Obamacare’s dishonest cost “savings.”

Obamacare is more “ready, fire, aim” from King Canute and the Kapitolian Knights.

Notwithstanding, health care “reform,” alas, looks to be sliding inexorably off the back of the truck onto our front lawns with the speed of a midnight shoppers’ stampede on Black Friday.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who would cry rivers over a whiff of cigarette smoke emanating from the other side of a football stadium, will not bat at eye over an addition to the United States statute books -- and resulting real-world confusion and loss of liberty -- that’s the legislative equivalent of building an oil refinery, a feedlot, and a nuclear waste depository on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Such are the views on pollution of the socialism-now-and-forever Democrats. Namely, organic Cheese Doodles, yes! and reckless political and economic Xanadudian seppuku, hell yeah!

On just the issue of supposed cost control possible from mobilization of 114 -- I kid you not -- new government agencies (and political favors doled out to wisely-chosen cost-conscious political constituencies), The Wall Street Journal recently did a great job of sorting the diamonds of sense from the week-old fish heads of flapdoodle.

Here:

"The 'Cost Control' Bill of Goods. How Peter Orszag and the White House sold a health-care illusion." Wall Street Journal, 12/14/09.

Oh, yes. There’s more.

Read about our contemptible Democrats and the supposed “savings” from a provision in the health bills called the “Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act” (the Class Act), a proposed new federal long-term care entitlement.

You can rest assured. Yes, you can. The near-term highly-problematical “savings” get spent eo instante by the politicians and then transform (difficult as it may be to believe) into massive liabilities later.

Detailed aqui:

"Congress's Long-Term Care Bomb. Another new entitlement that will make future costs explode." By Scott Harrington, Wall Street Journal, 12/13/09.

It’s only a MOVIE.

Unless one spends time over at Brussels Journal, I don’t think it’s clear just how radically Europe has been changed by the creation of the European Union. The contempt for popular sovereignty is palpable.

If Switzerland were part of the European Union (EU), the Swiss would no doubt be made to vote again [on banning new mosque minarets] until they give the answer their government wants. That is what some self-declared “democrats” are, indeed, proposing.

- “The Swiss will have to vote again,” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the leader of the Green group in the EU Parliament told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps.

- “But the Swiss people have spoken…,” Le Temps objected.

- “So what?” Mr. Cohn-Bendit said.

Granted this is just a Green Party legislative leader -- “Green” being the new “Red” as we know -- but the approach of the rest of the E.U. is no different on this point. Democracy is to be honored at all times up to the point of its actually being exercised. At which point, the smart set will step in and set things right.

"Switzerland: Last Bulwark against the Judges." By Paul Belien, Brussels Journal, 12/9/09.

Firm grip.

At any rate, the Abu Sayaf spent the afternoon burning people alive, blowing open all the bank vaults and generally murdering and pillaging [in Zamboanga del Sur province, the Philippines].

And so it was . . . that I was somewhat amused to hear my seatmate on the plane, a doctor from Medicins Sans Frontiere, confidently declare to me that he would be protected by humanitarian law when he reached Jolo. I told him if he went much beyond town he’d be kidnapped before he could say Jacques Robinson, which he was. You really have to be well educated to believe that stuff about the “religion of peace”.

"Wild, wild east." By Richard Fernandez, Belmont Club, 11/24/09.

Intellectual dishonesty and stupidity.

Finally, the [House and Senate health care “reform”] bills are fiscally dishonest, using every budget gimmick and trick in the book: Leave out inconvenient spending, back-load spending to disguise the true scale, front-load tax revenues, let inflation push up tax revenues, promise spending cuts to doctors and hospitals that have no record of materializing, and so on.

* * * *

In short, any combination of what is moving through Congress is economically dangerous and invites the rapid acceleration of a debt crisis. It is a dramatic statement to financial markets that the federal government does not understand that it must get its fiscal house in order.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin , former director of the Congressional Budget Office, concludes by arguing that responsible conduct

will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness.

Let’s see . . . . Which way should we go? Little Rascals on Meth Excellent Health Care Socialist Adventure or . . . kick ass action to set our house in order?

For administration and congressional leftists in the grip of a life-long redistributionist, foul-the-nest frenzy, it’s a closer call than you think.

What part of "disaster" don't they understand?

"The Coming Deficit Disaster." By Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Wall Street Journal, 11/20/09 (emphasis added).

Other than that, it’s fanTAStic.

The Muslim is subservient to Sharia; the woman is subservient to the man; Dhimmis and slaves are subservient to Muslims. As for Infidels, Islam does not even give them the status of humans. They are ranked with pigs and excrement.

This is the society that the proponents of Islamic ideology are pushing France towards, that which has already imprisoned hundreds of millions of Muslims. Violence, absence of liberty, disdain of humanist values, rejection of Democracy, oppression, fanaticism, and backwardness.

Lexington quoted in "The Incompatibility of Political Islam With Our Society." By Baron Bodissey, Gates of Vienna, 11/24/09.

Closing in on a working hypothesis.

H/t: big-pete comment on "Spy agencies: Ignoring the elephant in the room." By Marisol, Jihad Watch, 11/18/09.

Muslim panacea.

Ah, yes ... fear, cruelty, pain, blood and death -- the answer to all social ills.

Comment by Kinneddar on "20-year-old woman stoned to death for adultery in Somalia." By Marisol, Jihad Watch, 11/18/09.

Secret meeting.

Does this portend good for Europeans? How healthy can this election be if it had to be held in secret? What does this suggest about the mindset of European politicians?

The President of Europe has not been elected; he was appointed in a secret meeting of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states.

"Meet the President of Europe." By Paul Belien, Brussels Journal, 11/20/09.