Right Opinion

What 'Right' to Health Care?

Tom Friedman Hails China's One-Party Autocracy

The dwindling number of readers of The New York Times were treated Wednesday to a column by Thomas Friedman extolling China's "one-party autocracy," which, he told us, "is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people." China's leaders, he reported, are "boosting gasoline prices" and "overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power." All, of course, in the cause of reducing carbon emissions, which so many luminaries assure us are bound to produce global warming and environmental catastrophe. As Jonah Goldberg, author of the scholarly bestseller "Liberal Fascism," notes, "This is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s." Mussolini, we were told then, made the trains run on time. He drained the Pontine marshes. He got things done while Americans, with their chaotic democratic politics, dithered.

From McCain-Feingold to Madison

WASHINGTON -- Last March, during the Supreme Court argument concerning the Federal Election Commission's banning of a political movie, several justices were aghast. Suddenly and belatedly they saw the abyss that could swallow the First Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia was "a little disoriented" and Justice Samuel Alito said "that's pretty incredible." Chief Justice John Roberts said: "If we accept your constitutional argument, we're establishing a precedent that you yourself say would extend to banning the book" -- a hypothetical 500-page book containing one sentence that said "vote for" a particular candidate. What shocked them, but should not have, were statements by a government lawyer who was only doing his professional duty with ruinous honesty -- ruinous to his cause. He was defending the mare's nest of uncertainties that federal campaign finance law has made, and the mess the court made in 2003 when, by affirming the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold's further speech restrictions, it allowed Congress to regulate speech by and about people running for Congress.

Character and Care

Toward the end of his speech on health care Wednesday night, President Obama said that he had been thinking a lot about the phrase "the character of our country." Too bad the president's speech had all the character of a free lunch. Obama argued for the moral imperative of providing quality health care for all Americans -- but it's not such a moral imperative that most people should have to pay for it. In fact, he promised a load of goodies, starting with access to health care for America's 47 million-plus uninsured. House Bill 3200 would provide subsidies for families of four making up to $88,000. It also mandates that insurers would have to cover not only individuals with pre-existing conditions, but also would have to end co-payments for routine checkups and preventive care.

Cable's Not Kid-Friendly

Cable television is a minefield of unspeakable raunch for children, who, like it or not, freely roam the hallways of this medium at night. The Parents Television Council has issued its list of the Top 10 Worst Cable TV Shows for Kids. One hopes that someone out there is shocked. Leading the list is Comedy Central and its vile celebrity roasts. These mean-spirited and vile knockoffs are nothing like the sidesplitting, kid-because-we-love Dean Martin roasts of the '70s. August's roast of Joan Rivers was the ugliest yet. Rivers came out on stage holding hands with six little kids of different nationalities and joked that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were having a yard sale. She shoved the kids and snapped: "All right, kids, go make jewelry!" Behind the kids' backs, she flipped a middle finger and said, "I hate children."

The Government-Insurance Option Is Dead

The day after President Obama's impassioned speech for big-government health care, Wall Street bet heavily that the so-called government-insurance option he supports is dead. In a strong stock market on Thursday -- the market's fifth-straight daily rise (so much for the September swoon) -- health-insurer shares advanced significantly. Cigna increased 5 percent; Health Net almost 5 percent; Humana 3.5 percent; and UnitedHealth Group 1.5 percent. Hospital shares like Community Health Systems and Tenet Healthcare also rallied smartly, climbing about 5 percent each. Drug company Pfizer rose more than 1 percent. These stocks would not have rallied if the public option looked alive. Corroborating this, the Intrade pay-to-play online betting parlor shows only a 24 percent probability of the government option passing by the end of this year. Also, of 17,308 respondents in a Politico poll, 38 percent registered thumbs-up for the president's address, while 58 percent said thumbs-down.

