Universal Health Care 101

Here's a good rule of thumb: Before handing over the management of something important --your life and death, for example -- to someone else, you probably ought to look at their management history.

So before we fold before the Hillarycare or Obamacare juggernauts, we ought to look at the sort of work their home office -- the U.S. Senate -- is doing.

Year after year, decade upon decade, the U.S. Senate's network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money -- more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year alone, according to another.

The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month.

The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under the control of a contractor and all but guarantee lower wages and benefits for the outfit's new hires. (WaPo)

When the healthcare debate fires up, let's be sure to remind DiFi of her comments on this affair:

Candidly, I don't think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn't need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses.

Sounds like the house special at the restaurants, day in and day out, is Bull**** in Bull**** Sauce.

hat-tip: Jim

Sunday Scan

Reporting Grammar-Free

One of AP's crack political reporters, Liz Sidoti, wrote this lead today:

Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday for saying that the United States would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Clinton stood by her comment.

Of course, Hillary said no such thing. Here's the Clinton quote:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

She said, "would be able," not "would totally obliterate." Words are important and reporters -- especially reporters covering a national election -- are expected to get them right.

Done With Him

Last week, I lined up three options for Obama to consider in dealing with the Wright meltdown, from continuing what he was doing (doom!) up to a hard and complete severance. He's been following my third option, except for one thing I required for a believable clean break: "... and I assure the American people that anyone who holds beliefs like his will not be welcome in my administration."

In the same Russert/Meet the Press interview quoted above, Obama comes close:

MR. RUSSERT: You're done with him? If you're elected president, you won't seek his counsel?

SEN. OBAMA: Absolutely not.

But he follows that with babble:

Now, I think it's important to keep in mind, Tim, that I never sought his counsel when it came to politics.

Stop with the "buts" if you want to leave this behind, Obama! The statement shows you still don't get it. We never thought you were sitting down with Wright to talk health care policy options; we thought you might believe some or all of what he believed about America.

Obama will never recover all the votes he's lost because of Wright, and statements like that, following a very good statement, are part of the reason why.

The Latest Import From China?

China, which previously brought us avian flu fear, is at it again:

A province in eastern China recorded 622 new cases of the intestinal virus known as enterovirus 71 on Saturday alone, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The figure brought to 5,151 the number of people infected by the virus in Anhui province, Xinhua quoted the provincial health administration as saying. Anhui's worst hit city was Fuyang with 362 cases.

EV71 can cause hand, foot, and mouth disease, which is characterised by fever, sores in the mouth and a rash with blisters -- a common illness among infants and children but which is usually not fatal, according to the U.S. National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

There is no vaccine or antiviral agent available to treat or prevent EV71. Enteroviruses spread mostly through contact with infected blisters or faeces and can cause high fever, paralysis and swelling of the brain. (source)

But remember, they've got a state-sponsored universal health care system in China, so you know we've got nothing to worry about!

Superdelegate Watch

Here's the latest update on Dem superdelegates, courtesy of Urgent Agenda:

Ray Nagin, the monumentally incompetent mayor of New Orleans, who botched almost everything during Hurricane Katrina, has been elected a superdelegate to the Democratic national convention. This proves America is a land of second chances, and Louisiana a land of second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth.

The "democratic" Democratic party puts unusual power in the hands of hacks and incompetents. Does America really need to have the likes of Ray Nagin having extraordinary power in selecting who might be our next prez?

The World In The Hands Of Babies

There's a very interesting survey up on Stats that polls US climatologists and geophysicists on global warming. Among the findings, was this most interesting tidbit:

Overall, only 5% describe the study of global climate change as a “fully mature” science, but 51% describe it as “fairly mature,” while 40% see it as still an “emerging” science.

So let me see if I have this right. The Greenie movement, and all its calls for fundamental and costly transformations of our way of life and economy, is all based on a baby scicence that doesn't even know if what it's doing is right or not.

And the Goriac's famous rant about the debate being over? Well the practitioner sof this baby science have this to say:

However, over two out of three (69%) believe there is at least a 50-50 chance that the debate over the role of human activity in global warming will be settled in the next 10 to 20 years.

Two out of three say it's a 50/50 chance. Is that what we call a debate that's over?

An Ohio Bosnia For Hillary

A poor uninsured pregnant woman denied and killed by the country's heinous health care system. First, Hillary tells us, the woman's baby dies. Then, just because she didn't the required $100 fee, the heartless greed-monsters that represent US healthcare let the woman die, too.

Hillary has told the tale time and again to highlight the need for her solution, but:

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story ....

That's the story as told by a paper with some influence in the Dem world, a little rag called the New York Times, hometown paper of the state Hillary now represents in Congress. Unlike the story about the Clinton's $10+ million a year income, this one didn't make the front page, but it will make its rounds.

If the health care problem can't be illustrated without lies, how is it that we need so costly and risk a solution?

This is not another Tuzla story, since Hillary wasn't at the hospital like she was at the Bosnian airport dodging sniper bullets in her mind. But if the Clintons are as savvy as we're told they are, they should understand that the American public doesn't exactly rush to defend their credibility, so they should commit to fact-checking every element of every speech she gives.

That they don't have rigorous fact-checking isn't so much a function of running a bad organization -- we're told, after all, that they are the best political organizers going -- it is, rather, evidence that they just don't care much about the truth. The ends justify every means, so if they trash a hospital's reputation and turn a dead woman and baby into something they're not, it simply doesn't matter.

Meanwhile, check out this picture and remember it well, because if Laura Bush ever runs for president, this is the sort of experience she will tout as her foreign policy bona fides.

Yeah, but Laura Bush is a normal person, so I don't think that's going to happen.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Yeah, Let's Hand Health Care Over To These Guys!

As the great health care debate rages, and Dems continue to demand that we entrust our nation's health care system to some sort of national iteration of the Department of Motor Vehicles, consider this very brief clip:



Yes indeed! The government bureaucrats did in fact fire the seasoned supervisors who couldn't speak Spanish instead of the untrained recruits who couldn't speak English.

