image toon - 1st hcare mny msm = Oby bet's all tax payers chips on hcare gamble

Obama's 'Gift' Has Stopped Giving

"There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory." Mark Twain

President Obama's healthcare address to Congress displayed the oratorical gift he once revealed to Harry Reid. But the gift has stopped giving. In last night's speech before a joint session of Congress, the President pulled all the stops on his vocal organ, played his strong suit, and deployed the "gift."

But the gift has stopped giving, because people have started listening.

He accused opponents of using "scare tactics." This came after he'd piled scare tactic upon scare tactic himself to illustrate the problem. The healthcare system is "at the breaking point." It offers "insecurity today." People are dying! Thirty million can't get coverage, he said. Wait, we been told for years that it's 47 million. What happened to the other seventeen?

He wants a plan that "builds on what works and fixes what doesn't." The only problem is that doesn't jive with the thousand-plus pages of H.R. 3200 that have been read by too many Americans.

His description of limited reform doesn't match the bill.

It was the perfect moment for non-partisan conciliatory language, but Obama pulled out brass knuckles instead, attacking "bogus claims" made by opponents to the plan.

What plan still wasn't clear? H.R. 3200? Or, his intentions for a healthcare plan he was revealing, or claimed to be revealing, in the speech? He seemed not to want to differentiate between the two, but yet to differentiate between the two. Conflicted, for sure, and intentionally, also for sure. A shell game of hide the plan. Criticize H.R. 3200 and you're not being fair because that's not what he wants to have happen.

When he said, "While there remain some significant details to be ironed out," we heard something unique in recent joint Congressional speech history. Derisive laughter... [snip]

Then came that surreal moment when he said that spending cuts in a healthcare program -- one that the government already badly manages -- would cover additional costs to a even wider system. And, if the promised savings don't materialize, there'll be compensating cuts. [?, like rationing?]

About the time we were swimming in a sea of uncorroborated vagaries and smothering beneath layered non sequitur claims, he rolled out the memory of Ted Kennedy and the camera panned in on the widow. Out came the "moral issue" that the late Senator Kennedy said reflects the "character of our country."

A character lesson.

From Ted.

It transitioned to the recollection of how government once-upon-a-time assumed the responsibility for the Social Security of the elderly. Too bad no one stood and said, "Social Security is bankrupt!"

So, it was lofty oratory built on unsubstantiated claims; emotionally sustained by anecdotal tugs on the heart strings; punctuated with vague statistics; culminating in the remembrance of a liberal icon; that led to the invocation of that paradigm of welfare programs that's gone completely haywire.

"The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth." Aldous Huxley

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image 1st fnn mny hcare sclm - Oby = look at all broken Fed programs

THE RISE OF TRIAL LAWYER TV ADS

[HT:JW].
In August, former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Dr. Howard Dean made a telling statement when he answered a question at a Congressional town hall meeting about the lack of medical liability reform in the current health care reform proposals. Dean responded,

"The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people that wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth."

1. Television advertisements soliciting plaintiffs for medical malpractice lawsuits increased from about 10,150 ads in 2004 to more than 156,000 ads in 2008 -- nearly a 1,400 percent increase in four years.
2. Spending for these ads increased from $3.8 million to nearly $62 million during this time period -- a 1,300 percent increase in 2008-adjusted dollars.

Lawsuits are ultimately a business driven by the plaintiffs' bar, and when you see the marketing of medical malpractice lawsuits exploding like this, it tells you that these lawsuits are a growing sector within the larger lawsuit industry.

This new evidence of growth in plaintiffs' lawyer medical malpractice lawsuits comes amid an increased focus on medical liability reform -- or lack thereof -- in the larger health care reform debate.

It is yet another piece of evidence that we need meaningful medical liability reform as a key ingredient of any workable health care reform package.

[Yet not one of the Democrat proposals contain any degree of tort reform.]

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POLL: 53% Say Limiting Malpractice Awards Would Reduce Health Care Costs

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A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that only 21% disagree and 25% are not sure.