Obama's Trouble with Numbers

Let's stipulate that it was wrong of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., to shout "You lie" during President Obama's health care speech. It was a violation of courtesy and etiquette. Wilson apologized -- which is more than the Democrats who booed President Bush's State of the Union address in 2005 ever did. But I confess that watching at home, similar expostulations were heard. Some seemed to have burst, irrepressible, from my own lips. There was, for starters, this misleading assertion: " ... If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have." Ah, shades of Clintonesque lawyerly evasion. No, it won't "require" you to change, but if the tax treatment changes (and Obama proposes, among other things, to tax high-end plans) and the public option is available, employers may choose to change their offerings and employees will then no longer get to keep their current insurance.

Learning Is No Picnic, Buster

Conservatives and other parents won their point. President Obama dropped his lesson plan for the schoolchildren of America. He didn't ask what they can do for him, as he first intended to do, but what they can do for themselves and country. "We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect, so you can help solve our most difficult problems," he said. "If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not only quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country." Nobody can argue with that. The furor that preceded the speech was rage against the "cult of personality," and the White House did a good job of changing the subject to misrepresent what the furor was about. But as the Bard would say, "All's well that ends well."

Americans Aren't Buying What Obama Has To Sell

More prescient words were never spoken by a politician than Barack Obama's to the American people Wednesday evening on the issue of health care reform: "I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." For 60 years, Democrats have been trying to force a government health care system on a deeply skeptical American public, without success. And if President Obama fails this time, it's unlikely we'll see another attempt anytime soon. But despite the president's recriminations, he has only himself to blame. The president could have used his primetime public address to search for a moderate compromise. Instead, he chose to call those who disagree with him liars and to warn that if Congress fails to pass his plan "more (people) will die as a result." And to make matters worse, he claimed he could expand coverage to 30 million people who don't have it now, pay for higher drug coverage for seniors, guarantee that no one be denied health coverage for any reason or have their lifetime benefits capped -- all without adding "one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future. Period."

Listening to a Liar: Part II

"Hubris-laden charlatans" was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud. To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world-class chutzpa and an insult to anyone's intelligence. To do so after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the glittering words.

A Ring of Truth(ers)

Herewith, two scenarios. Scenario A: The supposedly inept president of the United States carefully planned and orchestrated the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. Though "only" 3,000 people died, the plan was to kill many more by simultaneously attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and either the U.S. Capitol or the White House itself on Sept. 11, 2001. Hundreds of people, including personnel from myriad agencies, participated. According to some versions of Scenario A, explosives were placed at the World Trade Center to ensure success. In other versions, all of "the Jews" working there were tipped off by some phone bank run by the Mossad. In every version, however, the U.S. government was in on it, and everyone involved kept the biggest secret in American history.

For O, It's 'My Way or the Highway'

Can someone explain to me how President Barack Obama's grandiose scheme destined to reduce the quality of the best health care system in the history of the world, force millions of people who choose not to purchase health insurance to purchase it, greatly increase medical costs, our deficits and national debt, ultimately reduce patient choice, and place health care decisions in the hands of heartless bureaucrats is somehow a demonstration of compassion? Why, in the course of his countless speeches on health care, has Obama rarely, if ever, praised American health care, which is the envy of the entire world? Perhaps for the same reason he doesn't praise America about much of anything, I suppose. If he's not trashing us, he's not talking about us.

Obama, Health Care and the Limits of Charm

WASHINGTON -- In 1950, Lionel Trilling could write, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." In 1980, as the Reagan revolution was starting, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded, "Of a sudden, the GOP has become the party of ideas." Where now is the intellectual center of gravity -- the thrill of innovation, the ideological momentum -- in American politics? Not in the party of Obama.

The Van Jones Matter

WASHINGTON -- So Van Jones, the defenestrated White House green-jobs czar, once called Republicans "a--holes." Big deal. I've said worse about Democrats. I've said worse about Republicans. I've said worse about members of my family (you know who you are). How prissy have we become? Are we allowed no salt in our linguistic diets? Having once written a column praising Vice President Cheney's pithy deployment of the F-word -- on the floor of the Senate, no less -- I rise in defense of Jones. True, Jones' particular choice of epithet had none of the one-syllable concision, the onomatopoeic suggestiveness, the explosive charm of Cheney's. But you don't fire a guy for style.

