So we have won after all

On 7, December 1941, upon learning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Sir Winston Churchill declared, “So we have won after all.” Lacking his prescience and deep respect for the character of the American people, many around him were perplexed by the statement. To Sir Winston, however, it was immediately obvious that the Japanese had over-played their hand and awakened their worst nightmare. He was well aware that years of intense struggle and pain lay ahead. But in his lion heart he knew that, in the end, the American will, sufficiently motivated, would prevail over the enemies of freedom.

On 7, December 2009, upon learning of the Leftist attack on their economy, character, intelligence, and future, the American people are similarly awakened. Fraudulent stimulus, socialist health care proposals, and the climate change scam utterly exposed as such have shaken the electorate to its core and stirred a reverence for first principles as has not been seen in many a decade. Even prominent Democrats are warning the administration to change direction. Indeed the most potent antidote for Leftism is its being put into practice.

And yet, there remains intense struggle and pain ahead. Those leading the attack are not motivated by traditional political impetus. The mere threat of losing office deters them not.

As Mr. Obama jets off to Copenhagen to socialize with socialists, communists, anarchists, and shysters from every corner of the globe, seeking to further obligate the United States in a trillion dollar extortion racket while she is already imperiled by 10.2% unemployment and unbearable debt, it is becoming apparent that this is no mere liberal democrat in the presidency. This is a leader who seeks to break the United States as she is, force her to her knees, and then reclaim her on entirely new terms.

The failing policies of the Obama administration destroying the United States economy and the Democratic party are not the product of political incompetence. They are the deliberate application of a strategy; less Jimmy Carter and more Vladimir Lenin. Of course we are referring to the Cloward and Priven Strategy. To Conservatives, this in no news at all. To others (“Independents”) this is the bitter realization of what Captain Hope n’ Change meant when he said he intends to “fundamentally change America.” Had they been paying attention, they would not have voted for this. Had they been paying attention, they would not have voted for Obama! Bit late for all that now. What’s done is done and, in truth, the worst is yet to come.

Nonetheless we have more hope than at any point in the last 12 months. The Left has overplayed its hand and awakened their worst nightmare: a genuine appreciation in the hearts and minds of the American people for the principles upon which their nation was founded.

America will suffer for her dalliance with Marxism. She may even sustain some irreparable damage. But we know that, in the end, she will prevail, yet again, against the enemies of freedom.

And so, Liberty Lovers, we have won after all!

Cheers,

Charlie

The Cancer of Progressivism in America

Congressional Gang Rape

Thus spake Czar Hope and Change to his minions in Congress to rally their votes for health care reform,

“Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down

health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”

Henry the 5th this is not. "Teabag, anti-government people?" "Extremists?" A little more contempt please, Mr. President, for you are addressing more than half of the nation here. And pray tell, how exactly does this rhetoric fit into the "Post-Partisan" lexicon?

As obnoxious and shrill as the Iraq war protesters became, we do not recall President George W. Bush ever deriding them in this fashion. What does that say about the man? And what does the above say about our current Commander in Chief as well as those soulless ghouls who carry out his bidding?

The Heritage Foundation explains that November 7's gang rape wrought a $2.6 trillion bill which raises taxes by $700 billion on a nation which already faces record deficits and 10.2% unemployment, and massively expands a Medicaid program that currently provides substandard reimbursement rates, is bankrupting states, and is bankrupt itself. Now that's something to celebrate, presuming the destruction of the Great Republic is your aim.

Throughout all this one is forced to ask continually, "why?" The 47 million uninsured? Please even The Obama Himself dared not employ that fiction in his last address to the nation regarding health care. Because major organizations such as the American Medical Association, AARP, and major pharmaceutical companies endorse it? As Mr. Dick Morris and friends point out, this support was bought and paid for (extorted?) with tax-payer money long ago, and each of these players are beginning to realize they have been had; (witness The Health Insurance Industry) a realization the Bishops and the Catholic Health Association will soon come to when the Stupak amendment is exposed as pure vapor.

It is little wonder that the chorus declaring the American Democratic Party an organized crime syndicate disguised as a political party is growing. The only question now is how much looting of American treasure - fiscal and moral, present and future - will they accomplish in the meantime?

Cheers,

Charlie

Trick or Treat – A Nightmare for Westerners

Dressed as Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost, the wee ones sheepishly approach the awesome house. Everyone in the neighborhood had told them what incredible treats were provided there. They ring the bell. The door opens slowly.

