Fun fun fun

It looks like Herman Cain is really into something. You might think the reason to celebrate is his surge in the latest polls but that is not it. Cain can be proud of himself for he is now a target of our unfair and unbalanced media!

Check it out this little nugget that is in the main page for CNN today:

Oooohhh! Amidst all the nonsense of the ‘Wall Street protest’ a little stab at the ugly Republicans! But not any Republican… The one most people have never even heard about! And when you

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More than words

War is never funny. Small wars, medium wars, it all ends up with a bunch of people dead and a fresh new stack of debt in your treasury. But… It has been truly hilarious to see Obama and his troupe deal with Libya and Saddam, I mean, Gadhafi.

And what you have here is failure to communicate. Or to be more accurate, an unwillingness to clearly communicate. According to the White House spokesman, Libya is a “a time-limited, scope-limited military action, in concert with our international partners, with the objective of protecting civilian life in Libya from Moammar Gadhafi and his forces.” Seriously dude…

It is obvious to anyone with half of a brain that what we are doing in Libya is an act of war. It is even more obvious that we are doing that because Libya is a strategically important country for the US and Europe (especially to Europe) and finally, that strategic importance includes the fact that there is a bunch of oil in that ground. Not the only reason, but an important one.

But since Obama could not use a weapons of mass destruction line here, he had to use the ‘avoiding a massacre’ line. Both are true by the way: The same way Saddam told us that he had WMDs, Gadhafi did say he would destroy Benghazi. It is also true that both are valid reasons to get us involved in wars. Again, not the only reasons but an important part of the decision process.

The same way that Iraq didn’t become unnecessary after we found out that WMDs were not what we thought, to say that we are in Libya just to ‘save civilians’ is absurd. First of all, we are and will kill civilians too. The rebels are killing pro-Gadhafi civilians. When you throw bombs you are never 100% accurate. We might end up saving more than what we kill, but that cannot be your only reason to go to war because it is simply an impossible goal to begin with.

At the end of the day, the main difference between Bush and Obama here is that Bush was willing to admit what he was doing. He was going to war to remove a dictator we really didn’t like for a variety of reasons. What Obama is doing however, is an incredible dancing around the truth act because one of his campaign issues was that we should not have been involved in Iraq – a war of choice, remember that?

Well Mr.Obama, let me tell you something: Libya is another war of choice. And even though it is a much smaller mess at this point, it could become another Iraq. What happens if Gadhafi refuses to leave? Are we going to just keep giving these Rebels larger and larger weapons? What happens when the fighting becomes an urban guerrilla style battle? Do we just sit back and watch? Will the carnage be that much smaller by then? What if Gadhafi still wins?

Bush might have messed up in the execution of the Iraq war but at least he knew that just bombing people doesn’t do much of anything.

Obama is making this huge and risky bet that Gadhafi will simply give up. Well, Bush 41 made a similar bet in 1991 and his son ended up paying the debt. Let’s just hope that Obama is more lucky. One thing is for sure: He is not being honest about what he is doing.

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Wikileaks

The issue at hand here is really simple: Publishing these secret documents is a crime against the US. Whoever ‘leaked’ these should be tried for treason. Wikileaks definitely broke US law (at least aiding and abetting; maybe terrorism?) and should be persecuted as much as possible – not sure how international law works here.

—x—

The one positive side of this crime is to show just how diplomacy is a fool’s game. A guy at the radio said that many Middle Eastern governments ‘sounded pretty much like Israel’ when talking about Iran. However, they do nothing. They want the US to do something just to condemn whatever happens later at the UN.

It is Hypocrisy with a capital H.

—x—

Obama of couse shares a large share of the blame for what happened today. This is not the first leak and he did nothing after the previous ones. My guess is that he was secretly happy about all the dirty info on Iraq and thought the Wikileaks guys would stop after that.

