Can Kool Aid Quench Hate?

As you know, the left is a tad put out by the health care debate. They’re so upset that the health care bill making its way through the Senate does not PUNISH insurance companies and drug makers that they’ve started throwing the greatest hissy-fit since. . . well, since, the last one. And in language getting increasingly more reminiscent of Wiemar days, the left has turned to fratricide and paranoid theories about being stabbed in the back by the dirty insurance companies and their secret agents in the White House and Senate. So how does Obama respond to this unruly mob of paranoid psychotics? Not very well.

Obama seems to have missed the fact that his minions have escaped their cages and are running around foaming at the mouth, looking for traitors in their midsts. He doesn’t seem to get that the left not only looks to destroy current allies (like Lieberman and Nelson) politically, but also personally. He doesn’t seem to get that the leftist blogosphere is starting to spin conspiracy theories in which their Messiah turns out not only to be a false prophet, but an agent of Satan Mutual Insurance.

That’s right, Obama’s not just a liar, he’s a betrayer, an agent of evil. . . capitalist stooge! He didn’t PUNISH the evil insurance/drug companies, he works for them. . . he was created by them. . . he is evil! Oh my.

But Obama missed all of this because he’s tone deaf.

The left wanted to hear this:

POTUS approaches TOTUS. . . My fellow Americans. Health care is the most important right we have. It is more important than any other right within the Constitution. We have tried to pass health care, but we have been betrayed by powerful interests of rich bankers, health care insurance providers and drug makers. This must stop. I have ordered the seizure of the assets of those who would oppose us and I have ordered the Senate to bar the doors until they produce a health care bill that guarantees free health care for everyone, except the rich, and which is premised on the only system that makes sense, with the government being the sole provider of health care. As of this moment, all doctors should consider themselves employees of the federal government.

But, instead, he gave them this: The Senate bill “fits all the criteria that I laid out.” Yeah, and Nancy Pelosi is Mary Poppins. Obama continued:

“It is deficit-neutral. It bends the cost curve. It covers 30 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, and it has extraordinary insurance reforms in there to make sure that we’re preventing abuse.”

What a crock. Not only is none of this true in any real sense of being truthful, but it’s not even true in the leftist sense of meeting their expectations (a greater form of truth in their minds).

Consider these real world untruths:

1. Deficit neutral? Yeah, if you don’t count huge chunks of the cost ($250 billion to doctors) that were excluded from the deficit calculation. . . if you use phony assumptions about cuts that will never happen ($460 billion in Medicare cuts and $25 billion in magical savings). . . if you assume that people will happily pay large amounts of income taxes rather than switching to lower taxed plans or that tens of millions of Americans would rather pay fines than get insurance. Not to mention that the spending is back-loaded and the taxes are front-loaded, which means that the bill will cost more than double the expected amount when you look at the second ten years.

Indeed, take a look at the following chart which shows how the spending increases slowly year after year. This is the only way to keep the cost under a trillion dollars for the first ten years. The second ten years (assuming the cost doesn’t shoot up like all other government programs in history have) will be around $180 billion a year -- that $1.8 trillion in 10 year speak, not the $800 billion advertised.


2. Bends the cost curve? Yeah, upwards. Let’s see, they’re adding 30 million people (I supposed the other 16 million will vanished) to the system without increasing the number of providers, and they’re adding billions in taxes to equipment and drugs and providers. Even Howard Dean, a noted liar, has admitted, this bill does absolutely nothing to reduce costs except promising to convene committees to look into the cost issue.

3. Extraordinary insurance reforms? Name one a~hole. And again, let’s cite Howard Dean on this: “This isn’t health care reform, this isn’t even insurance reform.”

Now consider these leftist-untruths. This bill does nothing to take “unfair” profits from insurers or drug makers. It does not hurt the rich in any meaningful way, nor are they made to pay for everyone else’s health care. It does not seize assets, involve nationalization, or ban private insurance. It doesn’t do anything. Boo hoo.

But will our sliver-tongued devil of a POTUS et. TOTUS be able to calm his followers and keep them from revolting? Apparently not.

After the election, Obama converted his massive e-mail list of 13 million “supporters” into an organization called “Organizing for America.” From time to time, he’s sent out e-mails asking this group to call Congress or volunteer. On Wednesday, Obama sent out another one of these e-mails asking people to call Congress or volunteer for phonebanks. This resulted in only 150,000 calls. Compare that to the more than one million calls they were able to generate in prior efforts.

More interestingly, the e-mail actually resulted in a backlash. Many responded with angry messages and others demanded to be removed from the list. Some sent out listserv e-mails urging activists to “just say no” to the phonebank effort. Here are some quotes collected by The Politico from various leftists:

• “Organizing for America will get a rude awakening when they try to round up canvassers and phone bankers.”

• “I will call my senators, but I will be asking them to vote against the bill without the public option or Medicare buy-in.”

• Obama “is taking for granted that the volunteers who worked so hard for him were going to buy in to whatever strategy he chose to pass his major legislative initiative.”

• “Why should I devote my valuable time (Editor’s note: **chuckles**) to volunteer for a bill that has no teeth left in it? We've sold our souls to four Senators instead of sitting down and convincing them that a public option or at the very least medicare is included in the bill.”

• “Say NO if (OFA staffers) ask you to participate” in the phone banking. “If this bill passes, it will be because Joe Lieberman threw a hissy fit and was allowed to control what went into the bill. That means that in the end, he had more power with President Obama and Senator Reid than we do. If he is rewarded, this tactic will be used over and over again to kill the progressive agenda.”

• Do not donate to the DNC or the Party’s congressional campaign committees.

Team Obama insists everything is ok. But Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, disagrees:

“We heard story after story from current Organizing for America volunteers about how they were getting disillusioned with Obama because he wasn’t fighting for the public option. Obama’s e-mail list may soon become a hollow shell if he does not fight Joe Lieberman and insist that there be a public option.”

Sounds like the Kool Aid needs more sugar.