VA-8 Matthew Berry interview

by Smitty

Jumping in Pools interviews Matthew Berry, who is exploring candidacy for the GOP nomination in VA-8.

He'll be running against this piece of work:

"We have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in this simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it, and they have an antipathy towards means of redistributing wealth."

You darn right we do, clown-boy Jim:

• Private property == good
• Theft == bad

Here is Beck playing your tune, Moran:

Jim Moran can have a follow-on career as a "wino throwing frisbees at the sun", where his non-command of anything recognizably American will be less economically harmful.

Update: Paco asks if there is anyone in Congress dumber than Jim Moran. I'd throw out Nancy Pelosi as a going-in position. Ejections would continue alphabetically through the list of godforsaken commies that voted for the 2K pp. Healthcare Prevention Act until reaching the M section. They're all close to the mean for dumb, yet deviants abound (deviance abounds?).

Finally VA-8 Gets Some Love

by Smitty

I've bemoaned the lack of attention given NOVA's finest piece of work.

Today all that changed. The Track-A-'Crat came through, noting Jim Moran's equating the GOP with the Taliban.

I'm not sure yet who the GOP will put on the ticket against this joker. Unfortunately, lack of blood circulation in the legislative district has left a distinctly blue color about the collective face.

Jim "Taliban" Moran. I think we may have a winner here. Let's see if we can make that the phrase the unruly hair in his coiffure.

Hoyer's Got a Feevah

by Smitty

He needs more General Welfare Clause cowbell.

Hoyer, speaking to reporters at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, was asked by CNSNews.com where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to mandate that a person must by a health insurance policy. Hoyer said that, in providing for the general welfare, Congress had "broad authority."

"Well, in promoting the general welfare the Constitution obviously gives broad authority to Congress to effect that end," Hoyer said. "The end that we're trying to effect is to make health care affordable, so I think clearly this is within our constitutional responsibility."

Readers having shred #1 of common sense interpret Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution as giving a limited set of powers to Congress, as well as enough wiggle room to carry out those powers.

The subsequent Amendment 10 should have been a firewall against this Progressive Hoyer-hooey. But there sits Amendment 16: Congress has eminent domain over YOUR WALLET. It's a century-old problem. The best vehicle I've seen for steamrolling the rampant Hoyerism is The Federalism Amendment.

The question is how bad things have to get to trigger an Article 5 cram-down. You know these neo-aristocrats are going to pay as much attention to the American People now as George III did back then.

I say this coming from a district with a bullet-proof piece of work in office, VA-8. At the Green Tea Party, I said to a speaker who was from Hoyer's district "I'll trade you Jim Moran for Steny Hoyer." That speaker (no recollection of his name) allowed that he was unsure which of us would be receiving the bigger screwing.

Back at TFA:

David B. Rivkin, a constitutional lawyer with Baker & Hostetler, told CNSNews.com that Hoyer’s argument was "silly," adding that if the general welfare clause was that elastic, then nothing would be outside of Congress' powers.

"Congressman Hoyer is wrong," Rivkin said. "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly because if that’s true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything.

"The arguments are, I believe, feeble," he said.

Now, for those lacking common sense, or enjoying a Federal collar on the neck, a feeble argument is no disqualifier, as long as it's backed with government cheese.

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.

Technology and Politics

by Smitty

With the advent of the webby-clouds, you can go to YouTube and watch a politician argue with itself over time, lining up beautifully contradictory statements on a topic. This collects a few links of historical interest and ponders technology and politics over time.

FDR had some ideas that seem swell in the abstract:

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

What kind of an evil person are you for failing to agree that these "truths" are "self-evident"? You've had 65 years. How is it that you have not "accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights" as some kind of stare decisis? Why must you continue to waste time and public resources in this resistance to such a common-sense set or proposals? Aren't you ashamed that your country doesn't join with the rest of the "civilized" world in embracing these concepts? What about the children harmed by your narrow-minded, hide-bound opposition, you Bad Person?

