At one point he actually called the cops, begging for water. I'll have to remember that strategy the next time I'm at the downtown Los Angeles post office, where one of the women posts a sign every Christmas that reads "your lack of planning is not my problem." Job security is a wonderful thing:

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital. Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help. They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control. The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours. She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. 'He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.'... 'They were lazy, careless and hadn't bothered to check his charts and see his medication was essential.'

Well-meaning liberals especially love government agencies because they get to use them for social experimentation. Think Michael Moore fantasizing about converting GM facilities into green tech factories. Or think British multiculturalism mixed with medicine, which is going roughly how you'd expect:

The third victim of the foreign doctor who left two patients dead in one day spoke last night of her 'horrific' treatment at his hands. Sandra Banks, 59, was left in agony two hours after Daniel Ubani treated her for an inflammatory problem normally dealt with by a painkiller. But the Nigerian-born weekend locum - who had flown in from Germany and started work after only three hours' sleep - gave her a weak dose of a diuretic instead, which lowers blood pressure... There was a language problem and he didn't seem to understand what my condition was. 'When my partner passed him a note with details of my condition and the drugs I was usually given, he just glanced at it and put it aside.'

I guess there's also an argument to be made that the need to import foreign doctors in the first place - probably more of a factor here than multiculturalism - also weighs against socialized medicine. Socialized medicine being where this thing is going, as Obama has recently taken to subtly reminding House liberals.

What I'm most looking forward to are the inevitable cycles of scapegoating. "Your health care costs are so high because of the overweight and/or smoking and/or soda-drinking guy next door." First will come the taxes - and yes, of course soda taxes are moronic - and then will come the "well you brought this on yourself" rationing. It's going to be delightful. (h/t: Jerry L)

References:
* Neglected by 'lazy' nurses, man, 22, dying of thirst rang the police to beg for water [Daily Mail]
* My horrific ordeal at the hands of the awayday GP who left two patients dead [Daily Mail]
* Obama comforts House liberals: Don't worry, this bill is just the beginning of what we'll do with health care [Hot Air]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster [Mere Rhetoric]
* Have a Coke and a Tax [Reason]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Health Care
* American Politics
* Britain

Each week, in a contest for the week's best post, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members. This week's submissions span foreign policy, domestic policy, and have a healthy dose of media criticism. There are also a couple posts on antisemitism and Judaism, an appropriate theme given how the world's favorite aid recipients have taken to destroying certain Arab products for being just too Jewy.

To better help you cope with the onslaught of lefty weasel pseudo-sophistication - from "engagement will work" to "giving terrorists civil liberties will make them like us" - here is a slow loris getting tickled. Watch the video, read the posts, watch the video again to cheer up, and then head over to the Mere Rhetoric Facebook page and sound off about the posts you liked best:

Have at it...

Right on cue, a nice little point on last month's news that government agencies wasted $98 billion in taxpayer dollars last year:

The U.S. Postal Service spent more than $792,000 "without justification" on meals and events in one five-month period even as it reported losing $3.8 billion this year, the agency's inspector general says in a report. Employees spent $792,022 on meals and external events "without justification for food purchases, purchased alcohol without officer approval and exceeded the dollar limit for meals," the report says. Among the purchases were crab cakes, beef Wellington and scallops at an installation ceremony for one of several postmasters in the United States, the report says.

Eh. Nothing that can't be covered with a few more Reid-driven soak the rich payroll taxes. And it's tough to begrudge USPS employees the occasional excess, given the superb level of customer service they provide. One of the employees in the downtown LA post office used to hang a sign reading "YOUR LACK OF PLANNING IS NOT MY PROBLEM," which was strange insofar as customer needs are in theory a service provider's only problem.

I don't know if it's still up - I go to the Fedex across the street, where the profit motive is still a thing - but that office has always been a nightmare. Two years ago I saw a rushed woman tear up because, like a schoolchild, she was instructed to go to the back of a huge line and "rewrite her shipping label" on her package. The USPS public servant actually drew a huge half circle in the air with her finger, the better to communicate where the back of the line was and how to get there.

Anyway, Paul Krugman says ReidCare is "an awesome achievement" and Mark Steyn believes it represents an unrecoverable loss of the American ethos of individualism and self-sufficiency. Which means that Paul Krugman and Mark Steyn more or less agree about the kind of welfare state at the end of this road. You'll know we're close when we pass the "liver cancer drugs 'too expensive'" signpost.

But at least in the meantime it'll help pay down the national debt. Gibbs said so himself and he wouldn't have made the promise unless the Obama administration was confident in its projections. Otherwise the press will totally hold them accountable.

References and related after the jump...

