In Other Words...

In Other Words...
Ann Coulter
Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Irritated at the bumps on the road to the Democrats' Thousand-Year Reich, liberals are now claiming that Republican Sen. Tom Coburn requested a prayer for the death of Sen. Bob Byrd during the health care debate last Saturday night.

Here is what Coburn actually said: "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight. That's what they ought to pray."

After reporting Coburn's remark, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank added: "It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.)."

Contrary to Milbank's claim, I find it extremely easy to get away from that conclusion. In fact, I'm a regular Houdini when it comes to that conclusion. That conclusion couldn't hold me for a second.

There are a million ways a senator could miss a vote, other than by dying. Ask Patrick Kennedy. At 1 a.m. on a Sunday night in the middle of a historic blizzard in the nation's capital, I don't think the first thing that came to anyone's mind was death. More likely it was: "Last call."

Milbank was employing the MSNBC motto, "In Other Words," which provides the formula for 90 percent of the political commentary on that network. The MSNBC host quotes a Republican, then says "in other words," translates the statement into something that would be stupid to say, and spends the next 10 minutes ridiculing the translated version. Which no one said. Except the host.

Also, by the way, Sen. Coburn did not "go to the Senate floor to propose a prayer," as Milbank reported. He was giving a floor speech in which he used the turn of phrase, "What the American people ought to pray is ..."

Inasmuch as liberals want to talk about anything but their plan to take over one-sixth of the American economy, let's talk about health care!

Democrats tout Medicare as their model for a government-run health care system, bragging about what an extremely popular government program it is.

Medicare is tens of trillions of dollars in the red. It is expected to go bankrupt by 2017. In order to pay for Medicare alone, the government will either have to cut every other federal program in existence, or raise federal income taxes to rates as high as 77 percent.

Medicare is like a $500 hamburger: I assume it's good -- it had better be -- but no one would say, "THAT'S A FANTASTIC SUCCESS!"

Until 10 minutes ago, the liberal argument for national health care was that it wasn't fair that some people -- "the rich" -- have access to better health care than others.

In liberals' ideal world, everyone lives in abject poverty and stands in long lines, but we all live in the same abject poverty and stand in the same long lines -- just like in their beloved Soviet Union of recent memory! (Except the commissars, who get excellent health care, food, housing, maid service and no lines.)

Instead of being honest and telling us that their plan is to make health care worse and more expensive -- but fairer! -- liberals have recently begun claiming that providing universal health care will actually save money. Overnight, they went from wailing about basic human needs being "more important than bombs" to claiming: "Our plan will be cheaper!"

Hmmm, I didn't make any notes to debate the manifestly insane points. But I'm pretty sure that extending full medical benefits to 30 million people who don't currently have them -- 47 million once the federal health commission rules that illegal aliens are covered -- will not be less expensive than the current system.

You can say -- mistakenly -- that the liberals' plan is more compassionate. You can say -- also incorrectly -- that it will be fairer. On no set of facts can you say it will be cheaper.

Democrats keep citing the Congressional Budget Office's "scoring" of their bills as if that means something.

The CBO is required to score a bill based on the assumptions provided by the bill's authors. It's worth about as much as a report card filled out by the student himself.

Democrats could write a bill saying: "Assume we invent a magic pill that will make cars get 1,000 miles per gallon. Now, CBO, would that save money?"

The CBO would have to conclude: Yes, that bill will save money.

Among the tricks the Democrats put into their health care bills for the CBO is that the government will collect taxes for 10 years, but only pay out benefits for the last six years. Will that save money? Yes, the CBO says, this bill is "deficit neutral"!

But what about the next 10 years and the next 10 years and the next 10 years after that? Will the health care plan continually pay benefits only in the last six years of every 10-year period? I think their plan assumes we'll all be dead from global warming in a decade.

Also, I note that the Democrats claim it's urgent that we pass ObamaCare by Christmas, but the bill doesn't get around to paying out any benefits until 2014. Poor uninsured chumps.

In other words ... Democrats are praying for the death of Bob Byrd!