Hillary Knows Best - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Hillary Knows Best
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BITTER MEDICINE
Re: Andrew Cline’s Hard to Swallow:

OK, let’s break this down into bite-sized chunks.

First, the fact that a Quinnipiac University poll found that 64 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “It’s the government’s responsibility to make sure everyone in the United States has adequate health care” really means that 64 percent of Americans have not read the U.S. Constitution lately.

Federal government involvement in health care violates the law of the land on so many different levels that it is absurd to think our citizenry will allow the libs to get away with this latest proposal.

Second, HillaryCare Ver2.0 mandates that everyone purchase health insurance. That government power is listed nowhere in Article 1, Section 8, nor does it comply with the fourth, fifth, tenth, or fourteenth Amendments.

Third, HillaryCare Ver2.0 requires proof of health insurance before attaining employment. Think about that for a minute. If you are in a position to self-insure, or if you and your family have made the deliberate choice not to purchase health insurance due to excellent health or for any other reason, who’s the government to say otherwise.

Lastly, there is a significant difference between the concept of “health insurance” and “health care,” the biggest being that no American can be denied access to health care. Yup, it’s a government statute that requires everyone to be seen in an emergency room, even if one cannot pay for it. And because of that statute, health care is already government-run to some degree, regardless that Hillary says “not so.”
Owen H. Carneal, Jr.
Yorktown, Virginia

So nationalized health care is back. Someone must have pulled the stake from its heart. TennCare, the Tennessee model for nationalized health care, was a test case during the Clinton era. If it had succeeded, it would have been the poster child for the national version. It was rife with corruption and unexpected results. Sick people from neighboring states were using Tennessee relatives’ addresses in order to “qualify” for TennCare. Small business owners, who were providing medical insurance for their employees, simply stopped doing so, and let TennCare pick up the tab.

If freebies are passed out, then there must be restrictions. If a rich family hosts an elegant banquet, then it will be by invitation only, and those invitations will be checked at the door by strong men. If “free” healthcare is being passed out, then we must stop illegal immigration. Does this mean that Hillary Clinton would close our borders and enforce our immigration laws? I don’t think so.
David Shoup
Augusta, Georgia

Why do you call it universal when it is socialism? Yes, poor persons do need health care but like everything else, if they implement that, they will just up the income that is classified the poor. They want socialism, big government, big bureaucracy, high taxes and the power to tell the citizens how to act, think and basically to control our lives. It stinks to high heaven. Call it what it is not what is PC.
Tom MacKay

Let’s see if I understand. The same government that got us into Vietnam and Iraq; created welfare to end poverty in America; runs our education system; keeps airlines flying on time; and maintains our bridges is now going to provide us healthcare.

Mrs. Clinton proposes to raise the taxes on “only the wealthiest Americans” to pay the trillions of dollars this will cost. (She says billions, but has there ever been a government program the cost of which didn’t very quickly quadruple or quintuple?)

Let’s see if I understand. Only “the richest Americans” will pay for this. I’m guessing that since less than half of Americans pay any federal income taxes at all, they must be the “richest.” That takes us back to Mrs. Clinton’s remark during her 90’s attempts to hijack the medical system, that “no physician needs to make more than $70,000 a year anyway.”

My then educated guess is that richest Americans are those who make $70,000 and up. Hmm. I never thought of myself as rich. I guess once Mrs. Clinton gets elected I can buy a new Lexus and stop driving a 10 year old Taurus. Or maybe a Mercedes or BMW. Aren’t they what rich people drive?

There is an upside though. We won’t have to listen to school teachers whine about salaries anymore. While at $50,000 they are not among the “richest” they certain are very well off!
Jay Molyneaux

Does anyone sense the irony in the fact that the very same people who tout federal government-run healthcare are the ones who complain about its incompetence in virtually every other arena?
Arnold Ahlert
Boca Raton, Florida

SQUEEZING JUICE
Re: Jay D. Homnick’s Hold That O.J>:

Excellent wordplay by Mr. Homnick. I never thought I’d be able to enjoy something written about O.J. Simpson, but here it is. The old saying “what goes around comes around” is what is finally being visited upon Mr. Simpson.

