What Does the Election of Scott Brown Mean?

After a two week absence, so much has happened that I barely know where to begin. I suppose an obvious place to start would be the election of Scott Brown to the Massachusetts Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy. This Republican victory overshadowed both the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races for several reasons. First, the “Liberal Lion”, Ted Kennedy had held that seat for nearly fifty years and the White House felt secure that a Democrat would have no problem capitalizing on Kennedy’s legacy. Second, Massachusetts is well known to be one of the most Liberal states in the union, consistently sending the left of the left to Washington and third, without the 60th vote in the Senate, the President’s healthcare reform initiative would be all but dead, something Massachusetts Liberals would want to avoid; at least that is what everyone thought.

Scott Brown campaigned on the idea that his was the vote that would finally put the brakes on the President’s agenda. There was no doubt that this election would determine if the healthcare reform act, as well as many of the President’s other ultra-Liberal programs, would ever see the light of day and the Democrats responded with as vicious a campaign as had ever been seen. Even after all the stops were pulled including a last minute Presidential visit to try and garner support for Coakley, the voters would elect Republican Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy by a tidy margin.

To most reasonable people, this was a wholesale rejection of not only the healthcare reform bill but of the openly corrupt tactics that were being used to force it through the legislative process. Congressional Democrats had defied the will of the people and those people were given an incredible opportunity to send a message that could not be ignored. Well, it could not be ignored unless you were a hopeless ideologue that intended to pursue your agenda regardless of the consequences. Moderate Democrats heard the message loud and clear but our Progressive friends and their President seem to have missed the mark entirely.

According to the President, they were so busy handling the fiscal crisis that he inherited from Bush that they…get this….”failed to adequately speak to the American people about what their core values are”. After the 1994 mid-term elections, President Clinton faced the nation after a massive Democratic defeat and said quite eloquently “We hear you”. Not this President. Instead of admitting that the defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and finally, Massachusetts, were the revocation of the mandate that he only imagined he had, Obama would rather believe that he didn’t explain his ideas in terms that we could understand. How condescending can one man be? Obama apparently believes that if the voters rejected his plans, it was only because he didn’t speak slowly enough or didn’t use the little words that we idiots would understand.

Obama added that the anger of the voters that prompted them to vote for Scott Brown was the same anger that had swept him into office a year earlier. A psychologist on one talk show panel said that this displayed what could only be called, narcissistic tendencies; that this statement was as foolish as a man that would say his wife filed for divorce to be with her new lover not because she was rejecting him, but as a different manifestation of the same love for her new man that had first brought him and his wife together years earlier. I know that sounds foolish but think of what is being said here. Obama believes, or at least he says he does, that the recent Republican victories are just an extension of anti-incumbency anger and that is really only a rejection of previous Bush era policy, not his. The only problem with that argument is that Coakley is not an incumbent that supported Bush policy; she is a Democrat that supports current Obama policy.

Even more bizarre than Obama’s statements are those of the Progressive Democrats in Congress. They are blaming the defeat of Coakley on their failure to push harder for a healthcare reform bill that contained a strong public option. Howard Dean, former DNC Chairman and failed Presidential candidate, absolutely refuses to accept that this is in any way a rejection of Obama’s Socialist agenda and instead believes with all his heart that the Massachusetts’s voters were punishing the Democratic Party for not being Liberal enough. Let me get this right. Massachusetts’s voters were so upset that healthcare reform hadn’t passed that they elected the only credible roadblock to the passage of the healthcare reform bill? He is crazy, isn’t he?

Democratic Strategists are even funnier as they weasel their way around questions about these three major losses for Democrats. The first thing they have all done was to point to the special election in New York’s 23rd district where the Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman was narrowly defeated by Democrat challenger Bill Owens. The results had Owens winning with 49% of the vote to Hoffman’s 45% with Republican Dede Scozzafava still holding 6% of the vote a week after she dropped out of the race, throwing her support behind Owens. Unfortunately, the race was close enough to fall pray to the “ACORN affect” as ACORN focused their “get the vote out” campaign solidly behind Owens. Considering the indictment of ACORN employees for voter fraud in other states, I would guess that if Doug Hoffman had persisted, there would probably been a sufficient number of suspicious ballots found in a comprehensive recount to have shifted the election in his favor.

