money. That is the first and last matter and all that Obama and the SEIU is concerned with. And we all know that money is power.

Workers be damned.

That’s unionism.

Think about it. What does “needs fixing” mean? What sort of “change” are we talking about? It means many things to many different people. Some may want only minor changes, most on the left want a socialist system to entirely replace the one we have. Two great extremes that find common agreement that “change” is needed. But the question is nearly meaningless when considering what degree of change is on the table. It’s all a matter of individual perspective.

This is reflected by the polls in a major way because, while everyone seems to agree that “change” is needed, once it comes down to brass tacks, the largest number of Americans shy from pulling the trigger. And that trigger is paying for it through taxes. Oh, sure, everyone says “change” is good in these polls, but when it comes to “ME” paying for it, well, maybe we don’t need that much change after all, respondents say.

Whether she meant to or not, Amy Walter of The National Journal illustrates this point quite well in her June 24 piece headlined “Not in My Health Plan.”

It seems Amy meant to help lawmakers push socialist healthcare on us all as opposed to showing why it might go over like a lead ballon, but whatever her goal, she does show that Americans have been sold a bill of goods with this whole deal.

The fact is, most Americans seem quite happy with their own healthcare but have been lulled into thinking that the whole system is in meltdown and that government needs to rush in to “fix” things anyway. On top of that few Americans want to pay higher taxes to fix the system even if they do think it is broken. The later leads me to believe that more Americans than not realize that government will make matters far worse as opposed to fixing anything because if they were happy to see government rush in to solve problems, they wouldn’t mind paying for it to happen.

For instance, looking over the polls, Walter finds this:

Finally, people are much more satisfied with their own care than they are with the country’s overall. In the Kaiser poll, a majority (52 percent) say that their family would either be worse off or unaffected by any health care reform. Yet 57 percent think that the country would be better off if Congress passed health care reform.

So Americans seem to be saying, “I’m fine and happy, but everyone else is miserable.” This is a logical disconnect that tends to show that most Americans are not in crisis with their medical care but have been fooled into believing that their neighbors are.

It’s from the chicken little media and their leader in the Oval Office trying to scare everyone into imagining we are in a crisis so immediate that lengthy deliberations are “killing” us all.

Walter also found that people are loathe to pay for Obamacare’s exorbitant costs.

But when asked if they’d be willing to pay more in taxes, either on their current health care plan or in general, respondents quickly pull back. Just 33 percent agreed with the idea of taxing health care benefits for those with “generous” plans. The Diageo/Hotline poll found just 26 percent of voters supported a tax on health care plans. And a Kaiser poll reported that only 41 percent of Americans were willing to pay more either in taxes or health care premiums to cover the uninsured.

It makes sense that people don’t want to pay more in taxes for something they already have and are happy with.

Now, there really is no doubt that our healthcare is not running smoothly. But it is not an “emergency” situation. We need not rush to Obamacare without due deliberations and further we should stop all the scaremongering coming out of the White House and the media.

Obama said during the ABC Special on Wednesday night that a way to save healthcare costs is to abandon the sort of care that “evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve” the patient’s health. He went on to say that he had personal familiarity with such a situation when his grandmother broke her hip after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Obama offered a question on the efficacy of further care for his grandmother saying, “and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?”

But who is it that will present the “evidence” that will “show” that further care is futile? Are we to believe that Obama expects individual doctors will make that decision in his bold new government controlled healthcare future? If he is trying to make that claim it is a flat out untruth and he knows it.

Does your homebuilder negotiate with your city hall over whether you get a building permit, or does the permit get levied no matter what? Does a cop decide if you really broke the law, or does he simply arrest you and let the courts hash it out? Does your tax preparer negotiate with the IRS or is he supposed to just calculate your tax bill on their terms and have you pay the required amount?

Government does not work by negotiation. Government does not work from the bottom up. It works from the top down. This singular fact means that no doctor will be deciding if you are too old or infirm to get medical care. It will be a medically untrained bureaucrat that sets a national rule that everyone will have to obey. There won’t be any room for your grandma to have a different outcome than anyone else’s.

So, what will it be then? Who will decide when medical care is just too expensive to bother with? Who will be left to perish because they just aren’t worth the lifesaving effort? Well, for sure it won’t be any members of Congress or anyone that works for the federal government because they won’t be expected to suffer under the nationally socialized plan. It also won’t be Obama’s buddies in the unions who are about to be similarly exempted from the national plan, at least if Senator Max Baucus has his way.

Ah, but we are told that Obama’s ideas on healthcare are “evolving,” dontcha know? During the recent campaign for president (that was only 7 months ago, if you’ll recall) Obama insisted that he would never tax your healthcare benefits from work. He even ridiculed McCain for proposing such a plan. Lately, however, he’s “evolved” toward saying that such a new tax is on the table. What about his stance against fining people and businesses that don’t join his UberPlan? He was against that sort of coerciveness before. Now he’s “evolved.”

