What’s Wrong with the World

I'm not sure. I think it can be repealed.

Two other scenarios remain. 1) the bill never goes back to the senate and Obama signs the bill the House approved.

2) the reconciliation bill goes to the senate and fails.

Stupak was a dyed in the wool socialist democrat. That we placed any hope or faith in him standing for life was a mighty slim reed. These democrat love power and control of other people's lives and money more than anything else.

God help us. May the People wake up.

Oh, the bill is unconstitutional and we may also need to lead millions to refuse to buy or pay for the insurance we are mandated to buy.

MB: well, the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church tells me that despair is a sin, so I guess I'll set aside, for the moment, the advice of the Greeks who taught that hope is the greatest of all evils.

I'll allow myself to hope that the bill can be repealed, or declared unconstitutional.

But I hope without confidence.

"These democrats love power and control over other people's lives and money more than anything else."

Ain't it the truth?

So what's next?

Amnesty?

Cap & Trade?

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

"What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women", Conan (the barbarian).

Pretty arrogant assuming that your prayers should count for more than those who were praying for passage (maybe Someone is telling you, you are on the wrong side).

You also seem to underestimate the amount of work it took to put some spine in the Democrat's backs. After a couple or three decades of being cowed by the right, it is way past time that the good guys decided to fight back.

You may be interested; David Frum twittered, "if HCR prevails, Republicans need an accountability moment. Jim DeMint/ Rush / Beck etc. [l]ed us to Waterloo all right . Ours."

"We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or - more exactly - with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?"

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

"...the transformation of America into the Custodial State of their dreams."

Steve, it's nonsense like this that led to what is likely to be a generational defeat for Republicans and conservatives (yea!). What will happen now is that there will be all sorts of serious articles explaining what is actually in the bill (advice columns, etc.). Except for the dead-enders who are hopeless anyway, all of the folks your side managed to scare and confuse with the lies and distortions will come to see the truth about all the good things this bill does for them or folks they know and likely not trust anything that comes from the right for quite a while.

On a happier note the gavel that Speaker Pelosi uses tonight is the same one that Con. John Dingell used back in 1965 when the Medicare bill passed. He has introduced a health care bill every session since 1957. His father served before him and introduced a similar bill in 1943. The bill isn't perfect but moves the ball forward.

That's right Al - once the bill passes and middle class America logs onto Huffington Post and reads some pro-Health care editorials, all the opposition to Big Government will melt away into your child-like enthusiasm about the great plans our leaders have for us.

Step2, al:

Thanks for linking to David Frum's piece. It's an absolute must-read for anybody who still mistakes him for anything other than what he really is.

You can say that again, Steve. About Frum.

You may be interested; David Frum twittered, "if HCR prevails, Republicans need an accountability moment. Jim DeMint/ Rush / Beck etc. [l]ed us to Waterloo all right . Ours."

What arrant stupidity. David Frum is stupid for saying it.

Al, whatever good things are in the idea of health care reform (some, I will allow), there is simply no excuse whatsoever for THIS bill, and the way it tramples on individual liberties, and stomps into the mud the principle of subsidiarity. Any Republican effort to "compromise" that left the primary features in place would have ended up, in the long run, being WORSE than simply failing to defeat the bill. They would have given aid and comfort to the idea that principles and freedoms are only worthwhile insofar as we can trade them for short-term comfort and then widespread (but equal) misery while accepting that government ought to rule any part of life that some technocrat thinks he can do a better job of ruling. Even Esau's bargain wasn't any worse than that. And President Obama's summit made absolutely clear that any Republican compromises were not going to change the central features of this bill one iota. So, no thank you, I would much rather have a stark but crystal clear loss than the likely alternatives that might have been in play.

Tony, I am presently listening to Mike Pence and he pretty much spoke along the lines you wrote above. He also quoted Ronald Reagan in the same vein. This sort of blew me away. The RR quote was from the mid 1960s and the Medicare debate. Reagan was wrong and still Pence is quoting his long discredited remarks and folks like you still buy into these stale ideas.

So, whether you like it or not, you will lose the freedom to have your insurance canceled just when you need it, your children will lose the freedom to have to scramble for insurance just as they are starting out, you will lose the freedom to be capped out on an annual and lifetime basis, you and yours will lose the freedom to have a child refused insurance because of a pre-existing condition, etc.

Reagan was dead wrong about Medicare (ask any geezer and even the Republicans are trying to get traction today by lying about medicare cuts) and Pence, et al are dead wrong today.

Thanks for your opinion. Would you care to explain WHY it is OK to trample the principle of subsidiarity into the mud? Or would you just prefer to continue spouting the refrain that "We're right and you're wrong."

Gladly. You are failing to differentiate betwixt provision of a good or service and the manner in which that good or service is compensated.

Even socialized systems like the UK provide medical services locally. In this country the VA is socialized medicine; the doctors and nurses work for the government and the national government owns the hospitals where the services are generally provided.

Medicare is a single payer system and single payer systems, like most insurance systems, seem to me to be unproblematic from the point of view of subsidiarity considerations - a multitude of locally provided services.

