Venalities And Victims

Among the things we can count on, regardless of how the prevailing political winds are blowing, is this: If Smith discovers a way to profit while simultaneously wounding his enemy, then, absent moral constraints strong enough to inhibit him, he will use it. And so we get this bit of viciousness, powered entirely by a religiously based difference:

Progressive people of the world, go ahead and see “Ender’s Game” this weekend with a clear conscience: Orson Scott Card won’t see a penny of your movie ticket money, TheWrap has learned.…

If you really want to hit Card where it hurts, boycott his book instead: Card still profits handsomely from the novel, perched at the top of the latest New York Times Best Seller List for paperback mass-market fiction.

Hollywood, which is fighting a losing battle for patrons, would never encourage potential customers to boycott a movie...but a book? Too easy. In Hollywood's collective mind, people who read have two strikes against them from the outset. Also, homosexuals are both overrepresented in the cinematic world and more politically active than most of their fellows. The rest follows unnaturally.

But that's essentially tawdry and trivial: a hissy-fit thrown by mediocrities unable to restrain themselves when they've spotted a chance to harm one of their betters. If you need your blood pressure elevated, have a gander at this:

[Craig] Patty, the owner of a small trucking company in Houston, was never asked if he wanted to become a cog in the DEA’s sting of the Zetas Cartel. He was never asked if it was cool with him to have his truck, his driver, become part of their covert operation. The DEA didn’t care what Patty thought. They had a job to do and it was the duty of every good American to give up his life to help the DEA.

Except the DEA plan didn’t work out nearly as well as the brilliant government tacticians thought it would:

Commandeered by one of his drivers, who was secretly working with federal agents, the truck had been hauling marijuana from the border as part of an undercover operation. And without Patty’s knowledge, the Drug Enforcement Administration was paying his driver, Lawrence Chapa, to use the truck to bust traffickers.

At least 17 hours before that early morning phone call, Chapa was shot dead in front of more than a dozen law enforcement officers – all of them taken by surprise by hijackers trying to steal the red Kenworth T600 truck and its load of pot.

When Patty was finally told that his truck and driver wouldn’t be coming home again, it apparently didn’t occur to anyone at the DEA that this might be a problem. Nor did they consider that Patty, who had nothing to do with any of this, might not want to be in the crosshairs of the Cartel for being part of this government sting. “Suck it up, pal,” was the government’s attitude.

When this story first broke, one might have suspected that the DEA, in one of its occasional bursts of actual thoughtfulness, would have apologized deeply to Patty, handed him a generous check to cover the loss of his truck and begged his forgiveness. After all, there is utterly no explanation for taking a truck from an American businessman, converting it for use in the War on Drugs, and telling the guy tough luck. Yet, that’s what the DEA apparently did (which is something to remember when the DEA promises that it would never do harm and we should trust it).

So! The State has first claim on your property, and may seize it without prior notification and with no compensation. So much for the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, eh?

But it gets worse, Gentle Reader. Oh my, how much worse it gets:

FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted....

Democrats appear to want to make physicians slaves of the state, but Democrats don't admit they would just drive more doctors out of practice into retirement and other occupations....

The head of Obamacare programs, Berwick, loves the socialized medical system in the UK, but never mentions that malpractice insurance is minimal. In the UK, panels of doctors review and approve malpractice awards, rather than emotional juries misled by trial lawyers.

It's bad enough that the Selective Service Act exposes doctors to the draft up to the age of 35, whereas young men in other trades cease to be vulnerable at age 27. But the notion of compelling doctors to take patients at a loss, while nevertheless leaving them exposed to all the other risks involved in practicing medicine, could only occur to a tyrant-in-embryo.

Forced labor is slavery, isn't it?

But perhaps ObamaCare's other effects will persuade certain persons that enslaving doctors isn't such a bad idea:

Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.

My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31....

What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.

For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point.

Cue Kathleen Sebelius intoning "Some people live, some people die."

All this, plus Benghazi, and the IRS scandal, and the NSA scandal, and Fast and Furious, and the New Black Panthers scandal, and the several "stimulus" scandals, and the Obamas' ultra-indulgent lifestyle, and Obama's several usurpations of power and dismissals of Constitutional requirements, and his unending lies, and every last politician to the left of Ronald Reagan calling those who differ with them "extremists," "anarchists," and "terrorists," and still no armed insurrection. Americans must be a nation of saints, to suffer oppression so placidly.

Pssst! This is Guy Fawkes Day. Celebrate it in the spirit of the event it commemorates...according to your best judgment, of course. And do stay safe.