The Clinton Flop

Let's assume Bill Clinton gave a rousing speech at the Democratic Convention. I don't believe he did, but the talking heads on the cable stations keep trying to tell me otherwise. Timing out at just short of an HBO miniseries, the speech was one long stuttering, meandering, hypothesizing, self-aggrandizing, rambling mess that only Chris Matthews could love. It kept going and going and going until even the Energizer Bunny must have felt like committing suicide.

Mercifully, most Americans changed the channel and watched the NFL Kickoff between the Cowboys and Giants, which means they most certainly missed the Patriots vs. Fauxcahontas, as Elizabeth Warren reminded us why charisma matters in a candidate.

Michelle Obama's speech the previous night grated on my last nerve given the over-the-top rhetoric, but at least it was well-crafted. It would have made a great testimonial except that it made actual testimonials of people who have accepted Christ as their Savior seem small by comparison. And Barack has enough image problems without being compared to the Messiah.

But Clinton's speech, with its faint praise and convoluted excuses for Obama's presidential challenges, couldn't have been effective even if it was the smashing success Washington insiders and media elites claim it to be. Why? Because it wasn't going to move independents to Obama, and that's the point at this point in the game.

We are down to just a handful of undecided voters, six to eight percent really, who have yet to make up their minds in this election. So appealing to them is crucial. And when a cheater who was impeached for lying under oath steps in as your character witness, you know your campaign is in trouble.

As it turns out, Clinton presents a Catch-22 for independents. Either they liked him and miss him or they recall his extracurricular activities, Monica, the blue dress, the big lie, etc. For those in the latter group, Slick Willie was just that, and he lacks the credibility to sell Obama's policies. For those in the former group, Bill Clinton is nostalgia for the economic heyday of the 90s when deficits were one trillion dollars less and Congress actually came together and passed laws. Standing next to each other, our current president is found wanting. Clinton reminds us of all Obama's faults and failures.

Alex Castellanos, a GOP "strategist" who spends most of his time on CNN gushing over Democrats, claimed Clinton's speech by itself was strong enough to "re-elect Obama." I won't ask what medication Mr. Castellanos is on or which winning conservative politician he's given advice to recently, but I will point out the flaw in his analysis.

"Bill Clinton saved the Democratic Party once, it was going too far left, he came in, and the new Democrats took it to the center," Alex summarized. "He did it again tonight."

I disagree. What Bill Clinton actually did was remind independent voters that the Democratic Party has gone too far left, that we don't have a centrist in the White House. Obama's campaign slogan is "Forward" but the Clinton years are "Backwards." And backwards in the Democratic Party sounds a lot saner than forward, where fights break out over honoring God on the convention floor.

The Democrats put Bill Clinton on stage as a measuring stick Wednesday night and proved Obama doesn't measure up.

Set DVRs to Torture: Super Horrific Health Care Hour Returns

In case you're a masochist who missed it the first time, or maybe you're interrogating someone (clearly not at Gitmo) and need to create intense emotional distress, there's good news for you on cable tonight. Keith Olbermann will be rerunning his hour long special commentary on health care reform, perhaps the biggest waste of airtime in television history. On a similar note, the National Geographic Channel will air the 1986 live TV special of Geraldo unveiling The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault.

Should you care to catch the "encore presentation" (talk about bastardizing a phrase) of Keith Olbermann's Super Horrific Health Care Hour - an hour of liberal nonsense, tortured logic, unrelated personal anecdotes, and Charles Dickens references - you'll note the MSNDNC host actually makes a tiny amount of sense when he asks for donations at the end of the show (no, not for his show, though with MSNDNC's ratings they could sure use them). Keith wraps up the hour by encouraging viewers to donate to the NAFC, a group that provides free health clinics around the country.

That's right, Keith accidentally shoots his own argument in the foot once again. Free clinics that rely on donations and volunteers are the exact type of health care programs that conservatives support. It's not a transfer of wealth to the government. It doesn't unconstitutionally force Americans to buy a particular product. It doesn't increase taxes or force gross new regulations on insurance companies causing premiums to go up. It doesn't limit the treatment one patient can receive in order to pay for the treatment of another patient with a "more curable" disease. It doesn't create an unsustainable entitlement program forever plunging the nation into debt. In fact, this is a win-win situation for the entire nation.