“Trick or treat,” plead the little beggars.

A silent and powerful hand reaches forth and drops curiosities into open sacks: Stimulus, reduced carbon emissions, free health care, and a fair media.

Trick or treat, wonder the wanders. Are these gifts what they seem? Or are they something else, something that exacts a price their little minds cannot quite recall?

“Trick!” cry Ghost and Patriot. “Treat!” counter Hobo and Witch. They quarrel, shattering the camaraderie that helped make this night so magic.

A sound interrupts them. They stop and listen. Laughter. A single laugh, high, mocking, and impossibly loud, coming from inside the awesome house.

Cold. Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost shiver violently and suddenly realize they are no longer in costume. In fact they are completely naked. The wintry wind nearly steals their treat sacks, and they find that they are now empty: bereft not only of the offerings of the awesome house, but of all gains they had made thus far.

The laugh grows louder.

They run, each to their homes, but their homes are empty, as if no one had ever lived there at all. Neighbors, friends, strangers, all houses are now dark and empty but one – the awesome house.

Cold, hungry, and tired the little ones approach the awesome house again – without mirth, without mischief, without choice. They ring the bell. The door opens slowly. They stand shivering without speaking. The silent and powerful hand reaches forth and presents each of them a massive candied apple, then ushers them inside.

The house is warm and spacious. Everyone from the neighborhood is there but no one speaks. All are naked and cowering, gnawing voraciously on massive candied apples. Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost do likewise, the intense sweetness making their empty stomachs sick. But there is nothing else to eat. There is nothing else to do. There is no where else to go.

Another door opens. The silent and powerful hand beckons. The naked mass obeys and passes through the door and down a massive stairway. Down, down, down, the darkness grows thicker as a stench begins to rise. They are down now, at last, on solid ground. Their eyes adjust to the living darkness and they begin to see – more. More naked people, hundreds of them, thousands, millions, not dead but hardly living, stretching back to the beginning of history, an ocean of humanity standing silently, miserably, resignedly.

Terror rises in the minds and throats of Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost. They turn to run and scream, but they cannot, there are too many bodies in their way and their voices too are gone. They struggle futilely against the herd.

The high, mocking laugh returns from atop the massive stairway. Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost look up to see the silhouette of a man against the open basement door. He turns, climbs the last few steps back upstairs, and slams the door.

The darkness takes over now and obliterates all distinction between Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost; those they once called neighbors; and the ocean of silent humanity.

Patriot summons all his strength and utters one final word into the suffocating blackness: “Trick!”

Cheers,

Charlie

P.S. Our apologies to Mr. Bradbury.

September 11, 2009 - The Apex of the Hangover

There ought to be a word for it. Perhaps there is and we are unaware? That excruciating instant during a hangover when the fog has lifted just enough that for the first time, and with stomach-lurching clarity, one appreciates the full folly and recklessness of the previous evening’s activities.

We suspect, and indeed hope, that September 11, 2009 proves just such a moment for the citizens of the United States.

America’s hangover from its binging on Leftism began, it would seem, mid-summer as the Obama administration and its obedient Congress vowed to force their health care proposals down the throats of the people, immediately following prodigious tankard-loads of “Stimulus” and Cap and Trade.

At that point, even the celebrated independents and moderates (i.e. those who normally don’t give a monkey’s about politics, history, or current affairs) became aware of a nauseating churn in their bellies and a painful ringing in their ears. They too had had enough. Many are beginning to realize the very real threat to their liberty the aforementioned measures constitute, and are fueled by a palpable sense that, once lost, that liberty shall never be regained.

This is all quite positive. And yet, we remain uneasy. For the Last Best Hope of Mankind had another such awakening just eight short years ago, far more violent and acute than this. For many, September 11, 2001 was electro-shock therapy, jolting them out of the delusion that America was inevitable, untouchable, and indestructible. They began, as had their forefathers, to guard their liberty jealously and hold the principles upon which their great nation was founded with reverence.

For too many others, it would seem, the single most horrific attack on the American homeland was just another tragedy, like a hurricane or an auto pileup, to be cleaned-up , litigated, and forgotten.

Now, as the stench of insidious, demoralizing, enervating collectivism rises throughout the fruited plain, the citizenry is again reacting with a kind of instinctual rebellion and righteous anger against the enemy – this one domestic rather than foreign.

