Columnist.
So rednecks need to be politically correct now? Wait, before the National Association of Rednecked Persons attacks me, let me be clear that I don't mean "redneck" as an insult. Indeed, Redneck Pride has been on the rise ever since Jeff Foxworthy got rich informing people they "might be a redneck." (Some clues: if your school fight song was "Dueling Banjos"; if you've ever raked leaves in your kitchen; if your boat hasn't left your driveway for 15 years; if birds are attracted to your beard, etc.)
When will the insurers revolt? It's a question that's popping up more and more. On the surface, the question answers itself. We're talking about pinstriped insurance company executives, not Hells Angels. One doesn't want to paint with too broad a brush, but if you were going to guess which vocations lend themselves least to revolutionary zeal, actuaries rank slightly behind embalmers. Still, it's hard not to wonder how much more these people are willing to take. Even an obedient dog will bite if you kick it enough. Since Obamacare's passage, the administration has constantly moved the goalposts on the industry.
"Obamacare was sold on a trinity of lies." That ornate phrase, more suitable for the Book of Revelations or perhaps the next installment of "Game of Thrones," comes from my National Review colleague Rich Lowry. But I like it. Most people know the first deception in the triumvirate of deceit: "If you like your health insurance you can keep it, period." The second leg in the tripod of deception was "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."
Newspapers are among the last places in America that have close to zero tolerance for [expletive deleted]. I could give you a hint about what word is between the brackets, but I'd best not for fear of arousing the ire of the editing Comstocks. About twice a year, I quote a profanity from a public figure, using just the first letter of the word and then some bowdlerizing asterisks for the rest. No dice, my editor tells me. You're writing for a family newspaper.
After you heard President Obama's call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots? But just in case the question didn't occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee's announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili's already made this move earlier this year.
Maybe someone can explain to me how, exactly, conservatives are the aggressors in the culture war? In the conventional narrative of American politics, conservatives are obsessed with social issues. They want to impose their values on everyone else. They want the government involved in your bedroom. Those mean right-wingers want to make "health care choices" for women.
Success! The Obama administration announced over the weekend that it had hit its deadline of Nov. 30 for HealthCare.gov. Of course, there were caveats. The site will still probably get buggy when there's a lot of traffic, which is why Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advised people to use it at off-peak hours. But that simply means peak hours will be moved to after midnight. After all, you don't alleviate crowding if you tell everyone to try a different door.
"I'm not a particularly ideological person," President Obama told an audience of donors in Seattle over the weekend. He added (in Reuters' words) that "pragmatism was necessary to advance the values that were important to him." This is an old refrain of Obama's. As he said in his first inaugural, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works."
If the Republicans can't fight wars and the Democrats stink at socializing medicine, what good are they? That would not be an altogether unreasonable question for a typical American today. No doubt spokesmen for the respective political parties would offer all sorts of objections to that summation. And many of those objections would be fair. A defender of George W. Bush's stint as commander in chief would point to the quick toppling of Saddam and the Taliban. He or she might argue that the Democrats undermined a wartime president and fomented defeatism.
In Britain to promote her film "The Butler," Oprah Winfrey gave an interview to the BBC last week. Not surprisingly, she promoted her movie about race relations in the White House with comments about race relations and the White House. The BBC's Will Gompertz asked: "Has it ever crossed your mind that some of the treatment of Obama and the challenges he's faced and some of the reporting he's received is because he's an African-American?"
Watching President Obama's press conference Thursday, I almost started humming the old ditty the "Farmer in the Dell" because all I could think was: "The cheese stands alone." The president did his level best to explain that he was as in the dark as anybody about the problems with his signature legislation.
"Character is what you do when no one is watching." It's a bit of a trite saying, attributed to coaches, motivational speakers and fortune cookie writers (by the way, whose idea was it to replace fortune cookie predictions with treacly aphorisms from the "Successories" reject pile?). Still, the expression's popularity illustrates the power of the idea behind it. Character is what you do when the only controlling authority is your conscience.
The government thinks you're stupid, or at least ignorant. This isn't just an indictment of the current government or an indictment of government itself. It's simply a statement of fact. At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren't equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. In 1776, the federal government's portfolio could have easily fit in a file folder: maintain an army and navy, a few federal courts, the post office, the patent office and maybe a dozen or two other pretty obvious things.
Many of the president's supporters are in barely concealed panic over the fact that he didn't tell the truth when he was selling the Affordable Care Act. In an oft-repeated vow, he told the country that "if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what." This was, by any common-sense measure, a lie.
The new mayor of New York City is a Red Sox fan. According to the rules of the New York I grew up in, I'd expect to see the Hudson turn into a river of blood and Zabar's to close due to a locust infestation before that happened. But if De Blasio's remarkable rise proves anything, it's that the rules can change. A liberal's crazy liberal, De Blasio still waxes nostalgic about the noble struggle of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, for whom he raised money in the 1980s. He violated the ban on travel to Cuba for his honeymoon with his formerly gay wife, and he often talks as if he's handing out literature in Union Square for the former left-wing New Party, for which he used to work.
Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, "He meant to do that." And the amazing thing is that so many people believe it. "Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He's smart, deft, elegant and subtle," proclaimed then-New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in 2009. It's an image of the president that his biggest fans, in and out of the press, have been terribly reluctant to relinquish -- because it confirms the faith they invested in him. Nobody every likes to admit they were suckered.
"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare. And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president.
Earlier this week, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski tried to call the HealthCare.gov helpline and got an operator. That's right: an operator! The call went through! MSNBC, the unofficial AV department of the Democratic Party, had a scoop. The network tweeted out the big news along with a link to the video: "Mika called the Obamacare hotline and got through with no problems -- right on air. WATCH."
Conservatives with long memories had to laugh at the recent New York Times front-page headline: "Fiscal Crisis Sounds the Charge in GOP's 'Civil War.'" That diagnosis largely hangs on the judgment of 1970s New Right direct-mail impresario Richard Viguerie, whose ears have been ringing with the thunder of Fort Sumter for a quarter-century.
"We've got to get the Rockefeller Republicans out of the party," a fellow told me in Minnesota recently. Or was it Arizona? Or Wilkes-Barre, Pa.? Actually, I think it was all three. I hear it all the time as I travel around the country speaking to conservative groups. For those of you who don't know, the Rockefeller Republicans -- named after the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller -- were the liberal, mostly Northeastern wing of the Republican Party.