(have to comment - Boehner is speaking, I hope you are watching, he came unhinged for a moment, too cool)

Anyway, any form of insurance depends on spreading risk. In general, the larger the pool the better. My health insurance company is based in Omaha and my auto insurance company is based in Seattle and another policy is from a company based in Connecticut. My doctor is 8 miles away as is the hospital I would use should (when) I tip over. She is paid by entities several states and many miles away. My local community is of a size that would make local insurance infeasible - too few of us (more horses, cows and sheep then folks).

You have been told that this is a government takeover of our health care. You have been lied to, just as we were lied to in turn about about Social Security and Medicare. The closest we will be to another nations system is probably the one the Swiss use. This is miles from a socialized type system. We will most likely wind up (eventually and years down the road) with a single payer (again not a socialized system) or a system in which the insurance companies are non-profit and regulated utility-like (Germany, France).

To sum up medical care is most efficient when provided locally and paid for by the broadest possible base which, in this world, is currently the nation state and this bill doesn't go that far. Hope this helps.

Si se puede, whoo hoo

Thanks for clarifying that Social Security and Medicare are 'unproblematic'. Brilliant.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north790.html

Learn to read Cic, ignoring context is simply dishonest.

However, since you mentioned it, Social Security can be fixed with a few simple tweaks on benefits and raising the limit on earned income. North seems not to know the history or understand that a debt obligation is a debt obligation.

Medicare needs fixing and the bill which just passed starts that process which will be more difficult due to the unfunded part D which the present minority passed when it was in the majority.

Gladly. You are failing to differentiate betwixt provision of a good or service and the manner in which that good or service is compensated.

Which is to say that there can only be a national economy and no local economies. Unless the provision is for free, the two are linked.

Just as I thought: you have no clue what subsidiarity means.

First of all, ALL services are provided locally. This will remain true until human beings are no longer local. Food is eaten locally, so it has to get to the locality of your mouth. Same with water, and power, and phone service, and clothes (well, I'll admit that you don't have to eat clothes. But you may have to eat your hat.) So your "distinction" is adrift as an irrelevancy right from the start.

Subsidiarity says that choices and decision making authority belongs at the lowest level of organization which is competent to achieve the good. You are saying that national insurance is the better way to achieve the good. Saying this can only be done by assuming, without any of the intermediate arguments, and the intermediate steps, that would place authority at lower levels that might achieve the good. Just leapfrog over all the intermediate levels. Just trample subsidiarity.

Social Security was basically a dishonest Ponzi scheme right from the start: billed as retirement pension, it actually is a welfare system. It set in motion cultural changes that made certain that society would not long retain the 5-1 worker to beneficiary that made the tax rate seem realistic. Now that the ratio has changed dramatically, it is clear that the tax and benefit arrangement is untenable. Your solution, to raise the income limit, is essentially unjust in the context of pensions without raising the benefit limit, and that solves nothing at all.

The democrats had nothing to lose. I doubt many of them will even lose their seats because of this. In ten years we'll be talking about how to best reform Obamacare because costs aren't going in the direction that the CBO said they would. How long before we have that public option?

On the other hand, we will have the opportunity to see just how much debt and waste this country can handle. Let's just hope it makes it for another 60 years or so.

Steve, it's nonsense like this that led to what is likely to be a generational defeat for Republicans and conservatives (yea!). What will happen now is that there will be all sorts of serious articles explaining what is actually in the bill (advice columns, etc.). Except for the dead-enders who are hopeless anyway, all of the folks your side managed to scare and confuse with the lies and distortions will come to see the truth about all the good things this bill does for them or folks they know and likely not trust anything that comes from the right for quite a while.

If you aren't a salesman for the software industry, you have a career there if you want one based on your ability to sell an over-priced, bloated, inefficient, unmaintainable POS masquerading as a somewhat inelegant, but pragmatic solution. If I had a dime for every time that someone tried similar lines on me, I'd be able to set up a free clinic in DC that would rival the mayo clinic.

The implicit liberal assumption in this bill was that we have the kind of economy to maintain this level of spending. Of course, we don't, since a significant portion of our "economy" consists of government spending and financial engineering. If we were still the manufacturing superpower that we were in the 1960s when Medicare was passed, this bill might not hurt us, but there are increasingly few wealth-producing industries in this country.

As it currently stands, the main wealth producers are the computer industry, agriculture, biotech, the manufacturing side of the health care industry and energy. Of those:

1) The computer industry is rapidly reaching maturity and many of the expensive products which provide a large taxable base for the feds are going to be replaced by low-cost open source software in the next decade.

2) Agriculture is heavily dependent on subsidies.

3) Biotech is widely despised by left-wing activists who would torch it to the ground the moment the government turned its back for a smoke break.

4) The manufacturing side of the health care industry (devices and drugs) is going to be collateral damage for any bill that gives more power to the insurance companies and government.

5) Energy is a mess for reasons that are too complicated to go into here.

