P. J. on Jimmy

P. J. O'Rourke sobered up enough to write a column for the Weekly Standard skewering Jimmy Carter's racism remark, plus related sentiments. As usual, Miami of Ohio's Greatest Graduate cannot be epitomized in a quotation. Nevertheless, we offer a paragraph:

I hadn't noticed I was a racist, but that was no doubt because I was too busy being a homophobe. Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot. Since I do not want America to suffer another Sean Penn movie, I will accept that I'm a homophobe, too. And I'm a male chauvinist due to the fact that I think Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke--excuse me, carbon neutral, biodegradable airborne particulate matter--out her pantsuit.

If the world were a decent place, this man, not Al Franken, would be the Senate's comedian.

Partnering with the World Was Supposed to Be Easy

The big story was that Dubya alienated America's global partners and that Obama has restored their confidence.

It may not be working that way.

The Pioneer, part of India's lively journalism industry, today offers the opinion that Obama has been the worst American President for India since Richard Nixon. Briefly but pointedly these Indian editorialists note their confusion in the wake of Obama's conflicting initiatives.

A telling quote:

At various points his diplomats and Generals have said different things. Yet, in all this the overarching political message has been missing.

There has been a remarkable absence of clarity on Mr Obama’s strategic goals. In the early months, it was easy to pretend he was making up his mind. Now, it would seem he has no mind.

What India wants is respect as the world's largest democracy and a serious military and economic power. What Obama has given India, in stark contrast to Mr. Bush, is the short end of the trade and nonproliferation sticks. When in this region America needs a reliable friend and the world needs a stable democracy, Obama is more concerned with appeasing the protectionists in the American labor movement and the nonproliferation ideologues in the global left. And we wonder whether the matter isn't all the more easily settled for Mr. Obama because India was a notable object of attention and point of diplomatic success for Mr. Bush.

China and South Asia--including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh--comprise about 1/3 of the world's population. America's best friend in the region--indeed humanity's best friend in the region--is India. Why does Obama treat India like a problem?

Follow the Absence of Money

Having previously noted signs that portend a conservative/Republican resurgence , we note as well WaPo's observation that Democratic contributions are in the tank. The reasons noted: (a) complacency among rank-and-file; (b) big donors closing their checkbooks because they interpret Obama's focus on taxing the wealthy and regulating finance as a betrayal.

Meanwhile, the real kooks of the left are assembled in Pittsburgh for the annual display of pointless protesting at the G-(pick a number) summit. They seem just as upset with Obama but even less able to fund his party should he ask.

So, no money and no options for the party in power. Hard cheese for Dems.

It seems that every once in awhile, disappointed with the failings of conservative politicians and the bleak realism of the conservative worldview, Americans must vote left of center. Recent experiences (1952, 1968, 1980, 1994, 2000) suggest that their flirtation with the left always ends in disappointment. We keep looking for that free lunch . . .

All Things European Are Superior

Clintonista-Obamanoid John Podesta notes that an American value-added tax is more likely to become reality when American deficits are enormous. This outcome is to be celebrated in Mr. Podesta's view, as it would "bring a balance" between the American economy and its Japanese and European counterparts.

For those who wonder, a value-added tax is like a sales tax, only more insidious. Americans presently pay state and local sales taxes, which are added to the cost of a purchase when one pays for the purchase, calculated as a percentage of the retail price and clearly listed on a sales receipt. Value-added taxes, by contrast, are assessed more furtively. When raw materials are made into goods, a percentage of the "value added" to those materials at each stage of production is calculated and recorded. Those taxes are paid finally by the consumer, who forks over a retail price that adds a predetermined percentage of the pre-calculated "value added." The tax is thus entirely opaque to the buyer, who simply grumbles at how high prices are and blames the rapacious retailer for his unseemly greed.

How Mr. Podesta thinks that an additional tax that raises retail prices will bring the American economy into "balance" with other economies in a way that benefits Americans is not exactly clear, but that's not our point. Certainly Japan and Europe have had such taxes for some time, which is more to our point.

Our point is to ask why the left always thinks that European approaches are superior to American ones. As a frequent visitor to Europe and one-time expatriate resident of an EU member country, we appreciate many aspects of European life and culture. Europe is scenic, friendly, artsy and tasty. But we fail to see what is inherently superior about its mode of governance.

