Friday, November 01, 2013

 

Thought of the Day

Beyond mendacity, there is liberal paternalism, of which these forced cancellations are a classic case.
We canceled your plan, explained Jay Carney, because it was substandard. We have a better idea.

Translation: Sure, you freely chose the policy, paid for the policy, renewed the policy, and liked the policy. But you’re too primitive to know what you need. We do. Your policy is hereby canceled.

Because what you really need is what our experts have determined must be in every plan. So a couple in their 60s must buy maternity care. A teetotaler must buy substance-abuse treatment. And a healthy 28-year-old with perfectly appropriate catastrophic insurance must pay for bells and whistles for which he has no use.

Charles Krauthammer


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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 6:19 AM 0 comments

Friday, May 24, 2013

 

Thoughts of the Day

And yet both the acting and the previous IRS commissioners insisted that the singling out of groups according to their politics was in no way politically motivated. More hilarity. It’s definitional: If you discriminate according to politics, your discrimination is political. It’s a tautology, for God’s sake.

Charles Krauthammer

All truth is tautology.

Roger Fraley

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 4:36 AM 0 comments

Friday, May 06, 2011

 

Thought of the Day

The new post-bin Laden dispensation is that the entire decade-long war on terror was an overreaction — as shown by the bin Laden operation itself, which, noted one critic, looks a lot like police work, the kind of law enforcement John Kerry insisted in 2004 was the proper prism through which to address the terror threat.

On the contrary. The bin Laden operation is the perfect vindication of the war on terror. It was made possible precisely by the vast, warlike infrastructure that the Bush administration created post-9/11, a fierce regime of capture and interrogation, of dropped bombs and commando strikes. That regime, of course, followed the more conventional war that brought down the Taliban, scattered and decimated al-Qaeda and made bin Laden a fugitive.

Charles Krauthammer


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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:08 AM 0 comments

Friday, March 05, 2010

 

Thought of the Day

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

Charles Krauthammer


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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 5:49 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

 

Second Thought of the Day

Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions.

Charles Krauthammer, talking about how President Obama has kept his perfect record of being initially wrong on every foreign policy issue, this one the counter-coup in Honduras.

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 12:59 PM 7 comments

Friday, June 19, 2009

 

Thought of the Day

Moreover, this incipient revolution [in Iran] is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

Charles Krauthammer

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 3:44 PM 0 comments

Friday, June 05, 2009

 

Thought of the Day

In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders -- Fatah and Hamas alike -- built no schools, no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.

Charles Krauthammer

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:04 AM 0 comments

Friday, May 15, 2009

 

Thought of the Day

Well, her news conference today was an utter disaster. She was nervous. She was shifty. Her syntax was incomprehensible. And there were times when she had had to refer to her original statement because she couldn't remember what the current truth — her current truth was.

It reminds me of a line in a Graham Greene novel in which a spy says "I prefer to tell the truth. It's easier to memorize." Well, she didn't have it memorized. You had a sense that if you'd attached a lie detector to her in that news conference, it would have short circuited.

Charles Krauthammer (talking about Nanci Pelosi's performance)

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:35 PM 0 comments

Friday, April 10, 2009

 

Thought of the Day

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.
He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.
From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.
And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?
When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week.

Charles Krauthammer

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:56 AM 0 comments

Friday, January 30, 2009

 

Thought of the Day

Obama...said...to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, [about] the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."
Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somali intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on earth. Why are we apologizing?

Charles Krauthammer

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:02 AM 0 comments

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