My good friend Jeff and I were in a little flame war last night with a gentleman who is confused beyond words about politics. (He calls himself a libertarian but in reality he's not: He suffers from acute Leftist Self-identification Confusion Disorder.) He started it by sending this cartoon that was in the New York Daily News (a leftist rag if ever there was one):

In response to his pressing Jeff for a solution on the health care crisis that has given birth to "The Monster," Jeff penned this:

Go to Goodyear and buy their best inner-tube. Blow it up. Throw it into the ocean near Cape May. Then get in it. Then start paddling south. When the weather gets warm, look for an island that has lots of sugar canes growing on it. Go ashore and get nothing but free health care for life.

Way to go, Jeff!

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Read what a lefty says is the purpose of the ObamaCare Monster:

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that "it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to."

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, "Putting on my amateur historian's cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted."

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.