Every rare once in a while, I find myself with The Washington Times open in my browser window. This tends to happen when someone has sent me a link, and I didn’t notice it was going to send me to the Washington Times, as I would never go there on my own compulsion. It’s just another of those news outlets that can never be trusted or taken seriously, sort of like the The New York Daily News … or the National Enquirer … or whatever that British tabloid is I have avoided reading for several years now, the name of which totally escapes me.^†

Anyway, someone sent me a link, in a chain mail, and while I believe nothing whatsoever that arrives in the form of a breathless email, I do try to keep up with the breathless emails making the rounds. Therefore, I clicked the supplied link and found myself reading an editorial at The Washington Times. And what a breathless, doom-saying editorial it was too! Almost as entertaining as a story about baby Elvis aliens!

Let me share some of the doom-saying with you, shall I?

…his primary goal has always been to gobble up the health care system. The most troubling aspect of the Obamacare debate, however, is not the measure’s sweeping and radical aims – the transformation of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, crippling tax increases, higher premiums, state-sanctioned rationing, longer waiting lines, the erosion of the quality of medical care and the creation of a huge, permanent administrative bureaucracy. Rather, the most alarming aspect is the lengths to which the Democrats are willing to go to achieve their progressive, anti-capitalist agenda.

That all sounds terribly scary. Why it sounds exactly like what we have now, except it’s corporate insurance sanctioned rationing and corporate insurance administrative bureaucracy, and the last time I talked with people who got to visit doctors when they needed to, they spent more time waiting to see the doctor than actually talking to said doctor. Fact is, as scary as that paragraph sounds, it’s complete bullsh*t. Little more than the spreading of fear, uncertainty, and doubt among the huddled unaware masses (which includes some Senators and Representatives, apparently). And anyone who thinks Obama or his administration is anti-capitalists needs to put down the crack pipe.

Mr. Obama is willing to devour his presidency, his party’s congressional majority and – most disturbing – our democratic institutional safeguards to enact it. He is a reckless ideologue who is willing to sacrifice the country’s stability in pursuit of a socialist utopia.

I know Americans like to throw around words like “communist” and “socialist” and “Nazi” because they do tend to get the rabble aroused, but anyone –ANYONE– who truly believes Obama is a socialist is uneducated or lying to further their own agenda. At the very least, they don’t have a clue about what socialism is. I’d suggest they begin by studying current day France, where there is actually some socialism in action. A simple compare and contrast table would very quickly show that America is in no danger of ever becoming a “socialist utopia” and Obama and his “leftist thugs” are hardly socialists.

I’ve read the bill being proposed. It’s a handout to the insurance companies. Socialism would be the government giving people insurance or providing health care for everyone. This bill does neither of these things. In fact, aside from putting in place some regulations that might actually help some people somewhere (i.e. the pre-existing condition problem and the dumping of people when they get sick), all it’s basically going to do is tell me I will be required to purchase insurance from said private insurance companies, and due to our household income, I will likely not be getting any subsidy to help me with that … therefore, I’ll likely be paying whatever fine it is they decide to impose on me, because at least I might be able to afford the fine (I certainly can’t afford the insurance, or I would already have it).

So after going on for many paragraphs of hand-waving and crying about how we are about to become a socialist dictatorship, the obvious solution is presented: Obama must be impeached! Yes, good luck with that.

And I said it repeatedly during the Bush years that the Republicans had best be careful what sorts of rules they create and precedents they set for how to govern our country during their tenure, because these things don’t go away when administrations change. The next people to take office and have the power will use them just as easily to do the things they wish to do, which is what we are seeing as excellent example of right now. It doesn’t do the Republicans much good to whine about the Democrats behaving exactly as they did when they were the majority and had someone sitting in the Oval Office. There may be two political parties, but there’s only one kind of politician: the bought-off and self-serving kind.

And the polls numbers being down on health care reform, Obama, and congress? If someone called me this morning and asked me, I’d be unhappy with all three of them too. This health care reform isn’t at all what was promised (health care for all), Obama didn’t push his own agenda early enough and just let Congress make a mess of things, and Congress is full of small children with their fingers in their ears having temper tantrums, because they aren’t in power anymore, and wimps incapable of getting things done, because they are afraid to be in power and to use it. So yes, I’m not currently happy with my government right now, but it’s not because I think they are bringing about a big scary socialist agenda. It’s because they aren’t doing what they said they were going to do, and in fact, they haven’t been doing much of anything at all.

1. † In fact, I’d take something the Enquirer said more seriously than the Washington Times. At least they are sometime correct about something (i.e. John Edwards affair) and are entertaining even when talking about baby Elvis aliens. [↩]