The rise of the Right
Fareed Zakaria asks whether the Right’s star is rising around the world. Let’s hope so (and note, his piece appeared in Newsweek, which is not exactly National Review 2).
In it, Zakaria also offers a succinct summary of one of the most basic problems with health care reform as proposed by President Obama (I could quibble about his numbers or the urgency of the crisis, but his general point is well put):
There are two great health-care crises in America””one involving coverage and the other cost. The Obama plan appears likely to tackle the first but not the second. This is bad economics but also bad politics: the crisis of cost affects 85 percent of Americans, while the crisis of coverage affects about 15 percent. Obama’s message to the country appears to be “We have a dysfunctional health-care system with out-of-control costs, and let’s add 45 million people to it.”
While I’m recommending articles to read, there’s always Victor Davis Hanson. Here he imagines what Obama coulda, shoulda , woulda said, if he were a better president (sigh).
It’s a sort of Wily Coyote moment, just after he realizes he has gone over the cliff. In that moment before gravity takes hold, he looks down and sees how just far down is the bottom of the canyon.
Obama can’t be a better president because he lacks the temperament, experience, and qualifications for the job. At best he is a Chicago pol, and at worst he is a closet Marxist. He sees no need to do a good job because the media are up his butt, and he has big numbers in the House and Senate.
The left figures this is their best shot at getting the camel’s nose under the tent for a single payer, national health care system. They have jumped off the cliff in hopes that it will work out.
Yeah, I was kinda disappointed to read VDH writing about what Obama would, coulda said….
I think it is some kinda stage in the grieving process.
Maybe its some insipid way of bargaining with death (of the Republic); that if only he could imagine a better president, or he kept the whitehouse “just like it was”, maybe a good president will come back.
I’m sorry VDH.
Fausta has a particularly good podcast about Cuba.
If we all get serious (whatever that means), then collectively we’ll be able to save our beautiful Republic.
Obama is an idiot, but he’s not running the whole show. Others have to do his bidding.
Also, we know that the Democrats depend on corruption and ballot-stuffing to get their way. We need to find a way to stop them.
True health care reform would address the ways that health care is delivered and how it is accessed rather than who pays for it.
There are two great health-care crises in America–one involving coverage and the other cost. The Obama plan appears likely to tackle the first but not the second. This is bad economics but also bad politics: the crisis of cost affects 85 percent of Americans, while the crisis of coverage affects about 15 percent. Obama’s message to the country appears to be “We have a dysfunctional health-care system with out-of-control costs, and let’s add 45 million people to it.
Wow, finally something on this topic makes sense!
I read the Zakaria article yesterday along with other links from RealClear Politics. I too was struck by reasonableness of Zakaria, though not by his geopolitical maunderings elsewhere on the Middle East and Islam.
From RealClear I also read Paul Bergala on “Forget Bipartisanship” and Paul Krugman on right-wing paranoia. Those articles seem to be written from some other parallel political universe.
I don’t know where one even starts to talk with someone who frames the recent healthcare vote as Bergala does:
Led by the unshakeable Nancy Pelosi, whose grace in the face of bitter and sometimes sexist attacks is truly admirable, congressional Democrats are showing rare courage in passing major health-care reform legislation in the face of implacable partisan opposition. History suggests they’re making a smart bet.
Yet a good many Americans take Bergala’s version of reality seriously, as well as the current absurd blindness over the motives of Maj. Hasan at Fort Hood.
Yeah, I was kinda disappointed to read VDH writing about what Obama would, coulda said….
I think it is some kinda stage in the grieving process.
Gray: Or maybe it’s the wisdom that arises from knowing history deeply from the perspective of millenia and realizing that while the Obamas have come and gone, the principles of rational debate in Western Civilization have served us well and will continue to do so.
VDH writes in a calm, gracious manner so that as many people as possible can hear him, not just those who already agree.
Victor David Hanson is a national treasure.
Health care consists of a three-sided equation of medical quality, cost, and availability. An improvement in one always, always affects at least, generally both, of the other two. Want to improve quality? It can be done, by increasing costs or reducing availability, possibly both. Cut costs? Sure thing, just expect medical quality to go down, or availability to suffer. Universal care? Can do, but quality will decrease, costs will rise, or both. ObmaCare does not render the laws of supply and demand invalid. Heinlein was right these many years ago–TNSTAAFL.
at least one, that should have been…
Or maybe it’s the wisdom that arises from knowing history deeply from the perspective of millenia and realizing that while the Obamas have come and gone, the principles of rational debate in Western Civilization have served us well and will continue to do so.
Yeah, I thought it was kinda pointless too….
The problem is that Western Civilization has a ‘suicide gene’ coded in its genetics that causes it to rationally debate with the irrational.
happyness breeds delusive thinking…
while those who are
The upside of feeling down
http://www.physorg.com/news177020337.html
just the effects that reasonable people are happier is enouigh to make them less able.
“These findings are also consistent with some earlier claims about so-called “depressive realism” and more recent findings that people who are sad by nature – known as dispositionally dysphoric – might have an advantage at detecting specific types of lies,”
and the left with its complete focus on the superiority of a condition only intended to be temporary as a permanent state, describes why they are unable to reason, inable to see lies, unable to make judgements, respond more strongly to propaganda and injected memories, and a whole lot of things…
us “depressive realists” get pretty frustrated that both sides do this… and are manipulated by this.
all the good stuff being given to his followers parallel the same effects over the first two years in every despots first taking their positions.
happyness breeds complacency, delusion, false competency, false assurity, incresed suggestibility, and tons more… (in contradictio to almost everything we today think about happyness)
there are reasons why the happy gladly end up slaves… and there is a reason that their torment is so complete once reality wakes em up… dreams to reality is a shocking jump. and those who spend a lot of time being ‘happy’ have spend very little time improving skills and abilities and other things they will need when happy ends