With Republicans pushing for so-called tort reform as part of the health care reform bill now before Congress, 56% of all voters agree that the government should limit the amount of money a jury can award a plaintiff in a medical malpractice lawsuit.

As is often the case, the Political Class disagrees with Mainstream America on the issue. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Mainstream Americans think limiting jury awards would significantly reduce health care costs, but a plurality (47%) of the Political Class disagree.

Similarly, 61% of Mainstream Americans say the government should limit the amount a jury can award a plaintiff in a medical malpractice suit, but only 26% of the Political Class agree.

Voters under the age of 30 are the least critical of jury awards and the least supportive of any limits on them.

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Power to the Patients, Please

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President Obama has made the calculated political decision to sell the Democrats' heavy-handed government revamp as the one and only possible reform to our medical delivery system.

He has also consistently mischaracterized our healthcare system as thoroughly broken, a veritable healthcare crisis.

President Obama told the rest of us to keep quiet while he made deals with every special-interest lobbyist at the backroom table.

What a heap of poisonous poppycock.

Presenting the American people with the utterly false choice of a my-way reform vs. no reform whatsoever has backfired precisely because it was blatantly dishonest in the first place...

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image toon 1st hcare = Oby puts lipstick on hcare pig

HEALTH CARE REFORM BASED ON FREE MARKETS AND COMPETITION

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President Obama continues to portray those who oppose his plan are said to be "obstructionist" or in favor of the status quo. Recently, the President again said, "I've got a question for all those folks [who oppose his plan]: What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution?"

If the President really wanted to know more he might have read Michael Tanner's recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times or Michael Cannon's piece in Investors Business Daily (IBD). He could have read Cato's book, "Healthy Competition." Or he might have just gone to healthcare.cato.org and read their plan:

• Let individuals control their health care dollars and free them to choose from a wide variety of health plans and providers.
• Move away from a health care system dominated by employer-provided health insurance; health insurance should be personal and portable, controlled by individuals themselves rather than government or an employer.
• Changing from employer to individual insurance requires changing the tax treatment of health insurance; workers should receive a standard deduction, a tax credit, or, better still, large Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for the purchase of health insurance, regardless of whether they receive it through their job or purchase it on their own.
• Increase competition among both insurers and health providers; people should be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines (one study estimated that this adjustment alone could cover 17 million more Americans without costing taxpayers a dime).

[All of which has been proposed, in Congress, in Republican plans that have been banned by the majority from being placed on 'the calendar' for any vote.]

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NYT: August Recess Didn't Greatly Alter Opinion on ObamaCare

[Meanwhile, in our professional media...]

Have you ever wondered what planet liberal media members live on?

Before you answer, consider the following astonishing quote from a New York Times article published Tuesday:

"While the month of August clearly knocked the White House back on its heels, as Congressional town hall-style meetings exposed Americans’ unease with an overhaul, the uproar does not seem to have greatly altered public opinion or substantially weakened Democrats’ resolve."

I guess wherever author Sheryl Gay Stolberg lives, they don't have Gallup polls.

After all, in September, Gallup found (emphasis added):

39% of Americans saying they would direct their member of Congress to vote against a healthcare reform bill this fall while 37% want their member to vote in favor.

This was down from 56 percent in favor back in July. That's a 19 point drop in less than two months.

Isn't that what you would call "greatly altered?"

[And the paper's losing readership - go figure.]

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What Carter Missed in the Middle East

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In an op-ed on Sunday ["The Elders' View of the Middle East"], former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on behalf of a self-appointed group of "Elders," described a rapacious Israel facing long-suffering, blameless Palestinians, who are contemplating a "nonviolent civil rights struggle" in which "their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela."

As with most of Carter's recent statements about Israel and the Palestinians, instead of facts we get vignettes from recent Carter travels. And while he finds "a growing sense of concern and despair" among "increasingly desperate" Palestinians, polls do not sustain this view.

The most recent survey by the leading Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki (done in August, the same month Carter visited), shows "considerable improvement in public perception of personal and family security and safety in the West Bank and a noticeable decrease in public perception of the existence of corruption in [Palestinian Authority] institutions."

This does not sound like despair.

