Obama and the White Americans: Greatest Hits

Lawrence Auster does a great job of gathering the quotes that seem to describe our Dear Leader's opinions about those of us covered in a whiter shade of pale.

The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure.... The earth shook under my feet, ready to crack open at any moment. I stopped, trying to steady myself, and knew for the first time that I was utterly alone.
--Obama's reaction when he learned that the man who had accosted his grandmother and of whom she was frightened was a black, Dreams from My Father, 1995 (quoted by Steve Sailer)

... a typical white person. ...
--Obama, speaking about his grandmother, March 2008

... they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
--Obama, speaking about Pennsylvania voters, San Franciso fundraiser, April 2008

Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.
--Obama, about arrest of Henry L. Gates for disorderly conduct, press conference, July 2009

But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking.
--Obama, speech, McLean, Virginia August 2009

Stasi, version 2.009

Funny how an election can lead to a shift in morals.

If George Bush's head of communications had asked citizens to turn in people they thought unsympathetic to Medicare prescription drug reform or Social Security reform, the Left would have gone ballistic. And rightly so. (Of course, if folks in the Bush administration had actually asked anyone for permission before spying on them, that would have been an improvement.)

When the head of Obama's New Media department asks citizens to spy on each other related to health care reform, though, it's not a problem.

Hmmm ... Interesting.

Mark Steyn puts it better than I could.

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI- . . . No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20. Under the stimulus bill, there’s a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful (“QUESTION AUTHORITY”), you can trade them in for a new “CELEBRATE CONFORMITY” sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you. ...

So, on Monday, the official White House website drew attention to the alarming amount of “disinformation about health insurance reform.” “These rumors often travel just below the surface,” warned Macon Phillips, Chief Commissar of the Hopenstasi . . . whoops, I mean White House Director of New Media, “via chain e-mails or through casual conversation.” ...

“Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help,” continued Commissar Phillips. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health-insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.” ...

Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer-survival rates under socialized-medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats!

And from the Left ... nothing.

Glen Beck rules.

He called Obama out for being racist. The media has excoriated him. He has refused to back down.

Awesome.

My take on Obama's "the Cambridge police acted stupidly" statement is that Obama didn't carelessly blunder. He just let his self-control slip. He let the curtain covering his real personality slip aside for a moment. He sat still for 20 years listening to Fred Phelps' -- er, Jeremiah Wright's -- hate-filled sermons about how white people are bad and black people are good. This was because, at some deep level, he agrees with Rev. Wright's take on the world. In other words, he agrees with racist, anti-white propaganda.

The man is too slick, too charismatic to actually blunder like this. Especially in the middle of such a crucial news conference. His comments completely overshadowed his other statements on health care. I'm sure he regrets having made those comments, but I have to believe that he realizes that it wasn't a result of him being stupid. It was a result of him being honest.

He made a similar mistake during the campaign when he talked about rural whites who cling to their guns and religion because they're bitter. That wasn't him mispeaking -- that was him speaking accurately about his real beliefs. His self-control slipped and he got off-message, as it were.

He was honest.

Well, fortunately for me, so is Glen Beck.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Listen, I don't have problem with the White House playing political hardball with health care reform. I don't. I strongly disagree with their positions, but they're doing the rough and tumble politics thing and that's what you have to do to get your way sometimes.

Can we please, then, jettison all the talk about Obama bringing any kind of change to DC? He's a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal from the Chicago school of corrupt, backroom political brawling. That's what he is. Please, Liberals and dupes -- er, Obamacons -- just admit this and let's move along.

WWFD?

What Would France Do?

That's what a lot of folks in the pro-national health care crowd are asking. France, they claim, has squared the health care circle and found ways to cover everyone adequately without exploding costs.

Not so fast.

France claims it long ago achieved much of what today's U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. ...

In recent months, France imposed American-style "co-pays" on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses. ...

And service cuts ... are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes could lead to rationing.

The French system's fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama's proposed overhaul.

How does France's system work?

French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie, proportionally to their income, and patients get treatment even if they can't pay for it.

Sounds simple enough.

France spends 11% of national output on health services, compared with 17% in the U.S., and routinely outranks the U.S. in infant mortality and some other health measures.

Even better. What's not to like?

The problem is that Assurance Maladie has been in the red since 1989. This year the annual shortfall is expected to reach €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and €15 billion in 2010, or roughly 10% of its budget.

Oh. I see.

So France's national health care system is leading to either a tyranny of the bureaucracy -- where Ayn Rand's "aristocracy of pull", not people's willingness to pay or a doctor's recommendation, determines who gets care -- or national bankruptcy.

Why are we supposed to be so hot to adopt national health care, again?

Fun with art

These are a couple of my favorites from the pictures I've downloaded recently.

I've put this one up before, but it's worth revisiting.

I saw this on Facebook (which apparently exists in the nexus of narcissism and stalking). Another "demotivator".

Why health care is not a right

Jonah Goldberg does a good job of crafting a very pithy explanation:

Let us for a moment adopt the proposition that health care is in fact a “right,” as pretty much every liberal politician has told us for at least a generation.

Now let us consider how President Obama's proposed health-care bill would work. Under his plan, an official body — staffed with government doctors, actuaries, economists, and other experts — will determine which health-care treatments, procedures, and remedies are cost-effective and which are not. Then it will decide which ones will get paid for and which won’t. Would a 70-year-old woman be able to get a hip replacement, or would that not be considered a wise allocation of resources? Would a 50-year-old man not be permitted an expensive test his doctor wants if the rules say the cheaper, less-thorough one is sufficient? The Democrats call this “cost-controls.” But for the patient and the doctor, it’s plain old rationing.

Now, imagine if the government had a body of experts charged with figuring out what your free-speech rights are, or your right to assemble, or worship. Mr. Jones, you can say X and Y, but not Z. Ms. Smith, you can freely assemble with Aleutians, Freemasons, and carpenters, but you may not meet in public with anyone from Cleveland or of Albanian descent. Mrs. Wilson, you may pray to Vishnu and Crom, but never to Allah or Buddha, and when you do pray, you cannot do so for longer than 20 minutes at a time, unless it is one of several designated holidays. Please see Extended Prayer Form 10–22B.

Of course, all of this would be ludicrous beyond words.

Which is the whole point. Health care cannot be a right, because rights cannot come from government. At best, they can be protected by government. The founders understood this, which is why our Bill of Rights is really a list of restrictions on the government in Washington. “Congress shall make no law . . . ” is how the First Amendment begins.