Right Wing Nut House

I wholeheartedly agree that this statement by Sarah Palin on her Facebook page is unconscionable, outrageous, and either a deliberate lie, or proof that she really is an airhead:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

You’re absolutely right, governor. That kind of a system would indeed be “downright evil.”

Except, there is nothing in any proposal by any Democrat, Republican, Greenie, Communist, New Nazi, or a Flat Earther on health care that even hints about a “death panel.” You’re just making stuff up.

In fact, it’s hard to know just what the hell you’re referring to. Are you talking about the now dead proposal for a Medicare commission to decide treatment options for diseases (not people)?

Most of the White House session focused on slowing the rapid growth in health care costs, lawmakers said afterward. That discussion centered on a White House proposal to empower an outside body, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, to make binding recommendations for cost cuts in government-run health care programs. Waxman and others previously opposed the idea, but the chairman made a verbal agreement to work with the seven Blue Dogs on his committee to break through an impasse that has stalled consideration of the enormous bill.

Sorry, but you’re a little out of the loop up there in Mooseland. The proposal was rejected within hours of the agreement.

Other than that, I can’t for the life of me, think of what you are talking about. Now it may be that you’ve seen something in one of the proposals making the rounds in Washington - a proposal that actually does have a “death panel” in it - or something that will do the same thing. If so, please share it with us. I would like to know who wants to turn America into ancient Sparta where the elders would examine all newborns and, if the child was found to be weak or otherwise flawed in their eyes, they would toss the screaming infant over a cliff.

I’m just wondering why you chose to spread this nonsensical information about health care reform. The damn bill is plenty bad enough without lying about it. Jesus Christ! Your loyal subjects, who don’t think you can do any wrong, are smart enough to figure that out without you having to demagogue the issue like a Democrat, for God’s sake!

We have entered a phase in the “debate” over health care where the two sides can’t lie enough about the other’s motives, intentions, and ancestry. One would think that resurrecting Winston Churchill was in order, there are so many Nazis to fight. Both sides have been flinging the “N” word (”Nazi”) around like a monkey in a zoo tossing his feces at the gawkers. Pelosi, the DNC, a few tea partiers, and even a stray GOP lawmaker or two have used the word “Nazi” to describe their political opponents lately.

Just curious, but don’t my friends on the left tire of such out of control exaggeration? Calling protestors against a massive expansion of government - the biggest in American history - “racists” and “Nazis” must get awfully tiring as you try and stretch, and stretch, and stretch your justification for doing so beyond the bounds of reason, of logic, and of reality.

Dan Boaz on the “racist” protestors meme picked up by Paul Krugman and others who believe opposition to statism is a sign of racism:

The classical liberal ideas of individualism, individual rights, property rights, “negative liberties,” and limited government date back hundreds, even thousands, of years. They find their roots in the Greek and Hebrew conceptions of the higher law, the Scholastic thinkers, the Levellers’ ideas of self-ownership and natural rights, the political theory of John Locke, the economic analysis of Adam Smith, and the political institutions of the American Founding. To suggest that the case for freedom and limited government — or the application of that theory to contemporary proposals for the expansion of government — must be attributable to racism is uncharitable, ahistorical, thoughtless, and indeed contemptible.

It cannot be the case that every parody of a president who happens to be black is racist. And it is not good for democracy to try to counter every opposing argument with such a blood libel. The good news for advocates of limited government is that our opponents are displaying a striking lack of confidence in the actual arguments for their proposals. If they thought they could win a debate on nationalizing health care, or running trillion-dollar deficits, they wouldn’t need to reach for such smears.

Sorry, people have tuned that sort of nonsense out or don’t believe it any more. There’s such a thing as going to the well once to often with a political ploy and the Democrats with their “racism” and “Nazi” charges against the GOP and the protestors are discovering that now. This issue is too vital to use cheap political tricks like that.

I might say in a similar fashion, that some conservatives - talk radio, anti-health care lobbyists, and others who should know better - are spreading idiotic bull like Palin’s “death panels” all over the place.

As I said before, this monstrosity of a bill is bad enough. Why exaggerate? Why put out false information? It scares the bejeebies out of me and I’m not even listening to you. Surely we can have a debate on this without calling each other Nazis or racists, or trying to scare the old folks with talks of euthanasia, or “death panels.”

In fact, I would say that this is the primary reason that everyone has gone stark, raving mad over health care reform. There is no debate. There is no back and forth. There have been few hearings, less input from opponents, and absolutely no leadership from Obama on this issue.

And what “leadership” we have seen from this pretend president, has been his refusal to consider the fact that there are indeed, alternatives to what he is proposing, that there are other ideas out there that would accomplish as much or more of what he is proposing, and that telling the opposition to shut up is about the absolute, most incompetent, unthinking, radical, idiotic thing I have ever heard a president say in the midst of a political war.

Just a little comparison:

“I think the president welcomes the fact that we are a democracy and people in the United States, unlike Iraq, are free to protest and to make their case known.” (White House statement on anti-war protestors, 2002).

“I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.” (Obama on health care protestors, yesterday).

My views on Bush are known to any who have read this site for a while, but I ask you; who’s the statesman and who’s the political putz?

Demagogues to the left, demagogues to the right, demagogues in the White House, The Hill, and all the way out in Alaska.

The republic appears to gone off the deep end. Pity we have the wrong man in the White House to fix it.

Action and reaction.

Obama comes up with ruinously expensive, statist, enormously complex, and ultimately ridiculous health care reform ideas - a bill that will change people’s lives in the most intimate way imaginable - and some people react to both the bill itself and the misinformation being spread by opponents by fearfully shouting down proponents of the measure and even threatening to get physical.

The Democrats react by bussing in labor thugs for “protection” while the White House encourages Democrats to hit back “twice as hard.”

Gee - and we’re surprised that violence breaks out?

In an age when reasonableness in politics is seen as weakness, or insufficient passion for “the cause,” coming to blows over health care was predictable Someone or many someones are going to get killed over this if it keeps up and the finger of blame will have a hard time finding a permanent place to rest.