In fact, positive views of personal and family safety and security in the West Bank stood at 25 percent four years ago, 35 percent two years ago and 43 percent a year ago, and they have risen to 58 percent in the past year, Shikaki reports.

There are other ways to measure quality of life in the West Bank: The International Monetary Fund recently stated that "macroeconomic conditions in the West Bank have improved" largely because "Israeli restrictions on internal trade and the passage of people have been relaxed significantly."

The IMF predicts that "continuation of the relaxation of restrictions could result in real GDP growth of 7% for 2009 as a whole," a rate of growth that would be far in excess of ours -- or Israel's.

Carter's efforts to portray life among the Palestinians as unbearable and getting worse are belied by data. His efforts to blame Israel for all the problems that do exist are equally demonstrably false, for anyone interested in looking at facts before the speak...

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Health Emergency? Dial 911, Not U.N. Medical Services

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With a full medical team of eight doctors and 11 registered nurses — and a budget of $38 million — the occupational health clinic at the United Nations should have all the resources it needs to meet any kind of emergency.

Yet the U.N. Medical Services Division (MSD) offers this important piece of advice for any U.N. employee in New York City who suffers a life-threatening condition at work: Don't call us.

Call 9-1-1.

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Invasion of the Czars

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According to the most recent count in Politico, with the resignation of the red green czar Van Jones, the White House still has 30 czars in its stable (12 more than Russia which had but 18 Romanov czars):

Afghanistan Czar: Richard Holbrooke
AIDS Czar: Jeffrey Crowley
Auto recovery Czar: Ed Montgomery
Border Czar: Alan Bersin
California Water Czar: David J. Hayes
Car Czar: Ron Bloom
Central Region Czar: Dennis Ross
Domestic Violence Czar: Lynn Rosenthal
Drug Czar: Gil Kerlikowske
Economic Czar: Paul Volcker
Energy and Environment Czar: Carol Brower
Faith-Based Czar: Joshua DuBois
Great Lakes Czar: Cameron Davis
Guantanamo Closure Czar: Daniel Fried
Health Czar: Nancy-Ann DeParle
Information Czar: Vivek Kundra
International Climate Czar: Todd Stern
Intelligence Czar: Dennis Blair
Mideast Peace Czar: George Mitchell
Pay Czar: Kenneth Feinberg
Regulatory Czar: Cass Sunstein
Science Czar: John Holdren
Stimulus Accountability Czar: Earl Devaney
Sudan Czar: J. Scott Gration
TARP Czar: Herb Allison
Terrorism Czar: John Brennan
Technology Czar: Aneesh Chopra
Urban Affairs Czar: Adolfo Carrion Jr.
Weapons Czar: Ashton Carter
WMD Policy Czar: Gary Samore

All of them work out of the White House and report directly to the President and none have been through the confirmation process, a process that would have weeded out Van Jones and a number of others who represent views anathema to the voters. (Cass Sunstein comes to mind, for example.)

But Senator Byrd made some very good points about Obama's overall misuse of his prerogatives: As he noted:

• (a) They are not accountable to the Cabinet members in their areas of control;
• (b) They rarely testify before Congress on data informing their decisions, their policies or their views.

Senator Byrd argued, in sum, that they were powerful, their work opaque and the means for holding them accountable for their acts or even for Congress to oversee their work were not apparent. Were I in Congress, I'd demand that funds for these posts be cut off until a better system for scrutiny and accountability is offered and agreed upon.

In the absence of oversight and Congressional scrutiny of this powerful inner circle in the White House the entire system of Constitutional checks and balances is meaningless...

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image toon 1st fnn sclm bbro libs reps = Job board = all CZAR positions

Birds of a Feather

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If the president were so concerned with being labeled a socialist, it probably wouldn't be prudent to appoint individuals with socialist backgrounds to serve in his administration, as in the latest and newest czar, Ron Bloom.

At first glance it seems rather odd that Bloom, a former high-level SEIU official, would be appointed to a position that would require him to create [?] manufacturing jobs, but further review of his background provides more clarity as to why he's ascended to the position of Manufacturing Czar.

