Harry Reids Lump Of Coal - Road to the Middle Class

SOME PEOPLE think that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is insulting Christians with his plan to make the United States Senate work right up to Christmas Eve on his health reform bill.

Maybe so. But it seems more likely that he just wants to make sure that every American gets a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking.

Because that’s what his Bill of Abominations amounts to.

At the Weekly Standard Jeffrey H. Anderson reckons that the Reid bill costs about $2.5 trillion over the first ten years. It will award a $1 trillion subsidy to the insurance industry over that period. We are talking here about the real first ten years of the bill, from 2014-2023, not the budget-gimmick 2010-2019 period preferred by Sen. Reid and the Democrats.

The joke is, of course, that after all the months of legislative sausage-making, the netroots have suddenly decided that they have been sold out. They were just fine with forcing the American people to stand in line at ObamaCare’s DMV, or whatever humiliations the public option would require. They were fine with that. But their finely tuned principles could not endure the humiliation of an individual mandate that forced them to buy health insurance from a health insurance company.

At least the netroots admit who they are. Rush Limbaugh famously says that liberals can’t admit who they are, at least not when running for office. It’s after liberals get elected that they start behaving like liberals, and Americans don’t like that. That’s why there’s a measurable Upchuck Factor that is fast becoming a “settled science” among political philosophers. Whenever Americans get a look at what liberalism means for them in practice, they hurl.

What’s surprising is how Americans ever find out the truth about liberals. It’s not as if the mainstream media is busy telling them about the fatal flaws of ObamaCare. And yet somehow, as ObamaCare has moved through Congress, Americans have turned against it. A week ago Rasmussen had American voters opposing the health bill by 56-40, with 63 percent of seniors opposed.

The most visible opposition of ObamaCare is the Tea Party movement. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that Americans like the Tea Party movement more than either the Democrats or the Republicans.

The Republican Party maintains its net-negative favorable/unfavorable rating in the poll, with 28 percent viewing it positively and 43 percent seeing it in a negative light.

For the first time in more than two years, the Democratic Party also now holds a net-negative fav/unfav, at 35-45 percent.

By comparison, the NBC/WSJ poll shows the Tea Party movement with a net-positive 41-23 percent score.

How did that happen? Fox News, that’s how. Fox News consumers have a 75-4 fav/unfav on the Tea Party movement. Broadcast news consumers are even at 28-27. No wonder the Obama White House wants to delegitimize Fox as a news network.

The White House is, of course, merely trying to shoot the messenger as the bad news pours in. We can be sure that the Democrats never imagined last January that they’d be limping across the finish line on ObamaCare with s straight partisan split and a mangled bill. No doubt they assumed that in the end game they would be shaming Republicans—set up as the party of No—into voting for a bill that was soaring the the polls with solid support from a grateful American people.

They guessed wrong, and US politics will never be the same. If Democrats would only look in their own secular holiday stockings they would find that they too have each got a lump of coal engraved with the words “See you in November.” So it’s lumps of coal all round.

When Santa leaves you a lump of coal, he is trying to send you a message. And in a little over 10 months the American people will be making a list and checking it twice, and deciding which politician is naughty or nice. Here’s what will be on my list.

Obama/Pelosi/Reid Health Bill of Abominations
Cap and Tax Bill of Abominations
$787 billion Porkulus Abomination
EPA CO2 Regulations and green energy subsidies
End of the Bush tax cuts
Gitmo North and civil trials for terrorists
Bullying Israel
Appeasing thug dictators
Federal employees making 42 percent more than private sector
State and local employees making 37 percent more than private sector
Jobs, jobs, jobs

When you look at that list it gives you a warm feeling. There really can’t be a US voter that won’t get riled up over at least three of four items on the list. It shouldn’t be any problem getting Republicans and independents out to the polls next November.

But don’t forget to keep that lump of coal handy.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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