I do not think it's so much because people want freedom and choice (altho they do) as it is because people have no confidence in government entitlement programs (which the Dem plans are all about, ultimately). Why?

Social Security - bankrupt
Postal Service - bankrupt
Welfare - had devastating unintended consequences for which the nation still pays and from which the nation continues to suffer (eg huge rates - up to 70% - of single motherhood among beneficiaries)
Medicare - bankrupt
Medicaid - bankrupting the states
Government-run (ie union-controlled) schools: are people thrilled with them?
Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac - bankrupt
The "stimulus" - a failure, but it did create 25,000 new government jobs!

The future tax consequences of the above are daunting to people, and the idea of adding another trillion or so frightens the heck out of people who are thinking about their own well-being, their kids' futures - and also about the nation's.

The sad thing is that most of what people complain about in health care can be easily solved without giant government controls and bureaucracies:

1. Permit interstate competition among insurance companies so people can have a wide range of choices of types of policies including cheap major medical which is what makes sense for most people, and explain the basic fact that medical care has to be paid for, and even saved for, same as car repairs and house repairs and vacations (and legal costs). That is what grown-ups do. You can get major medical for a family for the price of a big-screen TV.
2. Portability of insurance - so you own it (that is complicated tho for companies that self-insure)
3. A law that says you cannot be cancelled if you get sick
4. State "pools" for the uninsurable, same as for uninsurable drivers. We already have (bankrupt) Medicaid for the poor.

How easy and non-controversial would those changes be? Abundant, high quality, and fairly expensive medical care is one of the great blessings and privileges of a prosperous society, and thus an important economic engine. Why kill it? People want these things.

Do Americans want to be grown-ups, or children? It's our call.

- Take a minute today to email your Congressman and Senators to let them know your views of the Dem healthcare plan. Their email addresses are here. It helps to be calm, polite, reasonable, direct - and brief. A phone call or letter probably is better, but everybody does email these days.

Ouch! At Big Government. h/t, Insty

But Chavez, Fidel, Quaddafi and Ahmadinejad seem to like the O, so that must be progress.

I think the O is getting in political trouble, but I have been wrong before about things.

Health care bill too difficult to put online. 

FedEx or fax it to us, Sen. Baucus. We'll be happy to post every page for you.

Our secretaries, assistants, and paralegals are standing by, waiting (photo). It's a slow day just flirting in the office.

Mona Charen on Obama's Self-Worship.

It actually worries me a little. I am not saying this to pick on the guy. I just worry that he bought into the messianic hype because he has not been through much in life. Mark Steyn observed on the radio yesterday that he was the first President who acted like the job was too small for him.

Thus far, I am neither impressed by the O's fund of knowledge, nor his wisdom, nor his experience. I am impressed by his smooth, lawyerly glibness and his apparent supreme self-confidence at times - but these are not the things I admire in people.

From Vanderleun:

It has become fashionable for governments to treat people -- even adults -- like children: children who consume too much, obey too little and remain too fond their imaginary friends. And their betters take it upon themselves to guard their speech, take away their dangerous toys and curtail their choices because they are prone to make unwise ones. And most of all they see to it that we should expect no better our lives but a little welfare gruel and some end of life counseling. Once upon a time mankind saw it as their birthright to wander the fields, swim in the streams and see what was over the next hill. Today we live penned up in dark houses warded by sour matrons and bloodless didacts who are forever seeking to administer their "teaching moments."

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

Mark Twain, at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, quoted in an excellent piece on Joyce's Ulysses (I have read the book twice - love it) in The Chronicle, James Joyce for Ordinary Blokes

We have linked to a couple of pieces lately - Rich Lowry on A Masterstroke of Weakness, and Hinderaker on What They Really Think.

I fear that we have an administration that thinks the US should be social workers to the world, instead of good cops. But if we aren't the cop, who will be? Surely not the UN: they have yet to stop a war or a genocide - and it is packed wiith lunatics.

The NY Post today opines on The Naif in Chief, but I do not think it is naive: I think it is a plan. A very bad plan which does not serve our interests.

Lewis at Am Thinker begins:

Yesterday at the United Nations, Barack Obama renounced Pax Americana, signaling an end to the United States' role as global cop.

Lunatics running the asylum: Melanie Phillips on the feral youth of England. h/t, Dr. Helen. One quote:

When I blamed the children’s poor discipline and concentration on the layout, the teacher looked at me with horror. ‘The pupils are working together, directing their own learning,’ she said emphatically. Children are now expected, for example, to be ‘independent learners’ in charge of their own education. (‘Why do teachers keep asking me what I want to learn? How am I supposed to know?’ one boy asked me in exasperation.)

Quote from Hewett re Obama on Afghanistan, etc:

The idea of rejecting the proposals of the new commander on the ground less than six months after his appointment is bad enough, but to do so because Slow Joe Biden has a bright idea is truly terrible. 

