Obamneycare And The Future Of America

It looks as if the Republican party is not offering an alternative to the current president when it comes to transformative issues such as health care. (While this post isn't about Newt Gingrich, it should be noted that he is no conservative and has called himself a progressive and stated his admiration for Franklin Roosevelt.) It looks like the Republican party is flirting with nominating a candidate that is very hard to distinguish from Obama. The current front runner in the Republican presidential primary Mitt Romney's health care plan the he implemented and steadfastly defends is basically the same thing as Obama's health care plan. This issue was brought to light in one of the recent presidential debate where Rick Santorum challenged Romney on this issue and was told that this is nothing to get angry about. If the fundamental transformation of our society's culture and our country is nothing to get angry about then I don't know what is. Hot Air notes that having a republican candidate that supports government will run health care will be a big public relations win for the left:

Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end up losing the election, the PR value to the left of having the Republican standard-bearer mimicking O’s rhetoric on ObamaCare is incalculable for the repeal battle ahead. That was always one of the greatest pitfalls in choosing Mitt — at a minimum, the right will have to temper its criticism of mandates during the general election — but darned if we’re not poised to go ahead and choose him anyway. And as Peter Suderman at Reason notes, this clip doesn’t even exhaust the similarities between RomneyCare and its much larger younger brother:

Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end up losing the election, the PR value to the left of having the Republican standard-bearer mimicking O’s rhetoric on ObamaCare is incalculable for the repeal battle ahead. That was always one of the greatest pitfalls in choosing Mitt — at a minimum, the right will have to temper its criticism of mandates during the general election — but darned if we’re not poised to go ahead and choose him anyway. And as Peter Suderman at Reason notes, this clip doesn’t even exhaust the similarities between RomneyCare and its much larger younger brother:

During last night’s debate, Romney also defended his plan from charges that it resembled ObamaCare by arguing that in Massachusetts, “there’s no government plan.” He’s used this line before, but it’s never helped distinguish Romney’s health overhaul from Obama’s: There’s no “government plan” in ObamaCare either, or at least no more of one than there is in RomneyCare. Both ObamaCare and RomneyCare rely on a regulated market and an expansion of Medicaid. Nor is Romney the only one to point this out in order to defend the structure both plans share: In his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama touted the fact that “our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program.”

In the end, Romney only ended up reinforcing the similarities between his plan and President Obama’s. It’s hard to make a convincing case that the RomneyCare is somehow dramatically different from ObamaCare while relying on virtually the same arguments employed by ObamaCare’s most prominent defender.

Michael Tomasky agrees with Rick Santorum that nominating Romney will be giving up the issue of Obamacare in this years election:

The moment was, of course, the exchange between Rick Santorum and Romney when Santorum was aggressively challenging Romney about health care. Romney was going through his standard defense of his health-care plan, saying it was right for Massachusetts but not for other states. Santorum wasn’t buying it: “Think about what that means going up against Barack Obama ... You are going to claim [about the Affordable Care Act], ‘Well, it doesn’t work and we should repeal.’ And he’s going to say, ‘Wait a minute, governor. You said it works well in Massachusetts.’ Folks—we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom ... It’s going to be on your ballot as to whether there should be a government mandate here in Florida. According to Governor Romney, that’s OK.”[...]

On the substance, there is virtually no difference between the bills. Well, OK, there are two differences. No. 1 is that Romney did not vastly expand Medicaid in constructing his bill. No. 2 is that Romney did not raise taxes to pay for his bill. Now, both of those differences sound like they reflect very well on Romney—he didn’t expand a big-government program that most people associate with poor folks and therefore do not like, and he didn’t raise taxes.

But why didn’t his bill do either of those things? It didn’t expand Medicaid, because governors have no right to expand Medicaid. And he didn’t raise taxes because—ready?—the federal government paid for about half of it ($385 million, largely in Medicaid money). And the federal government paid for about half of it largely because of the efforts of ... Teddy Kennedy, Romney’s great ally in putting the bill through. Jon Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economist who worked on Romney’s bill, has said, with only slight exaggeration: “They’re the same fucking bill. He [Romney] just can’t have his cake and eat it too. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying. The only big difference is he didn’t have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes.”[...]