Will this bizarre turn of events make Oregonians feel safer when the fires start burning?

Extrapolating, will you feel safer going into surgery, knowing the best surgeons were fired because they didn't speak the Spanish, Romanian, Urdu or Tagalog spoken by the scrub nurse?

hat-tip: Jim

Sunday Scan

Bringing Honor Back To "Monica"

Here's a story out of Afghanistan that would be completely wonderful, were it not for the five wounded US soldiers that are central to it:

CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan (AP) - A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.

After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.

"I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there," Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost. ...

Brown, of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions. She said they were sitting in a dangerous spot.

"So we dragged them for 100 or 200 meters, got them away from the Humvee a little bit," she said. "I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of."

For Brown, who knew all five wounded soldiers, it became a race to get them all to a safer location. Eventually, they moved the wounded some 500 yards away and treated them on site before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation.

"I did not really have time to be scared," Brown said. "Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous (since) I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary."

The military said Brown's "bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat."

Can you imagine having that maturity, esprit de corps and selflessness at the age of 19? I just asked that of Incredible Daughter #2, who happens to be 19, and she just shook her head and said, "That's crazy."

It does take a little crazy to be a good soldier, and five guys in her unit and all of America have a very good, and a little crazy, soldier to thank this morning for her valor.

Name The Fanatical Motivation

What motivated these fanatics? I had the answer five words into this story ... but had to read 18 paragraphs before BBC provided just a hint:

Suspected militants arrested in western China earlier this year were planning attacks on the Beijing Olympics, a Chinese official says.

Two people were reported to have been killed and 15 arrested in a raid on 27 January in Urumqi, Xinjiang province.

Officials now say their aim was to attack the August Olympics.

The alleged plot was disclosed as officials also revealed that a plane crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a jet on an internal flight.

The incident occurred on Friday.

Put "militants" and "Western China" together and what do you have? Islamists! BBC can't bring itself to say that, though. Way down at paragraph 18 and beyond we find:

China has been struggling for years to contain separatist sentiment among the Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

Some Uighurs have campaigned for the mainly Muslim province to become an independent republic.

There it is: "mainly Muslim." And then you can read "separatist" to mean "wanting to set up a Shari'a theocracy."

Not that the media would ever make it that clear.

Gagging On Universal Health Care

A lot of us smell a rat on hearing the Dem-patter on the need for a system of universal health care. "Smell a rat" is just a figure of speech, of course ... [cue the sinister voice] ... or is it?

LONDON (Reuters) - A patient was told there was no reason why he couldn't have surgery in a hospital, despite the smell caused by a dead rodent trapped in the building's ceiling.

Andrew Cowper was due to have an operation at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Hertfordshire when staff "were made aware of a dead rodent in the single storey unit's roof space," the hospital said in a statement.

The hospital said its experts concluded that the dead animal was outside the operating theater and posed no risk.

Cowper, 19, who had been waiting 11 months for the unspecified operation, opted out, despite the experts opinion that it was perfectly safe under the rule of England's national health care system to be cut open within feet of a decomposing rodent.

Why I'm Not As Famous As Lileks

You remember Benny Sharon, the drugged-up Hebrew University prof and latter-day Timothy Leary, who recently postulated that Moses (I think that's Moses on the right and Jethro on the left) was stoned when he had a vision of God giving him tablets, and that the real hand-off never occurred. I thought my post on Sharon was pretty clever ... then I read what James Lileks had to say in his Bleat on the subject (with a hat-tip to Jim).

Talk about an effective rebuttal!

I just remembered that I called the Bob Davis show this morning to talk about the new theory re: Moses and the Ten Commandments: dude was high. Apparently a professor somewhere has suggested that the entire experience was the result of a mushroom or some such ceremonial intoxicant. I called to say I didn’t believe it, because if Moses was tripping we wouldn’t have ten commandments. We would have three. The first would make sense, more or less; the second, written half an hour later, would command profound respect for lizards who sit on stones and look at you, because they’re freaking incredible when you think about it, and the third would be gibberish. Never mind the problem of getting the tablets down the mountain – anyone who has experience of watching stoners try to assemble pizza money when the doorbell rings doubts that Moses could have hauled stone tablets all the way down.

After the chuckles (or "grass-giggles" if you will) die down, Lileks gets to The Big Point:

Sure: you cannot call them Commandments without someone doing the Commanding, and once they’re not commandments they lose the moral authority that supercedes the individual precepts. It doesn’t mean they’re not good ideas still; it just means they are one set of ideas in competition with other ideas that found their origin in the rude clay of history.

That, my friends, is why people who so enjoy sinning spend so much time and energy attacking the foundations of religion.

Whaling War Escalates

Paul Watson, a founder of GreenPeace who now has moved on to forcefully impose his anti-human view on others as captain of the anti-whaling ship Sea Shepard, is facing some stiff opposition this time around as Japanese whaling boat captains are standing up to his grandstanding:

Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd group's protest ship Steve Irwin, said on Friday he was shot, but survived because he was wearing a Kevlar vest.

Japan's fisheries agency said coastguard officials had only thrown "flash grenades," which are used for crowd control and are not regarded as weapons, after activists threw stink bombs on to the Japanese factory ship the Nisshin Maru. (source)

Tit for tat, I'd say.

Previously, the Japanese seized two whale-lovers who boarded a whaler and held them for quite some time, keeping them handcuffed to an outside railing to enjoy the Antarctic weather until an Australian fisheries patrol vessel intervened.

C-SM readers know I grew up in Japan, but you probably don't know that one day when I opened my bag lunch at school, I found that our housekeeper had made me a pineapple and canned whale meat sandwich. Yum ... not.

In my eleven years in Japan, my encounters with whale meat were slim to almost none. The Japanese whaling industry says whaling is cultural to the Japanese -- but whale meat is rarely served and hardly popular.

