Category: Health Care

‘Pajama Boy’ as Rorshach Inkblot

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The latest weird sequel to the ObamaCare ad controversy is the claim that conservatives mocking “Pajama Boy” are anti-Semites.

Such a claim involves a lot intellectual gymnastics which might be better described as the psychological projections of a profoundly disturbed personality named Jay Michaelson:

Parenthetically, the model himself is one Ethan Krupp, an Organizing for America staffer who is, in fact, Jewish. But whether Krupp himself is circumcised or not, Pajama Boy is semiotically Jewish, even stereotypically so.
In fact, Pajama Boy stands at a centuries-old nexus of anti-Semitism and misogyny.

Yeah. Right.

Jay Michaelson tells us very little about conservatives who made fun of a silly ad, but tells us an awful lot about the strange ideas that swirl around inside Jay Michaelson’s deranged mind.

“Some things you have to read to believe.”

 

Facts the ‘Experts’ Never Mention

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Philip Klein calls our attention to an overlooked statistic:

Massachusetts, whose health care reform program was used as a template for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, had the highest per capita health spending in the U.S. in 2009. . . . [T]he state spent $9,278 per person on health care in 2009, which was 36 percent higher than the national average of $6,815, and 11.2 percent more than the next-highest state, New York, which spent $8,341.

Was the relatively high cost of health care in Massachusetts a cause or an effect of the push for socialized medicine? The political impetus for ObamaCare came from highly urbanized, Democrat-dominated states where the cost of health care was already high.

If the result of this national policy is to spread the misery (i.e., causing a rise in health-care costs in more rural Republican-dominated states) why should liberals care? This simply deprives the GOP states of an economic advantage they previously enjoyed.

You could do some other correlations:

State …………….. Vote 2012 …. TFR 2010
Rhode Island ……… Obama 62.7% …………. 1.63
Vermont ……………. Obama 62.8% …………. 1.66
Massachusetts ……. Obama 60.7% …………. 1.67
New Hampshire ….. Obama 52.0% …………. 1.67
Maine ……………….. Obama 56.3% …………. 1.70

Utah ………………….. Romney 72.8% ………. 2.45
Alaska ……………….. Romney 54.8% ………. 2.35
South Dakota ……… Romney 58.3% ……….. 2.27
Idaho ………………… Romney 64.5% ………. 2.24
Texas ………………… Romney 57.2% ………. 2.16

TRF is total fertility rate — the average number of lifetime births per woman, based on annual birth rates — and you see that the top five states as measured by TFR all went for Romney, while the five lowest-fertility states all went for Obama. The average rate of the high fertility states (2.29) is 38% higher than the low-fertility states (1.67 average), which tells you that the political differences reflect profound differences in culture and lifestyle. Nationalizing policies favored by the low-fertility states can therefore be seen as an attempt to abolish these differences, to force the high-fertility states to abandon their culture and lifestyle.

 

Two Words You Probably Never Want to Think About: ‘Botched Vasectomy’

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Also, “shooting rampage”:

Newly released 911 tapes reveal what the Reno, Nev., hospital shooter apparently told trapped patients and employees as he terrorized a medical office, killing one doctor and wounding two other people before taking his own life last week.
His apparent reason for the rampage? A vasectomy he said wrecked his life.
One man hiding in a bathroom with 10 other people told a 911 operator that the gunman was “pissed off because he had a vasectomy here and it ruined his life. … He says, ‘As long as you’re a patient you can leave; otherwise, I’m going to shoot you.’ ”

There were warning signs:

The California man accused of fatally shooting a urology doctor and injuring two others at a Reno medical office has spent three years struggling with ailments resulting from a botched vasectomy, according to his messages on a Yahoo support group and a law enforcement investigation.
Reno police confirmed [Dec. 19] that 51-year-old Alan Oliver Frazier’s focus during the shooting was the doctors at Urology Nevada. . . .
Frazier told the online Vasectomy Pain group on Aug. 25, 2012 that his post-vasectomy pain, or PVP, “was like I got run over by a truck.” . . .
“Yes, yet another victim of an inhumane medical procedure from hell,” Frazier said in his first post on Aug. 11, 2012.