The race in Massachusetts was lost in part because of the perception of the American people that we are not only being ignored by Congressional Democrats and the President but that since we are resisting this push towards socialization, we are not even worthy to see what they voting on; that even the discussions of the bill are to be hidden from the ungrateful masses that don’t understand that the President is doing this for our own good. The message was certainly clear but the intended recipients are still ignoring it. They have already said that they intend to force this legislation through in true Saul Alinsky form…by any means necessary. The difference between politicians and ideologues is that politicians can be swayed by the threat of losing an election. Socialist ideologues will sacrifice themselves to progress their agenda for the good of the collective. This message of “full speed ahead” only serves to tell us who these people are. Their intent is clear…to bring about massive social change that cannot be reversed no matter who is elected later. There are already provisions in the healthcare bill that will prevent the repeal of certain key portions of the reform act should the “wrong” Party gain power in the November elections.

The election of Scott Brown may be the single most important electoral race in the past 100 years and the only hope of defeating the nefarious plans of the Progressive movement. What must be watched very closely now is how long they will attempt to delay the certification of the election results. Obama spoke out against delaying the certification process but I fear that is just to get his voice on record as opposing that dirty little trick to distance himself from something that he knows is already in the works.

The State of the Union address is coming this Wednesday and I will bet now that it will be another hour long stab at blaming Bush for the economy, the recent attempts by Al Qaida to inflict more damage on the United States and the anger of the American people. Once he is confident that everyone remembers Bush he will make another pledge to have healthcare reform back on the table as a dire need of a compassionate nation. Lenin never took no for an answer and neither will his protégé, Barack Hussein Obama.

Paul

Sense and Senselessness

I turned on the news this morning and watched no less than fifteen minutes of sheer nonsense before they reached anything of import. It was then I decided to do a selection of blurbs from today’s news in a segment on sense and senselessness.

Of course one thing on the mind of many Americans today is the President’s upcoming speech on Afghanistan. Scheduled for 8:00 PM this evening, rumor has it that he intends to come close to the 40,000 troops that General McChrystal has asked for – almost. Obama is to announce the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops however; the timeline for that deployment is in question. Some estimates were as high as two years and the anti-war Democrats have already floated the idea of a “war tax” to raise money for the additional troop levels in some half-witted attempt to dilute American support for the Afghan war.

Why 30,000 and not 40,000? Facing waning support from the independents and moderates, Obama is fearful of losing his leftist base and becoming a lame duck before his first year is even over. 30,000 would help him show strong support for the soldiers in the field and yet give him the ability to show his radical friends that he is not going to allow the Generals to dictate policy. Of course Obama is just narcissistic enough where he believes that this token gesture coupled with his charismatic aura will keep his base support chugging away at the Kool-Aid. What he doesn’t yet realize is that the left does not compromise and anything less than a wholesale retreat from Afghanistan makes him as much of a war monger in their eyes as Bush ever was.

Michael Moore issued an open letter in advance of Obama’s speech declaring that any reinforcement of the troops in Afghanistan will make him a “War President”. Moore’s contention is that Obama was elected to end that war, not escalate and he risks losing the support of his most loyal supporters if his speech does not detail the complete withdrawal of US forces from the region. Anti-war activists, Code Pink, also weighed in with their demands for the US to withdraw from Afghanistan. Code Pink had recently sent emissaries to Afghanistan and visited with the women who had been brutalized and even murdered under the totalitarian Taliban regime. Afghan women are breathing freely for the first time in years and as fellow women, Code Pink should realize that a premature US withdrawal would mean a death sentence for many of the women that showed them thankful hospitality during their visit.

I am an unapologetic proponent of the freedom of speech however, while the First Amendment guarantees our right to express our ideas and opinions, it does not include a right to be heard. The senselessness of this is that we continue to place microphones and cameras in front of these people. Michael Moore and the members of Code Pink have never served their country and cannot begin to understand the resolve of the military when our nation has fallen under attack. They do however; serve their own agenda which is sadly full of views that are myopic and ill informed. They speak as if they possess an authority that they simply have no claim to. That authority can only be gained by a thoughtful examination of all of the facts and what actions will best meet the prime interest of America; denying Al Qaida a base of operations within the remote regions of Afghanistan.