Still, anyone who stands up to holier-than-thou Watson -- a certifiable jerk-off who, when just 10, shot a kid in the butt to stop him from shooting a bird, and who once said "earthworms are far more valuable than people” -- is a hero in my eyes.

For more on the chief thug of eco-terrorism, read the bio on Activist Cash or this one on Target of Opportunity (a bit of a scary site in its own right). Skip Wikipedia; it's a bunch of bullsh ... propaganda.

Muff Diving?!

Yes, there is a town in Ireland called "Muff," and yes, there is a SCUBA diving shop there named after the town.

That's just one of the bizarre bits of info on European towns I learned on Spiegel's quiz based on the odd nature of European town names. (You're going into the quiz with a one-question advantage, thanks to me!)

If you thought "muff diving" is a bit obscene, just you wait ... it gets much more X-rated than that!

Making Jerry Brown Look Good

It's common knowledge that Cal. AG Jerry Brown is using global warming grandstanding as a stage for a run for the governorship -- Moonbeam II, if you will.

Frightening as that thought is, Brown just became a minor irritant in the scheme of things, as reported by the SF Wrongicle:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is considering a 2010 run for governor - a campaign that would embrace many of the same divisive causes he has championed as mayor, including same-sex marriage, universal health care and protections for illegal immigrants, The Chronicle has learned.

Newsom has long been rumored to be a potential contender in what is likely to be a crowded field of Democrats looking to succeed Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a list that includes Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, former state Controller Steve Westly and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio ["Grease-Zipper"] Villaraigosa.

In recent months, Newsom has quietly been meeting with Democratic campaign strategists and other supporters to discuss a gubernatorial run, and he is now "certain to at least consider the possibility," said Eric Jaye, a Newsom confidant and political consultant.

When asked whether he was planning to run, Newsom said, "A number of people in the last few months have reached out and talked to me about it."

Could there be better proof of the premise that big fish in small ponds tend to think they can be big fish in big ponds? Can you imagine how Newsome's honoring of a gay porn studio would play in Fresno? How his city's sanctuary city status will play in Orange County and San Diego? And shall we consider the stinking $229 million black pit that is the city's finances?

(If you want a good rundown of the bizarreness of life under Newsome, here's a list of SF-watcher Bookworm's posts on Baghdad by the Bay.)

Bring it on. Let the Dems strut their stuff in the Cal primaries, turning off sane Californians by the multitudes.

Sunday Scan

Tell Me If This Hurts

This hurts, Doc. From an op/ed on health care solutions in today's OC Register:

Many more doctors and nurses have been hired [by Britain's National Health Service]. Unfortunately, their productivity has declined, as the number of patients seen by each physician has declined over the same period.

Britain has imported more than 20,000 physicians from Third World countries in the past three years, as after 60 years of experience the NHS has failed to attract and retain British physicians. Most of the imports are undoubtedly well-qualified, even those few who blow up cars and airports in their spare time.

The author, Richard Ralston, a health care advocate, notes that the NHS is a model for many who would reform America's health system along Socialist lines. Cou-Hillary!-gh. He highlights for us some elements of the model:

• No knee replacements for women weighing more than 180 pounds and men more than 218 pounds.
• Heart bypasses denied for smokers.
• "Patients 80 years and older have been denied treatment for stroke because, after all, what is the point?"
• No longer changing sheets between patients -- just turning the sheets over, instead. Staph, anyone?
  
• British patients taking "surgery vacations" so they don't need to wait for surgery at home.
  

Feeling Insignificant

An anonymous LAT editorial took a swipe at those who would stand up to the secularization of American culture. Writing on the SCOTUS decision not to take up the forced removal of a cross from LA County's seal, the ever-tolerant LAT scathed:

The county offered up a new cross-less seal that also banished the Roman goddess Pomona (we can't show favoritism to pagans, you know) and replaced oil derricks with a cross-less view of Mission San Gabriel. People went berserk. The deaths of inmates in county custody, or patients at county hospitals, or children in county-supervised foster homes attract only a fraction of the invective that the change to the ridiculously insignificant county seal brought.

No criticism was directed the ACLU's way for bringing the lawsuit, even though if the seal were "ridiculously insignificant," criticism is certainly due. Instead, the LAT reduces to "ridiculously insignificant"' the concerns of those of us who see a very real threat in the ACLU's efforts to remove God from the public square, and paints us as a "berserk" bunch who would put this trifling concerns above whatever issue du jour concerns the godless heathens editorial writers at the Lost Angels Times.

The Trouble With Mormons

Now that the NYT has stopped forcing us to pay to get angry at Maureen Doud, I'm reading her again. Good thing. She's clarified what's so wrong about Mormons. Here's what she wrote today about the Mormon temple near her hometown:

It did seem like an alien world, an impression that was enhanced when we took a tour of the temple and saw all the women wearing white outfits and light pink lipstick.

Ooooh. There goes my vote for Mitt.

To ice her case, Doud turns to Jon Krakauer, who's Under the Banner of Heaven was not a kind portrayal of Mormon history. He delivers for her this line:

“J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic,. Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.’”

Doud then jumps on the "religious fanatic" theme:

The world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, but Republicans are still arguing the Scopes trial.

Sure we are, Mo. Just a bunch of fanatics stuck in a time warp; not that different from the Mohammed Teddy bunch in Sudan.

Ignorance and intolerance has found a Petri dish it loves to fester in at the NYT.

Edwards Answers Oprah

Yeah, this should work:

Democrat John Edwards announced Sunday that actors Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins will join him on Iowa's frigid campaign trail.

Edwards' announcement came as media mogul Oprah Winfrey stumped here for Barack Obama during the weekend ...

Just last week, Edwards was joined on the stump by actresses Jean Smart, who plays the first lady on the popular FOX series "24," and Madeleine Stowe, who has appeared in such films as "The Last of the Mohicans" and "Twelve Monkeys." Last month, performers Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne campaigned in Iowa for Edwards.

