We Had to Pass the Bill in Order to Pass the Dutchie on the Left Hand Side

“On Monday, Bloomberg View columnist Caroline Baum actually said that to get young people to sign up for ObamaCare, in states where it’s legal, the Administration should give them marijuana,” Noel Sheppard writes at Newsbusters, adding that now he’s really seen everything:

Baum then explained the enrollment rate for folks aged 18 to 34 has been very disappointing with the nine state exchanges the New York Times looked at averaging about 20 percent.

“Obamacare can’t work with those kinds of results,” she correctly observed.

So what should Obama do before it’s too late?

First, announce and advertise that everyone between the ages of 18 and 34 who enrolls on the health-care exchanges by the end of the year is automatically entered in a lottery. Winners will receive everything from a free iPhone or iPad to a full-year of health-care underwritten by Uncle Sam. Refer a friend and get a discount. Buy one (year), get one free. In states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use — Colorado and Washington — by all means, throw in a bag of cannabis.

Imagine that. Give people pot to entice them to sign up for ObamaCare.

Why stop there? Why not give them alcohol, too? Or cigarettes? Or any number of things that are bad for their health in order for them to purchase health insurance that they wouldn’t need if they continued leading a healthy lifestyle?

Maybe Baum wasn’t aware that saloons used to act as polling places many years ago, and that states eventually made it illegal for such establishments to sell alcohol on Election Day.

Perhaps mobile “Choomwagons” could be employed to drive door-to-door to simultaneously proffer both socialized medicine and the stickiest of the icky:

Obama’s pal Mark Bendix had a Volkswagen microbus known as “the Choomwagon.” They would often drive up Honolulu’s Mount Tantalus where they parked “turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some ‘sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds’ and washed it down with ‘green bottled beer’ (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl). No shouting, no violence, no fights; they even cleaned up their beer bottles.”

Of course, smoking, drinking and driving on mountain roads could also be a little dangerous. Especially the night they tried drag racing.

The race to the top of Mount Tantalus pitted the “Choomwagon” against another friend’s Toyota. Obama was in the Toyota. The Choomwagon made it to the top first. When the other car didn’t show up, those in the Choomwagon drove back down to find them. Here’s how Maraniss describes what happened next:

“On the way down, they saw a figure who appeared to be staggering up the road. It was Barry Obama. What was going on? As they drew closer, they noticed that he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up.”

His friend had rolled the car. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. And, amazingly, they avoided trouble by leaving the driver alone to deal with the police by claiming it was just an unfortunate “mishap.”

Maraniss concludes his chapter on Obama’s high school years by looking at a note Obama had written in his high school yearbook in a section reserved for students to give a line or two giving thanks to those who helped along the way.

Obama had written this: “Thanks Tut [his grandmother], Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times.”

Maraniss notes: “Ray was the older guy who hung around the Choom Gang, selling them pot. A hippie drug dealer made his acknowledgements; his mother did not.”