Having introduced this locution in an earlier article, I hasten to stake my claim as the one to have originated the phraseology. Thus, if and when it wiggles itself into an unheralded immortality in the hallowed pantheons of political discourse, there should be no mistaking on who first minted it.

Mistaken attribution may not lead to a distortion of history with momentous repercussions on the subsequent unfolding of events. But accuracy in reporting is important; otherwise injustice becomes an acceptable integral part to the praxis and history of scholarship. Becoming so would, ipso facto, defeat the very sine qua non of history.

For instance, the catchy "nattering nabobs of negativism" is often mistakenly attributed to Vice President Spiro Agnew just because he was the first on record to have uttered it in public. However, it was minted behind the scenes by then speechwriter William Safire, whose “On Language” column justified The New York Times being delivered to my doorsteps for several years.

The Agnew attribution may not have changed the course of history. I however deem it an injustice to Safire’s contribution to the national political discourse in particular, and to language scholarship in general.

I have come to the inevitable conclusion that President Obama’s ascendancy to the Oval Office was made possible mainly by a failure of the majority of the American electorate to recognize a multitude of patterns concerning Barack Hussein Obama, the individual, his modus operandi, and its cumulative impact to our national polity. These include, among others, his associations, his teleprompter enhanced eloquence, his penchant to obfuscate information obstinately, his flair for the dramatic and sensational, etc., in endless litany.

Granted, there were countless enablers along the way. But the genius of Obama lies in his gambit that taken as a litany, or a laundry list of seemingly harmless lapses of judgment, his modus operandi could not harm him politically. He was in effect counting on the statistical certitude that the majority of the electorate could not muster a gestalt perception of himself as a politician. Therefore Americans as the electorate are inherently incapable of knowing how harmful Obama is to America.

It is a certainty because the electorate as a collection of minds and individual conscience and consciousness, constitute a few drops of genius in a bucket of mediocrity. This is not to denigrate the intelligence of the American electorate. It is just to recognize the undeniable brutal reality that statistically, the nonchalant John and Jane Doe “cannot care less” amongst us do vastly outnumber the “you never can fool me” Einstein and Heisenberg amongst us.

To invoke the original far-reaching conclusive formulation of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, in its entirety, "Inequality of endowments, including intelligence, is a reality. Trying to pretend that inequality does not really exist has led to disaster. Trying to eradicate inequality with artificially manufactured outcomes has led to disaster. It is time for America once again to try living with inequality, as life is lived: understanding that each human being has strengths and weaknesses, qualities we admire and qualities we do not admire, competencies and incompetencies, assets and debits; that the success of each human life is not measured externally but internally; that all of the rewards we can confer on each other, the most precious is a place as a valued fellow citizen."

I deem it pointless to dwell again on the litany of sins. Aside from having peripherally dealt with it earlier elsewhere myself, the internet literature alone is replete with brilliant and incisive documentation. To single out the most notable few I recently found: Victor Davis Hanson has repeatedly analyzed Obama’s lapses in judgment. Thomas Sowell pointed out with unmistakable emphasis how ruinous Obama’s czaring of America is to the country. Joan Swirsky pushed the envelope even further by delving into who could possibly be calling the shots.

The enablers demand revisiting because they, too, constitute a pattern. It requires getting to the forest without being distracted by the trees. The so-called main stream media, exemplified to notoriety by the “tingling legs” of Chris Matthews, being blatantly functioning as a de facto propaganda outlet for Obama does not need any journalistic sourcing. That the “hope and change” mantra took political traction, thanks to the acolyte media has become a common knowledge.

It is however usually under-appreciated that the Clinton Paradigm ushered in with facility the arrival of the Obama Paradigm. The ultimate political insider Richard Morris architected triangulation as an effective tactical maneuver to attain the strategy of political survival. This enabled the Clinton presidency to recalibrate its bearings, to survive Newt’s “Contract for America” revolution and introduce a new standard for Presidential behavior. The Clinton era effectively corroded the nation’s sensibilities.