Bacon, Robbins, Smart,Stowe, Raitt and Browne between them have the drawing power of Oprah's little toenail.

And perhaps someone should remind Pretty Boy that the entertainment industry has done oh so much for politics, proving its worth with Al Gore, then re-proving it with John Kerry.

Academics (Snark!) For Ron Paul

Twenty-one, count 'em, twenty-one academics have signed an Academics for Ron Paul statement as of this writing.

These are an illustrious bunch. Netz Katz. Ivan Pongracic, Jr. Ralph Raico. Aeon J. Skoble. Household names all.

And darn good grammarians, too:

Paul is the only presidential candidate with a proven record of defending academic freedom across-the-board.

That would be "defending academic freedom across the board."

Pass the Methane, Mom!

Gee willikers, there's less then 10 years left to deal with global warming!

Does that mean -- puleeeze, God! -- that by 2018 we won't have to listen to this tripe anymore?

Probably not, but it's a good enough intro to this story:

A new species of bacteria discovered living in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could yield a tool in the fight against global warming.

University of Calgary biology professor Peter Dunfield and colleagues discovered a methane-eating microorganism in the geothermal field known as Hell's Gate, near the city of Rotorua in New Zealand. It is the hardiest "methanotrophic" bacterium yet discovered, which makes it a likely candidate for use in reducing methane gas emissions from landfills, mines, industrial wastes, geothermal power plants and other sources.

"This is a really tough methane-consuming organism that lives in a much more acidic environment than any we've seen before," said Dunfield, who is the lead author of the paper. "It belongs to a rather mysterious family of bacteria (called Verrucomicrobia) that are found everywhere but are very difficult to grow in the laboratory."

Methanotrophic bacteria consume methane as their only source of energy and convert it to carbon dioxide during their digestive process. Methane (commonly known as natural gas) is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and is largely produced by decaying organic matter.

Set if we let these little guys go free in methane-rich environments like landfills, they'll convert the methane into CO2, screwing up every single global warming model the Warmies have created.

Ironic, isn't it, that all these big believers in anthropomorphic global warming believe we've screwed everything up, but can't imagine that we can actually fix things. So they don't factor human ingenuity into their models, just assuming we'll go roasting off to oblivion, like so many overheated lemmings.

U.N. Solves Global Warming!

Not content to deal with pursue practical approaches like methane-eating microbes, the UN jet-setted 8,000 Warmie bureaucrats to Bali to emit hot air endlessly.

The UN is big on symbolism, and they've done a magnificent job of being symbolic in Bali:

Further rigors, according to a report from China’s Xinhua News Agency, include the demand that all motor vehicles entering the beach area surrounding Bali’s Nusa Dua conference complex run on biofuels.

Claudia Rosette harumphs:

That sounds problematic, if the Xinhua report is accurate that only a few gas stations in Indonesia routinely sell biofuels, and they not on Bali, but are clustered around the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, on the island of Java, more than 500 miles from the UN conference.

The UN is nothing if not a good source of comedy.

Hillarycare's SCHIP Sinks In Oregon

SCHIP went to the voters this week and sank like a highly taxed rock.

It happened in Oregon, where a universal health care for kids proposition that mimicked the DC Dem position on SCHIP, with an identical 300% increase in program reach funded by an identical jacking of tobacco taxes, was on the ballot.

It was there because the Dems had failed to pass the measure through the statehouse, so shoot, they thought, the people want this stuff, so we'll just circumvent those Neanderthal Republicans and put it on the ballot.

Bad idea, the Dems realized, as they watched their dreams flame out by a 60/40 margin. Here's a good recap from today's WSJ:

Measure 50's defeat is being blamed on $12 million in advertising by Big Tobacco. "What happened was, the tobacco industry bought the election," Governor Kulongoski declared yesterday.

We're surprised the Governor thinks voters in his left-leaning state are so easily gulled -- especially in a contest between "healthy kids" and cigarettes. More persuasive is the notion that voters didn't want to pass a state tax increase to finance a health-care expansion that Congress might soon pass, along with buckets of federal dollars. But most likely, voters understood that a tax increase on cigarettes is still a tax increase, and a highly regressive one at that. Only about 20% of Oregonians smoke, and most of those are lower income.

They may also have figured that to the extent tobacco taxes reduce smoking, they will soon not yield enough revenue to pay for ever-growing health costs. An analysis by William Conerly, a member of Governor Kulongoski's own Council of Economic Advisors, found that a straight Schip expansion funded by a tobacco tax was unsustainable, with costs exceeding revenues by $115 million by 2017.

Counting "crowd out" -- the migration to public from private insurance -- Mr. Conerly predicted a $638 million deficit within the decade.

The idea that Oregonians defeated the measure because they'd rather wait for a federally funded program is ludicrous; taxes are taxes, whether they're state or federal, they still rip money out of our wallet.

The more likely explanation is that Americans may be unhappy with our health care system, but we want an American solution to the problem, not a European one.

Sunday Scan

It's NOT the Economy, Stupid

Tune in a Dem prez debate and prepare to get the glummies about the economy. Where would the Democrankies be without their charges of the rich getting richer, the jobs going overseas and the economy of the verge of tanking?

Bulletin to Hil et. al.: Do not read Thomas C. Reeves' The Terrible State of our Economy? that's up on History News Network. In the piece, Reeves makes enough points to make Hil look like a giant stack at Waffle House, including:

• "In the first place, it now seems certain that the Bush tax cuts of 2003 stimulated the economy. Individual income tax receipts, according to the Congressional Budget Office, have soared by 46.3% in four years. In 2007, the IRS collected a total of $2.568 trillion, 6.7% more than the year before."
  
  
• "The wealthy paid much of the bill; in 2005, the richest 1% paid 39% of all income taxes, up from 37% in 2000. (At the same time, the bottom 50% of families enjoyed an average tax rate that fell by a third to 3%.)"
  