Buried on the second page of Politico's "don't believe the post-election conservative hype" article, this is going to have Mickey Kaus positively tickled. Couple it with how death panels got reinserted into House legislation, and everything old really does seem new again:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted Wednesday that the White House plans no changes whatsoever in its legislative strategy or agenda as a result of this week's contests. However, a White House aide told ABC that the administration will seek to bolster moderates by returning to an argument that health care reform will curb the deficit -- a talking point Obama aides have de-emphasized in recent months in favor of a focus on making the insurance system more secure and predictable.

The way I remember it, Obama aides de-emphasized Orszag's bend-the-cost-curve argument because it wasn't true. It wasn't true before Pelosi started outright lying about the cost of the House bill. It won't be true after politicians incite populist resentment against people who "choose" to be unhealthy - smokers, drinkers, people with dietary choices that Bay Area scolds frown upon, etc. Private ambulances are adding surcharges for obese patients. I'm just hoping they never discover that sex kills just like alcohol and obesity.

Six or seven years into nationalized health care - when citizens have to choose between higher taxes or scapegoating the overweight guy next door - won't that be a pleasant public sphere? I'm especially interested to see how the left handles the soda drinkers they're looking for excuses to tax. The race-infused classist condescension, already on display in some of our more refined liberal outlets, is going to be exquisite.

In fairness, that little dig about fashionable Bay Area health fads was probably unfair. Democrats are floating taxes on wine along with their sin taxes on beer. So it's not like they're being elitist.

References and related after the jump...

Cherry picking nutroots comments sections and finding antisemitism - not a neat trick. Finding the same antisemitic meme in comments across six top nutroots blogs - still not a particularly neat trick because what do you expect from Daily Kos, Wonkette, HuffPo, ThinkProgress, FiveThirtyEight, and DU? But closer!

What would be really interesting is if blogs like HuffPo had been randomly filtering Lieberman's health care calculations through an Israel prism for weeks. Then their commenters' anti-Jewish dual loyalty canards would go from being mere seething bigotry to something more like institutionalized habits of thoughts that lends themselves to symptomatic outbursts.

HuffPo contributor M.S. Bellows, "Fate of Healthcare Reform Is in Joe Lieberman's Hands", October 9, 2009:

But if Lieberman intends to become a Republican next year, he will lose that chairmanship anyway. And, with Democrats holding both the White House and solid majorities in both houses, Lieberman has no realistic chance of advancing his hawkish, pro-Israel foreign policy agenda despite being chair. Lieberman has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from jettisoning his chairmanship now and becoming a hero to the Right by singlehandedly stopping Barack Obama's signature domestic policy initiative in its tracks.

His duly incited audience responded with charming observations like "Joe is not an American supporter other than our military and welfare money to the theocratic state of Israel" and "If the fate of health care reform is in Lieberman's hands, it's doomed. Lieberman doesn't vote for anything that isn't Pro-MIC and Pro-Israel."

Fast forward to today's half bluff / half bombshell. Why would Lieberman do it? Tough to say. It could be because he's an experienced political hand who knows he has enormous leverage to insert specific health care reforms he's been pursuing for years. Or it could be, per this self-styled analyst at FiveThirtyEight, that he wants Obama to give Israel the green light to expand settlements and start a war across West and Central Asia:

Liebermann is playing political games for Israel. He wants this administration to let them do what they want, ie, expand settlements to their hearts content, use Iraqi air space for an attack, etc. He knows he can get concessions on Israel on his HC vote.

Of course there's room for nuance here. This DKos strategist doesn't think Lieberman wants Israel to bomb Iran. Apparently the Senator's actual plan is to install a warmongering GOP President who will have America do the bombing, albeit 4 years from now when it would no longer matter (?):

I know I speak for everyone when I thank the National Women's Law Center for injecting a note of levelheadedness into the health care debate. The pan of the abused elderly woman was a particularly subtle touch, though it was the body-length scar that really sold it for me.

But the shot of the woman looking at a pregnancy test was, I thought, confusing. When Obama says "reproductive care" it means exactly what you think it means, and it has since at least 2007. But dozens upon dozens of MSM fact checkers have established that ObamaCare won't cover abortions, so I'm not sure what it's doing in the ad:

In fairness, it counts as lying to quote The One on The One. So even though the Associated Press is now suggesting that ObamaCare might cover abortions, they could be making that up. No one - certainly not Congress - has really read the whole thing. Could go either way.

And not for nothing, but the good arguments implicit in the ad - apparently rape has been treated as a preexisting medical condition - are solved by health care reform that stops way short of the public option. You don't have to accept that interstate competition would fix things, though there's nothing like public shaming in an open market to motivate brand-conscious corporations. You just have to believe that passing a law saying "you can't treat rape as a preexisting condition, lest the government fine you into the ground" would prevent insurance companies from treating rape as a preexisting condition.

