Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics knows that what he is saying is patently false.  The moment the government nationalizes medical insurance, it will undercut all other insurers since the Government doesn’t need to make a profit, whereas insurers do.  Employers, always mindful of their bottom line, will immediately transfer over to the Government plan and all ability of the insured to choose their provider will be lost.  The resultant overload of the government system will force the rationing of health care services.  Soon, the other insurers will be forced out of business and Voilà!, we will have arrived at the goal, previously stated by the President and others like Barney Frank, of a single-payer, Government-run system–just like the failing, overburdened socialized medicine systems of Canada and England.

Now, since facts are stubborn things, the only way the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats can contend with facts that contradict their unfounded assertions is to demonize their opponents.  Nancy Pelosi makes bizarre and fantastic claims that opponents of the Health Care Industry takeover arrive at Town hall meetings displaying Swastikas!  Barbara Boxer makes up wondrous tales of “well-dressed” yet angry “mobs” who must (obviously) be paid by nefarious rabble-rousers to undermine the saintly agenda of the President.  Instead of their concerns being addressed, these eloquent common folk, fired by the passion of their convictions and legitimately dismayed by the direction our country is going in, are dismissed across the board by Democrat legislators as mere rabble.  Is this what our Founders envisioned as a representative form of government?

Still, one can easily write off the flailing response of legislators who see their unbridled quest for power being undermined by a populace informed of the stubborn facts.  Much more frightening, is what is written next on that White House blog:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

So, let me get this straight: the same people who went ballistic over a supposed “invasion of privacy” because the Bush Administration dared to use computerized (read, mechanical) monitoring of phone lines to ferret out domestic terrorists, are now asking that personal e-mails and “casual conversation(s)” that disagree with the Party Line be reported to the Feds?  If I dare to send my friends an e-mail that contains some stubborn facts – leave aside this highly public article – will I be visited by the “men in black”?  Maybe I should get my tax records in order for the coming IRS audit.

Anyone who has read Jonah Goldberg’s seminal history book Liberal Fascism will immediately recognize what is going on here.  Leftist ideology, to the large extent that it is indistinguishable today from Fascist ideals, depends largely upon shutting down the free flow of information.  Furthermore, as the supposed “Health Care Crisis” and the “Climate Change Crisis” so aptly illustrate, the modern Left (a far cry from classic Liberalism) needs to manufacture crises to get it’s agenda passed before anyone can understand or object.   After all, it’s all those stubborn facts that keep getting in the way of “transformation,” and one way to insure that a crisis remains a crisis is to limit public access to those doggone stubborn facts.

There was a huge “crisis” that needed Congress to immediately pass the “Stimulus” bill.  Over a thousand pages long, it couldn’t wait long enough for the members of Congress to read it.  Forget the Obama campaign promise to have a five-day period for public comment before any bill is passed.  No, the “crisis” was too great to spare even a moment’s delay.  Of course, once it was passed, the Obama Administration took several days to arrange a wastefully expensive photo-op bill-signing in Denver.  So much for urgency.

As it is, we as a people, are already deep into uncharted territory when it comes to the effects of an unprecedented expansion of Government spending and control of our personal lives.  Everyone–Left, Right, or Center–should be very alarmed by the kind of rhetoric coming from the White House that I quoted above.  The White House is now explicitly asking us to snitch on our neighbors.  In this great country, the foundation of our freedom depends upon our ability to know and disseminate the stubborn facts and then debate their consequences.  Let’s all make sure that those pesky, stubborn facts can continue to be freely spoken.

Hey, stuff happens.  Yes we can.

No, it’s the Swine Flu which is the new crisis-in-the-making and it’s quickly becoming the Crisis du Jour.  Texas Governor Rick Perry declared ‘a Disaster’ in his state after a two-yr-old boy tragically died after returning from Mexico.  Seems a bit of an overreaction, but maybe not.  It’s shaping up to be a pandemic of epic proportions, for as of this writing, ninety-one cases of Swine Flu have already been diagnosed in this country.  Ninety-one.  At this rate, in a week, there may be, literally, several hundred outbreaks reported. 

In a nation of 300 million.

To answer this new ‘crisis’, the CDC announced it is ‘standing ready to act’.  They are ready to prepare new inoculation serums to combat the disease.  And it will only take fourteen weeks to have the vaccines ready for distribution.

Fourteen weeks.    Uh…say again?   Three-and-a-half months?  

Well, that’s a relief.

