Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The ObamaCare Debacle

5 Comments

Will it kill Big Blue?

Edsall is simultaneously overestimating the policy sophistication of the white middle class and underestimating its morality. While it is true that, as Edsall points out, Obamacare is an aggressively redistributionist program that intends to shift hundreds of billions of dollars away from the middle class to the poor, I don’t think many voters have done the math on this. They are not reacting to the $455 billion in Medicare cuts that help to feed the Obamacare beast because not many people really understand how the new system is supposed to work. And at the same time, unlikely as it may sound to the finely tuned consciences of the New York Times editorial page, there are scores of millions of middle class white Americans who don’t hate minorities and would actually like to see things go better for them.

Sorry, lefties, the race card is maxed out.

Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Schadenfreude

17 Comments

Has its limits:

I suspect that one of the reasons Obama’s approval rating is in free fall is because of his obvious surprise and petulance in his public encounters over the disaster of Obamacare. He has made some grudging half apologies, but it is clear that the only thing he is sorry about is that he cannot — not yet, anyway — simply decree what happens with health care in this country. He believes himself above the law and is impatient about finding a means of achieving that discretion. For our own good, of course. Many observers on the Right have long known this about Obama. Suddenly, though, it is out there for all to see. The American people don’t like tyrants, even smooth-talking, Harvard-educated ones. The great trek away from Obama and what he stands for — above all, government unlimited — has begun. The journey will not be pretty, but I think it is all but certain to continue.

Let’s hope.

Business, Economics, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Obama’s Learning Curve

14 Comments

I wouldn’t call it “slow.” It actually basically vertical:

The education President Obama received at Columbia University and Harvard Law School — and delivered to others as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School — encourages the fantasy of a political world subject to almost limitless manipulation by clever and well-orchestrated images. This explains why the harsh exigencies and intractable forces of politics keep stunning the president, each new time as if it were the very first.

How might higher education be reformed to produce political leaders more familiar with how the world really works, more alive to the realities of social and political life and better able to discuss them honestly with the American people?

He’s lived his entire life in a bubble of unreality. A lot of us realized this in 2008, but a few million too few.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

When The Lies No Longer Work

6 Comments

It would appear that day has arrived.

The Dems on the Hill aren’t very happy with him, either.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is the most encouraging poll result, I think:

Gallup has been asking the question since 2000. “Prior to 2009, a clear majority of Americans consistently had said the government should take responsibility for ensuring that all Americans have healthcare,” the firm reports. The proportion answering “yes” peaked in 2006 at 69%–27 points higher than today’s number. Then it began declining, to 64% in 2007 and 54% in 2008.

The current 42% is the lowest figure ever recorded, but the percentage answering in the affirmative hasn’t risen above 50% since 2009. Remember what happened in 2009? . . .

Perhaps the most dramatic finding: The proportion of Democrats who say it isn’t the federal government’s responsibility in 2013 (30%) is higher than the proportion of all voters who said the same thing in 2006 (28%).

This could provide a political opportunity to get the federal government out of a lot of things it has no business doing and isn’t very good at.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Morality

9 Comments

We are apparently born with it.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. There are sound evolutionary reasons for us to cooperate. But these are statistical studies, and some people are clearly miswired and sociopathic. Many of them become politicians.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related somehow: Ace on the psychopathy of the Left:

Leftist politics, I maintain, are not a politics at all, but a psychological response to one’s shortcomings and feelings of failure. Leftist politics are, simply put, a way of getting even with a world that’s done one wrong — and most people carrying about such grievances against a world that’s done one wrong are psychologically broken.

These fairytale “politics” give them an avenue to vent their rages and turmoils about their failures and inadequacies in a way that is deemed, incorrectly, to be socially acceptable and even high-minded.

If a man were raving on the street in this fashion — about his hopes that someone would literally sh*t in a perceived “enemy’s” mouth (a perceived “enemy,” who, crucially, he’s never actually met) — most of us would shake our heads in secondary shame. Some of the more empathetic of us would call social services and attempt to have the madman brought in for psychological treatment.

But the left — Martin Bashir, Chris Matthews, Daily Kos, all of the hateful, raging, vibrating-with-resentment left — does this sort of thing in the guise of “political commentary” and no one makes the connection between this broken-souled primal screaming and mental unwellness.

All while their ratings remain in the same gutter as their political views.