Moreover, we think it's obvious why so many Europeans, the SWNIDish ancestors among them, left the Old Country for the New World. The spirit of individual initiative and opportunity that has historically attracted immigrants to these shores continues, despite various moves away from its nurture, to exist in a measure that is palpable when one compares other industrialized countries, most particularly in Europe. It has its upside as well as its downside, certainly, but it is nevertheless a key ingredient in the growth in prosperity and sharing of opportunity that have been the hallmark of the American republic and continue to distinguish it from its competitors in the eyes of still-teeming immigrants to the American republic.

So why is it that lefties think that the mantra "Europe does it" is sufficient to imply, "So should we"? These days the politics of Europhilism applies in American discourse to such far-flung matters as taxes, trains and health insurance. Why?

We're not going to quote stats on employment, economic growth or social mobility to make our case. We aren't going to note how often and expensively in the last century the American part of "the West" came to the rescue of its European counterpart. We are simply wondering why, mostly having left Europe long or not so long ago, Americans now want to go back, and not just to see 23 cities in 25 days.

How Does He Do It?

Click this link, watch the slideshow of photographs with dignitaries at the President's recent appearance at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and ask how it is that any human being can produce exactly the same beaming expression 130 times.

That's an amazing talent. We don't know whether it correlates with an ability to govern, but it's an amazing talent nonetheless.

SWNIDish Advice on the Art of Romance

As an end-of-the-workweek feature, today we offer advice to gentle readers on how to conduct their personal lives.

Over our extensive lifetime, we have observed the rite of the marriage proposal take on epic proportions. Where once the prospective groom might simply take his beloved's hand and ask her to plight her troth to him despite his extreme unworthiness, thereafter placing on her hand a simple ring affordable to his modest means, today he is expected to offer a production that includes a romantic setting replete with expensive elements of stage production. One hears tales of such proposals being "cast" with various actors--some volunteer, some even hired--and "staged" with lighting, music and special effects. And in the end, the prospective groom must present a hunk of crystallized carbon of a value that could purchase a late-model Toyota or provide a substantial downpayment on a domicile.

Such seems to have been the case recently on Hilton Head Island, where an unnamed groom placed some 150 luminaria on the beach to provide the setting for his proposal. We assume he got what he wanted, as the Charolotte Observer reports that the gentleman and his gentlelady retired to their rented home, presumably with chaperons, after he popped the question.

But the illumined luminaria continued to shed their light, confusing sea turtle hatchlings for whom the evening was also momentous. Dozens of doomed chelonia apparently circled the unnatural lights before expiring on the beach, never finding their watery homes. Oh, the reptility!

Moral: keep the proposal and the wedding simple and concentrate instead on the marriage that follows. You'll do less damage and protect what really needs protecting.

Praising Comrade Obama?

This video--schoolkids rehearsing a song praising Barack Obama--is making the rounds:




We find ourselves amused but unconcerned.

Yes, it sounds way too much like the vapid paeans taught to the innocent children of totalitarian dictatorships. Yes, the little minds are impressionable and will take seriously whatever their teachers and other authority figures tell them.

No, we don't think it's part of a massive, conspiratorial power-grab. People who do this kind of thing are willing accomplices of politicians' lust for power, and lacking a sense of self-criticism or irony simply trust their own pure motives to be sufficient to protect them from causing unintentional harm or humor. But such nonsense is seldom effective beyond the moment. Kids grow up and rebel, public opinion changes, today's hero is tomorrow's villain, and so the effect of such "indoctrination" is marginal at worst.

On the other hand, we recall a time when the SWNIDish progeny were taught a song praising the CEO of a local grocery chain, ostensibly as thanks for his corporation having made a substantial gift for arts education. And we realize now that our children seem to be completely addicted to groceries. Perhaps all this indoctrination is effective after all.

Update: Too much buzz about this video misstates that the "tune" of the performance is "Jesus Loves the Little Children" and so concludes that the event was blasphemous as well as tasteless. Gentle readers/listeners will note that the first performance has no tune at all but is a pale, rhythmless rap the words of which quote the gospel song's racial taxonomy "red and yellow, black and white." The second performance, actually "sung" by the children, appears to be set to fragments of the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," though the quality of performance makes any judgment uncertain. Julia Ward Howe's ditty is, of course, not distinctively Christian but is part of the expression of civil religion that has pervaded American history and public life. In any case, we take the allusion to the religious song to be a tribute that the young President practices what the Christian faith preaches, certainly no blasphemy, though perhaps a generous overestimate.

