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George Will, RCP.com

 

-- President Barack Obama, Dec. 15, on health care legislation.

 

Precipice, 1. a headlong fall or descent, esp. to a great depth.

-- Oxford English Dictionary

 

Trying to guarantee Americans the thrill of the precipice, the president dashed to Massachusetts on Sunday, thereby conceding that he had already lost Tuesday's Senate election, which had become a referendum on his signature program. By promising to cast the decisive 41st vote against the president's health care legislation, the Republican candidate forced all congressional Democrats to contemplate this: Not even frenzied national mobilization of Democratic manpower and millions of dollars could rescue one of the safest Democratic seats in the national legislature from national dismay about the incontinent government expansion, of which that legislation is symptomatic.

 

In their joyless, tawdry slog toward passage of their increasingly ludicrous bill, Democrats cling grimly to Robert Frost's axiom that "the best way out is always through." Their sole remaining reason for completing the damn thing is that they started it. They seem to have convinced themselves that Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994 because they did not pass an unpopular health bill in 1993. Actually, their 1994 debacle had more to do with the arrogance and malfeasance arising from 40 years of control of the House of Representatives (e.g., the House banking scandal), a provocative crime bill (gun control, federal subsidies for midnight basketball), and other matters.

The Foundry, Heritage.org

 

Scott Brown’s remarkable victory in the Massachusetts Senate election speaks loud and clear: Americans across the political spectrum are unhappy with the scale and cost of the congressional health reform legislation, and the lack of transparency in the process.

 

Congress would be wise to see this outcome as a referendum on health care reform. The proper conclusion? It’s time to hit the reset button and scrap the doomed bills in both chambers. Then President Obama should bring together the key leaders of both parties, and craft a far more modest approach in an open process that will actually address the concerns of Americans.

 

What’s Wrong with Obamacare:

 

Both the predicted and unforeseen costs of health reform have Americans very worried. Though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored both bills as deficit neutral, both the CBO itself and other analysts have been skeptical that many the assumed savings in the legislation will come to fruition. For example, the CBO cost analysis of the Senate bill, for example, has to assume that Medicare physician payments will indeed by cut by over 20 per cent next year – which is politically inconceivable. In fact, once politicians begin to feel the pressure of interest groups and worried voters, history indicates that Congress will retreat from any unpopular cost-saving provisions used to pay for part of the new spending in the legislation. Thus the cost of either bill would easily surpass CBO’s cost estimate, adding substantially to the federal deficit.

 

And the price tag isn’t the only problem: Read article.

Larry Thornberry, Spectator.org

 

In toney, left-wing circles it's considered rude, as well as prima-facie evidence of yahooism or worse, to suggest that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the merry majority in Washington today are socialists. Conversations with liberals either end or get testy when this word comes up. The charge of socialism, they huff, is too outrageous to even consider.

 

A primo example of this came on one of the yak-yak shows Sunday morning where uber-liberal Bob Woodward of the "Washington Pest" pronounced that calling Obama a socialist is "not even in the ballpark" (Bob apparently being unaware that Obama's ball park only has a left field). 

 

Some of the more acute on the left realize the socialist label is apt enough and only ham it up in this wise because they know most Americans -- saving a large fraction of those in academe, most of the media, Hollywood, the mainline clergy, most foundations, the education industry, environmentalists, and the literati -- don't fancy socialism, or politicians who promote it. 

 

Of course most of this lefty behavior is based on attitude rather than analysis. It's more a matter of etiquette than polemics. The folks tuning out references to socialism are treating the word as a mere insult and don't bother to parse whether this is or isn't an accurate designation for what the current post-everything administration is all about. Read article.

David Limbaugh.com

 

There are definitely two Americas, but not the two that fallen former presidential candidate John Edwards had in mind. There's the real America, and there's the imaginary America President Barack Obama has boasted of creating.

 

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, tells us on the White House's alternative universe blog that "President Obama inherited unprecedented challenges at home and abroad," including "diminished American standing in the world. ... A year later, America is stronger because of the President's leadership."

