Peggy Noonan's column is worth reading in full.

Support it or not, you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess. It is also utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and government administration.

Its biggest proponent in Congress, the Democratic speaker of the House, literally said—blithely, mindlessly, but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. It is a cliché to note this. But really, Nancy Pelosi's statement was a historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn't understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she'd done. This is how we make laws now.

Her comments alarmed congressional Republicans but inspired Democrats, who for the next three years would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they'd read the bill and understood its implications. They were later taken aback by complaints from their constituents.

The White House, on the other hand, seems to have understood what the bill would do, and lied in a way so specific it showed they knew exactly what to spin and how. "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan, period." "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period." That of course was the president, misrepresenting the facts of his signature legislative effort. That was historic, too. If you liked your doctor, your plan, your network, your coverage, your deductible you could not keep it. Your existing policy had to pass muster with the administration, which would fight to the death to ensure that 60-year-old women have pediatric dental coverage.

The leaders of our government have not felt, throughout the process, that they had any responsibility to be honest and forthcoming about the major aspects of the program, from its exact nature to its exact cost. We are not being told the cost of anything—all those ads, all the consultants and computer work, even the cost of the essential program itself.

Ben Domenech is skeptical that Obamacare's managing to sign up 7 million people (for some definitions of "sign up") when it was originally projected to sign up (as in "really sign up") double that is somehow a major success.

Have you heard? Obamacare survived! It got to that magic number it was looking for to make everything right!

Or rather, it got to half the number the Congressional Budget Office predicted it would get to after the Supreme Court ruling.

Either way, itÂ’s totally okay now and is absolutely going to survive and be the law of the land forever and ever despite anything those nasty opponents of the law tell you.

...

This is why talk of the 7 million figure as salvation from supporters of the law is completely bonkers: all you did was meet your lowered policy expectations.

By failing so catastrophically early, their recent failure is, by comparison, a relative success.

So here is what Obama and his supporters now call a "success:"

Obama asked for a primetime network shot to announce his Big Victory, and the red diaper babies of the networks actually refused him.

I'm not sure if this is just about the bottom line, or if the networks (and especially their news divisions) are feeling a bit used for repeatedly bending over for Obama whenever he sexts them a booty call, but otherwise treating them like the Town Pumps they are.

And maybe they've noticed that Obama's people always claim to only know the numbers they're interested in promoting, while claiming to have no idea about the ones that might not be so attractive.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (334)
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The appellation "Democrat-Media Complex" is more than just a jibe.

The communications giant Comcast announced in February that it would buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, creating the largest cable provider in America, with more than 33 million customers. That is about one third of the U.S. cable and satellite television market. FCC approval is required for the merger to go into effect. Critics of the deal say it would lessen competition and lead to even shoddier customer service. They are probably right, as all of us will soon find out, because there is little chance the merger will be stopped. Comcast, Time Warner, and their political fixers have spent years preparing for this moment—by buying off the Democratic Party.

Continetti ticks off Comcast's lavish donations to the Democrats, and Time Warner's as well. He throws up his hands at trying to estimate the value of the in-kind donations NBC and its parent company MSNBC provide the Democrat Party through relentless pro-Obama and anti-Obama-critic messaging, though he does ballpark this value at somewhere between "huge" and "felonious." (My words, not his.)

And yet the Republicans are not making an issue of this merger.

It is something of a political irony that Republicans, who for ideological reasons are pro-business, have not raised questions about, or objections to, the conjoining of two Democratic institutions into a media trust. If Republicans had any sense, they would wage war against Comcast and its Democratic enablers and turn the merger into a live issue. Needless to say they have not done so, perhaps in the wrongheaded and futile hope of scraps from the table of the Comcast cable beast, perhaps in the foolish and selfish notion that David Cohen may one day add another man to his company of lobbyists.

...

Imagine the noises from MSNBC if the merger involved Rupert Murdoch or Glenn Beck or Sheldon Adelson or the K-O-C-H brothers. Criticism would lead the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Costas would interrupt a Sunday Night Football game to decry corporate consolidation, Fallon would crack wise in his monologue.

Thanks to @benk84. Follow him on Twitter, or be Othered.

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (453)
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Andrew Stiles writes of the practice of "Othering" -- which is really just a primitive impulse to say that anyone who is Not Like Us is almost certainly a savage monster capable of undreamed horrors -- and how Progressives have embraced it as a political Standard Operating Procedure.

The biological purpose of "Othering" -- dehumanizing, actually -- is to shut down all empathy towards the target so that a maximalist war can be fought against that target without any human fellow-feeling weakening the killer instinct.

It makes sense to dehumanize one's enemy in some contexts -- War, of course, most famously. And for the two to three hours of a sporting match. Football players, for example, fill their heads with notions of how their opponents have demeaned them and so on to get some good warrior game faces on. (Of course, football players also tend to shut down all that nonsense after the game is over; they don't move on to the next game still thinking about how awful and arrogant their last opponents were.)

But Progressives have decided, collectively, to just treat their fellow Americans as the dehumanized Other 24/7. Not just before an election, mind you, but every single day of every single year.

And they do so while chanting "No H8," their limited intellects, conditioned by those who manipulate them into hatred, not capable of seeing the irony.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (349)
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Like a bus, just wait here a minute and another thread with some actual content will be along shortly.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:11 AM | Comments (266)
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Conservative Intel's David Freddoso joins Ace, Gabe, Drew, John & me to discuss the Tolerance Brigades' latest antics and the big recall at Government Motors.

Referenced: What did the Treasury Dept. Know About GMÂ’s Problems and When did they Know it?