What Kind of World Is It Where . . .

• The President of the United States delivers a speech prompting praise from Fidel Castro?
• Canada shows exclusive North-American mettle by planning to walk out on Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Ahamadinejad's upcoming UN speech?
• Not the head of a democratic state but reformed state terrorist Mamound Gadhafi castigates the UN for its impotence to stop some 65 wars?
• The only head of state willing to say that a climate-change summit was a sham is the President of the tiny Czech Republic?
• The American President and his State Department place sanctions on a tiny, poor nation whose in independent judiciary and legislature had taken action against its executive for unconstitutional exercise of power while conspiring with a large, relatively wealthy nation to return that executive to power?
  

Answer: a world in which dictatorships are celebrated and allies scorned, where the fashions of the left and the faults of the American Experiment are dogma.

This is not what Americans thought they were voting for in November 2008.

VDH: Obama the College Prez

The erudite Victor Davis Hanson today offers a most telling, brutal comparison of Barack Obama to the arch/stereotypical university president.

We don't know who should be more offended--Barack Obama, university presidents, other university administrators, or university faculty. But belonging to a couple of those groups, we still say that the article is an insightful hoot.

A few (well, many) quotations:

For many in the academic community who have not worked with their hands, run businesses, or ventured far off campus, Middle America is an exotic place inhabited by aborigines who bowl, don’t eat arugula, and need to be reminded to inflate their tires. They are an emotional lot, of some value on campus for their ability to “fix” broken things like pipes and windows, but otherwise wisely ignored. . . .

It is the role of the university, from a proper distance, to help them, by making sophisticated, selfless decisions on health care and the environment that the unwashed cannot grasp are really in their own interest — deluded as they are by Wal-Mart consumerism, Elmer Gantry evangelicalism, and Sarah Palin momism. The tragic burden of an academic is to help the oppressed, but blind, majority. . . .

Just as there are few conservatives, so too there are felt to be few who should be considered radicals in universities. Instead everyone is considered properly left, and even fringe expressions are considered normal calibrations within a shared spectrum. The proper question is not “Why are there so many extremists in the administration?” but rather “What’s so extreme?” . . .

On most campuses, referenda in the academic senate (“votes of conscience”) on gay marriage or the war in Iraq are as lopsided as Saddam’s old plebiscites. Speech codes curb free expression. Groupthink is the norm. Dissent on tenure decisions, questioning of diversity, or skepticism about the devolution in the definition of sexual harassment — all that can be met with defamation. The wolf cry of “racist” is a standard careerist gambit. Given the exalted liberal ends, why quibble over the means? . . .

Czars are a university favorite. Among the frequent topics of the daily university executive communiqués are the formulaic “My team now includes . . . ,” “I have just appointed . . . ,” “Under my direction . . . ” (that first-person overload is, of course, another Obama characteristic), followed by announcement of a new “special” appointment: “special assistant to the president for diversity,” “acting assistant provost for community affairs and external relations,” “associate dean for curriculum enhancement and development.” . . .

Academic culture also promotes this idea that highly educated professionals deigned to give up their best years for arduous academic work and chose to be above the messy rat race. Although supposedly far better educated, smarter (or rather the “smartest”), and more morally sound than lawyers, CEOs, and doctors, academics gripe that they, unfairly, are far worse paid. And they lack the status that should accrue to those who teach the nation’s youth, correct their papers, and labor over lesson plans. . . .

In short, campus people have had the bar raised on themselves at every avenue. Suggest to an academic that university pay is not bad for ninth months’ work, often consisting of an actual six to nine hours a week in class, and you will be considered guilty of heresy if not defamation. . . .

Many of the former Professor Obama’s problems so far hinge on his administration’s inability to judge public opinion, its own self-righteous sense of self, its non-stop sermonizing, and its suspicion of sincere dissent. In other words, the United States is now a campus, we are the students, and Obama is our university president.