I would dearly love to point the finger at President Obama and the Democrats as they have ratcheted up the potential for violence by bringing in supporters who have a 100 year history of goonishness when dealing with opponents. I’m talking about labor unions, of course, and the kinds of “activists” who will be showing up at these town halls. These are men who play for keeps and pull no punches when they feel their interests are on the line.

You might have had some sympathy for these tactics 70 or 80 years ago when employers routinely hired their own goons (and had the police on their side) to beat and kill organizers. But those days are long gone, even though the goons remain.

I have second hand familiarity with labor thugs, having worked in the early 80’s for an open shop construction trade association where our members who refused to use union labor were routinely beaten, harassed, their homes firebombed, and their jobsites vandalized. Of course, there are dozens of contemporary examples of workers who choose to cross a picket line being beaten - and worse. The heroes in the labor movement are all dead and long gone. Today’s unions are little better than extortion rackets, designed to milk both workers and employers for every nickle they can get out of them.

Labor officials then take that money and buy political power with it to maintain their lofty position (and lavish lifestyles) by getting their friends in Congress to protect them from audits, and as will be the case with card check, make it easier to get even more members to buy them more political power.

I don’t know for sure if labor bullies were responsible for beating up a couple of conservatives in St. Louis yesterday but I have my suspicions. I’ve seen it too often not to believe that it not only is possible, but likely as well.

But let’s return to the culprits who are also responsible for the violence last night and will be equally responsible as well for any future violence. The behavior of some conservative activists has been despicable. I am sick to death of hearing that shouting down opponents or physically threatening people who disagree with you is “understandable” because, after all, health care reform is so bad, you can’t blame people for being angry.

You bet your ass I blame people for shouting down and trying to intimidate their political opponents. We were given a brain at birth capable of reason and logic. We are not beasts who are unable to control our emotions. We were born in a country where only by civil debate and reasoned discourse have we been able to maintain our unity in the face of towering obstacles. Citizens coming from a hundred different backgrounds as well as representing every race, every creed, every ethnic group in the world do not naturally mix and form a society. We have to work at it. And that means governing our passions so that all may participate in the democratic process equally.

When we don’t - when we give in to these beastly impulses - we get 600,000 dead and one part of the country in ruins. Ultimately, the Civil War was as much about our failure to believe in the good intentions of our political opponents as it was about the union, or slavery. War is never “inevitable.” Losing faith in each other was what led to the explosion.

To give in to the desire to express anger while preventing others from making their views known demonstrates an adolescent level of emotional maturity. It is rude, selfish, and ultimately self defeating (as I wrote about here several days ago).

Look at Rasmussen’s latest poll that show a significant bump in the president’s numbers from people who “strongly approve” of him, from 28% to 34% in less than a week. A reasonable explanation is that those fence sitters who were becoming lukewarm about Obama have been energized by conservative misbehavior at town halls. That 6 point bump cannot be explained by a glitch in the numbers. It is statistically significant enough that it had to have been driven by what’s been in the news.

Those who can’t control themselves should stay home. It’s that simple. If you are unable to allow your fellow citizens the same rights given to you and refrain from shouting them down, I suggest you attend a professional wrestling match where you can shout down people who disagree with you without doing any harm. By showing up at town halls and claiming that you are so angry that, like a 15 year old boy, you can’t control your emotions, you only make passage of health care reform more likely.

It is the Democrats and liberals who have taken this to the next level, however, by urging their supporters to “hit back twice as hard” and by bringing in professional union agitators. And Democratic congressmen aren’t helping matters either by trying to prevent protestors from attending the town halls. Now conservatives feel they have to top what the Democrats have just done, and the cycle is likely to escalate out of control.

Action and reaction. In the end, no one remembers who started it.

You can find some wonderful symmetry between the Birther conspiracists and those on the left who have become so paranoid about opposition to Obama that they have invented a “Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory” on health care reform demonstrations.

Both are rooted in denial of facts, refusal to believe evidence right in front of their eyes, the exaggerated build up of the opposition, manufactured (or misinterpreted) evidence, and the unshakable belief that they are right.

The big difference is, on the Democratic side, the conspiracy nuts include:

The President
The Speaker of the House
The Majority Leader of the Senate
The entire DNC
Every major liberal blog

That’s quite a lineup, huh? On the Birther side, you have few nutty congressmen and a whole bunch of fringe kooks who would deny the sun rising in the east and setting in the west if someone presented evidence to the contrary.

So what is the bogus conspiracy theory being pushed by Democrats and the left?

Let’s let the President of the United States - or, perhaps we should start referring to him as the “Kook in Chief” - explain it:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

“Organized mobs?” “Paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies?” First of all, referring to fellow countrymen who disagree with you as a “mob” is beneath the dignity of the office - not that Obama has necessarily demonstrated that he cares a whit about that kind of thing in the first place - and bespeaks a paranoid outlook regarding your political opposition.

And I don’t know about you, but I sure would like to know specifically which insurance companies and “special interests” - specific lobbying groups and companies - are organizing and paying for these demonstrations? After all, if you’re going to smear the thousands and thousands of people who are opposed to a public policy initiative like health care reform and show up at these congressional town halls, it should be snap to identify those companies who are paying for these protestors to come out and demonstrate, right?

What are their names, Mr. President? How are they paying people to turn out? Are they paying gas money to the demonstrators so that they can drive the few blocks to where these town halls are taking place? Maybe they’re giving a stipend - sort of like strike pay that unions give to members who walk a picket line? (Now that’s grass roots action for ya!)? Just how is all this organized? How deep does this conspiracy go?

ABC News went to one of these town halls where protestors turned out by the hundreds:

There were no lobbyist-funded buses in the parking lot of Mardela Middle and High School on Tuesday evening, and the hundreds of Eastern Maryland residents who packed the school’s auditorium loudly refuted the notion that their anger over the Democrats’ health care reform plans is “manufactured.”

“I went to school in this school,” a man named Bob told me. “I don’t see anyone in this room that isn’t from Mardela Springs right now.”

“We’ve been quiet too long,” said a woman named Joan.