Will this rebellion last? Will it hold? Will it be sufficient to concretize once and for all the revolutionary vision of the Founders – itself the culmination of centuries’ cultivation of the concept of ordered Liberty – in the hearts and minds of all Americans?

Not likely. Perhaps it shouldn’t. Perhaps mankind’s ceaseless flirtation with self-enslavement is more a spiritual dynamic than political, to be conquered by each individual soul for its own reasons and in its own way.

But we can dream can’t we? As Britain, Europe, and the majority of the world order yet another round at the bar of collectivist statism, it would be some measure of hope to know the United States remains out there somewhere, sober and shrewd, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Cheers,

Charlie

Reading by the Light of Perverted Science

But if we fail, then the whole world ... will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister ... by the lights of perverted science.
— Sir Winston Churchill, June 18, 1940

My Dear Democrat United States Congresspersons,

We do hope you are enjoying your well deserved recess. The 111th has thus far proven one of the boldest and most aggressive legislative bodies in the history of governance. Statists and collectivists throughout the world and throughout history are doubtless agog.

Between naps and town hall meetings (how rewarding those must be for you) we hope you are taking the opportunity to catch up on your reading. We highly recommend two pieces in particular, namely HR 3200 and HR 2454, the health care reform bill and the cap and trade bill respectively.

While reading, we wonder if you won’t find something reminiscent within the myriad provisions and proposals comprising these bills; something akin, if not entirely homologous to, what Sir Winston Churchill referred to as “perverted science.”

It is often assumed that in coining the phrase Sir Winston was referring to the monstrous Nazi war machine. He was not. He was referring to the synthesis of new technology and knowledge with a godless utilitarian philosophy which recast mankind as a mere resource among others to be used or discarded as expediency requires. In this world view, man exists to serve the State. To the extent that he does, he has value. To the extent he does not, he is worthless and expendable.

Not surprisingly, this “science” proves a bit of a hard sell to most populations, even the German’s of the 1930’s. So shrewd politicians dress it up with pretty little rationalizations. Eugenics, for example, justified unspeakable medical practices and experimentation so long as they were carried out upon worthless and expendable non-humans such as Jews, the disabled, blacks, homosexuals, Poles, and political enemies of all stripes. The Nazi’s “Blood and Soil” campaign made acceptable all manner of environmentalist buggery like “Tierschutzrecht,” their law against the use of cruel experiments on animals (that’s what the Jews et al were for); “Reichnatureschutzgesetz,” which allowed government expropriation of land without compensation for the purposes of environmental land use planning, “Dauerwald,” which protected forests at all costs, and ultimately “Lebensraum,” which justified the expansion of right-thinking Germany to any place on Earth it damn well pleased. (You can read all about this in Mr. Mark Musser’s excellent compendium, “The Green Nazi Hell and America’s Future?” )

Are these evidence of the sunny side of Nazism? Did Dolphy and the boys have a soft spot in their hearts for fuzzy bunnies and leafy trees? No. They merely recognized the efficacy of these measures in getting feeling, thinking people to exchange their God given rights of person and property for the promise of some mystical agrarian purity sustained only by the wisdom and grace of science and State. Alas they instead found themselves mere grist for the mill and forced to accept any dehumanizing edict handed down from government almighty.

When we read then the breathtaking affront to the rights of private property that is HR 2454, the euthanasia provisions in HR 3200 (Section 1233 pages 425-430),and the mandated tax-payer subsidized abortion via the Kennedy amendment thereto, we cannot help but feel we’ve seen all this before. We wonder, too, if the American people will prove as blind and compliant to these manipulations – festooned as they are in the raiment of social justice, environmental stewardship, and fiscal responsibility - as have been their German, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser degree British, European, Canadian, and Australian cousins before.

It would seem, judging by the rather spunky response those of you holding live town hall meetings are receiving, that they are not. You would do well to listen to your constituents, and read the damned bills, being mindful of history and the light of perverted science.

Cheers,

Charlie

Our Interview with Satan

Churchill’s Parrot: Charlie Churchill’s Parrot here and joining us this evening is the Prince of Darkness himself, Satan. Mr. Satan, so gracious of you to be here.

Satan: Not at all.

CP: How are you, sir?

S: Never better.

CP: That’s most unfortunate. We must say we are a bit surprised to see you here. You’re not really one known for giving interviews are you?

S: You are correct. Historically my policy has been one of stealth; lurking in the shadows, masking my presence, et cetera, et cetera. There’s no cause for me to employ this strategy any longer, however.

