I’ve started an on-line petition. I hope that the astronaut office will weigh in.
[Update a while later]
Due to some unhappiness about having to deal with Facebook (and a politically problematic petition site), I’ve set up a new one at the web site for the book. So please sign over there, and pass the word.
Is it time to abolish it?
It would, of course, require an amendment.
Always ends up being idiocracy:
…the elites had to wait for the man of their dreams.
When they found him, he was a rare breed: a genuine African American (his father was Kenyan) who thought and talked like the academics on both sides of his family, a product of the faculty lounge who dabbled in urban/race politics, a man who could speak to both ends of the liberals’ up-and-down coalition, and a would-be transformer of our public life whose quiet voice and low-key demeanor conveyed “moderation” in all that he spoke and did. Best of all, he was the person whom the two branches of the liberal kingdom—the academics and journalists—wanted to be, a man who shared their sensibilities and their views of the good and the beautiful. This was the chance of a lifetime to shape the world to their measure. He and they were the ones they were waiting for, and with him, they longed for transcendent achievements. But in the event they were undone by the three things Siegel had pegged as their signature weaknesses: They had too much belief in the brilliance of experts, they were completely dismissive of public opinion, and they had a contempt for the great middle class.
…Obama had reassured them again and again that if they liked their plans and their doctors, they would be able to keep them, but this proved inaccurate. For the first time in American history the cost of a massive social program would be concentrated on a small slice of the populace that was not rich, and in some instances, could not afford it. Those costs came in many different dimensions: Parents found they could not take sick children to the same hospitals they had used before. People with complex chronic conditions found that the teams of doctors who had worked together to treat them had been broken up. For the people who had been insured through the individual market the elites had little compassion. Cancer patients who took their complaints to the press (and to the Republicans) were “fact checked” and then viciously attacked by the Democrats, among them Harry Reid, who called them all liars. “We have to pass the bill, so that you can find out what’s in it,” Nancy Pelosi infamously said. People had finally found out and they were furious.
In February 2010, in the midst of the row over Obamacare’s passage, 80 highly credentialed experts in health care, graduates of and teachers in the best schools in the country, sent an open letter to the president and the leaders of Congress insisting the bill be passed. The Affordable Care Act, they maintained, would “cover more than 30 million people who would otherwise have gone uninsured. . . . Provide financial help to make coverage for millions of working families. . . . Strengthen competition and oversight of private insurance. . . . Provide unprecedented protection for Americans living with chronic illness and disabilities. . . . Make significant investments in community health centers, prevention, and wellness. . . . Increase financial support to states to finance expanded Medicaid insurance coverage, eliminate the Medicare prescription drug donut hole . . . provide a platform to improve the quality of the health care system . . . [and] reduce the federal budget deficit over the next ten years and beyond.”
They were not alone. “Historians will see this health care bill as a masterfully crafted piece of legislation,” wrote Jonathan Chait in the magazine Herbert Croly cofounded. “The new law untangles the dysfunctionalities of the individual insurance market while fulfilling the political imperative of leaving the employer-provided system in place. . . . They put into place numerous reforms to force efficiency into a wasteful system. They found hundreds of billions of dollars in payment offsets, a monumental task in itself. And they will bring economic and financial security to tens of millions of Americans who would otherwise risk seeing their lives torn apart.”
It did none of these things. It did not fix the dysfunctions of the individual market; it destroyed it. It did not save money; it squandered billions. It did not bring peace and security to tens of millions of people; it took it away from them. The best and the brightest had made their predictions. They were wrong.
Hayek wrote a book or two about this sort of thing.
Roger Simon says “Blame me for everything.”
I think he’s being a little too hard on himself. As he says, he was young.
The first (and last) year I was eligible for the draft, I had a high number. If I’d gotten a notice, I’d have likely joined the Air Force, though my vision would have prevented me from being a pilot.
I wrote in passing yesterday that if President Obama or the people of this country had any self-respect, he’d resign over the scandal of the Veterans Affairs hospitals, which needlessly sentenced an unknown number of American veterans to death through their combination of managerial incompetence, medical malpractice, and monstrously cruel indifference to their clients. Other heads of government have resigned for less. President Obama presented himself to the public as an authority in the field of health-care management and as an executive who not only would insist upon but also would in fact achieve the highest standards in transparent, honest, competent government. He has failed, comprehensively. An honest man acknowledges his failures.
