Wake Up and Smell The Stench! Unsuitable!

President plays golf and comes back a 'tiger.' Same old, same old. Has to have more money. Pathological spender. (See 1 below.) Boehner did not create the mess, Obama did. The question is will Boehner hang tough and get Republicans to do so as well? They will be blamed for the false crisis and the next question is will the public eventually see the light and come to realize Obama is simply seeking to bludgeon Republicans and voters so he can continue his reckless spending? Obama is interested in a fight to win control of The House in 2104 so he can do what he pleases with our nation. Wake up America and start smelling the 'stink weeds!" (See 1a and 1b below.) --- Lacking the minimum requisites Hagel will be confirmed. How very sad! (See 2 below.) --- Pogo was partly right. The enemy is our education system. (See 3 and 3a below.) --- Trash them for populist political reasons then covet their life style and become one of them. What a fraud! (See 4 below.) ---- Dick ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) President Armageddon The Washington Monument ploy and other Obama gambits. President Obama returned from a long weekend with his golfing buddies on Tuesday to take up his by now familiar political stand: If Republicans don't raise taxes in return for more spending, the world will end. We wish he'd stayed on the putting green. Flanked by emergency medical personnel, Mr. Obama made his usual threat of Armageddon if automatic spending cuts go forward on March 1. Americans can expect more such melodrama in the coming days, so as a public service we thought we'd break down the President's three biggest political tricks. • The Washington Monument ploy. "If Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place," he moaned, "it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will eviscerate job creating investments in education and energy and medical research." His parade of horribles went on for several minutes. All of this wreckage from a 5% cut to domestic agencies and a 7% cut to the military. Americans need to understand that Mr. Obama is threatening that if he doesn't get what he wants, he's ready to inflict maximum pain on everybody else. He won't force government agencies to shave spending on travel and conferences and excessive pay and staffing. He won't demand that agencies cut the lowest priority spending as any half-competent middle manager would. It's the old ploy to stir public support for all government spending by shutting down vital services first. Voters should scoff at the idea that a $3.6 trillion government can't save one nickel of every dollar that agencies spend. The $85 billion in savings is a mere 2.3% of total spending. The agencies that the White House says can't save 5% received an average increase in their budgets of 17% in the previous five years—not counting their $276 billion stimulus bonus. • The recession scare. Mr. Obama warned that the sequester will "hurt our economic growth [and] add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls." But hasn't Mr. Obama been telling us that the economy is coming back and the stock market is up? Mr. Obama just whacked the economy with a roughly $160 billion tax increase in 2013 that he says will do no harm, but he wants us to believe that $85 billion in spending cuts will trigger a recession. The sequester shaves the equivalent of about 0.25% of GDP when offsetting it against the extra money the feds are spending on Sandy relief. After World War II federal spending fell from 42% of GDP to 14.8% in two years, yet the private economy and employment roared back to life. In the 1980s domestic spending fell by about two percentage points of GDP and in the 1990s it fell by more than three. Those were decades of government austerity but rapid growth in private output and wealth. Mr. Obama has taken government spending from 21% to 24% of GDP, yet we've had the weakest economic recovery in three generations. • A tax increase disguised as "tax reform." Mr. Obama isn't proposing to substitute other spending reforms for the blunt instrument of the sequester. He is actually demanding another tax increase on top of the one he just beat out of Congress. His trick is to pretend that this is "tax reform" that would eliminate loopholes, but this is the same President who insisted on more than $30 billion in tax breaks for big business (including $12 billion for the wind industry) in the fiscal-cliff deal. For 30 years bipartisan tax reform has meant lowering tax rates in return for closing loopholes. But having already raised rates, Mr. Obama now wants fewer loopholes for those he dislikes while keeping the higher rates. This is nothing but a grab for more revenue so he and Democrats can keep spending. *** The sequester is far from ideal and it would make much more sense to work with Congress to set priorities. But Mr. Obama has rejected every meaningful reform in entitlements that Republicans or his own Simpson-Bowles commission have offered. ObamaCare will add more than $1 trillion in new costs and add some 17 million people to Medicaid, but he says this can't be touched. In his State of the Union address Mr. Obama proposed $83.4 billion in new spending, according to a tally by the National Taxpayers Union. If Mr. Obama really wants to eliminate the sequester, Republicans are ready to negotiate. But if he won't drop his tax increase and negotiate in good faith, as he hasn't during his Presidency, then the sequester is the only way that any spending is going to be cut. The economy will be better for it. 1a)John Boehner: The President Is Raging Against a Budget Crisis He Created Obama invented the 