HEALTH CARE REFORM UPDATE:
Surprise, surprise--we're reminded again that when it comes to polling on this, how you ask the question matters, big time.
Most important is that, again, when the obvious negatives of single-payer, government-run health care insurance are pointed out to people, support for it drops significantly. This is yet another important reminder for Republicans and conservatives: stay on the attack!
OBAMA'S PLEDGES: AN UPDATE:
Guantanamo won't be closing anytime soon:
"President Obama acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that his administration would miss a self-imposed deadline to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by mid-January, admitting the difficulties of following through on one of his first pledges as president."
Oh, well--what else is new? He told us the stimulus bill would create hundreds of thousands of jobs by now, that if we passed that bill unemployment wouldn't rise, that we'd have a decision by now on Afghanistan, that we'd be out of Iraq, etc etc etc. None of those things have happened either.
THE SKY IS FALLING DEPT:
This time it's Tom Friedman playing Henny Penny:
"...the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.” The energy, climate, water and pollution implications of adding another 2.5 billion mouths to feed, clothe, house and transport will be staggering."
Really? Funny thing: we've heard this before, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Remember all the talk, the books, the articles, about a coming population "explosion", a population "bomb", that was going to mean a hugely crowded world, to starvation, to war? I do. None of it happened. I don't take UN reports as gospel or holy writ. Tom Friedman shouldn't, either.
ON PUTTING THE TERRORISTS ON TRIAL IN NEW YORK CITY:
Andy McCarthy of NRO has the best point on it--since when do these guys, who are not American citizens, who are foreign combatants--get "rights":
"What made the United States most vulnerable in the Nineties was our enemies' perception that they were at war and we were not. They gave us bombs, we gave them rights. That encouraged them to attack us more often and more audaciously — which is exactly what they did. If we are at war, and the Attorney General said this morning that we are, we have to treat it like a war. Pressed by Sen. Graham this morning, the AG could not name a single time when, during war, we captured an enemy combatant outside the U.S. and brought him into the United States for a civilian trial — vesting him with all the rights of an American citizen. That's because hasn't happened. That's not how you treat wartime enemies. Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians."
ND WOMEN'S HOOPS DIARY:
We'll be following the Notre Dame women's basketball team here this year. This is a team with some prized freshman recruits on the team this year, everyone--literally everyone--back from last year, and they're ranked #4 in the nation to start off. ND won its first game, 102-57 over Arkansas-Pine Bluff. No surprise there. What I liked though, was how Coach Muffet McGraw got after this team for allowing its opponent 57 points, and for ND making too many turnovers. She's holding this bunch to really high standards, in other words--which is what she did with the 2001 team that won the national championship.
