Comments Posted By anon
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The problem for Obama is the domino effect. If he dumps Jones, all of Obama's czars are going to get a thorough vetting from Obama's critics. That many, if not most, of them will be found to have been swimming in some pretty nasty radical swamps is a given. Does he toss them all out? Does he say "Oops, I didn't vet anyone"? He may dig in on Jones to try to avoid this, but, alas, it isn't going away. Every one of his czars is going under the spotlight now. I think Obama will focus his efforts, along with his attorney general and his FCC "diversity czar," on shutting down Fox News and talk radio. He doesn't see Jones as the problem, only that the people found out about Jones.
Comment Posted By Anon On 4.09.2009 @ 09:27
WHAT IF 'OBAMACARE' MORPHS INTO KENNEDYKARE?
I don't think there's as much political capital in Kennedy's death as the dems seem to think there is, so once again, I think Obama and Pelosi are going to have a tin ear here and they are going to be stunned by the negative reaction to their "do it for Teddy" push. I have visions of a little old lady at a town hall meeting saying "Ted Kennedy doesn't have a darn thing to do with my health insurance; what are you people talking about?!" Obama speaking at the funeral will be transparently political, so most will view it as an overt political act by a White House whose agenda is in trouble. In fact, Obama's crass exploitation of this death is very likely to create a backlash which, of course, he'll never see coming because he just doesn't get it.
I live in a fairly liberal town, and honestly Kennedy's death is being met with a kind of ho-hum disinterest, and an underlying "are we finally done with that family?" I see absolutely no outpouring of grief that requires immediate action by Congress on health care or anything else. I just don't see it. Once again, the Obama White House (and also the media, with its fawning coverage of Kennedy) is just reading the nation wrong on this one. Ted Kennedy was a hero to a fairly small group of far-left people.
The screeching negative reaction to Caroline Kennedy's "candidacy" for Hillary's seat should demonstrate to the dems that the Kennedy mystique went away a long time ago. Their efforts to resurrect it to pass a health care bill the nation does not want will be met with more mocking and more anger. The American people have already shown Obama quite clearly that they do not want to be toyed with on this issue. This transparent effort of engaging voters' pathos with a dead senator named Kennedy is just going to be seen as more insulting stagecraft and manipulation. It really is like watching a train wreck about to happen and you can't do a thing to stop it.
Comment Posted By Anon On 27.08.2009 @ 12:55
NO DOUBTING TED KENNEDY'S IMPACT ON HISTORY
First, I can't believe there are people in the world who can utter the phrase "Yes, he killed a woman…but…." It simply boggles the mind that, for some, killing a woman just does not mitigate other lifetime achievements. It does. It always has. It always will.
Second, no one should serve in the U.S. Senate as long as Kennedy did. It turns the intent of "government by the people" on its head.
Third, while Kennedy may have had his name on a number of important pieces of legislation, he did none of that alone. On Civil Rights, for example, it was the Republicans in Congress who put that over the top, and Kennedy's democrat colleagues who opposed it. Tenure does not necessarily equal achievement, though we'll hear little of that argument in the days to come. So, yes, we'll have to wait for history to give us a more reasoned analysis of Kennedy's achievements. For today, it's all Camelot-style myth-making.
Comment Posted By Anon On 26.08.2009 @ 12:47
It's interesting, isn't it? This stubborn American distrust of the rising powers of government, even after 40 years of pro-government-expansion public schooling, and as many years of a media that is decidedly working to further the interests of the powerful over the governed. I attribute it largely to those plain-spoken founding documents:
--"Free speech"
--"The right to bear arms"
--"Congress shall make no law…"
--"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people"The "nuance" the left is forced to argue in order to convince free men to relinquish their freedoms without bloodshed is, quite simply, washed away by the undisguised meaning of those founding documents -- and their direct limits on government. I had to chuckle when Obama said he doesn't like the "negative rights" the U.S. Constitution requires. I imagine he does not. They represent a hill the left has not been able to climb, no matter how hard they have tried.
Comment Posted By Anon On 23.08.2009 @ 20:43
PREPARE FOR ARMAGEDDON ON HEALTH CARE REFORM
The problem with people like Barack Obama is that they have spent their entire lives (or their entire adult lives) surrounded by like-minded people. The health care "debate" took him by surprise because he has had so little contact with people who do not think exactly as he does. Liberals -- especially those, like Obama, who float out on the far-left fringe -- are very insular people. Every time he comes up against stiff competition for what any reasonable person would deem a radical idea, he looks like a deer in headlights, and then the confusion leads to anger, and eventually to hubris. We are watching Barack Obama go through that precise range of responses. He has been taught that anyone who disagrees with liberal ideology is either a racist or a nut or some other invective. Since he has had almost no contact with any other adults than fellow far-leftists, he believes the caricature, even when evidence to the contrary is staring out at him from a town hall meeting. So, he will proceed down this ruinous path, secure in his righteousness -- because every single person he knows tells him it is righteous. Can he "Palinize" more than half the nation as inbred idiots? I don't think so. But he'll try, because that's the only way he's capable of understanding ideological differences.