JTA reports:

By now Ron Bloom's professional road to becoming the Obama administration's car czar has been widely reported. Missing from the coverage, however, has been any mention of those formative years at Jewish summer camp. Born in New York City and raised in Swarthmore, a suburb of Philadelphia, much of Bloom's early life revolved around Habonim (now known as Habonim Dror), a progressive Labor Zionist youth movement that emphasizes cultural Judaism, socialism and social justice...

Now envision little Ron at Camp Socialism, and today all grown up and in an unconfirmed high-level position in the White House.

How many more of these individuals does Obama have to align himself with before we open our eyes?

These czars are people that he wanted to work with who could have never made it through the public scrutiny of a Senate confirmation process and their backgrounds are only indicative of what he truly believes.

Ultimately, those beliefs will knock down the wall that hide who he truly is.

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The $2 Billion Chrysler Double-Cross

The Obama administration and its car-czar group appear to be intent on teaching someone who got in their way a brutal lesson.

Secured creditors' claims stayed in the "Old Chrysler," which was stripped of most of its value.

The ownership structure of "New Chrysler" that emerged turned out to be the following, according to this September 4 Bloomberg report -- U.S. Government -- 9.85%; Fiat Motors -- 20%; Canadian government -- 2.46%; the UAW's health care trust -- 67.69%.

Secured creditors have no stake in "New Chrysler."

"Old Chrysler" is still in bankruptcy, and in the process of liquidating. The proceeds from that liquidation, up to $2 billion, are supposed to go to the secured lenders first. But guess what? The same Bloomberg article by Linda Sandler and Erik Larson referenced earlier tells us that the government apparently now wants the $3-billion plus in bankruptcy financing back:

“Having stripped Chrysler’s first lien lenders of $5 billion in connection with the sham sale of Chrysler’s assets to a shell corporation, Treasury is now trying to make it difficult for the lenders to recover any of their losses from the scraps that were left behind,”

It's hard to see how anyone knowing the facts and sordid circumstances of the Chrysler bankruptcy and its aftermath can argue against how columnist Michael Barone accurately characterized as "an episode of Gangster Government" in early May.

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FLASHBACK >

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2009
Gangster government gives Chrysler to UAW

Other People's Money Part II

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A couple of days ago, I wrote an AT blog post on a New York Times story about the Stimulus bill’s failure to stop a “green” company from going through major lay-offs.

On Monday The New York Times ran a story on how the Stimulus has “failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades.”

Under the implicit assumption that local residents don’t know what’s best for them and their children, Obama and the Congress dedicated $100 billion of the Stimulus to school funding. But that money hasn’t been enough to prevent extensive school lay-offs.

In both public and private sectors, Obama’s big plans have fallen short or completely flat. Even after spending trillions, the president couldn’t make his promises come true. The late Milton Friedman explained why:

There's been one underlying basic fallacy in this whole set of… [economic] measures, and that is the fallacy…that it is feasible and possible to do good with other people's money.

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POLL: 60% Say Tax Hikes Hurt The Economy

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The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey also finds that 55% say tax cuts help the economy.

Half of voters nationwide (50%) say increases in government spending hurts the overall economy. Just 28% says increased government spending helps the economy.

Forty-six percent (46%) of voters say that cuts in government spending help the economy while just 24% say such spending cuts spending hurt the economy.

[But the real agenda has nothing to do with stimulating and economy.]

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Florida Exodus: Rising Taxes Drive Out Residents

[HT:DP].
There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them.

One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.

A few years ago, journalists - citing the chasm between Miami's high cost of living and its low level of income - began predicting that South Florida and its perpetual population-growth machine would soon face the unthinkable: a falling head count. Now it's official.

The region - Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties - lost 27,400 residents between 2008 and 2009, while Florida as a whole lost 58,000. That's not exactly a mass exodus for a state of 18 million; but it's the first net outflow in 63 years for a state that considers itself the new California:

"It's difficult for the working middle class to justify living here," ... "As much as they may love the sunshine, as you squeeze them out, they may find it in their best interests to move."

[Sound familiar?]