6) Most of our auto manufacturing is now done by Japanese and Korean car companies that produce better, cheaper products on American soil with American labor (but that send back the profits to Japan and Korea).

In short, it doesn't matter whether this bill has the potential to cure everything from cancer to war. We increasingly don't have the kind of economy that can handle it.

Al is positively giddy, go Al,go. Da Guvmint will save us.
This will last for a few days, Al going to sleep at night dreaming of sugar plums, lollipops, and forcing millions of people to do what he wants, the government doing his dirty work for him.
But slowly it will, the fix that is, wear off.
Anxiety will set in, loss of appetite, loss of sleep, chewing of fingernails, tears while reading the NY Times.
Addiction is not a nice thing, and there is only one cure, temporary though it is, still more force, more government.
A VAT would help, more taxes in general would be nice. AH, yes, Cap and Trade, the phony Global Warming scam, it never stops, so many people to bully, so many self congratulatory lies to tell your self, so much buttressing of ego based on what the federal government is doing.

Go Al, go.

Al, this idea the Social Security can be fixed with a few tweeks is nonsense, we know that Social Security has changed the family system through its relieving individuals of the obligation to look after there parents in old age, this has lead to people having fewer kids and has made social security unsitanable because you have fewer young people paying for the large amounts of old people, this is happening throughout Europe and in Asia as well as America, in Russia a Million people are dieing a year without meeting the replacement rate in the number of children and in China because of the 1 child policy it will get to the point the you have 30 percnt of the youth population paying for the 70 percent who are old.

Read this article by Hans-Hermann Hoppe he says alot of interesting things, though he seems to not read the work of many true conservatives.

http://mises.org/daily/1766

Robert Nisbet said on the idea of Goverment Intervention and policys and there effect "it has been a conservative precept and a sociological principle since Auguste Comte that the surest way of weakening the family, or any vital social group, is for the government to assume, and then monopolize, the family's historic functions." and this is what Welfare, Social Security and Now this Health Care Bill do.

@al

"What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women", Conan (the barbarian).

That's actually a paraphrase of Genghis Khan's response to that question.

We have just sold our children and grandchildren into debt-slavery. Way to go, libs.

However, since you mentioned it, Social Security can be fixed with a few simple tweaks on benefits and raising the limit on earned income.

I guess that depends on how you define simplicity in those context. The bill itself would be simple since all it would be is a bill stating that those who already have a pension or retirement fund are not qualified for Social Security (as it should be, since Social Security is only truly needed by those who have no other source of income, hence its name...)

The idea that someone should be able to draw 1 or 2 pensions and still be able to compete with the truly needy should be just offensive to the left...

"Subsidiarity says that choices and decision making authority belongs at the lowest level of organization which is competent to achieve the good. You are saying that national insurance is the better way to achieve the good. Saying this can only be done by assuming, without any of the intermediate arguments, and the intermediate steps, that would place authority at lower levels that might achieve the good."

Ok, what is the present situation with health care? If you have private insurance, it is likely with a national company regulated at the state level with payment decisions made by a clerk whose job, too often, is to find a reason not to pay. If you have individual coverage, the rates, increases, benefits and payments will be decided at a level that has no relevance to subsidiarity.

"Same with water, and power, and phone service, and clothes (well, I'll admit that you don't have to eat clothes)."

Let's break this down. Water - I have a well but that means that I'm dependent on rainfall (global issues), logging policy (state and federal), development (state and county), Our watershed involves several counties, two states and the feds. Power - we learned a decade ago that a well regulated and integrated grid would be useful. The solar potential of the sunbelt and the wind potential of the plains needs to be tied to demand. I certainly don't want nuclear policy decided at the local level. Phone service - it's nice to be able to call Europe and Asia. Clothes??? Thought we already dealt with looms in every home.

You are trying to apply a concept that works great for pot holes (I live on a private road so I fill them myself) but is irrelevant to much of modern life. Tell us how you would construct a health care system that conforms to your notions of subsidiarity or for that matter how subsidiarity applies to water and power.

You also seem to underestimate the amount of work it took to put some spine in the Democrat's backs.

If by "work" you mean mafia-style threats and bribes, then yes, I'm quite aware.

Tell us how you would construct a health care system that conforms to your notions of subsidiarity

A primarily cash-based system where patients pay for a general practitioners, dentists, optometrist and other mundane visits out of pocket. Many people find this concept offensive because it means that many families would have less disposable income for enjoyable purchases. Nevermind the fact that insurance (private and Medicare, you can't weasel out of that al) processing requires additional staff which greatly increases the cost of running a medical practice.

I would also create a $1:$1 tax credit where private citizens could directly pay for the costs of indigent patients instead of having the state or federal government fund it. If a rich guy decides to "abolish his tax liability" by going to a hospital, pulling up a list of the top 100 indigent patients and wiping clean their tab, that means some middle class family's Medicare tax will be lessened and their insurance won't pick up the patients' bill indirectly. It also means that they'll have private citizens who will expect a cost break down that is human-readable and consistent. That too would be good for the health care industry.