So Santorum was right Thursday night. Nominating Romney is giving up the issue, especially if the Supreme Court upholds the mandate. Obama probably can’t win the argument, but if his campaign handles the issue artfully, he can plant doubts in conservative and swing voters’ minds about Romney’s actual beliefs on the matter, which will play strongly into what presumably will be a key Obama theme of Romney as the say-anything candidate. Obama should even use Pawlenty’s little portmanteau. After all, it’ll be no loss to him if voters think of the plans as similar; making conservatives gnash their teeth is the point. [emphasis mine on the bold part]

Socialized medicine in the crown jewel of socialism and the welfare state. Health care is one sixth of the U.S economy, and with the passage of Obamacare the government is on track to slowly gain control of the vast swath of the economy and people's lives. Having this new entitlement will have a corrupting effect on the character of the American people by turning the society into an entitlement society. All one has to do is to look at the riots in Greece to see what a society that looks to the government to provide all of their needs leads to. If one agrees, like Romney, with the premise that government should be providing people with health care, then the government is justified in telling people what they can or can not eat and a whole list of other lifestyle choices. Nominating a candidate who supports government run health care would be a disaster for staving the tied of socialism in America and the end of the Republican party standing for personal liberty, limited government, and free markets. I believe the Republican party has already stopped a long time ago being the party that stands for these principles. Americans no longer have a choice in the direction the country is headed. This years election is shaping up to only offer Americans only with the choice of the speed that we are headed towards the socialist-welfare-state. I can not vote for Romney.

China's Perspective

The American Interest blog references an article in the New York Times that extensively quotes Chinese President Hu Jintao and his worries about the American threat.  A good look at what the world looks like from the Chinese Communist Party's perspective.

President Hu Jintao of China has said that the West is trying to dominate China by spreading its culture and ideology and that China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the assault, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week.

The blog itself states:

More, our strategy for dealing with communism in China is more or less the same as our strategy for dealing with it in the Soviet Union. It’s what Lincoln and the Republicans wanted to do to slavery in 1860: keep it from expanding, and wait while the forces of history destroy it from within.

Lincoln then and Americans today don’t think of this as an aggressive strategy. Changing the political structure of China is not on anybody’s to-do list in Washington today. The CIA isn’t hatching plots to overthrow the Chinese leadership. Lincoln swore up and down that he wouldn’t abolish slavery where it stood, and would have accepted a constitutional amendment making that position clear.

But Jefferson Davis and his fellow southerners weren’t fooled. They knew that Lincoln’s program to contain slavery was a plan to destroy slavery and, worse, they were sure it would work. Cotton exhausted the soil; sooner or later, if slavery couldn’t expand into new territory, plantations wouldn’t pay and when that happened the whole system would fail. Moreover, the North was growing faster than the South; increasingly the South would be outvoted and turned defensively in on itself.

Hu and some of his fellows seem to be thinking like Jefferson Davis. They believe that America’s project (it isn’t as definite as a plan) to undermine communism in China will work in due course. They fear the historical forces Francis Fukuyama identified in The End of History, and they fear that those forces march to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner.

Note that, though Hu claims this is a conscious effort by the West, this cultural assault that Hu fears is happening without any conscious effort by the West.  It is one of the things Fukiyama was talking about when he wrote about the "end of history" (a bullshit concept to me, but the point about the inevitable dominance of Western Culture inherent in the spread of democratic capitalism has merit).

The blog also says:

Americans, contemplating our policies in Asia and our ideological approach to Chinese communism, see us as promoting a stable status quo that ought to appeal to the Chinese. President Hu and many Chinese leaders see things very differently: the status quo is a dagger aimed at China’s heart. Our very moderation is a sophisticated form of aggression.

It's kind of saying that there's nothing China can do to turn this around. Mao was able to block all contact with the Western world, but try as he might, Hu can't do that, in fact, now needs that contact to market China's goods to the world.

We'll see what happens. As long as he can keep money pouring into China and standards of living rising, Hu and the Communist Party can ride the tiger. If the export economy stalls, he'll have hell to pay as the Chinese see what the developed world has (freedom-wise and wealth-wise) and demand a system of government that allows them to get it.

Iraq Falling Apart And Islamist Take Charge In Egypt

Almost immediately after American forces left Iraq the security situation and the fragile Iraqi government started to fall apart:

Faster than anyone expected, barely a month after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq's government appears to be coming apart, prompting fears that the country is headed for another round of sectarian strife.[...]

In the midst of the political squabbling, insurgents, possibly al-Qaida, have carried out attacks , killing at least 250 civilians in Baghdad and other cities in the time since U.S. forces left, giving the country a security scare.