Measuring Obama's Vitals

Within and without, things are tough for the Obama administration.

Within, someone leaked to the iconic Bob Woodward the report from General Stanley McChrystal concerning Afghanistan security. As Politico notes, this reveals personal fissures within the administration, which are unsurprising, but accompanied by a sense that the President can be pressured into a course of action, which is troubling so early in his term.

Without, Obama's approval numbers at this point in his administration are tied for lowest in postwar history, with the iconic Bill Clinton and the iconic Ronald Reagan. Both, of course, staged impressive comebacks, though for Clinton the comeback came at the expense of his legislative agenda.

We think that the poll numbers and the leak both say what's wrong with Obama. Poll numbers indicate that essentially all of Obama's loss of approval has come from Republicans (who started at 41% approval and now at 18%) and independents (once 66% and now 46%). Democrat approval peaked at 92% and now stands at 86%.

The number of independents who are cooling show that the drop is not a function of pure partisanship. The issue is that Obama has catered to his base in nearly every initiative thus far. The hard left may decry his weak leadership toward their agenda on healthcare, but the rest of the political spectrum sees where he is and understands where he's headed. And they don't like it. They voted for moderate Barack.

Same goes for the leak. Obama was going to take care of business in Afghanistan. Now he's questioning the recommendations of the general he appointed to do the job. Caution is one thing, but when caution seems to align with the surrender wing of the Democratic Party, more and more revealed as what Obama regards as his true base, anyone who isn't part of that wig get antsy.

What drove Reagan's comeback from a miserable political position was economic recovery, driven by permanent tax cuts that gave businesses the assurance they needed to start investing and hiring. Obama has made extremely clear that such is not his agenda. The iconic Arthur Laffer notes that Reagan's successful employment of supply-side economics to fuel economic recovery is the extreme opposite of the Obama agenda, which are more congruent with policies that lengthened and deepened the Great Depression.

What drove Clinton's comeback was an economic recovery coupled with his abandonment of his party's left wing after his own healthcare debacle. From 1994, a chastened Clinton worked as much with as against a Republican Congress, adopting a moderate, pragmatic stance that won him reelection against a lackluster opponent in 1996. Obama at this stage seems unlikely to make such a move, even as the Rs seem unlikely to stage as dramatic a comeback in the off-year election as they did sixteen years before. Still, no one anticipated a Speaker Gingrich, let alone a Clinton-signed welfare reform bill.

In sum, the Presidential Patient is politically sick. But he may well stage a recovery, though not by continuing to do what he is doing presently.

Is Carville Writing Ad Copy for CNN?

SWNID has little use for any particular television news outlet. Most offer j-school pablum, made even more bland for safe consumption by senior citizens. Though clearly catering to the right, Fox News is in the SWNIDish estimation shrill and jingoistic. We are not a fan.

Nevertheless, Murdoch's Fox is cleaning up in ratings, while Turner's CNN, once ascendant, is slipping.

So is it a big surprise that CNN is now advertising as if the competition between them and Fox is a political campaign, all about distortions of what the other guy has said?



We look forward to the next time that a CNN commentator decries the lack of civility in political discourse.

Irving Kristol, 1920-2009

Neoconservative thinker Irving Kristol is dead at the age of 89.

Kristol once described himself as "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." A self-styled "Trotskyist" in City College in the 1930s (who in City College's student body of the 1930s wasn't?), Kristol began reading folks like Niebuhr who expressed pessimism about the human capacity to operate under such idealistic systems as socialism and pacifism. With the rise of the Great Society, Kristol became an ardent advocate of conservative principles, including a robust American military to project power in support of democracy and monetarist and supply-side economics to promote growth over the equilibrium favored by the then-reigning Keneysianism.

Having drunk occasionaly from Kristol's prodigious well in the past, we appreciate his remark quoted first in a collection of quotables in Kristol's columns for WSJ, one especially timely in this moment of debate about healthcare reform:

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . .

On Educational Statistics, Quality, Choice

Cincinnati media are buzzing that the region's number of National Merit Semifinalists bumped up significantly this year, with 230 in the region, up about 50 from last year.