I can't wait to see all the "seamless garment" left-leaning Catholics turn into relentless anti-abortion zealots, now that this patch in the garment has been sewn on.

Don't hold your breath, Zippy.

johnt: there's nothing like the prospect of a big transfer of power into the hands of the state to reduce a faithful liberal to the emotional state of a giddy little girl.

al: last I checked, the USG already spends more per capita* on public healthcare than all but one or two countries in the world (I think Norway & Luxembourg were the exceptions, but don't quote me on that). For which we get Medicare & Medicaid and various other stuff that covers less than half the population.

Has it ever occured to you to wonder why, given the level of public resources that we *already* commit to healthcare, we don't *already* have universal coverage?

[*Please note - I'm not talking about spending per patient covered - I'm talking about spending per capita. As in spending per everybody in the country, covered or not.]

Steve I'm with you. When in the 90's Kiddie Care was first proposed Hillary said the biggest problem would be finding enough people to sign up to justify the program. Agencies went on virtual recruiting drives. Since then Medicaid has been expanded yet again & again. But to hear it told the streets are filled with the rotting, bloated corpses of those who didn't receive adequate medical care and only the progenitors of the Auto Clunker Program can save us.
Meanwhile the National Adequate Medical Care Investigative Team continues to expose our national shame, the numbers running in the millions, the bodies blocking traffic.

Ask Al, he'll tell you. God bless da guvmint.
It is a tiny, tiny man who requires government programs to lean on for ego support, to moralize upon, to assert a superior ethic, to identify with to the lowered degree that he and it are inseparable, where in sad fact the person is lost, save for his craving for more programs. It never ends.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking I hang my argument only on Medicaid, local, state, federal programs, and have we forgotten, private efforts all too numerous to mention exist.
Now let's sit back the next couple of weeks and see what worms crawl out of the sack created last night by people who at last have shown their total contempt for us.

Call it the Authors of Plutocracy exemption:

http://newledger.com/2010/03/exempted-from-obamacare-senior-staff-who-wrote-the-bill/

Meanwhile, the health care companies were up today on equity markets. Every corporation would love 32 million more customers made by the easiest mechanism of all; statutory law.

Steve and Lydia,

You may both know I like David Frum, but I have to admit that post linked to above was extremely frustrating, especially when some of his own bloggers have been pointed out how deeply flawed the Democrats bill is. So why shouldn't the Republicans have stood their ground and opposed the bill while hoping down the road to repeal some or all of the bad portions? I think Frum is wrong on the politics of the vote and wrong on the public policy. Sometimes he drives even his biggest fans crazy!

P.S. Don't get me started on the feud between his website and Spenser's new website. While I think both have said silly things about each other, I ultimately have to commend Spenser for taking the high road with Frum and laying the "smack down" with this post:

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/david-frum-s-satanic-girliemen/

And I say this as someone who finds Spenser distasteful having read his other works -- I dectect an anti-Christian attitude in his work and a hostility to America in his writing that turns me off.

Hey, Al, you forgot to mention that the food trucks use GOVERNMENT roads to carry their stuff from farm to market. That makes them government run too, right?

The fact that government already has tendrils of its hair in every pie doesn't mean that increasing its share of control is irrelevant. It means that we have already lost much of the self-reliance that gave us the wealth that is now controlled by gov. Government does not create wealth, it only siphons it from one person to another. When the majority of the economy is run by government, then the majority of the economy will no longer be about creating wealth but merely about moving it around.

Jeff - much as I may disagree with Lawrence Auster, on this or that, I think that he's got David Frum pretty well pegged: he's a little...ummm...Canadian boy "on the make."

I met him once, at a signing party in D.C. for Jonathan Rauch's pro-gay-marriage book. The only word I can think of to describe him is: oleaginous.

Steve,

Three quick comments, because you probably don't know that I can't stand Auster (I'm WAY beyond just disagreeing with him about "this or that"):

1) I think Auster mischaracterizes just about everything David stands for, so take his pronouncements with a HUGE grain of salt;

2) that said, this was pretty darn funny (in relation to the news that David had become a CNN writer):

Jeff S. [this is not me!] writes:

Have you checked CNN's ratings lately. This is like jumping on board the Titanic AFTER it struck the iceberg. I guess you could say this move speaks more to motive than it does to judgment, but still ...

LA replies:

I didn't know that. But isn't that funny. It fits the Frum pattern I've written about before, that he's both an unprincipled opportunist, and a schlemiel with laughably bad judgment, e.g., belatedly signing on to the Giuliani campaign just before it crashed.

3) in my own personal experience with David, he has come across as sincere, helpful, smart, etc. Check out the interview he did with Andrew Bacevich for Bloggingheads.tv and I don't think you'll watch someone who comes across as oleaginous. But I totally admit to being biased in my opinion of David -- I've been a fan of his for a long time, despite my widening policy differences with him.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis

As for Frum, he would have thought it a success to have convinced Stalin to reduce his purges from 5 years to 2.5. Three gulags is better than five, he would say.