They came to yell at their congressman, freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil, and they were surprised to hear that the “Congress in Your Corner” event to which they had been invited — by a robocall from Kratovil himself — was not to be a public airing of grievances, but instead an opportunity for private, one-on-one sessions with the freshman Democrat.

As the crowd grew, and began venting frustration over the fact they would only be meeting with the congressman behind closed doors, Kratovil’s aides suggested he switch to a town hall format

Obviously, ABC wasn’t looking hard enough for signs of the conspiracy. Our corporate media is covering for the insurance companies, I’m sure.

Or - these really are demonstrations organized at the grass roots and while I abhor the behavior of some (and admire Kratovil for standing up and taking his licks), the fact remains that the only sign of some kind of conspiracy involving big business was that, according to Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, the demonstrators were too well dressed to be “genuine.”

Ed Morrissey:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) appeared on Hardball last night in support of the Left’s attempt to discredit the people showing up to townhalls in protest of ObamaCare. Boxer says she can tell that they’re fakes, because they’re too well dressed. How does she know that this is a problem? Because well-dressed people apparently told her to get the hell out of Florida in the Bush-Gore recount, too.

If that’s not paranoia, I don’t know what is. Note the forced and bogus connection made between two completely different situations. Birthers do the same thing all the time. And they’re kooks and Boxer is sane?

Then you have liberal blogs and the DNC pushing the theory that a group called Freedom Works is in cahoots with the insurance companies and are directing the demonstrators and orchestrating chaos:

Above-the-fold headlines of the disruptive protests caused the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to accuse Republicans of fueling the anti-Democratic healthcare activists in an attempt to institute “mob rule.”

But Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele denied on Wednesday that the GOP somehow coordinated the protests.

“To sit back and say this is some sort of Republican cabal is some baloney,” Steele said on a conference call with reporters. “And you can substitute [baloney] with something else if you want.”

And Steele argued the protesters have raised questions that the Obama administration deems beneath it to answer.

“This administration has the arrogance to look down their nose” at the protesters, Steele said.

The authenticity of the town hall protests, and whether or not they represent real dissatisfaction with Democrats’ healthcare reform proposals, has become a key element of the early August battle.

The White House questioned the authenticity of the rabble-rousers earlier this week.

“I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the AstroTurf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Gibbs and the DNC have taken aim at groups like FreedomWorks, the activist group founded by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), for allegedly facilitating the protests at the behest of corporate interests.

FreedomWorks spokesman Max Pappas said in an interview with CBS that his group simply provides talking points to town hall attendees to engage in “civil” dialogues with lawmakers.

Those talking points from Freedom Works are one of about a thousand such efforts on the web. American Thinker had a series of 7 posts on “What to ask your Congressman” at these town halls while Hot Air just published their own suggestions.

If all these sites are getting paid to publish suggested talking points by evil insurance companies, maybe I should get in on the act. Who do I contact to spread the lies?

Of course, the revelations by Mary Katherine Ham yesterday about the “smoking gun” memo that Think Progress and TPM Muckraker were touting as “proof” of a conspiracy to disrupt town hall meetings, made most of the left look loonier than Orly Taitz:

When the “manufactured” outrage the Left is trying to demonize lines up so inconveniently with public polling, it’s sometimes necessary to create evidence for the “manufactured” storyline.

Enter Think Progress, which unearthed this shocking, secret memo from the leader of a small grassroots conservative organization in Connecticut, which allegedly instructs members on “infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.”

Right Principles PAC was formed by Bob MacGuffie and four friends in 2008, and has taken in a whopping $5,017 and disbursed $1,777, according to its FEC filing.

“We’re just trying to shake this state up and make a difference up here,” MacGuffie told me during a telephone interview. He’s surprised at his elevation to national rabble-rouser by the Left.

Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.

Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”

The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.

“There is no formal structural connection,” Brandon told me. “Never has been. Never will be. We’re just fellow travelers in the movement.”

My pet cat Aramas has more influence with tea party protestors than these bushers. And yet, they are the source of the tactics used by opponents of health care reform?

Exaggerating evidence of conspiracy is right out of the Birther handbook. And yet they’re the screwballs and liberal bloggers are members of a “reality based community?” Maybe on the planet Mongol, not here.

From the president on down, Democrats and liberals have become unhinged about opposition to Obama’s agenda. Somehow, it just seems more evil if big business, right wing fanatics, shady Republican operatives, and robot-like conservatives are all involved in this conspiracy to defeat the health care reform monstrosity that no one in Congress has read yet because it hasn’t been written. And citizens are supposed to require lobbyists and political pros to get ginned up about that?

When 71% of the American people believe that Obama is adding to the deficit unnecessarily, do liberals believe that a few thousands of those souls won’t take it upon themselves - with a little encouragement from tea party groups who have been organizing for more than 6 months - to show up and register their unhappiness?

Completely rational, and reasonable explanations for this outpouring of anger and activism are rejected by the left in favor of the elitist idea that ordinary citizens cannot think for themselves and must be told by lobbyists and corporate flaks to go out and demonstrate. And to carry this elitist lunacy even farther, it is intimated that these same ordinary citizens are actually paid for their efforts.

Birthers and lefty conspiracists - peas of a pod, birds of a feather, and partners in kooky lunacy.

This is one of the most dishonest, despicable things I’ve ever seen in politics. TPM and Think Progress published a purported “smoking gun” memo from an anti-health reform group that they were pushing as a blueprint for action that protestors at town hall meetings were following to disrupt the proceedings.

There’s only one problem: The group that is responsible for writing the memo are a bunch of bush leaguers with no more influence than my pet cat Aramas on demonstrators protesting anything:

When the “manufactured” outrage the Left is trying to demonize lines up so inconveniently with public polling, it’s sometimes necessary to create evidence for the “manufactured” storyline.

Enter Think Progress, which unearthed this shocking, secret memo from the leader of a small grassroots conservative organization in Connecticut, which allegedly instructs members on “infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.”

Right Principles PAC was formed by Bob MacGuffie and four friends in 2008, and has taken in a whopping $5,017 and disbursed $1,777, according to its FEC filing.