With an personal interest in one semifinalist, we note that local numbers show ongoing concentration in a few schools. Giant Oak Hills, which boasts the highest enrollment and number of course offerings in Ohio, has two. Lots of big publics have one or none. The big numbers come from selective publics (Walnut Hills); large, upper-middle-class-suburban publics (Sycamore, Mason); small, upper-middle-class-suburban publics with a history of high tax support for education (Wyoming, Mariemont, Indian Hill); and well-funded, selective privates (Seven Hills, St. Xavier, Cincinnati Country Day).

Still, why the bump? In a local case, it could be sheer coincidence. Trends take time to develop, of course. We'll see if this is but a blip.

If it persists, we suspect it could be reasonably attributed to some schools' deliberate competition to serve bright students better. For awhile there's been a quiet rivalry among some local high schools for Greater Cincinnati's smart kids. To attract them, schools have to cater to them. In catering, they offer programs that educate that segment better, putting a few more kids over the top on the standard for standardized-test excellence than they might otherwise.

Too bad there isn't similar competition to do the best with other demographic segments, at least as far as we can tell. While there's been plenty of attention given to working with at-risk students, there's nothing resembling healthy competition to attract their enrollment. Communities may work to attract and retain families committed to education, but we need not enumerate the disincentives to attracting the other end of the pool.

Meanwhile, what of the middle? Perhaps some of the schools with lonely-only National Merit Semifinalists are indeed putting their focus on the average to moderately bright student and show good outcomes in graduating such students and getting them successfully enrolled in postsecondary education (not necessarily college, but that's another subject). These stats won't reflect that effort.

But we doubt very much that there's a real competition to attract such students with programs aimed at them. And we think we know why.

Such students are served almost exclusively by public schools, though Cincinnati's robust parochial system is a sort of public-school surrogate. Public schools by nature don't see themselves in a competitive situation, apart from athletics. Kids go to the school because they live in the community. Homeowners and realtors generally push the schools to be attractive as a means of supporting demand for homes in the community and thus supporting home values and sales. Residents want better rather than worse, at least if they have kids enrolled. Meanwhile, property owners want the lowest taxes possible on their homes, applying pressure (wholesome, in our view) on spending.

But if you live in a school district, you're normally stuck sending your kids to the local schools. Many folks make the calculation that moving for education isn't worth the bother, though they might jump at the chance to send their kids to another school if they could do so at the same cost as their local public entity. And if such were possible, schools would be driven by competition to improve services to attract such students.

This, of course, is exactly what school-choice advocates say: choice breeds competition, breeding quality improvement over time.

For those in Cincinnati with bright kids--statistically better funded than most families, more committed to education and so more willing to make the expensive choices presently available--the results of such choices just might be visible in this statistic, not least because such schools have deliberately competed for such families. We'll see what the future holds before we draw that conclusion, but the correlation is at least interesting.

Meanwhile, and by way of SWNIDish advice to the young and thoughtful, we'll note yet again that Cincinnati Public Schools comprise a low-cost, competitive choice for families with a commitment to education for their bright kids but limited finances. For district residents there's no tuition for Walnut or the best elementaries in CPS. Cincinnati proper has lots of housing bargains, making it affordable for just about anyone to go to great schools. Taxes could be lower, but they're partly offset by lower costs for housing.

And interestingly, CPS long ago created (accidentally?) a competitive market. In the 1920s it provided a selective, college-prep high school that soon became competitive with the best private academies. In the 1970s it created what became a small, highly regulated but still competitive market among its elementaries and high schools, allowing several schools to enroll city-wide.

Coincidence?

The Obama Persona

Would it be a violation of House rules to yell, "You elide!" in the middle of a Presidential address?

Charles Krauthammer describes the President thus in his weekly column appearing today. Enumerating the ways that Obama's recent speech misdirects attention and understanding, Dr. K concludes:

Obama doesn't lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health-care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things -- energy, education and health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel's Law -- a crisis is a terrible thing to waste -- failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.

So on to the next gambit: selling health-care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office's demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform -- until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.

Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

We stipulate that politicians by nature do not speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, with or without divine help. We call attention to the truth issue in the President's address simply to remind gentle readers that this sobering reality applies even to an impressively cool guy who makes appealing promises.

Month of Metro Midpoint, Musings

SWNID is commuting by bus in September 2009.

