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David Warren likes the president more and more.
…Now, before we start, I should correct a reader misapprehension about my views on President Barack Obama — who has just announced that he wants to give radical healthcare legislation another try, notwithstanding the electoral setbacks the last round cost his Democratic Party.
In a strange way I’m on his side. I want him to go for broke on this, and can only offer encouragement. …
…Far from despising the poor beleaguered man, who is being abandoned by more and more of his supporters every day, and now risks being turned on by the previously adoring mainstream media, the way they turned on Tiger Woods, I am beginning to adore Obama. I can’t think of any American since Ronald Reagan who has done so much to advance the cause of conservatism.
The Tea Party movement, which is currently changing the ground rules of U.S. politics, would be inconceivable without a President Obama; just as Ronald Reagan might never have been elected without a President Carter to precede him. Thus Carter, too, should be a hero to the right…
Mark Steyn explains the fall-out from Ponzi-scheme entitlements.
…We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government: Once a chap’s enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest; he’s got his, and to hell with everyone else. People’s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense. …
And for the ever-dwindling band of young Germans who make it out of the maternity ward there’s precious little reason to stick around. Why be the last handsome blond lederhosen-clad Aryan lad working the late shift at the beer garden in order to prop up singlehandedly entire retirement homes? And that’s before the EU decides to add the Greeks to your burdens. Germans, who retire at 67, are now expected to sustain the unsustainable 14 monthly payments per year of Greeks who retire at 58.
Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less-profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out, anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. …
In Powerline, John Hinderaker blogs about the teachable moment that Representative Paul Ryan gave the president at the healthcare summit.
…Since the Congressional Budget Office can’t score your bill, because it doesn’t have sufficient detail, but it tracks very similar to the Senate bill, I want to unpack the Senate score a little bit.
And if you take a look at the CBO analysis, analysis from your chief actuary, I think it’s very revealing. This bill does not control costs. This bill does not reduce deficits. Instead, this bill adds a new health care entitlement at a time when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have. …
…And so when you take a look at all of this; when you strip out the double-counting and what I would call these gimmicks, the full 10- year cost of the bill has a $460 billion deficit. The second 10-year cost of this bill has a $1.4 trillion deficit. …
And we’ve been talking about how much we agree on different issues, but there really is a difference between us. And it’s basically this. We don’t think the government should be in control of all of this. We want people to be in control. And that, at the end of the day, is the big difference.
… we are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I’ve got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you’re not listening to them.
So what we simply want to do is start over, work on a clean-sheeted paper, move through these issues, step by step, and fix them, and bring down health care costs and not raise them. And that’s basically the point. …
The last three minutes of Paul Ryan are available on YouTube.
VodkaPundit catches a screen shot of Obama’s death stare during Paul Ryan’s discourse.
Power Line posts on the continuing collapse of Obama’s popularity.
Tunku Varadarajan discusses the healthcare summit. Did the Obami really think that this was going to help?
…The marathon TV teach-in—in which Obama was more schoolmarm than president—should be regarded by Democrats as a great disappointment. They made no clear gain, and won no clear argument. It became apparent from the very beginning—when a testy Obama said “Let me finish, Lamar!” to the courtly Lamar Alexander—that this was not to be an open-minded exploration of the issues in question. It was, instead, a simulacrum of a debate, a pretend-conversation, one in which Obama established, yet again, his command over fact and detail, but in which he also revealed reflexive superciliousness, intolerance of different opinions, and a shortness of patience unbecoming of a president. (He also showed that he’s a tedious clock-Nazi, cutting people off all the time, while showing no inclination to edit himself.)
What was so striking about the summit was the preparedness of the Republicans. All of them had done their homework: Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn, Jon Kyl, John McCain, Dave Camp, John Barrasso, and Paul Ryan.
…The meeting wound down forlornly, with Obama attempting to enumerate issues that the two sides had in common. But there could be no escape from the one, fundamental difference that divides the two sides: The Democrats want this bill and the Republicans don’t. That—and the latter’s preference for market solutions and the former’s rejection of them—ensured that the summit was a total waste of our time and Obama’s. …
David Harsanyi thinks that libertarian ideas may be useful, but that Ron Paul is not.