It is strange that the anti-war factions all claim that American involvement in Afghanistan is the catalyst of hatred that actually creates terrorists intent on destroying America. We were not in Afghanistan or Iraq when airliners flew into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. These people hate us for hates sake and a quiet withdrawal would only serve to show that orchestrated terror campaigns pay; that even a few militants can bring an America bridled with a weak President to its knees.

Next on the list is healthcare. The Senate began debating the healthcare bill today just as they had threatened to do. This is a serious issue and something that most independent analysts say that we just cannot afford. With the first day of debate already pockmarked with fits of fury there is little indication that anyone is having a good time doing this. About the only thing I have found that could be called a bit of ironic humor was the announcement today of six Massachusetts hospitals filing suit against the State for financial restitution. Massachusetts is the home of two of Congresses biggest supporters of a government run, single payer, universal healthcare system; Representative Barney Frank and the late Senator Edward Kennedy. If you recall, Democratic Congressmen stooped so low in their fight to force this legislation through that they even invoked the name of Ted Kennedy during the debates and said that they must pass this in his memory.

The irony is that Massachusetts passed a state-wide healthcare reform act complete with mandates to obtain healthcare insurance, tax increases and a subsidized public option in 2006. Massachusetts plan mimics many of the provisions of the Senate bill that narrowly passed the vote to allow debate prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. In a 2005 speech at a Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation conference, Massachusetts House Speaker, Salvatore DiMasi pledged that they would pass a healthcare reform bill before the close of the session that year (sound familiar?).

So how did that work out for Massachusetts? By 2008, 5.7% of Massachusetts residents were still without insurance, many opting to pay the fine rather than obtain the mandated coverage. New business starts had declined 16% as up and coming entrepreneurs slid across state lines into New Hampshire to escape Massachusetts’s socialist edicts. The program was supposed to curb costs but in reality, the costs have increased at 10% per year, more than three times the rate of inflation. The original projections were for the program to ultimately cover approximately 215,000 people at a cost of $725 million but recent projections now say that enrollment is projected to grow by June 2011 to 342,000 people at an annual expense of $1.35 billion. The Globe reported that “Commonwealth Care” was facing a short term funding gap of $100 million dollars and that Massachusetts would need to obtain a new three year funding commitment from the Federal Government for $1.5 billion dollars. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts state budget deficit was $1.3 billion dollars in 2008 as well.

Rather than admit failure, Massachusetts is considering a whole slew of new taxes to cover the shortages and of course, cutting costs by further slashing payments to the hospitals that actually provide the care. That is the basis of the law suit. Now that Massachusetts has become the insurer, the hospitals no longer have a few people showing up here and there to steal medical services from the ER. Massachusetts has made that theft systematic, leaving hospitals stuck with anywhere from 30 to 70% of the bill unpaid. In case you are interested...Massachusetts has a great model we can all look at to see what a Federal Healthcare Reform Act will actually look at. It looks like budget deficits, bankrupt hospitals, tax increases, job losses and rationed care. Hmmm? I think I've already said that.

Finally, Tiger Woods. The main stream press is falling all over themselves because Tiger Woods had refused to comment on his car accident beyond the prepared statement issued over the weekend. The Florida police fined Tiger Woods roughly $160 for the accident and closed the books, leaving the media slack-jawed at the notion they would not get the juicy little tidbits they were hoping an investigation would yield.

The most idiotic statement I heard was that “Tiger Woods is a celebrity and just can’t refuse to talk about this”. Oh really? Apparently, these people have forgotten that Mr. Woods is first and foremost, a human being. Believe it or not, even celebrities have their problems and since the accident occurred within the confines of the gated community that he lives in, it’s none of their damned business what, if anything, led to the accident. Apparently the neighbor’s statements taken by the police satisfied them to the point that they did not need to investigate the matter further. That is good enough for me and I hope both Tiger and his wife sort this matter out privately to their children’s and their own benefit. Let the newspapers go chase another ambulance or maybe they’ll find the time now to actually report some real news….like the scam Congress is trying to pull in the name of healthcare.

Paul