Know Your Enemy

Let me see if I understand this - John Edwards and the Krugman Democrats want to negotiate with the Iranians and North Koreans but not the drug companies or health insurers.

Well, as long as we are clear who the bad guys are.

Comments

[Other Tom]

Once we have exhausted the schadenfreude attendant to the catastrophic collapse not only of the Clinton campaign, but also of the Clinton "legacy," we can gleefully anticipate the disappearance of the snake oil salesman Edwards.

[clarice]

That irony did not escape me either, TM.

Well, I'll consider it if they agree to replace the DoS staff with rug merchants and used car salesmen.

[steveaz]

I'm seeing a pattern here.

If a threat is real and deadly, the Democrats want to talk to it, not "fight" it.

But if a threat is illusory, mundane, and invisible, then the Democrats want to "fight" it.

Of course, their idea of a fight is to convene a commission. But just like their "war" on poverty, the Dem's "fights" against "Big Pharma" and "Big Oil" are only attempts to gain votes.

Maybe it's better that the Democrats won't "fight" Iranian nukes and global Islamofascism. If they did, we'd have to sit thru CNN's "analysis" of a zillion politicized commission-reports, And a Valerie Plame, a Gorelick, or a Downing Street Memo can always get slipped into these committees to ensure the "punches" fall on the Left's favorite villains: Americans and Republicans.

[clarice]

Let's steal their lunch money!

[Other Tom]

Absolutely beautiful, SteveAz. Beautiful.

[PeterUK]

"If a threat is real and deadly, the Democrats want to talk to it, not "fight" it.

But if a threat is illusory, mundane, and invisible, then the Democrats want to "fight" it. "

Easy, the first could get them killed,there could be a payoff in the second.

[clarice]

It is a brilliant observation which I fully intend to steal. Speaking of ighting only the illusory, Shrum, who never consulted for a winning campaign suggests Hill can pull this off only by being her true, wonderful self and telling us what she plans to do if elected..
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/01/07/2008-01-07_sen_clintons_massive_mistake__and_the_fi.html?page=1>Go Home!

He does say something interesting..she's run thru most of her $100 million campaign chest and new money is drying up.

[Other Tom]

For once, Clarice, I've beaten you to it. I have already stolen StevenAz's observation, and done so without attribution. (Actally, if I knew his name I'd be more than happy to attribute it from now on. And I hope it gains well-deserved currency.)

It reminds me of an observation I saw many years ago in National Review: A liberal's idea of an unfair fight is one in which the other side fights back.

[clarice]

Attribution? Why call it theft if you give attribution. Stevez. Never heard of him. HEH

It is so brilliant his observation belongs to the ages.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Having just finished Stan Evans' Blacklisted by History, I can say that the phenomena steveaz describes has a long and deep pedigree with the Dems. It goes back to FDR's Admin, and continued into Truman's.

The State Dept was willing to cooperate with Stalin, but not Churchill. With Tito, but not Mihailovich. With Mao, but not Chiang Kai-Shek.

In fact, it wasn't enough to pull the rug out from under Chiang. We even had a plan to assassinate him when he fled to Formosa. A plan that Dean Rusk was in on, and apparently was the template for what happened to Diem a decade later in Vietnam.

[clarice]

And then--after making nice to our enemies and screwing our friends-- they moan that we have no friends on the international scene!

[MayBee]

Heh.
It has long occurred to me that anything we can't get Iraq or Iran or Pakistan to do is Bush's fault. As if he could say the magic words and make other countries do our bidding. Pretty much everything bad that happens in the world is because Bush couldn't convince someone to agree with him.
Yet the Dems never realize they can't even get other Americans that are Republicans to agree with them.

[steveaz]

No attribution necessary, guys! I do hope you'll run spell-check on the comment before running with it, though.

I think I substituted a comma for a period in there somewhere...
-s

[clarice]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/01/know_their_enemy.html>Steveaz's name in neon

[obsessed]

If you don't get that the health insurers are the bad guys, you're really out of touch with life on Main St.

[MikeS]

obsessed,
Why do you say health insurers are the bad guys?

[steveaz]

MikeS,
I think Obsessed was pumping out the for us, bud.

He's sayin' that, to the Dem's, vendors of consumer items like insurance and pharmaceuticals are America's "enemies."

Which leaves me wondering, how do the Dem's square their support for mid-western manufacturing unions with their anti-consumerist advocacy? Consumer goods must be manufactured to be sold...

Maybe Wolf Blitzer will ask Obama to answer that one.

[David Banner]

'This realm is not to be conquered, but to be joined; as a team.'
Mariposa

Diana 'Prince' was an undercover International Interrogation Member when she was undercover in the Bermuda Triangle working with a terrorist that wanted to be caught to make more money.