Comment Posted By Anon On 19.08.2009 @ 07:54
HEALTH CARE REFORM TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF FAILURE
"Seed money"? I'd have to see how much control Obama thinks that seed money cedes to him and the democrats in Congress. I suspect he imagines that it's a lot. Therefore, co-ops are a public option masquerading as something that Chris Matthews suggested "sounds less socialist." How about we get the seed money from the insurance companies and the pharmaceuticals, and the federal government keeps its grubby hands out of it? At least if they screw it up, the American people will have a recourse via the courts.
Comment Posted By Anon On 16.08.2009 @ 16:02
PALIN'S OUTRAGEOUS DEMAGOGUERY: WHY NOT? EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT.
I like a lot that you write. I really do. I appreciate your reasoned approach to most issues, and I agree that demagoguery like Palin's does nothing to move the ball down the field. But you haven't gone far enough in noting that we are saddled with an amateurish president who cannot right this ship. The fact is that these town hall meetings and various Congressional talk-fests started out with concerned, ordinary people just showing up to ask questions. It was the sneering, vicious contempt for those citizens displayed by their elected officials that ratcheted up the rhetoric. The democrats in Washington are not listening. They will not listen. They refuse to listen. They have absolutely no intention of listening. As you said, the President of the United States has directly told everyone who disagrees with him to just shut up. Morevoer, the only violence at these meetings has been committed by Obama supporters sent to those meetings by the president himself. To the extent that laying blame is instructive, the failure of the democrats -- who are controlling ALL of Washington -- to represent the people they are being paid to represent has forced those citizens to raise their voices, to yell, to DEMAND that they listen. What else would you have them do? The President and the democrats have said that they will not listen to any opposition to their plan for nationalized health care, yet the majority of Americans oppose it. What is a citizen to do? How is a citizen to be heard? I can't help but notice that as these meetings have become more contentious and loud, those very citizens are now being heard. I have seen more media interviews of those opposed to this monstrosity of a bill in the past week than in the four or five weeks preceding. The media is largely an echo chamber for democrat party interests. With the volume of opposition turned up as it has been, that chamber has been pierced by opposing voices. I think that's well worth a few loud town hall meetings.
Comment Posted By Anon On 8.08.2009 @ 10:57
Frum may have a point that some conservatives have come unhinged by the election of Obama; HOWEVER, I think it's lines like this one from Frum's piece that make many of us who have not come unhinged scratch our heads a bit:
Comment Posted By Anon On 29.07.2009 @ 19:10
"Americans have achieved this stability via tried and tested rules of the road, including the unquestioning acceptance of election results, an acknowledgement of the basic good faith of the other political party, and an absolute acceptance that people of all points of view are committed to the shared constitutional system."
Come on now. Was Frum around for the Bush years? Very,very few in the democrat party -- and even fewer in the media -- "accepted" the election results of 2000, and I've seen everyone from Harry Reid to Nancy Pelosi to Al Gore to Barack Obama himself say that George Bush "lied, threw away the Constitution, sent children off to die for his daddy," etc. -- there was little "acknowledgement of the basic good faith of the other political party." Moreover, we have groups on the left like ACORN actively working to subvert the Constitutional election process, and the Obama Administration is giving them billions in taxpayer funds to do it, while his Justice Department refuses to prosecute clear cases of voter fraud and intimidation. Now I'm not advocating that conservatives continue down the same lunatic road that the left has taken, but for Frum to whitewash what was some of the most vile, vicious, dishonest attacks on a sitting president by the leaders of the opposition party I've ever seen in my lifetime, and to leave out completely the democrat party's ongoing commitment to election fraud is an insult to those of us who have been paying attention. By being dishonest on these very important points Frum dilutes the remainder of his argument because one simply has to ask: What the hell is he talking about?
HEALTH CARE REFORM HEADING FOR DERAILMENT -- EVEN IF IT PASSES
Once cannot lead by obfuscation. On health care, we'll never know if Obama can "lead" or not because he isn't trying to lead. He's trying to pass a bill with onerous, objectionable provisions which the country cannot afford, and he's trying to hide that reality in campaign-style rhetoric. It really isn't all that difficult to shepherd a good bill through Congress, particularly with the majorities Obama has. But apparently, it's quite difficult to ram a bad bill through when its shattering effects become known to voters. This isn't an energy bill that may quadruple people's electric bills, though that's bad enough; this is a bill that will limit the health care all Americans receive, and likely cost them more than the health care they already have. How does he "lead" on that? There is nowhere to be led to, except a total collapse of the American health care system, so we get the presidential tap dance instead. He's leading us over a cliff, but must pretend otherwise.
Comment Posted By Anon On 23.07.2009 @ 15:05
HOW MUCH IS A HUMAN BEING WORTH?
I, too, trust "the insurance man" more. In addition to suing him, I can shame him, and he will have no defenders in the public arena. If need be, I can use my sad and compelling story to tar and feather his for-profit enterprise until every jury in the country that hears a case involving said enterprise votes guilty. Ever try shaming a politician? Aside from the fact that most have no shame, they also have a big-government media apparatus that will defend the government and destroy me (or my mother or grandfather or whomever is saying "they're killing me") in order to protect their government overlords. Yes, "the insurance man" has something to lose. The government man does not.
Comment Posted By Anon On 21.07.2009 @ 11:57
