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.

Krauthammer 2/27/09

What Obama Wants: Part 1

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

Summary: Yesterday's speech laid out Obama's main goals: (1) Universal health care; (2) Universal education; and (3) Government regulated and funded green energy economy. These changes will be a major change in American society.

Quote:

. . . the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.

My Views: The problem with government regulation and control is that while it limits economic downturns, it also limits economic upturns. Despite these downturns, the economy has expanded rapidly over the long term. Limiting upturns will slow that long term expansion. We will be less well off in the future because of this.

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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 2/20/09

Lower Profile Diplomacy

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

Summary: He lists the foreign policy reverses that various countries hit the US with since the new President took office. Every new President is tested but while Obama's tests have been small ones, he has not stood up to them well.

Quote:

I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e., domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented.

My Views: I'm not sure I agree with K's conclusions. A chess game may start with a slow, passive plan. The player uses a passive layout because he wants to build up for the middle game. Obama may have calculated on sacrificing a few reverses early on in order to disipate ill will. Once he has revamped America's diplomatic position, he may want to get more aggressive later on.

There's also a good arguement that America ought to lower its profile for awhile. First, to regroup its economy and second, to encourage other friendly countries to take up some of the slack in foreign obligations.

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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.

Will 1/27/09

Grand, Yes. Bargain, No.

My take on George Will's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Obama's "Fiscal Responsibility Summit" is starting to look like a giant spending spree. Will's example of "mission creep" is the recent House passage of the SCHIP program. In 2007 Bush called for a $5 billion increase. Democrats in the House passed $50 billion increase. The Senate compromised at $35 billion. This year the House just doubled that.

Fiscal Responsibility now appears to mean massive new spending.

Quote:

. . . this SCHIP expansion is sensible -- if your goal is quickly to get as many people on public coverage as possible and to have children grow up thinking that it is normal for them to get their health insurance from the government. That is the goal.

My Views: With the bailout reaching $1 trillion, the mental block of spending large amounts of money seems to be breaking down. Commentators of all stripes seem to be accepting new, large spending as inevitable.

This mirrors the thinking in the business sector. There was the dot-com bubble a decade ago. Then there was the lending bubble of a year ago. During the times of both of these bubbles, conventional wisdom held that these kinds of practices were the new normal. People talked of changing conditions and changing times justifing the changing business practices.

The trouble with that thinking was that while times change, the laws of mathematics and of finance do not. The practices of the businesses that operated within these bubbles failed to stop the bubbles from bursting. The one idea that the nation should have learned was that this was inevitable. The laws of mathematics and hence, the laws of finance cannot be changed.

This is also true of the governmental sector. However the conventional wisdom may support massive new spending, the government must still pay its bills. - Else, bad things will happen.

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George Will almost didn't make it as a syndicated columnist. His style was considered too erudite for a general audience.

Whatever one thinks of his views, read his work for use of language and for how he marshals facts and uses logic.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.

Coulter 1/22/09

Obama Treated Equally?

My take on Ann Coulter's latest. Her column was published on Townhall.com.

Summary: Compare how Obama has been treated versus how past Presidents were treated. Don't go back too far. Just look at the chorus of boos that assaulted George W. Bush upon entering the inaugural stage yesterday.

Quote:

Liberals always have to play the victim, acting as if they merely want to bring the nation together in hope and unity in the face of petulant, stick-in-the-mud conservatives. Meanwhile, they are the ones booing, heckling and publicly fantasizing about the assassination of those who disagree with them on policy matters.

My Views: Right on! I like the list of things that they said of Reagan's Inauguration versus the things being said of Obama's. Why are the left so mean to people who disagree with them?

As for Mrs. O's fashion sense, I just have to wonder why no one is pricing those gowns the way they priced Sarah Palin's?

I just want everyone to be treated equally. But that means that everyone has to BEHAVE equally. Carter wasn't booed at Reagan's Inaugural. Why boo Bush at Obama's Inaugural?

Some of Coulter's recent essays have struck me as petty but when she gets something right, she hits a bullseye. This one really struck a chord with me.

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Anybody who is as hated as Ann Coulter is must be doing something right. She is very right-wing but every left-wing blogger would love to write like her. I hate rants; opinion pieces must argue from the facts. Pay attention to how she uses facts and draws politically incorrect connections among them. People would do well to think and not just be outraged.

Here's her Wiki bio. Her latest book is at the right.

Obama Inaugurated

We wish them well. Of the five living Presidents, 3 are Democrats and 2 are Republicans - both Bush's. If Reagan had still been alive, it would have been 3 and 3.

Here is the text of O's big speech.

By the way, we had TR, FDR, JFK, LBJ. For Obama, he doesn't like Barack much and he definetly discourages the use of Hussein. O should do just fine.