Let's Talk Tipping Points

Like President Obama, bestseller writer Malcolm Gladwell is mixed race. Perhaps that qualifies him to write bestsellers like The Tipping Point.

Gladwell's book makes the obvious point that things tend to go on as they always have, in spite of winds, tides, and good old pushes. And then there's a Tipping Point.

Seems like we just reached a tipping point on ACORN all of a sudden. We've known for years that ACORN, the astroturf community organizing outfit, is a corrupt and partisan political organization that does all kinds of shady stuff for Democrats, from beating up banks to registering phantom voters. But nothing changed. Then, one fine day, Andrew Breitbart publicized a couple of young conservatives posing as pimp and prostitute in a series of gotcha videos. They showed ACORN employees advising them on how to break the law. Tipping Point! All of a sudden, Democrats are running from ACORN and voting to de-fund it.

Then there's the Race Card. After decades of playing the race card whenever they were bothered by opposition, liberals are taking a pasting on race. They are accusing the president's critics on health care of being racists. Nothing remarkable there. Liberals always play the race card. But conservatives are fighting back. Tipping Point! Maybe it's because we just elected a black president. After all, how can you call white Americans racists when they just elected President Obama?

How about Big Government? For years Americans have talked a good line about the evils of big government, but they kept electing people that grew government. It's enough to make you discouraged. Perhaps Barack Obama won because conservatives stayed home, discouraged after eight years of Bush big government.

But now Americans seem to be really riled up about the trillions in extra spending that's baked into the cake of ObamaCare. Tipping Point! Well, we don't know, exactly, on that one. A lot of the opposition, I think, comes from seniors who reckon that the president's plan is really a mis-direction play to reduce their Medicare benefits. So they are opposing ObamaCare not because it will increase spending, but because it might decrease their benefits.

Then there's Global Warming. Everyone is in favor of fighting global warming when it's just a question of repeating after me: solar, wind, and renewables. But when it comes to facing an annual cost of $1,761 on each family, well, Tipping Point! Ordinary people aren't willing to pay big costs now on the possibility of fixing a problem that won't be serious for a century.

Do you think there could be more Tipping Points in our future? I hope so. I'd really go for a tipping point on government in general. Government is force, so whenever you say: "there ought to be a program," you are saying that the only way we can do this is by force.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I'd say you'd be wrong.

Race Card: Worse Than a Crime...

Even the Brits are noting the injection of race into fight over President Obama's agenda. Toby Harnden asks: "Does white America hate Barack Obama?" in The Daily Telegraph.

No worries, Toby. It's just liberals playing the race card. It's always liberals playing the race card.

But in this case, I think that liberals have made a strategic error--worse than a crime, a blunder. It is one thing to accuse individuals of racism. Go ahead, call Bull Connor a racist. It is one thing to accuse City Hall, or a corporation of racism. Yeah. Accuse the police department of racial profiling. Good idea! You can even push the accusation to the more woolly notion of "institutional racism." It is just not a good idea to accuse voters of racism.

And that is what the president's surrogates like Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter are doing. They are accusing not just Rep. Joe Wilson of racism. They are accusing white America of racism. Of course, they are not alone. Just about every liberal believes in their heart that all white conservatives and moderates are racist.

But Ann Althouse at The Atlantic puts her finger on the problem:

Lots of people who voted for Obama believed that his election would reflect the extent to which Americans had moved beyond racism. That was part of why some people voted for him. Little did we realize that it would turn every criticism of the President into an occasion to make an accusation of racism. Racism is revolting, but so is the notion that we aren’t allowed to criticize a President.

Of course, we racist, sexist, homophobic conservatives all knew what was coming, even before the election. Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, in June 2008.

I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism.

As Rush Limbaugh says (more or less): Do I know liberals or do I know liberals?

Here's why this attempt to stigmatize all critics of the president as racists is a blunder. White people hate, absolutely hate, being branded as racists. I'd say that, after electing Obama, most white people are saying to themselves: OK, we elected a black president. Now stop with the race card. Now. Or there'll be trouble. Big trouble.

OK. There won't be trouble. But people will just decide to turn out and vote for the other guy. Or gal.

So go ahead, liberals. Accuse half the nation of being racists. Make my day!

Defend Wal-Mart Care

Back in 2008 I went to a town hall on the presidential election organized by the Seattle NPR station, KPLU. PBS and Fox News personality Juan Williams was there to liven up the contributions of the KPLU reporters.

Of course, the agenda included a comparison between ObamaCare and McCainCare. But wait, I wanted to say. What about Wal-Mart Care?

You may not know it but Wal-Mart has a health care program. It has in-store clinics where you can get to see a health care professional for routine medical problems.

