Health reform: Over whose dead body?

Managed to catch parts of most of the Sunday morning political shows. They all talked about health reform, at least a little.

Something I found amusing on George Stephanopoulos' show was that he had Paul Krugman and Robert Reisch on -- a couple of the biggest liberal-economic guns around -- and these two guys didn't seem to make much sense, except to each other. Even Stephanopoulos challenged some of their statements, which may serve as an indicator that the liberal media is considering bailing out of its unconditional support of The Comrade's radical "reforms." I mean, if Krugman and Reisch don't even make sense to George Stephanopoulos....

Or maybe it's just that Stephanopoulos' ratings are going down so he's trying to look objective. I don't know. And since I really don't listen to the network news or network commentary very often, the liberal spokesmen on these shows always sound to me like they're visiting the USA from some far-distant nation. They make all kinds of cultural references that just go completely over my head. Like George Will noted that many people were questioning the effectiveness of the "Stimulus" bill, and Krugman and Reisch smiled gleefully at each other and said, in unison, that the $787 billion package just wasn't big enough.

What?

I mean, only about 10% of that $787 billion has even been spent. I can only assume that the Krugman-Reisch response was straight out of the radical left catechism. That is, whenever someone claims a big government program isn't working, you automatically declare that the big government program just wasn't big enough. Like saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes.

So the "This Week" experience was something like that. Mostly I just wonder if having a scraggly beard has now become part of the uniform for far left economics people.

I don't understand the double-speak and don't care to learn it. At one time I used to try to figure it out -- spent lots of time reading people like Kant and looking for something deep in Pascal. After all, these guys were supposed to be pretty bright. They were supposed to have some kind of valuable insights.

However, after much torturous reading and thinking, it seems that these guys -- among others -- are either so blockheaded they're making a big deal out of a commonplace observation, or they went so far out on a limb they have to invent some alternative reality just to have something to apply it to. (Noumenals, anyone? Or is it noumenes? Something like that.) So I've come to rely on the notion that if someone's premises -- that is, the foundation of their argument -- is not perceivable reality, there's not much point in figuring out how they arrived at their conclusions.

This is all a convoluted way of saying: When you build on shaky ground, your building will not stand for long.

Like, if your central economic challenge is the marxist "How can we redistribute other peoples' wealth?" instead of on the more practical "How can human beings produce enough to sustain themselves?" we're not going to come to any kind of agreement anyway. The problem that marxists have with reality is their basic premise that "other people" will always have wealth to redistribute. The simple fact is, marxism pretty much eliminates the possibility of wealth all together, replacing it with the meanest subsistence, if that.

But what really worries me is that many Democrats and other leftists are making a lot of noise about passing HR3200 or a reasonable socialist facsimile of it whether or not it has public support. Some of the Democrats seem to be threatening this, or at least reminding the Republicans in congress and the general population that they have a majority in both houses and can do whatever they damn please.

What was it that Jefferson said? "When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny."

Or something like that.

Are the Democrats bluffing or are they genuinely prepared to wreck the republic? I can't imagine anyone who took an oath to defend the Constitution would violate the public trust simply in order to win brownie points with Pazzo Pelosi or Comrade Osama. That's just beyond consideration... and beneath contempt. Presidents and Speakers of the House come and go, after all. The USA was designed to be a bit more durable.

Like many others, I'll be sure to look up and download the exact vote for HR3200 or any socialist-medicine bill -- including the soon-to-be-announced re-write of HR3200 with all different language but no substantial changes.

I'm not a big fan of generic "Republicans," but at least they're organized. So I'm looking for a huge Republican sweep in the 2010 elections. It's absolutely required. It's starting to look like the only way we can disarm The Comrade and save the nation.