Granted, I’m a bit behind on my blog posts… the BAR EXAM will do that to you. Even so, I just had to post this snippet about the Gates Scandal:
“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.
This may be the smack-down of the YEAR right here.
This is some great criticism…
With his example of the red and blue pills, and another about whether a child’s hypothetical tonsils should be removed, President Obama unwittingly presents the real problem with his plan for reform. Here is a well-meaning government official who so fails to grasp the problem in health care that he can present such absurd oversimplifications and suggest that this sort of thing is the real problem — doctors simply lack the common sense to make obvious medical decisions. President Obama wants us to solve this problem by putting himself and other government officials in charge of rescuing medicine from the medical profession. If medical doctors with a decade of schooling cannot distinguish between good cures and ineffective ones that must be discontinued, then by gosh, we’re lucky that the good folks from the government can.
Doctors aren’t stupid, Mr. Obama.
via Take the red pill, Mr. President | Washington Examiner .
Robert J. Samuelson isn’t a right-winger… which makes his criticisms of the stimulus all the more useful (politically). It has FAILED its original purpose… there is NO DENYING IT at this point.
It’s not surprising that the much-ballyhooed “economic stimulus” hasn’t done much stimulating… The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn’t engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes.
There are growing demands for another Obama “stimulus” on the grounds that the first was too small. Wrong. The problem with the first stimulus was more its composition than its size. With budget deficits for 2009 and 2010 estimated by the CBO at $1.8 trillion and $1.4 trillion (respectively, 13 and 9.9 percent of gross domestic product), it’s hard to argue they’re too tiny. Obama and congressional Democrats sacrificed real economic stimulus to promote parochial political interests. Any new “stimulus” should be financed by culling some of the old.
Here, as elsewhere, there’s a gap between Obama’s high-minded rhetoric and his performance. In February, Obama denounced “politics as usual” in constructing the stimulus. But that’s what we got, and Obama likes the result. Interviewed recently by ABC’s Jake Tapper, he was asked whether he would change anything. Obama seemed to invoke a doctrine of presidential infallibility. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he said.
via washingtonpost.com.
Did you all see this latest study? Outta control.
Since 1970, Medicare and Medicaid’s combined per-patient costs have risen from $344 to $8,955, while the combined per-patient costs of all other US health care have risen from $364 to $7,119.
Medicare and Medicaid used to cost $20 less per patient than other care. Now they cost $1,836 more. (And that’s even without the Medicare prescription-drug benefit.)
In fact, if the costs of Medicare and Medicaid had risen only as much as the costs of all other health care in America, then, instead of costing a combined $807 billion last year, they would’ve cost a combined $606 billion. That savings of $201 billion would have amounted to more than $1,750 per American household last year alone.
Miguel Estrada has a very thorough legal analysis in the Los Angeles Times regarding the Honduran “coup”…. It turns out it really wasn’t a ‘coup’ after all… but a proper, judicially-ordered removal of President Zelaya resulting from his activities in violation of Hunduran Law. Here are some relevant portions of the piece:
As noted, Article 239 states clearly that one who behaves as Zelaya did in attempting to change presidential succession ceases immediately to be president. If there were any doubt on that score, the Congress removed it by convening immediately after Zelaya’s arrest, condemning his illegal conduct and overwhelmingly voting (122 to 6) to remove him from office. The Congress is led by Zelaya’s own Liberal Party (although it is true that Zelaya and his party have grown apart as he has moved left). Because Zelaya’s vice president had earlier quit to run in the November elections, the next person in the line of succession was Micheletti, the Liberal leader of Congress. He was named to complete the remaining months of Zelaya’s term.
It cannot be right to call this a “coup.” Micheletti was lawfully made president by the country’s elected Congress. The president is a civilian. The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before. The armed forces are under civilian control. The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November. Indeed, after reviewing the Constitution and consulting with the Supreme Court, the Congress and the electoral tribunal, respected Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga recently stated that the only possible conclusion is that Zelaya had lawfully been ousted under Article 239 before he was arrested, and that democracy in Honduras continues fully to operate in accordance with law…
And my favorite line from the piece:
It would seem from this that Zelaya’s arrest by the military was legal, and rather well justified to boot.
What then can we say? Zelaya tried to subvert the constitution of Honduras by means of a referendum ruled illegal by the Honduran Congress. He insisted on a course of illegal activity and evidenced a totalitarian willingness to remove anyone who stood in his path. Consequently, he was dismissed by the Honduran Supreme Court pursuant to the requirements of Honduran law.
Despite all this… despite the brave actions by the Attorney General and the Honduran Justices… the western world is turning its back on Honduras. In fact, in a recent press conference, Obama has stated Zelaya’s removal was “not legal”… evidencing not only a serious ignorance of Honduran Law but also a disturbing lack of judgment.
In a startling juxtaposition, our president found it entirely proper to meddle in a country in order to support a potential dictator… while refusing to meddle in a country [think Iran] where democratic protests threatened to remove a dictator.
In the words of Jonah Goldberg, “It sure seems like Obama has an ideological problem with democracy.”
Update 7.11 @11pm: Read my initial post on the Honduran ‘coup’ here.
Did you guys read the latest interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bater Ginsburg? Sort of alarming if you ask me:
Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
As Ed Whelan opines over at The Corner:
Gee, Justice Ginsburg, would you like to tell us more about your views on those populations that “we don’t want to have too many of”?
If Scalia had said something this outrageous there would be impeachment hearings going on in congress today. Liberals are so forgiving of their own, aren’t they?
If you want to know what is really going on in Honduras… you should read Honduras Abandoned.
What is transparent about silencing global warming skeptics at the EPA?
just asking…