Wal-Mart started these clinics in part to provide another low-priced service to its price-conscious customers, and in part to keep the cost of employee health care down.

Now there's information from the Rand Corporation on the effectiveness of Wal-Mart care, reported by Margaret Shapiro in The Washington Post. The results are in and they are good.

Walk-in medical clinics run by CVS, Wal-Mart and other retailers provide care for routine illnesses that is as good as, and costs less than, similar care offered in doctors' offices, hospital emergency rooms and urgent care centers, according to a new Rand Corp. study. The cost savings over emergency rooms, in particular, was quite dramatic.

So I'm sure that the president and our Democratic friends are running, not walking, over to Wal-Mart to find out how they do it, and how Wal-Mart's approach to health care could be scaled up and adopted by the public sector.

How much better was Wal-Mart than the emergency rooms? Here's what the Rand study said:

"The costs of care in retail clinics were 30 to 40 percent lower than in physician offices and urgent care centers and 80 percent lower than in emergency departments[.]"

You can see the danger here. It's not likely that the brilliant policy analysts at the White House have given a thought to health care the Wal-Mart way. For one thing, if Wal-Mart really made a success of this, and started expanding from routine care into treatment of common chronic conditions, then the need for a comprehensive and mandatory system of politically controlled health care would recede.

There is another way, you know.

Thomas Sowell, always good for a pithy comment, recalls how he'd spent many years without health insurance, and how and his wife paid for the delivery of their child on the installment plan.

The birth of my first child was not covered by medical insurance. I paid off the bill, month by month, until the time finally came when I could tell my wife that the baby was now ours, free and clear.

So here is a concept. Let's most of us pay for routine care at the Wal-Mart drop-in clinic. Let's pay for our babies on the installment plan. And let's keep insurance for the big stuff. And I mean by that, protecting our homes. Yes. That's the purpose of insurance: protecting our assets from disaster, natural or medical.

And let's be sure to defend Wal-Mart care from the inevitable attacks from its liberal critics. Why, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the workers in their clinics are non-union.

"Gentry Liberals" Dominate Dems

Why is the Democratic Congress so over-the-top liberal? That's the question that Michael Barone answers in an article "Republicans and Democrats: A Tale of Two Bases."

It's pretty simple really. A lot of Democrats are elected from very Democratic districts, and these are typically "gentry liberal" or race based. That is to say that the Democratic base is primarily gentry liberal or black or Hispanic, and these voters tend to be concentrated geographically in urban districts. Forty two percent of House Democrats come from gentry liberal, black, or Hispanic districts.

The Republican Party base is southern and rural. But the base is not as important. Twenty five percent of Republicans in the House come from identifiable base districts.

Then there's the leadership. Right now, the Democratic leadership comes overwhelmingly from gentry liberal districts. Only a few Republican House leaders come from the southern base (a change from the 1990s).

So that explains why the Democratic agenda right now is fiercely liberal, and why the Tea Party movement is leading the opposition to President Obama instead of the Republicans in Congress.

It does suggest that the MSM template is a little skewed. Republican support is less concentrated, and less driven by extremists. Who knew?

And of course, there is the binding factor of government largesse on the Democratic side. Those gentry liberals and the blacks and Hispanics depend disproportionately on the government for their livelihood. They are more focused and more dedicated to manipulating government and politics to deliver benefits. Republicans aren't so focused on politics because they don't depend so much on government for their daily bread.

But the Tea Party movement may change all this.

Tens of Thousands in DC Protest

Last week I was wondering if the forecasts of 20,000 protestors in Washington DC for the 9/12 protests was a little over-enthusiastic. I mean, this is America and people don't turn into the streets. Certainly not people on the right.

Leaving aside the reports of "up to a million" by the UK Daily Mail, it certainly seems that AP's estimate of "tens of thousands" is realistic. This conservative reporter reckoned on 300,000.

At any rate, it is clear that the turnout was major, beyond expectations. And it's good that it is getting less than serious coverage from the mainstream media. Any time you are doing any kind of conflict, it is best to keep the enemy quiet and unconcerned as long as possible, so that your side has the chance to prepare and reach strategic concentration before the other chaps understand what is happening.

The thing is: the ordinary American middle class is right to be concerned about the Obama administration. The administered state of our liberal friends is a state that feeds on the unorganized middle class for its sinecures and its subsidies. Ordinary people that just want to get a job, get married, and raise a family must understand that the liberal program is death to people like them who just want to be left alone to live their lives in productive peace.

The whole point of liberalism is to interfere in everything. And that means interfere with you.