Intro/Outro: Bad Company-Rock Steady / The Allman Brothers Band-Southbound

Questions & comments here: Ask the Blog

Listen: Stitcher | MP3 Download
Subscribe: RSS | iTunes

Browse (and even search!) the archives

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Ace (@AceofSpadesHQ)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 12:33 PM | Comments (295)
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• Obama's Stand Up Routine Is Laughable Indeed
  
• Hillary: There's A Double Standard On How Women Are Treated In The Media
  
• Senator Realized Too Late He's Shown Up To The Wrong Hearing
  
• You Can Still Qualify For Obamacare If You Suffer From A Temporary Cognitive Disability
  
• Can The Senate Map Keep Expanding For Republicans?
  
• The Volokh Conspiracy's Success
  
• The Cultivation Of Shame
  
• Bruce Braley Continues To Implode
  
• Welcome To The Era Of Politically Correct Web Browsing
  
• A Catastrophe Like No Other
  
• Russia Eyeing Land Grabs In Moldova And Georgia
  
• Thoughts On The Future Of Man
  
• Mozilla CEO Resigns
  
• Check Out Andrew Branca's Four Part Interview With A German News Network
  
• Captain America Review
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:55 AM | Comments (269)
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FFFFRIDAAAAY!

President Bush. Love the guy.

McDonald's is suspending operations in Crimea and offering to relocate its employees and their families to Ukraine.

Sec. Kerry says the State Department will reevaluate its involvement in the Middle East peace process, given its utter failure to provide him a launchpad for a 2016 run. Krauthammer's acerbic column on this is a must-read.

For some fun, BusinessWeek has a long read on Kevin Feige, one of the dudes running the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think they've done a great job with these and plan to see the new Captain America film this weekend.

The AOSHQ Podcast will be up later. We had David Freddoso of Conservative Intel and it was a riot. There were a lot of good Ask the Blog questions this week. Thanks for that.

Have a great weekend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (342)
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On this weekÂ’s podcast Ace and I disagreed over the importance and virtue of the latest Ryan Plan budget. As I wrote earlier this week, I think itÂ’s a waste of time that will be of no benefit to the GOP. I brought this up as my quick hit and Ace brought up Kevin WilliamsonÂ’s piece pointing out that thereÂ’s nothing close to a majority that supports big spending cuts. Obviously I agree with this because disagreeing with that notion is like disagreeing with the idea that the Sun will rise in the east and set in the west. ItÂ’s just a fact.

My problem with the Williamson/Ace position is that unlike the SunÂ’s daily path, public attitudes toward public policy are not fixed for all time by the laws of physics. America was not always enamored of big government. Liberals spent decades building support and banking incremental victories when thatÂ’s all that was available and making big leaps ahead when opportunities presented themselves. What liberals never did in their long march to the left was go right and agree to shrink or limit government.

Conservatives and the GOP have not marched steadily to the right. Quite the opposite in fact. When the GOP had both houses of Congress in the 90s they passed Ted Kennedy's SCHIP health insurance plan as a consolation gift to the Democrats after the defeat of HillaryCare. When they had both houses of Congress and the presidency they passed Medicare Part D, pushed the federal government further into controlling education through No Child Left Behind and generally spent money at historic levels on everything they could.

Yes, to his credit George W. Bush tried and failed to fundamentally reform Social Security. And having failed, unlike the Democrats and SCHIP, no Republican has mentioned it since.

One side sees rejection by the public as a temporary obstacle to be overcome and the other simply turns tail and never tries again.

Maybe Republicans are just responding to what people wanted but they certainly were not offering an alternative. They were not making the case that fiscal restraint isnÂ’t an option but an imperative.

Given the opportunity to use the catastrophic failure of ObamaCare to discredit the liberal program of big government, Republicans have responded by promising to deliver much of what ObamaCare was supposed to do but by different government sponsored means.

No wonder the Overton Window never moves in our direction. The GOP is too busy trying to follow the Democrats through the space they've already opened.

If there had been a comparable failure by conservatives or Republicans you can bet the left would be proposing all sorts of new programs, spending and regulations. ThatÂ’s how the Overton Window opensÂ…you use the environment you find yourself in to push the things you want.

Another status quo GOP budget that has no effect on the sequester busting Ryan-Murray agreement, that when push comes to shove Republicans wonÂ’t vote to actually implement if it means cutting a dime of spending or worse yet, missing the chance to spend even more money, is meaningless.

Right now the GOPÂ’s position amounts to saying, the path to smaller government involves giving back measures that shrink government and increasing government and once the public demands something that no one is offering, shrinking government, they will get right on delivering it.

Unfortunately that's not how politics works or how attitudes change. The Overton Window will not open itself. It has to be moved by an entire party, or at least a sizable chunk of it, committed to promoting and delivering something different first.

If you really want to start changing what's possible in politics, you're going to have to find and support candidates who are trying to move the electorate in your direction. Without that you'll keep getting told that the most direct path to where you want to go involves going in the opposite direction of your desired destination.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:09 AM | Comments (503)
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What's Flying Over Your Head Right Now?

Well go here and find out. Or you could create your own local aircraft radar-map with a cheap $20 dongle and some software. I'm just waiting on a good discone antenna and an LNA to set up my own monitoring system.

The Thugs Get Their Man

Brendan Eich is out at Mozilla. His crime: Giving $1000 to the Prop 8 campaign which was passed by a majority of Californians in 2008. And having the same views on gay marriage that Obama publicly stated circa 2007. Therefore he must be shunned and kept unemployed.

And Mozilla in the midst of self-congratulation is blind to the beam in their own eye:

Jimmy Carter Blames the XXX for Obama's Snubbing of Him

And if you're familiar with the man and his work I think you already know exactly who the XXX are.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:32 PM | Comments (551)
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I'm in such a terrible mood, but this is nice.

Open Thread. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:29 PM | Comments (492)
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