People, like Frum, who would rather live in tyranny than to die with honor have no real opinions to offer. They merely suggest to others the best and least painful way to acquire cigarettes in prison.

I think Auster is right Frum has no Principles at least from what I can see, he doesn't really seem to believe in anything so his views can swing from polar opposites based on a whim and he seems to have no underlining Philsophy to his thought process. He comes across like alot of Mainstream supposedly Intellucual Conservatives who are only interested in getting votes for there party, so they jump on popular trends and ideas to fight the otherside at there own game but by this point they've only undermining and fighting conservatives who aren't willin to jump on the Bandwagon so they end up fighting there ownside and in the Process Empower Liberals and the Left. They become like softer lighter versions of the opposition the battle becoms between soft liberals versus Hard Left Liberals and true conservatives aren't even in the framework because there Principles mean they aren't willing to play the games and do anything for votes.

I just don't Understand how David Frum can be called a Conservative what is he trying to Conserve. What is it he Believes in that he would'nt be willing to sell or give up for more votes. What is the underlying belief or Idea that holds all his Random Opinions together.

I don’t know too much about this bill (in fact, it seems that few people do) but I’ve been skeptical of all the Republican talking heads calling it “socialist.” From what little I know of this legislation, it seems more of a kind of “crony corporate capitalism." Government mandating a private-sector service.

Furthermore, as Christopher Caldwell and Robert Putnam have noted, socialism has only ever “worked” in smaller homogeneous countries. America’s trajectory of mass immigration and crony capitalism appears not to be toward quasi-functional socialism of 1960s Sweden, but toward a dysfunctional Brazil. Granted, people may vote for "socialist" politicians who'll promise the goodies, but the shrinking and disproportionate tax base will not be able to pay the bills. Again, welcome, Brazil.

From what I know of the bill--very little, honestly--it's not socialist. I don't know whether anyone actually thinks it's socialist. It's rather that they think that (1) it will be impossible to repeal; (2) it will, of necessity, morph into single payer; (3) once it morphs into single payer, the character of the American people will change into liking bills such as this; and (4) it will bankrupt the government so that it becomes impossible for it to carry out its other military functions, speeding the way for China to become the hegemon.

I don't know, of course, that anything of what I've said above is true. As I said, I know hardly anything about this bill.

One thing I can be sure of, though: whatever happens--and I mean that literally--, conservatives will say that the bill has had unfortunately consequences and liberals will say that it's had good consequences. That is, mainstream assessments of the bill's goodness or badness will be evidence-insensitive.

Regarding David Frum, I can't think of anything good to say. He has spent much of his career attacking everyone to his right, but because he has done it under the banner of "conservatism" he has done far more damage than many on the left.

Regarding Auster, I think Richard Spencer sums it up well here:

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/austercized/

Auster's a good blogger and often has good instincts. But he has that unfortunate tick of alienating people, who agree with him on a good many things, when they disagree with him on anything. At times it seems that someone can agree with Auster on 99% of what he's saying but disagree with him on one point and he flips out wanting to excommunicate the person on the spot. (Many others have noticed this unfortunate tendency.)

Auster has a brand name to protect. That of an intellectually rigourous traditionalist with a style that that is like thought itself. His arguments are almost mathematical in their power, and I doubt if there are many who can catch him in full flight. Therefore he doesn't suffer fools gladly. And his it has to be said that some of his detractors are not above using tiresome Jew-baiting tricks.

I don't know why this thread in trending toward a discussion of bloggers and writers and their personalities. I see the chances of fruitful illumination under this head as unlikely, and would request that we keep these ancillary matters to a minimum.

I'm more interested in the prayer, and Auster's use of it, than in the congressional vote or in David Frum. Look at the prayer. Grammatically, "we" implies "I". I get the feeling that as Auster uses this prayer, "we" means "you". (And I do mean "uses", by the way.) This is miles away from the sense of collective, common responsibility I get from reading the Bible, especially the books of the Prophets who condemn worse things than health care reform while still showing a connection to the community of sinners that I don't see in Auster.

A "we" is possible in a modern, nonbiblical context. One possibility is via Rousseau: that once an action is supported by the majority, everyone genuinely wills that act, including those who voted against it. Thus Lawrence Auster genuinely willed the health care reform, because he willed the General Will. I'm not saying this is a good way of thinking, only that it is one way to make sense of "we". Of course the majority oppose this bill, so arguably this approach couldn't apply, at least not directly. But then neither could the word "we" in the prayer, unless "we" means "the Senate and House of Representatives".

It was interesting reading Jeff Singer's comments on David Frum. I'm also a fan of Frum's, as well as being one of those right-wing extremists whom he condemns. I don't know whether Frum was correct here on the proximate cause (Republicans refusing to compromise), but a more distal cause is what brought in Obama and the Democrat majorities in the first place: bad governance by Republicans, largely including the Iraq War which Frum supported.

