The Foundation

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” –Thomas Jefferson

The Demo-gogues

Pretty much sums it up: “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this. … What I care more about, I care more about the people dying every day that don’t have health care.” –Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL), on video talking about health care (He later issued a video response.)

The BIG Lie: “So now that this bill is finally law and all the folks who have been playing politics will finally have to confront the reality of what this reform is, they’re also going to have to confront the reality of what it isn’t. They’ll have to finally acknowledge that this isn’t a government takeover of our health care system. They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they will keep their doctor. And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future. What this reform represents is basically a middle-of-the-road solution to a very serious problem.” –Barack Obama

Kumbaya: “[T]he loud minority made a lot of noise [opposing ObamaCare]. Now that the legislation passed, it’s amazing how much different people’s attitude is. … So everybody acknowledges, with rare exception, that what we did was terrific and if there’s some problems in the out years, we’ll be happy to take a look at that.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

“The Tea Party emerges as not only outrageous, but they have turned up the volume in ways that even Code Pink have not been able to do.” –Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), classic hypocrite (warning: vulgar language in the linked video)

Big socialist lie: “The truth is, some of these comments, when you actually ask ‘well, this is based on what? This notion that Obama’s a socialist, for example?’ Nobody can really give you a good answer.” –Barack Obama

Spreading the wealth: “It’s a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a ‘redistribution of income’ – well, so be it. I don’t call it that. I call it just being fair – giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.” –Joe Biden

More redistribution: “[Health reform is] an income shift. It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower-income, middle-income Americans. … [T]he maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. [The new health care legislation] will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America.” –Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who knows how much money you need better than you do

Compassion? “Number one is that we are the only – we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance.” –Barack Obama on what he “allows” his subjects

Editorial Exegesis

“Here’s a question of vastly more than theoretical importance to current and coming generations of Americans: How much longer can the U.S. economy continue to produce enough wealth to sustain a growing class of people who depend on government for some or all of their daily necessities? To pose the question another way: Are we nearing a point when there are no longer enough taxpayers to support all of the tax consumers in America? Such questions become increasingly important as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal civil service retirement, and legions of state and local pension funds approach their days of reckoning as millions of retiring baby boomers demand far more benefits than those programs have been prepared to pay out. And don’t forget the growing share of personal income that is derived from government transfer payments such as unemployment, veterans benefits, and the like. If these ruminations sound ominous, they should. … As it happens, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Dependency on Government measures the relationship between net taxpayers and tax consumers, using 1980 as its baseline year with a value of 100 and reaching back to 1962. Heritage noted last month that the Dependency Index now stands at 240, up three points from 2007. It has grown 31.2 percent since 2001 when it stood at 183. … These trend lines remind us of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s trenchant observation: ‘The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money to spend.’” –The Washington Examiner

Upright

“The founders of our great nation recognized that, after a few thousand years of civilization and multiple, painful attempts by governmental leaders to create ‘fair’ societies, the best hope for humankind was to construct a society of freedom, where individuals can freely chose to do business with one-another (or choose not to). This characterization of freedom and ‘fairness’ runs counter to the type of governmental constructs that Barack Obama grew-up with in Indonesia, and bares little resemblance to the world he knew in Chicago, but it is, nonetheless, distinctly American. I suspect that President Obama has no interest in this type of freedom and ‘fairness.’” –columnist Austin Hill

“Far too many Americans are already willing to trade integrity for ‘free’ health care, a ‘government modified’ mortgage, or a host of other carrots held in front of them by a federal government whose resemblance to a pimp grows sharper every day. Much of human nature is about taking the path of least resistance – which is why it is so important to resist such instincts, especially when they’re portrayed as virtues.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

“This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, ‘We achieved the dream of generations – high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all.’ The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have health care coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There’s simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few. ” –columnist Byron York

“Tea partiers must be racist, Democrats imply, because why else would anyone oppose Barack Obama’s agenda? But Mr. Obama’s skin color was well known in 2008, when he was elected president by a comfortable margin, and at his inauguration, when he began his presidency with the highest approval rating (68 percent) since John F. Kennedy. What wasn’t known by most then was that Mr. Obama is a left wing radical who is spending us into bankruptcy.” –columnist Jack Kelly

“Accusing the [health care] bill’s critics of racism and comparing them to the segregationist mobs of the 1960s is about silencing and delegitimizing them. It expropriates the unquestioned moral authority of the civil-rights movement and then uses it as a political bludgeon. It substitutes rhetorical thuggery for argument.” –National Review editor Rich Lowry

