How timely and awesome

by Smitty (h/t Knowledge is Power)

Dr. Richard B. Rafal provides a rhetorically lethal injection of common sense into the health care debate, by proposing that doctors regulate legal services, if lawyers can regulate medicine. 11 excellent points, including:

Legal "death panels." Over 75? You will not be entitled to legal care for any matter. Why waste money on those who are only going to die soon? We can decrease utilization, save money and unclog the courts simultaneously. Grandma, you're on your own.

He concludes:

Enthusiastically embracing the above legal changes can serve as a "teachable moment" and will go a long way toward giving the lawyers who run Congress a taste of their own medicine.

Interestingly enough, at my Town Hall with Jim Moran and Dr. Howard "Arrrghhh" Dean, the only time the Constitution was mentioned was in discussing why none of the proposals include tort reform. Going from memory here, not an official transcript at all: "Everyone is entitled to a trial by jury. That's in the Constitution."

Health careObamaCare is a brick in the wall of the mausoleum of your liberty, people.

My voice in the chorus of boos

by Smitty (h/t Townhall)

If you listen very closely, I'm coming in from the right side of the screen, and you can hear me add to the booing of Howard Dean. No, you can't.

Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to comb their Congresscritter's website, find the town hall meeting, attend, and enjoy a bit of primal scream therapy. You, and the unborn generations supporting the federal pyramid scheme, are paying an awful lot of money for the privilege. These are not cheap yucks. Get some.

The clip ends just short of Dean's use of the word 'Constitution', the sole appearance of the noun the whole evening, from the stage, anyway. A few of us up in nosebleed honored it in this horrible breach called ObamaCare. That they even fielded a question on tort reform was somewhat impressive, but the answer was akin to describing having four slashed tires on the car and only replacing three. Is the question actually about a systematic analysis of medicine in the US, or a battle of the word processors to see who can turn the most byzantine cross-breed of Molloy and War and Peace.

Or, as Madison laid it down with less hyperbole:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

So, I went to my Congresstool's Health Prevention Act town hall

by Smitty


I'm on Twitter as smitty_one_each (military supply unit of issue, as in pencils, box, dozen), if you care to suffer the tweets.

Tonight I had two hours of pure sunshine blown up an unusual location about the joys of single payer, which Jim Moran, my tool, supports. Had about a hundred tweets in two hours, which I will summarize here.

Going in 0:

Going in 1:

It was 2500-3000 people in a high-school gym, 99% European extraction, roughly 2/3 supporting the Longevity Abatement Legislation.

Howard Dean was there to answer Really Hard Questions.

There was some chanting. "Healthcare! Now!" Those against the madness were dropping the "w" to form "No". Guy behind me says "I guess we're sitting in the insurance company section." (The insurance companies were the Ultimate Scapegoat tonight. If you are an insurance company, we are now informed that you pray to Moloch and don't take care of your lawn.)

I replied, "No, Constitution supporter". He said, "F*** you". I replied "I love you too, sir." It's these more complex arguments you get from the left that baffle me.

Moran respects dissent, and said we were as American as apple pie for dissenting. Thanks, sir. He also assured us that the mythical death panels that didn't exist but were removed from the bill were not in the bill. Gotta save something for the signing statement. The way he circumlocuted the name "Palin" was fun.

Dean said "There is no industrialized country that has given over patient care to private companies". Like the private sector is somehow...unclean.

The Q&A was rigged and shameful. No one in the bleachers was aware of how to submit questions, which were binned for/against/moderate. One person was chewed for launching into a question that was not on the card, and therefore unscreened. I'll note that the words Federalism, Constitution, and 10th Amendment went unused by Moran.

Dean espoused comparative effectiveness methods. This is sort of like the medical equivalent of a Procrustean bargain, in a way. As long as the problem belongs to someone else, it's OK. I'm not an expert, so take this criticism with a grain of salt.

Howard Dean did seem to have heard of the Constitution, when that trick "Tort Reform" question came up. Seems that the bill would have reached a "too big" threshold. I guess big enough to kill a chihuahua when dropped from table height is OK, but a but a greyhound is right out. No, everyone has a right to a trial, that's in the Constitution (Dean's sole use of the 'C' word) but if you threaten the Sharks then the Shark (Judiciary) Committee takes a bite. Moran chipped in that the Judiciary Committee is 'partisan'. I do not know what that word means in this context.

The second hardest question was: When does reform become more important than cooperation? Moran punted. He said he didn't grasp the question. I admit it was slightly abstract, but I should think my Congresstool, as a tool, should know that we're asking how much you're willing to torque something that doesn't care to budge. Shear genius, since I pun when I'm tired.

