Garden State Patriot

Late last night, Sarah Palin posted a piece on Facebook entitled “Good Intentions Aren’t Enough with Health Care Reform.” Her post begins as follows:

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has approved its health care bill, it’s a good time to step back and take a look at the long term consequences should its provisions be enacted into law.

The bill prohibits insurance companies from refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and from charging sick people higher premiums. [1] It attempts to offset the costs this will impose on insurance companies by requiring everyone to purchase coverage, which in theory would expand the pool of paying policy holders.

However, the maximum fine for those who refuse to purchase health insurance is $750. [2] Even factoring in government subsidies, the cost of purchasing a plan is much more than $750. The result: many people, especially the young and healthy, will simply not buy coverage, choosing to pay the fine instead. They’ll wait until they’re sick to buy health insurance, confident in the knowledge that insurance companies can’t deny them coverage. Such a scenario is a perfect storm for increasing the cost of health care and creating an unsustainable mandate program.

Those driving this plan no doubt have good intentions, but good intentions aren’t enough. There were good intentions behind the drive to increase home ownership for lower-income Americans, but forcing financial institutions to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them had terrible unintended consequences. We all felt those consequences during the financial collapse last year. Unintended consequences always result from top-down big government plans like the current health care proposals, and we can’t afford to ignore that fact again.

Sarah Palin, of course, clearly has Presidential aspirations and, in that light, saying the proponents of government-run healthcare have ‘good intentions’ is certainly a diplomatic approach. In fact, I think most Republicans and conservatives have been of the opinion that our leftist friends generally have good intentions but are simply naive or misguided. For most of my adult life I have shared that opinion as well.

However, I can no longer say that I subscribe to such a view. There simply are no good intentions behind socialism. There is only misery, poverty and tyranny. That the leaders of today’s Democratic Party would pursue such an agenda – an agenda that subverts our very constitution I might add – when they are presumably knowledgeable about the history of socialism, let alone the disastrous consequences of socialized medicine in other nations, is the epitome of bad intentions. One who would pursue such an agenda does not have good intentions, but instead has a selfish quest for power and control over our lives.

As such, the days of Republicans and conservatives being kind enough to attribute ‘good intentions’ to the statists and socialists on the left need to cease. We need to begin calling a spade a spade. And we need to begin forthrightly telling our fellow citizens that intentions are only good when they begin and end with unapologetically promoting individual liberty and unbridled capitalism.

It would be a good start if Sarah Palin, the darling of many conservatives and potential 2012 Presidential nominee, would carry this torch and bring this message to the American people instead of - dare I say - trying to ‘put lipstick on a pig.’

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

Some in the media have been comparing Caroline Kennedy to Sarah Palin – even coining the silly phrase ‘Palin-ized.’ But Caroline Kennedy is no Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a self-made woman. She didn’t use a man or a last name that some bestow royalty upon to get where she is. Palin has actually run a government. She has more in common with the so-called ‘working family’ than any Kennedy ever could. Quite frankly, any comparison between the two is an insult to Palin. 
Of course, let’s just wait and see if SNL belittles Mrs. Kennedy in the same manner they did Sarah Palin considering her lack of experience, as well as her stumbling-type speech as witnessed here.

Is CNN’s Drew Griffin sloppy, ignorant or just another reporter who’s in the tank for Barack Obama?

Here’s the exchange from yesterday’s interview with Governor Palin:

CNN: Yeah. Governor, you’ve been mocked in the press. The press has been pretty hard on you, the Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.

Palin: Who wrote that one?

CNN: That was in the National Review, I don’t, have the author.

Palin: I’d like to talk to that person.

So, what’s the problem? Griffin completely distorted the National Review article, written by Byron York. York wrote:

Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle. In fact, Palin may have it even worse than Quayle, since she’s taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well.

York was criticizing the MEDIA, not Palin!

As reported on tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, when questioned about the distortion, CNN did not offer an apology or own up to the ‘mistake.’

But, hey, there’s no media bias, right? If a Fairness Doctrine is needed, it’s for network news operations like CNN and MSNBC which have taken journalism to new lows.

Here’s the entire interview: