Cheers for Joes

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

Let's hear it for Joes.

First we had Joe the Plumber, who had the fortitude to grill then-candidate Barack Obama about policies inimical to business. Now we have Rep. Joe Wilson, who was excoriated for yelling "You lie!" as President Barack Obama stood at the lectern/teleprompter last week and lied about health-care "reform" to the American people and a joint session of Congress.*

Wilson's "shocking breach of decorum and civility" brought the wrath of both Democrats and Republicans down on the South Carolina Republican, who, sadly, apologized to Obama.

• That would be the president who long has advocated a single-payer health care system, but last week said such a system wouldn't work in the United States.

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• That would be the president who denied the health-care bill would cover illegal aliens though his congressional allies had killed amendments specifying it would not.

• That would be the president who said Americans who exercised their freedom to opt out of a "reformed" system would be punished.

• That would be the president who said much of the cost of the "reform" would come from elimination of waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, then said Medicare and Medicaid deficits would swamp the federal budget if "reform" were not passed.

Wilson apologized to a president who declared, "This is personal for me. I will never forget watching my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final days, worrying about whether her insurer would claim her illness was a pre-existing condition so it could get out of providing coverage." That would be the mother whose son knew she was dying, but was not at her side at the end.

We apologize – to Joe Wilson – on behalf of those who pressured him to say he was sorry for blurting out the truth. And let us add the following to the Blind Partisan's Dictionary:

civility – n., the ability to retain the contents of one's stomach in the presence of a vile stench.

decorum – n., the capacity for maintaining silence in the face of mendacity.

Van Jones gets a pass

Van Jones' radical history may have cut him out of his job as the Obama administrations "green jobs czar," but he's still getting a pass from most of the mainstream media. The Los Angeles Times, for example, calls the communist agitator an "extreme liberal." This ranks right up there with the definition of "assassination" as "termination with extreme prejudice."

And lest you think Obama has cut Jones loose, consider that John Podesta, who headed the president's transition team, has found desk space for the gent at his Center for American Progress. If the guy were "radioactive," no Obamanite would touch him.

American 'paranoia'

The Los Angeles Times, which does so much excellent reporting, maintains a pro-administration editorial page. Last week it said that worries about Obama's speech to schoolchildren reflected "paranoia." It also brushed aside, as somehow unworthy, the criticism of the U.S. Department of Education's suggested, speech-focused curriculum. Perhaps the editorialists should have read the materials.

The Times' editorial suggests an entry in the Blind Partisan's Dictionary:

paranoia – n., the irrational feeling that persons who have lied to, cheated and robbed you in the past may be inclined to lie to, cheat and rob you again.

Punish the rich

And how about Sen. Max Baucus? The Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee wants to help pay for health-care "reform" by taxing insurance companies on their "Cadillac" health policies.

You could file this as the latest "punish-the-rich" scheme, but what worries us is that with the government takeover of General Motors, Buick health plans could be next, and then – Chevrolet!

Another load of green bull ...

The feel-good idea of the month comes from a California electric utility that is offering customers a chance to "reduce your carbon footprint" by adding $10 to their monthly bills.

In return for the 10 bucks, participants will receive, well, nothing – unless you count that self-satisfied feeling. However, they will be supporting "innovative local projects that reduce the effects of greenhouse gas." In this case, the one project cited is conversion of cow dejecta into methane gas, "which is then converted to clean, renewable electricity."

Uh … we thought burning methane produced carbon dioxide.

*(At the risk of sounding like a suck up, let us remind you also to remember another Joe – Farah – editor and publisher of WorldNetDaily.)