TR:  Presidential Leadership is Imminent – This is No Joke!

Breaking News – This Just In!

Obama “very close” to Afghan troop decision: TV report

At Your Service, my Lord!

BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday he is “very close” to a decision on boosting troop levels in Afghanistan and would make an announcement “in the next several weeks.”

In a transcript of the interview seen by Reuters, Obama said he did not want his successor as president to inherit the Afghan conflict, adding that a “multi-year occupation” would not serve the interests of the United States.

ThoughtRogue:  Has the left gone insane?  (or were they already there?)  Granting Jihadist terrorist combatants MY civil rights under our U.S. Constitution is verging on insane.  And then, trying them in American civilian courts, with all the rules of discovery and evidence, and so on, takes the cake, doesn’t it?

A few Questions which “Progressives” must answer satisfactorily in this case before trying KSM and his band of cohorts in New York City:

• When did OBL and fellow Islamo-fascist terrorists sign on to the Geneva Convention?
• What’s wrong exactly with Military Tribunals for these Jihadi wraiths, which have been used successfully since our Revolutionary War?  (and have recently been successfully vetted by the Supreme Court and Congress)
• Why exactly can’t Leftists understand the simple difference between Militant acts of War, and Civil Crimes?
• Were the horrific attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. really just one great mugging by poor Islamists?
• In selecting his trial’s jury, who exactly will be KSM’s “Peers”?  Can you say, OJ?
• Do we really want the standard of Justice for those who commit Acts of War against us, to gladly let 9 out of 10 Jihadists go free, lest one of them be imperfectly condemned?
• Isn’t this simply a Show Trial by the Obamunists, which will drag-on magically until just before the 2012 election, really their strategy to finally put Bush & Company on trial for their alleged plethora of “crimes” against Jihadists?

The Truth About Gitmo

ThoughtRogue:  I’ll heartily admit that Dr. Sowell is one of my personal heroes.  Hear, Hear him!  BTW – a so-called “Birther” is someone who believes the Constitution should be followed to the letter (e.g. “No Person except a natural born Citizen..”).  Those who castigate and persecute us, Birthers, should be called “Constitution Deniers!”

Think Things, Not Words

Random thoughts on the passing scene.

By Thomas Sowell

Wise Man.

Upon learning that the Constitution requires a president to be a natural-born citizen, a college student asked: “What makes a natural-born citizen any more qualified than one born by C-section?”

Airlines that keep passengers trapped for hours in planes sitting on the runway should be prosecuted for unlawful imprisonment.

When politicians propose some hugely expensive new program and are asked how the government is going to pay for it, a standard ploy over the years has been to claim that they will pay for it by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.” At a recent town-hall meeting, a citizen raised the obvious question: If you can do that, why haven’t you done it already?

Marxism is an ism that has become a wasm.

What is called “universal health care” can turn out to be universal “don’t care” medical treatment, when Washington bureaucrats can overrule what you and your doctor want to do.

What ever happened to Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel? Could she have met with foul play? Where is the FBI when we need it?

The older I get, the more I learn to tolerate human shortcomings — and the less I tolerate bad attitudes.

After political crusades for “affordable housing” ended up ruining the housing market and much of the economy with it, many of the same politicians are now carrying on a crusade for “affordable health care.” But what you can afford has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing anything. Refusing to pay those costs means that you are just not going to continue getting the same quantity and quality — regardless of what any politician says or how well he says it.

Want to win an easy bet? Bet someone that Babe Ruth had a lower lifetime earned-run average than Cy Young, Whitey Ford, or Sandy Koufax. During his early years with the Red Sox, Ruth pitched nine shutouts in a season, which is still the American League record for a left-handed pitcher. He would have made the baseball Hall of Fame, even if he had never hit a home run.

Joe Wilson got into more trouble for telling the truth than Barack Obama got into by telling a demonstrable lie about adding millions of people to the insurance rolls without adding a dime to the deficit. As regards providing medical insurance for illegal immigrants, I doubt that the president will do that. More likely, he will legalize them first and then give them medical insurance.

The way Hollywood elites have sprung to the defense of Roman Polanski to keep him from being extradited to the United States, despite the heinous crime he is accused of, suggests that — like other egalitarians — they consider those who are “one of us” to be more equal than others.

When I contemplate the direction in which this government and this society are moving, my biggest consolation is that economists’ predictions are often wrong. I can only hope that my expectations are wrong by miles.

What is most frightening about the political Left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. All problems seem to them to be due to other people not being as wise or as noble as they are.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Think things, not words.” In words, many see a need for “social justice” to override “the dictates of the market.” In reality, what is called “the market” consists of human beings making their own choices at their own cost. What is called “social justice” is government imposition of the notions of third parties, who pay no price for being wrong.

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Moammar Qaddafi, and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama’s many previous years of associations and alliances with people who hate America — Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, and so on — at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots?

TR:  Can’t you wait for your DMV-style Healthcare?  I don’t know about you, but there’s something so motivating, like in the pit of my stomach, when I hear such a compelling message from overpaid celebrities.  Hey, Obama’s a Celebrity and a False Idol.  Not bad for someone who can’t run a lemon-ade stand, and still refuses to release any documentation revealing WHO he really is!

This Just In!

Reported by Bolf Wiltzer, No Compromise Media

Copenhagen, Denmark – Breaking News…  Team Obama got quickly into the airspace over Denmark today after spending many hours giving international Olympic Committee officials a taste of the Chicago Way as Mr. & Mrs. Obama tag-teamed them wielding their incredible charm – and some special “arm-twisting” as well.

Air Danish One. Oprah, eat my Kale!

As the vote for Chicago to host the 2016 Games epically failed, Mrs. Winfrey’s chartered 727 nearly failed to get airborne before reaching the end of the runway.  It was earlier reported that Ms. Oprah was torn between sampling Michelle’s O’s homegrown White House Kale, versus raiding the famed Danish pastry shops while enduring her international lobbying mission on behalf of her svelte hometown.

In other major news, Obamunist Administration officials were nearly giddy with their early success in strong-arming the Iranians in their recent meeting with Shia delegates from the Religion of Peace.  An announcement was made immediately following the appeasement talks where it was agreed to meet again!.. sometime in the near future!.. no really, soon.. to continue discussing how we can All get along in peace, learning to live happily adjacent to a nuclear armed Iran.  And, who knows, we could even have another meeting at some point and all hold hands, singing together with a banjo around the fire.. sometime soon.  Yes, we can!

Watch as this stunned Chicagoway News Network (CNN) anchor gropes for his oxygen mask as their bid for $Billions in civic graft noses over in flames…

ThoughtRogue:  There seems to be some great confusion about the term “Natural Born” Citizen.  Most people and politicians, who also happen to be Constitutionally illiterate, confuse this with “Native Born” – which means one is born on U.S. soil – sorry, but not good enough alone to be eligible for the Presidency. 

Wake Up, America! WAKE UP!

To be “Natural Born” one must be born by U.S. Citizen PARENTS, and be born on U.S. Soil – as was John McCain – and every previous President (apart from a few Founders who are covered by their own clause).  To be a “Naturalized” citizen, is yet something else; it is where people who are not U.S. citizens go through a legalization, or “naturalization”, process to become a Citizen.

A Constitutional requirement to serve as a U.S. Senator is to be a U.S. Citizen – naturalized or otherwise.  The U.S. Presidency, however, as outlined in Article II, Section 1., contains a higher standard – the pre-requisite of being a Natural Born Citizen.  Can an illegal alien invade the U.S., give birth to an illegal “native born” baby, and that child later be eligible for the U.S. Presidency?  No.  That child’s NOT a natural born citizen – even if they legally become a citizen later.

Barack Hussein Obama II, by his own auto-hagiographical admission, cannot possibly be eligible to legally serve as President of the U.S. because his father was a Kenyan National and British colonial subject – no matter where he happened to be born (a birthplace which has NEVER been publicly confirmed).  Thus, BHOII is an illegal Usurper of the office of the President of the United States (POTUS).