CP: Truly? Might we ask why not?

S: No one believes in me anymore. I’ve made a joke of the very concept of evil, let alone belief in anything called “The Devil.”

CP: You don’t seem as distressed about that as one might expect.

S: Distressed? I relish in it. I am now as a hunter, utterly undetected by his prey, poised to pounce at the time of his choosing to make the final kill. Most exciting really.

CP: …yes well that is a bit chilling, isn’t it? And to what do you attribute this lack of “faith”, for want of a better term?

S: Well it certainly is no accident. My minions and I have worked for centuries to divert human beings in their intrinsic yearning for the light of Truth to the enervating conundrum that the Truth is there is no Truth. And when there is no Truth, there can be no evil. There are only preferences, which fair-mindedness prohibits people of conscience from judging. Now that this mind set has been acculturated world wide, I have effectively neutered mankind, morally speaking, and enjoy free reign on Earth.

CP: Well there it is then. What makes you believe this mind set – what we might paraphrase as Relativism - is any more a force in human events now than previous?

S: Obama.

CP: Er …Come again?

S: Obama. The ascendance of this man was the confirmation I required that this Relativism, as you put it, had become the dominant influence in the American ethos. Most of the rest of the world had adopted it decades ago, but Americans always clung to these despicable notions of self-evident truths, unalienable rights, and a “Creator” from which all emanated. Now, however, it looks as though they too have come to regard these concepts as nonsense and are more than willing to chuck them at the first hint of discomfort.

CP: Sadly you’ll get no argument from us on that. Tell us, what was your first clue about Obama?

S: The Saddleback Church Forum with Rick Warren, Obama, and Mc … McElroy?

CP: McCain.

S: Yes, McCain. You will recall Warren asked both candidates independently, “Does evil exist and, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it, or defeat it?” McCain’s response: “Defeat it.” Obama, however, was far more academic, finessed, nuanced, and lengthy. I knew I had my man!

CP: Fascinating. Would you agree that we have seen that same dynamic played out in Mr. Obama’s reaction to sundry international crises of late: the Russian rape of Georgia, Al-Qaeda’s advance through Pakistan, the bald-faced threats of North Korea, the repression of the Iranian freedom movement, increased Iranian hostility toward Israel, ex-Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya’s, disregard for the Honduran constitution and the rule of law...?

S: Precisely! There are complexities to these issues. But at their core, each is plainly a manifestation of brute lust for power and disregard for human dignity. In the past, American leaders would publicly identify these acts as evil, and awaken the passions of righteousness in souls throughout the world. Now the leader of the free world merely furrows his brow and spouts meaningless equivocations laden with qualifiers and caveats. Delicious!

CP: President Jimmy Carter was of little more use in such instances, was he not? What’s the difference now?

S: Carter, though useful, was genuinely weak. Obama is not weak. He is a devout Relativist. Thus he believes quite deeply that America is no better than any other nation. That she has no special responsibility to maintain the peace in the world. That she has no right to the riches she enjoys. And that she is a bully and a rogue who must be brought to justice before the world. More importantly, Obama has the talent and the will to convert the unbelievers to this worldview.

CP: So much for current foreign policy. What about domestically?

S: Oh where shall I begin? We have had so many victories so quickly. We have virtually obliterated faith in free market principles and convinced free people to place their trust in an economy managed by a vigorous centralized government. We have convinced the gentle-hearted that their love of man can best be demonstrated, not through individual acts of mercy, but through government redistribution of wealth. We continue to advance the “knowledge” that man’s activities toward bettering himself are ultimately destructive to himself and to his planet. I mean I can’t help but giggle like a school girl when I think about Obama’s EPA successfully selling the assertion that human breath is a pollutant! You can’t imagine what sublimity that is to me.

But again, the most exquisite aspect of all this is that the American people voted for it. The AMERICAN people! This is the hope and change they chose. Mind boggling! Granted only about 10% were paying any attention when they did so, but apathy has always served me well and will continue to do so. My work here is nearly done.

CP: You must know there is a rather outspoken and passionate opposition to all this.

S: Oh yes, yes, but I have so thoroughly marginalized them and that which they advocate they are almost entirely irrelevant in the scheme of things; objects of ridicule and no more. I give you, Sarah Palin.

CP: Still your minions do have the tendency, from time to time, of overplaying their hands and awakening an authentic moral outrage in the common man.

