October 13, 2009
It's Up To Us
Roger Kimball says it's crunch time on health care. Check out the video of Robert Reich from 2007, as he candidly reveals the end game of a government controlled system.
More to read before you call or email your congressman...
Stephen Spruiell - Obamacare Dissected
Power Line's John Hinderaker - Dumb "Reform"
Gregory Conko at CEI - Political Malpractice
Andy McCarthy's "Killing Obamacare" , which warned back in August that "we could still blow this thing"
James Capretta on the Baucus plan's defects
More from Kimball, including this bit...
I have often quoted from a speech Obama gave the week before the election in which he told his cheering acolytes that they were only “a few days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” I think he was in earnest about that, and I find the prospect frightening. Were America to be remade according to Obama’s blueprint, it would, I am convinced, be poorer, less free, and less secure. It would also more heavily regulated, more drearily conformist, more politically correct.Those are the things I keep in mind when I contemplate the proposed “reform” of health care. At issue are not just questions about what sort of health care will be available to whom. Those are, to be sure, important questions. But they distract us from the larger goal: what sort of life will be possible to whom in this country.
George Will, a month ago, on the increasingly bizarre and dishonest rhetoric emanating from the White House..
His [Obama's] incessant talking cannot combat what it has caused: An increasing number of Americans do not believe that he believes what he says.He says America's health-care system is going to wrack and ruin and requires root-and-branch reform—but that if you like your health care (as a large majority of Americans do), nothing will change for you. His slippery new formulation is that nothing in his plan will "require" anyone to change coverage. He used to say, "If you like your health-care plan, you'll be able to keep your health-care plan, period." He had to stop saying that because various disinterested analysts agree that his plan will give many employers incentives to stop providing coverage for employees.
He deplores "scare tactics" but says that unless he gets his way, people will die. He praises temperate discourse but says many of his opponents are liars. He says Medicare is an exemplary program that validates government's prowess at running health systems. But he also says Medicare is unsustainable and going broke, and that he will pay for much of his reforms by eliminating the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud in this paragon of a program, and in Medicaid. He says Congress will cut Medicare (it will not) by $500 billion—without affecting benefits.
The claim that opponents of the president's plans propose only to "do nothing" is specious and lazy. Reason's Peter Suderman spent two minutes on Google and came up with lots of alternative proposals. He concludes...
...not all of these essays and books come with thousand-page pieces of legislation attached (thanks goodness!), but every one of them offers innovative ideas for how to administer health-care and how to pay for it—ideas that, by and large, Obama has ignored.Why? It's impossible to say for sure, but I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with the fact that all of the ideas mentioned above would change health-care in ways that empower individuals, rely on markets, and emphasize patient choice and preference rather than government authority. No matter what the reason, however, it's just not true that reform opponents aren't proposing solutions. What seems a lot more likely is that Obama just isn't listening.
UPDATE 10/14:
Sadly Loony
Like professional race hustlers Sharpton and Jackson, who could spot racism in a field of dandelions, some hawk-eyed lefty blogger spies race hate in a writer's photo of her pet. Patterico reports.
October 05, 2009
October 03, 2009
Injecting Himself
A rare NYTimes link for a sample of web opinion about how Obama somehow made the IOC's decision be about Obama.
October 01, 2009
The Pose of Thoughtfulness
As the president dithers on Afghanistan and Iran, and outsources tough decisions on major domestic legislation to Congress, Jen Rubin says he remains in campaign mode...
Iran and Afghanistan policies are adrift while the president chases to catch up to unanticipated disclosures (from his own military and from Iran), foreign leaders push forward to assert themselves, and congressional leaders pull this way and that on everything from Afghanistan troop levels and funding to gasoline sanctions for Iran. The president mulls and meets, while others wrestle with breaking developments. The space usually occupied by a forceful commander in chief seems empty–and, as with all vacuums, will be filled by others.On the domestic agenda, are we closer to a health-care reform bill than we were when Congress left for vacation in August? It doesn’t seem that way. Cap-and-trade? It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. And we’ll get new unemployment numbers on Friday, followed to be sure by some head-shaking and sympathetic words from the White House press room. But Obama will be in Geneva. Who’s in charge here? Certainly not the president.
This should come as no surprise to those who followed the campaign. This was precisely Obama’s modus operandi. He said nothing for days when Russia invaded Georgia and then slowly moved closer to his opponent’s position. He was mute on the economic crisis, letting John McCain knock himself out racing to and from Washington. Then he was praised for “calm” and his supposedly ”superior temperament.” But he was stalling–just as he is now. He allowed events to swirl and a sympathetic media to fill in the blanks. He met with panels of advisers but rarely said what he would do. He never asserted himself, perhaps because he didn’t know what to say or because he feared the criticism if he announced a position.
