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Mark Steyn opens with good news about the recession; for other countries.
…Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan and much of Continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
Actually, when I say “to less effect,” that’s not strictly true: Due to Obama, one of the least-indebted developed nations is now one of the most indebted – and getting ever more so. We’ve become the third most debt-ridden country, after Japan and Italy. According to last month’s IMF report, general government debt as a percentage of GDP will rise from 63 percent in 2007 to 88.8 percent this year and to 99.8 percent of GDP next year.
Of course, the president retains his formidable political skills, artfully distracting attention from his stimulus debacle with his health care debacle. But there are diminishing returns to his serial thousand-page, trillion-dollar boondoggles. They may be too long for your representatives to bother reading before passing into law, but, whatever the intricacies of Section 417(a) xii on page 938, people are beginning to spot what all this stuff has in common: He’s spending your future. And by “future” I don’t mean 2070, 2060, 2040, but the day after tomorrow. Democrats can talk about only raising taxes on “the rich,” but more and more Americans are beginning to figure out what percentage of them will wind up in “the richest 5 percent” before this binge is over. According to Gallup, nearly 70 percent of Americans now expect higher taxes under Obama.
But the silver-tongued salesman sails on. Why be scared of a government health program? After all, says the president, “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” and if “we’re able to get something right like Medicare,” we should have more “confidence” about being able to do it for everyone.
On the other hand, says the president, Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money.” …
In The Corner, Mark adds an addendum.
David Harsanyi responds to Obama playing the morality card regarding healthcare reform.
Morality — whether derived from religion or a Starbucks coffee cup — is only one of the many considerations Americans take into account when thinking about policy. As an atheist, for instance, my core moral concern is that elected officials stop telling me what my core moral concerns should be.
While we have no clue what Jesus would make of a public option, we do have plenty of evidence that government tends to act immorally, corruptly and incompetently — especially a government with too much power. And the self-righteous elected official who has complete moral certitude on his side also has a tendency to ignore any other concerns. That detail has been painfully obvious in this debate.
“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies,” wrote C.S. Lewis, a man who knew a thing or two about religion. “The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
As Black Panther-gate continues to smolder, John Fund reports that Justice continues to refuse to provide more information.
…Justice spokesman Alejandro Miyar says the dismissal was “based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law.” But Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), has been asking for more information. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch, for example, claims in a July 13 letter to Mr. Wolf that charges against the New Black Panther Party itself were dropped because there wasn’t “evidentiary support” to prove they “directed” the intimidation. But Mr. Wolf notes in a letter sent to Justice that one defendant, Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, said on Fox News just after the election that his activities at the polling station were part of a nationwide effort. Mr. Shabazz added that the Black Panther activities in Philadelphia were justified due to “an emergency situation.”
Mr. Wolf’s demands that Justice make the career attorneys on the case available for questions have been rebuffed. He also wants the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings. A spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers was noncommittal as to whether any hearing would be held.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted on Aug. 7 to send a letter to Justice expanding its own investigation and demanding more complete answers. “We believe the Department’s defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law,” its letter stated. It noted “the peculiar logic” of one Justice argument, that defendants’ failure to show up in court was a reason for dismissing the case: “Such an argument sends a perverse message to wrongdoers—that attempts at voter suppression will be tolerated so long as the persons who engage in them are careful not to appear in court to answer the government’s complaint.” …
Paul Greenberg also summarizes Black Panther-gate and reports that it is being reviewed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
…The leading lights of the Democratic Party in and out of Congress may have turned a blind eye to this outrage, but the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hasn’t. In a letter to the attorney general, it has demanded an explanation for this kind “justice” from the Justice Department:
“We believe the Department’s defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law and raises other serious questions about the department’s law enforcement decisions.”
It sounds as if the commission is getting some subpoenas ready for high Justice Department officials, and it should be. The commission is obliged under law to issue an annual report on some aspect of law enforcement, and at least one of the commissioners — Todd Gaziano — has suggested that the Justice Department’s kid-glove handling of the Black Panthers be the focus of its 2010 report.
Nothing may actually be done to protect Philadelphia’s voters under this administration, but at least there ought to be a full investigation and comprehensive report by somebody official, even if it has to be somebody outside Congress. The record needs to show just how cynical this president and his attorney general can be when it comes to their promises about upholding the rule of law. Not to mention every American voter’s right to cast a secret ballot without being harassed. …
Victor Davis Hanson believes that Obama’s descent in the polls centers around Obamacare.
