Van Jones: Gone

Van Jones is old news.

Timing is everything in politics. Van Jones being "outed" as a "Truther" as well as a radical communist could not have come at a better time for the administration, if he had to be outed at all. While the story played out, the nation was enjoying its Labor Day holiday away from the news. By the time the Sunday Morning pundit programs aired, America was at the lake having a beer, and now, Tuesday morning, the story is out of the media. On to other things.

To me, the one thing that is missing in the conversation is the fact that there was no failure of the vetting process. Many pundits that I have seen have complained "What happened to the vetting process?"

Van Jones was vetted. He was exactly what Obama had in mind for his "Green Jobs Czar;" a community activist cut from the same mold as himself.

What Jones did was adjust the focus of the same "career" he always had - that of radical left-wing activist - to focus on pushing the latest fashionable excuse for all the same policies the left has always wanted.

The "revolution" Jones (and Obama) seeks would re-order the entire economy to take state control of private wealth and redistribute it to the hapless proletariat. This is the same agenda the Democratic Party has embraced for a generation. They've been trying to sell poverty and health care as excuses to do this since the 1960's. In many ways, the anti-war movement was (and is) about wanting to re-allocate the Pentagon budget for social do-gooder programs administered by agencies and groups that employ many of the radicals pushing the agenda.

Now the environment is the "cause du jour" to impose massive new taxes and regulations on an industry.

It's all to accomplish the same thing. That's why Jones the civil-rights activist became Jones the environmental activist. Every problem that has ever existed is solved by massive taxes and government regulation, and Jones knew how to pivot from issue to issue while really pursuing the same end goal.

What this does is reveal more about Obama, his priorities and his administration than he wants to be revealed. You can bet that all the rest of re czars are on the same page. The only difference is, their "Truther documents" have yet to be found.

Is Health Care Reform "Dead"?

I'm hearing talk from pundits (radio, TV and print) that health care reform, or at least health care reform with the "public option" being the cornerstone, is dead. Do you think it is?

I think this is unabashed optimism on the part of conservative commentators. It may even be part of the strategy to get people to relax a little bit, only to get people going again if and when Congress tries to push through a plan that will destroy our current system.

I don't think there is any way health care reform is dead. And when I say that, I mean a leftist view of health care reform that includes either long term or short term plans to include a government-run system that would be designed to eventually run insurance companies out of business, leaving us with a single-payor, socialist program.

The left has been drooling over socialized medicine since the 1950's (or earlier). This is their big chance. What conservatives fail to understand about the left is that they have really drunk the kool-aid. They believe that socialism is the solution to America's problems. They really believe they can push through a plan that Americans don't want, and when the voting public sees just how "good" it is, and how much it "helps" America, they will be redeemed and be voted back into power. They want to be part of the legacy. They want to have their name attached to the biggest sweeping socialist takeover in the history of our country. They think that's a good thing.

Keep in mind that many of these leftists are nearing or well past what most of the rest of us would consider "retirement" age. Even if they get voted out of office, they have pensions, not to mention the opportunity to be lobbyists and speaking opportunities. They don't necessarily need to be in power, if they think they can accomplish a huge majority of what they have been working for all their lives in this one year.

(Don't pick apart the sentence "they don't need to be in power." It's all relative, and I'm trying to get inside their thinking. Yes, they want to be in power.)

The bottom line is, the left sees 2009 as their one chance to do "everything."

Health care "reform" is not dead. Nor is any other liberal program they think they might be able to ram through between now and when the campaigns heat up next year.