'sequester' in the summer of 2011 to avoid facing up to America's spending problem. By JOHN BOEHNER A week from now, a dramatic new federal policy is set to go into effect that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more. In a bit of irony, President Obama stood Tuesday with first responders who could lose their jobs if the policy goes into effect. Most Americans are just hearing about this Washington creation for the first time: the sequester. What they might not realize from Mr. Obama's statements is that it is a product of the president's own failed leadership. The sequester is a wave of deep spending cuts scheduled to hit on March 1. Unless Congress acts, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will occur this year, with another $1.1 trillion coming over the next decade. There is nothing wrong with cutting spending that much—we should be cutting even more—but the sequester is an ugly and dangerous way to do it. By law, the sequester focuses on the narrow portion of the budget that funds the operating accounts for federal agencies and departments, including the Department of Defense. Exempt is most entitlement spending—the large portion of the budget that is driving the nation's looming debt crisis. Should the sequester take effect, America's military budget would be slashed nearly half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Border security, law enforcement, aviation safety and many other programs would all have diminished resources. How did the country find itself in this mess? During the summer of 2011, as Washington worked toward a plan to reduce the deficit to allow for an increase in the federal debt limit, President Obama and I very nearly came to a historic agreement. Unfortunately our deal fell apart at the last minute when the president demanded an extra $400 billion in new tax revenue—50% more than we had shaken hands on just days before. It was a disappointing decision by the president, but with just days until a breach of the debt limit, a solution was still required—and fast. I immediately got together with Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to forge a bipartisan congressional plan. It would be called the Budget Control Act. The plan called for immediate caps on discretionary spending (to save $917 billion) and the creation of a special House-Senate "super committee" to find an additional $1.2 trillion in savings. The deal also included a simple but powerful mechanism to ensure that the committee met its deficit-reduction target: If it didn't, the debt limit would not be increased again in a few months. But President Obama was determined not to face another debt-limit increase before his re-election campaign. Having just blown up one deal, the president scuttled this bipartisan, bicameral agreement. His solution? A sequester. With the debt limit set to be hit in a matter of hours, Republicans and Democrats in Congress reluctantly accepted the president's demand for the sequester, and a revised version of the Budget Control Act was passed on a bipartisan basis. Ultimately, the super committee failed to find an agreement, despite Republicans offering a balanced mix of spending cuts and new revenue through tax reform. As a result, the president's sequester is now imminent. Both parties today have a responsibility to find a bipartisan solution to the sequester. Turning it off and erasing its deficit reduction isn't an option. What Congress should do is replace it with other spending cuts that put America on the path to a balanced budget in 10 years, without threatening national security. Having first proposed and demanded the sequester, it would make sense that the president lead the effort to replace it. Unfortunately, he has put forth no detailed plan that can pass Congress, and the Senate—controlled by his Democratic allies—hasn't even voted on a solution, let alone passed one. By contrast, House Republicans have twice passed plans to replace the sequester with common-sense cuts and reforms that protect national security. The president has repeatedly called for even more tax revenue, but the American people don't support trading spending cuts for higher taxes. They understand that the tax debate is now closed. The president got his higher taxes—$600 billion from higher earners, with no spending cuts—at the end of 2012. He also got higher taxes via ObamaCare. Meanwhile, no one should be talking about raising taxes when the government is still paying people to play videogames, giving folks free cellphones, and buying $47,000 cigarette-smoking machines. Washington must get serious about its spending problem. If it can't reform America's safety net and retirement-security programs, they will no longer be there for those who rely on them. Republicans' willingness to do what is necessary to save these programs is well-known. But after four years, we haven't seen the same type of courage from the president. The president's sequester is the wrong way to reduce the deficit, but it is here to stay until Washington Democrats get serious about cutting spending. The government simply cannot keep delaying the inevitable and spending money it doesn't have. So, as the president's outrage about the sequester grows in coming days, Republicans have a simple response: Mr. President, we agree that your sequester is bad policy. What spending are you willing to cut to replace it? Mr. Boehner, a Republican congressman from Ohio, is Speaker of the House. 