Chasing the Wind

I had a discussion this past week with a fairly “progressive” client on a wide variety of topics. Mostly cordial, of course. He was the client.

One of his positions was that access to healthcard should be a right, not a privilege. I took the position that while I agree that individuals should be given access to healthcare, it was just as moral to make sure our country was fiscally solvent if it was to take on the role of healthcare. To do otherwise would limit healthcare for all and simultaneously lead the USA down the road of fiscal ruin.

I fear for my country the last couple of years. I see the amount of spending from our government seen as a “right” by progressives. And if they can’t tax and spend, then at least they’ll spend and worry about taxing later. And before you jump all over me for being partisan, I include George W. Bush (and George H.W. Bush) and Barack Obama.

From today’s Wall Street Journal, James Taranto discusses a possibly fabricated quote from Aristotle (or possibly Aristotle Onassis), and includes this statement:

Whatever Aristotle might or might not have said, the flip side of establishing a “right” to medical care is that it also entails empowering the government to define the limits of that right.

I think he’s right on. While compassionately I care that all people receive full healthcare, I also compassionately care about the country we leave to our children, one that isn’t bankrupt. In order to provide “affordable” healthcare, the government will be forced to “limit healthcare to the lowest common denominator. That means cutting edge technology will no longer be used, which means future innovations will be canceled.

There are many good reasons to oppose letting the government into our healthcare decisions. Find some other, simple way if you must – a minimum guaranteed payment or tax credit or something. But if the government takes over healthcare, they will both bankrupt our country and hope we will “die quickly” as the Democratic representative Alan Grayson has been saying.

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• Rep. Grayson Says No Apology for ‘Die Quickly!’ Remark (blogs.wsj.com)

Dear Obama, this is what we think of your fiscal policies so far since you’ve taken office.

Perhaps you should pay attention. What you’re doing now, we don’t like.

My opinion: Obama and his team are in waaaaay over their collective heads. They believe the world is basically good, and because Obama is in control of the White House, the world will warm to them and we will all live together in harmony.

Except that’s not the world. Putin will outmaneuver the clueless Obama. The middle east will continue to shun American and call us the Great Satan. China is waiting for the right moment when they own all our assets before they invade Taiwan. Our response will be every bit as lame as our response was against Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

The only way Obama can make it worse is to cripple our GDP for years with excessive liberal pet programs and inflicting a nationalized banking and health care system on us while completely destroying our economy with massive deficit spending and liberal pork spending.

Operation Cripple America now in progress.

And the stock market burned. The Dow was down almost 300 more points today, probably on it’s way to zero.

And Obama dances the congo. I suspect they served appletinis.

A week before that, the foot-stomping sounds of Sweet Honey in the Rock, a female a cappella group, filled the East Room for a Black History Month program first lady Michelle Obama held for nearly 200 sixth- and seventh-graders from around the city.

Cocktails were sipped during at least three such receptions to date, all held on Wednesdays.

Bookending the midweek activity were a Super Bowl party for select Democratic and Republican lawmakers and a dinner for governors, the new administration’s first black-tie affair. It was capped with a performance by the 1970s pop group Earth, Wind and Fire. And a conga line.

The flurry of entertaining is in keeping with the Obamas’ promise to make the White House a more open place for everyone.

The governors’ dinner was “a great kickoff of what we hope will be an atmosphere here in the White House that is welcoming and that reminds everybody that this is the people’s house,” Obama told the state chief executives after they had dined on Maryland crab, Wagyu beef, Nantucket scallops and citrus salad.

Well. I’m glad somebody has money to spend.

And so the veil of deceit lifts. The news media, so eager to proclaim Obama as the messiah during the election cycle, now turns on him and begins to devour him. What changed?

In one sense, nothing. Obama’s promises of socialist changes are progressing. Universal health care, nationalization of manufacturers and banking, imposition of union rules, reestablishment of federal funding of abortion, and massive taxing and spending are being implemented at a frightening speed, with no conservative obstacles in sufficient numbers to slow them down.

In another sense, everything. Obama promised to be open and honest, anti-pork, hope and change instead of fear, yet many of the policies were buried inside a pork-laden monstrosity without debate, without the 5-day evaluation, and signed under dire warnings of catastrophe, and sometimes outright lies, such as the re-hiring of manufafacturing jobs and “all economists agree” pitches.

The revolt of hard working American, long overdue, has begun. Trillions of dollars printing are now showing up as inflation. CNBC says “traders revolt” and openly question why diligent homeowners must pay for the mortgages of dlinquent homeowners. Even high school children, governed by emotion instead of experience, said after his appearance this morning that they don’t believe eveything Obama says and understand the Stimulus bill is bad for the economy and is merely a thinly-disguised pork-laden liberal agenda.

One teenager even wore an Obama t-shirt that said, “Hitler gave good speeches, too.”

But the “angry left” is having it’s day, and I see few obstacles in their way for the next two years. It’s amazing the damage they’ve caused already in just 3 weeks of office. What can we do except batten down the hatches and weather this liberal storm?

I’m praying, and I’m buying gold.