Pushing National Healthcare with Senator Kennedy's Corpse

De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum Dicendum Est — In a Pig’s Ear.

In the biggest display of maudlin excess since — well, since “Jacko” died, but probably going back to the death of Elvis — the hive started shrieking that the health disaster bill should be renamed “Kennedy Care” and passed immediately in honor of a liar, a cad, a murderer, and a drunk who benefited handsomely for half a century because his brother had been president.

In the latest thoroughly typical demonstration of squashy sentiment and opportunism the Democrats and their trough-grubbing sycophants jumped right at the chance not to let an emotional “crisis” go to waste before Ted Kennedy’s body was cold on a gurney.

Gary Bauer notes: “From CBS to ABC, from CNN to MSNBC the message was the same: Conservatives and dissenting “Blue Dog” Democrats need to get out of the way and allow Big Government liberals, inspired by Kennedy’s heroic 15-month struggle, to give us government-run healthcare. Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge, saying, ‘Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration.'”

Balderdash. A useless, vicious, amoral man is dead at seventy-seven after a lifetime of excesses — and I don’t see how it can be described as “a heroic fifteen month struggle;” What’s heroic about having cancer, other than that he didn’t die of cirrohsis of the liver as many of us supposed he would eventually? Did he give up drinking, or something?

Are there “cowardly” struggles against cancer? We all know how Kennedy would have fared under what he was trying to foist on the rest of us and never intended for the elite to settle for. He would have gotten a handsome offer to go to sleep quietly under a doctor-induced overdose of morphine.

We have the best quality health care in the world; what we don’t have is the taxpayers paying all of the costs. We hear constant howls of how high our mortality rate is; if you add the number ten cause of death to our stats it makes a difference. That “disease?” Auto accidents. The same estimates do not filter out the high number of homicides among those who toil not, neither do they spin. This is another cost of life on the Welfare Plantation. Take murder and vehicular trauma out and we not only have the best health care in the world but our costs are lower.

What’s wrong with health “care” is government intervention since the Nineteen Forties, which got around government-imposed wage controls leading to the notion of “benefits” such as paying part of the doctors bills in lieu of forbidden raises.

The inchoate Socialized medicine propositions are disastrous from every angle, full of lost freedoms, exorbitant costs, and vast expansions of government, and they won’t lower the accident rate or keep gangs of assorted persuasions from killing each other, either.

The not even vaguely tragic death of Edward Kennedy has nothing to do with the merits of the case, not that I have ever been able to see any. If the fourteen per cent. of hard-core Liberals want to set up a monument to their “Liberal Lion” they may do anything they please with my blessing — so long as it does not involve passing legislation or spending taxpayer or fresh-printed Bernanke dollars for the purpose. Perhaps a vulgar display at Chappaquidick memorializing Mary Jo Kopechne’s swimming lesson. His favorite liquor provider might well contribute, mourning the passing of such a good customer.

I can’t put this better than Mr. Bauer did: “Nationalized healthcare, socialized medicine, or KennedyCare – whatever they want to call it – is a bad idea, and its defects have not been cured by the senator’s passing. No one who was against another Big Government power grab when Ted Kennedy was alive should now toss their principles out of the window and cave in just because he has passed away. In fact, the Left and their media shills should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting his death in such a crass and cynically partisan way.” Bravo, Mr. Bauer.

Over 70% of us don’t want anything to do with the government grabbing 16% of the economy when it can’t run a revenue-neutral postal service. We are already spending ruinous amounts to cover the health costs of millions of illegal “immigrants” and many more millions on welfare. Medicare is so far in the hole it will never be pulled out…unless the “Kennedy Care” bill passes and Medicare is gutted completely to the detriment of a large proportion of the citizenry that actually pays taxes. We don’t want to fund abortion, and we are firmly against the notion that oldsters must go in for mandatory — mandatory!!! — counseling every five years on the benefits of doctor-assisted suicide.

We are attempting to tell our representatives in Congress how we feel, but they are using every trick to defeat us. (See companion article.) We found out that Chet Edwards held a town hall meeting here, today. Gee, tough if you didn’t read the Bryan Daily Eagle in time to go.

The Dems are rightfully hoist by their own petard; Kennedy’s death is one less ultra-left-wing vote, and he cannot be replaced physically quickly due to legislation the Left forced through the Massachusetts legislature a while back when they wanted to prevent a Republican governor from replacing a senator. A special election must be called, and the estimate I saw indicates that Harry Reid will have to struggle along with only 59 votes for a while, poor fellow. This is pertinent because the legislation needed to be thrust through on greased wheels and parliamentary tricks before we the people found out the details or what this abomination would cost.

