Damn, I Spoke Too Soon

Just when I thought that Pelosi and Hoyer had come up with irony that was not going to be topped, American Socialists prove how hard it is to find the bottom of the depths they will plumb.

It appears that Kenneth Gladney has no health insurance [see update – it appears he is insured]. Think Progress makes a great issue of this. They claim this “…underscores the vital need for health care [sic] reform”. If he had not been beaten up by thugs supporting healthcare reform he would not need healthcare!

They make their inane comment just after quoting Mr Gladney as saying “I was attacked for something I believe in”. Notice the tense, he is saying that he still believes in opposing the healthcare measures despite his current need for care.

It appears that Moderate Voice (in close competition with Think Progress for the “Most Inappropriate Name for a Website prize” as well as the reopened Least Subtle Irony one) thinks “If anything was more calculated to make the Right look foolish than this St. Louis incident then [they]’d love to see it”. Actually if anything were more calculated to make the Right look honest, to show their integrity, than a man who carries on protesting against healthcare reform that might help his newfound situation I’d like to see it.

Damn. There was I thinking that the Left valued integrity. That just makes me look foolish.

Update: this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Instapundit (which I forgot to hat tip for the original link) points out the update I missed at the bottom of Think Progress’s article. It appears that Mr Gladney does have health insurance. So why not make a really obvious correction to the article, Think Progress?

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As a technical aside, leaving aside the snide and sarcastic persona, the point the Left has missed here is that the problem is not that healthcare does not need reform, but that this reform is wrong. I can’t find the reference to hat tip, but a very good suggestion I read was that the first thing to try is a simple, two-stage process. Radical tort reform, to reduce doctors’ massive over caution in the face of possible law suits, followed by the disengaging of the link between employment and health insurance.

The left of course completely ignore the possibility of any healthcare reform other than their own, and pretend the only choice is between the current flawed model and ObamaCare (although they don’t actually know what that is, because only the right-wing protesters have actually read it).

OK, so I didn’t entirely leave the snide persona aside. Sue me.

Update on Kenneth Gladney

I wrote yesterday about the beating received by Kenneth Gladney, an American conservative who was beaten by members of the Service Employees’ International Union, the SEIU.

At the time there was no good impression of the injuries he received. The attack was described as ‘a beating’, but all commentary was from people politically opposed to the SEIU’s stance on the healthcare issue under debate. Well, that is if you can call a beating debate, because it appears that ‘beating’ was an understatement. ‘Serious beating’ was certainly justified.

Hundreds of people, largely it appears from the ‘Tea Party’ movement (opposing large increases in government spending, for those non-Americans who have not heard of this), descended on the St Louis offices of the SEIU. Mr Gladney was able to join them, he is fortunate that he has been able to leave hospital. However it appears that he is as yet still unable to speak. That does not suggest a moderate knock-about. That suggests to me he was subject to some determined violence, from four cowardly attackers.

Notice that the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, rabble rousers who have supported violent criminals if they were black) and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) did not manage to attend. That is the left for you. Event the ACLU won’t defend civil liberties taken away by their fellow lefties.

I wish for Kenneth Gladney swift justice and, more importantly, an even swifter recovery. Freedom-loving people everywhere are supporting you, Mr Gladney.

Update: of course the left-wing blogosphere cannot believe that the left has thugs. An ideology of coercion, socialism has always had its thugs, from the brownshirts of Germany in the 1930s to violent revolutionaries in South American jungle. My earliest memories of the left was the violent nastiness of the “peace” campaigners at Greenham Common, where we had family friends. Peace protesters who would attack a car with three young children in the back, entirely surrounding it and physically rocking it while shouting and screaming.

Political Punch

You might have heard by now about a black, American conservative, Mr Kenneth Gladney, being racially abused and attacked by members of a union (the SEIU) who were at a meeting to lend support to a Democrat politician who favours health-care reform. There has been a lot written even now, and I am sure more will come out.

However I found this exchange between a witness and an SEIU thug especially telling, as transcribed from video by Mary Katherine Ham in the Weekly Standard Blog,

"Two of you attacked that poor guy."

"No, we didn't."

"Yeah, you did!"

"He attacked America!"

Mr Gladney was an activist opposing the SEIU thug’s political opinion. The thug had no doubt his opinion was the correct one, so any dissent was to attack America.

Usual expansive hat tip to Glen Reynolds. I don't know what I'd blog without Instapundit!