I do differ in opinion from Mr. Homnick on the Goldmans. I believe they are driven to stick their finger in O.J.’s eye in any way they can. To think that he could have profited from the sale of his sickening story was their purpose in going after the profits. They have vowed to be Ron’s angels and make life difficult for his killer in any way they can here on Earth. They also wanted O.J.’s confession out there for the world see. I don’t believe they give a rat’s patootie about their own profits.

Thanks for the column.
Deborah Durkee
Marietta, Georgia

Not quite, Mr. Homnick. Many cops still want only to be seen with Simpson, and to tell of tales while they were in his presence. That was the case in L.A., and that was the case here also. Anyone else would have been arrested that night, not three days later. Simpson, when arrested, was taken out of the Palms without being legitimately handcuffed — that is, he was handcuffed for show, without both wrists being connected, under cover of clothing.
Other cops, and prosecutors, have different ideas fortunately.
James Wilson
Las Vegas, Nevada

Just a minute — Homer Simpson isn’t the self-righteous one. Lisa is. It’s gotten especially bad in the past season or two, where she’s become little more than a mouthpiece for the screenwriters, letting us know how bad anyone is who isn’t following the Hollywood liberal party line.

Homer is the nice one.
John Lockwood
Washington, D.C.

Don’t bet against O.J. just yet. I am sure the sport books in Vegas have already posted the odds for bail, trial and acquittal. The man is slipperier than a snake. By the time they exhume Johnnie Cochran and get on with the trial and a million “FREE OJ” tee shirts are sold, the viper will turn out to be the victim.
Tom Bullock
West Covina, California

It is galling for Mr. Homnick to refer to that double murderer as “O.J.” Why is he not referred to as “Simpson” rather than his whimsical nickname?
Charles Heifet

“What happened in Las Vegas — whatever it was, right, wrong or indifferent — will be staying in Las Vegas… for a long, long time.”

From your Pen to God’s ear.
Elaine Kyle

MEDIA SANITY
Re: James Bowman’s III’s Media Madness:

While I agree with some of what James Bowman wrote, to complete the picture of Media Madness one has to include this article and others like it that divert our attention from important issues. The game, as it is currently played, is that the “liberal media” questions or criticizes the president and the GOP and the “right wing media” criticizes the “liberal media.”

So what are the important issues? Two were raised by Republicans John Warner and Lindsey Graham. John Warner asked General Petraeus if the war in Iraq is making us safer. He doesn’t know. Does anybody in the current administration? Lindsey Graham outlined the cost of the war in terms of life, limb and money and asked if the sacrifice is worth it. General Petraeus and Mr. Croker couldn’t say at this time. Maybe we’ll know at some point in the future, say six months from now.

I found Mr. Bowman’s dismissal of Al Greenspan’s suggestion that the war in Iraq is about oil particularly interesting. If not oil, Mr. Bowman, then what is the war about? WMD (not found), to punish our 9/11 attackers (no connection), to get rid of a murderous tyrant (Mr. Cheney rightly warned against this during the first gulf war), to create a democracy in the Middle East (the president opposed “nation building” during his first campaign), to stand up now so we can stand down in the near future when certain benchmarks are met (not happening), to join forces with the Sunnis (the minority group in Iraq and Hussein’s followers) against al-Qaeda (who were not initially in Iraq) or something else? Didn’t the vice president tell us that Iraqi oil would pay for this war? That didn’t work out either.

Looking for another issue that is more pressing to write about than Sally Field’s comment or MoveOn. org’s advertisement? Try the economy, the current deficit and the national debt. That “media mad” Al Greenspan just wrote a book about how well the president and the Republicans, those paragons of fiscal responsibility, have managed all three.

