Give Me a Break

Excuse the numerous posts referencing Obamacare. But after years of having every doubt about the wisdom of the law, the expense, and the disgust at the legislative process that led to the law described as dumb and likely evil, the problems of the law's roll out are just a little bit of short-term vindication of at least some of those doubts.

After being told for eight years (from 2001-2009 right before President Obama was sworn in) that dissent was patriotic, being told that dissent is racist was a hard charge to endure.

And the press corps' cooperation in this charge was an added annoyance.

I'm going to try to stay in my defense and foreign policy lane more than I have of late. But grant me that I had reason to be annoyed, okay?

UPDATE: This is highly relevant to my frustration.

UPDATE: And one more.

Opposition to the war in Iraq--legally embarked upon and in conformance with Clinton-era legislation making regime change in Iraq our official policy--was patriotic dissent. And dissent was energetically pursued even as the surge offensive showed results. Still we won the war.

Now, opposing domestic legislation, a thoroughly normal and expected part of our Congress since our laws are not carved in stone, is "sabotage(!)" Who knew Republicans were writing bad code for Healthcare.gov?

Okay, I'm done.

UPDATE: This is really an update to the update, so I'm grandfathering this in:

In other words, [rather than being sabotage as Democrats have charged] most of the damage was done not by lack of funding, but because the administration was either incompetent or trying to insulate itself from the perfectly ordinary, natural, legitimate and, dare I say, patriotic function of an opposition party, which is to point out to the public when the party in charge is doing something that the public wouldn’t like. Reframing “criticism of the administration” as “sabotage” deserves an Oscar for outstanding lifetime achievement in the field of political spin.

It's not like the press corps carried out that function until the last several weeks, putting the burden on Republicans, I'll add.

So my frequent criticism of the failures of our press corps (from bias and lack of expertise) in reporting on war issues is touched on here, as well.

Hey, maybe it is time to haul out another favorite saying about dissent popular in the Bush years: false patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The left always left off the "false" qualifier, of course. That was an error.

Tip to Instapundit.