Now if people die because of what happened (and I bet they will – you just wait and see if we don’t have a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia soon) part of the blood will be in Obama’s hands.

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Sane? Maybe. Informed? Hardly.

Via

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Miss him yet? Yes you do!

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Political Rorschach

Ezra Klein breaks down the latest Gallup data on Obama’s approval:

So what do you see here? Are the problematic outliers the political ones (Conservatives and Republicans) or the racial one (non-hispanic blacks)?

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Obama 6:16

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It could be worse: Michael Moore edition

Every time you get down with the thought that Obama is our President remember: It could be worse. Much worse!

Need proof? Just read Michael “The Clown” Moore latest ‘letter’:

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Obamacare

I watched the whole health care debate yesterday, and it was quite enlightening. And mostly concerning.

Republicans put up a decent show, trying to bring attention to all flaws and corruption around the current bill. Obama on the other hand, also did a good job to at least appear interested in some sort of back and forth. However, the one point Obama (and other democrats) were specially successful yesterday was to challenge Republicans to clearly state the ideological difference between their proposals. And Republicans failed to do so.

You see, trying to focus on cost or procedure here is what democrats want. They want to establish that, all things considered, health care is a right. That one point would justify their agenda, no matter what form it takes. At one point, a Democrat (can’t remember who) said something like “our goal here is to make sure that health care is provided equally. Sick people should not be forced to pay more than healthy people for care”.

That my friends is the crux of the matter. Not access, not price – but equality. Once you establish that a resource (in this case, health care) is not affected by market forces (which determine that sick people *should* pay more than health people, just like reckless drivers pay more for car insure than safe drivers) the battle is over. Health care becomes a non commercial good. That ultimately means the end of private health care.

Why Republicans shied away from this challenge? I think there are a few reasons at play here. First, the current system does allow insurance companies to abuse their power. Cancelling existing policies or adding loopholes on complicated contract language compromised the treatment of sick people who were responsible and were following the rules. So it becomes easier to convince the public that since insurance companies are not following the rules we should simply screw them back, instead of trying to fix the loopholes. Second, the Republican support for Medicaid/Medicare and especially the expansion done under Bush to cover prescription drugs (Medicare Part D) broke the public’s perception that government should not be handing out ‘free’ medical services to people. It became simply a matter of who should receive what, and that is exactly what Democrats want. So now that they simply want to change the variables at play, any kind of ideological rebuttal is almost impossible.

So my take on this whole thing is: Overall, the battle is lost. Republicans are still a positive force here (remember that one year ago we were discussing the public option, which now is dead) but some sort of reform will go through. Eventually, this reform will lead to higher taxes and the decline in quality of the medical system. It will most probably be a smaller change than initially feared, but a big one nonetheless.

Elections do have consequences.

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And the World Goes ‘Round

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Interpreter of the obvious – News in 10 seconds

1 – No, economic growth is not ‘here to stay’. It will go up, down, up and then down. Welcome to capitalism.
2 – Of course the growth was ‘faster-than-expected’. Nobody in the media really thinks we could get out of this slump anyway.
3 – Yes, winter weather batters the heartland. Just like summer will scorch it, and global warming will kill us.
4 – Funny thing that Obama is waiting so long to trial the 9/11 guys. I thought that, along with Guantanamo, was all Bush’s fault. By the way, did you notice how POTUS didn’t mention Guantanamo at all at the SOTU address? Maybe because he will take

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Links

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Bring up the hatchet!

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Bandwagon – Jump – FAIL!

Sorry, I know the issue is serious and everything but watching

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Game changer?

Hmmm, it looks like Real Change is coming soon. Maybe tonight?

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Go Cafferty!

I am not a big Cafferty fan but he nailed this one:

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Change you can believe in

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Shocker: simple laws of economics still apply

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Good news to start 2010

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The New Emperor’s Old Clothes

Ah, how much can change in one year.

Remember how Obama was all about change? How we were going to improve regulation,

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