That, like so many other attributes, works fine in a campaign. It’s potentially disastrous for a president. We are now experiencing the consequences of electing an essentially passive figure who slipped by on charisma and the pose of thoughtfulness. At some point, presidents much choose, lead, negotiate, challenge, and direct. We elect someone to perform as chief executive and commander in chief, not as pundit in chief or media critic.
We see this in the workplace—someone is great in an interview but a poor job performer. Obama proved to be a world-class interview, but he’s quickly earning a reputation as an underachiever. If it keeps up, the people who hired him will start looking for a replacement.
Start looking?
September 29, 2009
Standard Fare
I checked out the Weekly Standard site to see how much of the current stellar issue they had made available online, and was glad to see much of it there.....Andrew Ferguson's observations on Obama "relinquishing any [American] claim to indispensability" at the U.N., P.J. O'Rourke pleading guilty to all the hatreds necessarily harbored by conservatives, Fred Barnes on why the Obama team is insistent on dismantling the Medicare Advantage program relied upon by over 10 million seniors, and Stephen Hayes on Obama's Iran policy of "speak timidly and don't carry a stick".
Three remembrances of Irving Kristol are keepers too...by his son Bill, one by Joseph Epstein, and an admiring tribute by Mary Eberstadt.
And leave it to Noemie Emery, long a favorite of this blog for, among other things, her insights on presidents and presidencies, to articulate nicely the source of much of my own unease with Obama in his first nine months. Set aside the hubris, political tone-deafness, insularity and condescension. For me, it's his unwillingness (inability?) to speak with pride in, much less affection for America that is most galling. Not only does he fail to acknowledge American exceptionalism, he unambiguously abdicates the traditional role of the President of the United States as the champion of freedom and democracy in the world. What's worse, he seems to think this makes his bona fides as a sophisticate...a man of the world. Ferguson hits it in his article (linked above), and Emery says a lot in these three paragraphs...
Barack Obama is often described as an inspiring figure, in the vaunted tradition of Reagan and Kennedy, who can arouse in his hearers a sense of great purpose, and set them to dreaming great dreams. He's a fine speaker, but Reagan and Kennedy inspired by their message: the idea that the country is unique among nations, has a singular mission to promote freedom everywhere; in effect, that the country is great. On this point, Obama is dumb. He stresses the country's faults, not its virtues; goes on apology tours, where he asks the forgiveness of nations with much grimmer histories; calls his country arrogant and dismissive of others, who deserve more respect. Cities on hills, beloved of Reagan and Kennedy, are not in his lexicon, and the idea of the "last best hope" of humanity has not crossed his lips. He finds the country exceptional only in its pretense to be so, and has been at pains to let England and Israel, who gave us our values, know that they're also not much. He doesn't seem to be moved by democracy either, as shown by his indifference to those fighting for it in Iran and Honduras, and his indulgence of oppressive regimes.A normal candidate who struck most of these notes would quickly be tossed on the ash heap of history, but this isn't your average bloke. He is in himself a historical moment, whose breakthrough election was, as was the moon landing, a great giant step for mankind. While denying American greatness, he seems to embody it: No other country had ever atoned for its sins in so stunning a manner, or come quite so far quite so fast.
The candidate at once of the left and the center, of the hot and the cool, of the race conscious and colorblind, he is the candidate too of those who deny that their country is special, and those who believe that he proves that it is. The upside of this is that it allows him to run down the country and still seem aspirational; the downside is that public tolerance for his world view has always been limited (think Jimmy Carter), and sooner or later the truth will come through. If he becomes Carter II, then the glow will fade quickly. No president who hasn't stood up for American greatness has ever been loved for too long.
Read it all, of course. She concludes that the above Obama contradictions "have misled the public, without the intent to deceive." Chief among those contradictions is the moderate temperament of the man, contrasted with the radical agenda. Many who backed him were fooled...but so was Obama, says Emery. He misread the electoral mood. The main question now seems to be whether he will double back or double down.
September 22, 2009
Narrowing the Mission
It’s understandable that he’d want to deliberate carefully about a decision to send as many as 45,000 more troops. But on his Sunday-show marathon, Obama questioned the premises of the war. He complained of “mission creep” in Afghanistan and claimed, “I wanted to narrow it.”If so, this is the only news from his mind-numbing round of interviews. In August, he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that Afghanistan is “a war of necessity,” because “if left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” In March, he announced “a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” He called for reversing the Taliban’s gains by taking the fight to the insurgents, training the Afghan security forces and promoting a better Afghan government. If the mission “creeped,” Obama did it.