“We’re just trying to shake this state up and make a difference up here,” MacGuffie told me during a telephone interview. He’s surprised at his elevation to national rabble-rouser by the Left.

Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.

Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”

The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.

“There is no formal structural connection,” Brandon told me. “Never has been. Never will be. We’re just fellow travelers in the movement.”

There is no “memo” that tells protestors what to do. If anyone else besides this guys mother, grandmother, and maiden aunt saw this “blueprint” I would be enormously surprised. It was a wholly manufactured piece of “evidence” - along with the ridiculously tenuous connections - by TPM.

Josh Marshall bragged to high heaven about the George Polk Award for journalism he received. I am going to write the award committee and ask them to rescind it. This isn’t even yellow journalism. It is propaganda, as Marshall and the rest of the left (who are, in fact, the ones who receive instructions on a daily basis about how to frame issues through their exclusive email list) can’t be bothered with the facts, can’t be bothered with the truth, and are only concerned about demonstrating their rank partisanship and shocking demagoguery.

Of course, it is impossible for the truth to catch up to the lies at this point. We will see the left pointing to this ridiculous memo for the duration of the health care reform debate as “evidence” that the outrage is “manufactured” and not genuine. Nor will the media take the time or make the effort to differentiate between the vast majority of demonstrators who are locally organized and the few agitators who have come in from out of town. Ignorance of the nature of the protests and who is taking part extends to the White House, as this email I got proves:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

“Largely paid for?” Who is paying what to whom and why? If this is true, how come we never hear any names of these evil companies or individuals? So far, all we’ve got is a memo from a guy running a PAC out of his basement. Specifically, which companies are paying the protestors? Which lobbying groups are giving people money to disrupt the town halls? If you don’t have any names, it’s a base political smear, nothing more.

Are big insurance companies paying people gas money to drive the few blocks to where the town hall meeting is being held? Isn’t the White House aware that the tea party groups have been organizing since February and have email lists of hundreds of volunteers in the area? Why do they need help from lobbyists to send out a couple of hundred emails?

The facts are a little less dramatic. And while Marshall and his cohort of lock-step liberals in the media drum on about “astroturfing” and “mobs,” the protests go on. Not always with the decorum and reasonableness that such a weighty subject demands. But as I said yesterday, that kind of disruptive action hurts much more than any fakery the liberals can come up with to delegitimize the protests.

Is it ever the right thing to do to shout down the political opposition at an open meeting?

I realize people are angry. I know that conservatives feel a sense of powerlessness as Republicans in congress fumble and stumble around and the Democrats seem to have it all going their way. I accept the fact that this health care bill is a fearful monstrosity and that extraordinary measures should be taken to defeat it.

But is screaming in impotent rage at your congressmen the way to go about doing it?

The left has been doing it for 40 years. Poor Hubert Humphrey was hardly ever able to make himself heard during his 1968 election appearances because anti-war protestors dogged his steps, shouting him down at every opportunity. Back in those days, they didn’t remove troublemakers as they do today - at least I don’t recall that they did. Sometimes there were several hundred people chanting and screaming so removing them all would have been a problem.

Nixon was also often shouted down during that contest. It was a typical display of bad manners by the left that only served to help elect Richard Nixon and set back their cause of ending the war immeasurably.

Here are some examples of what’s been going on:

Angry protestors in Philadelphia shouted down both Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter.

On Saturday in Texas, demonstrators against what they called government-run health care surrounded Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett and followed him out to his car, shouting “just say no.”

The crowds are partly the result of conservative Web sites asking for turn out at town hall meetings - including three tonight in Virginia, Mississippi and South Carolina. Hundreds of events by both Democrats and Republicans are being targeted in every state.

But the turnouts also reflect the real fear over the increased taxes and government controls that are part of the health bills being considered in Congress.

“They know that that means somebody’s taxes are eventually be used to pay for this - and they are worried that that’s their taxes,” said Max Pappas of the conservative Web site Freedom Works.

As an aside, it is obvious that CBS reporters read liberal websites:

Is this just some less-than-polite heckling or political maneuvering? CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

Funny…Brian Beutler doesn’t wonder - he knows:

On Friday, July 24, a representative of Conservatives for Patients Rights–the anti-health care reform group run by Swift Boat message man Rick Scott–sent an email to a list serve (called the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Reform Committee) containing a spreadsheet that lists over one hundred congressional town halls from late July into September.

The email from CPR to tea baggers suggests that, though conservatives portray the tea bagger disruptions as symptoms of a populist rebellion roiling unprompted through key districts around the country, they have to a great extent been orchestrated by anti-health care reform groups financed by industry. (CPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

That email predates by about a week a recent flurry of events at which Democratic members of Congress have been accosted and harassed by anti-health care reform tea party protesters. But beyond putting those spectacles, now receiving wide play on cable news, into a fresh light, it also provides a window into the tea party protesters’ organizing infrastructure, which, like so much political organizing today, occurs in private email list serves.

Omigod - don’t tell me. The horror of it! Citizens actually organizing to protest! Oh, the humanity. (If Beutler or anyone else has a link to a tea party website that makes the claim these demonstrations are “spontaneous” I would appreciate it. In fact, if there is a link to any site on the web that makes this claim, I would like to see it. This is a strawman argument, nothing more.)

Of course, tea partiers have made absolutely no secret that they are organizing to protest at these town halls. The fact that an organization sent out a list of scheduled town hall meetings in key districts does not mean anything except liberals are worried that the right - usually moribund when it comes to protesting anything - is aping their long cherished tactics. I guess when Moveon sent out a million emails to people telling them to protest the war, that was…what? “Real” grass roots action? Puhleez.

Regardless, it’s how opponents of health care reform act at these meetings that concern me. Boorish behavior like this is inappropriate and serves no purpose other than to make the screamers feel good. That’s pretty selfish if you ask me.

Every single poll shows that the more people know about this bill, the more they detest it. Logic and reason would go a helluva lot farther in showing people how bad this bill is than giving into emotionalism for the sake of a little theatrics and releasing pent up anger. You are not doing the cause one iota of good by demonstrating poor manners and stifling free speech.