Originally, he said it was “healthcare for all,” but as of Wednesday night, it seems he’s “evolved” to say that only those worth the bother should get healthcare. The rest should be left to died and/or suffer. If he does any more “evolving” we’ll all be finding just who is “worth” what as far as he and his Democrats are concerned. Somehow I’d guess that many of you reading this today won’t quite be worth as much as certain others!

Let’s hope none of us are ever in a position to find out if Obamacare deems our grandmothers worth saving.

And what ever happened to the left’s mantra that healthcare is a “right” and that money should never enter into a life or death decision? Now The One is saying it’s just too darn expensive to save the old and infirm? Will our friends on the left now disown Obama the “murderer”?

Unfortunately, one would have to cast aside all ability to think intelligently to be assured by so casual a disclaimer. It most certainly is hyperbole to claim that our current healthcare debate is “just like” slavery but not only does Smith indulge in such hyperbole, he also employs some of the sloppiest arguments I’ve seen with any debate for quite a while. On second thought, there isn’t much by way of “debate” in this thing because Smith just assumes the concept as a matter of fact and goes from there. There is no attempt to plum the logic of the principle at all.

Let’s get to Smith’s send up… er, I mean premise.

The gravity of America’s health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century’s bloody conflict over slavery. This is not hyperbole, though the truth of it is often lost in abstract talk of insurance company profits, treatment costs, and other cold, inhuman analyses.

Today’s health system condemns 50 million Americans to ill health and death while guaranteeing health care to the economic privileged. It cannot stand.

There is no explicit cause and effect between not having healthcare coverage and dying. After all, healthcare insurance is a rather new thing in man’s history. If there was a distinct cause and effect, we’d never have had in past human history any such thing as a 90-year-old person. They’d have been “condemned to die” because of lack of healthcare insurance long before their 90th birthday.

But this is just the sort of sophistry that Smith employs to “prove” his case. It gets steadily worse with each new paragraph.

About 18,000 Americans die each year because they lack health insurance. That’s more than a third the number of lives lost in battle during each year of the four-year Civil War.

“Because” they lack health insurance? And, has there ever been any sensible moral correlation to deaths in war and those that occur in the general living of life? If so, why does the left get more outraged over the small number (comparatively) of 4,000 U.S. combat deaths in Iraq while virtually ignoring the tens of thousands that die every year in car accidents? To be consistent with Smith’s premise, one should expect to see the deaths in Iraq barely mentioned by the American left over a sort of “holocaust of the highways” — to use their sort of rhetoric. And yet?

Smith develops his nonsense still further:

Members of Congress without the moral clarity to recognize this equivalence will be condemned by history. Their spinelessness and lack of will when confronted with the power of the insurance industry is just as morally bankrupt as the American congressmen who bowed to Southern slave-owners.

Wow. So, not having healthcare insurance is exactly the same as being forced into chattel slavery? You’ve really got to be kidding me?

To punch up his spittle-specked claims, Smith throws around some historical references about the things that led up to the Civil War then claims that the current debate is just as “morally compromising” as the Dred Scott decision and the Missouri Compromise.

Sadly, for all his huffing and puffing, Smith does not bother to actually prove his case through an investigation of the actual underlying reasons that slavery and healthcare might be the same. He merely states it as a fact, takes it as a given and moves on to his other partisan yacking points.

For instance, how is slavery “morally equivalent” to not having healthcare insurance? Does a lack of healthcare insurance equate to being forced to the servitude of another? Can one not be healthy without insurance? What rights do the two states have in common? In what way does a lack of healthcare take away the individual’s right of action? What right does not having healthcare insurance deprive you of? Is healthcare a right in the first place? (It isn’t, of course, as I recently discussed.) To one devoting any reasoned thought to the issue by engaging in any deeper look at the differences between not having healthcare insurance and slavery, one must quickly conclude that the two bare no relation one to the other.

Obviously, Smith knew he was headed off the deep end or he wouldn’t have felt compelled to explain to everyone at the outset that he wasn’t heading off the deep end. This is, though, a perfect example of the demonization of the opposition so endemic with the far left. You see if you don’t agree with Smith and his ilk, why, you want to murder people.

No, the sad fact is that all these weighty questions that Smith claims to be discussing are summarily ignored in order to promulgate his blindly partisan assumptions. He simple-mindedly sums his point up this way:

Condemning Americans to premature death and ill health so some can earn profits is the moral equivalent of slavery. Some may find the comparison extreme, others distasteful. But history will record it as a fact.

Ah, and there we have it, right? This whole thing is just another excuse to bash the left’s hated capitalism, just another excuse to claim that capitalism is akin to murder.

But again, is it impossible for a person to have health without health insurance? If so, how did anyone have good health before the days of the health insurance policy? Certainly it is a false dichotomy to claim that without healthcare insurance Americans are “condemned to death.” It is hyperbolic and simple-minded, for sure. But these are the absurd ends these people are driven to in order to excuse a take over of nearly 20% of our economy and to excuse their desires to place our very lives into the hands of uncaring, medically untrained government bureaucrats.

In this debate, there certainly are important questions to ask. The status quo is not serving us all well, and the role of government in addressing the whole issue is an important debate. But this sort of foolish resort to the nonsensical such as that wallowed in by Smith shows that the left is not up to the debate. It is sad, but Smith’s piece is a perfect example of the lack of intellect behind the left’s healthcare debate today.