Overall, I'm terrified. The righteousness of destroying liberty in the name of health care was a religious affirmation for the supporters. Down the road, we have to drive for something like the Federalism Amendment, and we may have to push for a historically unprecedented Article V suppository to plug the sucking pelvis wound marked by the Beltway.

Good luck with that, Howard

Howard Dean Says Sotomayor's Race Comment Taken Out of Context

I've been trying to explain this "context" thing for years, and yet some people still persist in the erroneous belief that I am a neo-Confederate lesbian . . . er, NTTAWWT.

Dean's thumb on the scales

Obama bombs in a debate, and suddenly somebody is not willing to wait until the primary voters have their say:

An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.”
“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”

Dean's hostility toward the Clinton machine is well known so his push for an early commitment is intended to help Obama. The superdelegates aren't helping Hillary:

[I]nterviews on Thursday with a cross-section of these superdelegates — members of Congress, elected officials and party leaders — showed that none had been persuaded much by her attacks on Mr. Obama’s strength as a potential Democratic nominee, his recent gaffes and his relationships with his former pastor and with a onetime member of the Weather Underground.
In fact, the Obama campaign announced endorsements from two more superdelegates on Thursday, after rolling out three on Wednesday and two others since late last week in what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated show of strength before Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary.

Obama's orchestra of endorsements continues:

If the Democratic presidential race were a poker game, by now you'd have to suspect that Barack Obama's campaign is dealing from the bottom of the deck: Rarely a day goes by when it doesn't slap another ace down on the table. The aces in this (possibly strained) metaphor are endorsements, and it often seems as if the Obama operation has an inexhaustible supply at its disposal. In the past week alone, it has announced the support of congressmen from North Carolina and Indiana; the Utah state party chair; the Oklahoma state party's chief fundraiser; 25 South Dakota state legislators; the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers; and, not least, The Boss. Some of these endorsers are super-delegates, and thus of no small consequence to the outcome of the race. Others are simply window-dressing, deployed to create a sense of ineluctable momentum in Obama's direction. But none have the particular resonance of the endorsement that's coming -- unbeknownst to the campaign -- a little later today.
The endorsement in question is that of Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Labor and a friend of both the former president and his wife for four decades. Around 1:00pm EST, Reich informs me, he intends formally to declare his support for Obama on his blog.

Robert Reich, the Red Dwarf. A small endorsment, as it were. Despite all this strategic pressure from Dean and the Obama campaign, Hillary still sees hope:

With Sen. Hillary Clinton widely expected to win Pennsylvania's Democratic primary on Tuesday, most of the focus is on the margin. Anything less than a double-digit victory could solidify the perception that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is the inevitable Democratic nominee, sparking a flow of superdelegates to his side.
But even if Sen. Clinton wins strongly, she still will remain behind in delegates, so her goal must be to change the dynamic of the race, raising doubts about Sen. Obama's ability to carry states like Pennsylvania and lifting her chances of replicating the win in Indiana on May 6.
Most important, a strong Clinton victory would send a message to the superdelegates -- whose support she needs to win the nomination -- or might at least persuade them to stay neutral longer to see if a similar pattern plays out through May.

When I saw Hillary in Greensburg, Pa., last month, I was impressed with her apparent determination to stick it out all the way to the convention. She may lose, but she won't quit. That's an important distinction, and she'd rather be a loser than a quitter.

(Links via Memeorandum.) Pro-Hillary blogger Taylor Marsh also sees Dean's move as a "freaked out" reaction to the debate.

UPDATE: Further evidence of the debate freakout motive from MoveOn.org, which declares that the ABC News moderators "hurt the country" by asking Obama tough questions. Michelle Malkin:

The Soros water-carriers say they will run an ad against ABC -- Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulous photoshopped as Hitler and Eva Braun? Nah, too subtle -- if they gather 100,000 signatures.

Ah, now we see the puppet strings. Remember in 2004 when MoveOn.org declared their ownership of the Democratic Party and installed Howard Dean as DNC chief? That alliance is now trying to push Hillary out of the race, so the Deaniacs can avenge his 2004 primary defeat. It's like George McGovern's nomination '72 vindicating the Gene McCarthy '68 campaign. If the analogy holds true, that means John McCain is . . . Richard Nixon?

Meanwhile, Ed Morrisey gives a hearty "yeeargh!":

Dean can only stop this runaway train if he can convince one candidate or the other to withdraw. If Hillary wins Pennsylvania by anything more than three points, he won’t have a prayer of succeeding.