For years we have been used to a kind of standoff in the great culture war. After all, the last time there was a blowout in a presidential election was a quarter of a century ago in 1984. Since then there has been a 50-50 nation of conservatives and liberals, but neither side ever got to win a decisive victory.

But the go-for-broke program of President Obama is poking a stick into a sleeping giant, the 40 percent of the American people who think of themselves as moderate, but live their lives as small "c" conservatives.

And the Obamites have provoked the first center-right street protests in living memory. The tectonic plates are shifting, folks, and nobody knows where it will end.

How the Dems Do It

I've always wondered why. Why do African Americans vote 90 percent for Democrats? And why do Jewish Americans vote 75 to 80 percent for Democrats?

The fact is that, unless you apply extraordinary pressure to people, they won't sort out that strongly. You only have to talk to people to realize how much they vary in their opinions, for no apparent reason.

If you are an evolutionist, that makes sense. People naturally cover the waterfront on opinion. Some people end up right. Some people end up wrong, er, left.

The only way you can make people line up in agreement is to frighten them. There's nothing scandalous about that. It's just the way humans organize against a perceived threat. Hate and fear are the drivers of unity.

So I always wondered: how do Dems manage to frighten African Americans? How to you get to the natural division of, say 60-70 percent to 80-90 percent? I knew about guys like Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton. But they coudn't put fear and hate of Republicans into the entire population of African Americans. Could they?

Then came 2008 and Reverend Wright. Now it all makes sense. If every large city has a preacher or two like President Obama's Reverend Wright, then you've got the horsepower to keep 80-90 percent of African Americans frightened of white America, and determined to stay together to defend themselves against the threat of white racism.

Obviously, activists are doing something similar to keep the Jews at home in the Democratic Party. But how?

The fact is that Jews are afraid of Christians, and with reason. Down the ages, whenever things went wrong, Christians blamed the Jews. When the Black Death spread across Europe in 1348, for instance, Christians started to accuse the Jews of poisoning the wells. So Jews are trained, you might say, to expect trouble from Christians. Of course, in the 20th century, the main threat came first from racist Nazis and then from classist Communists. Then the Arabs decided to wipe Israel off the map. And now in Europe the secular left is turning against Jews and against Israel, especially in the universities.

Yet Jews are still frightened of Christians, even in the United States where conservative Christians are particular friends of Israel.

Then it came to me, as I read the rant of a liberal acquaintance about how conservative Christians want to create a theocracy. Eureka! That's how it's done! You don't really need a conspiracy. Liberals are naturally annoyed with the rise of conservative Christians. All it needs is enough people--like our friends in the netroots, for instance--to rage away at the Religious Right and worry about an imagined danger of theocracy and you'll keep the Jews frightened of Christians and keep them home in the Democratic Party.

But one day, of course, the whole climate of hate and fear will collapse. One day some issue will come up, and the scales will fall of the eyes of African Americans or of the Jews. But that day is not yet.

But we are conservatives. We are optimists. Some day, our liberal friends will drive African Americans and Jewish Americans out of the Democratic Party. One day the fear play won't work any more. And it can't come soon enough. For all our sakes.

When the President Tells a "Porky"

They say that the time to get up and shout is when a politician stops lying. So Rep Joe Wilson (R-SC) was wrong to yell: "You Lie!" to President Obama when the president said:

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

Strictly speaking, if you parse his remarks carefully, the president is correct. There is nothing in the House bill that applies to illegal aliens. So they would continue to get health care just as they do today. They wouldn't be insured. But they would be covered. So Joe Wilson was wrong.

Anyway, it's not nice to call the president a liar. Grandma wouldn't like it. But we need a way to tell the president that he isn't fooling anyone with his lawyer-like evasions. It should be something that Grandma wouldn't mind. It would be nice if she could get a chuckle out of it.

Here's what I suggest. Any time the president tells a "porky," we should shout: "Lina Lamont!"

You remember Lina. She was the fictional silent-screen star in Singin' in the Rain that had a whiny Jersey accent that you could cut with a knife. Lina, played by the immortal Jean Hagen, was beautiful, but she had the manners, the mind and, most important of all, the voice of a gangster's moll.

Lina Lamont was one tough cookie. She knew how to take care of herself, or thought she could. Whenever Lina Lamont thought that the management of Monumental Pictures was trying to put one over on her, she would recite the following immortal line:

What do yer think I am? Dumb or something?

So here's my mild and humble suggestion. When the president tells a "porky" don't yell "You Lie!" No. That would be too coarse.

In future, when the president tells a porky, yell "Lina Lamont!"

Then when the mainstream media asks what that was all about, you answer: "What does the president think I am. Dumb or something?"