  
• "For fiscal 2007, the CBO predicts a federal budget deficit of $158 billion, a $96 billion decline from 2006."
  
  
• "Federal spending (despite Iraq and the continued impact of Katrina) is growing at a lower rate, up just 2.8% last year, comfortably below the 7.3% average over the previous five years."
  
  
• "The U.S. Treasury Department reports that in September, 110,000 new jobs were created, “the 49th straight month of job gains.” The nation has added 8.4 million jobs since August, 2003."

And on and on Reeves goes, rebuttal after rebuttal of the major Dem talking points on the economy. Wag a finger at Bush's management of the economy, Dems, and chances are Reeves will bite it off.

Who Started al-Qaeda Anyway?

You may have thought our blood enemy got its hatching in the mind of bin Laden, as he toiled away as a rich young mujahadeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan ... but you'd be wrong, half a world away wrong.

Here, from that pillar of truth, Iran's Fars News Agency, is what really happened:

"The Untied States has deployed its military troops in 8 different countries in the region in a bid to control oil reserves and secure free flow of oil," representative of Tehran at the Islamic Consultative Assembly Hossein Sheikhol Eslam said while addressing a meeting dubbed "A World without US Intervention" in the northern city of Behshahr Saturday night. ...

"But after it failed in attaining [Saddam's victory over Iran], the White House leaders thought of new plots to maintain their domination over regional reserves, including the formation of such terrorist groups as the al-Qaeda," he said.

See, we created al-Qaeda all because of our lust for oil and power. It's nice to know there's someone more paranoid and anti-American than the American left.

Image credit here.

Maria Shriver for President?

I don't think so, and neither does Arnie. He told a group of Silicon Valey business leaders Friday that Shriver has no interest in the job because of her upbringing:

"She grew up and was a victim, where she was always thrown into events and photographs, and Sunday nights there were always 100 people in the house ... and she was at the factories telling people, 'Vote for my daddy, vote for my daddy,"' Schwarzenegger said.

"When she was 21 years old, she went out and decided she would find a man who had no desire to be in politics. She bumped into a man who was from an Austrian farm, a bodybuilder who was only interested in oiling up ... and wearing tight pants ... and then going into Hollywood," he said to more laughs. (OC Register via Flash Report)

First Take Out The Media

Pervez Musharraf is following classic coup procedures. On day one, he took out television and his main enemy, Pakistan's supreme court.

On day two:

Hundreds of political activists, senior judges and human-rights leaders were rounded up by police. The country's deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, was confined to his cordoned-off home, with no one allowed to approach. ...

Some of the country's most venerable jurists and human-rights activists were among those rounded up and roughly bundled into police vans.

They included Munir Malik, a senior attorney who has been at the forefront of a pro-democracy movement that swelled in recent months, and Asma Jehangir, a distinguished lawyer who leads the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Up to 200 policemen stormed the office of the rights commission in the eastern city of Lahore, arresting all the group's senior staff. (LA Times)

It occurred to me this morning that The Lives of Others, which I reviewed yesterday, would be reviewed quite differently by the Kos Krowd. They would see East Germany's repression not as a window into places like Pakistan and NoKo, and a cry for the need for democracy, but as a warning of what Bush would like to do to our country.

I'm sure that as they read of Musharraf's closing down of Pakistan's tenuous Democracy, they're thinking in their negative little minds that Bush will be following his puppet shortly. What a waste of creative brainpower.

"Gen. Musharref, Saakashvili's on the Phone"

One person looking enviously at Musharref is President Michael Saakashvili of Georgia. How he must long for tough martial law and the jailing of dissidents.

Up to 10,000 Georgians demonstrated for a third day against Presidential Mikhail Saakashvili on Sunday, accusing him of authoritarian rule and demanding his resignation.

Some 70,000 had rallied in front of Georgia's parliament building on Friday, calling for a parliamentary election to be brought forward to early 2008 as a step to abolishing the presidency. By Saturday, opposition activists were mounting pressure for Saakashvili to step down. (Reuters)

Saakashvili came to power backed but just such demonstrations, dethroning Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003's Rose Revolution. But revolutions can be demanding things, and Georgians are fed up with the economy and allegations of human rights abuses.

Georgia should be, as our president has called it, "a beacon of democracy," and it can be again if Saakashvili simply calls early Parliamentary elections.

Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales

So writes Diane Feinstein in today's LAT, in saying that Mukasey's got her vote. She goes in the face of Leahy, Schumer et. al. and says Mukasey has answered the questions, especially the questions on waterboarding, sufficiently and should be confirmed.

Go Di. I disagree with her often, but have to admit she shows an independence from the Dem goose-steppers frequently enough to still earn my grudging respect.

Shakin' Things Up

How bad is it when the ground shaking is so strong the seismological instruments can't even measure it? I don't want to know; and I don't want to be anywhere close to Mt. Kelut in Indonesia.

A day after a false alarm on Indonesia's Mount Kelut led to panic among residents on its slopes, the volcano is showing signs of an imminent eruption, a scientist said Sunday.

"An eruption is now very, very much possible, although so far it has not yet happened," said Agus Budianto, a geologist monitoring the activities of the volcano in the densely populated East Java province.

On Saturday, continuous tremors beneath the volcano became so strong that they could no longer be read on seismological instruments, leading scientists to evacuate their posts and warn an eruption appeared to have occurred.

They could not confirm it visually as the top of the historically deadly mountain was shrouded by clouds but their warning led residents still in the danger zone to flee in fear for their lives.

Maybe It's The Unintelligible Docs

A recent survey has found that more Americans are discontent with the state of our medical care system than are residents of Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand or the United Kingdom, with theirs. According to the survey, one-third of Americans say the whole system needs an overhaul.

In addition to cost concerns, U.S. patients report more fragmented and inefficient care, including medical record and test delays, perceptions of waste and more time spent on paperwork, compared to patients in other countries.