Of course: He’s a victim, which is why he had to shoot three people before committing suicide. And I’m not saying this is an argument against vasectomy, per se, because I’m sure severe complications like Frazier’s are rare, but on the other hand:

  1. Nobody’s getting anywhere near my scrotum with a knife;
    and
  2. If you decide to undergo “an inhumane medical procedure from hell,” you’ve got to be prepared to deal with it.

 

The #PajamaBoy Thing, Also: Bizarre Holiday Ad Targets Gays for ObamaCare

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OK, I’m way late blogging this.

Twitter gold! The Obama #PajamaBoy selfie
and other must-see mash-ups and memes
— Twitchy

Pajama Boy, An Insufferable Man-Child
— Politico

Footiejammies from the Id!
— Ed Driscoll

Even MSNBC Is Laughing
Hysterically at Pajama Boy
— Jammie Wearing Fools

Meanwhile, an organization called “Out2Enroll” (get it?) produced this gay-themed ad for ObamaCare:

 

Exit Questions: How many U.S. tax dollars are being spent to fund these laughable ObamaCare propaganda efforts? Couldn’t that money be better spent on, y’know, actual health care?

 

After ObamaCare

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Guest Blog by Dana from Ohio

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (aka Obamacare or the ACA) is proving to be difficult to implement. Can it be fixed?

It was difficult legislation to comprehend and difficult legislation to pass. It passed even though a majority of the U.S. was against it. It has endured court challenges and is still facing a few. It’s the court case that has yet to be filed that may stop this “train wreck.”

Active court cases focus on the funding of subsidies for health plans purchased on the federal exchange versus the state exchanges. The legislation set up subsidies for plans purchased through the state-based exchanges but made no provisions for plans acquired through the federal exchange. The real challenge will be when the individual mandate kicks in. Once the individual mandate is imposed legal standing to challenge it can be established.

The Obama administration had to go back on calling the individual mandate a penalty. It argued before the Supreme Court that it was a tax and not a penalty. The legislation held up because the individual mandate was deemed constitutional as a tax. But what kind of tax is it going to be? It’s not a sales tax, an excise tax nor an income tax. It’s a tax on…. nothing. It’s a tax for not doing as we’re told; a tax on bad behavior. It’s a tax on just being a citizen of this country. How can such a “tax” stand?

The ACA is barely standing under its own weight. The individual mandate will bury it.

The question before the nation is not “Can we fix Obamacare?” but rather “What are we going to do after Obamacare?”

 


Obama: Less Popular Than Syphilis

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“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

OK, maybe the headline is exaggerating a bit, but Obama’s poll numbers have definitely cratered in the past ten weeks. These two headlines were an interesting contrast of how the polls get spun:

Obama’s Current Approval Rating
Is The Ugliest Since Nixon
— Business Insider

A Drop in Opposition to Obamacare
Helps Stabilize a Struggling Presidency
— ABC News

ABC offers the “glass half-full” interpretation, viewing the dead-cat bounce as good news for the President, although we don’t actually know whether the situation is “stabilizing,” because future events could make things even worse for the White House.

Show of hands: Who remembers ABC News doing this kind of upside spin for George W. Bush during his second term? Anybody?

No, of course not. Whether or not the ABC interpretation is accurate, it takes a lot of digging in the poll numbers lately to find any encouraging news for Obama. Yet ABC’s Gary Langer was willing to do that kind of digging, because . . . Yea, Democrats! Go team!

It’s as simple as that, really. The media reports poll data according to their own hopes and expectations, and what they want is the same thing Democrats want, i.e., for this to be a short-term decline in the President’s numbers as a result of the problems related to the HealthCare.gov website, not the policy per se. The media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) are not prepared to accept the possibility that the President’s program is actually unpopular. ObamaCare simply can’t fail, from that partisan perspective, and so the reality of its failure must be explained away as a matter of misperception.

