Gruber is as Obama does.

Courtesy of the Gateway Pundit, here's ObamaCare co-architect Jonathan Gruber taking a stab at putting on a 'humble and contrite' face, after being called to testify to the House today, in regards to
the multiple videos (6? or is it 7 now?) gloating about conning the American 'Stupid People' into buying ObamaCare (and being paid millions of dollars to do it). Here you can hear him as he tries mightly to hide the words he can't avoid saying:

"Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI): The Obama administration promised the American people 37 times that if you like your plan you can keep your plan. When you were working on the law did you believe Mr. Gruber, did you believe, that no one would lose a plan that they liked due to Obamacare.

Gruber: I believed that the law would not affect the vast majority of Americans.

Walberg: The vast majority? But did you believe that no one, as the president said, would lose a plan they liked?

Gruber: As I said I believed it would not affect a vast majority of Americans. But, it is true that some people might have to upgrade their plans because their plans were not comprehensive as defined by the law.

Walberg: So they couldn't keep their plan, even if they liked it.

Gruber: What the law says is that there are minimum standards to be met.

Walberg: Why did the President make this representation if his experts, including you, knew it was not true, that some, as you said, would not be able to keep their plan, they'd have to upgrade, or they'd have to change it?

Gruber: I'm not a - political adviser, I have no answer to that question. "

But Gruber needn't have put himself through all the discomfort of trying to seem like a decent person, there was no need to call the American (Leftist) people 'Stupid', had he simply reflected upon two old American sayings first. They are:

"You can't cheat an honest man." and "There's a sucker born every minute."

Because an honest man isn't looking to get something for nothing, the American Right were never among those Gruber and Obama aimed their ObamaCare con at, so he wasn't addressing them at all, stupid or otherwise.

But he also didn't need to call the Leftists, Independents and RINO's 'stupid people', they were simply willing partners to the lie. After all, anyone who's interested in getting something for nothing, clearly isn't interested in anything to do with reality or the truth to begin with - they're simply looking for an excuse to justify going along with the deception.

The people Gruber called stupid were really only partners to Obama & Gruber's lie, and so calling them stupid was not only clumsy and rude, but self incriminating. True, that is stupid, but as neither their target audience nor themselves were ever interested in the Truth to begin with, there was no point in telling that inconvenient truth at all.

Oh well, I suppose there's another old saying that fits here: Stupid is as stupid does.

Hoft V: Fighting for our Rights in foul weather and fair

What do you get when you combine 34* temperatures, rain, politicians lies and a hardy few willing to speak up against them? Why... a Tea Party rally, of course!

Band of Brothers: Me, Stacy Washington, Jim Hoft,
Virginia Kruta, Letitia Wong (photo JD Wilson)

The Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, still recovering from an infection which caused him heart attacks, strokes, as well as the loss of one eye, one knee, and the health insurance policy which has enabled him to survive it, led a hardy band of Tea Partiers willing to brave the elements, in a rally outside Sen. Claire McCaskill's office in St. Louis.

We came with Jim to demand an apology from our senator for the lies which she and President Obama knowingly told, in order to impose their idea of fairness, upon us all.

Stacy Washington spoke as well, driving home the point that no one, no matter how well meaning, can make the best choices for another's life, for the simple fact that they cannot know their their needs, their hopes, preferences, means, desires and those risks they are willing, and unwilling, to take.

Yet proRegressive politicians have the hubris, the unmitigated gall, to believe that they not only can, but should, make the most critical decisions of our lives for us - and lightly brush off the fact that though some peoples lives are upset, harmed or even ended in the process... so be it - omelets require eggs to be broken.

There are however those who are willing to stand against this, no matter the odds, no matter the milquetoast GOP'rs who are willing to accommodate themselves to it, there are still enough of us who are willing to come out in the cold and the rain to fight the good fight. And for those who worry about being in the minority, pardon me, but I can't help thinking of Henry V's St. Crispian's Day Speech, when his comrades worried over being outnumbered in the battle of Agincourt, he chided them, saying that 'The fewer men, the greater share of honour', that,

"...This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. "

Why is our govt doing to us what we encouraged it to feel free to do?