I must say I'm shocked at the number of self confessed people that know little about the bill and yet still feel comfortable discussing it. The bill hasn't substantively changed in over 4 months. This is not what an informed citizenry should look like. I certainly wouldn't wear my ignorance as a badge of honor.

A reader directed me to this thread. Two points.

First, on Frum, I'm glad more and more people are realizing what he is. I agree that Frum is personally nice, but it's irrelevant to the issue of what he's saying in his writings. On a couple of occasions when I was being very critical of him I was disarmed by his niceness. Never again. His cover story in Newsweek was a declaration of war against conservatives. He was "making his bones" with the liberal establishment through his hit-job on Limbaugh, and, through Limbaugh, on conservatives generally.

Second, I'm not sure what commenter Aaron's beef with me is. I quoted the General Confession from the Anglican service because we were facing this horrible event as a country and I very much wanted to bring God and repentance into it, and I was also invoking the American tradition of collective prayer at times of great national crisis. And this is the way he describes what I was doing. He thinks I was using the prayer in an insincere, manipulative way to make myself right and others wrong. What depth of animus must Aaron have against me, that he would turn my quotation of the confession on its head like that, and portray it as some egotistical act of one-upmanship, directed by me at others.

And by the way, that confession and prayer was helpful to some readers and also to me personally. It brought me back to seeing that we need to walk with God whatever disasters may be happening externally and politically, and even as we continue to fight against enemies who seek our ruin.

Here is the entry at my site where I introduce and quote the prayer. And here is Lydia McGrew's post at 4W where she mentions and commends it. I hadn't seen Lydia's post before and I thank her.

I want to echo Lawrence Auster's comments about the General Confession. It was sincerely suggested by him and was very helpful to me, as is his quotation of Psalm 37 subsequent to the passing of the bill.

If our nation, as a nation, has forgotten God, we will surely fall. It is only a matter of time. The passage of this bill is in my opinion another, visible step in that direction. Those of us who do remember God can only hope and pray that he would spare us, but this is not for our deserving but of his grace.

The Catholics here might find this perspective interesting: http://newledger.com/2010/03/the-catholic-failure/

Brace yourselves, Senator John Kerry has already called for global warming/ climate change/voodoo science legislation as next on the agenda. The ink has not even been applies to the paper yet and already they're starting.
Now what was I saying above on the incessant craving, the sick addiction for government action & control.
Close your eyes, imagine it, "Thousands die due to,[ fill in your own horror], " Planet threatened by",[ as above]," Experts, who else, call for", well you know the answer to that one.
As I said, it never stops. And you will see the same band of the Lost But Fevered climbing aboard, desperate for their issue fix, their justification as persons.

Kerry couldn't even wait a week.

Well, since the democrats may lose the majority in the fall, they want to get as much done as they can before then. I just hope we avoid amnesty.

The health care thing may have emboldened them to just pass legislation without worrying about the 'bipartisanship' sideshow.

Thanks for that, Mike T. It dovetails with this piece on another subject:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100030794/catholic-sex-abuse-scandal-time-to-sack-trendy-bishops-and-restore-the-faith/

from which here'e the key quote:

Should bishops be forced to resign? Oh yes – approximately 95 per cent of them worldwide. These clowns in their pseudo-ethnic mitres and polyester vestments with faux-naïve Christian symbols, spouting their ecumaniac episcobabble, have presided over more than sexual abuse: they have all but extinguished the Catholic faith with their modernist fatuities. They should be retired to monasteries to spend their remaining years considering how to account to their Maker for a failed stewardship that has lost countless millions of souls.

After reading Lawrence Auster's and Lydia's comments, I just want to apologize to Mr. Auster for saying that he "used" the prayer. That was way out of line, since I had no way of knowing what his thoughts were. I certainly believe him when he says that he meant it sincerely.

By the way, I think the importance of the law is way overstated, but that's a separate issue. I should have understood how important this was to Mr. Auster and to some of his readers, and I should have given extra thought before posting because of that.

Ed,

I don't envy the Catholic Church's reformers. They will have enemies on every side from the liberals to conservatives who will balk at anything resembling faithful Catholics retaking their church like Jesus retaking the temple from the money changers.

Unfortunately, faithful Catholics will have to be that zealous and uncompromising to win.

"It means that we have already lost much of the self-reliance that gave us the wealth that is now controlled by gov."

The "self reliance" that gave us:

The Louisiana Purchase

The Mexican War

The Civil War

Transportation projects from the National Road to the Interstate highway System including the Transcontinental Railroad.

Government has been part of our nation's economic development since the beginning. Read the bill and read our history.

Tony, I'll ask again, How Does Your Principle of Subsidiarity Apply to Health Care? Details please. At least Mike T. stepped up to the plate on this. His policy provisions, based on the principle of subsidiarity, are depending on the kindness of strangers and bankruptcy. What are yours?

"As for Frum, he would have thought it a success to have convinced Stalin to reduce his purges from 5 years to 2.5. Three gulags is better than five, he would say."

