Still in anger mode

[Warph]

The media is angry.  It gets angry whenever it encounters resistance to its narrative.  That's what happened with the Trayvon Martin case and Obumacare.  When the media encounters resistance, it runs through its stages:

1. Denial.... No one but a few loons reject the narrative

2. Anger... How dare they reject the narrative

3. Bargaining... The media starts looking for moderates who will accept some element of the narrative

4. Depression... The media glumly pontificates on a broken America where racism and poor health care will always be issues.  Where their narrative remains marginalized among the NPR/New York Times enlightened.

But the fifth stage, Acceptance, never kicks in.  The process just repeats itself.

The Trayvon Martin case is still locked into Anger mode.  ObumaCare is starting to tip slowly toward Bargaining, but is also in Anger mode.  Anger mode happens when the media realizes that the resistance isn't a few people they can ignore, that the resistance is organized, literate, competent and is advancing towards its goal.  It takes the media a while to reach this point, but once it does, it jumps into action, plugging its narrative non-stop, searching for any evidence, real or manufactured (ie: NBC), to back up its case, and pushing that evidence non-stop.  The facts don't matter, only the survival of the narrative does, because the narrative is a vehicle for policy.

Trayvon Martin isn't about a dead 17 year old, it's about reestablishing racism as the dominant issue in American life, helping to pave the way for Obuma's reelection campaign and finding a wedge issue to use against the NRA in order to bring down the Second Amendment.

The media's problem is that it launched the narrative prematurely based on sloppy information, without taking into account minor issues such as Zimmerman's own racial appearance or Martin's problematic backstory.  It assumed that the public would uncritically eat up the narrative, the right would be sidelined or made to feel guilty for supporting individual self-defense and the Second Amendment and the narrative would steamroll its way to the 2012 election.  At first they didn't know how to deal with the blowback, now they're stuck having to fight to defend their narrative to the death.

The ObumaCare Mandate is even more problematic, because it's unpopular with the general public and not that popular even on the left.  Administration authoritarianism made it seem acceptable, but that was an illusion and now that illusion is suffering a severe attack.  The left had counted on Scalia's authoritarian side, or what they thought was his authoritarian side, to pull this off for them.  When they realized it wasn't going to happen, he became their first target.  In Anger mode, when the left realizes that it is losing, it begins lashing out at those it blames for its defeat, whether it's Verrilli or Scalia.  It's rarely capable of understanding why it lost, instead it reaches for personal attacks, like the clowns they are.

[Warph]

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/03/ten-ways-that-obamacare-is-bad

Ten Ways That Obamacare Is Bad Law

(Obumacare.....) If not struck down by SCOTUS, it must be repealed!

It was the kind of spectacle that policy wonks savor -- three days of dry and complex argument before the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

To cite a question that occupied a whole day of questioning: If the federal government can compel you to buy health insurance, can it also compel you to buy broccoli -- or anything else that it deems to be in your best interests?

Should the Supreme Court uphold the law, it will signify that the act has met the minimal standard of constitutionality. Nothing more. The debate over constitutionality, however it is resolved, should not obscure the fact that the health care reform act is simply a bad law. Let us count the ways that it violates basic principles of sound policy:

1. It exemplifies a legislate-in-haste-repent-at-leisure mentality. Few Senators and Congressmen had time to read the 2,700-page bill before it was brought to a vote. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously stated, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it."

2. It violates the principle of impartiality. "When a bill is 2,700 pages," as columnist/author Mark Steyn noted, "there is no equality: Instead, there's a hierarchy of privilege micro-regulated by unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown and unnumbered bureaucracy." Already the administration has granted a long list of exemptions to various companies and unions.

3. Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services dictated that employers, including religious organizations, must cover contraception and abortion-causing drugs in their health plans. Apart from any moral objections to such provisions, why should the federal government tell employers and employees what their health insurance has to cover?

4. Good public policy would encourage health care consumers to shop around and purchase insurance policies that are best suited to their own needs and spending priorities. The health care reform bill does the opposite. Decision-making power is turned over to bureaucrats, who pay no price for decisions that are costly or wrong-headed.

5, 6, and 7. Good public policy does not raise false expectations. Backers of the health reform bill violated this principle three times over. They promised a) anyone can "keep their plan if they like it'; b) the plan would mandate many new benefits and still reduce the average family premium by $2,500; and c) that it wouldn't add "a single dime" to the federal deficit. To review each of those points in turn:

According to a McKinsey & Co. study, a third to a half of employers plan to stop offering health insurance beginning in 2014. Faced with expensive mandates and less expensive fines, many employers will choose the fines and cause their employees to move to government-sponsored plans.

Another study concludes that a typical family health insurance plan costing $12,300 today will cost more than twice that by 2019. There are no "free" mandates or other benefits -- to paraphrase Milton Friedman.

And finally, the administration has grudgingly acknowledged spiraling costs under its plan. Last October, the administration dropped the long-term care program known as the Class Program from implementation of the new law as financially unworkable. It also added $111 billion premium subsidies to its proposed fiscal 2013 budget.

8. Good public policy avoids ticking time bombs. The health-care law is filled with them.

The legislation will increase Medicaid enrollment by an estimated 24 million new beneficiaries by 2015. Missouri and other states struggling to balance their budgets will pick up a significant share of the cost.

The law includes a massive new health entitlement/income redistribution program for families earning more than three times the poverty level. In 2014, it will channel up to $3,000 in taxpayers funds to families making up to $95,000.

It also discriminates against young people, forcing them to purchase health insurance at inflated prices in order to subsidize older beneficiaries. Simultaneously, the law imposes severe penalties on young people who use Health Savings Accounts to secure health benefits for themselves in later years.

9. The law is fiscally irresponsible. It includes a raft of new taxes. But these appear to be wholly inadequate to the task of paying the bill for over-promising and extending new entitlements to tens of millions of people. That leaves rationing as a last resort, and the government's own reports contemplate major cutbacks in Medicare spending down the road.

10. The Affordable Care Act is truly unaffordable... and unsustainable. Perhaps the Supreme Court will strike it down. But whatever the Court decides, that does not excuse our elected representatives from their responsibilities. Our government should not erode our freedoms, degrade our quality of life, or bankrupt our future. The health care reform bill does all those things. If it is not struck down, it should be repealed.

[Diane Amberg]

It doesn't matter.The insurance companies and drug manufacturers have already figured out the next step no matter what happens. Example ,extending care under the family plan until age 26. By then the kids should be so used to having insurance they'll figure out how to buy it and remained covered. Medco and Express Scripts are already planning to merge. Knocks out more of the competition. Hospitals will keep adding on to your bills to pay for those people who don't have insurance or don't pay.

[srkruzich]

I personally resent the fact that i supported my kids, insured my kids, on my own fricking nickle and now folks want to insure them for free.  Let them insure themselves after 18. thats their job, not mine nor anyone elses.

Shrug.  It is all about whats important to you in life.  IF your children are important you'll do without cable and internet and whatever luxury to make sure they get their needs met