The article also points out how that the situation in Iraq is possibly being unjustifiably portrayed in America as a success:

The Obama administration, which trumpeted the U.S. troop withdrawal as the fulfillment of a campaign promise, views the internal conflict as a real crisis and a big problem for future relations.

The United States has "repeatedly" told Maliki and other political leaders that "our relationship, all the things we want to do" depend on "a resolution through constitutional means," a State Department official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Less clear is whether the U.S. can help restore stability. With no military forces on the ground, Washington's leverage is meager.

President Barack Obama may have made things worse last month when he hosted Maliki in Washington and hailed him as the leader of "Iraq's most inclusive government yet."

"Iraqis are working to build institutions that are efficient and independent and transparent," Obama said.

The speech enraged Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni who is a deputy prime minister.

"What I heard from Obama was deceiving both for Americans and Iraqis," Mutlak said. "Obama is telling Americans that they were victorious in Iraq, they liberated the country and Iraqis are now very well situated, and the hero of Iraq, the prime minister, has made an inclusive government in Iraq. But it is the opposite."

So he gave an interview to CNN in which he denounced Maliki as a "dictator."

"I wanted to let Mr. Obama know that what he's telling his own people is not correct. And I wanted to tell my people that I have waited enough, and it's time to tell the truth of what's going on inside the government. If Maliki stays in power, dictatorship will be more concentrated."

It seems that in a haste to withdraw from a long and unpopular war, America leaders might have made an early withdraw at the expense of America's long term national security interest in Iraq and the region. While most Americans might not care what is going on in Iraq and might support leaving Iraq, there is a very real concern of the possibility for Iran to exploit the political chaos and power vacuum to gain influence in Iraq as this article points out:

Military analysts and Middle East experts have spent years warning about the growing influence of Iran in Iraq. A group of Texas National Guardsmen watched it firsthand.

As one of the last U.S. units to deploy to Iraq, the Texas Army Guardsmen told congressional lawmakers in late November the Iraqi army still struggles to disseminate intelligence and manage logistics, leaving their soldiers vulnerable to outside influence. Iraqi soldiers spend weeks by themselves, without supplies or relief, on posts dispersed across the Iran-Iraq border.[..]

Iran is flooding Iraq’s markets with goods at much cheaper prices than other imports, leading other countries’ suppliers, in places such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to not bother to sell in Iraq. Those supplies allow Iran to control southern Iraq’s markets and thus its stomachs.

“It really means more than you might think,” Smith told Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, a member of the Armed Services Committee. “It’s really going to be a big problem for them in the future.”

The Iraqi army also continues to struggle to set up its intelligence network, Spurgin said. The soldiers don’t have an effective, decentralized system to spread information securely and efficiently across the country.

When asked by Conaway if the Iraqis could protect their borders from an external threat such as Iran, he bluntly said no. Spurgin told the congressman the Iraqis could not defend against an invading force.

“Operationally, the Iraqi Army has the ability to provide internal security of their own country, but they’re not ready to defend their country from an external threat,” Spurgin said.

If Iran does end up with considerable influence in Iraq, a very real concern by some American leaders, then the Iraq war will have been a wasted war and effort from my perspective. What would over ten years of American effort at the cost of 850 billion dollars, 4800 dead, and 32000 wounded been for?

The results of the Arab Spring are also creating the potential to weaken America and the West's long term interest. Middle East the Arab Spring that was suppose result in the flowering of democracy in the Middle East has resulted in Islamist winning seventy-five percent of the Egyptian parliament:

Final results on Saturday showed that Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliament in Egypt's first elections since the ouster of authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, according to election officials and political groups.The Islamist domination of Egypt's parliament has worried liberals and even some conservatives about the religious tone of the new legislature, which will be tasked with forming a committee to write a new constitution. Overseeing the process will be the country's Mubarak-era military generals, who are still in charge.A coalition led by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood won 47 percent, or 235 seats in the 498-seat parliament. The ultraconservative Al-Nour Party was second with 25 percent, or 125 seats.

But there is nothing to worry about according to our government because"... top U.S. officials from the State Department have recently met with the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders, who have in turn assured Western officials that they respect minority rights and support democracy". The Muslim Brotherhood is the party whose spiritual leader wants to kill Jews from his wheelchair, there is actually a video of this guy (who gave a speech to millions of Egyptians shortly after the Egyptian uprising) saying this. Also taking a look at the early history of the Muslim Brotherhood is illuminating and will make you view things through a different prism.