Are we confusing plans with sentences? The Reds seem to have loved five year plans for development but I seem to recall that a five year sentence was considered a slap on the wrist, the typical sentence was a tenner. Anyway, now that OUR plan for domination is under way, I'll be magnanimous and make sure none of you serve more than Dr. Beckwith's suggested 30 months.

BTW, It was almost 45 years to the day that Rep. John Lewis was beaten by Alabama cops that he walked through a gauntlet of Teabaggers in the Capitol yelling racist epithets. Has that caused any of you to engage in a little self reflection on the forces you are stirring up with all this over the top and somewhat deranged talk of Gulags and government takeovers?

Good question Steve and one that we on the left have asked. Government programs are constrained by the general system that has developed over the decades since WWII. Insurance as an untaxed benefit probably is a large cause as is failure to create a national system of health care before the cost curve headed north. Also recall that one of the criticisms of the Medicare part D was the failure to provide for serious cost containment.

A shortage of doctors, especially in general practice, and the high cost of medical school needs to be fixed. Other factors like records, tort reform, and insane billing practices focused on procedures instead of outcomes.

It took us decades to get into this mess. This bill is only a start.

I think what we have now is a form of Indirect Socialism. Direct Socialism is when the Goverment takes over a business, Indirect Socialism is when the Goverment has so much control over your business that it is for all intersive Purposes Socialised, you don't have the Freedom to make your own decisions in relation to your Business. There is Price fixing in this Bill and the use of Goverment force to tell Insurance Companies and small businesses how they should treat there Employees, so there no longer aloud to make decisions based on what is best for the business, they have to make sure there complying to goverment rules first, hence Goverment overrides all other Business and Market Decisions.

Also on the Racist and Homophobic insults shouted at some of the Congressman, I believe they were wrong and the people who shouted them just empowered the the left who say all opposition to the bill (and all Conservative beliefs forms) really just stem from Bigotry or is just irrational anger that is a reaction to either Social or Economic Problems. But at the same time I don't remeber people on the left saying tone down the Anger and Emotion directed towards there opposition to the Iraq war when the Protestors were ingaging in Anti-Semtism with Signs and chanting and also with there extreme hated or Irsael.

al's incoherence is epic. He chastises conservatives for engaging in "deranged" rhetoric, accusing us of falsely seeing a government takeover implicit in the logic of Obamacare and then only minutes later in a subsequent post talks about Obamacare being but the beginning of this Brave New World. Then there is the use of guilt by association with respect to some alleged racist comments where the only substantiated epithet used was his calling the Tea Party protesters "Teabaggers". Classic liberal thug tactics.

Rep. Stupak, before he caved, was getting spit on regularly in DC. We'll all await Al's comment expressing his outrage at that.

The nature of the bill is pretty clearly technocratic and corporatist. It is a union of established wealth and government entitlement, along with actuarial gimmicky worthy of Wall Street. It is plutocracy -- a form of that rule by the few which Al averred barely a week or so ago was impossible to even imagine in the 21st century.

Here's a link where we see that Stupak was always going to vote for the Bill no Matter What.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/03/stunner-pro-life-democrat-stupak-was-lying-all-along-will-support-pro-abortion-obamacare/

All this stuff With him was his way of trying to keep his Pro-Life Facade up.

Here's Auster talking about this.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/016054.html

My apologies to Lawrence Auster for the delay in posting his comment - it got held up because of the links, and I've been out of the building. Thanks to whoever approved it in my absence.

Phantom blogger - same point.

Steve,
This was the part that caught my eye:

But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

So my question is this: If this bill is straight out of the Politburo as Frank suggests, how is it remotely possible that it shares so many elements with previous Republican plans?

As a side note, I am eager to see Rush stick to his promise and go to Costa Rica to get health care - where they have real socialized medicine and not this watered down compromised compromise of a compromise.

Rep. Stupak, before he caved, was getting spit on regularly in DC.

I heard he got some nasty phone calls which threatened he would be spit on, which is deplorable, but in fairness he was also called a baby killer on the floor of the House. He somehow managed to make everyone despise him, an unfortunate talent for a lawmaker.

Mike T, from your earlier link:

"...legions of nominal American Catholic politicians...treat the abortion license with more reverence than they do a consecrated host..."

Now that's what I call phrase-making.

no, al - y'all on the left have *never,* seriously, asked that question. I have been begging guys on your side, for years, to acknowledge & explain the fact that our per capita public spending on healthcare already exceeds that of all your favorite European single-payer paradises - yet we get barely a third of their bang for our buck.

And all I ever get, in reply, is a great big steaming pile of vague generalities ["Government programs are constrained by the general system," blah blah blah] - combined with unsupported assertions that everything will get better once the USG takes total control.

Like that has ever worked before.

Step2 - so Romneycare now counts as a "traditional Republican idea?"

As in, like, David Cameron is a traditional "Tory."

And, as in, like, David Frum is a traditional "conservative."

Whatever, dude.

Regarding David Cameron, if any of you have not seen this, check it out:

David Cameron Declares War upon England

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252145/David-Camerons-plan-impose-women-gays-ethnic-candidates.html

Best quotes from the article:

"The authors also admit white men will feel disadvantaged, stating: 'The handling of white males should be done with sensitivity."

