In the WSJ. One quote:

Television does not begin to fill it. To the extent broadcast networks ever tried they now have abdicated to so-called cable news channels. These, in turn, now devote most of their resources to covering celebrities, crimes and sundry social trivia and to prime-time programming that pretends to be analysis and informed opinion while mostly offering the spectacle of extremist heads yelling at each other. There are few resources and even less commitment to covering significant news beyond floods and fires.

The Internet is not filling news vacuums either. There are hundreds upon hundreds of online sites and blogs that claim to provide news, but virtually none of them even pretend to pursue the traditional news role of newspapers, which is to invest in professional staffs dispersed around a community and across the country or the globe to cover, analyze, and only then comment on, events. Actually, all they do is comment.

As to all the free online editions of our newspapers, their business model does not begin to cover the cost of significant news reporting. So the online editions with growing audiences—largely cannibalized from print audiences—rely on the poor print editions for almost all the news they give away. Sadly, there is less and less of that, and the ultimate loser, of course, is the public.

He is right. We are in a time when new paradigms are waiting to be born. (However, his WSJ is still doing fine.) The new paradigm we do not want is this one. The very idea is sick sick sick.

I do not think it's so much because people want freedom and choice (altho they do) as it is because people have no confidence in government entitlement programs (which the Dem plans are all about, ultimately). Why?

Social Security - bankrupt
Postal Service - bankrupt
Welfare - had devastating unintended consequences for which the nation still pays and from which the nation continues to suffer (eg huge rates - up to 70% - of single motherhood among beneficiaries)
Medicare - bankrupt
Medicaid - bankrupting the states
Government-run (ie union-controlled) schools: are people thrilled with them?
Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac - bankrupt
The "stimulus" - a failure, but it did create 25,000 new government jobs!

The future tax consequences of the above are daunting to people, and the idea of adding another trillion or so frightens the heck out of people who are thinking about their own well-being, their kids' futures - and also about the nation's.

The sad thing is that most of what people complain about in health care can be easily solved without giant government controls and bureaucracies:

1. Permit interstate competition among insurance companies so people can have a wide range of choices of types of policies including cheap major medical which is what makes sense for most people, and explain the basic fact that medical care has to be paid for, and even saved for, same as car repairs and house repairs and vacations (and legal costs). That is what grown-ups do. You can get major medical for a family for the price of a big-screen TV.
2. Portability of insurance - so you own it (that is complicated tho for companies that self-insure)
3. A law that says you cannot be cancelled if you get sick
4. State "pools" for the uninsurable, same as for uninsurable drivers. We already have (bankrupt) Medicaid for the poor.

How easy and non-controversial would those changes be? Abundant, high quality, and fairly expensive medical care is one of the great blessings and privileges of a prosperous society, and thus an important economic engine. Why kill it? People want these things.

Do Americans want to be grown-ups, or children? It's our call.

- Take a minute today to email your Congressman and Senators to let them know your views of the Dem healthcare plan. Their email addresses are here. It helps to be calm, polite, reasonable, direct - and brief. A phone call or letter probably is better, but everybody does email these days.

Ouch! At Big Government. h/t, Insty

But Chavez, Fidel, Quaddafi and Ahmadinejad seem to like the O, so that must be progress.

I think the O is getting in political trouble, but I have been wrong before about things.

Health care bill too difficult to put online. 

FedEx or fax it to us, Sen. Baucus. We'll be happy to post every page for you.

Our secretaries, assistants, and paralegals are standing by, waiting (photo). It's a slow day just flirting in the office.

Mona Charen on Obama's Self-Worship.

It actually worries me a little. I am not saying this to pick on the guy. I just worry that he bought into the messianic hype because he has not been through much in life. Mark Steyn observed on the radio yesterday that he was the first President who acted like the job was too small for him.

Thus far, I am neither impressed by the O's fund of knowledge, nor his wisdom, nor his experience. I am impressed by his smooth, lawyerly glibness and his apparent supreme self-confidence at times - but these are not the things I admire in people.

From Vanderleun:

It has become fashionable for governments to treat people -- even adults -- like children: children who consume too much, obey too little and remain too fond their imaginary friends. And their betters take it upon themselves to guard their speech, take away their dangerous toys and curtail their choices because they are prone to make unwise ones. And most of all they see to it that we should expect no better our lives but a little welfare gruel and some end of life counseling. Once upon a time mankind saw it as their birthright to wander the fields, swim in the streams and see what was over the next hill. Today we live penned up in dark houses warded by sour matrons and bloodless didacts who are forever seeking to administer their "teaching moments."

We have linked to a couple of pieces lately - Rich Lowry on A Masterstroke of Weakness, and Hinderaker on What They Really Think.

I fear that we have an administration that thinks the US should be social workers to the world, instead of good cops. But if we aren't the cop, who will be? Surely not the UN: they have yet to stop a war or a genocide - and it is packed wiith lunatics.

The NY Post today opines on The Naif in Chief, but I do not think it is naive: I think it is a plan. A very bad plan which does not serve our interests.

Lewis at Am Thinker begins:

Yesterday at the United Nations, Barack Obama renounced Pax Americana, signaling an end to the United States' role as global cop.

Quote from Hewett re Obama on Afghanistan, etc:

The idea of rejecting the proposals of the new commander on the ground less than six months after his appointment is bad enough, but to do so because Slow Joe Biden has a bright idea is truly terrible. 

The president's domestic agenda is in a shambles and his ratings are plummeting to near record levels for a modern president in his first year in office.  His global warming hysteria of yesterday adds to the idea of a rookie being handed unvetted speeches --like the one in Congress with the man who died from denial of treatment, except he didn't-- and rushing off to his next media event. 

Thousands of Americans died because of the Taliban's partnership with al Qaeda, a partnership that endures.  Hundreds more have died pushing the Taliban-al Qaeda alliance deep into the remote mountains of the region.  General McChrystal's report asserts that with the right forces, stability can be achieved, and within an acceptable number of years.

The choice facing President Obama is a defeat and vulnerability to more terror plots and a second mission back when one occurs, or the acceptance of the commanding general's recommendations.  This isn't hard.  The fact that Joe Biden is on the other side makes it even easier to tell Secretary Gates to proceed with the McChyrstal plan.

 

Tough political realities quiet youth 'Obamamania.

Those youth were all about image. Political fashion. The youths do not know reality yet. They only know entitled dependency.

Related re immaturity: do we need the nanny government to save us from ourselves? I happen to believe that the government is far more immature than I am.

Even attorneys like this site: Sick of Lawsuits. I view an important part of my job as to avoid lawsuits.

I like to make money, but I do not like to make dirty money.

From G. Kim Blank at the New English Review. Blank compares search engines to Gutenberg. Good or bad? People want it, and that's what matters.

Naturally, the government wants to control it now.

No, it is not. From his analysis of the Dem push for government medicine:

For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which “conservative” parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. Listen to your average British Tory or French Gaullist on the campaign trail pledging to “deliver” government services more “efficiently.”

The Dems are desperate to make us dependent slaves on their plantation before their chance disappears.