Overall, America's long term nation interest in the Middle East being achieved doesn't seem likely.

Save this blog! Stop SOPA!

The new SOPA bill is confusing. It has some good intentions; stopping piracy and preserving intellectual property, but has the power of too much regulation.

It could even harm RTP!

According to Chris Heald, a programmer (why his opinion matters, I'm not sure, but he sounds intelligent):

"Section 102(a)(2) permits the attorney general to take action against foreign sites (i.e., sites that do not fall under U.S. jurisdiction) if 'the owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of [copyright infringement].'"

"Since copyright violation is ridiculously easy, any site with a comment box or picture upload form is potentially infringing. Furthermore, DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are no defense. You, as a site operator, become liable for copyright infringement committed by your users, even if you comply with DMCA takedown requests."

This means us!

Do your part and write your congressman to stop this legislation. I did.

This is Rock

I never really paid too much attention to ZZ Top. I knew they made some decent music but I have developed much more respect thanks to youtube. I came across this video, along with others, from a show in 1980 in Germany. Their image and stage performance is pretty awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c7d8BYJy8I&feature=relmfu

Obama The Prosperous

Barack Obama's accomplishments:

1. Killed Osama


2. Brought democracy to totalitarian Libya


3. Ended war in Iraq


4. Ended DADT


5. And....wait....what the....boosted employment?!?!

Now that Ron Paul's election chances have diminished and Mitt Shmomney will likely represent the GOP, the chances of beating Obama are are disappearing. Especially since it is believed that the economy and employment are headed in the right direction. Or are they?

"If the size of the U.S. labor force was as large as it was when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.9 percent. But since so many people have gotten discouraged and stopped looking for work– and thus disappeared by government statisticians — the jobless number has been artificially depressed. A better gauge of the jobs picture is the broader U-6 rate, which includes part-timers who would rather have full-time jobs. It stands at a whopping 15.2 percent. "-(Drewmusings)

Basically, I'm fearing that the ignorant voters from 2008 will vote again for Obama based on a bunch of bullshit. The accomplishments of the above list are either not accomplishments at all or they occured based on circumstances that Obama had nothing to do with. He'll spin it to his benefit though.

The Government Has Gained An Authoritarian Power

The government has gained the ability to detain a U.S. citizen indefinitely for no reason:

I can't believe that nobody's talking about this: The thing Obama signed on New Year's Eve, the new Defense Authorization Act. I don't know if people don't know what's in this or if other things take precedence. Well, it is being reported because I saw it. I saw it reported. Obama signed this thing, the new Defense Authorization Act on New Year's Eve. Folks, you know what this thing does? It allows the United States military to detain anybody for no reason! They don't even have to charge you. I mean, this is specified. This is not the Patriot Act. This is way beyond. This is total authoritarianism. This is the kind of stuff that exists in Third World banana republics. The government can detain anybody! All they have to do... They actually don't have to do anything.

They just have to say they suspect you of terrorism.

They don't have to prove it. They don't have to have any evidence. They can charge you. They can put you away in a jail. You are not allowed a lawyer. You are not allowed habeas corpus. It's the most amazing thing. Obama even issued a signing statement with it in which he said: Don't worry, I'm not going to do this. Don't worry, I'm not gonna do it. Well, he can, as can anybody in the military, as can any future president. They can just decide to detain you.

As noted Obama has put in a statement saying that he disagrees with this, but it was he who wanted this put in the bill:

Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.

The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not "support our troops" by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The "American way of life" is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.[...]

For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment: 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.

I have not heard any good justification for this law. Not long ago I probably would have said that this is necessary to fight the war on terrorism, but this appears to me to be going beyond fighting the war on terror and violates the Constitution by being a power grab by a government that is led by "rulers" who have authoritarian inclinations. The ability of the government to detain people indefinitely for no reason is a salient characteristic of an authoritarian government. I don't expect the government to immediately start rounding people up, but this does set a new precedent for the use of government power that does not have very well defined limits: it depends on how you define terrorism. I know that when you start talking about authoritarianism and the government gaining too much power that this will cause some people to immediately dismiss this as a conspiracy theory or crazy talk, but the unwillingness of people to overcome normalcy bias and to contemplate things outside the realm of their experience is how governments are able to slowly acquire new powers like this.