Too late, Statists. We know.

Every time figures come out they are worse than the previous estimates. When even the White House can’t come up with more sanguine estimates than that Obama is going to add nine trillion to the national debt, up two trillion from their guess just weeks ago, who knows exactly how bad the tab would be? They’re supposed to be on his side!  Such estimates are always far less than actual costs. Over twenty per cent. up already, and just wait until 2024.

The CBO says that a scant five years from now “Kennedy Care” or “Cirrhosis Care” or the “Obama Abortion” or whatever one wants to call it would raise the deficit by five billion dollars, which isn’t exactly snack money. The next year the costs would increase the deficit by forty billion. Why the difference? Because the giveaways aren’t slated to start until 2013.

Fifteen years from now the experts suppose that we will have scattered around over six-tenths of a trillion dollars, and the cream of the jest is that doesn’t even include the costs of the “Public Option” which will replace Medicare and Medicaid. Those are bad programs which waste staggering sums, but the PO will add a new use for a vulgarism ladies are not allowed to utter, indicating that one is upset.

To be trite, if you think health insurance is expensive now, wait until it is “free.” It won’t be free for you or for me. We’ll be paying for what we don’t want and don’t use and paying for untold millions who have no claim on tax dollars even by the lax definition of those who somehow found a “right” to healthcare under that tattered “living, breathing document” the rest of us thought was a straight-forward contract known as the Constitution.

Is there nothing nice I can say about Edward Kennedy?

Ted Kennedy’s record speaks for itself:  Being expelled TWICE from Harvard for cheating, using family influence to keep him out of a war zone and halve a voluntary Army enlistment, cited four times for reckless driving while in law school, injured while driving drunk in 1964 (details sealed for twenty years), the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969, when Teddy got off with a suspended two month sentence for “leaving the scene of an accident,” with no penalty for leaving a conscious young woman trapped in the car, and a great many shennanigans involving liquor and scantily clad young females in public places. A charming episode more recently involving his nephew and cries of “Rape!”

Kennedy’s public career was as “distinguished” as his Army one, where he never rose above private during the two years of his four-year hitch Papa Joe, the bootlegger and fervent Nazi supporter, couldn’t get him out of. Infesting the Senate for 47 years Kennedy did little, but what he did was disastrous: he was responsible for one of the most deleterious of all policy changes, the deliberate flooding of the US with immigrants from third world countries, changing the face of America forever for his own ends. He worked constantly for amnesty for illegal “immigrants,” another way to skew the no-longer-existent “melting pot” and increase votes for leftwing policies. The man who brought us the Balkanization of the USA strove endlessly to ruin the level of medical care available here, as well.

A friend writes, “Not to mention the pious grilling he gave the last two Supreme Court nominees, as if he was the standard bearer for the nation in matters of ‘what’s right.’ What a pompous ass! He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and very disrespectful to ladies. JERK is a better description than ‘great American.’ ‘A blonde in every pond’ is his motto. Let’s not allow the spin doctors make this jerk a hero  —  how quickly the American public forgets what his real legacy is.”

Part of what set me off so that I broke an ancient shibboleth is that our local rag ran three sentences as a side bar using the new adoring sobriquet of “the liberal lion,” without quotes or capitalization, showing how much in lockstep they are, and that they couldn’t think of anything nice to say about Ted Kennedy, either.

Above the fold the story is that local representative Chet Edwards having a town hall. Oops…was. Surprise…if you don’t take the paper (and most don’t, any more)…you didn’t know about it until too late. The details were released conveniently at a time and in such a way that few knew to attend, although the Sheriff’s Department was laid on to be there. The other banner is “DEBT NEWS DIRE, 17 T deficit feared by ’19.” Below the fold two bold headlines, “Layoffs part of Bryan budget plan,” and “Swine Flu could follow path of 1957 outbreak.” (A “pandemic that was briefly harsh but rarely fatal!” exclamation point mine.)

What ails America as revealed in those headlines is due to Ted Kennedy, fellow legislators from Massachusetts, and collectivists everywhere.

I’m half Irish, and I regard Kennedy as a disgrace to my ancient heritage. It’s enough to make me think “No Irish need apply” may not have been such a bad idea.

“Nil nisi bonum?” If I had chosen to do that this would have been a very short article.

Unrepentently yours,
Linda Brady Traynham

September 1, 2009