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image toon - mny libs - Nightmare of the leaving Debt zombies

TERMS OF ENDANGERMENT

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The White House is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "endangerment finding" that as a matter of law CO2 is a pollutant that threatens the public's health and must therefore be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

Such a rulemaking would let the EPA impose the ossified command-and-control regulatory approach of the 1970s, even if Democrats never get around to passing a cap-and-tax bill, says the Wall Street Journal.

Yet a curious twist is buried in the EPA's draft rule. The agency thinks it enjoys the discretion to target the new rules only to major industrial sources of carbon emissions, such as power plants, refineries, factories and the like.

This so-called "tailoring rule" essentially rewrites clear statutory language of the Clean Air Act by bureaucratic decree:

• Because the act was never written to apply to today's climate neuroses, clean-air regulation is based on an extremely low threshold for CO2 emissions that will automatically transfer hundreds of thousands of businesses into the EPA's ambit.
• The agency is required to regulate sources that emit more than 250 tons of a given air pollutant annually, which may be reasonable for conventional pollutants like NOX or SOX.
• But this is a very low limit for ubiquitous CO2, and so would capture schools, hospitals, farms, malls, restaurants, large office buildings and many others.
• To exempt these sources, the tailoring rule unilaterally boosts the rule for greenhouse gases from 250 tons to 25,000 tons, an increase of two orders of magnitude.

Yet the Supreme Court said nothing that would let the EPA simply decide on its own to apply the law to some un-favored business while giving others a pass...

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image toon - grn engry bbro - Whacky prof. failure = EPA head

Stop deportations, marchers urge at immigration rally

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With most of Washington concentrating on economic policies and health care, reforming immigration isn't a priority. Marchers at an immigration rights rally Monday in Chicago hope to change that and called on President Obama and Congress to act or face political trouble at election time...

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STUDENTS BORROW MORE THAN EVER FOR COLLEGE

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Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.

Federal student-loan disbursement -- the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools -- in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25 percent over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The ripple effects for today's heavily indebted young people are becoming palpable, says the Wall Street Journal.

A growing body of research suggests that tough loan payments are affecting major life decisions by recent graduates, forcing them to put off traditional milestones -- from buying a first home to even marriage and having children.

But colleges can be big employers in congressional districts, making it challenging for politicians who represent them to also take them on, says the Journal.

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image toon - edu - College tuition continues to go up

Chicago Tribune Ignores Thousands at Tea Party Express Protest

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You might think a major metropolitan newspaper that boasts "The Midwest's largest reporting team" on its front page would report on a suburban demonstration attracting thousands of people. In the case of the Chicago Tribune, you'd be wrong.

Today's Tribune print edition makes no mention of yesterday's Tea Party Express protest in New Lenox, Illinois, located only 36 miles from Chicago's Loop. The Southtown Star did cover the event on its Web site, noting:

About 6,000 people packed the hillside venue at The Commons Performing Arts Pavilion for the protest, part of a nationwide Tea Party Express tour that includes speeches, musical performances and updates from a traveling Fox News correspondent.

Today's Tribune devotes two stories, six pictures, and two maps to Oprah Winfrey's "takeover of downtown Chicago Monday." And there are stories on disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's media blitz and there's the large picture of a woman holding a "Health Care Can't Wait" sign.

The Tribune even finds space to devote to an article to a suburban man who's installed a faux drawbridge for his Tudor-style home.

Yet the Chicago Tribune, with "The Midwest's largest reporting team," doesn't report on a true grassroots phenomenon. As this is written, there's no mention of the story on the newspaper's Web site either.

Maybe the mainstream media are just hoping that if they ignore them long enough, Tea Parties, and the people who attend them, will just go away.

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image toon - mny msm = Oby = 1776 tea partiers = astroturfers

NBC MSNBC NYT: Obama Opponents 'Not Smart Enough' To Raise Their Children

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A new high-tech Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Racism. And parents too dumb to raise their children.

That was how NBC sought to explain away opposition to Pres. Obama's planned speech to schoolchildren. Andrea Mitchell narrated a segment on this morning's Today on the subject.

Then it was on to John Harwood of MNSBC and the New York Times.