I'll work with Malcovich any time, 'cause the other guy was shot in his lomo by Hilly's.'

The DOS five year term limit is going to happen. Average Americans are good enough for those jobs. So, dems in Congress get the same limits. What's the problem? It should be obvious from the New years day celebrations..........

Haaaaaaaaaaaaa

[vnjagvet]

The MSM is hot on the Obama bandwagon. Hillary and Edwards are being left in the dust. It is interesting to again watch the mob mentality that infects these sober analytical champions of neutrality. So unlike those of us who just write on "them there emotional blogs".

[Bob Agard]

Nothing like having your priorities straigtht.

[obsessed]

Why do you say health insurers are the bad guys?

Health insurers are the bad guys to us just as redtail hawks are the bad guys to field mice. It's not that they're evil - it's that their job is to make money and they do it by offering healthy people a choice of paying premiums that go up way beyond the price of inflation every year, or running the risk of losing all their assets if they get sick, while refusing to insure anyone who has anything wrong with them.

Listen - if you were a cancer survivor and you asked me to take a monthly premium from you in return for being responsible for your bills if you got sick again, I wouldn't do it either.

The mission statement of your health insurer is to bleed you dry while you're healthy and leave you to die when you get sick, and if you don't think so you're more naive than the dumbest knee-jerk liberal you ever made fun of. And you're in for a very rude awakening.

It's an inherently adversarial situation and there's no recourse. They're our natural adversaries; they hold all the cards and they're playing to win. And they're winning.

I'm not a socialist AT ALL, but in the case of things that EVERYONE needs, it doesn't make sense to let carnivorous capitalists jump into the middle of it and squeeze everyone dry.

Listen, Mike S, try quitting your job and becoming an independent contractor. Or try getting sick with almost any ailment and then getting laid off and trying to get your own insurance. Or try getting a policy that pays 80%, or 70%, or 60%, and having to get almost any major medical procedure. Or try being completely healthy with a private policy and watching it go up 10 to 25% every single frikkin year for a couple decades. Then you tell me why the health insurers are the bad guys.

And when I say Tom is an out-of-touch elitist who doesn't get what's going down on Main Street, I'm saying that it doesn't matter if you go to church every Sunday after deer-hunting, hate gays, hate abortions and want to nuke Iran back to the Stone Age. You're still gonna get sick and still getting screwed by the health insurers. And that's what's happening to the army of rednecks who voted against their own self-interest to put George Bush in the White House for 8 years. They're a little slow on the uptake, but they're starting to catch on. By the time you sufficiently demonize the word "populism", it's going to be too late.

[JM Hanes]

obsessed:

"I'm not a socialist AT ALL, but in the case of things that EVERYONE needs, it doesn't make sense to let carnivorous capitalists jump into the middle of it and squeeze everyone dry."

In the words of Inigo Montoya .... Oh, never mind.

[obsessed]

So enjoy your health, and your permanent majority, while they last.

[obsessed]

In the words of Inigo Montoya ...

You keep using that term ... "socialized medicine". I do not think it means what you think it means.

I repeat:

1) get diagnosed with any warning signal of any disease
2) get laid off
3) where are your wisecracks now?

[SunnyDay]

30 years ago, health insurers were nonprofits. The greedy politicains saw all that money changing hands and not being taxed, so they took away their nonprofit status, and forced them to become for-profit businesses - in a business where it is impossible to make a profit.

That's how we got here. Beware the law of unintended consequences.

[glasater]

Thank you SunnyDay!

[sbw]

The political talk of universal health care misses the point. Successful health insurance must depend on free enterprise or it necessarily becomes inefficient and unaffordable. Government, capitalists, unions, professional associations, companies, ad infinitum are susceptible to overweaning self-interest if they are not faced with the reality that excess drives people elsewhere.

The Republican position is not that people without health care should not be cared for, it is that the Democratic plans are prescriptions for failure -- and that that should be obvious to anyone with sense of history.

On the other side, the Democrat's position that the Republicans lack compassion for not adopting the Democrat's approach is intellectually dishonest and demonization of the opposition to the detriment of the American people.

Both sides need to talk sense.

[pst314]

"I'm not a socialist AT ALL, but in the case of things that EVERYONE needs..."

Everyone needs food. Clothing. Housing. Transportation.

Shall we socialize them too?

And of course the list is endless because sooner or later everything is declared to be a need, be it an internet connection and a PC, or a color TV.

[kim]

'Food, clothing, housing, transportation'. These are externalities; health care is your BODY, man. You know, that TEMPLE.
=================================