Why is our govt doing this to us? People across the nation (and the world) have been asking this question, more frequently and more loudly. The answer is, because we have allowed govt to think of itself as something more than power organized for the defense of our property, rights and lives.. It is not. And if it is allowed to stray from that narrow purpose, it cannot help but to spiral downwards into ever greater depredations upon our property, rights and lives. My friend Patch, from Po'ed Patriot & "The Bell News", wrote a rare and moving post, about his own circumstances, how the expansion of govt has brought turmoil into his and his family's lives. His title, "Obamacare: It May Have Destroyed My Life, But We All Have Lost Our Liberty" encapsulates the nature of our current condition, as the closing paragraph points up:

POSTPONED – Saturday “Wheel In” Protest Postponed Due to Snow Sen. McCaskill saved by flake - Wheel-In protest postponed to next week due to glowbull warming snowstorm.

"So before you drag out the decorations and throw a pity party for me.. just remember…. even in this nightmare we call an economy it will be far easier for me to replace the things I have lost….. than it will be for all of us to replace the Liberty which was taken from us through Obamacare.

And that my friends.. is the real tragedy to this story…."

Our mutual friend, Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit, recently experienced the miracles of modern medicine, and soon afterwards the horrors of modern government. When a persistent 'cold' led to loss of vision in one eye, Jim, taking advantage of his personal insurance plan, went to the hospital and discovered that what he thought was a cold, was actually a deadly infection and he was days away from death. As he describes it:

"The bacteria blinded my left eye, ate a hole through my heart, caused five strokes on both sides of my brain and forced the removal of my prosthetic left knee.

Dr. Lee was the surgeon assigned to perform open heart surgery. What was originally scheduled to last four hours ended up lasting twelve. My heart was severely damaged. Dr. Lee later told me the surgery was one of the most difficult of his career. He also said I only had a few days to live without the surgery.

Thanks to the excellent insurance I carried I was able to receive life-saving medical treatment at St. Louis University."

Truly, Jim experienced the miracles of modern medicine. But that miracle didn't arise only from the medical arts, it owed just as much to the industry which produced the diagnostic machinery, the implements of medical technology, and the financial techniques of the insurance industry (though ever more hamstrung by each  passing administration of the last 50+ years) which made it possible to regularly apply relatively small portions of your wealth on a monthly basis, against future medical needs and disasters.

And even more fundamental to that, what made such miracles possible, was the system of laws designed to uphold and defend the property, rights and lives of the American people, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and through the liberty which flowed from that - which really means each person being able to act on their own best judgment, to live their own lives and follow their own pursuits, they've enabled, paradoxically to those who haven't attempted to understand it, the most interconnected, wealthy, successful society in history.

But such miracles of modern society are being imperiled by the very thing which originally led the way to their becoming a reality in our time, our government, and specifically ObamaCare has led Jim, and millions of others, to go from experience miracles, to experiencing the horrifying effects of the modern regulatory state.

If you think that's hyperbole, imagine yourself, recently saved in the nick of time, and still heavily dependent upon medical care, and consider Jim's closing comments:

"This week I found out I am going to lose my insurance. The company that carried me is leaving the Missouri market. I will have to find something else.

I am one of the millions who will be looking for new insurance. God willing, I will be able to keep my doctors at St. Louis University. I trust them. They saved my life. Please pray for me and the millions of working Americans who are going through this same ordeal.

Why is our government doing this to us?"

This weekend, Saturday the 11th, from 11:00 am to Noon,

"Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit, plans Wheel-In Rally at Senator Claire McCaskill’s St. Louis Office- Asks “Why is Our Government Punishing the American People-Give Us Back Our Healthcare!”

Saturday December 14, 2013 / 11 AM CT until Noon
– Wheel-In Location:
Senator Claire McCaskill’s St. Louis Office
5850 Delmar Blvd, Ste. A
St. Louis, Missouri 63112
From 11 AM CT to Noon"

It is important to ask this question, 'Why is our government doing this to us?", and it is particularly important to ask it of our representatives.