The circumstances are immaterial, but the experience is material. We note the following about the experience:

• In our case, a bus commute roughly quadruples time spent commuting. Circumstances would be different if we were doing what our local bus system is set up to accommodate: commuting from the suburbs to downtown and back again. But the time investment is still greater than driving oneself for nearly every customer.
  
• Even owning an automobile, we figure we're saving at least $40 this month in fuel expenses. If we rode regularly and got rid of our hole-in-the-garage-into-which-we throw-money, we'd save a lot more on insurance, depreciation and maintenance.
• Cincinnati's Metro buses are pleasant enough. Seats are comfortable and, on our route, readily available. Drivers are careful, if sometimes seemingly anxious to accelerate or brake. Despite what some folks think, smells and dirt are minimal.
  
• Fellow passengers comprise a friendly assemblage. Folks smile, greet one another, shift their belongings to accommodate riders, hold small children for caregivers, and even supply extra quarters for shorthanded riders.
• Every person who rides the bus has a story. We aren't anxious to hear them, but someone looking for human-interest material can get it riding the bus.
  
• Buses run on time with few exceptions. SWNID has missed zero appointments so far.
• All this makes commuting by bus a pleasant, stress-free, stimulating experience.
  

Nevertheless, we expect to return to driving to work when our circumstances allow. Like most Americans, we think our time and freedom are more valuable than the enumerated benefits of bus riding. More amenable to public conveyance than most of our peers, we nevertheless eschew the bus for our private car, not because it's private but because it's much faster and not yet prohibitively expensive.

The only thing that would change our behavior would be a massive increase in the expense of car travel, either in money or in time. The latter is what explains extensive use of public transportation in some of the largest, oldest, most congested American cities. The former is what explains it in gas-taxed Europe. For various immutable reasons, neither situation is likely to obtain widely in our Republic in the foreseeable future.

All of which says something about present initiatives for better public transportation services, specifically the "stimulus" funding of intercity high-speed rail services. SWNID would like nothing better than to take a swift, comfortable train to other cities of the Midwest. Eight billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. But it won't buy actual high speed rail service. It's a down payment on passenger trains that would run at about 80 mph on rail lines shared with freight trains, connecting a few cities. Operational costs would be extra, requiring subsidies to make tickets even remotely competitive.

So the typical intercity passenger will ask why he or she should pay to ride a train to the origin of which he or she will require other transportation and from the destination of which he or she will require other transportation when said train is not substantially faster or cheaper than interstate highways. Everyone will ask why tax dollars are being used to finance such a venture. No one will provide a credible answer (this assumes that reducing CO2 emissions is not a credible answer).

To put it more succinctly: Amtrak.

Jimmy Carter: Mind Reader

To his impressive list of accomplishments, Jimmy Carter now adds ESP. Man looks on the outward appearance; the Saint from Plains looks on the heart.

Reports the AP:

Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst to President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress last week was an act "based on racism" and rooted in fears of a black president.

"I think it's based on racism," Carter said in response to an audience question at a town hall held at his presidential center in Atlanta. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president."

So it wasn't a publicity stunt after all.

We stipulate that racists exist in large numbers in our large Republic. We insist that racism is bad. We aver that labeling any act as motivated by racism requires a kind of knowledge rightly called divine. We regret that Mr. Carter, having known God rather well for a lifetime, continues to confuse himself with the One he knows.

We SWNIDishly warn others of the same.

We additionally remind gentle readers that it's better to tell someone, "That sounded/looked/felt racist," than to tell that someone, "You are a racist."

More could be said, of course, e.g. the way that Carter decries comparisons of Obama to Hitler as prima facie evidence of racism but says nothing about what was said about former POTUS Chimpy W. Hitliar. But we leave it to others to say such things.

Kristof's "Body Count" Doesn't Add Up to Obamacare

Peripatetic columnist Nicholas Kristof has a typical human-interest angle on the healthcare debate: a tragic story of a young woman felled by lupus because she couldn't get insurance and so couldn't get timely care.

We note that such stories are exactly the kind that reformers of all stripes want to eliminate. The question is how.

Kristof reveals the key issue in a sentence: "And once she lost her job, she lost her health insurance."