In the end, the only “slavery” we find in Smith’s piece is his enslavement to the shallow thinking of the far left, his bondage to the left’s healthcare talking points, and his enthrallment to anti-capitalist notions.

During the initial stages of the schedule that Obama was expecting to impose on the healthcare debate, he expected a bill to sign by October. This Fall deadline still appears on the White House policy page in its Briefing Room section where Obama comments are supposedly transcribed for the sake of “transparency.”

But, two sources — The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly and ABC News‘ Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper — are reporting Obama’s verbal statement as positing a December deadline instead.

Here are the relevant sections of the announcement (my bold in both cases)…

WhiteHouse.gov transcript:

“The agreement reached today to lower prescription drug costs for seniors will be an important part of the legislation I expect to sign into law in October. I want to commend House chairmen Henry Waxman, George Miller and Charles Rangel for addressing this issue in the health reform legislation they unveiled this week. This is a tangible example of the type of reform that will lower costs while assuring quality health care for every American.”

Obama’s verbal comments of June 20:

“The agreement reached today to lower prescription drug costs for seniors will be an important part of the legislation I expect to sign into law in December… This is a tangible example of the type of reform that will lower costs while assuring quality health care for every American.”

Now, it might be easy to assume that a single reporter mistakenly used December instead of October when reporting the president’s comments. Yet we have two reporting Obama’s words, not just one. There isn’t any sort of “bias” angle here, there is no way to imply a flavoring of the news by left-wing reporters as might be the case in other areas. This is a simple reporting of the actual words Obama used in his comments. When two such professionals make the exact same “mistake,” well that pretty much makes it a lot less likely that it is a mistake.

Why did Obama say December when his past statements have focused on an October deadline and when the White House transcript also says October? Obama must know that his Obamacare policies are meeting heavy resistance in the Democratic Party as well as the GOP. With the Kennedy Bill being roasted by the CBO and the announcement by Senator Baucus that he was pushing back his timetable, on top off wide criticism from all across the spectrum, it is obvious that Obamacare is seeing a big slow down in the speedy timetable that the president initially set.

So, if we might read some tea leaves here, we very well could be seeing the realization finally hitting President Obama that October was not likely to happen, hence he’s priming the pump for the deadline to be pushed back to December. Likely we’ll soon be hearing the president using his favorite line, “As I have always said…” it will be December that he expects to sign a healthcare bill, not October.

Keep your eyes and ears open folks, because in my humble opinion we are seeing planted the seeds of defeat for Obama’s radical, big government take over of nearly 20% of our nation’s economy.

As to the GOP’s plan, this week we will see Senator Jim DeMint (R, SC) offering his counter plan to Obamacare. The debate will be fairly joined at that time.

She was initially excited about her contribution to that shared sacrifice so urgently hailed by the president, even felt duty bound to observe the president’s exhortation. Soon she broke ground with the help of her children. She even brought some local kids over to her house to help so that the spirit of the effort might spread. It was a picture worth seeing and a message earnestly delivered.

The digging and planting was quite successful, actually. She was gratified that some local media arrived at her picture perfect home and indulged some ooos and ahs about how she was involving the city’s youth and inculcating a concern for our nation among them.

As the rains came and nature plied her hand at the little plot, what always happens came to pass. A few weeds grew here and there and had to be removed, tilling had to be done, fertilizer spread, and when the flowering plants resulted in a needed harvest, picking was sure to be necessary.

But, this upper class gardener had long since lost interest in the little project. She waved her hand dismissively and told her house servants to do all the lowly, manual labor because she was far too busy to grovel in the dirt, you see. Who could expect her to get her delicate hands dirty, anyway?

Besides, there wasn’t time. She had vacations planned, shopping to do, she was on a European tour ready to fulfill, nights on Broadway to indulge, and there were the community meetings, and other things like her children that took up so much of her time. Again, she wondered why did she have servants if they weren’t there to do the boring, lowly sort of work that so disinterested her? Why indeed.

So, the orders went out. The busy mommy went about her jet-set life and her cook and other house servants got on their hands and knees and pulled weeds, tilled the soil, spread the fertilizer, picked the crops, and then brought them into the house to serve the dilettante and her brood.

Soon enough, however, the upper class dabbler thought she’d better show her strata that she hadn’t forgotten her little project. After all, it would be unseemly if people suddenly realized that she had not followed through on her promise to be oh-so-concerned about that shared sacrifice business that was all the rage only a few months ago.

So a party was held. Once again the local kids were trundled out as backdrop to show that this upper class Mom was just like everyone else. As the kiddes gathered, the green-thumbed posh smiled and fed the props the crops. The clicking of the cameras and the ooos and ahs of the press filled her ears. And she was gratified once again, happy to know that her hard work, her constant attention to the nurturing and care of her garden was worth it. After all, what are servants for?

And once again Michelle Obama was proud of herself for her efforts. This was, she satisfactorily felt, the first time in her adult life she could be proud of a garden.