But it is equally important to remember that our government is doing what it is doing to us, and those potentially dark things that are yet to come, because we, with the best of intentions, we have allowed our collective power, gathered together in the form of our government, to stray from that narrow purpose it was designed to serve; we have allowed us to seduce ourselves into thinking that we could command prosperity, rather than to simply enable it, we've allowed ourselves to think that we could impose (teensie-weensie) evils upon the lives of some of us, for the supposed benefit of others. But though we might fool ourselves into thinking that there would be no penalty for such violations, such actions could not help but spiral downwards into ever greater depredations upon all of our property, rights and lives.

As I was recently reminded, Henry Hazlitt, in "Man vs. The Welfare State", warned us long ago, in discussing that gateway drug of ever greater 'greater goods', the progressive income tax, that whenever a society allows those seemingly 'teensie' evils, when they could still be imagined to be small, to roam free of the iron manacles of the Rule of Law, that:

"The graduated personal income tax should be abandoned in favor of a strictly proportional income tax. The argument against the "progressive" tax rate was conclusively stated as long ago as 1833 by the Scottish economist J. R. McCulloch: "The moment you abandon the cardinal principle of exacting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or of their property, you are at sea without rudder or compass, and there is no amount of injustice and folly you may not commit."

Or in other words, if you allow the power you've organized into a government, for the defense of everyone's property, rights and lives, to stray from that narrow purpose, breaking its bonds through the power of your best wishes, then it cannot help but spiral downwards into ever greater depredations upon the property, rights and lives of everyone of us.

We have got to say "No More!" See you there Saturday.

Thanks for giving questions

I'm hearing a lot of people with concerns about their ability to shine in political discussions, and particularly this Thanksgiving, with Obama's OFA advising its zealots not only to inject politics into Thanksgiving dinner, but to actually push the mashed potatoes aside and sign up some desperately needed 'customers' for ObamaCare (and we used to think multi-level marketing was a pain!), they are doubly concerned.

"I don't eat and breathe this stuff, there's no way I'm going to remember all these facts, and how can I possibly know whether or not the statistics they tell me are accurate? How am I to know which point they advance conflicts with which clause of the Constitution - If I try arguing about this I'm going to look like a fool."

To which I'd like to answer, "Yes you probably will. As would I." And I'd remind you, that responding to statistics, is the primary means which people use in order to avoid having to face up to principles.

There may be a few issues you can gain some authoritative command of the facts over, but there are very few 'Good Will Hunting' types out there who can memorize all of these points, or even recall them at just the right moment and present them in just the right way to effectively put your opponent in their place.

But there's something else to consider here, and that is, what if you do remember what you need to remember, and point it out in such a way that leaves your opponent speechless?

What has your reaction been when someone has done that to you? When you are standing there, at a loss for words, unable to answer back... do you feel convinced by them? Or do you feel annoyed, frustrated, even angry, that you were unable to make a good reply? Did that sense of humiliated frustration, sway you to their point of view?

If you did not feel converted when you were left speechless, do you really suppose they will be, should you succeed in doing that to them?

And what about those watching your discussion? Well they be more likely to think the issue over on hearing your unanswerable answer? Isn't converting, or at least getting others to consider your position and reconsider their own, your real goal?

My point is, having the right answer on the tip on your tongue, at the right time, is nice, and leaves you feeling good... but can that alone really accomplish anything more than getting you recreational slamming points?

What might be more likely to change minds?

Think about it a moment, what do you want the person you are talking to, and those listening, to come away with? Don't you want them to question what they might have previously accepted with little or no consideration?

Then... why not forget about memorizing the statistics and the witty replies, and focus more on the questions that should be asked? And by the way, if you understand, and keep your principles in mind, the right questions will naturally come to mind when someone says something that doesn't gibe with them. The questions that come to mind in that case, will be questions that the person you are speaking with, and those listening, will be far more likely to willingly participate in asking and thinking further about.

