A Tale of Two Bridges

Is Obamacare the Democrat version of "A Bridge Too Far"?

Bernard Law Montgomery

In the Fall of 1944, Allied Command finally gave Monty his opportunity for glory on the continent of Europe. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery had proposed an ambitious plan to capture four bridges in the Netherlands as part of an attempt to sweep around German defenses into the Reich itself. In deference to Churchill and British sensibilities, Eisenhower and the Allied command accepted Monty's plan and his assurances that the troops under his command would sweep over the old men and young boys who were all that was left defending German positions in Holland. 

Montgomery was wrong.  Operation Market Garden, Monty's complex and intricately timed battle plan began to go wrong almost as soon as it was launched.  As do most battle plans, Market Garden did not survive contact with the enemy.  A lot of men were killed or captured and when the dust settled the key Arnhem Bridge remained in German hands. Cornelius Ryan memorialized the incident in his 1974 book "A Bridge Too Far" which was later made into a surprisingly accurate movie three years later.  It is well worth watch as a cautionary tale of what happens when a leader's ego is greater than his ability.

The President's big plan for social change was appropriately named "Obamacare", tying President Barak Obama's "Hope and Change" legacy to his signature piece of legislation.  If you're going to "fix" healthcare, it was thought, then why not do it BIG.  Some legislators had doubts, but as with Montgomery, nobody wanted to tell Obama his plan had some problems.  Instead they buried it in 2000 pages of regulatory details and pushed it through, House Speaker Pelosi proclaiming, "You'll have to pass it to find out what's in it."

Tuesday was the big Obamacare launch.  Like Operation Market Garden, Obamacare did not do well when it came into contact with the ene......I mean, the American citizens who were supposed to rise up and shout for joy when they found out, "....what's in it."

Obamacare's Facebook page erupted in negativity following it's first bug-filled days of bringing healthcare to the ignorant masses.  Operated by Organizing for Action, a pro-Obama group supported by deep-pocketed members including billionaire investor George Soros and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, Obamacare's Facebook page has a big banner that proclaims "Signed, Sealed and Delivering." As millions of Americans have discovered to their financial discomfort this week, Obamacare is delivering all right, but not anything like it promised to. 

Is Obamacare the president's "Progressive Socialist Program Too Far"?

Perhaps the Republican stand is not ill-advised after all - perhaps something on the order of Concord Bridge.  Hopefully it's nothing like Arnhem.  First the Germans were the bad guys and unfortunately, for our analogy, Montgomery still managed to fall back, recover and roll over them German defenders.  The Reich fell anyway, despite Monty's partial defeat.  That was a good thing for democracy, but I'm pretty sure if the Democrats manage to salvage this "government program too far", democracy is likely to lose big this time around.

© 2013 by Tom King

Arguing with Bullies: The Phobia Gambit

I love all the people out there who get their pantaloons in a twist because conservatives and Christians don't believe homosexual behavior is a good thing. They inevitably issue an angry denouncement proclaiming us "homophobic" as though we are somehow "afraid" of gay people.  I've seen a recent call for a boycott of Orson Scott Card's books and the new movie "Ender's Game" because Scott is Mormon and believes homosexual behavior is a sin. They call Card homophobic, a bigot and loser.

That makes no sense. 

If people like Card and me were "afraid" of gay people, we'd all pretend we thought gay marriage and gay sex were okey-dokey with us so that the scary gay people wouldn't hurt us and would stop calling us hurtful names that might make people not like us anymore. 

What a load of piffle!

Look I don't like alcohol addiction either but it doesn't make me alcoholicphobic or addictphobiic. I think adultery is wrong, but I'm not adultererphobic or for that matter sinnerphobic, a term I could use to apply to the fear of any person whose behavior violates my personal moral code.  The use of "phobic" applied to a person who disagrees with you on some moral point is nothing more than playground taunting, "You're just afraid; that's why you won't do it!" I can't tell you how many times I heard that used by 7th grade bullies to try and force some frightened kid to submit to their will or to do something he didn't want to do. 