The study was conducted by The Commonwealth Fund, a group that advocates fundamental shifts in health policy, including a shift from pay-for-services to a system that would pay for each health episode, thereby incentivizing the medical profession to seek more efficient cures.

One third is not 50%, and dissatisfaction with status quo is not a demand for a national health insurance program a la Hillarycare.

Some parts of the survey's conclusions seem questionable, like the finding that Americans say they receive more erroneous test results than patients in the other countries. How do they know the tests are wrong? Do the patients in other countries even have access to their results? The survey reports that the highest number of US patients claiming bad test results are those seeking multiple opinions -- a luxury that may not be afford the citizens under national health care systems.

All in all, the survey shows that the Canadian system is the worst of the bunch and the European systems offer access levels similar to ours. No wonder the GOP always rushes to compare Hillarycare to Canada, and Dems always gaze fondly at Europe.

Hillary Care: It's What She Does, Not What She Says

What a great deal! A brand new national health care program that reduces costs and doesn't create a whole new big ugly bureaucracy! Or even a trim little pretty one!

You have to hand it to Hillary; her health care proposal is a hum-dinger, and WaPo is ready to tell us all about it:

In a speech in Des Moines, the Democratic front-runner said she would expand insurance to the 47 million people who do not already have coverage and would attempt to reduce costs for others without spawning a massive new bureaucracy. In a far different political environment than the one that turned her efforts to establish universal health care into a fiasco in her husband's first term, Clinton offered a more modest approach than she took as first lady and head of a White House task force in 1993.

"Today's plan is simple yet doable," Clinton said. ". . . This is not government-run. There will be no new bureaucracy." ...

She added that "there is a much broader consensus on the need for reform now," as health-care costs have outstripped inflation and the growth of income in the past 15 years. "You see businesses and labor together on this, Republican and Democratic governors, and the fact that we are in a global market, where our health-care costs are a competitive disadvantage -- all of that is different."

So this should be a piece of cake, not a repeat of the Death Walk Down Pennsylvania Ave. Hil endured the last time she gave national health care a big hug. And since she's the candidate to beat, we should all be happy.

But wait a minute. Stuck a few pages back from the big page 1 splash on Hillarycare II: Not A Disaster we find another story about a health care program near and dear to Hil's heart:

Key lawmakers in the House and Senate negotiated into the night yesterday on a deal that would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over the next five years.

That would set up a clash with President Bush, who has promised to veto such a plan.

The emerging compromise would bring total enrollment to 10 million children. Congressional aides said it would be funded by an increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes, which is now at 39 cents a pack. [And, by the way, repeal of Bush's tax cuts for people earning over $250K a year.] It would also attempt to blunt rules the Bush administration imposed last month that restrict the eligibility of middle-income children.

The SCHIP program, as I've written about previously, started innocuously enough as a modest program to provide funding for health care for children in poverty. Cunningly created with incentives for state's to grow the program, it has expanded like an ebola outbreak, as states both pushed the age of recipients and the household income allowed so it no longer was a program for poor children.

Now, Congress is pushing to expand it even more, so middle class families can opt out of privately run health care program and go for taxpayer-subsidized public sector programs. Could anything be more Big-D Democratic?

SCHIP is more than just Hillary's approach, it's Hillary's plan, as her Web site makes clear:

Nobody has worked harder or longer to improve health care than Hillary Clinton. From her time in Arkansas when she improved rural health care to her successful effort to create the SCHIP Children's Health Insurance program which now covers six million children, Hillary has the strength and experience to ensure that every man, woman and child in America has quality, affordable health care.

SCHIP started at $25 billion; now the Dems -- led by Hillary who is, you know, the health care socialized medicine point person on the Hill -- want to push it up to either $60 or $75 billion, depending on whether you prefer the House or Senate version.

Hillary's smaller, smarter national health care program would start not at $25 billion like SCHIP, but at $110 billion. A year. But not for many years. Expect the Dems to "schip" it up right away, to $150 billion, $200 billion, up and up until it's finally big enough for Hil to call her own.

NYT Pretends It Doesn't Get CHIP Expansion

The Children's Health Insurance Program should have been contained by President Bush the first time he had a chance, but he tried magnanimity. Congress responded without so much as a thank you, and pushed the program far out into left field.

CHIP was questionable even as a restricted program, limited to providing government health insurance to children who lived in poverty. But the program gave states financial incentives to enroll more children, and instead of doing the hard work of finding children in poverty, the states did the brainless and effortless work of just expanding the income levels accepted into the program.

Now New York accepts families with incomes of 250 percent of poverty and the legislature wants to push it up to 400 percent ($82,600 a year). California is pushing to jump its income limit from 250 percent to 300. You get the point: The trend lines are pointing to the creation of a massive new federal entitlement.

And is entitlement ever the word. In a highly prejudiced piece against Bush's new policy of dialing the program back, the NYTimes sniffs:

Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey, said: “We are horrified at the new federal policy. It will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children.”

Already, it doesn't occur to the big brains at the NYT or to Kohler, whose state accepts children from families with incomes of 350 percent of the poverty level into CHIP, that restricting family income levels does not restrict access to health insurance; it simply forces well-to-do families to stop sucking on the teat of a federal program that was never passed by Congress in its current state.

To end the expansion of the program, Bush announced new restrictions yesterday, taking advantage of the Congressional holiday. Here's the draconian new policy that had Kohler and her fellow socialized medicine advocates in a huff:

In the letter sent to state health officials about 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Dennis G. Smith, the director of the federal Center for Medicaid and State Operations, set a high standard for states that want to raise eligibility for the child health program above 250 percent of the poverty level.

Before making such a change, Mr. Smith said, states must demonstrate that they have “enrolled at least 95 percent of children in the state below 200 percent of the federal poverty level” who are eligible for either Medicaid or the child health program.