How Olbermoron comes to believe that supporting this program will somehow prove that the government can do a better job by attempting to provide the same service for everybody in the entire country AND reduce the deficit is not something he explains. Probably because he can't. Needless to say, I agree with Keith (and that's not something I've ever said before) that this non-profit organization deserves our support.

There's a big difference between encouraging people to give their time and money to help others (think Mother Theresa) and confiscating wealth by force to establish government agents with the power to control who gets help (think Hugo Chavez). Socialized medicine pushes the latter under the guise of the former. That's why progressivism is such a poisonous ideology. It uses people's desire to do good and help others in order to gain control over citizens lives, a point that statists like Olbermoron never seem to grasp.

To donate to the National Association of Free Clinics as a conservative and possibly make Keith's head explode, go here.

Keith Olbermann's Super Horrific Health Care Hour

Years ago, there was a Seinfeld episode where Jerry's hand cramped up from having to endorse too many residual checks from his appearance on a popular Japanese show called the Super Terrific Happy Hour. On Wednesday night, MSNDNC's favorite Daily Kos blogger, Keith Olbermoron, introduced Americans to the antithesis of this by filibustering about health care for a super horrific, almost unwatchable hour of special commentary.

Keith's special commentaries, which usually last a few minutes at the end of each show, are often amusing in a sophomoric kind of way. His grasp on liberal logic is excellent, which is to say it's completely incoherent, his points backed by nothing but unsubstantiated anecdotes, personal prejudices, non-sequiturs, and ad hominem attacks. Needless to say, a full hour of Keith shuffling papers, dramatically changing camera angles, furrowing his manicured unibrow, and lecturing viewers in his pompous, self-righteous tone was about 55 minutes too long to take sober.

Now I'm not a heavy drinker, but when Keith started quoting Tiny Tim from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and referring to progressive multi-millionaire Michael Moore's anti-capitalist film as source material, I knew I had to self-medicate or risk throwing my plasma TV at the first Austin hippie to walk past my balcony. I needed vodka.

So I am hungover today, and I'm not sure if it was the alcohol or Keith's shrieking, irrelevant pleas for "All Americans to stand up, stand up for life. Death is the issue! How can we not be unified against death?" Does Keith actually believe there are Americans out there opposing FauxbamaCare because they are in favor of dying? He sounds like Rep. Grayson, the Democratic Congressman who said Republicans wanted everyone to die quicker. I thought the narcissistic dribble Michelle Obama presented in front of the International Olympic Committee last week was the worst speech I'd ever heard, but Keith is running a close second.

We are fortunate so few actually watch MSNDNC or thousands of alcoholics would have surely fallen off the wagon after staring at Keith's mug for an hour and trying to comprehend what the heck he was saying. Many more Americans might have succumbed to drug use. I know I thought about indulging in valium as the Countdown counted down way too slowly.

At one point, Keith described his father's ordeal of lying on the floor with a failed kidney and refusing to call for help. Twenty minutes later he was bragging about how quickly he decided to euthanize his mom rather than extend her life with uncomfortable cancer treatments ("it took five seconds to decide.") Hmm. I'm beginning to see why the senior Olbermann refused to tell his son about that kidney. He might want to keep the overanxious Keith out of the hospital room less the plug be pulled.

In between these disturbing personal stories, Keith quoted Winston Churchill for being against socialized medicine as a reason why we should all be for it (?) and chastised those who used terms like death panels, referring to this as completely over-the-top rhetoric. Except when he needed to vilify private insurance companies a few sentences later, which an unapologetic Keith referred to as death panels.

If there was a modus operandi other than making a fool of himself, it was definitely attacking the insurance companies. Keith later reiterated:

"Your life is in the hands of people, insurance companies, who can still make money by betting against your good health. There is only one comfort here and it is cold indeed. Profit while you can, insurers. Sickness and death wait not just for your customer. They also wait for you. And they are double-parked."

He went on to call us all slaves of the insurance companies:

"We must recognize the enemy here: an enemy capable of perverting reform meant for you and me, into its own ATM that mandates only that more of us become the slaves to the insurance companies."

"The monied interests that have bled their customers white, and used their customers' money to buy the system, to buy the politicians, to buy the press, cannot now even be checked by the government."