And then there's this shameless "deficit neutral" two-step:

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future -- period," President Obama told Congress in a health-care address last month. Well, that depends on what the meaning of "plan" is. Senate Democrats wanted to protect doctors from scheduled cuts in Medicare payments over the next 10 years, but there was a problem: Doing so would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to the federal deficit, making mincemeat of Obama's promise. So Democrats hatched a novel scheme: They would pass the legislation separately, so the $250 billion cost wouldn't be part of the main reform "plan," thereby allowing the president to claim that that bill wouldn't increase the deficit.

Whatever. I don't want to spoil anyone's weekend, but the right is going to get clobbered on ObamaCare. Elections, it turns out, matter.

References and related after the jump...

You know how sometimes nanny state regulations cause conservatives to throw up their hands in exasperation? "At this rate," a few have been known to exclaim, "the only place you'll be allowed to smoke is your own car." Canadians wish they were that lucky:

A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his vehicle because it is considered his workplace, a police spokeswoman said on Friday. A police officer saw the 48-year-old trucker driving on a highway in southwestern Ontario with a cigarette in his mouth on Wednesday, and gave him a C$305 ($290) ticket. The Smoke-Free Ontario Act, adopted in 2006, prohibits smoking in an enclosed workplace or enclosed public area, and that extends to work vehicles... "We enforce the legislation and this truck driver was in violation of that," she said.

At least there's no recent precedent for our federal government financially punishing "unhealthy behavior," including smoking, in the context of health insurance:

A U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday adopted a measure aimed at rewarding healthy behavior in a sweeping healthcare overhaul... The Senate Finance Committee voted for an amendment offered by Republican Senator John Ensign and Democrat Thomas Carper that would allow health plans to provide financial incentives for people to quit smoking, exercise more and engage in other healthy activities. "I believe that the key to achieving savings is to provide rewards for people who engage in healthy behaviors," Ensign argued. The measure passed on a 18-4 vote despite concerns expressed by some Democrats as well as committee Chairman Max Baucus that it could raise insurance premiums for people who do not participate in wellness programs.

I like that they're calling them "wellness programs" now but I don't think it's clear enough. Maybe something like "Two Minute Wellness Programs," with guidelines and procedures set down by a federal MiniWell agency. Go bold or go home, ya know?

We've already got Democrats identifying ordinary Americans as "enemies" of successful government health care. Right now their enemies list focuses on scapegoats who stand in the way of passage. Once they shove this crap sandwich down America's throat they'll switch to scapegoating patients for being too expensive because of their "unhealthy behavior." That's what they're ramping up to do and that's the way it always goes.

And just to be clear, there are absolutely no limits to how absurd this will get.

References:
* Canadian trucker fined for smoking on the job [Reuters]
* Health reformers targeting 'enemies' [Wash Times]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster [MR]
* Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push for Healthier Foods [NYT]

Previously:
* Health Care Coverage
* New Poll: Only 26% Consider Health Reform A Success In Massachusetts
* Health And Human Services Comes To Maryland School, Brings H1N1 Vaccines And Spectacular Failure

They tried to inoculate an entire school for H1N1. Instead they inoculated one-fifth of a school because not enough permission forms had been lined up. We've now reached the point where it's a demonstrable fact that the federal government can't even handle stage-managed health care correctly.

Tough to know who to side with here. On one hand you side against the foot-dragging parents, since many of them are anti-vaccine Blue State morons who fear that H1N1 scientists neglected to take their kids' unique auras into account. On the other hand you have to blame the government too since this was their stunt and it was their responsibility to make sure everything went smoothly.

If you were a corporate PR lackey and your job was to set up an event and you screwed up this badly, you'd be fired:

A U.S. government media event to promote H1N1 school vaccinations on Friday included VIPs, cute kids and a phalanx of television cameras -- but only one in five children at the school had proper parental consent to get immunized. "This school was ready to go," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius... But 80 percent of the student body were ineligible for vaccinations due to missing paperwork during the day-long swine flu clinic. Federal officials did not want to discuss the turnout.

Of course the total number of people fired over this train wreck will be zero. In a large bureaucracy it's always easier to move someone elsewhere than to fire them. That's true for corporations as well, but do it long enough in a company and it collapses (cf. GM).

In government you can allow inefficiencies to build indefinitely. The post office, to take a random hypothetical, is hurtling towards bankruptcy and will soon need a bailout. So if we had a reason to believe that ObamaCare would resemble the post office, that would be a real cause for concern.

Speaking of which, the cost of the fed's H1N1 school campaign is projected to be $6.4 billion. So let's be generous and say it only ends up costing $7 billion. H1N1 has killed 76 U.S children since April, of which 20% were healthy when they got the disease (the rest had underlying conditions). So the US government has decided to spend roughly $500,000,000 per healthy child.