Set aside the Constitutional issues, and the general financial insolvency of the results of the spiffy ideas of FDR. My curiosity is whether having the Internet available in the 1930s would have enabled a patriotic resistance to the implementation of these ideas at a federal level.

[Note that I'm not attacking these ideas as such. It would be quite interesting to see a distribution of states of various adherence to these concepts and see which dogs hunt, and which ones not so much. (The resistance of some to that kind of empiricism is telling).]

As implied by the full title of The Glorious Cause, the American Revolution was a slow-burn affair, with its pamphleteers. I recall from having read it a couple years ago that there is thought to have been a breakdown in thirds between those who supported independents, those who didn't care, and those who, unlike the modern left, did in fact go to Canada rather than deal with a pack of conservatives setting up a government emphasizing individual liberty.

A thrust of the Progressive movement has been the creation of the permanent political class, an American aristocracy, if you will. Also, it has a funding mechanism that could probably use an audit by now. The result has been to diminish the States as relevant in addressing issues. My Congresstool, on Tuesday, bemoaned the 800 families who've gone bankrupt as a result of health care costs in the last year (I think that was the scope of the remark) without mentioning Richmond as a source of any leadership.

I wonder to what degree the current crisis presidency and Congress realize that, if the US Constitution is to be defeated, the deed must be done now. Like a tiring magician, I think that the radical left realizes its ability to control the audience attention is fading. The serial failures of the Obama administration and the 111th Congress to manage public attention, drawing it away from the pesky details of sucking the remaining independence out of the States, is telling. Stage magic requires a pliant audience.

What about between now and the next election?

• This Saturday the Tea Party Express gets under way. Pray for peace as that trek unfolds.
• We have gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey in November.
• There is the wild card of the Massachusetts Senate seat. Do we get some vulgar display of legislation, or does the 2004 law stand, and they vote the seat?
  
• ???
• The 2010 election season starts up.

It's going to be exhausting. And, yet, your alternative is knowing that you stood by while all that was good about the country is replaced by a cheap imitation. Such is untenable.

Victor Davis Hanson bears quoting, in closing:

History tells all of us that nobody gets a pass. Your [country's] perpetual existence is not guaranteed. If you do not believe in yourself, and believe that you're better than the alternative, and have the educational skills to come to that empirical judgment, then there is no reason for you to continue, and often you won't.

Dear Congressman Moran

August 26, 2009

Dear Congressman Moran,

Thank you for conducting the health care town hall on August 25, 2009. Having slept on the matter, I should like to express my discontent with the entire concept.

It was refreshing to hear a Rabbi offer the invocation. I'm a fan of Jews, their King in particular. The mention of Pharaoh in Exodus seeking wise counsel to prepare for the famine years was interesting. I appreciated the Rabbi's taste in serving up the example, and leaving it to the audience to connect the dots. Your attempt during your remarks to connect the 44th President with Pharaoh had ominous overtones. Pharaoh was an autocrat ruling a nation of slaves with the rod. I have thought that, at a high level of abstraction, the health care debate could be seen as an attempt to convince the people that we'd really all be happier in Egypt. See Exodus 14:9-12.

You really don't want to be an insurer these days, do you? I suppose a corporation makes a great scapegoat, and your attempts to throw THEM a bit of reclama were amusing. Yet, if we take the evening as a whole, and substitute a despised ethnic minority for 'insurer', the rhetorical devices in use hearken back to a prior century. It would be helpful to substitute sound economic reasoning for crass emotional plays.

You mentioned 800 families in the local area having gone bankrupt as a result of medical expenses. 800, a three digit number, seems big enough to be scary, without being far-fetched for the scope of the discussion. And who could deny families? They are the building block of society, (for now), right?

Furthermore, I understand the town hall format precludes analysis of those 800 families. We don't want to judge, we don't want to blame the victim, we don't want to live in a society where all are at liberty to succeed or fail on their own merit.