For the past five years, we’ve seen this blatant pro-Obama spin so often, in so many different contexts, that I fear we’ve begun taking it for granted, as if it is normal for journalists to engage in this kind of partisan rah-rah routine. And the stark contrast between the media’s reverential awe toward their idol and Obama’s sinking polls is a phenomenon that the media can only explain by saying that the people must be wrong!

 

 


Alabama Tea Party Leader Compares ObamaCare to ‘Lord of the Rings’

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Becky Gerritson, leader of the Wetumpka (Alabama) Tea Party, made headlines in June when she testified to Congress about how her organization was treated by the Internal Revenue Service. Monday, in a speech to a meeting of the Alabama 60-Plus Senior Association in Montgomery, Gerritson compared the fight against ObamaCare to the Lord of the Rings saga, an analogy in which President Obama is Sauron. Here is the text of her speech:

Hello. I’m Becky Gerritson. I’ve been asked to explain how Obamacare will affect you all in five minutes. I think I can do it in less than one.
Remember Lord of the Rings?
Well, we are all happy hobbits. Washington, DC is Mordor. Barack Obama is Sauron. Kathleen Sebelius is Sarumon. The hideous, despicable army of evil orcs would be the IRS. And the Affordable Care Act is their plan to reorganize the Shire.
That metaphor works for several reasons. I love it because it highlights a certainty that many of us would prefer to ignore: a battle is coming.
As natives of the Shire, we don’t like conflict. We like to work hard. We like to take care of our families. We like our churches. We like our communities. When we see a neighbor struggle, we like to band together and bear each other up.
But outside forces think they know better. They’ve announced their new edict. Very soon, they will commence its enforcement. And now, we are being forced to make a choice: submit or fight.
And what does submission require?
Obamacare may begin with health care, but it’s much more than that — more than your individual policy, more than a government takeover of 1/6th of the American economy.
Try not to focus on the politics of the moment. Forget about your personal relationship with your family doctor. Forget about broken promises. Forget about the technical failures of healthcare.gov. The real nightmare arrives when Obamacare starts to function properly.
Complying with Obamacare means that your tax dollars will directly fund abortions as of January 1st, 2014. It means that religious institutions will have to violate their consciences if they want to keep their doors open.
If the government orders you to kill a baby would you do it? No? Then why would you agree to pay someone else to do it?
What is religious freedom if the government can force you to violate your religious convictions?
Maybe you’re not religious. And maybe you don’t care about abortion. Are you comfortable with the government redefining freedom whenever they change their mind about the “greater good?”
That’s the most troubling aspect of Obamacare. It’s not just an enormous government welfare program that asks younger Americans to pay for the decisions of an older generation. Obamacare presents a competing system of values that cannot co-exist with our local values.
I like to make my own decisions about my life and family. But if I’m forced to deal with a collective, I would rather trust the strangers in this room than federal bureaucrats. And that is exactly what Obamacare forbids: individual decision-making and communities expressing local values. With Obamacare, the moral decision-making occurs in Washington. We just follow their orders. As such, Obamacare is the keystone to a fundamental transformation of our culture.
If you think I’m being dramatic, I urge you to remember the name Ezekial Emanuel. He’s the chief architect of Obamacare. He’s also the author of the Complete Lives system. That system is his blueprint for how health care dollars should be allocated to benefit the most productive in a society. He says his program will serve the “greatest good.” Emanuel believes that too much money is spent on the elderly. He also believes that children born with serious disabilities and illnesses siphon off more than their share of collective dollars that could be better spent elsewhere. In short, the Complete Lives system would focus health care expenditures to aid the most productive in society (roughly those between 18 and 50) at the expense of the elderly and the infirm.
When it comes to sick kids and grandparents, sometimes difficult decisions must be made. I think those decisions should be made by families. Obamacare will leave the decision to a panel of bureaucrats.
I believe that Obamacare will be deeply destructive — both to American health care and to American culture — but Obamacare is just a vessel. It is not nearly as sinister and threatening as the idea behind it: social justice. Over the last five years, you’ve heard the term “social justice” uttered by President Obama and his czars and czarinas somewhere around 14 billion times. The president can’t complete a sneeze without mentioning it.
As a concept, social justice means that we have an obligation to those less fortunate than us. On the surface, there’s nothing especially new about that. Christians and Jews believe something similar. We know that the poor will always be with us, and it is always our duty to reach out and be charitable.
I urge you not to fall for this. Christianity calls individuals to be generous to the less fortunate. Christianity is concerned with each individual soul. Though social justice cloaks itself in similar language, it asserts that some debt exists between one citizen and another. This is an enormous difference. Recipients of charity are grateful. Those who believe that they have been denied justice are not.
If social justice exists, where are the courts? If a debt exists between citizens, how much is owed? And who owes it? If these questions can’t be answered, then social justice is a fraud, and those who propagate it are promoting violence between citizens.
Obamacare was sold under the banner of social justice. In nearly every speech, President Obama suggests that part of the population has taken more than its fair share. Conversely, he is telling part of the population that they have been robbed. This is a morality fairy tale spun by a man who doesn’t understand the free market or respect American traditions.
I know the Shire, and I know Shire folk. We’re generous and hospitable to those in need. We’re happy to support charitable causes, near and far. But submitting to outsiders is not generosity. It’s surrender. And I won’t play a part in it.
As I said at the beginning, a battle is coming. If you’re interested in joining the resistence, we need your help.