And to think - there are people who believe government health officials misallocate resources in response to faddish health trends and exurban hysteria.

References:
* US school swine flu event shows vaccine challenge [Reuters]
* How is that Post Office comparison working now? [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Health Care Coverage
* British Health System Denies Woman Treatment For 7 Years Because "Alzheimer's Is Not A Health Condition"
* Dems: We'll Finance Health Care With Cigarette Tax That Will Cause People To Stop Buying Cigarettes

The wonderful thing here is that it's not just a story of glazed-eyed government incompetence breaking at the same time that the Obama administration is trying to nationalize 15% of the US economy. It's that the incompetence has its source in interest groups who issue diktats according to whatever the prevailing liberal pseudo-sophistication happens to be. 30 years ago it was preservation, then we decided that nature should always be allowed to take its course, then we decided we had to plant trees everywhere to enrich the atmosphere - opps! - and now we've got some kind of non-interventionist hodgepodge.

The upshot being that if you think this is bad, wait until panels of doctors and bureaucrats get to make calculations - and set premiums - based on which social groups they think are responsible for unreasonable costs. The public "blame the smokers no blame the drinkers no blame people who drive too much" populism is going to be exciting enough.

But when well-heeled Blue State bureaucrats start making decisions based on a combination of non-replicated studies, shrill urban hand-wringing, and a sensibility about healthy living derived mostly from the Barnes and Noble "Personal Enrichment" shelf - that's when things get really awesome. If someone in San Francisco has made a serious effort to ban or regulate something you enjoy consuming, bummer.

Anyway, yeah:

Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there... Months before the huge blaze erupted, the U.S. Forest Service obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth and brush on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest. But just 193 acres had been cleared by the time the fire broke out, Forest Service resource officer Steve Bear said.

The agency defended its efforts, saying weather, wind and environmental rules tightly limit how often these "prescribed burns" can be conducted... Some critics suggested that protests from environmentalists over prescribed burns contributed to the disaster, which came after the brush was allowed to build up for as much as 40 years. "This brush was ready to explode," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich... "The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today."...

The blaze has destroyed more than five dozen homes, killed two firefighters and forced thousands of people to flee... Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species.

Acres supposed to get cleared: 1,748. Acres actually cleared, according to official records: 12.8. In fairness, the fire service says that the records are wrong by a factor of 10 and that they actually managed to clear 193 acres.

So just over 10%.

References:
* Careful Where You Put That Tree [Wired]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster [MR]
* Feds didn't clear brush in wildfire area [AP]

Previously:
* Geithner Tells Reporters: "I'm Very Confident You... Will Do A Good Job Of Framing This Thing"
* Guy Who Accused Bush Of "Ethnically Cleansing" New Orleans Wets Himself Over Obama Hitler Poster
* Incompetence In Education, Foreign Policy, Economics. But Especially Education. (Plus: Uber-Competent Right Truth Joins Watchers Council)

Does pointing this out count as a "myth" or is it merely a "distraction"? I can see how the left might want to hold back "myth" for yes/no questions where they're demonstrably wrong and need to overcompensate. Under that strategy verifiably true statements like "ObamaCare will cover abortions" count as "myths," while "the White House is making shit up about preventative care savings" gets relegated to "distraction" territory:

Preventive services for the chronically ill may reduce health-care costs, but they are unlikely to generate the kind of fantastic savings that President Obama and other Democrats have said could help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health system... Using data from long-standing clinical trials, researchers projected the cost of caring for people with Type 2 diabetes as they progress from diagnosis to various complications and death... However, except for the youngest diabetics, the additional services would add to overall health spending, not decrease it, the study shows.

"There's no free lunch here. Prevention will not pay for everything. But it's not as expensive as it looks at first blush," said Michael J. O'Grady, a senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Begging yet another question: why is Michael J. O'Grady a political terrorist who hates Ted Kennedy?

References:
* Factcheck.org: Tax money will pay for abortion in the health-care bill [Hot Air]
* Study Raises Questions About Cost Savings From Preventive Care [WaPo]
* Video: Democrat can't stop whining about "political terrorists" [Hot Air]
* No One Saw That Coming: Byrd Wants to Name Socialist Government Health Care Bill After Kennedy [Ace]

Previously:
* Liberal Defenses Of ObamaCare Now Literally Define Clinical Denial
* Old Political Terrorists: "Financial Companies." New Political Terrorists: "ObamaCare Skeptics."
* Obama: I'll Talk To "Folks Who Created" Iranian Mullahcracy But Not "Folks Who Created" US Health Care

Republican myths blah blah web 2.0 blah blah blah setting the record straight. On the plus side at least this emailed tripe, courtesy of the White House Open Government Initiative, doesn't read as if it was written by someone's unemployed nephew who got the job on the strength of his Comp Lit degree. At least there's that:

Our latest Reality Check video features Vice President Joe Biden addressing the biggest whopper of all: that our health insurance system works just fine and Americans don't care about reform. Nothing could be further from the truth. So we're trying something new. You can help the Vice President debunk this myth by uploading your own video on why reform matters to you. This is an opportunity for Americans of all backgrounds and situations to make the case for reform in your own words.