"In this case you've got a lot of people who are truly agitated about [the president's school speech] and I think partly that's the polarization continuing over time. And partly it's simply because Barack Obama is a different kind of president: first African- American, [you know; racism]

"But I gotta tell you, Amy [Robach], as somebody who's covered Washington for a long time, this is one of the most ridiculous controversies I've ever seen. So far as I can tell, the biggest danger to kids in this whole thing is that a lot of the parents complaining aren't smart enough to raise them very effectively. Because if you think that a president coming into your school, kids school, and saying work hard and stay in school is a danger to kids, you've got some problems."

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The revolt against the elite

The philosophical breach between the American people and the intellectuals is the hope of the United States.

The revolt keeps growing, from tea parties to angry town hall meetings across the country, an uprising against the attempts of an elite to force on us an all-powerful State, about as welcome as grandma's cod-liver oil. Examples of revolt go beyond irate callers to radio talk shows. Take for instance the incident at a Frankie Valli concert recently posted on American Thinker, and the disgust and anger in Joe Sheffat's article. Sen. Barbara Boxer encountered it, as did Sen. Claire McCaskill, who made the mistake of asking if she was trusted.

The elite seem unable to comprehend that anyone could possibly oppose their infinitely superior wisdom, hence the strange and radical smears against the town hall opposition. No one could possibly have a better idea than us, the elite, therefore the town hall "mobs" must be fakes. Anyone, like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, or Sarah Palin, who thinks differently than us, the elite, surely must be of lower intellect.

The elite are unable to understand that this is not about taxes, or health care, or politics. It is about them... [snip]

• Sen. Harry Reid - degree: law, business experience: 0, In Congress since: 1982
• Sen. John Kerry - degree: law, business experience: 0, In Congress since: 1984
• Barney Frank - degrees: law, business experience: 0, In Congress since: 1981
• Nancy Pelosi - business experience: 0 (worked for DNC), In Congress since: 1987

A degree from Harvard does not wisdom make. In fact, the longer an individual stays in academia, the fewer credits they earn in the College of the Real World.

Implementing the ideas of intellectuals can result in disaster. Dr. Peikoff discusses the role of philosophy and the intellectuals:

The root cause of Nazism lies in a power that most people ignore, disparage - and underestimate. The cause is not the events hailed or cursed in headlines and street rallies, but the esoteric writings of the professors who, decades or centuries earlier, laid the foundation for those events.

"[The Nazi] death camps," notes a writer in the New York Times, "were conceived, built and often administered by Ph.D.'s"

The elite think and see us as needing their benevolent care, since we don't have their level of "sophistication". Such arrogance is the road to tyranny, as warned by writer C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

For the sake of benevolence, the Elites in Power are willing to implement by force the Elites in Towers' utopian fantasies. The Benevolent Eliteness accepts the advice of intellectuals with little or no critical scrutiny. The blind acceptance of global warming is one example. As a result, unrealistic grandiose schemes are proposed which always seem to result in the need for more Benevolent Elitenesses... [snip]

Dr. Peikoff describes the roots of today's revolt:

The hope of the United States lies in the philosophical breach between the American people and the intellectuals.

The people admire material wealth, practical success, technological innovation. The intellectuals dismiss such values as "middle class," and say that machines are destroying the globe. The people admire self-reliance, productiveness, and the other virtues of the so-called "work ethic." The intellectuals say that these virtues are impossible, unnecessary, antisocial, and/or "Puritan compulsiveness."

The people approve of personal ambition, are eager to pursue their own happiness, think that a man should not live on handouts but should earn what he gets, and reject the insistent demands for self-immolation. The intellectuals denounce this - every element of it - as selfish and therefore vicious.

The people hotly reject the proliferating manifestations of the welfare state, from soaring welfare rolls to forced busing to sexual quotas. The intellectuals condemn this as unfeeling, racist, "sexist."

The gap between the people and the elites has become a chasm, into which the elites are about to fall.

[Not without our first severing their control of our institutions [government, education, media], as they've the power {as is being proven to this day} to counteract/thwart the values of the majority...]

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-end 090910 post-