If Obama never meant what he said about Afghanistan — or has changed his mind — this is the time to say it.
Remembering Kristol
The Standard blog has a nice roundup of commentary on, and remembrances of Irving Kristol.
UPDATE 9/23: Chris DeMuth and Jonah Goldberg
..and another roundup at the Standard blog.
September 20, 2009
Going Where They've Been
Via Power Line, a report on Sweden cutting income taxes to spur economic growth. John Hinderaker says...
...a generation of economic stagnation has taught the Swedes a lesson. They've learned that government does not produce wealth, and if they want more people to work, jobs have to pay better, after taxes. Sweden is therefore in the midst of a series of tax cuts aimed at preserving the long-term viability of its economy. Today's headline: "Sweden slashes income tax further to boost jobs."It's an interesting comparison: Sweden experimented with the nanny state, learned that it was devastating to the economic and moral health of its people, and is moving back toward individualism. Here in the U.S., we had the world's most dynamic economy, and the lesson we took away from that--some of us, anyway--was that we were doing something wrong and needed to socialize everything. Curious.
And it's not just Sweden in retreat from nanny-statism, with center-right politics resurgent in nearly all of Western Europe, as a corrective to decades of socialistic policies. Obama's insistence on taking the U.S. down that road anyway betrays him as an ideologue, not a pragmatist. The conclusion wouldn't be so easy to jump to if Obama had given any hint that he is something other than a societal leveler by disposition.
September 15, 2009
In The Public Interest
A new magazine venture called National Affairs is worth checking out, as I'm sure the free content is representative of the full version, with Yuval Levin on the masthead, and names like James Capretta, Charles Murray, Michael Barone, and Leon Kass contributing to the first issue.
Here's Levin with the quarterly's inaugural editorial and mission statement.
Mighty Oaks in Jeopardy
It's all ACORN all the time, at Andrew Breitbart's biggovernment.com site. Take a look, because you won't find it in your local newspaper or on the TV news.
September 14, 2009
Censure Whom?
Michael Ramirez at IBD Editorials
Lectures on civility from Democrats are the order of the day...as if the last eight years never happened. As Victor Davis Hanson says..."it's all quite amazing, really"
As we all remember, novels were published outlining dreams of killing Bush; a film on that theme won an award. Al Gore, John Glenn (of all people!), and Robert Byrd compared Bush to a brownshirt or Nazi, and they were echoed in the popular culture by the likes of Linda Rondstadt and Garrison Keiler ("brownshirts in pinstripes"). There was no liberal outcry in response.The Guardian published a sick column by one Charles Brooker, who asked out loud, "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?" Howard Dean, head of the Democratic party, raged, "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for." I think it was The New Republic that published Jonathan Chait's infamous "Why I Hate George W. Bush" article — imagine the outcry should anyone now do the same reprehensible thing with Obama substituted for Bush (e.g., "Why I Hate Barack H. Obama"). A play ran in New York called "I'm Gonna Kill the President."
...lots more.
UPDATE 9/17: Peter Wehner documents Democrats' civility and respect for the office of the presidency during the Bush years.
September 11, 2009
Dr. Lou Talks to the Buckeyes
Lou Holtz' pep talk for the Buckeyes before facing USC. Lou has a pretty funny Woody Hayes story.
Here's my game preview at TheClevelandFan.com, which contains links to some other pregame talk.
UPDATE 9/14: My thoughts on the USC game outcome.
September 09, 2009
Has Obama Been Listening?
Newt's 10 point Checklist for the Obama health care speech, a speech that should be listened to with one overriding question in mind..
Is this a speech designed to bring together Americans to pass bipartisan health reform?Or is this a speech designed to appease the Left?
Then there's Fred Barnes, who has five questions.
And here's Michael Barone
There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits.
September 06, 2009
Van Under The Bus
Now that he has resigned, the New York Times and others are forced to report that there has been a "controversy" about Van Jones. The Times says it has been "slowly escalating", and in fact it just "erupted" Friday. That's probably why they haven't gotten around to covering it.
UPDATE: Linkfest at Ed Driscoll
More at Ed's, including Jimmie Bise's three things.
And if Trutherism and Free Mumiaism had not been enough, I'm thinking the words of Jones monologue on the CD he recorded with Mumia might have been troublsome for him... as reported via PowerLine...say, like this for example...