Need some help? We also have a new online quiz to help set the record straight about health insurance reform. Find out what's in reform for somebody like you by answering a few questions. What does reform mean if you already have insurance? What if you don't? What does it mean if you're young? If you're a senior? If you have children? Take the quiz and then share it -- simple tools like this are a great way to cut through the noise and get the facts about reform: www.WhiteHouse.gov/realitycheck/quiz

My favorite part of the video is the oozing condescension about how you'd have to be a total moron to believe they're cutting Medicare, something that used to be Obama's Orszag-driven selling point for "comprehensive" reform. Note the weasel word "eliminate" though. At least he's only being intellectually dishonest!

The political upshot is that they're doubling down on the "Republicans think health care is just fine" line, a particularly brown thread in the dull "Republicans have no alternative" tapestry the White House is weaving. In addition to being flat out false - Republicans have multiple alternatives that will never be let out of committee - it's also been a spectacular loser for them.

Although you have to admire Democrats for spinning "the other side" as anti-reform, just a few days after Reid's "trial lawyers are scary" response to Palin-style calls for tort reform.

But perhaps most importantly: "reality check"? That's really what they're calling it? Could they be more obnoxious?

References:
* At kf It's All-Platform Game-Changers 24/7 [Kausfiles]
* Shhhh! There's a Republican Alternative to Democrat-Care; Don't Let Anyone Know! [Herman Cain]
* Rasmussen: GOP now more trusted on health care than Democrats [Hot Air]
* Video: Dean says no tort reform because trial lawyers too intimidating [Hot Air]
* Palin: No health-care reform without tort reform [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster
* Dems: We'll Finance Health Care With Cigarette Tax That Will Cause People To Stop Buying Cigarettes
* Obama To Lawmakers Concerned About Health Care: Stop Talking

This week's Watchers Council nominations are up. It hasn't been the best week for Obama and the vast new health care bureaucracy - aka the permanent Big Government Democratic constituency - that he wants to create. The Colossus of Rhodey ran down ObamaCare's financial and social costs, the administration's unblinking denials to the contrary. In the same context The Glittering Eye outlined the health care reforms we need and why ObamaCare's entire approach is misguided.

Of course you don't actually need new bureaucracies to throw more government money at Democratic constituents. My own post described how California Democrats hiked the salaries of their personal staff and tried to cover it up. Or, more ominously, The Provocateur - digging into mind numbing tax records - did genuine investigative work proving that the federal government is shoveling millions into ACORN's coffers.

Joshuapundit and Right Truth's both dealt with the many layers of stupidity involved in Holder's CIA witch hunt, with Joshuapundit focusing more on the institutional impacts and Right Truth going after Obama's motives. The reflexive liberal sympathy for terrorist prisoners - a sensibility usually justified with gestures toward the rule of law or toward "our values" - extends all the way into freeing filthbags like Megrahi and coddling rogues like Iran and its proxies. See Soccer Dad's post on that.

Bookworm Room described sitting through Julie & Julia. Liberal filmmakers seem to believe they get extra credit for slipping gratuitous anti-conservative stereotypes into their works (they used to in cinema school - old habits die hard). This self-satisfied sneering is a particularly charming aspect of Blue State cocoons, though to get the full experience you really need to go to Broadway. Those tools are still slipping unscripted anti-Bush references into their songs, much to the delight of their aren't-we-oh-so-liberal-together audiences.

But for some reason, per Rhymes With Right, even a whiff of conservative group think is enought to cause liberal journalists to wet themselves.

As always this a great collection of Council posts. Feel free to sound off about any of them under this post on Mere Rhetoric's Facebook page.

References and previously after the jump...

Can you really blame them? The woman was already over 65, and it's not like you can cure Alzheimer's anyway. If people aren't willing to make these kinds of tough sacrifices, how do they ever expect socialized medicine to work?

NHS Worcestershire ruled that Judith Roe, 74, did not qualify for NHS funding because her condition was a "social" rather than "health" problem, even though she was so ill she could not make a cup of tea and regularly left the stove on. She was forced to sell her £200,000 home to pay her £600-a-week nursing home fees, which would have been funded if she had been categorised correctly. Mrs Roe's family appealed to the Health Service Ombudsman, which ruled that Mrs Roe's assessment had been incorrect and her treatment should have been funded by the NHS...