After the nation have accepted the mantra that the Lewinsky Affair was about “only just sex,” “everybody does it,” “does not amount to impeachable behavior,” the crush and burn methodology of Rahm Emanuel became as benign to the nation as a cub scouts fire drill. On his inauguration speech, Obama enjoined the nation to help him remake America and more than half of the nation gave him a standing ovation.

Little did the applauders suspect that what he had in mind was to convert America to be the leading debtor nation after a long tradition of being a reliable creditor nation. Little did the nation suspect that what he had in mind was to downsize the private sector, the very dependable engine of wealth creation, in order that union and government bureaucracies, become the undisputed purveyor of the perverted “golden rule,” that he who has the gold makes the rules.

As a matter of pedagogical illustration let us take the recently passed House Bill which is popularly deemed the PelosiCare version of ObamaCare.  I had neither the latitude nor the forbearance to deal with the thousands of pages of the full text. Hence, I searched the CRS summary page for the text strings “establish” and “prohibit.” The search returned ten hits for “establish” and five hits for “prohibit.”

Without going into a tedious and toilsome cost-benefit analysis of the implications of the search result, it is safe to conclude that at the very least, when PelosiCare becomes the law of the land, we are guaranteed five more constraints to what can be done, without fear of violating the law. Whether they be czars, commissions, committees, or panels of sorts, there shall be ten more units of bureaucracy to function as instruments of governance.

Let me remind, in passing, all those who breathed a sigh of relief on the report that Sen. Lindsey Graham pronounced the Bill a DOA (dead on arrival) in the Senate, to take the relief with the proverbial grain of salt. The venerable Senator issued a similar verdict on the Sotomayor confirmation. She was then the nominee. She is now Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Would calling Senator Graham’s office for an explanation serve any purpose? I suspect it would be an exercise in futility.

Finally, recognizing a paradigm is one thing; being cognizant of its enduring legacy is quite another. I deem it proper and fitting to apply the modifier repugnant to emphasize the reality that every facet of the Obama agenda has the guaranteed effect of undermining the principles which serve as the foundation of Americanism, the vaunted last best hope of mankind on earth.

"All politics is local," is a truism attributed to the late Tip O’Niell. He was Speaker of the House when Ronald Reagan was President. I believe Chris Matthews of "tingling legs" fame may have worked for him, in some important capacity.

I hasten to add, however, that in a land like America, where individualism is supposed to flourish and reign supreme, "All Politics is Personal." (It sounds so delicious I should get this trademarked.)

The essence of what the Obama administration is doing respecting health care is an assault on individual liberty. All the machinations and lawyerly schemes buried in thousands of pages and a mesh of cross references impact every citizen in the most personal way.

I Got Lucky Once

On August 30, 2007, less than one year after I started collecting Social Security, I underwent an open heart surgery with aortic valve implant and a quadruple coronary bypass. This was the byproduct of an attempt to get an inguinal hernia fixed surgically.

The cruel dollars-and-cents scorecard was rather staggering. Upwards of $149k paid for by my insurance provider and our co-pay in the neighborhood of $15k, an obligation we are still struggling to meet.  All this cost for another lease on life, now as a card-carrying member of that exclusive club of people with artificial implants bearing the manufacturer’s serial number.

Beyond the cost, even more staggering was the realization that this was the result of discrete individual decisions made by professionals practicing their professions under the free market system. Mainly the patient’s best interest and the highest integrity of their respective professions were the deciding factors.

As the debate on ObamaCare unfolds or heats up, what haunts the inner chambers of my reverie is this: The outcome could have been drastically different had the decision been made by a Health Care Czar or any low-level bureaucrat concerned only with cutting costs from wherever it can be done in the domain.

With triage driven strictly by a cost-benefit analysis, denying me the heart surgery would have represented multiple savings: the cost of the surgery itself and the monthly social security check due me if I continued living. 

It would have been a sort of accomplishment to eliminate what can be construed as a potential useless eater. It’s a gruesome thought that betimes besets me even while playing an occasional round of golf with my nine-year old granddaughter (which she seems to immensely enjoy).