We see violence against poor people, and poor people of color, within the US border, at the US border, and beyond the US border. And you see US tax dollars funding all of it. And so we have now a global struggle against the US-led security apparatus and military agenda that impacts people here and impacts people around the world...
You'd think that kind of thinking might have been problematic for a President of the United States, who, you know, controls the security apparatus on which Van Jones has declared global war. Even more troublesome is the sense that Jones and the President are of one mind on the issue.....and then that Jones' position renders him unfit for service in the White House.
...semi-regretting the unoriginal post title, which I selected before I saw how ubiquitous it is in the right blogosphere...too good I guess.
UPDATE: Andrew Breitbart
David Horowitz' blog post in full...
Lessons of the Van Jones Affair: Democrats Are Comfortable With Communists, Racists and Anti-SemitesThere is no more mystery about Van Jones. He was a passionate defender of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, a self-satisfied and described "Communist," a supporter of the destruction of the Jewish state, and a promoter of the theory that the Katrina tragedy was a white racist plot, and so forth. That's okay with Democratic chairman Howard Dean, and Obama's Environmental Quality Council head Nancy Sutley. (See Ron Radosh's current blog for chapter and verse, and also the many blogs on Jones at our own www.newsrealblog.com.) This should surprise no one. The recent heads of the black caucus in the House -- part of the 120 member "progressive caucus" -- have all been Castro-loving racists -- Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee to name two off the top of my head. Diane Watson is probably next. The Democratic Party today is a "popular front" organization (to pluck an appropriate term from the 1930s when liberals and Stalinists lined up together as well). There are no scoundrels, America haters, racists -- that Democrats won't assimilate. One of the more obnoxious racists and crooks in public life -- Charlie Rangel -- is still chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee because Nancy Pelosi can't remove him, so strong is his support in her party.
And if you don't believe how far left the Democrats have lurched when I say it, here's authentication from Alan Colmes who, after ignoring all the evidence about who Van Jones actually is and what he believes, and pretending that it's all a Glenn Beck-World Net Daily-Horowitz plot, concludes "Van Jones is a mainstream liberal." That's exactly right Alan. And that's exactly the problem.
How did things get to this pass? Let me just single out one problem, because it's the one conservatives can actually affect. And that is to start calling things by their right names. The timidity and cowardice of Republicans towards Democratic Party outrages of this nature is a principal culprit. When you call Communists "liberals," it legitimizes them. The time has come to stop it. To stop the charade, stick your head out the window and say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
September 04, 2009
For Slow Learners
Clearly what's needed here is another speech.
Funny how the people who run the most sophisticated communication operation in the history of the presidency keep concluding that their difficulties stem from their inability to get their message out and never from what their message actually is.
August 30, 2009
What KSM Gave Up
Definitely click and read Tom Joscelyn on the lives saved and plots foiled owing to the enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Via Stephen Hayes, who has lots more.
August 26, 2009
Reality Rearing Its Ugly Head
Will the administration cling to the claim that it is fear-mongering partisan Republicans who are orchestrating opposition to Obamacare, now that the Washington Post has editorialized that the White House and Congress should "face the reality" that the plan, as it exists today, doesn't meet any sensible standard of revenue neutrality or cost-savings projection?
Probably.
August 25, 2009
Looking Back, Not Forward
Jen Rubin, on the decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA operatives...
The decision, one of monumental significance to our intelligence community and national security, is announced while the president is closeted away in Martha’s Vineyard. This is political courage and transparency? Really, Obama is president—not Eric Holder—and should have the nerve to come forward, explain his decision, and tell us why we should not interpret his words to those assembled earlier at Langley as bald-faced lies. Then he pledged to the CIA employees that he intended to look forward, not back, and expressed that he would “need them more than ever.” Then he was vowing to have their backs. Now he and his attorney general have stabbed those same agents in the back.As a colleague expressed to me yesterday, “this is a form of madness.” The Obama administration sees the CIA as the enemy, not the terrorists. It chooses to employ the full force of the federal government against our own protectors, not those who seek to murder Americans. This has long been the pathology of the Left, a conviction that efforts to defend ourselves are evil and that our enemies are figments of our imagination. The difference is that now this conviction is held by the president and his attorney general.
It is therefore not simply the CIA that should feel betrayed, but all Americans. We lack leaders who are serious and committed to defending us against implacable enemies. There is no greater failing for a president.
In another post, Rubin writes...
Well, we’ve come a long way. The war on terror has become the war on the CIA.It does look that way.
More from Bret Stephens
Much more from Andy McCarthy, for folks interested in stuff like facts, law and history.
UPDATE 8/26: From Protein Wisdom