Thank GOD our Forefathers had the wisdom to have our U.S. Military Officers swear allegiance, NOT to the POTUS, but to our U.S. CONSTITUTION and to protect it against all enemies – both foreign and Domestic.

Have you asked yourself yet, or asked your family and neighbors, just why the Usurper of the United States, BHOII, has hugged and bowed before every vicious dictator, king, and tyrant on the planet?  Or why he has back-handed every one of our traditional allies – such as berating the State of Israel even while ordering her what to do upon their OWN LAND?!

How can BHOII recite Islamic phrases in Arabic with a near-perfect accent? – a feat according to Islamists.  Just why did BHOII skip out on the National Day of Prayer in which all modern Presidents have participated?  BHOII stated emphatically recently that, not only was our nation NOT a Judeo-Christian nation, but he announced to the world that the U.S. is one of the “largest Islamic nation’s” on earth!  Note:  Barack Hussein Obama II, inherited his name from his Islamic Kenyan father, and went to Muslim primary school in the Muslim nation of Indonesia where he lived with his Muslim step-father while growing up.

After his sudden disassociation from “Rev.” Wright’s radical, racist, “Black Liberation Theology” “church”, the Obama family has curiously and completely run out of luck in finding a “Christian” church anywhere within the District of Columbia which suits their “faith”.

Then, as do all Marxist radicals, BHOII has been hell-bent on cutting the legs out from under our great military.  He has cut the cutting edge F-22 air-superiority fighter program where they produced only a fraction of the originally requested number.  Not to worry they say, the much cheaper JSF will act as a better replacement.  Uh, only one small problem, though – the JSF fighters are not even being produced in numbers in their final form yet!

BHOII ordered the Pentagon to ratchet back our national ballistic missile shield immediately in the wake of North Korea test-firing several missiles in celebration of our Fourth of July festivities last summer.  Now he has scrapped the ballistic missile shield that had been promised to Poland and our Eastern European allies – leaving them to twist in the wind before a resurgent Russian threat.  Is it sheer coincidence that BHOII announced his betrayal of Europe on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland?  Who was that message for?

The list goes on, and on, even as BHOII admits he knew LAST YEAR of Iran’s second secret underground nuclear facility (which he somehow failed to mention in his recent feckless U.N. speech), he continues to try to back Israel into the corner of nuclear Armageddon – an apocalyptic set-up of our former ally which couldn’t be more “transparent”.

Folks, it is high time to ask yourself regarding this “President” of the U.S.:  WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON HERE?!

Obama Risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’

By John L. Perry, Newsmax

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

• Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
• Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.
• They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.
• They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.
• They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.
• They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag.
• They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.
• They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do?

"Yes You Can, Iran. It's All Set Up."

Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?

Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?

What happens if the generals Obama sent to win the Afghan war are told by this president (who now says, “I’m not interested in victory”) that they will be denied troops they must have to win? Do they follow orders they cannot carry out, consistent withtheir oath of duty? Do they resign en masse?

Or do they soldier on, hoping the 2010 congressional elections will reverse the situation? Do they dare gamble the national survival on such political whims?

Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America’s military leadership is lost in a fool’s fog.

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

TR:   “Equal work for equal pay”?  Barack Hussein Obama II’s “great accomplishments..”??  Aaarrrrggghhhhh!!!!…   Note during the second piece the stiff-arm salutes made hip and cool by displaying various numbers of fingers.  At the end, notice the closed fist pump of “Social Justice”.  Just CReeeepy.   Tell us what You noticed..

TR:  Gee, ask yourself, What would Jimmy C. do??  Is there anyone with a more pathetic track record than this feckless, flaccid, fatuous, fallacious, fetid example of a former “president”??

How could BHOII possibly be an “African-American”?  First of all, the world awaits ANY real proof that he is even an American (Citizen).  He has boasted in his two auto-hagiographies that he is proudly half White, and half native Kenyan.  How does that make one an “African-American” as if he marched in the Civil Rights movement, or has done anything of the sort?

Click on JC’s image for video:

I won the Nobel prize for Peace?!