Those citizens who are on the fence on this issue (the ones who will probably decide the fate of health care reform in the end), and who are trying to learn more about it, only see a bunch of angry, irrational people, incoherently ranting when they want to hear both sides of the argument. The question is, do we give them a chance to find out how bad this bill is or do we drive them into the arms of those supporting the measure by coming across as a bunch of bozos?

What the left never understood - and still doesn’t get, judging by the way they tried to shout down Bush every opportunity they got - is that presenting your case in a reasonable manner always goes a lot farther with those who are undecided than simply trying to stifle your political opponent’s right of free speech. That tactic breeds resentment from those who are more thoughtful about politics or who are trying to learn about an issue. You lose far, far more than you gain when acting boorishly.

Again, I know people are angry. But giving in to the emotionalism of the moment hurts the cause. I realize the left has used these tactics for generations - and that may be the silliest reason of all for conservatives to mimic them. Do you really want to imitate the absolute worst tactic of your opponent? Where’s the logic in that?

This is not a zero sum game. There is much more to be gained by demonstrating reasonably and respectfully than going off half cocked and disrupting what is, after all, part of the democratic process. There is a real chance that the entire idea of health care reform can be defeated for this congressional term.

But it won’t happen if conservatives continue to make it impossible for the majority of voters to see their side of the argument because they are preventing everyone from hearing both sides.

Megan McCardle has a disturbing interview with Paul Campos, the author of The Obesity Myth (republished as The Diet Myth) that smashes the idea that obese people are necessarily more of a drain on health care resources than thinner people.

McCardle:

With health care in the news, everyone’s looking for magic bullets to save money. Obesity seems to be a growing favorite: wouldn’t it be great if we could make everyone look like Jennifer Anniston, and be cheaper to treat? There are a lot of holes in this theory–the morbidly obese are very sick, but die young, while lower levels of overweight/obesity aren’t so well correlated with poor health. But still, the idea’s power seems to be growing every day.

This week, Health Affairs published a new study showing that–quel surprise!–obesity accounts for an ever growing share of our health care costs. They put the number at about 10%. So I decided to ask Paul Campos, the author of The Obesity Myth, what he thought. The book, which everyone should read, argues that the health benefits of losing weight are largely imaginary; that we are using “health” to advance our class bias in favor of thin people, particularly thin women.

Following are some selected cuts from the interview that should open you eyes about the efficacy of studies touted by government health professionals as well as the difference between being thin and being healthy.

On trying to control health care costs by reducing the number of obese Americans:

It’s a terrible idea on all sorts of levels. There are three big problems with attempting to control health care costs by reducing so-called “obesity.” First, it’s a fake problem. Second, the solutions for the problem are non-existent, even assuming the problem existed. Third, focusing on making Americans thinner diverts resources from real public health issues.

Is being fat really being unhealthy?

The correlations between higher weight and greater health risk are weak except at statistical extremes. The extent to which those correlations are causal is poorly established. There is literally not a shred of evidence that turning fat people into thin people improves their health. And the reason there’s no evidence is that there’s no way to do it.

So saying “let’s improve health by turning fat people into thin people” is every bit as irrational as saying “let’s improve health by turning men into women or old people into young people”. Actually it’s a lot crazier, because there actually are significant health differences between men and women and the old and the young — much more so than between the fat and the thin.

Campos calls this obsession in the public health community over obesity “a moral panic” and debunks the statistics:

OK, the CDC honchos and the authors of this study you referenced are in hysterics because the obesity rate, so-called, has roughly doubled in the last 30 years. But let’s consider what that actually means.

Adding to the absurdity of all this, people with BMIs in the mid to high 20s actually have the best overall health and longest life expectancy — ,more so than those in the so-called “normal” BMI range.

Debunking diets:

If you put people on starvation diets, which is what these methods do, of course you’ll get huge amounts of weight loss. Then most or all of it will be gained back, which among other things is a recipe for congestive heart failure. I’d love to do a “reality” show on the contestants on shows like The Biggest Loser three years down the road. But that would probably be a little too much reality.

Gastric bypass is the most radical method available for weight loss, and it basically doesn’t work. Everything else is even less successful, though usually not quite as dangerous.

Finally, increasing government coercion to get obese people to lose weight.

It’s the classic pattern of moral panics. As public concern about the damage being done to the fabric of society by the folk devils increases, increasingly intense demands are made on public officials to “do something” about the crisis, usually by eliminating the folk devils.

I mean, there’s no better established empirical proposition in medical science that we don’t know how to make people thinner. But apparently this proposition is too disturbing to consider, even though it’s about as well established as that cigarettes cause lung cancer. So all these proposals about improving public health by making people thinner are completely crazy. They are as non-sensical as anything being proposed by public officials in our culture right now, which is saying something.

There is perhaps no part of government that bases its policies on flawed research, unproven assumptions, and is driven by politics more than the public health sector. From the Alar scare that cost apple growers $100 million to the myth that salt causes high blood pressure, our public health bureaucrats have not been as helpful as they should be in contributing to the health of Americans.

Beyond the question of how effective they are, there is the growing realization that altering personal behavior to conform to what some health professionals believe to be necessary for good health results in a loss of freedom for the individual to manage their own lives without interference from the government.

The excuse to intervene in such personal decisions as what we should eat or drink will be even more prevalent once national health care is a reality. The logic that eating certain foods or partaking in some behaviors results in an individual using more than one’s fair share of scarce health resources will be more than enough to tax, to ban, to regulate, to dictate the kinds of foods that should be available to us. It may even result in penalties if we fail to abide by these strictures, such as not treating people whose behaviors or diets are self destructive.

When I was 280 lbs (42 lbs ago), I felt tired all the time, caught colds often, and found it very hard to get around. I’m still about 50lbs overweight but am losing the weight without dieting. It’s a slow process - no more than 2-3 lbs a month, sometimes none at all. But I’m eating better while still enjoying all the foods I ate when I was 280. I figure that there are so few true pleasures here on earth - one of them being good food - that to shortchange yourself, even at the expense of your weight and ultimate life expectancy, isn’t worth it. Better to live well than make yourself miserable by dieting all the time. If that results in a few fewer years on this planet, so be it.

