the rightwing czar

“$787 billion for a stimulus. $1.8 trillion for healthcare. Calling Steny Hoyer a liar: priceless.”

A great piece over at Legal Insurrection looks at how the Democrats might start wishing they weren’t pushing the Birther story so hard. What they thought was an excellent way to destroy the public perception of Republicans (likely to distract them from Obama’s healthcare reform blowing up in his face), might end up backfiring:

Kuhn plays it a little coy, but he basically has it right. Media Matters, Think Progress, and a host of left-wing blogs all became obsessed with the Birther theory and movement in the past month, as opposition mounted to Obama’s health care plans. What better than to distract attention.

But it is backfiring. It’s like telling people not to think about something, which virtually guarantees they will think about it.

Oops?

By now you’ve probably heard about the WSJ poll that recently dropped showing ObamaCare support plummeting faster than anyone can keep track of.

An economic writer for the WSJ told Megyn Kelly this morning that ObamaCare requires too many “leaps of faith” than Americans are willing to take right now while the economy is still slumping and jobs are scarce. Of particular interest here is the point that women are starting to defect in a major way from ObamaCare – which is really affecting the polling because women are also the primary spenders of healthcare money. It’s bad news for the Democrats if women find themselves particularly displeased with healthcare reform. They happen to be a pretty important part of every Democrat’s reelection plans.

This, folks, is the way to reach the hearts of wasteful Americans everywhere. You know what they say: vadalism is the best evangelism:

And now, after repeatedly calling out HP for using PVC and hazardous chemicals in its devices, the group has taken matters into its own hands — specifically, by slipping into the company’s Palo Alto headquarters and painting “hazardous products” on the roof, in really big letters, with non-toxic children’s paint.

Hey, at least they used non-toxic children’s paint, right?

This clip is double awesome. Not only does Pence lay down in clear, understandable language why the public option will mean an indirect government takeover of the healthcare industry – but you also get the joy of of watching Andrea Mitchell make a fool of herself.

Pence suggests that ObamaCare is going to cause up to a trillion dollars in new taxes and Mitchell wants to correct him. You see, ObamaCare doesn’t call for a trillion dollars in new taxes, she says, it calls for a trillion dollars in new spending. Uh, and how exactly are we going to pay for that new spending, Andrea?

Wait for the Easter egg at the end when Pence says Medicare ending up costing more than we thought it would and Mitchell takes that to mean he is against Medicare. Is she seriously this crazy?

What is it exactly that makes this so hard for liberals to understand? If the government starts undercutting private insurance companies – because their plan is being paid for by taxdollars - then those private insurers are going to go out of business. Sounds simple, right? Tell that to Andrea Mitchell.

Why is it, exactly, that conservatives seem to get these crazy ideas about how the far-left in this country don’t seem to like America very much?

Oh yeah:

You know who I’m talking about. He’s the same guy who voted for Obama while insisting that it’s important to keep our government small and efficient. Oh, and not too long ago he let us know that Republicans aren’t very nice to minorities so we should probably support Sotomayor’s nomination to make up for it or something.

That’s right, it’s Colin Powell:

“I think Skip, perhaps in this instance, might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer and that might have been the end of it,” Powell said in an interview with CNN’s Larry King. “I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal.”

If Powell is throwing in the towel I’m not sure who is left out there to give credible support to Gates (and Obama). The news dropped yesterday that some Obama voters on the Cambridge police force (specifically, an African American) won’t vote for him again because of this.

Is there any bright side for Obama after his indefensible accusation that the Cambridge police force acted stupidly? Maybe:

At this time, voters are skeptical about the ability of the reform effort to help control the cost of health care. Just 23% believe passage of the reform legislation will lead to lower health care costs. Most voters (53%) say it will lead to higher costs, while 18% expect prices to remain about the same.

Okay, so maybe it isn’t that bright of a side. But if we had seen this past week’s news cycle focusing solely on healthcare and Obama’s terrible press conference, the number of people thinking that prices will go up because of ObamaCare might be even higher.

Well, maybe not on purpose. But I’m confused about how this fits into his larger goal of putting Americans back to work, or whatever it is he says he is doing.

Harry Reid is calling this “destination discrimination” and wants to put an end to it. That might have something to do with his re-election chances – plus Democrats can’t resist the opportunity to complain about discrimination.

What would you call a politician who campaigns passionately against government secrecy, advocates for new levels of government transparency, but once elected does virtually nothing to reverse the practices he once found so deplorable? If you’re a reporter for MSNBC, he might be “decidedly mixed” on the issue.

In practice, the new president’s record on government secrecy and transparency has turned out to be decidedly mixed, with his administration seeming to take as many steps toward shielding government information as it has toward exposing it to the sunshine.

Oh don’t worry, the story gets better:

Depending on who’s talking, Obama’s administration can be described as either one of the most accountable and open in history, or one of the least. One reason is that the term “open government” means different things to different people.

Depending on who’s talking? Open government can have different meanings? We elected our first post-modern president and now MSNBC has apparently decided that otherwise simple ideas like “open government” might not as clear a concept as it was when Bush was in office.

According to MSNBC, Obama gets credit for a type of transparency that no one has ever heard of before, much less considered it a form of a transparency. This transparency has to do with opening communication between Americans and the federal government, which is a fancy way of saying Obama’s staff responds to your e-mails you send them.

For others, it means that if a citizen has a concern or wants to express an opinion, he no longer has to put a letter in the mail or telephone his congressman. Instead, he can post a message on a government Web site or send an e-mail making his point — and sometimes receive a response — almost immediately.

So instead of sending a letter to Obama, we can send an e-mail. Aren’t you blown away by the steps the President has taken to assure us open government?

The real question is, how is Obama doing on the issues of transparency he campaigned for? I don’t remember him giving any impassioned speeches about how it was important that a transparent government respond to e-mails, but I do remember him speaking out against executive privilege and secrecy in the Bush administration. When it comes to transparency, how does our champ hold up to his own standard? Not so good, as you can imagine.

Candidate Obama furiously criticized Bush for not making meetings and deliberations with lobbyists public, but President Obama refused to release information on healthcare executives meeting in the White House. Candidate Obama campaigned against the Bush administration’s secret use of rendition programs; President Obama happily stood by Bush’s position. Candidate Obama promised he would put all non-emergency bills online for at least 5 days before signing them into law, President Obama promptly ignored that promise.

Personally, I never heard an advocacy group complaining that the Bush administration wasn’t transparent enough because they were too slow at responding to e-mails. But it’s a post-modern world, I suppose, and I better get used to the many different definitions of “open government” that MSNBC think exist.

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