Karl Rove, Online WSJ.com

 

The public is in no mood for drastic changes in current coverage.

 

It's extremely unlikely that Republicans will be able to pass their own health-care plan in this Congress. But in politics you can't beat something with nothing, so it is critical that the GOP offers an alternative to President Barack Obama's government-run monstrosity.

 

Americans will listen more closely to Republicans if they make empirical and specific arguments against Mr. Obama's attempted government takeover of the nation's health system. But they must also offer proposals that families, small-businesspeople and health-care providers will applaud. Read article.

Jeff Jacoby, JWR.com

 

Is Barack Obama channeling George H. W. Bush?

 

Twenty years ago this month, the first President Bush refused to condemn China's communist rulers when they unleashed a violent assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in the streets of Beijing.

 

For weeks Bush had refrained from encouraging the student-led reform movement that had blossomed around the country. "Clearly we support democracy," he said, but it wouldn't be appropriate for an American president to endorse the protesters' pleas for more freedom. "Exactly what their course of action should be," he demurred, "is for them to determine." Even after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, Bush — unwavering in his commitment to engagement with Beijing — would say nothing that might offend the Chinese government. "Not the time for an emotional response," he told reporters. He even spoke respectfully of the Chinese troops. "The army did show restraint…. They showed restraint for a long time."

 

In reacting to last week's rigged Iranian election and the protests that erupted after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway victor, the Obama White House seems deliberately to be taking a page from the elder Bush's 1989 playbook.

 

Not until Monday evening did Obama himself finally address the crisis in Iran, and when he did it was Bush-on-Tienanmen all over again — halting, mealy-mouthed, passive. "I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be," he said, as if that isn't precisely what the mullahs rigged the election to prevent. Read article.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

Are you confused by all that has changed since Pres. Barack Obama took office in January? If so, you’re not alone. Perhaps, though, this handy guide to Age of Obama “logic” might be of some assistance.

 

1. The Budget. Wanting to cut $17 billion from the budget, as President Obama has promised, is proof of financial responsibility. Borrowing $1.84 trillion this year for new programs is “stimulus.” The old phrase “out-of-control spending” is inoperative.

 

2. Unemployment. The number of jobs theoretically saved, or created, by new government policies — not the actual percentage of Americans out of work, or the total number of jobs lost — is now the far better indicator of unemployment.

 

3. The Private Sector. Nationalizing much of the auto and financial industries, while regulating executive compensation, is an indication of our new government’s repeatedly stated reluctance to interfere in the private sector. Read article.

 

Ted Nugent, Human Events.com

 

In his role as the guard captain of a Florida prison camp in the movie Cool Hand Luke, one of actor Strother Martin's more famous lines was: "Some men you just can't reach..."

 

There have always been psychotics intoxicated on power and evil. Such is the case for international kooks Kim Jong-Il of North Korea and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. These men can't be reached with diplomacy, logic or reason.

 

It's incredibly naive and arrogant of the Obama blowhards to believe they can "talk" and reason through pragmatism with rabid kooks. Believing so is kookier than the kooks themselves. As someone who believes in giving kooks enough rope to hang themselves, the right course of action would be to sever all communications with rogue, whacky regimes until they prove to the world they no longer have rabies. In the meantime, America should walk loudly, proudly, and carry an oil-soaked 2x4 wrapped with rusty barbed wire and always be ready to swat international kooks upside the head. Read article.

Thomas Sowell, JWR.com

 

One of the many problems of the pay-back approach is that many of the people who most deserve retribution are no longer alive. You can take symbolic revenge on people who look like them but this removes the whole moral element. If it is all right to discriminate today against individuals who have done you no harm, then why was it wrong to discriminate against you in the past?

 

These are not just abstract questions. These are serious, real world questions, especially when considering someone to be given a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

Some judicial nominees have had racial bias attributed to them, despite their years of unwavering support of civil rights for all — Judge Robert Bork and Judge Charles Pickering being striking examples. But the current Supreme Court nominee is the first in decades to explicitly introduce racial differences in their own words, along with the claim that their own racial or ethnic background makes them better qualified.