…None of which is new. …Ronald Reagan explained to Reason magazine back in 1975 that “the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” …
A serious libertarian, David Boaz at the Cato Institute, found that 14 percent of American voters could be classified as libertarian. “Other surveys,” he points out, “find a larger number of people who hold views that are neither consistently liberal nor conservative but are best described as libertarian.”
Since the two top concerns at CPAC were “reducing size of federal government” (35 percent) followed by “reducing government spending,” it is obvious the message of individual freedom and small government has resonance. But accepting Ron Paul as the leader of this — or, actually, any — charge is a mistake for both parties.
Charles Krauthammer comments on Toyota’s problems.
…And don’t imagine that we do not coldly calculate the price of a human life. In 1974, the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to conserve oil. That also led to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities — approximately 3,000 lives every year. This didn’t stop us, after the oil crisis, from raising the speed limit back to 65 and beyond — knowing that thousands of Americans would die as a result.
The calculation was never explicit but it was nevertheless real. We were quite prepared to trade away a finite number of human lives for speed, and for the efficiency and convenience that come with it. …
…But it is no disrespect to the memory of those killed, and the sorrow of those left behind, to simply admit that even the highest technology produced by the world’s finest companies can be fallible and fatal, and that the intelligent response is not rage and retribution but sober remediation and recognition of the very high price we pay — willingly pay — for modernity with all its wondrous, dangerous bounty.
John Stossel gives us a few examples of how government “protection” has gone overboard.
…The most basic questions are: Who owns you, and who should control what you put into your body? In what sense are you free if you can’t decide what medicines you will take?…
…The FDA’s intrusion on our freedom is supplemented by another agent of the NannyState. The Drug Enforcement Agency’s war on drug dealers has led them to watch pain-management doctors like hawks. Drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin provide wonderful pain relief. But because they are also taken by “recreational” drug users, doctors go to jail for prescribing quantities that the DEA considers “inappropriate.” As a result, pain specialists are scared into underprescribing painkillers. Sick people suffer horrible pain needlessly.
Think I exaggerate? Check out the website of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) (aapsonline.org). It warns doctors not to go into pain management. “Drug agents now set medical standards. … There could be years of harassment and legal fees,” says the AAPS. Today, even nursing-home patients, hardly candidates for drug gangs, don’t get pain relief they need. …
…All drugs involve risk. In a free country, it should be up to individuals, once we’re adults, to make our own choices about those risks. Patrick Henry didn’t say, “Give me absolute safety, or give me death.” He said “liberty.” That is what America is supposed to be about.
In the Corner, John Miller posts on Vancouver’s olympic-sized bill.
I’ve enjoyed watching the Olympics this week. I’m also delighted not to be stuck with the bill:
As for Vancouver’s municipal government and the taxpayers, the bad news is already in. The immediate Olympic legacy for this city of 580,000 people is a nearly $1 billion debt from bailing out the Olympic Village development. Beyond that, people in Vancouver and British Columbia have already seen cuts in services like education, health care and arts financing from their provincial government, which is stuck with many other Olympics-related costs.
Obama’s failure to secure the 2016 summer games is one of the best things that’s happened to Chicago lately.
Linda Robertson reviews Kim Yu-Na’s gold medal skating performance for the Miami Herald.
…She took women’s figure skating to an ethereal level with her performance to Gershwin’s exuberant Concerto in F, landing all 11 of her jumps, seven in combination. She looked like she was dancing down Broadway.
Her delicacy belied her dominance. Has any skater been so far ahead of her opposition since Sonja Henie commanded the sport 70-plus years ago? …
…It was a show that took your breath away. It was both lyrical and athletic, balletic and bold. Kim nailed six triple jumps and looked weightless on takeoffs and landings. …
And here is video footage of Kim’s performance.