Sadly for the LGBT advocacy community, many of us have grown up since 7th grade and we don't respond well to bullying. Their favorite tactic is useless against anyone who has actually bothered to grow up.  I seriously doubt Orson Scott Card is worried about the gay community boycotting his books. They don't read them anyway. Scott is making a good living writing for the huge untapped conservative audience for sci-fi/fantasy novels out there. They buys up his books in hardcover every time a new Ender novel comes out.  I've got the whole set myself.  The Commandant of the Marines made "Ender's Game" required reading for officer candidates. 

I don't own a single volume by Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde or Gore Vidal, not because they are gay authors, but because I don't like their stuff. I'm not boycotting them, nor calling for a boycott of gay authors.  I'll not be making any "boycott these gay authors" list. I just don't have any interest in buying books based on someone's sexual orientation. If I don't like their stuff I pass it by.  If I do, I read it.  I hear that Vidal's "Lincoln", for instance, is quite good and it may get a read before I'm done.  His historical perspective on Lincoln is, I hear, really well crafted and unique in the Lincoln literature. 

The difference I have with they hystrionic homophobe-bashers is that I don't care what books you own or do not own.  I don't call my LGBT friends heterophobic or Christian-phobic or Conservative-phobic if they disagree with me. As a way to force people to accept your point of view, I find the "you're afraid of us" argument less than effective with people who are at all worth convincing - grownups for instance.

Convincing the herd beasts is easy. Make them feel left out of the group and they totter into line as directed by the current societal bully boys.  People with real character and independence of thought recognize the bully argument for what it is and ignore it.  Those folk have left 7th grade far behind them. We are no longer afraid of them - not phobic if you will.

There's nothing sadder or more pathetic than a 40 year-old bully still trying to bend people to his will - or to hers for that matter.


© by Tom King

Top Five Reasons Obamacare Won't Save Us From Big Pharma

"It'll save money. Yeah, lot's of money. It'll save, uh
TRILLIONS of dollars. Yeah, that's the ticket!"

Obamacare is supposed to save us from evil corporate medical corporations, Big Insurance and Big Pharma!  Here's why it won't.

1. The Locus of Evil:  If big medical, big insurance and big pharmaceuticals are all evil, why is big government miraculously not evil.
2. Depantsing the Consumer:  In one stroke Obamacare turns the consumer from a customer into a commodity. By removing free market forces the government takes away the only tool consumers have to control prices (voting with their feet) and replaces free markets with top down price controls.  Historically that never works. Nixon tried it and nearly killed the economy. Carter tried it and did!
3. Empowering the Big Guys:  It is far easier to bribe government officials than it is to bribe 300 million consumers.  Now that we are being forced by the government to buy a product (medical insurance), the giant corporations that are supposed to be so evil don't have to do marketing studies or offer deals to attract customers.  They merely have to offer trips to Tahiti and all expense paid conferences in Las Vegas to the right government officials to get the price protections they want.
4. DeCapitalizing Healthcare:  By killing free market forces altogether, medical providers no longer have to make their customers happy.  Their customers have to make the medical providers and their government handlers happy in order to get services.  This was explained to me once by a public transit official as the difference between private and public transportation. The same principle applies to "public" healthcare.
5. A Falling Tide Sinks All Boats:  The idea that forcing everyone to pay for medical "insurance" will cover anecdotal problems like pre-existing conditions and unusual medical problems is simplistic and wrong.  Forcing everyone into the insurance market merely covers the cost of all that government supervision that will be added on to the cost of medical care.  The continued problem of unusual and expensive medical conditions will merely force reductions in the quality of care of all consumers.  Socialism's great strength is in its ability to share misery equally among everyone (except of course for the leaders who get a better deal because they are smarter and wiser and we couldn't get along without them or at least that's their story and they're sticking to it.

And like this post which promises ten reasons in the link, but delivers half what it promised, Obamacare is pretty well guaranteed to deliver far less than it promises too.

© 2013 by Tom King