S: Oh you’re quite right about that. Ham-fisted pity pimps and wild-eyed sociopaths have certainly spoiled the whole game for me in the past. But I need no longer concern myself with such buffoons. I’ve got my smooth-talking ace-in-the-hole in the driver’s seat now.

CP: We realize this is the age of “transparency” and all, but have you no reservations about laying out your strategy so plainly?

S: None whatsoever. Remember, I don’t exist. And, in the eyes of men, those who oppose me are pathetic lunatics lunging at phantoms. You cannot win.

CP: We can and we will. It’s just that you can’t imagine how we’ll do it at this point. Unfortunately, neither can we. But we possess something which you do not: Faith.

S: You are fools.

CP: Coming from you, that’s quite a compliment.

S: As you wish.

CP: Well we certainly have no shortage of other questions for you but we realize you have another engagement to attend.

S: Yes I’m overseeing the Jackson funeral and have a few loose ends to tie up.

CP: You don’t say. Well sir we wish you every obstacle, frustration, and failure in your future endeavors.

S: Likewise.

C: We have no doubt.

Victory in Iraq - So says Joe

Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, declared the Battle of Iraq won as United States troops withdrew from major cities this past week. (Beak tip: The Mudville Gazette). Perhaps you missed it? Perhaps everyone did? What with the Jackson funeral, the Governor Mark Sanford affair and so forth ...

Oh well. Er ... thanks guys.

Cheers,

Charlie

The Hard Price of Liberty

In these times when so many throughout the Anglosphere appear committed to relinquishing their liberty for social welfare goodies, we do well to recount the price paid by those who won that liberty for us in the first place.

Here, on the occassion of the 233rd signing of the American Declaration of Independence, is one such recounting. (Beak tip to Mark Block of Americans for Prosperity).
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Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.

Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.

Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.

Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of theRevolutionary War.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. What kind of men were they?

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.

Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer,Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.
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Something to ponder. Something to share. As we line up for our federal "freebies", what exactly are we providing in exchange? The 56 signers of the Declaration just might have something to say about that.

Cheers,

Charlie

Polar bears, the Uninsured, and the Marxists Who Love Them

“Perhaps the most visible sign of the need for health care reform is the 46 million Americans currently without health insurance. CEA projections suggest that this number will rise to about 72 million in 2040 in the absence of reform.”
- The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), June 2, 2009

Despite the fact that, at roughly 25,000, there are more polar bears alive today in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain then at any point in recorded history, global-warming pimps continue to peddle their tale of doom regarding these creatures as proof positive of the evils of man made climate change. Why? Because it works.

Similarly, another tale of doom is being spread far and wide to emotionally bludgeon the American people into accepting that a good portion of their liberty and income must be sacrificed as penance for the excesses of their free-market wantonness: the tale of the uninsured.

“We’ve got to admit that the free market has not worked perfectly when it comes to health care, because you've got a lot of people who are really getting hurt: 46 million uninsured,” declared President Barack Obama in Green Bay, Wisconsin this past 11 June.

You’ve simply “got to admit” it. Otherwise folks might suppose your capitalistic zeal has blinded you to the sufferings of your fellow man, and you wouldn’t want that would you? Golly, no.

The canard of the “46 million uninsured in America” is the well-choreographed stage-craft of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Heavily invested in, and thus deeply disappointed by, the colossal failure of the Clinton administration’s go at establishing a taxpayer-funded, government-run health care system; RWJF realized they’d need to pursue a different strategy in order to sell their poison to the American people. So they borrowed a page from their friends in Hollywood and put a “human” face on the otherwise dismal tedium of health care financing: “The Uninsured.” Like the climate-change pushers and their cute, fuzzy, drowning polar bears, government run health care advocates now had their mascots by which to yank the heart strings of otherwise common sense Americans and guilt them into forsaking not only their liberties but the best health care system in the world.

For seven years now RWJF has funded and orchestrated Cover the Uninsured Week campaigns through health institutions across the country. The intent of the campaign has been to rivet into the head of every single American that there are 44-50 million people in the United States who simply cannot afford health insurance and that something must be done NOW. As their lack of insurance is due to the fact that private insurance and private-sector health care are utterly unaffordable, a tax-payer funded public option and government enforced price controls are the only real path to the panacea of “universal coverage.” Genuinely compassionate Americans, baffled and bored by the complexities of the issue, find the logic hard to argue and increasingly go along with the show.

