Patriot Politics

Archive for August, 2009

We who are of a certain age remember being told, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”  Alice Roosevelt Longworth famously modified that admonition, and we generally find ourselves more closely aligned with her take on the sentiment.

We anticipated there would be plenty from which to draw in Alice’s emulation when Senator Ted Kennedy passed, and we haven’t been disappointed.  However, even those expectations have been exceeded by the sheer obsequiousness and tawdry revisionism that has accompanied mainstream commentary in the past few days.  It’s as though some people, and we don’t mean his older sister Rosemary whatsoever, have been lobotomized.

Emanating from my car radio on Sunday were the down-home, folksy tones of Bob Schieffer commenting on the Senator’s passing.  The content of his remarks was enough to incite me to pull over and vomit, and I would have save for the TARP project sign on the shoulder of the Illinois tollway (irony alert):

BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally, as I watched Ted Kennedy’s funeral yesterday, I thought of a book I read last week called ‘The Art of Racing In the Rain,’ in which the protagonist observes that no race has ever been won on the first turn, but many have ended there. Ted Kennedy crashed and crashed again during the early turns of his life, but somehow he kept on going through the sorrows and tragedies over which he had no control and the self-destructiveness over which he did. And in the final laps he won. His children loved him. His contemporaries, even those who often opposed him, admired him. And those whose causes he championed thanked him. To what else can a man aspire? His personal friend and sometime political foe, the long-time Republican leader Bob Dole, told me the day Kennedy died that what impressed him was the Kennedy boys could have gone through life and never worked a day. But all of them did. The thousands of laws that he authored changed the lives of millions who were less fortunate, a legacy few can match. In a sense he was the classic American hero, the imperfect man who was sorely tested and yet in that testing found a way to overcome personal flaws and go on to accomplish great things. You didn’t have to agree with his politics to appreciate what he achieved. Ted Kennedy made a difference.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the Kopechne family might think of the difference Ted Kennedy’s personal flaws made to them.  You certainly wouldn’t have to agree with his politics to appreciate what he did for the Kopechnes, no?

Before Bob S. waxed eloquently and euphemistically in conclusion, listeners were treated to his guest, Michael Eric Dyson, who didn’t need an introduction once he opened his mouth – not that Bob was giving one.  Dyson opined in quasi-religious tones (unusual for a sociologist) that the Kennedy family endorsement was a “powerful gust of wind” that propelled Barack Obama’s sails atop the tides of hope and change.  Ted’s support represented a passing of the mantle of liberal leadership.  “I think that Senator Kennedy identified in Barack Obama the same hopefulness that he had seen glowing in the face of his brother John and radiating from the heart of his brother Robert.”

As with so much of what passes for journalism these days, translation into understandable language often requires interpretation of liberal doublespeak.  Even as much is said, the truth often resides in the unsaid and unrevealed.  Fortunately, there are plenty of sources from which we can make a more accurate measure of the late Senator despite how glowingly he has recently been portrayed.

Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat has been in the family’s control for over 50 years.  While Ted was elected in 1962 to replace his brother, John, who had been elected President, John had held the seat since 1953.  And we all know how Daddy got John the job.  A family friend, Benjamin Smith, was appointed to fill the seat for two years until Ted was old enough to be eligible for it.

Just a couple weeks ago, Teddy wrote to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and legislators, urging them to change state law to allow Patrick to appoint his successor.  These would ostensibly be the same legislators who passed the law precluding Mitt Romney, a Republican, from appointing a successor to John Kerry should the latter have won the Presidency in 2004.

Professor Dyson’s fawning admiration notwithstanding, has anyone considered that Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement, closely followed by that of her uncle, for Barack Obama was a brilliantly calculated move designed to derail Hillary (and by proxy, Bill) Clinton’s appeal with Democratic voters.  It’s not a stretch to imagine a deal with Obama that might include Hillary’s Secretary of State appointment, so that Caroline could have dibs on her Senate seat.  After all, it’s a natural ascendancy from volunteer work to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, the club to which no Kennedy had yet been barred, except by premature demise, isn’t it? And it probably would have happened if not for that messy little Spitzer incident, n’est ce pas?

