Category Archives: Opinions

Value Added Tax Around the Corner

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Charles Krauthammer prognosticates, “The VAT Cometh”:

American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.

Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, “health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost.” But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.

With the VAT, Obama’s triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan’s strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes — then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.Obama’s strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first — which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.

And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.

The Biden Incident – Charles Krauthammer

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RealClearPolitics – The Biden Incident.

Noting Israel history of peace overtures in the Middle-east Charles Krauthammer asks:

Why did President Barack Obama choose to turn a gaffe into a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations?

And a gaffe it was: the announcement by a bureaucrat in the Interior Ministry of a housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem. The timing could not have been worse: Vice President Joe Biden was visiting, Jerusalem is a touchy subject, and you don’t bring up touchy subjects that might embarrass an honored guest.

But it was no more than a gaffe. It was certainly not a policy change, let alone a betrayal. The neighborhood is in Jerusalem, and the 2009 Netanyahu-Obama agreement was for a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements excluding Jerusalem……………………..


Clinton’s spokesman then publicly announced that Israel was now required to show in word and in deed its seriousness about peace.

Israel? Israelis have been looking for peace — literally dying for peace — since 1947, when they accepted the U.N. partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. (The Arabs refused and declared war. They lost.)……………………

So why this astonishing one-sidedness? Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while beating up on allies — therefore Israel shouldn’t take it personally (according to Robert Kagan)? Because Obama wants to bring down the current Israeli coalition government (according to Jeffrey Goldberg)?

Or is it because Obama fancies himself the historic redeemer whose irresistible charisma will heal the breach between Christianity and Islam or, if you will, between the post-imperial West and the Muslim world — and has little patience for this pesky Jewish state that brazenly insists on its right to exist, and even more brazenly on permitting Jews to live in its own ancient, historical and now present capital?

Who knows? Perhaps we should ask those Obama acolytes who assured the 63 percent of Americans who support Israel – at least 97 percent of those supporters, mind you, are non-Jews — about candidate Obama’s abiding commitment to Israel.



Kill This Bill!

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The People are speaking out about their distrust of the health care bill but is Congress listening.

What about the President? The man is a more concerned with himself than he is with the People and their will.  It’s still all about him. It’s still all about his presidency.  His present last ditch effort amounts to ‘Please save me!’

“There are serious implications of losing on President Obama’s ability to be effective for the rest of his three years in office,” Waxman told POLITICO. “That’s a message [undecided members] need to hear. If they don’t think that affects them if they are reelected, they are burying their heads in the sand.”

But many Democrats simply aren’t buying it after months of what they view as Obama’s disengagement from the health care battle.

“We’ve always known he’s a fourth-quarter player, and it’s great to see him on the field,” said an aide to a senior House Democrat. “So why did he sit on the sidelines for the last eight months?”

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a firm “no” vote, has politely rebuffed feelers from Obama’s staff and rejects the idea that he can’t survive a defeat on health care.

Bob cusack:

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said Thursday that all House Republicans are planning to go to the Rules Committee in an effort to amend the healthcare reform bill.

Democrats Self-executing – How Lovely!

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Democrats aren’t suicidal. They’re self-executing | Washington Examiner.

Death by Algae-nan

Krauthammer – In Praise of the Rotation of Power

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RealClearPolitics – In Praise of the Rotation of Power.

Charles Krauthammer praises rotation of power:

“Barack Obama is now commander in chief. The lack of opposition (to our presence in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan) is not a matter of hypocrisy. It is a natural result of the rotation of power. When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That’s its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.”

Krauthammer further explains:

“The rotation of power is the finest political instrument ever invented for the consolidation of what were once radical and deeply divisive policies. The classic example is the New Deal. Republicans railed against it for 20 years. Then Dwight Eisenhower came to power, wisely left it intact, and no serious leader since has called for its repeal.

Similarly, Bill Clinton consolidated Reaganism, just as Tony Blair consolidated Thatcherism. In both cases, center-left moderates brought their party to accept the major premises of the highly successful conservative reforms that preceded them.

A similar consolidation has happened with many of the Bush anti-terror policies. In opposition, the Democrats decried warrantless wiretaps, rendition, and detention without trial. But now that they are charged with protecting us from the bad guys, they’ve come to view these as indispensable national security measures.”


Praise Bart Stupak Now!

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Democrats Against Abortion » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog.

Joseph Bottum directs us to Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List,who” has an op-ed in the Washington Post called “If Republicans Keep Ignoring Abortion, They’ll Lose in the Midterm Elections.”

Dannenfelser writes:

Republicans oppose President Obama’s health-care reform effort for many reasons: It will cost too much, it’s “socialist,” it’s big government at its worst. But they are letting Stupak and his fellow antiabortion Democrats lead on that issue. And the more the GOP ignores abortion and focuses on economic populism—taking up the “tea party” cause—the more the party risks leaving crucial votes behind in November.

Bottum responds:

That’s right—and yet, it isn’t. There are genuine reasons for pro-lifers to resist any move toward a nationalized health-care system. The iniquitous distribution of American healthcare is a scandal, but even the incomplete moves of the current plan create a system that no future bureaucracy or Congress will be able to resist using for purposes of social engineering. And, given the condition of social-elite opinion today, that will always mean increased government-sponsored abortion and euthanasia.

Bottum further says:

All of American politics has been corrupted by this murderous procedure, and, at present, the party platforms are clear enough. But pro-life forces should not want an America in which the great pro-life message is shoved off into one party. We shouldn’t want an America that squanders its religious exceptionalism by having a political party of believers and a political party of non-believers—a European-style division between the Christian Democrats and the Socialists. This is everyone’s issue, we must believe, and when Democrats such as Bart Stupak arrive, they ought to be celebrated.