…Health-care take overs and socialized medicine have terrified not just the right and conservatives, but the elderly of all persuasions who fear their shaky Medicare funds will be diverted to Obama’s new plans. In short, they believe their care will be rationed and given to all sorts of new recipients. And they fear age will be a basis for meriting treatment; as if the gang banger with a long felony record of mayhem at 22 would be more deserving before a federal health panel than would someone at 90 who scrimped and saved for insurance in case of some future need for a hip replacement (and was still active and productive; cf. great octogenarians from Sophocles to Barzun who did their best work in their late lives).
It was an insane political move to demonize these town-hallers, when streaming video showed the participants scared and angry, but not violent, trying to get answers from smug politicos who either cell phoned away, ridiculed questioners in the manner of Barney Frank, or mocked their interrogators. These were for the most part not Code Pink/Cindy Sheehan type protestors. …
…Who made the following decisions? 1) to propose a 1,000 page bill that no one had read, much less could explain?; 2) to ram down the greatest change in the US economy in fifty years by the August recess?; 3) to talk loosely of the “uninsured” without knowing why they were not insured, how much it would cost to insure them, or whether they currently in fact find some sort of care?; 4) to reference Rahm Emanuel’s doctor brother as a source of wisdom? 5) to demonize the health-care industry as greedy? …
Charles Krauthammer tries to bring rational thought to end of life care. Pickerhead still thinks some government creeps will reduce our lives to a “death score.”
…We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend. To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling — whether or not the patient asked for it — is to create an incentive for such a chat. …
…So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we’ve nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.
It’s not an outrage. It’s surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it’s intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.
Thomas Sowell addresses a number of the deceptive tactics being used in the campaign for Obamacare. Here is the first:
Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance?
Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured — and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.
That’s called “bait and switch” when an unscrupulous business advertises one thing and tries to sell you something else. When politicians do it, it is far more dangerous to far more people.
Deception is not an incidental aspect of this medical care legislation, but is at the very heart of it.
The NRO staff posted some of Charles Krauthammer’s comments from Fox News All-Stars.
On Obama blaming Republicans for obstructing health-care reform:
This is typical Obama. He speaks for truth and justice, and anybody who opposes him is a rabid partisan who does it for personal partisan reasons.
Look, this is disingenuous, and it’s dishonest. He knows that the reason his proposals are in trouble is because of two things: Democrats in Congress, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. …
David Friedman thinks that we will adapt to the projected effects of global warming pretty easily.
…But most of the argument is put in terms not of what might conceivably happen but of what we have good reason to expect to happen, and I think the outer bound of that is provided by the IPCC models. They suggest a temperature increase of about two degrees centigrade over the next hundred years, resulting in a sea level rise of about a foot and a half. What I find implausible is the claim that changes on that scale at that speed would be catastrophic—sufficiently so to justify very expensive measures now to prevent them. …
…Even if the planet has not been optimized for us, we have optimized our activities for the planet, with the details depending in part on the local climate. Hence any change in either direction can be expected to be a worsening, making our present way of doing things less well adapted to the new conditions.
That would be a persuasive argument if we were talking about a substantial change occurring over five or ten years. But we aren’t. We are talking about a not very large change occurring over a century. In the course of a century, most existing houses will be replaced. If temperatures are rising, they will be replaced with houses designed for a (slightly) warmer climate. If sea levels are rising, they will be replaced, in low lying coastal areas, with houses a little farther inland. Over a century, farmers will change at least the varieties they are growing, very possibly the kind of crop, multiple times, in response to the development of new crop varieties, shifting demand, and similar changes. If temperatures are rising, they will gradually shift to crops adapted to a (slightly) warmer climate. …
The Economist gives us a peek at a coming trend.
NEGOTIATING his way across a crowded concourse at a busy railway station, a traveler removes his phone from his pocket and, using its camera, photographs a bar code printed on a poster. He then looks at the phone to read details of the train timetable displayed there. In Japan, such conveniences are commonplace, and almost all handsets come with the bar code-reading software already loaded. In America and Europe, though, they are only just being introduced.
Actually, calling them bar codes is a bit old-fashioned, because they store information in a two-dimensional (2-D) matrix of tiny squares, dots or other geometric patterns, rather than a stripe of black-and-white lines of varying thickness. When an image of the matrix is captured, software in the phone converts it into a web address, a piece of text or a number. If a number, it is sent to a remote computer which responds with an instruction that tells the phone to perform an action associated with that particular bar code.
In the case of the traveler, this might be calling up a web page on which the train timetable is displayed. Other 2-D bar codes might add an event to a calendar or display a coupon that entitles the bearer to a discount on a hamburger. …