The Tedious Narrative

It all started with the need to have my hernia fixed, before the health insurance coverage lapses as a result of my wife, Krystyna changing jobs. Not that she had another job to go to but she was very unhappy with the working conditions at the job she held for the time being. She was seriously thinking of going for a change.

I had scheduled a surgery for Tuesday, 21-Aug-07. I reported for the pre-op procedure on Friday, 17-Aug-07. The anesthesiologist said he did not like the looks of my ekg., and wanted a cardiology clearance for the surgery. So, instead of going for the hernia surgery on Tuesday, 21-Aug-07, I went for a cardiac stress test. At which point, the cardiologist said he did not like the looks of the frontal area of my heart and wanted a closer look.

There really was not much of a choice but to abide by the cardiologist’s prescriptions. After all, I consulted him for his professional expertise. The cardiologist secured a 28-Aug-07 appointment for a Cardiac Catheterization for the coveted ‘closer look.’

Meanwhile, while taking a shower in the early evening/late afternoon of Saturday, 25-Aug-07, I experienced all the telltale symptoms of a stroke reminiscent of the one I suffered on 1-Feb-93 which had me out of commission for a month. (Then I was paralyzed for two weeks, I spent the third week doing in-patient rehab at Beekman Downtown Hospital, the fourth week outpatient rehab at home.) I was admitted to the Emergency Room at SBUH (Stony Brook University Hospital). I underwent a battery of tests which turned out negative for stroke but was kept in the hospital for observation in light of my appointment for cardiac catheterization.

Whether inadvertently or by design, during cardiac catheterization I was only half-way sedated. I could hear the conversation of the people conducting the procedure as if it was taking place in the adjacent room. But my recollection of what I heard is as vivid as my mother’s words when I bid her my final goodbye back in April 1974. I can see it engraved in marble in the inner chambers of my mind:

Voice A: “I cannot do this anymore. It’s too far gone. I want the surgery team to take a closer look at this. Can you do this?”

Voice B: “We are looking. Yes, that’s doable.”

Voice of my mind’s I: “Hey, guys, are you talking about me? I’m still here. Can somebody please fill me in on what it’s all about?”

I got my wish. I was wheeled into the waiting/staging room to wake up from my sedation. Some thirty minutes later the surgeon (Voice B above) informed me that I need an aortic valve replacement and a triple, possibly, quadruple coronary artery bypass. If I had any questions, this was the time to ask:

Me: “So doc, what are my options?”

Surgeon: “Not too many. You can take either a metal or a tissue implant.”

Without losing a breath, I picked tissue. Somehow the idea of inorganic object implanted in my body, other than dental, did not sound too appealing.

Surgeon: “Good choice. That way you don’t have to be on blood thinner all your life.”

He proceeded to inform me that he can do the procedure the following Thursday as his second patient for the day. Under the inertia of hospitalization, I accepted the schedule but deep down in my soul I was struggling for a moral justification for the attempt to extend my physical life with an artificial implant.

Although I am no longer a church-going Christian, somehow, I had apprehension that the impending procedure violated my perception of Divine Providence. I have to come up with a reason to justify what I then considered as making a mortgage of my soul with the Devil. Then came the epiphany. I need to sing at Nikki’s wedding. Nikki is my granddaughter who was seven years old (and four months) at the time.

The aortic valve (affectionately referred to as a “pig’s heart”) has a statistical longevity of fifteen years, give or take a couple. Fifteen plus seven makes twenty-two, and that is about a marriageable age, depending on circumstances. Nikki does not know this but she has been the main reason for my still being around. As far as she is concerned she is just happy that Pa (as she calls me) is here as opposed to being a distant memory.

It was under these circumstances that I submitted myself under the knife which in its essential components consisted of: nine hours of surgery, seventeen hours sustained by the respirator machine, eighteen units of blood transfusion, and my daughter getting hysterical that I might have been dead when the hospital staff finally allowed her to look at my seemingly lifeless carcass.