Lucid Links (081809, Morning)
Mona Charen hits the bulls-eye:
President Obama set out to reform health care not because Americans were clamoring to profoundly change our system, but because he wishes to transform the relationship between the individual and the state.
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Dennis Prager also hits the center of the target:
…. in the early 1970s, I came to the then-tentative conclusion that I would probably never encounter a morally weaker, more cowardly group of people than college administrators.
…. What prompted this conclusion in the 1970s was seeing a handful of radical students take over classrooms at Columbia and shut down the university while professors and deans, individuals whose lives were supposedly dedicated to the open mind and to learning, did nothing.
…. I came to see the modern university as fraudulent. In theory it stood for learning and opening the mind. In practice it stood for appeasement of bullies.”
This news (“Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book”) clearly justifies that sad assessment.
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Valid point (HT to an e-mailer) on town hall consistency:
My own representative, and the House Minority Leader, John Boehner is not holding any townhalls. Add to that the district directly south of me, OH-02, which is represented by Jean Schmidt (R), and our Republican Senator George Voinovich.
The justification I’ve heard from Jean Schmidt’s communications director — that there is no one plan out there to talk about, so there’s no common frame of reference — is very weak. Why not hold a meeting that would lay out what Ms. Schmidt (and, separately, Mr. Boehner) would do to improve the system, which, despite being the best in the world, needs freedom-enhancing work?
If you’re concerned about disruptors (and there’s plenty of justification for that concern), hire security. If you’re concerned about unanticipated crowds, take advance (free) reservations limited to a reasonably-sized room on a first-come, first-served basis. I also don’t think there would be anything wrong with a “no signs” rule enforced across the board.
I think Schmidt, Boehner, and others are missing a golden opportunity to distinguish their conduct from that of the potted planters — both congressional and presidential — on the other side of the aisle.
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Cal Thomas, on how Brits are rushing to the defense of their National Health Service (NHS):
The British media are conflicted. They patriotically defend the NHS, while simultaneously acknowledging its serious shortcomings. One example: A recent Daily Mail editorial praised the NHS for its free care and universal availability, but then added, “Our survival rates for breast, prostate, ovarian and lung cancers are among the worst in Europe, despite huge additional expenditures.” Free is nice, but best is better.
And of course, it’s really anything but free, even if you callously consider lower survival rates a “cost of doing business.” If that seems an unfair characterization, then try to justify what Britain’s naughty NICE board does to ill British patients all the time.
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Oops:
After insisting no one was receiving unsolicited e-mails from the White House, officials reversed their story Monday night and blamed outside political groups for the unwanted messages from the tech-savvy operation.
Uh, doesn’t this sort of show that the White House’s geniuses aren’t as tech-savvy as advertised?
It’s never their fault.
Note that the name of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who tried (and failed) to ridicule, intimidate, and cut off Fox’s Major Garrett for bringing the issue up, is nowhere to be found in AP’s coverage.
Here’s the exchange between Garrett and Gibbs, which heats up at about 1:00 (Update: The original vid was taken down; I have replaced with one from Fox, which should stay up for at least a while):
Given the result, Gibbs was “pwned,” and owes Garrett an apology that will surely never arrive.
If this had occurred under Bush 43, we’d be hearing about this one for days, and Nancy Pelosi would be at the head of a long line calling for an investigation. It has already been forgotten by the establishment media, and the Congressional leadership could care less.