There is a bit of a sticky wicket in all this, however, in that the entire 46 million uninsured statistic so universally bandied about these days is a damnable lie. A bit of analysis, if you will.
As the United States’ Congressional Budget Office (CBO) explains,

“Far from being a static group, the uninsured population is constantly changing. Some people are uninsured for long periods, but more are without coverage for shorter times, such as between jobs.”

The U.S. Census Bureau, who’s Current Population Survey (CPS) data has traditionally been used for estimating the number of uninsured in America, has acknowledged the CPS’s failure to take into account this fluidity of the uninsured population. Buried in the back (page 59) of the bureau’s 2007 report you will find this:

“Health insurance coverage is likely to be underreported on the Current Population Survey (CPS). While underreporting affects most, if not all, surveys, underreporting of health insurance coverage on the Annual Social and Economic Supplement appears to be a larger problem than in other national surveys that ask about insurance. … Compared with other national surveys, the CPS estimate of the number of people without health insurance more closely approximates the number of people who are uninsured at a specific point in time during the year than the number of people uninsured for the entire year.”

So why does this matter? Well one would think activists sincerely concerned with addressing a problem, let alone a “crisis”, would want to take great pains to accurately assess it. Or, to quote the CBO once again, “Policies aimed at increasing coverage are most likely to be effective if they consider the distinction between the short term and long term uninsured.” And yet health care reform crusaders seem not at all concerned with this distinction. Curious.

Now of course, the United States Census Bureau is not entirely inept (at least not until ACORN takes over.) They do produce surveys which make the distinction between those deemed “chronically” uninsured and those just enduring a bit of nasty weather. In particular, the bureau’s National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) takes measurements of the uninsured over time, i.e. those uninsured at the time of the interview, those uninsured at least part of the year prior to the interview, and those uninsured for more than a year at the time of the interview. Not surprisingly, the 2008 NHIS produced results that paint rather a different picture of the uninsured in America:

· 42.8 reported being uninsured at the time of the NHIS survey, only 30.8 million reported being uninsured for more than a year. (Whoopsie daisy, bit of a drop off there, eh?)

· Men are more likely than women to be uninsured. (Why is that do you suppose? Could it be that men, as a group, tend not to give a tinker’s damn about their health as compared to women?)

· 18 to 24-year olds are most likely of all age groups to be uninsured. (Why is that do you suppose? Could it be that 18 to 24 year olds, as a group, tend not to give a tinker’s damn about health care– and why should they- as compared to everyone older than they?)

· Those without a high school diploma are far more likely to be uninsured. (Just another in a litany of misfortunes destined to befall those who fail to complete high school in the United States.)

· The percentage of uninsured poor children has decreased since 1997 (How can this be? Don’t tell the S-CHIP pushers!)

· The percentage of uninsured poor adults has remained relatively stable since 1997 (How can this be? Don’t tell the Medicaid pushers!)

· Spells of uninsurance average 5.6 months in duration

· Only 1 in 9 of the uninsured go without coverage for more than two years.

· 9.7 million of the uninsured are not citizens of the United States (Véase la página 21.)

· 18 million of the uninsured earn more than $50,000 a year (See page 21.)

· 14 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP but have not enrolled (See page 21.)

How often have these caveats accompanied the utterance of the “46 million uninsured” factoid when e’er you’ve heard it? We’re guessing never. For doing so reduces the issue to what it is: a problem, not a “crisis” symptomatic of the dire need for massive reform of the American health care industry and its financing.

There are individuals genuinely experiencing hardship through no fault of their own owing to medical expenses and insufficient insurance. And the current pathetic state of the economy has forced many who have never before sought nor needed government assistance to become wards of the state (kudos Messrs. Cloward and Piven). For both the chronic and the acute aspects of this problem, however, there exists numerous free market proposals on the table; the most tidy and comprehensible proposed by one Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) known as the Patients’ Choice Act. You’ll likely never hear a wit about any of these unless you do the digging yourself. As they say, the fix is in.

As for those insisting that “only government” can provide relief for the nation’s uninsured, they care no more about people who lack health insurance than the global warming scammers do their polar bears. They are mere pawns, a new category of “victims” the Marxists can use to emotionally blackmail the American people into relinquishing still more of their hard won liberty and prosperity. Why? Because it works.

Cheers,

Charlie

For additional reading on this complete and utter farce:

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12691196

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50288

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49986

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=479724

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49586

http://www.epionline.org/study_detail.cfm?sid=122