How Obama Cronyism Threatens Rail Security

New Delhi. Mumbai. Chechnya. Madrid. London. The question isn't whether America will suffer a jihadi attack on our passenger rail lines, but when. So, why has President Obama neutered the nation's most highly trained post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism rail security team? All signs point to business-as-usual cronyism and pandering to power-grabbing union bosses. Amtrak's Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO) grew out of a counterterrorism and intelligence unit developed by the Bush administration in the wake of global jihadi attacks on mass transit systems. The office was staffed with Special Forces veterans, law enforcement officers, railroad specialists, other military personnel and experts who collectively possessed hundreds of years of experience fighting on the front lines against terrorism. Each member underwent at least 800 hours of rail security-related training, including advanced marksmanship, close quarters combat and protective security exercises.

Battle Space

KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan -- We're with the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in southern Helmand province, just 75 kilometers from Pakistan, in "battle space" that was the heart of Taliban territory until a few weeks ago. When these Marines fought their way into this dusty district capital in July, the Taliban were stunned. No Afghan government or coalition authorities had been here since 2002. Taliban leaders across the border in Pakistan told their minions to fight back. They did, and it was a terrible mistake. Scores of them died trying to stop the joint American/Afghan National Army troops from establishing a foothold here.

History Made to Order

At the outset of the great break-up of the Soviet Union, many of us hoped Russia would emerge as a free country, if not an ally then a friend. Looking back, any outcome so idyllic was about as realistic as Russia's becoming something other than Russia. Instead, the new Russia that emerged looks a lot like an old one, specifically the tsarist one. One hallmark of Russia's long night under Stalin and his successors remains essentially unchanged: a tendency to airbrush the past to suit the political needs of the present. Note some recent comments from Russia's new tsar and old KGB man, Vladimir Putin -- former president, current premier and future whatever-he-wants-to-be. Making a ceremonial appearance in Warsaw on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, he couldn't help but repeat a standard feature of the old regime's custom-tailored history: The war was the West's fault. KGB reflexes die hard.

The Reason for Our Discontent

Who wrote the following: "We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless." A "right-wing extremist" didn't write these words, nor did a cable TV or radio talk show host. Sen. J. William Fulbright, the late Arkansas liberal Democratic senator and Bill Clinton mentor, wrote them in his 1966 book, "Arrogance of Power." The arrogance of power and disdain for average Americans is what fueled much of the dissent expressed in town hall meetings. Growing numbers of people see a small cadre of government, academic and media elites caring nothing about them, except when it comes to their tax dollars. Many, especially those who are conservative and even worse, religious, are viewed by these elites as enemies of progress and sophistication. They are mocked as NASCAR-loving, flag-waving, God-worshipping trailer trash. The people are getting the message and properly expressing themselves by peacefully (and loudly) assembling and petitioning government for a redress of their grievances.

New Generation of Churchill Critics

WASHINGTON -- Sept. 1 was the 70th anniversary of Hitler's blitzkrieg into Poland and the beginning of World War II. Fifty million people died. Western Europe was devastated. Eastern Europe was more thoroughly devastated and subjected to communist tyranny that for decades seemed invincible and a threat to the Free World, which remained armed and vigilant. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt emerged from that war as legendary heroes who saved our civilization. Almost immediately, there were skeptics. Some claimed that both were responsible for the war. Some claimed that Roosevelt provoked the Pearl Harbor attack and failed to notify our doomed soldiers and sailors. These skeptics were, of course, cranks.

Race Card -- R.I.P.

The scenario usually plays out this way. A white person says something about a nonwhite person -- a statement perceived as racially insensitive, purportedly reinforcing a stereotype, or otherwise considered racist. "Black leaders" or members of the "civil rights community" pitch a fit and make demands. Off with his head! The offender apologizes, denies that the comment reflects how he "truly feels," agrees to take racial sensitivity courses, grovels and then often ends up losing his job anyway. Recognizing and accepting that sometimes people say silly, stupid, illogical or disagreeable things won't do. Writing someone off as wrongheaded isn't enough. He or she must pay.