Insight

“Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.” –former U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

“I didn’t know before I got there and they told me all this – that Rome had Senators. Now I know why it declined.” –American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Dezinformatsia

Belly Laugh of the Week: “But right now, the division, the hatred, the venom over a policy of something close to universal health care for citizens – I would sooner jab my hand into a food processor than take a side – in my line of work I never engage in opinions anyway – but this has proven one of those catch-all issues. … We’ve had a lot of anger building in this country. A lot of it goes back to Bill Clinton’s affair with an intern, then from the attacks of 9/11. But whatever the cause, the source, however long it’s been building, people chose this issue [the health care bill] for it to boil over.” –NBC’s Brian Williams, feigning objectivity

If the shoe fits: “After spending time, out and about, listening to talk radio, the kindest of terms you’re sometimes referred to out in America is a ‘socialist,’ the worst of which I’ve heard is called a ‘Nazi.’ Are you aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation about you?” –CBS’s Harry Smith to BO

Classless and clueless: “What do you guys have to talk about positively? What do you guys got in your barrel? You got anything to sell or are just running against this guy? Just pee all over Obama everyday. You got anything to sell? Positively? What? What are your bills?” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to GOP consultant Todd Harris

Bullying prez and delusional reporter: “President Barack Obama is learning to be a strong president. Yes, he can. … In the closing weeks of the national debate over health care, Obama ended up using his powers of persuasion with his own wavering Democrats by making it clear that their political future was at stake, too. And it paid off.” –White House press corpse reporter Helen Thomas

Facts schmacts: “One [factor in opposition to government taking over health care] is clearly there’s a racial component. Some members of Congress you know, had epithets hurled at them as protesters marched around the Capitol on the day of the big House vote.” –New York Times scribbler David Herszenhorn, regurgitating the unproven smear that Tea Partiers chant racist slogans

Newspulper Headlines:

It’s Called ‘the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act’: “Sebelius Warns of Health-Insurance Scam” –WSJ.com

Does That Mean They’ll Be Good for Nothing?: “City Will Stop Paying the Poor for Good Behavior” –The New York Times

News You Can Use: “Next Big Thing in English: Knowing They Know That You Know” –The New York Times

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Winchester Dairy Farm to Pop Hazardous Gas Bubbles in Manure Lagoon” –Star Press (Muncie, IN)

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Ahmadinejad Rejects Obama’s ‘Beautiful Words’ to Iran” –Reuters

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

And again with the redistribution: “The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top … and those at the bottom? When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution.” –former DNC Chief Howard Dean on the unconstitutional health care bill

Religion of climate: “The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century.” –James Hansen, leading global warmists at the NASA Goddard Institute

Threats: “If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this: We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.” –Greenpeace blogger Gene Hashmi

“No, it’s about the myth, you know, why it is that 300 people went to North Vietnam, people, many people before me, why me, why have they created this myth? You know, when I came back from North Vietnam, there was maybe a quarter of an inch of media about it in the New York Times. Nobody made any big deal out of it. It was created … by right-wingers. There are some people who are like stuck there, you know, they’re still stuck in the past. … The myths are now true.” –“Hanoi Jane” Fonda with some hysterical revisionism on how she earned her nickname

Short Cuts

“Half a century ago, Khrushchev and Nixon had what was dubbed the kitchen debate. Nixon predicted that the Russians would become capitalists, while Khrushchev insisted that socialism would bury us. Who would ever have guessed that they would both be right?” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“[T]hose bitten by the Obama bug can be healed. Indeed many of them as I type and smoke a cigar are waking up from the mindless allegiance to a president who promised them the moon but instead mooned them.” –columnist Doug Giles

“Whereas you [Ronald Reagan] are remembered for, ‘Tear down this wall,’ Obama may be remembered for, ‘Tear down this country.’” –columnist Doug Gamble

“The legendary King Midas was given the gift of the golden touch; everything he touched would turn to gold. Excited at first, he learned the price of greed when the food he tried to eat turned to gold and when he even turned his own daughter into a hunk of gold. King Obama, twentieth century America, has a magic touch, too. Everything he touches turns to … well … donkey dust … owl hockey … bull shavings … bunny pellets … that sort of thing.” –Tony Gallardo

“This is my favorite story of the week. The Republican National Committee is in trouble after spending nearly $2,000 at a bondage club in Hollywood. You know what I call a Republican that spends a lot of money in a strip club? A Democrat.” –comedian Jay Leno