Tom McGee's Blog

I wonder if he really believes this stuff, or simply hopes you do. To this morning’s missive to the GOP mailing list, Steele writes:

Today, America witnessed the first vote for the end of representative government. Congressional Democrats said no to the will of the American people and voted yes to President Obama’s $2.5 trillion government run health care system.

The House of Representatives approves something in a nationally televised vote, and that’s the end of representative government. In Steele’s worldview, government by poll is somehow more like representative government than having your, well, Representatives vote on something.

And he’s still harping on the government-run thing? News flash: Single payer died a year ago; the public option last last December. The government, alas, isn’t going to be running anything.

Americans across the country made their voices heard and flatly rejected this legislation loaded with special deals and tax increases

A deceitful statement that is repeated despite all evidence to the contrary. A narrow majority opposed the bill, and many of those that did did so because the bill didn’t go far enough. A truer statement, should he be interested in any such thing, would be that Americans across the country wanted this or something stronger.

The President, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the architects of a system that encourages out of control spending, increased national debt and does nothing to control the cost of health care.

The increased national debt is explained in the next paragraph:

it will increase taxes by $569 Billion; it will cut Medicare by $524 Billion

Traditionally, increasing taxes and cutting expenditures serve to lower national debt. But oh well.

On a personal note, I was watching the vote last night with two other people. Two of we three realized that we were going to be directly affected by the bill — for the good.

And after all the spending has been done and the bill is fully implemented, 23 million people will still be uninsured in 2019.

And I guess it’s unfortunate that the number isn’t 53 million instead.

I don’t know where they get this stuff, but I can’t wait until October when the Republicans start running on a platform of allowing your insurance company to cut you off when you get sick, or that spousal abuse really is a pre-existing condition worth denying you coverage over. That’ll be fun to watch.

I’m glad they finally got it done. It’s not perfect, but it’s a big accomplishment that opens the door to more.

Updated

This afternoon’s e-mail contains this gem:

Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat minions in the U.S. House — against the will of the American people — have “passed” their radical government-run health care experiment.

The quotation marks around “passed” are in the original. They’re still, I can only guess, hammering on the parliamentary move that the leadership was going to try in order to pass the original bill plus reconciliation on one pass — but didn’t.

I for one don’t believe they’re this stupid, but rather that they believe you are. Anyone watching CNN last night could see that there were two separate votes, and they both passed, not “passed,” with majorities.

Meanwhile, former straight-talker John McCain has had enough. Republicans in Congress are through cooperating with Democrats!

I wonder how we’ll tell the difference.

What the polls really show

From a Pew poll last August, how the individual components of the health plan stack up.

Polls showing general opposition are a pretty crude instrument, especially when you’re asking people who aren’t especially aware of the details. But when you spell it out, it’s a whole different story.