Plucked from the Twittter feed

The lede says it all: “90% of Top Newspaper Headlines Censor Islam in Nairobi, Pakistan Attacks : Generic ‘terrorists’ and ‘militants’ appear in nine of 10 headlines.”  Doesn’t anybody read their Harry Potter anymore?  I’m quite sure it was the sensible, intelligent, brave Hermione who said that the refusal to name your enemy leaves you incapable of defending against him (or words to that effect).

Obama promised that, under Obamacare, health insurance premiums would drop by $2,500 for a family of four.  He was off by about $10,000.  In fact, premiums for a middle class family of four will increase by almost $7,500.  I do believe that all of us here saw that coming.  Insurance is no longer a question of statistical risk (i.e., the insurance company assesses the likelihood at any given time that it will have to pay out on a specific policy, and adjusts to price accordingly) but is simply wealth redistribution.  The moment the law mandated that people can wait to get insurance until they’re actually sick, it was all over.  The insurance companies are just conduits now, that funnel money from the middle class to the poor.

Obamacare wasn’t a principled (albeit stupid, communist) committed to improving America’s medical care.  Instead, it was a campaign slogan:

The most important red line of Barack Obama’s presidency was scrawled hastily in January 2007, a few weeks before he even announced he was running for president.

Soon-to-be-candidate Obama, then an Illinois senator, was thinking about turning down an invitation to speak at a big health care conference sponsored by the progressive group Families USA, when two aides, Robert Gibbs and Jon Favreau, hit on an idea that would make him appear more prepared and committed than he actually was at the moment.

Why not just announce his intention to pass universal health care by the end of his first term?

[snip]

“We needed something to say,” recalled one of the advisers involved in the discussion. “I can’t tell you how little thought was given to that thought other than it sounded good. So they just kind of hatched it on their own. It just happened. It wasn’t like a deep strategic conversation.”

And that, my children, is how Obamacare was born.

Glenn Reynolds takes a look at why Obama is pushing something that Americans have hated from the beginning and, now that they’re learning what’s in it, are hating even more.

Please consider this an Open Thread.