Couldn’t Help But Notice (011208)

Great points are made in an IBDeditorials.com item on the health care system:

Democrats claim high medical costs are a “failure of the free market,” and they demand a government takeover. But a new study says government’s to blame.

So if Uncle Sam made health care so unaffordable, why do so many voters like Democrats’ plans to expand government control of health care? Because they’ve bought into the myth that the private sector has failed and begs for government rescue.

Democrats’ solution to this failed government-heavy system is more government in the form of mandatory health coverage. Public plans offered by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all boast of “using government to lower costs and ensure affordability for all.”

But if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until government makes it “free.”

Hillary calls for expanding coverage through public health plans like Medicare or the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. Yet Medicare already costs more per capita than any other industrial nation’s public medical program.

The way to control costs isn’t to expand a health care bureaucracy that already is divorcing patients from market-price decisions. The answer is letting them choose between health care and money.

Read the whole thing.

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BS Buy-in of the Day: Ben Smith at Politico should know better than to propagate this (bold is mine; link is in original) –

Race is particularly complicated turf this year, however, in a contest that features two towering figures who pride themselves for breaking racial barriers in American politics.

The first is Bill Clinton, sometimes referred to as “the first black president,” who now finds himself on the same uncertain ground as any other white politician speaking dismissively of an African-American rival.

Smith identifies the second as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama), who, for all his weaknesses, is the first black (enough) presidential candidate to score a state victory in a presidential election cycle, and the first with a shot at winning his party’s nomination (Jesse Jackson, for all his success in 1984 and 1988, never got anywhere near as close as BOOHOO will get, even if he [BOOHOO] doesn’t get the nomination).

But what “racial barriers in American politics” did Bill Clinton ever break? Anyone?

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My sympathy tank is running on empty upon learning of this news:

Sidney Blumenthal plays hardball. A longtime confidante and adviser to the Clintons, he has zealously defended them through any number of scandal investigations. Along the way, Blumenthal has shown an affinity for the sharp counterattack. When a group of Arkansas state troopers in the early 1990s began leveling charges that Bill Clinton had strayed in his marriage, Blumenthal shot back–penning an article in The New Yorker accusing the troopers of a litany of their own transgressions, including attempted fraud, marital infidelity and drunken driving.

Now, Blumenthal himself faces charges of driving drunk. Blumenthal, an unpaid senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was arrested in Nashua on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and charged with aggravated DWI, according two members of the Nashua police force.

Christopher Hitchens understands why. Blumenthal’s Wiki entry “somehow” makes no mention of his involvement in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the 1960s.

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Funny, from IMAO (HT Instapundit) –

Daily Fred Thompson Fact

Taxes get so depressed when they hear Fred Thompson is in charge that they cut themselves.