Archive for 2009
August 12, 2009
SURPRISING FINDINGS: “A a new survey from Indiana University and the University of Utah finds that a huge majority of Americans think that women should change their last names when they marry. And they’re not sure we should stop at moral suasion. . . . I can’t help but wonder if they got some sort of a screwed up sample. Government naming rules? When did I move to Germany?”
Hey, government health-care, government name-care — it’s all of a piece, really. It’s for your own good!
HEALTH CARE: We need the courage to do nothing.
Plus this: “I finally understand why the Congressmen who are pushing HR3200 have not read it, and have come up with something unreadable. It’s quite deliberate. If people could actually read it, they might learn too much. If they learned that a new cancer drug would not be available, or that their father’s heart surgery would not be covered, millions and millions of ordinary people would be outraged and up in arms, and it would be very bitterly personal, like Mike Sola, the guy whose son has cerebral palsy and who learned he wouldn’t be covered.”
Transparency!
DOUG MATACONIS: “Despite all of the protesters, despite all of the talk on talk radio and cable news, and, yes, even despite all the polls showing the public’s skepticism on ObamaCare, the Republicans one chance of success here is to convince the Blue Dog Democrats in the House and the Senate that they would pay a severe political price for working with the Administration on health care reform. With the Blue Dogs, the bill passes. Without them, it fails. It’s really that simple.” Worth remembering, for those involved. In part, of course, the best approach depends on whether you think Congressmembers are motivated more effectively by persuasion, or fear. This is the debate between Andy McCarthy and Charles Krauthammer. More on that here.
CAMILLE PAGLIA: Obama’s healthcare horror: Heads should roll — beginning with Nancy Pelosi’s!
Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.
Case in point: the administration’s grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. . . . Who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Ouch. Plus this: “You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you’re happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing. I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way?” Why, indeed?
Plus, from Mickey Kaus:
I still don’t quite understand why Obama can’t bring hmself to say some variation of a) “There won’t be rationing” or b) there won’t be rationing under the Kinsley definition–“Any treatment that I, the President, would get you will get,” or c) “Medicare doesn’t ration now and won’t ration in the future, period. There will be no change in how Medicare decides what treatments to pay for. The goal is to get it to pay for more, not less.” Read My Lipitor!** No New Rationing. . . .
**–Obama’s answer to a questioner who had to “go through two different trials of other kinds of drugs” before being allowed by Medicaid to go back on brand name Lipitor (which he’d been taking for years) was basically that the outcome was good because “once it was determined that, in fact, you needed the brand name, you were able to get the brand name.” Spoken like a lawyer! (So you had to fight for a few months or years? You won didn’t you? Process costs don’t count.)
Read the whole thing.
PRICES IN JAPAN ARE IN A NOSEDIVE: “Japanese wholesale prices were down by a record 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, highlighting the growing deflationary pressure in the economy.” But the Bank of Japan says it’s not deflation, so don’t worry. (Via Americablog).
ROBOTS TO GET their own operating system.
A WHILE BACK, I lamented the unavailability of Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco. Now Glenn Kenny emails that it’s about to come out in a Criterion edition DVD, and that it’s getting good reviews. I’ve ordered my copy.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Sailing to Byzantium. “NATO ships and American leadership. Take that away and we’d be back to 1941, 1915, 1571, and 404 B.C. in a few years.We should remember that as we go into $2 trillion debt this year, since very soon this administration will by needs either raise taxes on the middle class or slash the military budget in late 1940s style.” The military budget is not a priority, I’d guess.
PAM SPAULDING on race, sexuality, and having your “black card” revoked.
If, as Harold Pollack argues, “rationing of life-saving or life-extending care” would not really be a priority for the “effectiveness” panels–such as the Obama-endorsed IMAC–then it was all the more stupid to bring the topic up, no? Here’s the first graf from a Bloomberg account of an early Obama health care foray back in April:
April 29 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.
Gee, where could the misinformed town hall crazies have gotten the idea that Obama was thinking about saving money by denying expensive procedures toward the end of life?
Oops.
EEK! A GUN! James Taranto notes that charges of “firearms incidents” at Town Hall protests say more about lefty ignorance than about Town Hall violence.
Funny how TPM et al. are pushing this stuff while ignoring the Ken Gladney beating. Of course, they’re not the only ones.
UPDATE: On the other hand, “leave the guns at home” is good advice, regardless of substance, given that folks in the press are desperately looking for anything they can use to discredit the protests.
HEH: “What if opponents of ObamaCare threw shoes at congressional backers of same? The left seemed to think that was an OK form of protest earlier this year!”
Yeah, but that was back when protest was patriotic! Amusing as this idea sounds, though, it’s probably a bad one.
UPDATE: On the other hand, this thing seems to be going viral: Post Office Vandalized With Obama ‘Joker’ Posters. But anything with Alex Jones behind it deserves some skepticism, to put it mildly. However, I don’t think that calling Congressmen Nazis is racist. At least, it wasn’t racist when federal judges did it to Bush.
But the graffiti may have been another false-flag operation. Expect to see more of those.
GALLUP: Public Support for Health Care Drops 21 Points In Four Weeks.
In his news conference, Obama was asked if Americans would “have to give up anything in order for this [reform] to happen?” His answer: Basically, not much: “They’re going to have to give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier.”
That answer is about as convincing as the prospects for cold fusion.
Hey, don’t give up on cold fusion . . . .
August 11, 2009
HEH: Dem Rep Who Opposes Photo ID To Vote Requiring Photo ID For Town Halls. Isn’t he worried that a photo ID requirement will discourage minorities — and immigrants — from attending? . . . .
CHARGE: A packed “town hall” in San Diego. So I can see the appeal of a friendly crowd, but what does this really accomplish? Maybe a bit of positive local media, but just as likely some negative stuff as people complain. Is it just about protecting politicians’ fragile egos?
TOM MAGUIRE: Who is this guy? The clothes have no emperor.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” US official gropes to explain Clinton’s outburst. “The State Department struggled Tuesday to explain Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s face-off with a Congolese student and suggested that the questioner’s nervousness sparked the outburst with the mention of her husband’s name.”
OR MAYBE IT’S JUST THE MEDIA HYPE THAT’S BUSTING: Obama baby boom: Predicted surge in births goes bust. “On Nov. 4, the hope and happiness seemed boundless for supporters of President-elect Barack Obama, leading some to speculate, with a wink and a nod, that in nine months there would be a virtual Obama baby boom — a celebratory uptick in the national birthrate. But now, 40 weeks later — the average human gestation period — MSNBC is reporting the prediction has largely been nothing more than, well, false hope.” And not the last such, I suspect.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Cap And Trade: Measuring The Disaster.
BILL WHITTLE, SCOTT OTT, STEPHEN GREEN: Healthcare Town Hall Protesters: Grass Roots or Astroturf Dissent?