Why ObamaCare is different from Obama's other thefts

There was little or no major outrage over Cash For Clunkers. 
There was some outrage over The Porkulus Package, but not much.
Nobody gave a damn about Solyndra, or LightSquared, or the Detroit giveaways. 

But now that Obamacare has hit the mailboxes, Obama's popularity is taking a nose-dive, his congress-critters are deserting him, and he has to keep doing executive action fixes to the thing.  People are pissed!

Why?  All of these programs gave to the wealthy at the expense of the middle (and the not-so-middle).  What makes Obamacare different? 

You have to go all the way back to Fred Bastiat to understand what's different this time....

In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

That's from "Things Seen And Unseen". 

Everybody saw the new cars from the Cash For Clunkers program.  Everybody saw the factory down the street get new overhead doors with their Porkulus check.  Everybody read the Green Energy bullshit about how Solyndra and Lightsquared would one day bottle all known fairy farts and successfully power our homes. 

Nobody got a bill for the cars that were destroyed. 
Nobody got a bill for the pork. 
Nobody got a bill for the Crony Capitalist green boondoggles. 

Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to pay for that stuff, and they can't vote yet.

Obamacare is different. 

The bill is in the mail, mofo's, IF you are lucky enough to still have insurance.  There ain't a free lunch.  Almost all insurance has gone up, and the fools who advocated for this disaster are, in many cases, the ones who are also having to pay for it.  Pass the Kleenex. 

Of Obama/Pelosi/Reid had stuck to traditional methods and put it on your baby's bar tab (or simply printed it), Obama would still be flying high. 

Hope this explains things. 

You're welcome. 
 

A Day In The Life Of A Statist. Or A Departmentist.

Someone (with the aid of schoolteachers, The Department Of Education, and the roadbuilders of the Information Superhighway) has written a clever little socialist parable that is making the rounds on Facebook:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads to my house, which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshall’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how socialism in medicine is bad because the government can’t do anything right. 

-Anonymous Wingnut

It begs for a response, doesn't it?  If the phrase "electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy" doesn't make you break out in fits of giggles, hell, it can't be done.  And then there's the long lists of unnecessary government departments, all staffed with tens of thousands of useless seat warmers, helping this guy get through his day. 

Because if the government didn't provide those services, the private sector could never ever do so.  Is that really what this dude believes?   

Someone called Ipster76 on Reddit wrote a response that goes as follows:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the local public power monopoly. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the latest misleading liberal dominated mass media reports are. I watched this while eating my unhealthy, subsidized corn-byproduct dominated breakfast thanks to the US Department of Agriculture.

Had I written this, I would've put in something about "the US Department of Agriculture - a wholly owned subsidiary of Monsanto."  But I tend to over-write. 

I then get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration used automobile, whose renewed title I was forced to pay an exorbitant amount for when I bought it. I then set out to my job on the roads built by the local, state and federal departments of transportation, passing by groups of 8 or more Union laborers, of which only about 2 are actually doing work at any given moment due to their collective bargaining agreement. I am also forced to slow down or risk being caught and fined by speed cameras implemented by the local government, despite the fact that I am a fully competent driver with no violations on his record, and the highway repairs have yet to be finished after 5 years. I also do not stop to purchase exorbitantly priced fuel from Big Oil subsidized by the Federal Government using legal tender that has lost value thanks to inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. At some point in the future when I am married with children, I will drop off my kids off at a private school 20 minutes away, because despite my future residence in a decent neighborhood, I am zone for an unsafe public school fraught with gang activity, and staffed by underpaid teachers.

This guy must live on Fort Worth's East Side. 

After work, I drive by the same unproductive union workers in the alleged construction zones, and am again forced to slow down because of the speed cameras. I do not stop by the liquor store, because although I am legally an adult who can vote and serve in the military, I cannot legally purchase alcohol, thus violating my rights under the Equal Protection Clause of Section I, Amendment IIV of the Constitution; however, because I am over the age of 18, it will also remain on my permanent record if I am caught in possession of it. I continue driving my car back to my apartment, which I discover has been plundered of all its valuables. I contact the local Police Department, who make a cursory investigation and fail to find any evidence, because they are too busy fighting the prohibitionist war on drugs under which gang activity has flourished for the past 30 years. I consider smoking some marijuana on my own private property to relax after a long, hard day at work, but I can’t because it has been made illegal by politicians that receive campaign funds from big pharma and the liquor lobby.

I then get on to the internet, which the Federal Government is trying to stifle through regulation and censorship, and proceed to post on r/politics about how libertarians are selfish and that the government needs to be more involved with healthcare.

Well done, sir.  Well done. 

The Occupy Wall Street movement discriminates against drummers !!!

This irritates me more than it should. 
I am a drummer.  Not a great one, but I get by. 
I was in the drum lines at Ole Miss and Delta State. 
Here's a picture of me, way off in the background, thumping the skins at Jazz Cafe. 

Yes, I've heard all the jokes. 


What do you call a guy who hangs out with four musicians?  A drummer.
 
How can you tell a drummer is at your door?  The knocking speeds up. 

How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?  None.  Thank God they have a machine for that now !!!


And now we have this freakin' outrage:

All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective. . . .

Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out,” said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.

But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly.

“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music,” said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it … they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.”

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest,” he said. “They didn’t even give the drummers a say … Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”

The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting.”

(The drummers are learning that if The Collective gives, then The Collective can also take away. - TWS)

All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.

But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You’re going to break my f***ing tent, get that s**t off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.

First they came for The Drummers, but I did not speak out, for I was not a Drummer.... 

Let's regulate Barney Frank's pay

From David Boaz at The Cato Institute:

“Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Tuesday that he will hold a hearing this fall to examine whether regulators are being tough enough in curbing pay practices at Wall Street firms that can lead to excessively risky practices,” writes Zachary Goldfarb in the Washington Post.


Hmmm. “Pay practices that can lead to excessively risky practices.” Since Barney Frank entered Congress, federal spending has risen from $590 billion in 1980 to $3.7 trillion this year. (U.S. Budget, Historical Tables, Table 1.1) The annual deficit has risen from $74 billion to $1.5 trillion. Gross federal debt rose from $909 billion to $13.8 trillion — and to over $15 trillion next year. (Table 7.1) And all this without a major war or depression during those 30 years.

Maybe we should adjust pay practices for members of Congress to give them an incentive to avoid risky, unaffordable, out-of-control borrowing and spending.

Do Reid and Clinton really prefer having the light-skinned guys bring their coffee?

Several years ago, Republican Trent Lott had to resign his position as Senate Majority Leader after saying a few complimentary things about segregationist Strom Thurmond. Lott's unfortunate comments were about the era when Thurmond was either a Democrat or Dixiecrat.

"I want to say this about my state (Mississippi): When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either," Lott said at last week's party.
Thurmond ran as the presidential nominee of the breakaway Dixiecrat Party in the 1948 presidential race against Democrat Harry Truman and Republican Thomas Dewey. He carried Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and his home state of South Carolina, of which he was governor at the time.

The media outrage was deafening. Maybe it should have been.

Well, this should be interesting.

Go here for Harry Reid's analysis of Barack Obama's complexion (or lack of it) and "Negro dialect" (or lack of it).

Hold on. We aren't through yet. Go here for some comments that Bill Clinton made to Ted Kennedy, on Barack Obama getting uppity.

If this seems like excessive ridicule over a few offhand comments, go to the Democratic Party's rule book: Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals. See rule #4.

Pics came from here.