When are conservatives going to start being conservative and stop being apologists for the president and the GOP?
Mike Roush
North Carolina

THAT’LL BE THE DAY
Re: W. James Antle III’s Massachusetts Miracle:

I simply wish to ask what Mr. Antle has been drinking. I have a G-note that I would be willing to bet Mr. Antle that the Democrat wins the special election. As a matter of fact, I feel pretty sure that Mr. Tsongas, were he on the ballot, would win the election, regardless of the fact that he assumed room temperature a significant span of time ago. If the Dem fails to win one way, he/she will win another way. Belichick’s video camera guy is available.
Ken Shreve
New Hampshire

WILL IT POUR IN NEW YORK?
Re: Alfred S. Regnery’s Single Malt in the Blue Ridge:

What will paying his taxes to the revenue boys avail Alfred Regnery’s distiller friend, if the Mayor of New York gets wind of his quality product originating in “a sweet and smoky mash”?

No friend of Jimmy Walker or Johnny Walker, Bloomberg may declare its malthouse reek contraband as a fuming hookah in the front window of Mortimer’s, or possession of a cigarette lighter within 1,000 yards of Elaine’s.

Unless hizzoner is brought to heel by a class action suit, the Virginia Malt industry may be stillborn north of the Mason Jar-Dixon line as the pint-sized tyrant’s minions declare Talisker a Class A carcinogen, and felonize the indoor exhalation of the second hand smoke dissolved in Mr. Wasmund’s elixir.
Russell Seitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts

RECLAIMING BONHOEFFER
Re: Mark Tooley’s Goodbye to American Christendom?:

If James Kennedy overly romanticized the Christian America of days past, clerical talking-heads such as Hauerwas and Willimon have fallen ferociously in love with the “Babylonian captivity” of the Church during Hitler’s Reich. Both Hauerwas and Willimon and all are “more interested in strengthening a confessing church based on the model of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s alternative community in Hitler’s Germany.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was but one among thousands of Christians to fall under Hitler’s wrath and he himself would have claimed little more. He would not be remembered today except for the posthumous publication of Papers and Letters From Prison. With that work, American divines have latched onto Bonhoeffer’s notion of “religionless Christianity” tighter than a miser on a nickel. Although Bonhoeffer himself toward the end of Papers and Letters From Prison wrote that his thoughts on religionless Christianity were undigested and needed more reflection, self-styled “modern Christians” hijacked Bonhoeffer as a banner under which much mischief of the liberal variety has been committed in his name. In the following years, several of his other books and writings have been publishing revealing Bonhoeffer as a far more orthodox Lutheran than the theological world had let on or was comfortable with. But the crafted legend of Bonhoeffer was far more interesting and useful than the real man.

The truth was that Bonhoeffer’s “alternative community” was an ill-fated and short-lived response to the rise of a hostile, pagan, totalitarian ideology. Such a community only made sense as an emergency arrangement in extreme circumstances and was never envisioned as a model for the Church everywhere at all times. A “confessing church” according to the Lutheran Confessions was a church which preached the Gospel and kept the sacraments. Its task under the grasp of the Reich was to proclaim to the German people that Christ and not Hitler was Lord.

As used today, Bonhoeffer’s “alternative community” is exploited to advocate Christianity unanchored to the past — free for political activism of the predictable caste. The divinity of Jesus may be in doubt; but the dictates of “economic and social justice” are carved in stone. These are far a field from Bonhoeffer’s most idle and quirky musings. Had James Kennedy and Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in the same time, it is unlikely they would have been on each other’s radar. But each would have fed all who would listen more solid food. Each would have preached Christ crucified.
Mike Dooley

MOVED TO RESPOND
Re: The Washington Prowler’s The New York TimesMoveOn:

Can’t you guys at least try not to lie to people? Thanks.

From the New York Times Website:

Among the critics has been the American Spectator, which wrote: “The New York Times in the past has rejected ‘advocacy’ ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as well as from the National Right to Life Committee, despite the fact that both would have qualified for the same ‘special advocacy, stand by’ rates.”

Mr. Jespersen said in the telephone interview that the advertising department had rejected a right-to-life ad because it contained an illustration that did not meet the paper’s standards of taste. “It had nothing to do with the message of the group,” he said.

As for the Swift Boat veterans group, which in the 2004 presidential campaign questioned Senator John Kerry’s military record, it never tried to place an ad with The New York Times, according to Mike Russell, communications director for the Swift Boat group.

“There was never an effort to mock up an ad for The New York Times and there was never any refusal for any ad copy because none was submitted,” Mr. Russell said.

William Aviles

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