1b)Carroll: Staggering toward the sequester By Vincent Carroll Denver Post Columnist The sequester is coming, the sequester is coming. And if you believe The New York Times, it's going to hit us in March with the force of the biblical plagues. In a recent editorial that should have been trimmed in black, the Times published a parade of horribles that it claims will be triggered by the federal government cutting 7.3 percent of defense and 5 percent of non-entitlement domestic programs this fiscal year. They include the loss of 1 million jobs, "a shortage of meat, poultry and eggs," "thousands of criminals and civil violators" escaping justice, hour-long waits at airport security, and half a million fewer doses of vaccines. We have no word yet on whether the $85 billion cut from discretionary spending that totals well over $1 trillion (in a total federal budget of $3.5 trillion) will also darken the skies and unleash bolts of lightning, but stay tuned for the next advisory. Of course, federal agencies may indeed choose to maximize the impact on the public — and in some cases will have no choice but to contract services — but keep in mind that even after the sequester's first-year cuts, discretionary spending in most cases will remain above the levels of 2008. And as the Wall Street Journal reminds us, "the cuts amount to about 0.5% of GDP." This is not to say the sequester is good policy. Across-the-board cuts are terrible policy — and were supposed to be. They were supposed to be so terrible, indeed, that Congress and the president would reach a bipartisan budget plan to stop them. But of course they haven't. And their default alternative is stalemate in the face of a debt crisis, which is terrible policy, too. Deficit hawks like Sen. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility can talk until they're blue in the face about a balanced plan to curb the deficit that relies on new revenues from tax reform and genuine entitlement revisions, but Congress and the president still sit on their hands. Come to think of it, the Times opposes most efforts at serious entitlement reform, too, such as adopting what's known as the "chained" cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits. One of the few good things to come out of this fiasco is an increasing willingness of Republicans to accept the prospect of major defense cuts. House Republicans were expected to clamor to stop sequestration because of its disproportionate impact on defense, but as The Hill reported this week, a number of them "see the sequester as the best way possible to actually reduce government spending, which they see as the biggest threat to the nation." Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, has even come up with a plan, which he outlined this week in The Denver Post, to reduce Pentagon spending by "more than $500 billion during the next decade." Coffman has been an aggressive advocate for Pentagon cuts for at least two years, but his latest proposal takes his ideas to a new level. While the sequester could be a "disaster" for defense, he told me, he believes savings of equal magnitude could be found "without harming national security." And he's even got a list of additional ideas whose potential savings are still being assessed. But then there's never been a lack of good ideas for addressing the deficit. The obstacles are the left's hostility toward slowing the growth of social programs and the right's rejection of further new revenues — even from narrowing some deductions. And in a divided government, that spells gridlock. It's enough to leave those of us on the outside wondering whether an hour's wait for airport security might just be a tolerable tradeoff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2)Chuck Hagel 'Manifestly Unsuitable' to Be Secretary of Defense By Vincent Zafonte Last week, the Senate decided to temporarily refrain from advancing former Sen. Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense. There were many reasons why the Senate did not advance his nomination, The Heritage Foundation’s expert James Carafano explains: Simply put, Senator Hagel lacks the necessary executive skills and experience, embraces naïve and dangerous foreign policies, and empathizes with sworn foes, all while showing antipathy toward loyal allies (i.e. Israel). This makes him manifestly unsuitable for this critical position. The decision not to advance Hagel was a good one for the country–but was it done to stir President Obama, or as a serious inquiry into Hagel's competence? Some in the Senate just wanted to make a point to the Obama administration, and say Hagel is likely to be confirmed shortly. Some Senators voted against Hagel as a way of pressuring the Obama administration to answer many troubling questions about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Carafano reminds us, though, that there’s more at stake than politics: “Certainly the Senate and the American people deserve to know what happened in Benghazi and why. But that knowledge should not be purchased at the price of installing an unsuitable candidate as the Secretary of Defense.” --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3)The Endgame for the Destruction of the United States By Daren Jonescu See also Part One: Total Destruction of the U.S.: An Interview with Larry Grathwohl and Part Two: American Education: Rotting the Country from the Inside In Part 1 of this interview with former FBI operative Larry Grathwohl, we addressed the goals and methods of the Weatherman organization and debunked recent attempts to dismiss their words and activities as "youthful folly" or "typical of those days." In Part 2, we discussed the continuity of purpose connecting the murderous radicalism of the Weather Underground leadership with the progressive education and social justice advocacy of the "mature," "respectable" Ayers, Dohrn, Machtinger, Boudin, and others. Here