"'Like a conjuror, we'll get more applause if the audience cannot see exactly how the trick is performed,' the document says."

"The more that the profusion of women, black, Asian or gay candidates appears to be the result of spontaneous open-mindedness on the part of grassroot activists the greater will be the accolades."

Geez, and people wonder why English conservatives are now supporting the BNP.

so Romneycare now counts as a "traditional Republican idea?"

Exactly. Good grief, since when are conservatives required to back up everything ever done by some guy with an R on his Superhero shirt? Time was when Romney was openly regarded as a liberal Republican (aka "moderate"), but I guess that was a long time ago, huh?

Matthew, I had not seen that.

My roots in England go, if anything, deeper than my roots in America, so stuff like this hits me hard.

But I still hold out some hope for UKIP.

A shortage of doctors, especially in general practice, and the high cost of medical school needs to be fixed. Other factors like records, tort reform, and insane billing practices focused on procedures instead of outcomes.

It took us decades to get into this mess. This bill is only a start.

This bill is not likely to get us where we aspire to be, at any rate. You can't make a functioning system by building more features onto a kludge. That is an immutable law of engineering, including "social engineering."

A note on the Lewis thing for those sensitive souls whose delicacy in manners is legendary.
First, and apart from print reports, I doubt it happened, tapes would indicate otherwise.

However if it did, a thought for those moral epicures whose appetites & sensibilities were spoiled. For the past year people who have criticized Obama have been smeared with the epithet "racist", that is when they haven't been called haters, or when the two have used in tandem. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, unknown to commentators, have been so smeared. A neat trick, if you're clairvoyant.
Perhaps a little stable cleaning is in order back home before liberals anoint themselves with a purity wholly imaginary. and totally undeserved.

As for the Black caucus. Well it's hard to give up your shtick, I understand. But where were these heros when their party sold out hundreds of black families in Washington D C on school choice?
Not a peep!
They deserved to have some rotten fruit cast their way but no such luck.
Now back to our moral posturing.

And less we forget, we have allies to humiliate and hopefully abandon.

Steve,
Okay, so which Republican plans do count? Ones that were never intended to be taken seriously or enacted into law?

Phantom blogger writes: "All this stuff With him was his way of trying to keep his Pro-Life Facade up."

The cynical interpretation isn't the correct one in this case. Stupak led the most successful pro-life insurgency within the Democratic Party in recent memory. Nobody expected his amendment to pass with the support it did, and pro-choice organizations reacted with horror that a new front was opening within their stronghold.

His amendment was dead in the Senate though. His insurgency failed.

A man in Stupak’s position can’t afford to appear totally uncompromising all of the time.

But he extracted a concession from the President, which can help hold Obamacare accountable. He also helped his party by allowing Pelosi to give vulnerable Democrats the chance to vote "no." (She likely had enough votes in reserve, but because of the pro-life Dems she didn't have to use them.)

Here's some comments from the end of Stupak's Sunday press conference that have been under-reported:

“...the statutory language, we’d love to have it. But we can’t get it through the Senate. And we’re not giving up. If there was something we missed, we’re coming back with legislative fixes. These right-to-life Democrats, who really carried the right-to-life ball throughout this whole debate, we will continue to do that. We will work with our colleagues to get the job done.”

In my view, Stupak cut his losses while raising the profile of pro-life Democrats and getting Obama to commit to something. He can be held accountable too.

The speed with which many pro-lifers turned on him is disturbing to me. If there were more Democrats like him, he would have won. But he lost, and so he tried to lose in a manner most advantageous to his cause and to his career. I think he deserves gratitude for that failed attempt, and criticism of him has gone overboard. The Senate and those who excluded the Stupak Amendment from the Senate bill bear far more blame, as do the Catholic groups whose misinformation sapped his coalition's strength at a critical time.

A man in Stupak’s position can’t afford to appear totally uncompromising all of the time.

He said, for a while, that he wouldn't vote for the bill with abortion coverage. The presidential executive order is not worth anything. Nothing. It's junk. Either Stupak is just foolish and doesn't know this--in which case he is very, very foolish--or he does and is cynically manipulating.

I think Stupak suspects that it's junk, but I don't think he would go so far as to say he knows it's junk. It will be worth seeing how he reacts once that executive order is dropped.

Kevin J Jones if you look at the video I posted you see that he said he would vote for the Bill no matter what happened and thats why I said that. Look at the Auster link I posted as well to see what I mean't.

"The presidential executive order is not worth anything. Nothing. It's junk."

Legal junk? Yes. Political junk? No. If the EO is junked by the courts or by the President, it makes Obama look bad and provides a catalyst for future reform. Lip service is poor service, but it's still service.

"If the EO is junked by the courts or by the President, it makes Obama look bad..."

Really? In whose eyes?

"Pro-life" Democrats?

No doubt the thought of such a possibility has Obama trembling to his very core.

I accept Aaron's apology.