Krauthammer 3/20/09

What Obama Wants: Part 2

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: It seems that the big economic plan is just more old-style government spending.

Quote:

Obama delegates to Nancy Pelosi and her congressional grandees the writing of all things fiscal -- and gets a $787 billion stimulus package that is a wish list of liberal social spending, followed by a $410 billion omnibus spending bill festooned with pork and political paybacks.

My Views: The larger point here is that Obama is acting more like an old pol rather than a new agent of hope and change. Since FDR, every left-winger has measured success by more government programs and more government intervention. At least if O would take a stand against some Democrat special interest group - any group will do. Instead, it is just more of the same politics. Where there is newness, it is in directions that lefties have wanted for years and righties have feared, such as government takeovers of companies. (Hello auto industry!)

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Krauthammer 3/13/09

Abdicating Responsibility on the Stem Cell Issue

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Last week CK declined to attend the White House ceremony celebrating the overturning of GW Bush's Executive Order on Stem Cell Research. CK disagreed with where GWB laid the moral boundaries but he disagreed even more with Obama's removing those boundaries entirely.

Quote:

This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

My Views: Mengele was a Nazi scientist who performed grusome experiments on humans. Tuskegee is a college but I am not sure what CK's reference means.

Stem cells is not an issue on which I am well informed. The significance of this story to me is that it contributes to a growing picture of Obama who said he was going to be above partisanship, race, and ideology but is continues to make left-wing decisions while giving scant attention to non-left concerns. Bush's position on this issue ought not to have gotten the bum's rush that it did here. The wrongfullness of his policy (if it was wrong) remains as much a mystery after the President's statement thereon as before.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.