EVERYONE WHO IS FOLLOWING the debate over the massive health care policy proposals in Congress, and is wondering what the term “public option” means, should read Hugh Hewitt’s post today.  It tells you everything you need to know.  Excerpt:

The fundamental dishonesty [in President Obama's defense of his plan] is that the president refuses to acknowledge that the government option/public plan will be subsidized by the federal government in a number of ways and thus will be cheaper for employers to choose for their employees, and they will choose it, sending tens of millions of Americans now covered by private insurers into the public plan, dramatically driving up federal costs while crippling the private sector insurance industry.  Once dumped into the plan, the employees will wonder what happened to the president’s promise — often repeated — that “if you like your plan you can keep it.”

Read the whole thing, and send it to your friends.  Most important, call members of Congress and the Senate.  Hugh’s post gives you all the phone numbers.

I think it’s too early to say, but Reuters Blogs’ James Pethokoukis thinks so.  He asks and answers his own question: “So what happened?”

“How is it possible that Democrats cruised to a huge victory on Election Day in November 2008 and are yet again unable to make good on their top legislative priority? Why are the ghosts of Bill Clinton’s 1994 healthcare reform debacle suddenly flitting about Capitol Hill? What happened was the Great Recession, the political impact of which the Obamacrats completely misunderstood. Oh, they knew the financial and economic crisis helped sweep them to office. That part they got just fine.”

What went wrong, Pethokoukis thinks, is that the Democrats misread the public mood:

[T]hey also assumed that the downturn would create such a sense of economic insecurity that time would be ripe for the sort of expansive, government-led healthcare changes that the party has been dreaming of for two generations. Instead, the Great Recession made healthcare less of a priority for voters than economic recovery — as fast as possible, please — and job creation. A recent spate of polls shows concern about healthcare (and climate change and pretty much everything else) lagging concern about unemployment. Healthcare lags concern about the shocking enlargement of the federal budget deficit, which has grown partly due to government actions — such as the $800 billion Obama stimulus package — to deal with the recession, as well as by the decline in tax revenue caused by the downturn itself.

Finally, a most untimely (for President Obama) bit of reality raised its ugly head:

And then last week, the Congressional Budget Office, the respected arbiter of what new government programs might cost, calculated that the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill would cost more than $1.6 trillion over 10 years. That was determined to be a political no-go by Senate Democrats– a smart conclusion given the recent polling — and the committee moved on to a still evolving plan B.

Pethokoukis is an economic journalist.  Here’s the view of a “money guy,”Larry Kudlow at Kudlow’s Money Politics.  Kudlow wonders whether Obama’s problem is that the public will to support a massive change in the system just doesn’t exist:

According to a recent ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. That could mean up to 250 million people are happy. So why is it that we need Obama’s big-bang health-care overhaul in the first place?

We have two videos that we can’t embed, but we’ve got links for you.  Both are very much worth watching.

First, this BBC video shows an amazing clash between Iranian police and a large crowd of street protesters.  Start paying close attenttion at about 1:45.

Second (and swinging all the way back to the other side of the world), Sonja Schmidt at Pajamas TV offers a scathing wrap-up to the David Letterman – Willow Palin disgrace, and throws in some pointed comments about Guy Cimbalo, the Playboy on-line editor who fantasized about assaulting specific conservative women.  Video here.

(HT: Instapundit.)

This just in from our correspondent Steve Finefrock:

The photo below captures a disturbing trend that is beginning to affect US wildlife.

Animals that were formerly self-sufficient are now  showing signs of belonging to the Democratic  Party… as they have apparently learned to just sit and wait for the  government to step in and provide for their care and sustenance. 

This photo is of a Democrat black bear in Montana nicknamed Bearack Obearma.

And our selected weekend cartoons follow . . . .

The Los Angeles Times, a vehement defender of gay rights in California and particularly during the recent Proposition 8 battle, remarkably, came out today opposing the recent effort to introduce gay curriculum in Northern California elementary schools.

You may remember that the Alameda Unified School District, which has celebrated “Coming Out Week” in many of its public schools for sometime, voted to begin introducing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender concepts in classrooms from kindergarten on up.   Even supporters of gay  marriage have been ambivalent about such a move.   Now the L.A. Times seems to speak for all of us:

The unsigned editorial in today’s L.A. Times is fascinating on several levels.   Key paragraph:

In attempting to discourage taunting of gay students, the Alameda Unified School District turned what should be a basic lesson on treating others kindly into a primer on sexual identity. Its new anti-bullying curriculum for kindergartners through fifth-graders will begin in the fall and focus solely on gay and lesbian issues — as if harassment based on race, religion or failure to wear cool clothes were nonexistent. Parents who might object cannot opt their children out of it. It’s a heavy-handed approach to take with students at a tender age.

. . .

[The district] went too far in adopting a curriculum that introduces topics involving sexuality at an age when most children are ill-equipped to consider them. The new curriculum familiarizes second-graders with the concept of same-sex couples and teaches fourth-graders the words “gay” and “lesbian.” A year later, it calls on the teacher to write the acronym LGBT on the board and ask students the meaning of each letter (it stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, the four main forms of alternative sexual identity).

The district is using a facts-of-life curriculum to impart a Golden Rule lesson: Treat others as you want to be treated. Mean behavior is not OK. This is best taught by creating a school culture that values and rewards kindness and that doesn’t hesitate to discipline bullying.

During last fall’s Propositi0n 8 election anyone who raised this issue was derided as a liar or a fear-monger (not to mention a “hater”).  It will be interesting to see the reaction the Times editorial gets.  So far, the comments to the on-line version are not encouraging.

No one supports bullying children — about their sexuality or anything else.  All children should be taught — at home and at school — the “Golden Rule”  lesson the Times endorses.  But there is no reason to teach elementary school children anything about human sexuality.  Anyone who argues otherwise has some explaining to do about what the real agenda of such education might be.

From commenter Lotus at Knox News:

Under Bush, we had 100 left-leaning, rabidly anti-administration media outlets that were trying to get the President impeached and members of his staff thrown in jail. Against that, we had a single media outlet giving him generally favorable coverage.

Now, under Obama, we have 100 left-leaning media outlets trying to ram the President’s agenda through while working at having his likeness chiseled on Mount Rushmore. Against that, we have a single media outlet playing watchdog.

(HT: Instapundit.)