Some Observations Worth Observing

Here are a couple of things you should know about.

First, the Left is, as always, still displaying ultimate class when it comes to Sarah Palin. This time their vitriol is directed at a 12-year old girl:

She’s only 12 years old but Ashleigh Jones is feeling the heat of this election year.

That’s because the seventh grader at New Smyrna Beach Middle School was called a racist by classmates for wearing a pro-Sarah Palin t-shirt.

Jones is volunteering at the Republican Headquarters in New Smyrna Beach. The Palin t-shirt was a gift from her fellow volunteers. But when she wore it to school she learned just how tough politics can be.

“Some of the students were calling me racist because I was Caucasian,” she said. “I wanted the Caucasian man to win. And I told them that’s not true. It’s my freedom of speech, it’s my opinion.”

I'd be interested to know how the teacher handled all of that. I would hope he or she would have turned it into a learning opportunity about freedom of speech, tolerance, and all that. The article doesn't say. Regardless, kudos to this girl for standing up for what she believes. Many of us grown-ups could learn some things from her (she certainly has more spine than 90% of the Republicans in Congress!).

Moving on, we have this disgusting story of the blatant vote theft of a handicapped person:

It really doesn't get any lower than that. Where are the calls for prosecution...? Oh, wait, that's right...the stolen vote went to Obama, so it's all okay.

Speaking of Obama, remember how his campaign has officially stated that paying taxes is the patriotic duty of Americans? Well, apparently not everyone in the Obamessiah campaign is patriotic. From Hot Air via The Jawa Report:

Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of Obama’s campaign, has tax liens. So do his companies.

You’d think that matters more than the tax liens of Joe the Plumber, wouldn’t you? But good luck finding a Big Media story about Nesbitt’s liens.

If tax liens are such an indicator of character and trustworthiness, wouldn’t it have more significance for the treasurer of a presidential campaign than for a man who just asked a question of the candidate? If the national media has such an interest in investigating a plumber who made a couple of national appearances, why wouldn’t they have at least the same interest in the people running a major party presidential campaign?

...Because, you know, associations matter when choosing a plumber, but apparently not when choosing a President.

Two sets of rules: one for liberals, the other for everyone else.

Finally, let's examine universal health care again. Barack Obama wants to implement this if he becomes President. Aside from looking at the absolute disaster that such a system already is in Canada, England, France, and literally everywhere else it's been tried, how about Hawaii, the only state in the U.S. to give it a shot? Well, let's just say that it didn't work out:

According to the Associated Press:

Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched.

Gov. Linda Lingle’s administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

Here’s why this is bad news for Barack Obama and other Church of Universal Coverage faithful — or for the rest of us if they succeed.

1. Universal coverage means paying too much. Hawaii officials realized they were paying too much when families that could obtain health coverage on their own were lining up for subsidies. The taxpayers’ money was not making much of a dent in the uninsured because it was covering lots of kids who would have had coverage anyway. The Church of Universal Coverage will protest: “The problem was not that taxpayers were paying too much – only half of this program’s budget came from taxpayers.” But that’s just it: even half the cost of the program was too much. The other half came from Hawaii’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan, which has agreed to keep covering enrolled children through the rest of the year without taxpayer subsidies — even more evidence that taxpayers had been paying too much.
2. Universal coverage also means getting too little. Hawaii’s “now you see it, now you don’t” approach is shortchanging thousands of children by disrupting their coverage and care. Again, the Church of Universal Coverage will protest: “But that’s just because Hawaii has an awful Republican governor.” But that’s exactly the point. As I tried to explain to pre-Nobel laureate Paul Krugman: there will always be awful Republican governors. Putting the government in charge means that the medical care you need to keep yourself or your loved ones alive can disappear with a shift in the political winds. The resulting harm is not just the work of black-hearted Republicans. It’s a risk inherent to all universal coverage schemes.

Barack Obama’s health plan promises much of the same. He would force people to pay more for health coverage, even if they found little value in the added expense. He would waste taxpayer dollars on people who can already afford coverage on their own. He would draw millions into government health programs that would threaten their access to care.

And if in 10 years some nasty Republicans yank your family’s health care, we would have Barack Obama to thank.

Hm, now let's see, what have people on the Right been saying about universal health care for years and years and years? Here's just one example from this blog last fall:

When something is offered for free, the demand skyrockets. Universal health care would provide 'free' -- though all this 'free' stuff would be paid for by increasing your taxes -- medical services, so the demand for those medical services would skyrocket with no limits.

With unlimited demand for those 'free' services, the costs would skyrocket, too, which means your taxes would skyrocket. When people finally decided they'd have enough of the tax increases and the government couldn't raise them anymore without causing open revolt, the only other way to control costs would be to start limiting the availability of medical services. There would be limits placed on the number of operations, prescriptions, and other services that would be available to Americans, which would mean people would have to wait in line until their turn came up.

In order to enforce these limitations, the government would then have to determine who is most deserving of the limited medical services available. At that point, you would start seeing things like smokers being denied treatment because they're less deserving than non-smokers, fat people being denied treatments because they're less deserving than slim people, and so on.

So, the end result is huge tax costs for your 'free' health care, long wait times, denial of treatment based on who is more 'deserving', and government deciding who those 'deserving' people are.

And that's exactly what we see happening in Hawaii. That's why they killed it. Do you really think this is a good plan for the entire country?

Just the opposite - it'll be disastrous, because you often don't get a second chance with your health care.

There's my two cents.