 

How has Obama been able to perform this miraculous feat in such a short time?

 

Well, Obama's "steady diplomacy" has made America stronger and renewed its moral authority. In his superior wisdom, he realized that our real enemy isn't all Islamic extremists dedicated to world conquest, the annihilation of all infidels, and jihad, but the sole branch of that larger group, al-Qaida. So he's smartly and efficiently recalibrated our war effort against this solitary group of jihadists -- though I could have sworn his people have told us it's not exactly a war.

 

Through his myopic lenses, Obama apparently can't understand that terrorists would be virtually impotent against us without nation-state sponsors. Without that perspective, how can he possibly lead this nation in this "overseas contingency operation"?

 

Simple. He's not trifling so much with the prosecution of war details, but addressing the root causes of the man-caused disaster that occurred on American soil Sept. 11, 2001.

 

On that score, Rhodes brags that Obama has embarked on a path to restore our alliances, renew our moral leadership, and reinvigorate our efforts to address the challenges of nuclear proliferation and "climate change."

 

How has he done all this? His unique gift of gab. Reaching out. Apologizing. Torquing the teleprompter. Just being himself.

 

He's making the world more comfortable for terrorists, being careful not to alienate them or provoke them to attack us again. He's making amends for our dastardly misdeeds of holding their brethren in detention facilities, treating them like prisoners in our finest federal "country club" penal institutions, and according them constitutional rights they could never dream of in their own cultures. Read article.

 

Arnold Ahlert, JWR.com

 

The racial flap surrounding Harry Reid once again reveals the not-so-secret double-standard with regard to stupid racial comments: make one as a Republican and you're toast, make one as a Democrat and it's "time to move on to more important things." How do Democrats get away with it? Besides an in-the-tank media willing to cover their behinds, Democrats have successfully maintained one of the biggest lies in American politics: they, and they alone, are the party looking out for black America's interests. What interests? The maintenance of a victimist mentality and an expansion of the welfare state.

 

In a sane world, the idea that helping people to remain dependent on government is something to be proud of, would be ridiculed for the insanity — make that racist insanity — it truly is. Vote for us, so you can keep getting food stamps, or a welfare check? Vote for us so you can keep getting a substandard education for your children, because we're in political hock to the teachers' unions? Vote for us so you can maintain the myth that every problem in your life is due to white racism? Vote for us because we're going to make it better for you?

 

Forty-six years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed — after 54 days of filibustering by Senate Democrats to prevent its passage — one would think that at least some black Americans might wonder why so many of their fellow blacks still live in crime-infested neighborhoods, still lag other ethnic groups with respect to educational achievement, and still have an out-of-wedlock birthrate approaching 80%. One would think forty-six years of being told by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton that "things are as bad as they ever were" might lead some to conclude that hitching one's star to the Democratic party to achieve racial progress isn't all it's cracked up to be. Read article.

 

Larry Kudlow, Townhall.com

 

President Obama's misbegotten bank tax is precisely the wrong policy at precisely the wrong time. It will wind up backfiring across the board. Why? Because bank consumers and borrowers are the ones who will wind up paying this tax, creating an obstacle to economic recovery.

 

Obama is actually rewarding losers and punishing winners -- exactly the reverse of free-market capitalism.

 

Who's being rewarded? Obama's bank-tax penalty is being used to finance the failed government takeovers of GM, GMAC, and Fannie and Freddie. And let's not forget the $75 billion failure of the so-called foreclosure loan-modification program. To this day, no one knows where that money went. But the big banks are going to be forced to finance this through a tax that will damage lending, stockholders and consumers.

 

This is sheer political favoritism. Crony capitalism at its worst, with a sub-theme of bailing out Obama's Big Labor political allies. It's just like his bailout of the unions by exempting them from the so-called Cadillac insurance tax until 2018, all while the rest of us may have to suffer under that tax.

 

Speaking of political unfairness and favoritism, mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie will not pay a nickel of this tax. These government-sponsored enterprises were at the very center of the financial maelstrom, financing the government's quotas and targets for unaffordable mortgages. Read article.