 

Attempts to claim that Judge Sonia Sotomayor's words were isolated remarks — a slip of the tongue "taken out of context" — have now been discredited by further information showing that she has repeatedly expressed the same ideas, in virtually the same words, at other times and in other contexts.

 

Moreover, her deeds — including years of participation in group identity politics — are perfectly consistent with her words. So too was her vote on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to summarily dismiss the appeal of white firefighters who did not get the promotions they had earned by passing a required test, because not enough minority firefighters passed to provide racial "diversity." Read article.

Dick Morris, The Hill.com 

 

To quote the esteemed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the chickens that were hatched in the stimulus package are coming home to roost in the healthcare proposal. The budget deficit Obama racked up paying for the massive federal spending passed in January is now having a real economic and political impact, which is forcing the president and his congressional allies into hard choices as they face his healthcare legislation.

 

Of course, the prudent thing to do is postpone healthcare changes until the economy generates some revenues and trims the deficit. But the socialist in the White House can’t do that. He’s got to strike while his congressional majority is hot. So he is forcing his administration and his party to choose among unpalatable choices to finance his program. His demand may be a bridge too far, endangering his popularity with the American people. Read article.

 

Brent Bozell, Townhall.com

 

A calm Sunday breakfast might have been ruined after a glance at The Washington Post's front page on June 14. A chart below the fold explained that under Obama's federal spending proposals, the United States would be required to borrow $9 trillion during the next decade. That's $9,000,000,000. The Post compared that, in today's dollars, to the financial burden of World War II: $3.6 trillion. That's not all of Obama's spending plan. That's only the part that's in the red.

 

Is it any wonder that a recent Gallup poll found more people disapprove rather than approve of Obama's handling of the deficit? But we've only just begun. Now President Obama wants to add another enormous chunk of government health-care spending. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the latest Democratic bill in the Senate would add another $1 trillion to the budget over the next decade, and they suggest that's only a partial estimate. Read article.

 

Lt. Col. Allen B. West (US Army, Ret.), Atlas Shrugs200.Typepad.com

 

This month’s title is appropriate because Rod Serling could not have written this script any better. Everyday we wake up and have to ask ourselves, “Are we in some kinda parallel universe”? Actually Serling had an episode which fits appropriately.

 

Therefore I googled up what has to be my favorite Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”Here is the synopsis of the episode, which was available upon search.

 

“A race of aliens known as the Kanamits, they were tall, land on earth and promise to be nothing but helpful to the cause of humanity. Initially wary of the intentions of such a highly advanced race even the most skeptical humans are convinced when their code-breakers begin to translate one of the Kanamit’s books with the seemingly innocuous title, “To Serve Man.”

 

Sharing their advanced technology, the aliens quickly solve all of the Earth’s greatest woes, eradicating hunger, disease, and the need for welfare. Soon humans are volunteering for trips to the Kanamits’ home planet, which is supposedly a paradise.

 

All is not well, however, when a code-breaker discovers the Kanamits’ true intentions: Their book, “To Serve Man,” is a cookbook, and all their gifts were simply to make humanity complacent, much like fattening pigs or cows before they are slaughtered.”

 

Here we are today and the Kanamits are the far left liberals and their book is “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. Read article.

 

Larry Elder, JWR.com

 

About 45 million Americans lack health care insurance. Or do they?

 

A pro-"universal health care" television host recently cited this widely accepted "fact." The number is bogus.

 

Here's the skinny.

 

Start with the math. We have 300 million Americans. Subtract the 45 million — 15 percent of us — with no health insurance. That leaves 255 million Americans, or 85 percent, with it.

 

And the insurance is lousy, right? Not according to a 2006 ABC News/Kaiser Family Foundation/USA Today survey. It found that 89 percent of Americans were satisfied with the quality of their own health care.

 

Nearly half of the 45 million fall in the category of my 26-year-old nephew. He smokes cigarettes, dates, eats out, goes to movies and, like all young people, lives through his cell phone. With a slight change in priorities, he could afford health insurance, the cost of which at his age and health starts at about $100 a month. Take a look at a Reason Foundation VIDEO of interviews with a bunch of non-health-insured 20-somethings. Read article.

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