The original sin of American health insurance is tying it to employment. We do this not because we planned it but because the practice arose during another attempt by the federal government to contain costs in a crisis, inarguably a much more severe crisis than anything existing at present. During World War II, FDR imposed wage and price controls. When defense-related businesses couldn't get the workers they needed at the wages and salaries allowed, they lobbied for permission to give non-wage, non-salary compensation to attract qualified workers. The result was employer-provided health insurance, which as non-income income was not taxed and so grew in size and scope over the years as a means of protecting a portion of income from the ever-growing income tax.

Kristof's tragic victim, whose story is no less tragic for this reason, was felled because of the perverse incentives of our insurance system in tying insurance to employment. Those incentives include not only the tax code which doesn't extend tax benefits to individually purchased policies but also the economic incentive for insurers to prefer large groups to small ones.

We could say more, but we've said it all before.

What we say now we've said before as well, but we'll say it again. It's illogical to move from the notion that such tragedies ought not occur to the conclusion that there is but one way to fix this thing. We say further, yet again, that the best way to avoid future tragedies is not to provide a public option and additional regulation but to decouple employment from tax preference for insurance, remove barriers to the functioning of the national free market for health insurance, and then requiring insurance for catastrophes but allowing discretion in whether individuals choose comprehensive health insurance or other plans like HSAs for ordinary healthcare expenses, backed up with subsidies for the poor.

More Critique of ObamaCare

In other words, Obama would encourage unlimited health care consumption by patients while eliminating the last vestige of price consciousness.

That's from Shika Dalmia of Forbes. She offers a nice analysis of the perverse incentives and effects that would be created by enactment of Obama's healthcare proposals.

Meanwhile, Rich Lowry offers thirteen steps to constructing a speech just as brilliant as Obama's. He starts with:

1) Create a false center. In his speech Wednesday night, Obama positioned himself between the left calling for a single-payer system and the right agitating to end employer-based health insurance. Presto -- he's the very definition of a centrist. Anyone advocating almost any position can benefit from the same insta-centrism.

Meanwhile, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, who's had a crush on Obama that barely replaces her former crush on Bill Clinton, swoons that having orated like Lincoln, Obama must now legislate like LBJ.

Ms. Clift is doing better than usual. She's half right.

Lincoln's rhetoric managed to avoid self-righteous swipes at his political opponents, if we use the stellar addresses of Gettysburg and the second inaugural as the exemplary standards. Obama's rhetoric is better characterized by Lowry as a collection of tricks, long played by the left but played with virtuosic skill by Mr. Obama.

But she's right on the LBJ thing. Johnson passed the Great Society legislation, now the gold standard for a Democrat President, because he was skilled in retail politics. Always a man of the Congress, Johnson had been famous for his ability to schmooze and cajole and twist arms and trade promises to get his legislation passed. He came to the Executive Branch after serving over twenty years in the House and Senate, much as Senate Majority Leader during the Eisenhower administration.

Johnson had a legislative resume as long as Imelda Marcos's shoe inventory.

Which brings us to a point made during the campaign but now largely forgotten: Barack Obama is responsible for no significant legislation and had a mere two years' experience on Capitol Hill.

With a divided party already looking to midterm elections and a stirred up conservative/libertarian demographic (see below), something akin to Johnson's skill is surely what Obama needs most and has least.

Analysis of the Speech: Nothing's Changed, Including the Hypocrisy

John Hinderacker of the SuperBlog Powerline offers trenchant analysis of Obama's speech just ended. In sum, there's nothing new, including the ongoing vagaries of specifics, dissimilutions about intentions and effects, and disrespect for dissent.

We endorse.

"You Lie" Postscript

SC Congressman Joe Wilson says his emotions got the better of him last night when he yelled, "You lie." He has also apologized.

Count us skeptical. Congresspeople get the text of the President's address before it's delivered. Politicians have emotions, but they tend to calculate political impact.

We think that The Hon. Joe Wilson calculated the impact that his Rebel Yell would have on a constituency in the first state to secede, not to mention his fundraising. There are probably a lot of people who will respond to Wilson's fifteen minutes of fame as does the blogger who posts here.

It'll also energize some opposition, which is fine with Wilson, who will win anyway, thereby siphoning funds from competitive races.

Meanwhile, he will temporarily replace Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin as Most Hated Republicans.

UPDATE: Looks like we were right (as if this were hard to figure out to begin with).