May I reference my correspondence to your office dated August 04, 2009? For those 800 families, where is the State of Virginia in all this? Where is Governor Kane amidst these tales of woe? Why are these 50 States United short-circuiting the chain of command, and relying on a Pharonic Fed fix? Do the States even matter?

Furthermore, you didn't mention the 'C' word the whole evening. Your side-kick Governor Dean made a sole mention of the document, in the context of explaining why tort reform, so conspicuously absent from the debate, is precluded from discussion. What about that Constitution? What if the wise Framers, foreseeing the behavior pattern of a Pharaoh in DC, insisted on a 10th Amendment specifically to preclude the shenanigans currently afoot? If you haven't told me what you're doing to alter the Constitution explicitly to support this overreach, and instead seek to legislate your way around it, then I shall continue to attend your town hall meetings and guffaw like an idiot at your oath-breaking behavior. (I was the loud creep in nosebleed directly to your left last night, sir.)

Now, socializing medicine has been, to be generous, a mixed bag, world-wide and across time. Your attempt to state that this country is somehow less corrupt than every other country in the world, and that the forces of bureaucratic gravity therefore do not apply to us, was among the more luxurious laughs I enjoyed yesterday evening. Those were some expensive laughs. If this healthcare abomination passes, I'll treasure those laughs, because they shall have been the price of liberty.

I could go on. I'm even sympathetic to your plight as my Representative. The creeping Progressivism the last 100-ish years has trained Americans not to look to liberty and capitalism as the source of happiness, but to the Federal government. Expectations have been raised. Irrespective of your own opinion, you're carrying out the will of VA-8, even if that will resembles a junkie craving a hit.

Health care, then, is a large battle in the overall struggle for the soul of the country. Thank you for stating that dissent is as American as apple pie. Thank you for not calling those who esteem the Constitution, and its interlocks to preclude tyranny, a bunch of Nazis. Please convey my contempt to Madame Speaker for usage of that epithet. I pray daily for peace, and hold forth the hope that something along the lines of http://FederalismAmendment.com will gain traction in the public debate. The proper answer to the various challenges besetting the country is to solve them Constitutionally, at a State level, and delegate to the Federal government an oversight role, so that the weeds of corruption are minimized within the US government and focused on polluting Pharaoh's dreams.

Respectfully,

Christopher Smith

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.

Did you protest Obamacare today?

by Smitty

I met ~15 patriots today at the office of my local tool.
The cell phone is not a blogging platform. Will flesh this out later.
For now, rmember that one of the chief ramifications of Hopium and Changeeba is that politics has ceased to be a spectator sport.
Your sins of omission to participate on whatever level you can will be held against your freedom and your wallet.

Update:
The protest was small, but fun. The first question was, are we in the right place?
Note Google Maps:

This agrees with his website.
So, we're left to wonder: where is our trusty representative?

Probably he's unused to having groups of citizens show up to tell him what a piece of work they think the 111th Congress is.
Well, we're planning on sharing the love with him on Tuesday, over in Reston, VA.

That anyone turned up on such short notice was impressive. Especially in the absence of any formal organization whatsoever. This district is completely blue. Wikipedia says Moran took the Oath of Office in 1991. To where he took the oath is unclear. Twenty years of this jackanapes is sufficient.
The family photo was small, but give us time.

Why Does Instapundit Hate Virginia?

by Smitty

Here he goes with another Murtha is a crook post, which we all understand. But The Fine Article also points out (emphasis mine) that

John Murtha [D-PA], James Moran [D-NJ(sic)*], and Pete Viclosky [D-IN] all figured prominently, but the report showed a wide range of behaviors by politicians in both parties.

Look, when one screws up, one should air the laundry. It's good for the soul. Others may learn vicariously not to repeat your (in this case, voting) errors. So, Instapundit, please help VA-8 to understand where we went wrong, what we did to offend, and how we can overcome your disdain in our efforts to get equal airtime for our local nitwit. Help us be rid of this peripatetic pettifogger:

*Just how does one screw that up?