Keith actually makes a good point here, but of course he has the argument backwards. Let me explain how slavery works. You have no freedom or choice. There's only one master offering health insurance and you take what they give you. There aren't thousands of health insurance companies like today competing in a free market, where profit is an incentive to provide the best service. Instead, the state controls everything. They have a monopoly and a monopsony. The government becomes the only seller of health insurance and the only buyer of medical care. We already have a way to hold companies in check, but like Obama, Olbermoron wants to eliminate private insurance completely, putting in power a single-payer, state-run entity. Who holds their power in check?

The government will make life and death decisions for you. You are only a number to them, represented by a dollar amount. If the unelected bureaucrats don't believe you can contribute to society, if the cost to save your life is greater than the benefit, then you will be denied treatment for the collective state, thank you very much. This is your death panel, similar to the Orwellian NICE Board in England. Of course, under these circumstances, it becomes more important to keep citizens alive that pay the highest taxes, so the super rich and politically connected will receive better care. Ultimately, this results in a greater gap between health care for the rich and poor, not to mention a substantial difference in life expectancy.

As it turns out, incoherent Keith has actually made a very good argument against socialized medicine. Obviously, it was accidental. Even a broken watch is right twice a day. But at least now I feel better for having viewed his super horrific health care hour.

Morning Jo(k)e

Paging Joe Scarborough. Joe, please call Arlen Specter's office. He has some advice for you on how to turn those flimsy, moderate views and nuanced positions into full-fledged Democratic Party support.

Joe presents the conservative case so meekly, it's almost as if he expects progressives to offer a better argument. Or maybe he's afraid he might fit the Left's characterization of a conservative too well. He's already a southern white male. Best to whisper his dissent to Obama or stir the suspicions of his colleagues that he's an angry teabagger. No wonder MS-DNC keeps him on the payroll. He's like the Alan Colmes of their network, graciously losing every argument and providing cover for MS-DNC to tout its "balanced" political coverage. The only thing less balanced than a panel with Matthews, Olbermann, Schultz, and Scarborough is Calista Flockhart sharing a canoe with Michael Moore.

Here's some advice, Joe. If you can't win a conservative argument, stop pretending you're a conservative. Join the Jim Jeffords and Colin Powells of the world. Anyone who bashes Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh while appearing on the venom-spewing Bill Maher show and writing for the Huffington Post is no friend of the conservative movement. No matter what David Brooks tells you.

Joe's latest article at Huffington, "Thank You, Mr. President", is another lame effort to make himself sound like a reasonable centrist while painting mainstream Republicans as unreasonable (or racist) for criticizing Obama's trip to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympics. The article is littered with so many assumptions and empty cheerleading for the president, I'm not even sure he turned in his own work. It sounds a lot like that of his MS-NBC co-worker and softball teammate Richie Maddow.

Here's what Morning Joke wrote yesterday:

Today on Morning Joe, NBC News Legend Tom Brokaw remarked to Pat Buchanan about how the level of partisanship is even more intense today than during the depths of the Watergate crisis. Brokaw was commenting on Congressman Grayson's comments, but he could have easily been talking about Joe Wilson or death panels or the bizarre claim that the President "hates all white people."

Some of the rhetoric is dangerous. But what we saw from some conservative corners regarding the President's failed Olympics bid was just plain stupid.

Geez, a Republican wrote that? With friends like these, who needs enemies?

First of all, the partisanship isn't any worse today than it was eight years ago when Bush was elected president. Secondly, the rhetoric isn't dangerous. It's messy, but that's part of the democratic process. The only countries where everyone agrees are the countries where disagreeing is a punishable offense (see Iran, China, or Venezuela). There are strong ideological differences dividing our nation, and I say good for us!

As for the claim that opposing the president's bid for the Olympics is stupid, Chicago was a terrible choice for the Olympics. It has enough problems already including a corrupt government, a 550 million dollar budget shortfall, failing schools, and excessively violent crime. That's why many conservatives opposed it. We're not against having the Olympics in America. We love the Olympics! We're against raising taxes and spending valuable resources on something that's not going to help the people in the long-run.