A modest proposal at best, this Bush strategy is simply trying to stop the runaway greed of states that are more interested in federal incentives than covering the poor. But what gets the Left's goat is that the proposal would put the brakes on a program that has become a congressional end-run around a wary public towards a national health insurance program.

Congress passed a shell of a program so they can retort "we did no such thing" when accused of creating a national health insurance program, but they knew full well what the states would do with the incentives they built into CHIP. They're redefining "children" to higher ages and redefining "poverty" to higher incomes.

Faced with a modest Bush slow-down proposal, the NYT comes out swinging, calling the program "popular" in its lead, the use of a word that is anything but objective. The program may be popular around the editorial board room of the NYT, but that's hardly universal.

Before it gets around to defining the Bush proposal, NYT tells its readers:

• Bush proposed the changes during a congressional recess
• State official say it will cripple their health care programs
• "As on other issues like immigration, the White House is taking action on its own to advance policies that were not embraced by Congress."
• Four Republican govs (including that RINO, Schwarzenegger) like the program
• The letter notifying states of the change in policy was mailed at 7:30 on Friday

That last point really got NYT's goat, because it meant Saturday, Sunday and Monday went by before it got to write its snarly little story.

But look, containing CHIP is vital. The Congressional budget office has said that the $30 billion budgeted for the program for 2008 through 2012 is not enough -- but that's only because the states have moved eligibility far above the poverty line.

The only thing Bush has done is attempted to apply some fiscal conservatism to a program that's rife with liberal exploitation. That's a good thing, but it takes wading through paragraphs of propaganda to get to that point in the NYT coverage.

And the blogosphere? Look at the links at memeorandum; they're a carnival of the outraged radicals, including BartBlog ("Why does Bush hate kids?"), Firedoglake ("Bush to kids: Forget about more public health care"), Crooks and Liars ("Compassionate conservatism for kids") and Feministe ("Bush A*&holery continues re: SCHIP").

Methinks the prez did something right.

Bad Medicine

Here's a (socialized, natch) medicine prescription from Venezuela, with Fidel and Hugo as a watermark.

If Hillary gets her way and we're saddled with a national healthcare plan, do you think prescriptions will feature her with Robert Treuhaft, Communist Party USA member, Black Panther lawyer and former Hil employer? (source)

hat-tip: Jim

Hillarycare Fans, Take Note

Why exactly were so many Muslim doctors involved in the recent bomb plots in England? Could it be that Muslims are among the only people who will put up with England's National Health System?

Mark Steyn thinks so:

Does government health care inevitably lead to homicidal doctors who can't wait to leap into a flaming SUV and drive it through the check-in counter? No. But government health care does lead to a dependence on medical staff imported from other countries.

Some 40 percent of Britain's practicing doctors were trained overseas – and that percentage will increase, as older native doctors retire, and younger immigrant doctors take their place. According to the BBC, "Over two-thirds of doctors registering to practice in the UK in 2003 were from overseas – the vast majority from non-European countries." Five of the eight arrested are Arab Muslims, the other three Indian Muslims.

Medicine has become such an unattractive career choice that the sons and daughters of British families that have been physicians for generations are not applying to med school. In their place come doctors trained in backwater med schools whose immigration paperwork was processed at warp speed.

So today the NHS is hungry for medical personnel from almost anywhere on the planet, so hungry that the government set up special fast-track immigration programs: Mohammed Asha, Mohammed Haneef and their comrades didn't even require a work permit to come and practice as doctors in state hospitals. You don't have to be the smartest jihadist in the cave to see that as an opportunity, any more than it required no great expertise for the 9/11 killers to figure that the quickest place to get the picture IDs with which they boarded the planes was through Virginia's "undocumented worker" network.

There is so much evidence from Cuba to Canada to England that national healthcare is really a national nightmare, yet Hillary and the trailing Dems continue to push for it, more eager to keep the big nurse and hospital worker unions happy than us healthy.

And we haven't even thought about the security side of this losing proposition!

Obama Health Plan: Take From The Rich, Give To The Lazy (And Illegal?)

The rap (well deserved) on Barak Obama is that there's plenty of sparkle, but not much substance, so in an effort to be considered a "serious candidate," according to AP (and isn't it funny that he's gotten this far without being serious?), Obama got serious today.

Did he get serious about making sure the economy stays robust? No. Was it the war on terror? Nope. Was it fixing Social Security before it goes bankrupt? Think again. It was universal health insurance! The no-brainer of politics!

You can float out whatever universal health insurance plan you want with absolutely 100 percent assurance that nothing like it will ever become law, and in this case, that's a very good thing.

Obama says his plan will insure the "45 million" Americans who are uninsured. That number is so high it appears to include illegals, along with the millions of young Americans who have made a financial decision to spend their sufficient incomes on something other than insurance. Neither should be insured at public expense.

Who's going to pay for it? Obama says it won't be us; no, we'll SAVE $2,500 a year. It'll be THEM, because he plans to help pay for it by repealing "the Bush temporary tax cut for the wealthiest taxpayers." You mean the folks who've always paid for their insurance, and probably paid for or contributed to the insurance costs of thousands of their employees? Those richest Americans?

It's worth it, Obama says, because "the skyrocketing profits of the drug and insurance industries" shouldn't be on the backs of the people. How about the skyrocketing profits of the class-action attorneys?

We'll know truly meaningful health insurance reform, because it will come with tort reform designed to protect drug companies, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies from the ravenous attacks of shark lawyers.

And you'll never, ever see that universal health insurance program coming from a Dem.

Hello, Hillarycare!

Step into my time machine and we'll take a little tour of heath care if Hillary gets her way:

"Thanks a lot, officers," an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in [Edith Isabel] Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. "This is her third time here."

The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She'd been given prescription medication and a doctor's appointment.

Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, "You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do," according to a report by the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.

Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.

Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition, no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit camera captured everyone's apparent indifference.

Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked at sending rescuers to a hospital.

