Boehner to White House: You’ve been dodging our calls since April.

I’m translating this into English, of course – but not too much; Boehner made it clear Monday that the White House was disinterested in getting anything except a rubber-stamp on health care.

Earlier this year, GOP leaders sent a letter to the president in May stating that they would like to work with the administration to find “common ground” on healthcare reform.

But the administration responded with a tersely worded letter indicating that they had healthcare reform under control.

Continue reading Boehner to White House: You’ve been dodging our calls since April.

John Holdren. Science Czar. Exceptionalism Denialist.

You might remember John Holdren from a previous post – one where it was noticed that the man was on the record as considering the government to have the right to force a woman to not have a baby. As I recall, it was loudly and repetitively declared at the time that thirty years was plenty of time for Holdren to modify his extremist, anti-choice views on reproductive rights.  Which is an interesting argument, but I’m curious: is two years enough for him to do the same moral development, when it comes to denial of American exceptionalism and rejection of capitalism?

(H/T: AoSHQ) For those without handy video access: Holdren first sneers at the very notion that there’s something special about America in the first place, then blithely informs the virtual crowd – yes, this discussion was made to a digital audience; no, this particular flavor of the Left has always been blind, deaf, and especially dumb to irony – that of course we’re going to have to become poorer so that everybody else can become… less poor. In other words, it’s the usual zero-sum game nonsense that took refuge among our professional academic class, post-Cold War.  I don’t know whether it’s mourning for the lost fever dream of Marxism, or pique that we knuckle-dragging, jingoistic class-deniers made killing the monster look easy… but ever since then a certain type has been nursing a real grudge against the American dream, and expressing it in a variety of ways.  Apocalyptic environmentalism is merely one form; there are more.

Which is fine – or at least tolerable, or at least endurable – but why are we letting people who shelter these thoughts anywhere near the reins of power? Surely the President could have found somebody for science czar who had not only Holdren’s paper qualifications, but also the belief that there’s something special about this country. He could have found someone who agrees that we have the right to dream heroic dreams. I refuse to believe that we couldn’t do better than John Holdren.

And I resent that this even has to be brought up.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Everything that you need to know about tonight’s health care speech.

Everything.

But a Democratic leadership aide who sat in on an administration briefing Tuesday said that while Obama will offer support Wednesday for a public option, the president will not insist on it.

“He’s going to say it’s the best tool for reducing costs,” the aide said. “I think he’s going to be a bit noncommittal.”

(Via Instapundit) If I was still a Democrat, I’d be praying right now that this is just some massive head fake, and that the President was going to show up to the speech tonight with an actual bill.  Because the one thing that nobody wants from President Obama right now is for him to be ‘a bit noncommittal.’

Crossposted to RedState.

“Five Laws of the Crazy Tree” – and my sixth.

Jesse Walker’s post on the subject is good (via Ed Driscoll*) – his gist is that the Crazy Tree is not linked to any particular people or group, even the ones that you don’t like – but it’s incomplete.  Here’s the Sixth Law of the Crazy Tree: The fruits that you gather from the Crazy Tree are much worse than the ones that I gather. We just saw this Law play out in the Left-sphere, as people tried – and failed – to explain why it was no big deal that an administration official endorsed a malignant conspiracy theory about 9/11.  It failed largely because nobody on the Left wanted to say “Well, our nuts are harmless, so we don’t worry about them.”

This is not to say that all conspiracy theories are equally harmless, of course.  For example, nobody worries about the folks who believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked, and for good reason: they generally don’t do anything except get punched by Buzz Aldrin**.  But it does remain true that it’s always the Other Guy’s fringe who looms larger when doing the subjective threat analysis.

Moe Lane

*Apropos of nothing – say what you like about Rush Limbaugh, but “flat-shoed bird-brained idiot” is probably going to be the best description of Robert Gibbs that you’re likely to read today.

**You’d think that would stop being funny.

Crossposted to RedState.

Sarah Palin’s Wall Street Journal Health Care Op-Ed.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Former governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin wrote a pretty good op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on the health care situation – one where she points out, repeatedly, that we’re being asked to blindly fund a government program that will affect every aspect of our life and will not save us money in either the short or long term.  As Ace of Spades notes, this is not going to cover new ground for the people already intimately familiar with the debate – but for those who aren’t, it will give a good idea of conservative objections to Obamacare, not to mention providing the alternatives that the Democrats are pretending that the Republicans aren’t providing.  All in all, useful and timely.

And, as an added, special bonus, it includes the written equivalent of a smack on the nose:

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through “normal political channels,” they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats’ proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we’ve come to expect from this administration.

Continue reading Sarah Palin’s Wall Street Journal Health Care Op-Ed.