Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
March 18, 2010
In This Issue . . .
1. This Health-Care Debate Has Gone On So Long, I'm All Out of Quips
2. When Barack Met Bret
3. Obama's Israeli Policy Follows the Success of His Iran, India, Russia, Czech, Poland, Japan and Great Britain Policies
4. Addenda
Good Morning,
Here's your Jolt!
Enjoy,
Jim
1. This Health-Care Debate Has Gone On So Long, I'm All Out of Quips
Even the deadlines from this White House come with expiration dates: "House Democratic leaders on Wednesday night said the long-awaited Congressional Budget Office score of the reconciliation bill will not come out until Thursday, forcing an acknowledgement that a Saturday healthcare vote is likely off the table." The president is never going to see Indonesia at this rate.
Dan Riehl tears into once-pro-life Dale Kildee, a Michigan Democrat who's abandoning Bart Stupak. "Filtering taxpayer dollars through an insurance company to pay for abortions doesn't make them non-taxpayer dollars. Buying into such a scam does mean you're willing to put lies above lives to remain in good standing with your political party. Trying to go out and sell it in religious terms might make you a sort of Judas. But at least Obama still likes him. Maybe that's what he either values, or fears most of all when it comes right down to it."
Robert Stacy McCain tries to explain health care to Dennis Kucinich, using an example at hand: "From Kucinich's statement: 'I believe health care is a civil right.' Yeah? Well, some people may believe a 6-foot-tall redheaded wife 30 years younger is a civil right, but do the math, Dennis: There's just not enough to go around. You can't conjure up goods and services merely by proclaiming your belief that these things are a 'civil right.' This is the basic problem with socialism: Eventually, you run out of other people's money."
John at Powerline looks at the various whip counts of likely yes and no votes and concludes, "It is hard to believe that Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts won't be able to get there, by hook or by crook. Still, we need to keep up the fight to the end -- and beyond. If the current bill, whatever it is, becomes law, taxes will rise immediately but the health care 'reform' provisions will mostly be put off for several years. I agree with Paul and others that once socialized medicine is actually established, it will be difficult or impossible to undo. But that won't happen under the current bill. Rather, as I understand how the legislation works, there will be a window of several years during which Republicans can try to repeal or amend the legislation. So no matter what happens this week, Obamacare will be a millstone around the Dems' necks for years to come. That's how it looks to me, anyway."
2. When Barack Met Bret
President Obama humbled himself enough to grant an interview to the most-watched cable news network. By most accounts, it didn't go that well for him. Perhaps when the most memorable quote insinuates that you don't really care that much about rules, it's a night you should have turned in early.
Seth Leibsohn, writing at NRO: "Bret Baier just concluded the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter. He was resilient in the face of the president's obvious attempts to run down the clock by stonewalling; Bret continually hammered a series of questions the president did not want, and yet he was polite in explaining to the president the meaning of the questions just in case they were not what the president was familiar with (see the question about Connecticut for example). It was a model of how not to be cowed by a strong and charismatic leader and a model of a truly independent anchor/reporter. President Obama knew he didn't have Bret at the very end when his last effort at victimhood was to sarcastically hang his head to the side in response to Bret's saying he didn't mean to interrupt, as if Bret were being insincere -- which he wasn't. Anyone who watches the interview can see who was stalling, who was running the clock, who was refusing to answer the questions, and why polite interruption was exactly what was needed."
Doug Ross: "Where's TOTUS [Teleprompter of the United States] when you need him?"
Sistah Toldjah: "I don't think I've ever seen the President so defensive. And, of course, he did not answer a single question. Very revealing -- or, rather, 'transparent.' As I wrote on Twitter,true journalists like Baier & Garrett are the REAL reasons Obama and Company (& the left) can't stand Fox. Has very little to do w/ Hannity & O'Reilly."
Jim Hoft noticed an odd remark from the president: "President Obama said tonight that he agreed with 'The Louisiana Purchase' in Obamacare because it also covered the earthquake in Hawaii. . . . Either Obama's completely making up stuff now or we all missed some horrible devastating earthquake in Hawaii."
Allahpundit, writing at Hot Air: "My one knock on Baier is that he didn't press him on what he and Pelosi have been telling liberals about this being merely the first step in the great remaking of American health care and, by extension, America itself. The whole reason he wanted to go on Fox was to sell centrist Democrats and independents on what a modest, even fiscally responsible plan this is; confronting him about the left's oft-stated ambitions for single-payer would have blown a hole in that. But oh well. I'll leave you with this question, my very favorite of the ones he asked: 'Monday in Ohio, you called for courage in the health care debate. At the same time, House Speaker Pelosi was saying this to reporters about the deem and pass rule: "I like it, this scenario, because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill." Is that the kind of courage that you're talking about?' Heh."
3. Obama's Israeli Policy Follows the Success of His Iran, India, Russia, Czech, Poland, Japan and Great Britain Policies
The Economist: "Friends have spats, but this seems to be more than that. America has not simply accepted Mr Netanyahu's prompt apology. Opinion in the administration is said to be divided. Mr Biden himself and many State Department officials, together with George Mitchell, who was to have supervised the now-stalled proximity talks, advised cooling things down. But, whether out of rage or calculation, Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton preferred to escalate."
Boy, there's a reassuring calculation about what drives our policy choices, huh? Fifty-fifty shot this is deliberate or we're just lashing out in blind rage at the one ally in the region we would trust in a back-alley knife fight. And how utterly screwed are we when Joe Biden has become the voice of reason on Middle East policy?
The headline in Haaretz is "Netanyahu's brother-in-law: Obama is an anti-Semite," but the story actually quotes him as saying Obama is "anti-Israel." I don't think the terms are quite the same, although the middle portion of that Venn diagram is pretty big. Is Obama an anti-Semite? Well, the chief of staff being former IDF and the indispensability of Axelrod would appear to dispel that notion. But whether Obama is anti-Israel is a fairer question, and I think it's increasingly safe to say that Obama is no particular friend of Israel and is no longer all that worried about being seen as neutral or worse on Israel.
Jen Rubin: "The answer is that Obama seeks to ingratiate himself with the thug-ocracies and put the screws on Israel. The answer is that Obama views Israeli actions not in the best possible light, as one would expect a valued friend to do, but in the worst possible light. And the answer is that neither Obama nor his administration can think through the implications of their actions (Will acquiescence work with Syria? Will bullying win over the Israelis?) or appreciate the moral distinction between a democratic friend and a rogue state. They are both morally obtuse and politically (domestically and internationally) tone-deaf."
Bingo. Obama sees himself as this grand peace-maker who stands above the petty conflicts of others and bridges the warring sides. Of course, if you stand above disputes, you don't take sides, and thus you see the functioning democracy and Western values of Israel as morally indistinguishable from the vast underage-suicide-bomber academy that is Palestinian society. I hit the roof when my little guy throws a Thomas the Tank Engine; halfway around the world, some Palestinian Papa is offering his son tips on how to throw the rock most powerfully when he runs in front of an Israeli tank.
The subtext of this Robert Kagan column from yesterday was pretty clear: All around the world, we're spitting on our allies and groveling before our enemies and the most hostile states. For two years, we argued that the world didn't work the way Obama said it did; now we're getting to see the results.
4. Addenda
Looks like Jerry Brown isn't going to let a little thing like the law get in the way of his ambition to be governor of California again. Quick, somebody call the state attorney general! Wait, that's currently . . . Jerry Brown. |