Alerted to the "disturbance" in the lobby, police stepped in — by running Rodriguez's record. They found an outstanding warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before she could be put into a squad car. (LATimes)

Actually, we don't need a time machine; we're dealing with current events here, at the famous ... infamous ... Martin Luther King Jr. - Harbor hospital in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. It is the closest thing you'll find to a state-managed, Hillarycare hospital as you can imagine.

The hospital was created by the public sector after the Watts riots in 1965 and opened in 1968. Because the private sector wasn't interested in the gang- and welfare-ridden neighborhood, the hospital has been operated ... mismanaged ... by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services since its outset.

It is such a disaster the LATimes won a Pulitzer at the expense of the poor people who had to go there for health care. Over the years, it has digressed from a 233-bed facility with a tip-top trauma center and a conjoined medical school to a 48-bed hospital with no trauma center or medical school. In just the last two and a half years, 260 hospital staffers, including 41 doctors, had been fired or had resigned as a result of disciplinary proceedings. The trauma facility lost its certification and was closed.

Financially, it's just as much a mess. One consulting firm was paid $1 million to straighten out problems with the nursing staff. From the story above, you can see it wasn't $1 million well spent. Another consulting firm was paid $17 million to operate the facility for $18 months.

And the whole thing has sunk into a swamp of litigation ... with Ms. Rodriguez's family to join that club soon.

Why is it exactly that this government-bred and government-run hospital should be a model for the destruction of America's medical system?

Hillary's Bloated "Schip" Of State

Schip? Never heard of it!

It's the rich residue of Hillary's failed universal health care initiative, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It started modestly enough, with $40 billion over 10 years, which would be matched by states in order to extend health care benefits to the children of those living in poverty.

That was in 1997. Today, it's a massive "underfunded" program the Dems are pushing forward as their health care Trojan horse for the upcoming elections. As the WSJ led off its editorial today:

Any doubt that "universal" health care has returned as a dominant political issue vanished with last month's forum for Democratic Presidential candidates in Nevada. "We need a movement," Hillary Clinton declared. "We need people to make this the No. 1 voting issue in the '08 election."

No. 1? That's the new way to insult our troops. First we say they've lost the war, then we make universal health care more important than their mission.

The Schip battle is shaping up like this: It's due up for renewal in September, and Bush, foolishly, wants to expand it by $4.8 billion to make it a $30 billion program over five years. Instead, he should force the law to be rewritten, as I'll explain in a minute.

The Dems want it to be hiked by $40 or $50 billion to take care of the "underfunding" that's occurring, which they estimate to be $900 million and rising. Oh my gosh! How did we so grossly underestimate the health care needs of children in poverty? The Dems would have you believe it's because there are more children in poverty (not so!), but WSJ tells the truth:

But this "crisis" arose because some states have grossly exceeded Schip's mandate. They are using the program to expand government-subsidized coverage well beyond poor kids -- to children from wealthier families and even to adults. And they're doing so even as some 8.3 million poor children continue to go uninsured.

The Schip legislation defines potential recipients as children in families making twice the federal poverty line, or $41,300 a year for a family of four. But states are encouraged to apply for waivers to allow for more flexibility. Now 15 states have eligibility thresholds above 200% of poverty, and nine of those are at or over 300%. In New Jersey, the figure is 350%. New York recently passed a budget raising eligibility to the highest in the nation at 400% -- or $82,600 for a family of four. That's an income close to what Democrats usually define as "rich" when they're trying to raise taxes.

Some states are using Schip to create universal child health programs, regardless of need. Governor Rod Blagojevich recently expanded the Illinois Schip program to insure all children, with premiums and co-pays based on parental income. Pennsylvania's "Cover All Kids" and Tennessee's "Cover Kids" programs do the same.

As of February 2007, the Government Accountability Office found that 14 states were using Schip to cover adults: pregnant women, parents of Medicaid or Schip kids -- and even childless adults. Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin cover more adults than children. In 2005 Minnesota spent 92% of its grant insuring adults, and Arizona spent two-thirds the same way.

Why is this happening? Because there's no reason in the law for the states not to expand Schip to other populations -- and the proposed Dem modifications would make it even worse, because it proposes that if a state doesn't spend all its Schip funds, it will get less the next year. It's incentivizing waste.

So as the Dems ramp up their arguments for universal health care, remember this: We already have it. Naescent, for sure, but growing in reach and cost, expanding the entitlement mentality and fidelity to the Dems as it spreads. That's why Bush's position should be no new funding until the law is tightened up to forbid its use for any population other than children living in poverty.

But that's not Bush's position, tragically. I'll leave the conclusion to the editorial writers at WSJ:

In other words, what began as a hard-cap grant to cover the working poor is evolving into an open-ended entitlement to cover whatever promises states make. And all under the political cover of helping "children." Instead of debating government-run health care on its merits, Democrats are building it step by step on the sly. Or as Mrs. Clinton put it in Nevada, "Make no mistake. This will be a series of steps."

There's a lesson here for Republicans, who agreed to create Schip in a trade for Mr. Clinton's signature on their "balanced budget." Balanced budgets vanish in the blink of an election, while entitlements like Schip live on and expand as an ever-larger claim on taxpayers. Mark this down as another case in which Bill Clinton outfoxed Newt Gingrich. The least Republicans can do now is work to return Schip to its original, more modest purposes.

Remember This When Hil Goes Shrill

Over the next few weeks, you'll hear Dems -- with Hil shrilly leading the wolfpack -- denouncing the Bush Administration for the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed and other military hospitals.

Fair enough; criticism is due. But when you hear them, remember this bit of insight from blogger Gerry Charlotte Phelps:

But can our care system for wounded vets be fixed? It is, after all, socialized medicine. Its flaws are the same as socialized medicine in the countries that have it.

Yep. Not a single free market, competitive molecule exists in the free-for-all (literally, apparently) world of military medicine.