 

Geoff Metcalf, NewsWithViews.com

 

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

 

Reasonable people can (or should be able to) reasonably disagree if or when they honestly consider facts that may contradict their preconceived opinions and prejudices. However, unfortunately, especially in the partisan environment of politics, reason, honest analysis and fairness too quickly become victims of the “us versus them” thing. Politics has become a blood sport where the only golden rule is “the team with the gold makes the rules”.

 

Politicians who were elected to represent the best interests, wants and desires of their constituents, morph into petty, agenda driven competitors quick to eschew reason for partisanship. Sadly, this axiomatic reality is universal and not exclusive to any one party. Politics is supposed to be the art of compromise. However, increasingly, politics is a blood sport personifying the absolute worse elements of abuse of power under the color of authority.

 

President Barack Obama, a year after promising "change" and a Kumbaya tsunami of bi-partisan cooperation, now reluctantly admits he has not succeeded in bringing the country together. In a recent People magazine interview, the president begrudgingly acknowledged an atmosphere of divisiveness that has washed away the lofty national feeling surrounding his inauguration a year ago. 'That's what's been lost this year ... that whole sense of changing how Washington works,' Obama said.

 

"What I haven't been able to do in the midst of this crisis is bring the country together in a way that we had done in the Inauguration," he said, referring to last January 20 when hundreds of thousands flooded into Washington to see him sworn in as America's first black president...before reality and buyer's remorse.

 

The simple reality is Obama has failed because he and his party's leadership (or critics will argue LACK of leadership) have failed...failed to do what they said they would do...and failed to do anything the "way" they promised. Read article.

 

Editorial, Washington Times.com

 

Barack Obama has the worst budget record of any president in American history. White House budget office spokesman Tom Gavin claimed "a very strong beginning" for the president's purported first-year attempts at controlling spending - for example, zeroing out a $17 million program for work incentive grants. But such paltry efforts are round-off numbers compared to the gush of red ink created by President Obama and congressional Democrats. This government is setting the United States on an inevitable path to permanent debtor status.

 

The White House entitled Mr. Obama's first budget "A New Era of Responsibility," which essayist Roger Kimball observed should have been called "Gone with the Wind." Mr. Obama's budget, coupled with the $787 billion stimulus slush fund, was the most irresponsible in history. The effects of his ruinous policies can already be measured. The 2009 budget deficit tripled over 2008. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product went from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009. The deficit for the first month of fiscal year 2010 was $176 billion, which was greater than the $161 billion deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year. Read article.

 

George Will, Townhall.com

 

You know the foreboding you feel while watching the steamier Greek tragedies, when dynasties are falling and sons are marrying their mothers and everyone is behaving badly and you are thinking: Really, things cannot continue like this.

 

Washington feels that way on the rare and fleeting occasions when it really thinks about the nation's looming crisis of public finance. The crisis, which is obvious and inevitable, combines unfulfillable entitlement promises and unsustainable budget deficits. So Washington is succumbing, yet again, to an idee fixe, which is usually, and in this case, scary.

 

The awful idea is for Congress to divest itself of the core competence that the Constitution vests in it -- the power to make the taxing and spending choices that shape the nation. This power would be given to an 18-member panel assigned to solve the budgetary crisis.

 

Under legislation drafted by Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and endorsed by 33 other senators, the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action would be composed of 16 members of Congress (four each selected by the House speaker and minority leader, and the Senate majority and minority leaders) plus the Treasury secretary and someone the president selects. The panel would propose spending cuts and tax increases to put the government on a glide path to solvency. The menu of proposals would be guaranteed an up-or-down vote -- no amendments permitted -- in both houses of Congress.

 

The Gregg-Conrad legislation should be amended to include this language:

 

"During the life of this task force, which will perform Congress' fundamental duties, all senators and representatives will be considered on vacation and will not be paid. If the task force's recommendations are accepted by Congress, there will be no congressional pay until 2050."

 

This would be a Madisonian measure, altering incentives in order to encourage responsibility. Let's vote. Read article.