I forgot to mention something that I picked up on in my post on Obama’s carefully crafted (watch the video, it’s a hoot!) health-care town hall.  I found a transcript of the meeting/infomercial at the LA Times.  Below is are excerpts from Obama wrapping up his town hall meeting a la campaign mode:

America — one of the great things about this country is we’ve got a system that’s sometimes kind of hard to change.  Congress gets kind of bogged down, and part of that is because of the way the Constitution is designed — it’s served us well because it keeps us very stable.  We don’t have coups and all kinds of governments collapsing all the time.  But the disadvantage sometimes is, is that it’s hard for us to make big, bold steps.  But the great thing about the system is that, every once in a while, when we finally hit a point where things just aren’t working at all, we are able to generate the political will to finally get things done.

Let’s see.  Hard to change.  What does the constitution of the United States have to say?  Read Article V for a what the founders of our country had to say about making things difficult to change (or better yet, read the entire United States Constitution).  Apparently, he thinks the Constitution is a disadvantage for us because we can’t implement his health-care ideas tomorrow.  Well, I for one am glad for that.  I am certain that if Ronald Reagan had wished for the ability to implement his visions for America that his critics would have all cried foul.  What matters is that we continue to be a nation under the rule of law and the flagrant disregard that Obama seems to have for the Constitution is at least a little bit alarming.

What causes alarm for me in this portion of his monologue is that Obama uses the past tense when referring to how the Constitution is designed: it’s served us well.  I hope that he meant to say, and it continues to serve us well today and into the future, but I didn’t hear it yesterday.

That’s how we got Social Security. After the Great Depression, nobody had any pensions or protection, and people started realizing, we can’t have a country where suddenly older Americans are just on the streets, after working hard all their lives.  And finally we got Social Security.  And then people said, well, we can’t have older Americans who don’t have any health care, and we got Medicare.  At every juncture, when we finally need to make a change, we make a change. This is one of those times.

Okay, now on to the alarm of the moment: health-care reform.  In the previous excerpt Obama talks about times in history when things aren’t working well as though there will never be any tough times.  Of course, operating under that assumption plus the assumption that government is the best means for alleviating tough times, Obama is ready and willing to scare us into the kind of action that he wants.  Obama conjures up two of the Left’s favorite government programs to illustrate his point.  Programs, by the way, that are either inevitably going to be bankrupt (in the case of Social Security) or are wrought with problems of fraud and inefficiency (in the case of Medicare).

So don’t be scared about the future. Let’s embrace the future. Let’s go after the future. If we do, then I’m confident that we can create a health care system that gives you choice, allows you to keep your doctor, drives down costs, makes sure that every American doesn’t have to worry if they lose or change their jobs.  That’s our aim. That’s our goal. We’re going to make it happen this year. Thank you, everybody.  I appreciate you. Thank you.

Don’t be scared!  He is telling us this because earlier in this portion of the town hall he accuses his opponents of fear mongering.  The reality is that he intends to be the one controlling the type of fear that you experience.  If he can control your perspective on the problem then you will have the right kind of fear in order to buy into his version of the solution.

Gives you choice…maybe for the first year of the program until the private insurance companies go out of business.

Allows you to keep you doctor…what doctor?  Who will want to become a doctor when they are forced to accept payments well below what their services are worth.

Drives down costs…artificially and temporarily at best.  First it will be because the bureaucrats will find a way to infuse a ton of cash into the public option so that it looks good.  Then as tax revenues dry up costs will have no choice but to go up.

Makes sure that every American doesn’t have to worry if they lose or change their job…utopia is the stuff of make-believe.  I hope that Americans are a little more grounded in their perspective on life than our president seems to be.  Otherwise, we may wake up to a burgeoning totalitarian state that will dictate what perspective you will have, or else…