It’s safe to say the Kennedys are used to manipulating the law to suit their purposes without even mentioning Chappaquiddick.  And, it’s safe to say that Chappaquiddick is so infrequently mentioned as time passes that younger journalists and historians can be or appear to be entirely unaware of the incident. The irony of Gloria Steinem excusing Bill Clinton on sexual harassment is similar.

Speaking of sexual harassment, did anyone notice how very little was said about the William Kennedy Smith incident?  Teddy’s story of his involvement and knowledge of the incident took some familiar-sounding twists and turns through a series of conflicting sworn statements and obstructive moves. But that was so long ago (1991), like Chappaquiddick, that little mention is made of the matter.

Evidently Teddy was busy writing letters up until just about the end.  In a 10 page missive to the Pope, he describes himself as being “committed to universal health care.”  Given the fact that other reports have him in and out of consciousness for the last few weeks, one wonders how all that writing might have come to be?  Might someone concerned about disposition in the afterlife make an appeal to God’s earthly authority similar to this:

I want you to know, Your Holiness, that in my nearly 50 years of elective office, I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I have worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I have opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a United States senator.

I also want you to know that even though I am ill, I’m committed to doing everything I can to achieve access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life. I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field and I’ll continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national health policy that guarantees health care for everyone.

I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith…

Errr…uhhhh…errr especially when advocating and voting for abortion law.  Evidently, theocratic law doesn’t apply to this man, either.  It is the height of either hubris or fear of the hereafter that prompted this characteristically self-serving communication.

But wait!  There’s more! Let’s not forget that Ted Kennedy contacted representatives from the Soviet Union, including their General Secretary Andropov, on numerous occasions during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  Kennedy felt, according to John O’Sullivan in The President, The Pope and The Prime Minister, the Soviets needed better tactics in their negotiations with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, and he was just the person to provide the ammunition.

According to Ted Kennedy, something needed to happen to break the spell Reagan had on the people:  “The present complacency of the Americans, their almost Christmas mood, must be broken. You should put more pressure, and firmer pressure, on Reagan.” Teddy confidently thought he was just the guy to do it.  Somebody else might have been charged with treason, but hey. . .

Now of course Ted Kennedy isn’t the only American politician or celebrity who has tried to undermine a President’s diplomatic efforts with a rogue foreign power (see John Kerry in Paris and Syria, Nancy Pelosi et al in Syria, and Jimmy Carter almost everywhere).  But as Peter Robinson, in Forbes Magazine points out, “Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov–the leader of the Soviet Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring–at least in part to advance his own political prospects.” With friends like that, my dad used to say, who needs enemas?

In Slate Magazine today, Christopher Hitchens, generally laudatory of Kennedy’s legislative accomplishments, rues, “One of the many dreadful aspects of the Kennedy “legacy” is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and “torch passing” rhetoric in general.”

Inimitably, Hitchens reminds us that precedent in the media for whitewashing is akin to precedent in the Kennedy family for legal circumvention:

“Sure, the “tragedy” of Chappaquiddick had its necessary moment, but even in those days Barbara Walters was doing her damage control, and it was amazing to see a clip of Walter Cronkite referring deadpan to the “driving accident” that had kept Kennedy away from the Senate. It must take some ingenuity at the networks, even so, to simply airbrush the fascist sympathies and bootlegging background of Joseph Kennedy Sr., his sons’ murder campaigns in Cuba, the recruitment of the mafia for same, the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, the increasingly frantic and pathetic narco-addictions of JFK, the exploitation of unstable broads like Marilyn Monroe, and so much else besides.”