Even half of Chicago was against it. Is Morning Joke calling half of Chicago stupid? That sounds a lot like Bill Maher to me. I don't think it's stupid to stand up for your rights as a citizen. These Chicagoans didn't want to see Mayor Daley's political machine funnel more federal dollars away from taxpayers and underfunded schools and neighborhoods into a political boondoggle rife with cronyism. Does anyone think Obama would have made the trip to campaign on behalf of any other American city, say Phoenix or Nashville? Seriously?

Obama's trip to Copenhagen wasn't about the United States or the Olympics any more than OJ's acquittal was about the gloves. This was about paying back the fat cats that helped launch his political career in the Windy City. Period. And possibly making Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett money off her Grove Parc investment.

Chicago has enough problems without the Olympics. All one needs to look at is Millennium Park (built 4 years late at 3 times the projected cost) or Chicago's subsidized housing fiasco (see Tony Rezco). It's also the murder capital of America. More people died in the streets of Chicago in 2008 than died fighting in Iraq. Just last week an honor student was beaten to death by gangs with railroad ties for simply walking home from school, which was all caught on video.

If the president acted concerned about any of this or went to Chicago and apologized to the family of the victim, Derrion Albert, for the government's failure to protect law-abiding citizens in broad daylight then I would say, "Thank you, Mr. President." If he improved Chicago's schools, I would say, "Good job, President Obama." Instead, he attached his ego to the city's Olympic bid and made it all about him. He flew two jumbo jets halfway across the world for an unnecessary trip that cost taxpayers millions with two wars going on and the worst unemployment rate the nation has seen in 30 years. It's not just conservatives saying this. Kevin Powell, a liberal columnist I don't often agree with, made the same argument.

But what really irks me are the examples Morning Joke uses to try and demonize conservatives. Rep. Joe Wilson may have violated House decorum when he shouted "You Lie", but that wasn't a premeditated statement full of false and offensive language like Democratic Congressman Grayson presented when he said "Republicans want you to die quickly."

Someone needs to tell Morning Joke that Republicans lost an election in 2008 because McCain failed to articulate a conservative message that captured the imagination of voters. Instead, he acted like a Democrat with a big government fix for everything. Conservatives stayed at home or cast their ballot for third party candidates as a result. Some even voted for Obama, and why not? Very little John McCain said sounded different than the most liberal Senator to ever capture the White House. Maybe Morning Joke was one of them. He sure seems anxious for the Republican Party repeat the failures of the last election.

Mr. Scarborough plays right into the Democrats hands when he acts ashamed of conservatives for being vocal about what they perceive as intrusive government and wasteful spending. Where have you gone, Joe Scarborough? Stop demonizing your own party. It might win you friends in the short-term, but it won't win any votes. Just ask John McCain.

Unbelievable: Bernie Sanders on MSNBC: Why is There No Progressive TV Network?

Sometimes when you're half-paying attention to the TV in the background, you have to hit the DVR button to make sure you heard things right. That's what happened when I caught this "interview" between Richie Maddow and Bernie Sanders the other night on MSNDNC. Turns out I did hear things right. I just can't believe my ears.

Maddow asks how to handle those that dare speak out against state-run health care, whether to mock them (the choice of Saul Alinsky, Obama's mentor) or refute them (done less since the Dems are losing the health care debate). Senator Sanders (I) answers by blaming talk radio and accusing Fox News of being "an arm of the Republican Party" (so more mocking naturally), and then he does the unthinkable. He asks a progressive talk show host on the most progressive cable news channel in America why there isn't a progressive television station.

It's like going on PBS and asking why there isn't a public broadcasting station. It's like going on Cinemax and asking why there aren't any skin flicks. It's like going on Jon Stewart and asking why there isn't any comedy. Okay, so maybe he'd have a point on the last one.

Business and Media caught this nonsense, too.

Granted Sanders is a self-avowed socialist with a 100% lifetime legislative score from the AFL-CIO. He supports a single-payer universal health care system. As in only a public option. No private insurers. And he's from Vermont, where there are probably fewer voters than volvos with Obama stickers. But still. That's quite a statement. Where did Bernie Sanders think he was? The O'Reilly Factor? This had to have hurt the gang at NBC's feelings. They've been trying sooo hard to out-Barack CNN.

Better kick it up a notch, Keith and Richie. Maybe put a bust of Lenin in the studio. Bernie ain't impressed.