Mrs Roe, a retired church warden and school teacher, was diagnosed in 2002 with severe Alzheimer's and Parkinsons. Under English law, elderly people must pay for their own residential care unless their needs are deemed health-related. She was assessed but her needs were regarded to be social rather than health, meaning she did not qualify for funding.

The Obama administration, by the by, has yet to appoint a Medicare chief. Because it's not like we could reduce health care costs by installing resposible agency heads to oversee health care organizations. Much better to go back to campaign tactics, bring out thugs to "drown out" concerned citizens, twist network arms to get press conferences on the air, and have MSM water carriers smear opponents.

References and previously after the jump...

Gather around class, as we open up one of the central passages from Freud's seminal Interpretation Of Dreams:

The term Kettle Logic or La logique du chaudron refers to Freud's mention of the defensive tactics engaged by a neighbor who had borrowed a kettle and was accused of having returned it with a hole. Freud mentions this tale in his Interpretation of Dreams... "The whole plea -- for this dream is nothing else -- recalls vividly the defence offered by a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all. A complicated defence, but so much the better; if only one of these three lines of defence is recognized as valid, the man must be acquitted."

Democrats and their MSM water carriers on Palin's "death panel" accusation:

(1) We'll have death panels in the plan because they're necessary:

Obama came a lot closer to talking about "death panels" back in April than I'd thought... He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this - Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example - Obama thought it would do it.

(2) There are no death panels in the plan:

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the health care overhaul bill would set up a "death panel." Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong. Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes.

(3) We're dropping death panels from the plan:

"Independent" guidance to seniors about death with an eye to reducing the lion's share of health-care spending. What could go wrong? Tired of the political migraines it's getting from this, the Finance Committee finally decides to, er, pull the plug:

"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly..." Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to "advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care."

Do you think nutroots cretins will apologize to Palin for the last few days of "you'd have to be an idiot not to understand that there are no death panels in ObamaCare"? I'm thinking they're such a reality-based community - to say nothing of gracious argumentative disputants - that they'll pretty much have to.

References:
* Kettle Logic [HG]
* Will You/Won't You Be on My "Death Panel"? [Kausfiles]
* FACT CHECK: No 'death panel' in health care bill [AP]
* Breaking: Finance Committee drops "death panel" provisions from Senate bill [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Dems: We'll Finance Health Care With Cigarette Tax That Will Cause People To Stop Buying Cigarettes
* Obama To Lawmakers Concerned About Health Care: Stop Talking
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster

Remember the time when Obama branded AIG execs "suicide bombers" and threatened them with pitchfork-wielding mobs? Those AIG execs can rest easy for a while. The left's ever-spinning wheel of scapegoating - the necessary relief valve for any utopian movement that creepily coalesces around a Dear Leader - has temporarily landed on a new target:

"The war's on," says Rep. Baron P. Hill, and he's not talking about a conflict overseas, but a battle over health care in his own back yard, where thousands of people are trying to tell him what to do, some not so nicely... One thing Hill is not doing is holding public town-hall meetings like those at which opponents have heckled members of Congress. He held at least six unannounced meetings with constituents last week and is mulling a day-long series of one-on-one meetings or a telephone conference call. "I'm trying to control the event," Hill said... "What I don't want to do is create an opportunity for the people who are political terrorists to blow up the meeting and not try to answer thoughtful questions."

How dare political constituents try to tell their elected representatives what to do? The nerve. Though apparently there was a time when that sort of thing was celebrated by liberal journalists and academics. Historians the period "the Bush administration."

Here's a passage from an academic journal criticizing the Bush administration for using "War on Terror" rhetoric to "demonize enemies to serve as scapegoats for unifying the nation." Academic scrutiny of Presidential rhetoric has for some reason been a little more lax since Obama took office. Which is a little weird because Obama is the President who made "unity" into a brand. You'd think the "fascism" criticisms would be similar:

A cluster of characteristics commonly associated with fascism include deploying the themes and imagery of the nation's dominant religion for propaganda purposes, demonizing enemies to serve as scapegoats for unifying the nation, appealing repetitively and blatantly to nationalism and patriotism, pandering to fear and national security, undermining human and civil rights, militarizing society while expanding the power of law enforcement agencies, favoring a corporate culture of business and industrial power while suppressing labor, controlling news media and stifling dissent, and promoting an expansionist foreign policy.

In fairness nobody can really accuse Obama of suppressing labor. The part about "appealing repetitively and blatantly to nationalism and patriotism" gets a little more dicey:

Which makes sense given how American health care providers - having created the best health care system in the world - are so much more intransigent and conniving than the Iranian mullahs. It's almost like Obama targets the people who are objectively farthest from what he professes to believe with the most vitriol. Strange, that:

Listen to the cheers that greet the spectacle of an American President telling American citizens to shut up. Can't you just feel the post-partisan love? You can't? Racist.