This may not be your attitude and that’s fine. That’s your choice. But the point is, it should be our choice, not the governments. This is the same mindset that forced auto manufacturers to make it impossible to start a car without buckling up. Is buckling up a smart thing to do? Sure. But the idea that the government is forcing you into a behavior - no matter how much money it saves (no evidence it does due to different injuries suffered while wearing a belt), - that isn’t and shouldn’t be the point.

Where does it stop? At what point do government diktats on health or controlling behavior become so onerous that the very idea of individual responsibility and personal freedom is destroyed? I am not that much of a libertarian to believe that ingesting anything we please - including drugs that are currently banned or illegal - should be the standard under which we measure our personal freedom.

But government comes perilously close to unnecessary intervention in our personal lives when it determines for itself what is “healthy” and what is not, and then tries to impose that idea on us by reducing our freedom to decide for ourselves.

My latest piece is up at AIP and its about how health care reform reminds me a lot of my ex-wife:

I think it would be extremely helpful if Americans began to think of President Obama’s health care reform proposals the same way I think of my first wife. The more you know about it, the less you like it.

And the fact that it lacks common sense, spends too much of your money, makes decisions that would be better left in your hands, and is attractive on the outside while being insidiously rotten on the inside is also reminiscent of my former beloved, although at least my ex-amour was a great dancer and a decent cook. Otherwise, I would recommend a Vegas divorce for this monstrosity of a bill.

One of the major selling points that the president used for his national health care reform was that it would lower insurance premiums substantially. He promised on his campaign web site, in the second presidential debate, and in the third debate:

“If you have health insurance, then you don’t have to do anything. If you’ve got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. … And we estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.”

We Americans can be a pretty cynical lot when it comes to believing politicians so it is a wonder that we actually fell for this little prevarication from Candidate Obama.

We know now that the prospects of keeping your insurance depends on how willing you are to overspend for it. That’s because Candidate Obama’s promise to lower your premiums by $2500 are about as believable as my ex-wife’s explanation for why she spent $1500 on a dress. “But it was on sale…” just doesn’t cut it.

Supporters will probably tell me I’m all wet, that we will save money on our premiums, that we won’t be forced on to the government plan, that costs will come down simply by government waving a magic wand,…

Sorry, but you can spin what’s in the bill all you want and it won’t change the practical effect of what is implied in adopting many of the measures in the bill. This is what supporters refuse to address.

Is there anything in the bill that would require you to drop your insurance that you have now? No - but the practical effect would be to make it prohibitively expensive and force you to choose less coverage for more money - unless you are eligible for the subsidy that doesn’t cover you if you’re part of an employer based insurance plan.

Faulty numbers, insidious requirements, stealth mandates - its all there.

Do I have a viable alternative? No, I don’t. But others do and, as I have said before, it is criminally negligent of the Democrats to present this monstrosity of a bill as the only alternative - that there’s no other game in town. Baucus is looking at some of those alternatives as I write this, although without including a public option in his compromise, it is doubtful that Obama will sign it much less the liberals in the House support it.

I have to believe there is a third way - somewhere. There has got to be a combination out there of public and private that will cover the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions, bring down costs intelligently, while keeping the best of the private health care system in place, and not cost us $1.5 trillion I refuse to believe that this is not possible - even in our current partisan atmosphere.

I agree we cannot go on as we are now. Those who say we don’t need reform are crazy. Rising health care costs will bankrupt us in 20 years. But to support this bill is to support catastrophe for our health care system as well as for our fiscal situation. Don’t believe me? Ask other Democrats who are the ones standing in the way of passing this bill, not Republicans.

Don’t tell me this is as good as we can do “realistically.” I don’t believe that for a moment. They are big boys and girls in the White House and Capitol Hill. If things are as bad as they say - and they are, except it’s not quite the “emergency” we are being led to believe - then the judgment of the people who believe that this is a crucial issue will be severe if nothing is done.

And, I daresay, the blame will go to both parties. The GOP cannot be accused of “obstructionism” - not with the gigantic Democratic majorities in both chambers. But they will be blamed for not offering solid alternatives. Republicans should be out there every day touting their own plan. Instead, they have decided to treat it as a PR gimmick rather than a serious legislative initiative.

And I will repeat - Obama is not taking the lead on this as he should. He is not being realistic in his criticisms, nor is he doing much besides jawboning from the sidelines. His one effort at compromise - the health commission - was shot down by the CBO as being meaningless in controlling costs. Face it- the guy is an empty suit; all talk and no action.

In that respect, if health care reform is dropped or goes down to defeat, President Obama will be as much to blame as anyone.

Nothing says crazy quite like the idea that someone is better off receiving services from a person who shares the same skin pigmentation.

Obviously, a black accountant is better off having black clients while a white lawyer is better suited to handle cases brought by other whites, this idiotic thinking goes. It is racial preferences run amuck and has taken what is actually a sound idea and extended it to radically ridiculous lengths to serve the interests of racialists, hate mongers, and pea brained politicians who see political advantage in trying to curry favor with “victims of white oppression” or in playing up racial differences.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that the Obama administration would want to see that “underrepresented” minorities in the health care field would become part of what Linda Chavez calls a “racial spoils system” that will give educational preference to minorities in health care fields because everyone knows that people will be healthier and get better treatment if their doctors share their racial and ethnic background.

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine released a study entitled “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” that sparked a flurry of accusations that minority patients, especially African-Americans, receive bad health care because their doctors were biased.

The study said that “some evidence suggests that bias, prejudice and stereotyping on the part of health-care providers may contribute to differences in care.” But as Dr. Sally Satel, a highly respected physician and author, observed at the time, the “evidence” in the study was thin. ” ‘Some,’ ’suggests’ and ‘may,’ ” she wrote, “are all the kinds of words authors use when the data are flimsy and reputations are at stake.”