The New York Times, commenting on the election of Edward Kennedy to the Senate in 1962, opined, “The Democratic voters of Massachusetts have evidently decided that if a man has the right connections, those are all the qualifications necessary for nomination to the United States Senate.” Cultivating the right connections in the media, the third brother managed to fool some of the people into believing his portion of the family mythology.  Some of the time.

We think Alec Baldwin’s well-intentioned advice is sound:  Don’t name a bridge after Ted.  Yep, that’s what he said.  But Alec reveals his own obstreperousness with the truth in the following: “How unusual to mark the death of a Kennedy man in old age and from ordinary circumstances like illness. No tragic accidents. No political homicides. No footage to watch, obsessively, for decades to come, wondering what brought that moment on.”

Please, Alec.  This is a joke, right?  We all know Teddy enjoyed a good joke as much as the next guy, unless he might be Mr. Kopechne.  Who else would name his dog “Splash,” after all? It’s just now that he’s gone, we think you and your leftist cronies in and out of the media need an intervention.  Or maybe an introduction to the concept of truth.  Good night, Ted.

We first started hearing Saul Alinsky’s name pop up last fall during attempts to uncover the relationship between William Ayers and Barack Obama.  A few intrepid souls – like Stanley Kurtz, and subsequently John Kass (who noted how the Daley machine shut Kurtz down from further investigations by curtailing his access to the UI – Chicago library) among others – questioned the speed of Obama’s rise to prominence from his community-organizer beginnings.  The tangled web included names such as Ayers, Dohrn, Rezco, and Alinsky.

Who is Saul Alinsky? And what does he have to do with William Ayers, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, ACORN, MoveOn.org, Al Capone (Al Capone? WHAT?), John L. Lewis, Robert Kennedy, and Eastman Kodak?  Is your head spinning yet?

The more we discover, the more we recognize that the blueprint for the “Hope and Change” we are currently seeing manifested in the Obama administration has its basis in the belief structure promulgated by Saul Alinsky.

The most widely known of Alinsky’s writings is Rules for Radicals.  Radicals were to assume the mantle of societal change-makers by employing a series of methods designed to transform society from within.  Tactics such as organizing for “social change” and “justice,” eliminating the “fundamental causes” of disparities and problems, and destroying “national neuroses” which pollute the ideal social order were to be employed by a slew of “People’s Organizations.”  These brigades of radicals – those who were dissatisfied and disillusioned with society’s ills and injustices – would be local in nature, the better to retain credibility in their respective communities.

The reach of this manifesto, originated by its 1946 predecessor, Reveille for Radicals,  is stunning.  Alinsky, studying criminology at the University of Chicago, befriended Al Capone, and later, when Capone was jailed, an associate – Frank Nitti.  Studying the tactics of John L. Lewis (founder of the CIO union) Alinsky identified parallels that he could apply to the relationship of the citizenry and government.  Systematic application of power transfer to oppressed population segments would effect a sweeping transformation by collapsing societal status quo and its innumerable ills.

The transfer of power from the Haves to the Have-Nots held universal appeal to idealistic acolytes in the liberal movement of the sixties such as Kennedy, the young Hillary Clinton (whose conversion from Goldwater Girl to liberal Democratic operative occurred in concert with her undergrad thesis on Alinsky’s writings), William Ayers, Cesar Chavez and others.

Inappropriate zeal and transparent methodology in the 60′s New Left was tempered by Alinsky’s admonitions to conceal and infiltrate from within.  Ayers moved from throwing bombs to the board of an Annenberg-funded educational foundation.  Clinton paid her dues in the Rose Law Firm while her husband was Governor of Arkansas.  Kennedy allied himself with Chavez to create a more man-of-the-people persona.