There's a Reason for that.

Western Civilization didn't catch on because of its answers... those are still being argued about more than 3,000 years on... but because of its questions, and its method of comparing your answers to reality, and pursuing the questions which those answers lead to. Questions such as:

• What is real and how do we know it?
• What is Good? Why should we care?
• How can we recognize what is not Good?
• What is a Good life?
• What is Happiness?
• Should what is Right and Wrong, guide our actions?
• What is Beauty?...What is Truth?...What is Justice?
• What does it benefit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?

Ask the right questions, and your listeners will question their own answers, and reality will do the rest.

Question what they assume to be true.

Question their assumptions that a law can make happen, what no one actually in that business for decades and trying to get an edge over their competitors, was ever able to make a reality. And a bureaucrat has solved it?

• If insurance companies could have found a way to ignore pre-existing conditions, they would have put their competitors out of business, wouldn't they?
• What makes you think that govt bureaucrats and regulators, are going to make work, what no business has yet been able to accomplish?
• If we're mandating by law, that we do what must result in loses... who is going to pay for those loses? How are we going to save money, by increasing financial loses?
• Do you think that regulations can prohibit cause and effect? Can regulatory law over rule reality?
• Why should I not have a say in what features I do or don't pay for?

Think about what you know about your life, about your business, about trying to do your job, about having to comply with regulations or even ludicrous policies handed down by distant corporate managers which you and your fellows know to be folly, and apply them to the healthcare solutions you are being presented with.

• How can laws and regulations written three years ago and thousands of miles away, improve my physicians ability to care for me today and tomorrow?
• Is it possible for those laws and regulations to not make it more difficult, and costly, for any doctor to provide me the care I need?
• How is my health going to benefit, by restricting what my physician thinks is best to do for me?

So when your Obamanautic relative brings up the wonders of signing up for ObamaCare, particularly the sort found here, listen to what they say, and question those things they assume should be unquestionable.

• Why should I be forced to sign up for ObamaCare, if I already have insurance I like?
• How is it Just to force me to buy what I do not choose to?
• Is Justice served by preventing people from making their own choices?
• Can the Greater Good be served by forcing individuals to do what they judge to be wrong for them?
• Why should my healthcare be made into a political issue, rather than a medical issue?
• Why do I not get to decide whether or not I even want Health Insurance?
• Is it right that voters get to decide what I do in my personal life?
• Can I be said to be living my own life, if the most important decisions I have to make, are made for me by distant others and against my will?

What it comes down to, is asking Who, What, When, Where, Why and How, and particularly asking them in relation with a person being able to live their own life, and with what makes life worth living.

This Thanksgiving, after family and friends, I'm most thankful for those who are willing to ask those questions which Western Civilization, and America, cannot exist without being asked and pursued.

More surprising NEWS of the day.

Ok, enough people have asked me, so here's my take on the latest NEWS from out of the White House, Washington D.C., Obamacare, Common Core and Foreign Affairs:

Oh. Look. Liars are telling lies.
Oh. Look. Hypocritical liars are responding as they've heard that the people they pretend to be, would have responded.
Oh. Look. The fools who elected the liars and hypocrites are upset that their lack of attention has put liars and hypocrites and thieves into positions of power over their lives.

Gee. What a surprise.

In other news, the head lying hypocrite in the White House thinks the flaws in the laws he 'wrote', to manage what he doesn't understand, can be fixed by giving more orders to control what he doesn't understand; meanwhile, the fools who thought they could make a buck from his plan, are upset his new plans to fix his old plans will bring them to ruin.

In other news, the diseducational system which made all of this possible in the first place, is frantically trying to adopt standards (which contain no standards) for that which it fears to define (namely Education, which is not to be mistaken for 'college & career ready skills'), promising that it will improve what it has consistently failed to do, by the very means with which it has already succeeded in creating such a colossal failure from an equally unprecedented success, in order to escape blame for what it is faced with having created today.

Gee. What a surprise.