There is no question that African-Americans, on average, die younger and have poorer health than whites. What is less clear is why that is the case. Socio-economic class and behavior both play an important role. Homicide is the leading cause of death for young black males between the ages of 15-24, for example. Obesity, drug and alcohol use, and other behavioral factors play an important role in determining overall health. But will insisting on preferences for African-American students applying to medical-school admission improve health care for blacks? Not likely.

There is not one scintilla of evidence that black doctors treating black patients will make black people healthier. But when have facts ever stopped the racialists from seeking preferences based not on ability or aptitude, but rather the color of one’s skin? You either have what it takes to be a doctor or you don’t. The same is true for nurses, and anyone’s hands I am forced to entrust with my mortal coil.

I don’t care if my doctor is black, brown, green, or six shades of chartreuse. I don’t care whether the physician is from Delhi, India, Peshawar, Pakistan, Colombo, Sri Lanka, or Dixon, Illinois. When I’m in an emergency room after being involved in a car wreck, I just want to be assured that the attending physician knows my shin bone from my elbow bone, is fully qualified as a result of a medical meritocracy, and isn’t the recipient of preferential medical school policies that promote based on the accident of birth that gave one person more melanin than someone else.

I support affirmative action as it was originally intended. But the idea that all things being equal in educational or employment opportunities, preference should be given if at all possible to those who have been the historic targets of discrimination has fallen by the wayside in favor of out and out quotas by schools and large corporations who fear being sued for discrimination more than they value fairness and merit based policies. And this cockamamie idea that preferential consideration should be given applicants not due to ability but due to skin tone or whether one’s loins are cloven, not cleft, is a rank injustice against all Americans.

A society that recognizes historic differences in equal opportunity but seeks to overcome disadvantages for some by disadvantaging others is not the kind of society envisioned by the Founders nor those who fought so hard to make the Constitution’s words about equality be a source of inspiration and not hypocrisy. Martin Luther King and most of the mainstream civil rights activists at the time believed in an Affirmative Action that recognized merit first, race second. Today’s race baiters and hate mongers have that notion switched around entirely and instead, use Affirmative Action as a club to make a mockery of merit altogether.

The notion that a white doctor can treat me better than a black doctor, and vice versa, is so nonsensical as to be beyond belief. I either have the flu or I don’t. The same goes for just about everything else connected with medical care. Medicine is a science that makes judgments as a result of empirical facts based on testing and experience. The idea that a white doctor would miss a virus, or a bug, or some other condition, or prescribe the wrong medicine, or cause any harm by omission or commission because he/she is not the same color as the patient is idiotic on its face.

Should medical schools actively seek out qualified minority candidates? Abslutely yes. But not everyone has what it takes to be a doctor, and admitting unqualified candidates based on race while other, qualified candidates are refused will not improve the health care system, will not improve the life expectancy of blacks, but will result in fewer doctors.

And in the immortal words of Dirty Harry, “That’s a helluva price to pay for being stylish.”

Obama’s press conference was not aimed at the recalcitrant members of his own party who are balking at passing health care reform. For some reason, he can’t quite bring himself to do much in the way of traditional arm twisting and private lecturing that has been the hallmark of successful presidents in the past.

Instead, his message was aimed at the American people who are beginning to doubt the president can deliver what he promised and are becoming leery of the plan as it is emerging from Congress.

Jane Sassen of Business Week:

While insisting that his own proposal to cut the amount of tax deductions wealthy taxpayers could write off for their charitable contributions would be better, the President said such a measure would “meet my principle” that the costs should not be borne “by families already having a tough time.”

Of course, providing answers to tough funding questions wasn’t the aim of the press conference, as least from the White House point of view. The goal was to make a convincing case to keep public support for the plans from eroding. And at that, he may well have succeeded. The prime time hour may not have done much to move the needle in Congress, where the nitty-gritty proposals are being hashed out. But the President probably helped tamp down some of the increasing doubts that the American public has expressed recently about health care reforms as details have emerged. And that, after all, was his real job for the night.

Meanwhile, the senate’s #2 Democrat Dick Durbin says that the reform bill will not be taken up before the August recess as Taylor Rushing of The Hill reports:

“We’re going to take a little longer to get it right,” Durbin told The Hill when asked about the oft-stated goal of a vote on or before Aug. 7, when a monthlong Senate recess begins. “Initially we had hoped for a full vote by then, but I don’t think it’s going to be possible.”

Delaying the vote until after Labor Day would all but erase hopes of getting a bill to President Obama by mid-October, since the House and Senate versions would have to be reconciled in conference negotiations - assuming they pass their chambers.Durbin said the bill was still largely on track, however, denying that momentum has stalled.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “This is a complex challenge, and we’re taking a reasonable approach with it. It would be better if some Republicans joined us instead of just criticizing.”

Just wait until Democratic congressmen and senators start talking to their constituents about this bill while they are home during the recess. They will no doubt get an earful. Also, several independent groups are planning massive ad campaigns during the recess targeting Blue Dog Democrats as well as those in districts that were carried by George Bush or John McCain.

The question has been raised by the bill’s supporters that even bad reform is better than no reform at all. Such would be the case if there weren’t other options, other ideas out there - none of which got any hearing whatsoever by the progressives in both the House and the Senate who were handed the ball by the president and have created this monstrosity on their own.

It is simple minded to dismiss these options as “more of the same” tax cuts and the like from the GOP. The  GOP alternative that some liberals were surprised in that it was fairly comprehensive, would not have raised taxes on anybody, rich or poor, and in the end, probably have induced more people who are currently uninsured to get coverage. There were many problems with the bill - the tax credit for families to buy insurance was ridiculously low, for example - but it addressed almost all of the same problems the Democrat’s bill does including coverage for pre-existing conditions, Medicare reform, portable insurance, and a host of other elements the Democrats want us to pay a trillion dollars for.

The Wall Street Journal had the bare bones outline:

The nexus of their plan is redirecting the $300 billion annual tax subsidy for employment-based health insurance to individuals in the form of refundable, advanceable tax credits. Families would get $5,700 a year and individuals $2,300 to buy insurance and invest in Health Savings Accounts.