Speak the people’s language, cloak the movement in moral rationalization, magnify the effects of progressivism, exploit publicity, act first and rationalize later, demonize the opposition via derision and the assertion of hypocrisy, assess and initiate battles to win.  Sound familiar?  It should.  It’s all been employed with a stunning degree of success by the Obama campaign, prior and post-election.  Michelle Obama even quoted Machiavelli, via Alinsky, at the Democratic Convention:  “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.”

The trouble for Obama is, the veil has been lifted.  Although some of us have been paying close attention to the man behind the curtain for some time, more and more have been awakened.  We’ve been played, and Alinsky, that magnificent bastard, wrote the playbook.

For a more comprehensive analysis of Rules for Radicals, visit David Horowitz’s blog and the following articles, not for weak stomachs:

Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me

Hell on Earth

Boring from Within

To Have and To Have Not

Hat tip:  Dennis Prager, radio interview with David Horowitz

See also:  I am Finally Scared of a White House Administration

A U.S. Marine reminds Brian Baird, who called Town Hall protesters ‘brown shirts’ recently, how the Nazis took control of Germany. Subscribers may need to click in. Worth it! Semper Fi!

More than ever!  We love John Mackey!

Translation: undermine = tell the truth about

Hat tip for image to: Michelle Malkin

Remember all the fuss about Dick Cheney’s deferred compensation from Halliburton?  Sure you do!  CBS was all over it in a breathlessly cheap suit.  John Kerry felt compelled to run an ad filled with false accusations on it.  (John’s good at that sort of thing; he practiced on our soldiers years ago).  The left’s premise was that Cheney hatched a Machiavellian plan to pad his personal bank account by starting a little war in Iraq and giving all its related contracts to a company that was still paying him.

The Office of Congressional Ethics (that would be an oxymoron, no?) weighed in, saying deferred compensation is a continuing financial interest.  Byron York bemoaned that Cheney’s decision to accept deferred payments gave the Democrats the opportunity to “attack and attack and attack.” And they did.

So. . . what are we to make of Davey Axelrod, the champion for the uninsured, whose fingerprints are all over a health care proposal that robs from the rich to cover the poor?  Well, plenty, as it turns out.

Politico summarizes some handy little payouts to Axelrod’s consulting firm (where his son still works, natch) from coalitions (Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care) that support his new boss’s legislative agenda. Everyone who’s anyone is in these coalitions, dont’cha know!  PhRMa, the AMA, SEIU, AARP, and even Pfizerand GlaxoSmithKline.

The coalitions aren’t sayin’, and of course they’re not required to, but the ad campaigns came in at about $24 million, which AKPD split with another firm that has Obama ties: GMMB Campaign Group.  (Go ahead, click on GMMB’s link and the first thing you’ll see is this:  Who we work for says a lot about who we are.  LOL)

Since AKPD Message and Media still owes Davey a few bucks, and cash flow being what it is, well . . . there’s those pesky dots that are always connecting. From Bloomberg.com:

Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until he sold his interest after Obama’s victory, government records show. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million, which it’s due to pay in installments beginning Dec. 31. Axelrod’s son, Michael, still works there. He didn’t return a phone call. The firm’s Web site continues to feature David Axelrod’s work on the Obama campaign.

Radiovice furthers the story with a definition of Beltway Insurance (not the kind you and I qualify for):

On top of that, the sole shareholder of AKPD Message and Media prior to the sale in December was David Axelrod himself, so he cut a deal with himself and the new partners to ensure he got $2 million after he left.

and good, coordinated public relations strategy:

“Campaign manager of the year” and AKPD senior adviser David Plouffe’s name and resume is now the main focus on the AKPD Web site. He’s the guy who sends out e-mails for the Organizing for America (OFA) political wing of the Obama White House.

Say, check out the latest email here. Gosh, it sure looks like it’s coming from the President himself!  How DO they do that anyway?

There’s a long history of turning the heat up inside the Beltway’s kitchen, and we think it’s kind of funny how the long knives Byron York referenced years ago can turn on the wielder.  Attack, attack, attack.  Even funnier will be some of the facial expressions and verbal contortions as this little brouhaha unfolds.  Or maybe not.