You Stay Classy, LGF

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Left to right: Jason Mattera, Michelle Malkin, Jim Hoft and me
covering the Democratic National Convention, August 2008.

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit is one of the nicest guys in the blogosphere and when he got sick this summer, I was happy to help by guest posting at his site. However, I had no idea of how sick he really was:

In August 2013 I became very sick with what I thought was a cold. After a few days I lost vision in my left eye and I checked into the hospital. I soon found out that what I thought was a summer cold was actually Strep bacteria poisoning my blood stream. The bacteria blinded my left eye, ate a hole through my heart, caused five strokes on both sides of my brain and forced the removal of my prosthetic left knee.
Dr. [Richard] Lee was the surgeon assigned to perform open heart surgery. What was originally scheduled to last four hours ended up lasting twelve. My heart was severely damaged. Dr. Lee later told me the surgery was one of the most difficult of his career. He also said I only had a few days to live without the surgery.
Thanks to the excellent insurance I carried I was able to receive life-saving medical treatment at St. Louis University.
This week I found out I am going to lose my insurance. The company that carried me is leaving the Missouri market. I will have to find something else.

Jim Hoft is one of millions who are losing their insurance because of ObamaCare’s centralized regulatory scheme. By substituting government mandates for the risk-based business decisions of insurers, ObamaCare effectively abolishes certain insurance plans and in other cases — including Jim Hoft’s — drives insurers out of certain markets.

These problems were entirely predictable and were, in fact, predicted by opponents of ObamaCare, but the media never questioned Obama’s repeated promise, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” — now recognized as The Lie of the Year.

For some reason I’ve never understood, Jim Hoft has always been hated by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, one of whose ignorant minions posted this despicable hatefulness:

This is as dishonest as it is cruel — “thanks to ObamaCare,” my ass!

What these deluded fools would have you believe, basically, is that there was no such thing as “decent” health care in America until Obama and Democrats invented it. According to these idiots, cancellations caused by ObamaCare are actually good news, because hey, the government will force other companies to issue you a policy. But this isn’t the same as, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” is it?

No, it’s not. As Jim says, he had “excellent” insurance that gave him access to the best treatment. Jim paid extra for that plan, because it was the plan he wanted, and the regulatory mandates of ObamaCare have now taken Jim Hoft’s plan away from him.

ObamaCare is a redistribution scheme that in order to insure the uninsured, also uninsures the insured by eliminating some choices and forcing everyone into a government-controlled system.

It’s one thing to discuss this as a policy in terms of statistics, but quite another thing to confront what it means to real human beings. Of course, no one should ever expect human sympathy from any of the vile selfish left-wing creeps at Little Green Footballs.

Go hit Jim Hoft’s tip jar — I just did.