In Duck Soup, Groucho Marx pleads his innocence to his
wealthy matronly fiancé, who catches him smooching with a show girl:
“Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Since September 12, the Obama administration has been asking us to
believe him, his press secretary, and his proxies that our Libyan
ambassador and three other consulate officials were killed by a
spontaneous mob driven into frenzy by an anti-Muslim film produced by an
unknown Christian film maker. He asks that we not believe his state
department or top intelligence officials who testify that this narrative
is false. Nor should we notice the coincidence of the attack taking
place on 9/11 or that this was revenge for the fifteen top al Qaeda
leaders killed by drones under Obama. Of course, Obama spiking the
“I-killed-Osama” football at the Democrat convention had nothing to do
with this either. Nor did the Libyan President warn of impending
violence three days earlier.
go to forbes.com
Showing posts with label Paul Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Ryan. Show all posts
Monday, October 15, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Why Obama/Biden Cannot Possibly Win the Presidential Debates
If we cut through the surface images of the two presidential
debates – aggressive confident Romney, subdued and passive Obama, jeering
Biden, and polite Ryan – the Obama/Biden team has little chance of winning any
of the four debates. Despite recent
improvements in survey numbers, the vast majority of Americans think the
country “is headed in the wrong direction” and almost eighty percent are
“dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States.”
Reduced to fundamentals, Obama and Biden must defend the
status quo, which voters believe is a disaster. They cannot offer major
makeovers because that would amount to admitting policy mistakes, and they must
somehow make voters believe that they have done a good job or that the sorry
state of the country is not their fault. It goes without saying that this is a tough
and almost impossible sell after three and a half years in office.
Romney and Ryan have their hands free to blast the status
quo, focus on the policy errors of the past three and a half years, and explain
what they would do to fix the mess we are in.
When the current team manager is having a losing season,
fans decide it is time for a new one. Romney and Ryan can play the role of the
new manager with new ideas which can turn the season around if given the
chance. Obama and Biden are left with explaining why, due to weather, injuries,
and other things beyond their control, they have lost so many games. Fans don’t
want excuses. They want wins.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
My Diminished Capacity to Understand Obama's Clean Energy Policy
It took President Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney to shock me to my senses. As someone who favors cutting government spending on clean energy and eliminating government subsidies in general, I was particularly distressed to learn (in Carney’s words) that “I am “aggressively and deliberately ignorant of the world economy not to know and understand that clean energy technologies are going to play a huge role in the 21st century.” Even worse, I learn that “I have a severely diminished capacity to understand what drives economic growth in industrialized countries in this century.”
And I had thought that if clean energy technologies were going to dominate the 21st century, private enterprise would figure this out and develop them itself. In my ignorance, I thought that subsidies are dictated by and for special interests not by economic rationality. I also believed that Solyndra and SunPower were not aberrations but representative of what is going on in Secretary Chu’s and Obama’s energy department. What I fool I have been.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
At Last, Peggy Noonan Says Something Interesting: “We Don’t Accept That Card Anymore.”
I rarely make it through a Peggy Noonan article. Her WSJ column soars into the stratosphere, high above the political fray. She muses in rhetorical flourishes about the human condition. She offers little advice or analysis that I consider of practical use.
Enter the mainstream media and their newfound consensus: The Republican Ryan plan to change Medicare from a card guaranteeing senior citizens medical care to a voucher to buy private insurance will hand the 2012 election to the Democrats.
I suggest that the Republicans offer a prize for the shortest and clearest explanation of why senior citizens are better off with the Ryan voucher. This task is not easy. It requires that voters understand that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” (I offered a parable in my posting of yesterday).
Noonan, so far, is my nominee for the prize. She notes the great political appeal of Medicare as it is currently constituted:
“Here's the great thing about Medicare: You turn 65 and it's there. They give you a card and the nurse takes it. Supporters of Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan must talk very specifically about how this would all work, and why it would make your life better, not worse.”
And here is the nugget buried in her column:
“They also have to make two things clearer. One is that if nothing is done to change Medicare, the system will collapse. You'll give the card to the nurse and she'll laugh: ‘We don't take that anymore.’ This already happens in doctors offices. Without reform it will happen more often.”
“Sorry, we do not take that card anymore” should be the Republican rallying cry.
I can imagine the 20-second commercial: A timid elderly couple walks into the doctor’s office to be told by a frosty receptionist: “Oh, you want to see the doctor. We haven’t taken that card for years. I’d tell you to go at the cash clinic at Walmart but they have been on strike every since they unionized.”
In confusion and tears, the elderly couple stumbles out of the office.
Enter the mainstream media and their newfound consensus: The Republican Ryan plan to change Medicare from a card guaranteeing senior citizens medical care to a voucher to buy private insurance will hand the 2012 election to the Democrats.
I suggest that the Republicans offer a prize for the shortest and clearest explanation of why senior citizens are better off with the Ryan voucher. This task is not easy. It requires that voters understand that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” (I offered a parable in my posting of yesterday).
Noonan, so far, is my nominee for the prize. She notes the great political appeal of Medicare as it is currently constituted:
“Here's the great thing about Medicare: You turn 65 and it's there. They give you a card and the nurse takes it. Supporters of Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan must talk very specifically about how this would all work, and why it would make your life better, not worse.”
And here is the nugget buried in her column:
“They also have to make two things clearer. One is that if nothing is done to change Medicare, the system will collapse. You'll give the card to the nurse and she'll laugh: ‘We don't take that anymore.’ This already happens in doctors offices. Without reform it will happen more often.”
“Sorry, we do not take that card anymore” should be the Republican rallying cry.
I can imagine the 20-second commercial: A timid elderly couple walks into the doctor’s office to be told by a frosty receptionist: “Oh, you want to see the doctor. We haven’t taken that card for years. I’d tell you to go at the cash clinic at Walmart but they have been on strike every since they unionized.”
In confusion and tears, the elderly couple stumbles out of the office.
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