We know from years of experience now that the president is the very antithesis of an honest man. And in his own self delusion, he considers himself indispensable.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The failure of socialized medicine:
Many have wondered about Barack Obama’s prolonged silence concerning the disastrous situation at the Veterans Administration hospitals and then his odd detached demeanor (well, maybe not that odd for him) when he finally did discuss it at a press conference.
The answer is simple. His lifetime dream of a free public (single payer) healthcare system for all just disintegrated in front of him. Forget the wildly ambitious and pervasive “Affordable Care Act,” the government couldn’t even handle the health of our wounded servicemen, acknowledged for years to be by far the group most deserving of medical attention in our country. With veterans dying while waiting lists are falsified, it’s hard to see government healthcare as anything but incompetent, disgraceful and quite possibly criminal.
Government has failed utterly. Does anyone have any doubt that Halliburton or even the dreaded Koch brothers could have better handled the health of our wounded warriors? Probably almost any business would have. There at least would have been some accountability. (It’s interesting to see the quaint Bernie Sanders, the one self-described socialist in the Congress, as opposed to the closeted ones, being the most outspoken defender of VA malfeasance and urging us not to “rush to judgement” on a three page bill.)
But it’s not just healthcare, although it’s certainly prominent, important and symbolic. The Obama administration has been the best advertisement for libertarianism across the board in recent memory.
Well, we’ll see what happens this fall.
Sorry, NYT, but I just went and looked, and no one has passed an amendment repealing it.
As with Halbig, the Chief Justice may see this as a chance to rectify his previous screw up. When you strip out all the language of a House bill, leaving nothing but the bill number, it’s pretty clearly a violation of the spirit of the clause, no matter what kind of procedural games the Congress wants to play.
Thoughts on Ukraine, and Russia, from Anne Applebaum and Andrew Stuttaford.
I think that the usually sharp Anne misses the point here, though (as Obama did with his idiotic comment about Greeks thinking that Greece was exceptional), about American exceptionalism:
In the United States, we dislike the word “nationalism” and so, hypocritically, we call it other things: “American exceptionalism,” for example, or a “belief in American greatness.” We also argue about it as if it were something rational — Mitt Romney wrote a book that put forth the “case for American greatness” — rather than acknowledging that nationalism is fundamentally emotional. In truth, you can’t really make “the case” for nationalism; you can only inculcate it, teach it to children, cultivate it at public events. If you do so, nationalism can in turn inspire you so that you try to improve your country, to help it live up to the image you want it to have.
A thousand times, no. American exceptionalism isn’t (just) a different phrase for American nationalism. What is exceptional about America (unlike England, or Greece) is that it isn’t about birthright, or race, or location, but about ideas. American exceptionalism is the idea that anyone can be an American, if they accept the premises of America: individual liberty, limited government, and truly liberal values (something that the Left has never had — they simply appropriated the word). That is why it was perfectly appropriate for a committee looking into American communists to be called one about “un-American activities.” Because Marxism is fundamentally un-American. It may be good, it may be bad (obviously, people know what my opinion is on that score) but it is not American.
Is she the world’s biggest blunderer?
That’s a pretty high bar in a world with Barack Obama, John Kerry, Kathleen Sebelius…
I could say that she’s the most overrated one, but that’s true of a lot of Dem pols, too.
…is never very far.
I discuss this in the book. It’s even closer in space.
The Democrats need a Howard Baker.
Unfortunately, Democrats with principles (other than political victory) seem to not exist.
I would note that the Republicans took a long time to finally get on the ball, compared to Watergate. This August will be the fortieth anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, at exactly the same time in the presidential cycle that Obama’s in now.
[Update a few minutes later]
Americans have a right to know where their president was while a terrorist attack was taking place — and the daily diary will provide that information. There will be a record if Obama held a secure video teleconference (SVTC) with his military commanders in the region or even spoke with them by phone. There will be a record if he met or spoke with his national security adviser to discuss the unfolding attack, and how many times he did so. If properly kept, the logs will show precisely what Obama was doing — whether he was carefully monitoring events on the ground or was otherwise occupied.
…During Watergate, Richard Nixon had his infamous 18 1/2-minute gap. When it comes to Benghazi, Obama has an eight-hour gap. That gap needs to be closed.
If Obama has nothing to hide, then he has nothing to fear.
I think it’s similar to his unwillingness to release his college transcripts. Or let people see the Khalidi birthday-party video. There’s something there they don’t want us to see.