Memories of Journolist Behind-the-Scenes Work...

I just remember how Ezra Klein rewrote the rules of transparent journalism and rode a bachelor's degree in English from a small California school, and a face a grandmother could love!, into his allegedly being one of the leading lights of 21st century American journalism...

It paid off for him, and his little wife, too.  Big time!

Truth took a big hit though...

The funny thing is, we've always had poor, unhealthy and uninsured people amongst us.  Missionaries and charity care workers have always struggled to match resources with needs.  Only when a personal profit motive is introduced do these men double down on their duty to help others.

Ezra Klein, Jonathan Gruber... all those who would hide the truth to give us what we need... while the overall health of the country suffers.

Video of Mr. Gruber’s remarks, delivered at a University of Pennsylvania health care conference last year, has surfaced in which he explained how the details of Obamacare were kept under wraps until the measure was rammed through the Democratic Congress with no opportunity for anyone to read the legislation.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Mr. Gruber said.

“Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever. But basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

Those “stupid” people have been extremely generous to Mr. Gruber. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2010 investigated the $297,600 that the Department of Health and Human Services paid Mr. Gruber to sing the praises of the health care scheme.

Congress — or part of Congress — was concerned that this payoff violated a federal law against paid government propaganda, but the GAO said it wasn’t a violation because Mr. Gruber had written his propaganda on his own time. Officially, he was paid only to “analyze various health care reform proposals and identify cost and coverage implications.”

This is an extraordinarily lucrative enterprise in the age of Obamacare that Mr. Gruber himself brought about. Individual states have lavished taxpayer cash on Mr. Gruber in return for cookie-cutter reports that describe the impact of Obamacare for each of the several states.

Minnesota, for example, used federal Obamacare grants to pay Mr. Gruber to attend one meeting, participate in a biweekly email list and print a copy of the report, all for $329,000.

Wisconsin paid Mr. Gruber $400,000 for the same material, requested by the office of then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. When the report was presented, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, didn’t want Mr. Gruber at the news conference.

Vermont is paying him another $400,000. ... West Virginia, Maine, Colorado and Oregon have partaken of Mr. Gruber’s services, too, guaranteeing him a tidy sum. The money bought lies and deception. That’s Mr. Gruber’s characterization, not ours.

“If you had a law which made it explicit that healthy people are going to pay in and sick people get money,” said Mr. Gruber, “it would not have passed.”

Think this is bad?  Wait until years later when it is revealed the reasons American forces are now back fighting in the Middle East civil wars...

The American people were pretty overwhelming in their calls to Congress and in their direction to the president:  do not intervene in Syria. At first, he heeded our warnings.

Then... somebody got to him.  ISIS is now a national security threat.  Seriously?

I don't for a minute believe some beheaded journalists swung our hearts and opinions.  One had been captured previously, and still went back undertaking the risks.  A shame, and a tragic loss for his family, but not a death that needed to be avenged by plunging American resources back into the fight, and recommitting ourselves to the cause of killing every last terrorist abroad to protect the American homeland.

I'm glad Mr. Gruber spoke out, because so much of American journalism today relies on the stupidity of the American news consumer.  We don't much care about the truth, they think.  We're dumb enough to go along to get along, always.  We will stand by our allies, and follow them to the gates of hell, if need be...

Except, we won't.

Our support of Israel is not a mutual suicide pact.  

We've provided defensive technologies in the forms of Iron Dome that have proven to work in their latest "wars".   How much more of a protective bubble can the American taxpayers be asked to provide?  How many troops must be stationed in the Middle East so that Israel never has to confront or acknowledge her precarious living situation?

There has never been a country built as such a prized hothouse flower before...  but once such precious resources are withdrawn, and artificial life meets reality, too often the artificial wilts and droops, unable to survive in the wilds when the hothouse environment is exited, and the artificial help withdrawn.

I'm not sure what these bright Jewish minds think of the American Evangelical help they are receiving in subduing their neighbors and settling the region.  They are discounting the rest of the story, and as Paul Harvey would tell, that's the most important part.

Mr. Gruber?  Take a note from the stupid American voters: We not as dumb as you thinks we is!