Okay.  So I’ve got my surgical mask and Nyquil on standby.  And since I’m an irascibly cynical curmudgeon shut-in, I’ll have no problem duct-taping my doors and windows and refusing to see daylight for three months.  (“Just slide the pizza in under the door, dude!”)  But I am morbidly curious to see how this will all shake out.  And I’m wondering also if this will end up being like The Great Bird Flu Crisis of 2006.  Remember that one?  You don’t?  Well, neither do I really, such a non-event it was.  But the government stirred up such a panic, people were running around with surgical masks, weeping in the streets, flipping their birds and choking their chickens.  All right, maybe they weren’t weeping in the streets… but they were doing all the rest.  (I had pictures, but Breitbart stole them.)

But it was a crisis, and surely deserved the billions spent combating it.  Didn’t it?

Now, in the midst of the current Economic Crisis…which is happening in the midst of the current Climate Change Crisis (hey, what happened to ‘Global Warming’?  Did focus poll results teach them that people had developed Global Warming fatigue?  Weenies.) …we have the Swine Flu Crisis.  An impending pandemic in our midst.  We must act/spend and we must act/spend now!  Before it’s too late! (And you wake up and realize they’ve act/spent all your money.)

On a side note, I think it’s fairly remarkable that it took a bunch of sick pigs for anyone to seriously consider actually sealing our southern borders. 

I’m just sayin’…

Another point of curiosity to me:  I’m wondering how, in the religious culture that reviles anything to do with pork, this swine flu will impact the Muslim community, both here and abroad.  Will a new fatwa be issued?  Will Farmer John and Oscar Mayer be slated for jihad?   (And while I’m toying with the ridiculous… Anyone know if the movie, “BABE” was banned in the Middle East?)

Just sayin’…

Any fan of history will remember that all instances of massive subjugation of a people had a strikingly consistent precursor:  the Crisis.   In the name of crisis, huge movements of central government control and power are instituted.  The frightened and panicked masses willingly give up autonomy and individual freedom so that their leader will solve the crisis and keep them safe and secure. 

The government, thinking that the masses are too stupid and uninformed to possibly understand how to care for themselves, wields that mighty power; backed by the military force, to set new laws, restrictions, and controls in place.  Huge amounts of tax money are spent immediately, just to get everyone in up to their necks, committed to battling the new crisis.  Troops are organized and mobilized to get the military into play, for the security of the communities, dontcha know.  Civilian volunteer groups are organized and set into motion and empowered in this new crusade to save The People.  (And by the way – ‘The People’ shakes down to meaning this:  Everyone But You.)  The accommodating, and state-controlled Media (You think ‘can’t happen here’?   Just wait for the next ‘communication crisis’.) tout this move as ‘unprecedented but necessary’…and ‘heroic acts of self-sacrifice’…and the ‘noble fight for the people’…etc, etc, etc. 

All that is required is a fawning adoration for a charismatic leader…a blind and naive willingness to be ‘taken care of’…and the popular or even tacit agreement that there is a Crisis of unprecedented magnitude that requires the government making big Changes.

Change we can believe in.

(Ryan Seacrest) – “Hello!  And welcome to, NAME THAT WEEKLY CRISIS!  On our show, each contestant hears the SSD (Societal Symptoms of Disaster) of the week, and when one of them hits the buzzer, they must…NAME THAT CRISIS!   If they guess correctly they win hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars and chance at the Lightning Round:  The Run For Congress!!”

Raucous studio applause.

“If at the end of the Congressional Run, you can drive the Media Assistance Bus through the Focus-Group Polling Maze… your total score may enable you to scale Popularity Mountain where, if you climb the National Panic Meter and can come up with the Mystery Crisis To Break The Bank…you can possibly win the grand prize, GRAND EXALTED EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE!  Plus an appearance on American Idol.”

Thunderous studio applause! …and…go to commercial.

 Oh sure… You may be laughing now…but you won’t be laughing when Prez-O is up on that stage dancin’ and shakin’ it with Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson.

Now that’s a crisis.

It’s funny how the Left are shattered to mind-numbing stupor and trepidation over the economy, global warming, and the swine flu…but seem to be fairly complacent, if not irresponsibly myopic with regards to hundreds of millions of Islamofascist terrorists who openly denounce the United States as Satan, and commit daily to our destruction.

Ah, forget that noise — I’m gonna go get my swine flu shot.

In about three-and-a-half months.