Focus People: It’s Health Care & Cap-n-Trade

The only issue before the American people right now is the state of the state. That is, how much more they will allow the state to intervene in their affairs. The issues: health care and taxation.

There is nothing else worth paying attention to this week. Certainly not the nonsense the Obama administration is cooking up about torture. Rick Moran is vehemently against the Bush Administration’s choice to use controversial methods to extricate information from terrorists but says this:

Prosecutions would no doubt please some on the left who want a pound of flesh from Bush administration officials. But is the administration really that keen on reigning in Holder and preventing him from looking at this “dark chapter in our history?”

Methinks the Obama administration doth protest too much. A distraction like this is just what the doctor ordered to take people’s minds off the fact that the stim bill isn’t working, that there is a growing call from Obama’s left flank for a second stimulus measure, that his cap and trade bill is in big trouble in the senate, and that it is far from certain that his his health care plan will come out the way he wants – with a public option that will be paid for without taxing the middle class.

Rallying his base to the cause of prosecuting Bush administration officials for torture will also take their minds off how he has betrayed them on a host of issues from gay rights to his agreement to indefinite detentions of terrorists.

So might this unleashing of Holder on Bush era torture crimes be nothing more than a distraction from the woeful economy that is resisting the president’s importunings to improve? Obama wouldn’t be the first president to use the tactic and he wouldn’t be the last if that is his game.

A good old fashioned investigation with strategic leaks and the spectacle of Bushies marching into the Justice Department to testify would serve as excellent bait for the media who no doubt would go overboard in their coverage of the hated Bush administration’s torture policies.

Bread and circuses worked for the Roman pro-consuls who used the spectacles to distract a populace constantly on the verge of starvation.

Why not Obama?

Oh yes, yes. A show trial would be great fun for the 10% of the crazy leftists who would relish every moment of seeing Dick Cheney squirm. The other 90% of Americans would be disgusted at more government nonsense in the face of the economic crises that Biden admitted was worse that the administration thought.

But really what the Holder threats are all about is a distraction from something Americans are finding more ominous than the economy: more debt in service of more government programs no matter how well-intentioned. Americans are nervous about the spending, even spending that they’ve been told will benefit them. (A lie, but whatever, people believe it, because it’s pleasing to believe it.)

Erick Erickson notes this well:

Don’t play the game.

Sonya Sotomayor will be confirmed. Ignore that ball as best you can.

Dick Cheney will need some help, but we don’t all need to focus on that ball.

The interrogators will not be prosecuted. It is a ruse. Do not be distracted.

Cap and Trade and Obamacare are the balls in play. Keep focusing on them.

We cannot afford to be distracted from these two policy initiatives. They are trying to distract us. We must target Congress on healthcare and cap and trade.

It is a telling point of the game’s existence that the Democrats have not revealed the terms of their healthcare legislation. They want us fully distracted by these other matters before they do and rush it through.

Focus people. The rest of these trivialities will suck up media time because it’s fun and it’s gossip fodder. They also play the game and know that the enormous tax increases involved in these two monster issues are boring and fear-inducing to people. The press, liberals almost entirely, want these policies to pass. The only way for that to happen is if people remain ignorant. They’ll do their part to make that happen.

Focus. The whole of the future of America rests on the decisions the next couple weeks. After this, President Obama will have spent his arsenal. Democrats are looking for reelection and need time and space between these votes because people are going to be furious when the reality of the taxes and reduced benefits hit their lives.

Obama wants to remake America into a state-run, workers paradise. He wants to redistribute wealth–that’s his notion of fairness. He will have to make this new state on the backs of those who contribute and produce. They have to give approval for this to happen.

The people must rise up now and stop them if they value capitalism and liberty, for the two go hand in hand.

Posted in America • Isms • Political Animals