In other news, the world wide wolves are eyeing our positions and lands with great interest.

Gee. What a surprise.

You want to fix this?

If you find any of this surprising, and want to know how to 'fix' it, start with fixing yourself. Here's a good starting point. If you can't do that, or can't even be bothered to attempt doing that, you have no business trying to fix anyone or anything else.

Gee. What a surprise.

Here's some 'NEWS' you can actually use, via Plato, 360 B.C., from "Laws - Book V"

"...The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and all other goods which may be imparted to others, as well as acquired by a man for himself; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men, and he who is willing, yet is not able, may be allowed the second place; but he who is jealous and will not, if he can help, allow others to partake in a friendly way of any good, is deserving of blame: the good, however, which he has, is not to be undervalued by us because it is possessed by him, but must be acquired by us also to the utmost of our power. Let every man, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let there be no envy. For the unenvious nature increases the greatness of states-he himself contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly curable, or altogether incurable acts of injustice done to him by others, a man can only escape by fighting and defending himself and conquering, and by never ceasing to punish them; and no man who is not of a noble spirit is able to accomplish this...."

You want to hear something 'new'? Stop looking for it in the 'news', that is, and always will be, the same old same-old. If you want something truly new, you'll only find it in the old truths applied to the new day.

Anything less than that, is going to be less than surprising.

A question for our elected representatives: Do you intend to live our lives for us?

I'd like to ask a few questions of my Missouri Senators, Roy Blunt & Claire McCaskill, similar to a short series of questions I asked a year ago.

"It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea" Sen. Cruz quoting from The Fountainhead

The questions start off simple enough: Do you expect to live your own life? It's a simple question. The answer to which determines whether or not you are an American, or are Anti-American

Too harsh? Too bad. Do you expect to be able to live your own life? Don't worry, there remains plenty of room within a 'yes' answer for us to find innumerable areas to disagree upon, but upon this one question, all further communication depends.

Do you expect to be able to live your own life?

If yes, then welcome to the club, the club which is populated with a subset of those living in America, who actually are Americans. Whether or not they were born here, or what their background was, or their skin color, religion, race is, I really don't give a damn about any of that. But how they answer that question, that is everything to me.

Now, if you do expect to be able to live your own life, doesn't that require that you be at liberty to make your own choices in and for your own life? Do you somehow also believe that you are able, capable, entitled, to make choices for how other people will have to live their own lives?... while still expecting to be free to live your own life?

s such a view compatible with equal Rights for all?
Is such a view compatible with equality under the law?
Is such a view compatible with any form of logical thought at all?

Have you considered this? Seriously, have you? Have you considered what it means to want to force others to comply with your wishes, while somehow being left free from their desire to force you to comply with their wishes?

They only way to do such a thing, is to abandon the Rule of Law, in favor of the turbulent Rule of Men using power to pursue their passions. The only way to do such a thing is to abandon Principles in general, and the principles that America was founded upon, in particular, trading what is Right and Wrong, for what some proclaim to be 'for the greater good!' - even yours, regardless of what you might choose as being good for you.

Don't bother criticizing me, try criticizing the idea behind it: Do you have the right to live your own life? Or not? Answer the question.

It is all well and good to want to see that every American has their health care needs met. Who doesn't? It is a laudable sentiment. One which, according to the left (and a great many willing accomplices on the Right), a majority of Americans agree with  (really?). But answer me this - is there any reason why you and your majority, can't associate together, to provide low cost health care to those who are in need of it?

Is there some level of efficiency which you feel 200+ new governmental bureaucracies, are going to contribute to providing your service, that you, focused upon your cause, couldn't provide yourself?

What is it? And why has Congress, the Unions and every corporation with any political power to speak of, sought an exemption from it?

You don't want to answer that, do you? What is it that the govt brings to the issue, other than the ability to compel, to force, through the IRS, everyone else to conform to your wishes, for living their life?

Do you really expect to be free to deprive others of their freedom? How long do you expect to remain one of the privileged 'others' and separate from the imposed upon 'we'?

