Dr. Krauthammer offers to Write Obama's Valium Prescription

Responding to reports yesterday that our thin-skinned POTUS needed to take a Valium before choosing to meet with Senate Republicans, Psychiatrist turned political-pundit Charles Krauthammer, offered to write Obama a prescription:



It's been a while since I have worked in the field but I am not sure Valium is the solution for a terminal case of audacious and grandiose expectations, particularly when the patient doesn't have the good sense to come bearing even a token gift. Nothing, not even a Trojan horse. Obama offered his presence I guess, in exchange for his demand Republicans stand up to their conservative base and help him pass his liberal agenda. I think Haldol is commonly prescribed for hallucinations.

In one of the most heated exchanges of the lunch, Corker accused Obama of acting “duplicitous” in his calls for bipartisanship, saying that he was trying to cut a deal on regulatory reform only to see the rug pulled out from underneath him. At one point, Corker said Obama was using lunch with Republicans as a “prop.”

"I told him I thought there was a degree of audacity in him even showing up today after what had happened with financial regulation," Corker told reporters after Republicans met with Obama.

Republicans came away believing Obama wants to do too much, too fast.

"He wants to do immigration, climate change — all before we go home — he's a very ambitious guy," said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.). "I think he needs to step back and see where the country is at."

Yes well, ambitious or psychotic, take your pick. Obama feels he is entitled to Republican support for his audacious agenda. He has, after all,  bled for the country or something:

“There was some good healthy give-and-take in there,” Graham said. “He believes that he’s bled for the country in terms of giving up political capital and making his base mad. He said that often. … It was at times testy; I think overall it was cordial.”

Testy and cordial are often interchangeable  aren't they?  Obama has bled support alright.  Imposing a left-wing agenda on a center-right country will do that for you.  Asking the Republicans to sacrifice themselves so his radical left wing base doesn't abandon him as well is nothing short of delusional.  I hope Dr. Krauthammer has something in his black bag to fix that.

More on this at Memeorandum

Krauthammer Comments On The Power Grab By The EPA: May Bring A Revollution on the Administration's Hands"’

Charles Krauthammer commented on the decision by the EPA to declare greenhouse gases a threat. Charles makes it clear, this is a huge power grab:

“Look, it’s blackmail, a way of saying to Congress: ‘either you do cap-and-trade or we’re gonna do cap, no trade. We’re gonna regulate every aspect of American life.’ This is – if the EPA now has in its power – perhaps it will when acted over time – to intrude into every aspect of American life."

Via Breitbart TV

Health Care Hocus Pocus

John Stossel nails the lies and deceptions used by politicians to sell the health care debacle:

The key to magic is misdirection, fooling the audience into looking in the wrong direction.

I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible.

The politicians have a hat full of tricks to make their schemes look cheaper than they are. The new revenues will pour in during Year One, but health care spending won't begin until Year Three or Four. To this the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner asks, "Wouldn't it be great if you could count a whole month's income, but only two weeks' expenditures in your household budget?" (H/T: Instapundit )

Charles Krauthammer thinks "the bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool."  Pat Austin wonders if there is a Senate swimming pool.  Of course there must be nothing is too good for those we pay to shred the US health care system then lie about what a wonder it will be.  Presto Changeo, the "result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency," according to Krauthammer, who suggests we can throw a dart at the 2000 page tome and find a problem:

You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.
 
You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences. 

Of course we can throw darts all day but the only solution to this bill is to throw a knife and end the misery.  Howard Dean admits the "Republicans are right about the rhetoric of this bill," though Dean seems to be hitching himself to the liberal wing of the party.  Dean's devotion to the public option aside, it is hard to ignore his point the health care bill is a giant bailout that will have negative consequences if enacted.  Hot Air has a transcript for the video below:


Ed Morrissey wonders:

Dean — who was a successful chair of the DNC and supposedly represented the mainstream of the Democratic Party — has now hitched himself to Socialist Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the party. Is Dean thinking about a 2012 run predicated on a politically wounded Obama who failed to pass health-care reform?

Now that would be entertaining, imagine sawing the Democratic party in two with a primary.