in the final installment, I ask Grathwohl about the alarming cognitive dissonance of today's Middle America in the throes of the "fundamental transformation" promised by Barack Obama, facilitated by the progressive education and legal establishments, and put into practice by federal agency appointees, colleges of education, union leaders, and bureaucrats with established leftist pedigrees. As an example of this dissonance, consider an American colleague of mine here in Korea: a friendly, down-to-earth, educated family man in his early thirties, and a teacher by profession. On the eve of the 2012 election, I asked him whether it bothered him that Barack Obama had been so strongly endorsed by the Communist Party. He said he had never heard of that. When I explained that the Party's official endorsement cited Obama's signature policy initiatives as the surest means to achieving socialism in America, and that CPUSA leaders were actively campaigning for Obama in swing states, my colleague fell silent for a moment, and then said, matter-of-factly, "It doesn't really bother me; I guess it might bother me if Obama were endorsing the Communist Party, but if they're endorsing him, it doesn't matter." I leave you with that thought, by way of introduction to Part 3 of my conversation with Larry Grathwohl. DJ: The Communist Party USA has officially endorsed and vocally supported President Obama, and his administration has included several people with well-known Marxist or Maoist views and affiliations. And yet most people, including many so-called conservatives, shy away from this entire subject area, and they practically run for the hills when anyone mentions Bill Ayers, re-education camps, or communism in connection with current political events. Why do you think there is such discomfort among Americans, including supposed conservatives, when confronted with this issue? LG: To answer this question in a word, I would say "political correctness." Today we live in a world where people are afraid to discuss issues of importance due to a concern that they might say something wrong. We have a society where people can be condemned for being on the wrong side of an issue, especially if you're in a position where you could be labeled as a racist or an individual who has no sensitivity towards those who are in some way in need. Today, [concern about] Marxism is out of vogue, and the Chinese are our friends and are lending us money in order for our government to continue to exist. How can you question this? Conservatives are afraid of being labeled as mean or uncaring and want to maintain a civil image in the midst of this chaos and confusion. Senator McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign refused to confront Barack Obama regarding his ties to Bill Ayers the unrepentant terrorist. When others brought up the possibility of Obama's connection to the Muslim world, McCain became angry and turned away. By doing so, he negated any possibility of forcing the two-year member of the Senate to explain his sympathetic positions towards Islamic terrorism and the domestic terrorism that his friend Bill Ayers had participated in [during] the '70s and the '80s. Basically, this is the problem we face today. If you criticize the president for any of his policies, you are racist, and your argument ends. There aren't defenses for these kinds of accusations, and it completely eliminates any possibility of discussion and compromise. This works wonderfully for the Democrats and their policies, and it puts the Republicans and conservatives in very un-defensible positions. The bravery or whatever you care to call it simply no longer exists [when] people who are involved in the political process are more concerned with the next election than they are with what's best and right for America. I often wonder what would've happened during the Revolutionary War if people of this stature were to be the ones we were dependent upon to defeat the British. I wonder if this tendency can be overcome or eliminated. DJ: How frustrating is it for you, having seen what you have seen, to encounter this kind of reluctance from people who should be your allies? LG: While I do have some allies, which includes those who have the courage to speak the truth and to stand up for what's right, the fact is that it is extremely frustrating that people are simply unable to recognize the truth when it is presented to them along with the evidence which exists in the WU's activities, writings, and continued attack on our institutions. As for me, the frustration is simply a greater motivation to accomplish my mission of enlightening people as to the true goals and objectives of the WU and the means that they used in their attempt to achieve the destruction of the United States. DJ: Many people dispute President Obama's claim that Bill Ayers was just "a guy in my neighborhood." And Ayers himself has spoken of being ecstatic when Obama was elected in 2008. What connection or consistency do you see between the goals and/or methods pursued or promoted by the WU and those pursued and promoted by the Obama administration? LG: The goals and objectives of these two individuals are the same. Bill Ayers tried first to destroy this country through violence. Having failed, the WU determined to accomplish this through the system and in my opinion Barack Obama was recruited as a means to accomplish this goal. ... The connections between Barack and Bill include having shared an office for at least three years in Chicago, being co-members on two boards in which Barack was the chairman, and one of which was called the Annenberg Challenge[, which] was charged with the dissemination of approximately $100 million to educational institutions in the Chicago area. Bill Ayers has been associated with the writing of Barack's book, Dreams from My Father, through content analysis, and on three occasions Bill has admitted that he wrote this book and then later retracted his comments. It would seem apparent to me that individuals who have been this closely associated through many years have a common knowledge [of] one another's political aims and goals. This can only mean that they are in agreement, and while Bill has utilized the educational system to further his objective, Barack Obama has chosen politics. Keep in mind that Barack Obama's first political fundraiser was held at Bill's and Bernardine's home while Barack was running for the Illinois state legislature. This is his first fundraiser, and Bill and Bernardine are involved -- can there be any doubt as to the extent of the relationship that exists between these individuals? Obama is in the process of attacking all institutions of our society and government, [including] the First Amendment by stating that it's the conservative media that keeps the Republicans from negotiating with him; the Second Amendment [through] his attempts to impose restrictions on gun ownership, procurement of ammunition, and whatever other means he can devise; and lastly, there is his attack on the freedom of religion by trying to impose birth control and abortion under the Obama health care act on churches who run such institutions as hospitals, schools, rests homes, and other services. DJ: You have spent a good portion of your life trying to warn Americans about the specific intentions of the young leftist radicals of the late 1960s. How do you answer people who might say that those leftists are older now, their radical days are in the past, and there is no longer anything to worry about from them? LG: The fact is, Bill Ayers and many of his comrades from those days of strategic sabotage in the underground movement have not changed their goal or their purpose. Bill has made this very clear in his book, Fugitive Days, in which he makes no apology for the death and destruction the WU were responsible for and even seems to revel in what he perceives as the glory of the revolution. In his book Underground, Mark Rudd also makes no apologies for his activities and even admits prior knowledge to the bomb factory in Greenwich Village in which three members of the WU were killed. He states that Terry Robbins had told him of the purpose of their bomb creations and that they were to be used at Fort Dix, New Jersey during an enlisted men's dance and at the officers' club. These bombs were adulterated with fence staples and roofing nails, whose purpose can only be to inflict as much death and injury as possible. There are many other individuals from the WU who have written books and also regret only that they did not succeed or that they didn't do enough. Some individuals were involved in a Brinks armored car robbery during which two policemen and a Brinks guard were killed. Kathy Boudin is no longer behind bars, but her husband, accomplice David Gilbert, is still in jail and writing books about love and the revolution and has many supporters [who are] trying to get him released to this very day. It simply cannot be said that these people have allowed the last three or four decades to change their political beliefs or political goals. Instead, they have been involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the encouragement of young people to defy authority and to create as much chaos and turmoil as possible. Bill has actually attended Occupy meetings during which he instructed individuals on how to accomplish the most destruction of property and confrontation with authority and in a way that makes it appear as if they are the victims. This I know for a fact, as people who are friendly to me and have attended some of these meetings have reported these facts. Van Jones, who was appointed as the green jobs czar by President Obama, is very active [in the] political movement in the Bay Area, particularly in Oakland and Berkeley. He has associations with Bill Ayers and has attended Occupy meetings in which they were both in attendance. It is simply impossible to conclude that any of these people have in any way, shape, or form been influenced to change their political beliefs or their goal and objectives by the passage of time. They still believe that the United States is the root of all evil and must be destroyed, whatever it takes. Innocent lives or genuine disagreement is not a qualification for being spared, and it is my belief that Bill and people who follow Bill are consumed with this hatred for this country and a desire to be in control of life and death, and this may be the underlying reason for the personality disorders they obviously suffer from. Author's concluding note: Larry Grathwohl provides powerful witness to the hatred the Weathermen bear for the United States as founded, and their utter disregard for human life in pursuing their transformative agenda. I do not believe that Grathwohl's perspective is infallible any more than I believe that of anyone else. I do believe, however, that he speaks sincerely, and from a deep understanding of the minds and hearts of the Weather Underground radicals. Rational observers know that Ayers's relationship with Obama is much more developed than either man has publicly acknowledged. And it is undeniable that these two progressive "reformers" have achieved a degree of mainstream success and influence in their respective fields of endeavor, education, and politics that would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago, when Ayers's