Another question: Do you have such a low opinion of your fellow Americans, that you believe that the vast majority of them would not be favorable to your project, and would not contribute some measure of time, effort and money, towards your efforts to aid your fellow Americans?

Think of the unprecedented outpouring of donations to help victims of worldwide disasters in Japan, Indonesia, Haiti, Katrina, 911... why would you think your fellow Americans would be so stingy towards your efforts to help those in need right here, in your neighborhood?

What does that say about your allegedly 'good intentions'?

One last question, a rhetorical one borrowed from Thomas Sowell, how is it that you believe me greedy, mean spirited, etc, in wanting to remain free to make my own decisions and spend my money myself... and yet you don't find it greedy, mean spirited, etc, for you to want to take my money from me and deprive me of my liberty to make my own decisions about living my own life?

I would dearly love an answer to these questions.

And here's another question for our elected representatives, that I would dearly love an answer to:

Do you believe you were elected to represent people who wanted to live their own lives, or people who want you to live their lives for them? Do you believe that standing up for our right to live our own lives, is somehow a support for anarchy?

Sen. Blunt, Sen. McCaskill, do you intend to stand with Sen.'s Cruz, Lee, Paul & Rubio, to block the ObamaCare law which forces us to handle our healthcare according to how others insist we do? Or are you going to allow this law to deprive us all of our ability to live our own lives as we choose to?

To my fellow Americans, do you intend to sit back and allow your representatives to represent you as if you were their pets? Or will you, at the very least, call them, email them, Tweet them, that you expect something more American of their votes?

Really? Well I live in Missouri, so Show Me:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) -- (202) 224-4944
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) -- (202) 224-3324
John Barrasso (R-WY) -- (202) 224-6441
Roy Blunt (R-MO) -- (202) 224-5721
John Boozman (R-AR) -- (202) 224-4843
Richard Burr (R-NC) -- (202) 224-3154
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) -- (202) 224-3521
Jeff Chiesa (R-NJ) -- (202) 224-3224
Dan Coats (R-IN) -- (202) 224-5623
Tom Coburn (R-OK) -- (202) 224-5754
Thad Cochran (R-MS) -- (202) 224-5054
Susan Collins (R-ME) -- (202) 224-2523
Bob Corker (R-TN) -- (202) 224-3344
John Cornyn (R-TX) -- (202) 224-2934
Mike Crapo (R-ID) -- (202) 224-6142
Mike Enzi (R-WY) -- (202) 224-3424
Deb Fischer (R-NE) -- (202) 224-6551
Jeff Flake (R-AZ) -- (202) 224-4521
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- (202) 224-5972
Chuck Grassley (R-IA) -- (202) 224-3744
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) -- (202) 224-5251
Dean Heller (R-NV) -- (202) 224-6244
John Hoeven (R-ND) -- (202) 224-2551
Jim Inhofe (R-OK) -- (202) 224-4721
Johnny Isakson (R-GA) -- (202) 224-3643
Mike Johanns (R-NE) -- (202) 224-4224
Ron Johnson (R-WI) -- (202) 224-5323
Mark Kirk (R-IL) -- (202) 224-2854
John McCain (R-AZ) -- (202) 224-2235
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) -- (202) 224-2541
Jerry Moran (R-KS) -- (202) 224-6521
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) -- (202) 224-6665
Rand Paul (R-KY) -- (202) 224-4343
Rob Portman (R-OH) -- (202) 224-3353
Jim Risch (R-ID) -- (202) 224-2752
Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- (202) 224-4774
Marco Rubio (R-FL) -- (202) 224-3041
Tim Scott (R-SC) -- (202) 224-6121
Jeff Sessions (R-AL) -- (202) 224-4124
Richard Shelby (R-AL) -- (202) 224-5744
John Thune (R-SD) -- (202) 224-2321
Pat Toomey (R-PA) -- (202) 224-4254
David Vitter (R-LA) -- (202) 224-4623
Roger Wicker (R-MS) -- (202) 224-6253