Last week we attended a Town Hall Meeting.  We figured it was a great way to be part of a Nazi mob without making any kind of permanent commitment to National Socialism. 

The un-Americans in attendance were neatly dressed.  Ages ranged from young families to senior citizens.  The crowd numbered several hundred.  While at times the discourse was passionate, it was not unruly, despite the room being packed to capacity.

The speaker was a Registered Nurse, Twila Brase, who is affiliated with the Citizens Council on Health Care .  Brase arrived bearing a printed copy of all 1100 + pages of H.R. 3200.  Unlike our President and most of the members of Congress, this lady has more than 20 years of experience in medicine, and she has actually read this bill.

Enumerating specific reasons in summary form to oppose the bill during the beginning of her talk, Brase also took questions from the audience., and kindly uploaded a handy PDF on the CCHC site for you to study.

My notes reflect the following points, and are corroborated in the PDF:

1. Care will be rationed (including denied) in accordance with committee standards on what is clinically appropriate.  The Health Benefit Advisory Committee, comprised of political appointees, will decide essential and non-essential benefits and treatments.
2. A Health Choices Commissioner will decide which insurance plans are available, and the Secretary of HHS will implement the Advisory Committee’s decisions.  Yes, this sounds suspiciously like another Administration czar.  What, are there about 300 of them now?
3. There is an anti-discrimination section that allows non-citizen access.
4. There are numerous electronic systems contained in the bill: a national health ID card (GREAT!  maybe we can use it to vote, too…oh wait..), electronic data system to access citizen bank accounts for real-time “adjudication of claims,” and compliance checks and balances with data from the Department of Treasury and “any department or agency of the U.S.”
5. Tax and pay disincentives will coerce migration by physicians and consumers into the government options, essentially transitioning users into a single-payer system via economics.  These tax disincentives include a tax on unacceptable coverage (as determined by the political committee), fees on private insurers resulting in higher premiums (a hidden tax).  Pay disincentives to physicians include forced medicaid enrollment, same rate pay regardless of specialty and hospital monopolies.
6. Additional government intrusion includes home visits to train new parents in approved parenting methods, advanced directives on end of life-related intervention, research using private records without consents in addition to the above, and prevention and wellness funding to monitor behaviors and lifestyles from a health perspective.

I’m sure you can imagine the uplifting effect this knowledge had as the evening wore on.

The intent behind H.R. 3200 is clear: to make it economically unfeasible to maintain private health insurance coverage for individuals via financial constraints upon them and their employers.  In other words, coerce an oblique migration into socialized medicine.

A more comprehensive summary with page annotations appears as follows.

From What’s Really in Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill:

• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the government option!

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

• Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

• Page 126: Employers MUST pay health care bills for part-time employees AND their families.

• Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll

• Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll.

• Page 167: Any individual who doesn’t have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

• Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

• Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.

• Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)

• Page 253: Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc.

• Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.

• Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.

• Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.

• Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.

• Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in health care companies!

• Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.

• Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.

• Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.

• Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.

• Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.

• Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).

• Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?

• Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.

• Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.

• Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.

• Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.

• Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.

• Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.

What are the takeaways besides a knot in the pit of the nation’s collective stomach?

The biggest:  they think we’re stupid.  That’s no surprise.  Liberals have been telling citizens what’s good for us forever.  They still are.  And, despite being elected to represent the people, they’re still deciding to vote the way they want to, because they know what we really need.  “I will vote adamantly against the interests of the people in my district.” “That’s why I don’t do town meetings.” Citizens are brown shirt tacticians, hijackers and outlandish rumor-mongers.

Marginalizing your detractors is a great strategy . . . until your contempt motivates them instead.

Thomas Jefferson believed in “the natural integrity and discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to which they might trust themselves with a control over their government.”  Those who author and promote this bill might do better to emulate his reverence, instead of asserting their self-appointed superiority.