I'm shocked that a guy who banned surrogates from debating Republican Jews during the election would stoop to shutting down domestic debate after the election. Ah well. At least it'll leave him time for dialogue with Iran:

Rice said reports that some of the demonstrators had been tortured "are of grave concern" to the United States. But she nonetheless insisted that President Barack Obama's offer to start a dialogue on Iran's nuclear program is still open. "That option remains on the table, and we leave it there in our national interests," Rice said.

Because that's a group of rational leaders we can do business with, in sharp contrast to the mob-driven thugs concerned about ObamaCare.

References:
* Ten leading indicators of
American health-care superiority [Hot Air]
* You're racist for worrying about ObamaCare [Hot Air]
* Obama Campaign Demands Ban On Republican Jewish Group, Escalates Thuggish Intimidation [MR]
* Rice denounces Iran 'show trials' [AFP]

Previously:
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster
* Obama To Lawmakers Concerned About Health Care: Stop Talking
* Obama Pollsters Now Bragging About Their Poll-Tested Scapegoating

You've got to be kidding:

"However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue," the two leaders wrote. "These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views -- but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American." They point to a series of protests at congressional-district hearings held by members of Congress this summer, including one where the likeness of a Maryland congressman was hanged in effigy, one where the tombstone of a Texas congressman was displayed and meetings where protesters shouted down opponents with "Just say no."

One salient difference between the inexcusable Kratovil effigy and the fake lynching of Sarah Palin during the election: the health care opponent didn't try to hide behind the facade of being oh so ironic. Another salient difference: the conservative launched his stunt in the context of a policy disagreement, while the Palin death fantasies - along with the Palin rape fantasies and the Palin assault fantasies - were motivated by the pathological hate that leftists proudly and explicitly brag about.

For the last week I've been thinking this is a "can dish it out but can't take it" dynamic, ala Kos strutting about how the nutroots should "have some fun" with the Michigan primary and then demanding legal action against Rush for Project Chaos. That would certainly explain how liberals who absurdly complained that Bush was stifling dissent are now really trying to stifle dissent.

But that doesn't account for the surreal tone deafness of mainstream Democrats. Telling constituents to shut up and get out of the way? Really? So now I'm beginning to think that they're so deluded that they really believe they survived 8 years in the darkened basements and dispersed gulags of the Bush-Cheney regime, and now they're merely giving back in kind. This is getting borderline pathological.

References and previously after the jump...

He's had it up to here with outdated concepts like democratic deliberation. Nothing must be allowed to delay his grandiose scheme to destroy the economy:

"The time for talk is through." -- President Obama, talking to liberal bloggers on a conference call Monday night... Nothing goes into effect in any case until 2013--except the tax provisions, which would begin in 2011. Yet President Obama wants everyone to stop debating and deliberating, and act now--because he and he alone has decided "now is the time to go ahead and act." Congress should assert itself, stand up for the deliberative and democratic process, and defy this presumptuous presidential dictate. The time to debate is now. There's plenty of time to act later.

For some reason the ABC News White House puff-piece didn't do much to assuage the public's concerns. Which is weird because you'd think a professional organization with that much experience would be better at producing effective agitprop.

Maybe it has something to do with the CBO's most recent scoring. A trillion dollars over the next 10 years sounds like something worth talking about. Or it could be that people are just tired of the Democrats' brazen fear-mongering:

The democrats aren't even hiding their intentions anymore:

FOX News analyst: But they're afraid. Private insurance companies are afraid that they will be put out of business. So why shouldn't they fight it?

Sen. Sanders: They should be afraid. Let me tell you they should be afraid. I think when they deny people health care because somebody has breast cancer a few years ago, when they throw people off of health insurance because people were sick and ran up a health care bill they have a right to be exposed, a right to be afraid.

Although I suppose it's better to start the scapegoating early. That way people at least know what they're in for.

References:
* Kristol: Shut Up, Obama Explained [Weekly Standard]
* ABC to broadcast town hall on health care -- from the White House
* Document drop: CBO scores the health care takeover [Malkin]
* Sen. Sanders: Private Insurers SHOULD BE AFRAID Of Going Out of Business (Video) [Gateway Pundit]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster [MR]

Previously:
* Dems: We'll Finance Health Care With Cigarette Tax That Will Cause People To Stop Buying Cigarettes
* New Poll: Only 26% Consider Health Reform A Success In Massachusetts
* Stimulus Czar Biden: In Fairness To Me, "Everyone Guessed Wrong" About How Few Jobs Stimulus Would Create

That's 26% too many given what an objective disaster the policy has been. But the really interesting question is how 26% of Massachusetts residents can think it's a success while only 10% think it's made anything better. You don't think they're unblinking partisans embracing the left's ideological Big Government catechism, do you?