Low-income Americans would get a supplemental debit card of up to $5,000 to help them purchase insurance and pay out-of-pocket costs. They would have an incentive to spend wisely since up to one-fourth of any unspent money in the accounts could be rolled over to the next year. The combination of the refundable tax credit and debit card gives lower-income Americans a way out of the Medicaid ghetto so they can have the dignity of private insurance.

The great majority of Americans with job-based health insurance would see little more than a bookkeeping change with the Patients’ Choice plan. But implicit in the policy is the acknowledgment that our system of tying health insurance to the workplace is not working for upwards of 45 million uninsured Americans.

As I said, the bill is far from perfect and some of it makes assumptions as unreasonable as are in the Democratic bill. And the GOP bill isn’t the only alternative game in town. There are dozens of proposals - equally untried as anything in the Democratic bill I might add - floating around that have never been examined, studied, or debated by Congress because Obama wants his reform RIGHT NOW - despite the fact that a careful vetting of ideas in the Democratic bill or any alternative has not been done.

Why can’t my liberal friends see that this is no way to reform 1/6 of the economy? This massive, untested, unproven, Gorgon of a bill is being rushed through with nobody reading it, no one measuring the consequences, and no one weighing the effect on ordinary people’s lives. And it being rushed through not because if we delay 6 months or a year, anything bad will happen. It is being rushed for the sole and exclusive purpose of giving the president of the United States a legislative victory. Politics trumps sanity in this case. And if you want the bill now, you are part of a Kabuki play that almost certainly is going to cost more, cause more problems, and perhaps even make things worse than if we slowed down and looked at the health care problem rationally.

But there are many good ideas that haven’t even been examined because the liberals have a monumental distaste for the free market. Government cannot order costs to be lowered any more than King Canute could order the tide to recede. Market based incentives, both logically and intuitively, would work better, more efficiently, and more cheaply than the simple lowering of Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals the liberals have in mind, not to mention the “intelligent” rationing of services we are told that will result from passage of this bill.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi was bragging to reporters that she has the votes right now to pass a health reform bill in the House. That’s a lie, as two Democratic congressmen confirmed tp Deidre Walsh of CNN :

Nancy Pelosi’s statement Wednesday that Democrats have the votes to pass health care in the House. “I think the Speaker was well intended because she was hearing optimistic things, but I don’t believe there are the votes on the floor as of right now,” he said Wednesday.

Hill said he and other Blue Dogs were meeting again Wednesday night with Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman. Hill said they’re “making progress,” but still have significant issues to resolve. Nancy Ann DeParle from the White House was involved in an earlier meeting with Blue Dogs, he said.

Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, who is trying to change the bill to make it clear it would not use taxpayer money for abortions, also disagreed with the Speaker.

“It would be easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than to pass this bill,” said Stupak.

Stupak said Democratic leaders can’t lose 40 votes if they want to pass the bill and predicted “she [Pelosi] would lose more than 40 on the right to life issue alone. There’s just no way.”

Stupak said he doesn’t want to block the bill, but wants leaders to agree to add language on the abortion issue before it comes to the House floor.

Pelosi has a revolt on both her right and left, with the progressive caucus getting angrier with each concession made to the moderates.

In the end, the bill might die a death by a thousand cuts as the final effort may contain so many objectionable elements to so many Democrats that it won’t have a prayer of passing.

The lack of leadership on this bill by the president has been astounding. While he has occasionally met with members at the White House, his efforts have fallen far short of whipping his reluctant party into line. He makes speeches. He holds town halls, He goes before his friends in the press.

But the nitty gritty political work he is leaving to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and at least 5 committee chairmen. While no one has ever doubted the president’s skills as a campaigner, it is apparent he doesn’t know how to lead. He can’t distinguish a difference between campaigning and governing.

And there is a real possibility, no longer remote, that he will fail to bring any health care bill to a vote this year.

My latest column at American Issues Project is up where I write about health care rationing.

A sample:

If one were to calculate the value of all the minerals and chemicals found in the human body, we’d be worth about $4.50 (add $3.50 for the 18 square feet of skin that holds it all together).

A paltry sum, to be sure. But there’s another way to calculate the worth of a human being. If one were to total up the value of all of our organs and other salable elements - what they’d fetch on the open market - our bodies would be worth considerably more. Our bone marrow alone would fetch $23 million. Our DNA would be worth a cool $9.7 million.

Our organs are pretty valuable too. Need a little extra cash? Selling your lung would net you a fast $116,000. Losing your heart would gain you $57,000.

Add it all up and you’d be quite a catch as a prospective mate. There’s $45 million in you just waiting to be mined, bottled, and sold, which is a nice number but probably won’t give you much comfort if you actually try to cash in while you’re still alive.

Then there’s another way to determine how much a human being is worth, coming soon to a hospital near you — the government way. Not surprisingly, the way the government will figure how much someone is worth is not by figuring the value of your limbs, or organs, or what Uncle Sam could get if they mined the potassium out of your carcass. They won’t calculate how much you have contributed to society in the past or how much you might contribute in the future.

And you can bet they won’t try to calculate how much you’re worth to you spouse, your kids, your family, your friends, or your community.

The government will determine how much a human being is worth by calculating how much of a drain on health care resources they will be.

Oh, but don’t worry. It will all be couched in nice, soothing language like “quality adjusted life years” or “comparative effectiveness research.” Anything but what it is; the government deciding which of us gets life saving or life extending treatment and which of us fails the tests.

Read this Eric Erickson article at Red State. These people are dead serious. I’m not sure about the cite from the bill being an accurate representation of what it is meant to be, but it matters little when creepy crawlers like Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and “Utilitarian” philosopher Peter Singer are all inferring that their idea of rationing is determining if someone’s life is “worth it” when deciding whether to give life saving treatment.

There are monetary considerations (rationing) already used by insurance companies to determine some care options. But I’d rather have some green eyeshade guy working in the private sector worried about me or my family suing the crap out of his company making that choice rather than a “bureaucrat with a slide rule.”

As always, please read the whole thing.