Obama's Health Care Speech - with translator. UPDATED

Cartoon by the great Michael Ramirez. Click on image to enlarge.

UPDATE:  People are really upset by the "profound dishonesty" of this speech. Language alert on the secondary Ace link.

Still More: Saturday Night Live - Obama's take on Harry Reid's sacrifice: Health Care Bill is "ANGRY-MOB UNPOPULAR" in Reid's district. Oh, well.

“health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture.

So it's worth it to the Democrats to lose a few elections.

Glenn Reynolds on "The consent of the governed - and the lack thereof.

. . . . Even among the rulers, only 63 percent -- triple the fraction of the general populace but still less than two-thirds of the political class -- regard the federal government as legitimate by the standards of America's founding document. The remainder, presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.

These numbers should raise deep worries about the future of our republic. A nation whose government does not rest on the consent of the governed is a nation whose government holds sway only by inertia, or by force. . .

But we've had enough political drama in recent years, so I'll go for a more prosaic comparison: The once-heady brew of American freedom has become watery and unsatisfying.

In fact, when I think of the federal government's brand now, I think of Schlitz beer. Schlitz was once a top national brew. But, in search of short-term gains, it began gradually reducing its quality in tiny increments to save money, substituting cheaper malt, fewer hops and "accelerated" brewing for its traditional approach.

Each incremental decline was imperceptible to consumers, but after a few years, people suddenly noticed that the beer was no good anymore. . . .

The federal government, alas, finds itself in much the same position. The political class sold its legitimacy off in drips and drabs. As "smart politics" has come over the past decades to mean not persuasion but the practice of legerdemain, the use of political deals, cover from a friendly press apparat and taking advantage of voters' rational ignorance, the governing classes have managed to achieve things that would surely have failed had the people known what was going on.

But though each little trick may have slipped by the voters, the voters have nonetheless noticed that the ultimate product isn't what it used to be. The end result, as with Schlitz, is a tarnished brand. And rescuing tarnished brands is hard.

It gets worse. . . .

In the past, America has managed to reinvent itself without transformations as wrenching as the Civil War or the Revolution. As the legitimacy of our current arrangements becomes increasingly threadbare, it is perhaps worth thinking about how this might be accomplished again. Because when a great beer dies, it's sad. But when a great nation dies, it's tragic.

Read the whole thing.