Twenty-six percent (26%) of Massachusetts voters say their state's health care reform effort has been a success. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds that 37% say the reform effort has been a failure, while another 37% are not sure. Only 10% of Bay State voters say the quality of health care has gotten better as a result of the reform plan while 29% say it has gotten worse. Most (53%) say the quality of care has not changed.

As for cost, 21% say the reform has made health care more affordable in Massachusetts. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say health care is now less affordable while 44% see no change... By a 37% to 17% margin, Massachusetts liberals consider the program a success. By a 55% to 18% margin, conservatives in the state say it's been a failure.

I hope the Senate passes Cap and Trade quickly so Congress can put partisanship aside and work with the White House to ruin our health care system too.

References:
* Massachusetts: 26% Consider State's Health Care Reform a Success [Rasmussen]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster [MR]

Previously:
* Paul Krugman, Economic Guru, 2002: "Greenspan Needs To Create A Housing Bubble"
* CA Dems: Instead Of Cutting Costs, We're Going To Increase Taxes And Destroy CA's Oil Industry
* Annals Of Earmarked Pork - Rangel Steered $10 Million In Pentagon Funds To NYC's Natural History Museum

It's apparently "reality vs. liberal Big Government utopianism" week. Yesterday it was the left's weird animus toward measuring teacher performance. Today it's state-managed medicine:

In 2006, [Massachusetts] lawmakers seeking to broaden health coverage made it illegal to be uninsured. It works like this: Employers have to offer you a health plan. If you are jobless or don't like your employer's plan, you must buy your own. If you don't get one, you pay a stiff fine. This strategy--known as an employer and individual "mandate"--forms the backbone of the national health reform bills now making their way through Congress... Something strange happened. Despite having health insurance, roughly one in 10 state residents still failed to fill prescriptions, ended up with unpaid medical bills, or skipped needed medical care for financial reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to insure more Massachusetts citizens, but many people still weren't getting necessary care.

Turns out "really good health care is also really expensive." And setting it up without acknowledging the costs eventually leads to mismanagement and poorer health care. Who knew, right?

But that's not what's really devastating about national health care.

When a country embraces a national health policy, two things happen. The first is that any real decrease on government spending becomes impossible, because now the special interest threat goes from "cutbacks in the programs that educate your kids" to "cutbacks in the things that keep you alive." If there's no private industry to fill in immediately - and their won't be, because devastated institutions take time to recover - no one wants to take the risk. It's a recipe for guaranteed Big Government populism.

The second thing that happens is what always happens when a government embarks on grandiose utopian schemes like ones that promise "lower costs... an annual cap on out-of-pocket expenses and 'an end to rate increases based on preexisting conditions, age or gender'; 'greater choice' and 'peace of mind.'" When those schemes begin to collapse - and they will, because they're financially unsustainable - the government needs to continuously manufacture new scapegoats to explain away the failures.

There's a debate among economists over Obama's rosy assumptions - that taxpayers will maintain status quo spending patterns under a crushing $25K/person taxpayer burden - are wildly inaccurate or merely kind of off. I think it's irrelevant now that the stock market is in freefall and the economy shrank a gut-wrenching 6.2%, but whatever. These are the same people who can't decide whether the stimulus will miraculously save or spectacularly detonate the global economy. So there are probably more fundamental assumptions at issue.

But can't we all admit that this is blisteringly stupid:

Congressional Democrats have chosen an unlikely source to pay for the bulk of their proposed $35 billion increase in children's health coverage: people with relatively little money and education. The program expansion passed by the House and Senate last week would be financed with a 156 percent increase in the federal cigarette tax, taking it to $1 per pack from the current 39 cents. Low-income people smoke more heavily than do wealthier people in the United States, making cigarette taxes a regressive form of revenue... They do not dispute that the tax plan would hit poor communities disproportionately, but they say it is worth it to provide health insurance to millions of modest-income children. All the better, they say, if higher cigarette taxes discourage smoking.

The nanny-statism aside: the plan is literally to finance children's health care by discouraging the purchases that are going to finance children's health care. And it's not like that detail is getting overlooked. It's a feature! Does the thought process even get as far as "wait, if no one buys cigarettes any more..." ? Or is it just "taxes good, children good, cigarettes bad"? Is anybody in charge over there?

Or is it more "Obama's already quadrupling the deficit this year so who cares"? Anyone remember when Obama was going to "shift focus to the budget deficit." It was right before his budget director gave up and said that "elevated deficits are beneficial"? Last week.

References and previously after the jump...