The president's domestic agenda is in a shambles and his ratings are plummeting to near record levels for a modern president in his first year in office.  His global warming hysteria of yesterday adds to the idea of a rookie being handed unvetted speeches --like the one in Congress with the man who died from denial of treatment, except he didn't-- and rushing off to his next media event. 

Thousands of Americans died because of the Taliban's partnership with al Qaeda, a partnership that endures.  Hundreds more have died pushing the Taliban-al Qaeda alliance deep into the remote mountains of the region.  General McChrystal's report asserts that with the right forces, stability can be achieved, and within an acceptable number of years.

The choice facing President Obama is a defeat and vulnerability to more terror plots and a second mission back when one occurs, or the acceptance of the commanding general's recommendations.  This isn't hard.  The fact that Joe Biden is on the other side makes it even easier to tell Secretary Gates to proceed with the McChyrstal plan.

 

Tough political realities quiet youth 'Obamamania.

Those youth were all about image. Political fashion. The youths do not know reality yet. They only know entitled dependency.

Related re immaturity: do we need the nanny government to save us from ourselves? I happen to believe that the government is far more immature than I am.

Crowder pays them a visit to find out, and it's worse than I though. An embarrassment.

What are these morans (nb - that's the cool blog spelling) doing in any competitive college? Or any college? Are these simple souls our best and brightest?

What happened to the old saying: "You can't shine sh-t"? These dopey kids should have real jobs, where they could learn something useful to do, shine themselves up, and become a credit to themselves. I think colleges are ripping these people off - or their parents.

Even attorneys like this site: Sick of Lawsuits. I view an important part of my job as to avoid lawsuits.

I like to make money, but I do not like to make dirty money.

From G. Kim Blank at the New English Review. Blank compares search engines to Gutenberg. Good or bad? People want it, and that's what matters.

Naturally, the government wants to control it now.

No, it is not. From his analysis of the Dem push for government medicine:

For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which “conservative” parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. Listen to your average British Tory or French Gaullist on the campaign trail pledging to “deliver” government services more “efficiently.”

The Dems are desperate to make us dependent slaves on their plantation before their chance disappears.

A quote from Mankiw's excellent op-ed in the NYT:

Imagine that someone invented a pill even better than the one I take. Let’s call it the Dorian Gray pill, after the Oscar Wilde character. Every day that you take the Dorian Gray, you will not die, get sick, or even age. Absolutely guaranteed. The catch? A year’s supply costs $150,000.

Anyone who is able to afford this new treatment can live forever. Certainly, Bill Gates can afford it. Most likely, thousands of upper-income Americans would gladly shell out $150,000 a year for immortality.

Most Americans, however, would not be so lucky.

h/t, Carpe Diem:

Just Google "Chris Dodd and ACORN." I don't have time to write a post right now except to note one link.

You are, of course, quite right, BL: Sen. Dodd was The Man From ACORN, (well, and so was Obama).

Ed. addendum:

John Fund today on why ACORN should get no more federal funds. Scathing review of the issues, including their links with SEIU. I still find it difficult to believe that there are nuts like this around.

Nothing at all against eggheads. There is a place for them, but not in roles of power.

Academics and eggheads spend their professional lives insulated from the realities that most of us deal with every day. They play with ideas, and are not familiar with running a business and making a payroll, for example, while most normal folks spend their days dealing with tough realities and unsecure, demanding, worrisome, and often unpleasant jobs. 

This from Why eggheads shouldn't be running things:

Making government policy from radical, unfiltered, untested ideas turns citizens into guinea pigs and puts the country at high risk for destabilization and other unpredictable consequences.  

Part of what allows academia to produce radical ideas is the absence of failure. Their ideas are rarely applied to real world problems. You don't have to "go back to the drawing board" unless you have a reason to do so.

Academia isn't a mill for practical solutions. It is intended as an environment for expanding thought to open the mind to new possibilities unbridled by law, ethics, morality, practicality and other elements of civilized society. "Eggheads" in academia are on the far side of the spectrum from those who should make policy to govern.

The(se) maps were not used as navigation tools but instead served as visual histories, teaching objects, and illustrations of religious or philosophic ways of understanding the world and what was seen as God’s creation.

Collect your best debating points here: Hawk vs. Dove on crime and punishment. Dalrymple.

As a retired prison shrink, Dalrymple knows whereof he opines. 

More fun with basic math today. Sam Savage on why we underestimate risk (h/t, Theo):

At The Corner:

My friend By contrast, my friend Andy tells me that, after seeing his son off to college, he and his wife had to wait a week before receiving an unsolicited telephone call.  "He was in the laundry room.  He wanted to know what all the buttons on the washing machine were for."

The new site Big Government is all over ACORN. The fact that Obama used to work for them seems of no interest to the MSM.

The new undercover videos from NYC are as bad as the other ones. It is clear now that it is up to independent journalists to find the truth. This O'Keefe guy deserves a Pulitzer - but he won't get one.

Related: MSM cred sinks to new low