educational role model, John Dewey, was beginning progressivism's long march through the souls of America's children. A century of progressive schooling made Barack Obama's presidency possible. In turn, with a president openly bent on transforming America according to a collectivist "social justice" agenda, public education itself, under the leadership of Ayers and his colleagues, may reveal itself ever more fully as the socialist indoctrination center Dewey could only dream and scheme of. As Grathwohl warns, Ayers is urging followers to see that they are "very close to accomplishing their mission of changing America forever." The circle envisioned by early Western progressive intellectuals such as Antonio Gramsci is almost complete: government schools prepare the souls of men for subservience and dependency, and the progressive intelligentsia churn out attractive demagogues to appeal to this forcibly debased population's need for a provider. Eventually, all that is preserved of the history of modern liberty will be the veneer of democracy masking the tyrannical structure beneath, as an emasculated humanity "freely chooses" its own slave masters 3a)s the U.S. Clinically Insane? By Deane Waldman Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. The British National Health Service (NHS) has a history of such "insanity." They maintain their healthcare system without change despite repeated episodes of preventable patient deaths. So what does the U.S. do? President Obama wants to emulate their system here. Insanity! We start our story with the Bristol (England) Royal Infirmary, which enjoyed a reputation as a world-class surgery center for children with heart problems. When someone began to question that reputation and asked for outcomes data, a cover-up started, just like Watergate. Patient results were fabricated. Potential whistleblowers were intimidated. There were public distortions and denials. Eventually, the British government empaneled a "Commission" (their term for blue-ribbon panel), which released its Bristol Report in June 2001. After confirming the terrible patient outcomes, the Commission did the unexpected. Instead of blaming specific individuals, the Commission identified the root cause: the system and its culture, one of intolerance and corruption. The system that was supposed to protect the patients protected itself instead, at the patients' expense, literally to their deaths. A few years later, similar events were made public at the Stafford (England) Trust Hospitals. "Trust" is the word the NHS uses for a division, like the old Cook County Hospital System. Despite outcries over Stafford and reminders of Bristol, there was no change in the system -- just in the names of some players. In 2010, the chief of the United Lincolnshire (England again) Hospitals Trust was concerned about needless deaths in his hospitals. When he tried to move these concerns up the NHS corporate chain, he was gagged (legally) and then fired. A new cover-up started, which took over two years to see the light of day. A 14 Feb 2013 headline read, "Deaths, lies and the NHS: Shocking new healthcare scandals emerge in UK." As previously documented in other NHS hospitals, there is evidence of "filthy wards ... understaffing ... excess deaths ... [and] avoidable deaths." The NHS chief, Sir David Nicholson, clearly wanted to protect the system's reputation more than protect sick Britons. Obvious "insanity" in England, but maybe it is just a British problem? Let's look at a different government-controlled healthcare system to our north: Canada. In 2010, Dr. Ciaran McNamee, formerly a surgeon in Alberta, now at Harvard, sued the Alberta Provincial Government for similar reasons as at Bristol, Stafford, and Lincolnshire: inadequate allocation of resources, too few doctors and other providers, not enough beds and equipment. Canadians died needlessly and avoidably. Treatments that would have worked were either Not Approved or Approved for some time in the distant future, rather than when the patients needed care. In my new book, Not Right! - Conversations with We The Patients, I call the former death-by-bureaucracy and the latter death-by-queueing. The recurring pattern is clear. When the government is in control, the budget and rule-following are more important than patient outcomes. When a bureaucrat decides your health care, you lose. The root cause of needless patient deaths is the system, not the individuals. ObamaCare is replicating the British NHS here. The president certainly can't want Americans to die. Thus, he must be insane: he is doing the same thing (as elsewhere) and thinking that the result will be different. His insanity has a medical diagnosis: megalomania, "a psychopathological condition where delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence predominate." The everyday term is "God complex." Someone who has the God complex knows what is best for you better than you do. This person therefore must decide for you because you might make a mistake, and he (God) won't. He takes away your freedom to choose in your best interest. No doubt you demand proof of such an outrageous (!) charge. Proof #1: Examine the substance of ObamaCare. We The Patients are not in control -- the government is, just like Great Britain and Canada. Guess what will happen here. Proof #2: Review how ObamaCare was imposed on We The Patients against our will, for our own good! Proof #3: Watch President Obama's face as Dr. Ben Carson tells him that God knows better than he does. If patients suffer and die needlessly and avoidably under government-controlled healthcare systems, what kind of a system would actually put patients first? Answer: a system where patients are in control of their medical care, and no one else is. What we need as We The People and particularly as We The Patients is the return of our freedom. We need personal control over our own persons. We want to decide for ourselves. We will accept the consequences of our choices. We want to place the responsibility for our welfare, and thus both financial as well as medical controls, in the right hands: ours. Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA gave up practicing clinical medicine after the 2012 election, saying, "I cannot practice ethical medicine under ObamaCare." He is the author of Uproot US Healthcare and Not Right! - Conversations with We The Patients (June 2013) as well as adjunct scholar for the Rio Grande Foundation in New Mexico ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4)Gilded class warriors By Victor Davis Hanson In his first term President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the one-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha's Vineyard and the nation's most exclusive golf courses. Obama never quite squared his accusations that "millionaires and billionaires" had not paid their fair share with his own obvious enjoyment of the perks of "corporate jet owners," "fat cat bankers" and Las Vegas junketeers. Now, that paradox has continued right off the bat in the second term. In the State of the Union, Obama once more went after "the few," and "the wealthiest and the most powerful," whom he blasted as the "well-off and the well-connected" and the "billionaires with high-powered accountants." Like clockwork, the president then jetted to West Palm Beach for yet another golfing vacation at one of the nation's priciest courses, replete with lessons from a $1,000-a-hour golf pro to improve the presidential putting. The rest of the first family jetted off on their own skiing vacation to elite Aspen, Colo., where nobody accepts that at some point they've already "made enough money." Meanwhile, below the stratosphere, unemployment rose to 7.9 percent for January -- the 49th consecutive month it has been 7.8 percent or higher. The economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012, gas is back to almost $4 a gallon, and the government continues to borrow almost $4 billion a day. Today, lots of liberal grandees attack the rich and yet do their best to act and live just like them. Take financial speculator and leftist billionaire George Soros, who is back in the news. Soros is able to fund several progressive think tanks that go after the 1 percent because he is the most successful financial buccaneer of the age -- notorious as "the man who broke the Bank of England" and was convicted of insider trading in France. The Soros family investment firm's most recent speculating coup was betting against the Japanese yen. That made Soros $1.2 billion in just three months -- enough capitalist lucre to keep funding Media Matters and other attack-dog progressive groups for years to come. Facebook co-founder and Obama campaign organizer Chris Hughes just bought the New Republic and has rebranded the magazine as an unapologetic progressive megaphone. How odd that hip Facebook just confessed that it paid no federal or California state income taxes for 2012 on its $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits on its U.S. operations alone. Odder still, Facebook will probably receive a federal tax refund of about $429 million. Apparently Facebook's "well-connected" found some "high-powered accountants" to write off their stock options as a business expense. Perhaps Treasury Secretary-designate Jack Lew should have a look at Facebook's tax contortions. He should be familiar with the big-money paper trail, given that Lew himself took a nearly $1 million bonus from Citigroup after it had received billions of dollars in federal funds to cover its gargantuan losses. Lew, like his tax-dodging predecessor, Timothy Geithner, has a propensity for doing just the opposite of what the president used to preach against. Obama, remember, warned Wall Streeters not to take bonuses after their failing companies received federal money. Obama also derided dubious offshore Cayman Islands tax shelters. Yet he apparently forgot to tell that to Lew, who invested in a fund registered to the same Potemkin Cayman Islands building that Obama had used as a campaign prop to bash the one-percenters. One of the nation's best-known class warriors is former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Chicago, who for years has damned the wealthy for their ill-gotten gains. He is expected to plead guilty to fraud charges after he and his wife allegedly siphoned off $750,000 from their campaign accounts to pay for an assortment of one-percenter extravagances like a $43,000 Rolex watch. Today's leftists like the high life as much as their demonized conservative rivals. The more they damn the bad "millionaires and billionaires," apparently the less guilt they feel about living it up in Palm Beach or Aspen, paying no taxes, offshoring their profits or wearing Rolex watches. The vast growth of the federal government has splashed so much big money around New York and Washington that even muckraking progressives can't resist. Loud redistributionist rhetoric offers the necessary vaccination shot that makes privileged leftists immune from any criticism -- or guilt -- over indulging in tax avoidance, billion-dollar speculation or aristocratic tastes. George Orwell long ago noticed the same thing, when in "Animal Farm" the pig elite loudly damned reactionary humans even as they sought to copy them by walking on two legs. .Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.