Obama’s Dissolving Credibility

By Robert Tracinski, RCP

Experience: ACORN. Any Questions?

We had our warning during the campaign, we really did.

Remember Barack Obama’s famous speech on race, back in March of 2008? Obama had spent 20 years listening to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright, full of venomous anti-Americanism and attacks on “white America.” Yet when the reverend’s rants were revealed to the public, Obama tried to convince us that he just happened to be missing from the pews on any well-documented Sunday, and that the Jeremiah Wright we saw and heard was not the Jeremiah Wright he knew.

It was a giant, implausible lie. Yet the speech was smoothly delivered and well-turned, perfectly balanced to seem to empathize both with the grievances of blacks and with the concerns of whites. So most people seemed to believe it.

This is what Obama’s supposed gift for rhetoric amounts to: the ability to tell a smoothly polished bald-faced lie.

And that was the whole essence of Obama’s big health-care speech. It was a pack of lies from beginning to end, and if we’re going to finally see through this flim-flam artist once and for all-as more and more people are beginning to do-then we had better identify them one at a time.

I’ll skip the lies by omission-his only mention of town hall meetings, for example, was of people who “shared their stories with us” because they are “counting on us to succeed” in passing a health-care bill. Yeah, that’s what happened at town hall meetings last month!

And I’ll skip the non-health-care lies, like Obama’s claim that he merely inherited giant deficits-when his first big legislative campaign was for three quarters of a trillion dollars in new deficit spending. Or his claim that the economic crisis was brought back from the brink “thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January.” (Does anybody remember that day in February when the Dow dropped 300 points because Obama’s Treasury Secretary gave a speech in which he failed to outline any details of his latest plan? Bold and decisive indeed.) Or Obama’s claim that Ted Kennedy was not an advocate of big government.

For now, let’s just stick to the speech’s seven big lies.

1) Obama’s proposal is just minor, incremental tinkering.

The key to Obama’s speeches is that he counts on you not to be listening carefully and not to compare what he says from one moment to the next. So while he vows to be the “final” president to reform health-care-indicating that his approach is a sweeping, once-and-for-all overhaul, he then goes on to tell you that everyone else is a radical, but he’s just in favor of cautious, incremental tinkering.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months.

Does it take a thousand pages of legislation to not “disrupt one-sixth of our economy”? The reality is that the proposals he advocates would create a vast new bureaucracy from scratch, with sweeping powers to regulate private health-insurance plans-eventually including employer-provided plans-and forcing individual health-insurance plans to be offered on a government-controlled “exchange.” It is a plan for the comprehensive restructuring of the health-insurance industry-but Obama wants you to think that he’s not really doing anything. Which makes you realize that he doesn’t want to you notice or think too hard about what he is doing.

2) Obama’s plan is bipartisan.

This is another attempt to deflect scrutiny by claiming that everything he is proposing is safe, bland, anodyne. Thus, his plan “incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight-Democrats and Republicans.” Which explains why Obama has so few Republican votes that his allies in Congress are now talking about ramming the bill through, in a dubious parliamentary maneuver, on Democratic votes alone.

Obama’s one token concession to Republicans gives you a flavor for his actual “bipartisanship.” Citing Republican arguments that curbing excessive medical malpractice awards would help reduce “defensive medicine,” i.e., extra tests ordered to avoid a lawsuit, the president offered to authorize “demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues”-an ineffectual, symbolic measure the Bush administration tinkered with because it couldn’t get Congress to pass real tort reform.

3) You can keep your existing insurance.

This is the central claim of Obama’s speech: “First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” Notice that this is already a minor change from his previous statements on this issue, in which he made the same assurance for all “private health insurance plans.” The change acknowledges the fact that individual plans would be swept into the government “exchange.”

But notice that, while claiming he won’t change your existing coverage, Obama goes on to detail a whole set of changes to that coverage that will be mandated by government:

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition…. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses…. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care.

And notice what each of these regulations would do: it would increase costs for private health-insurance companies. They would have to pay more to cover people with pre-existing conditions; more for people who go over their yearly or lifetime caps, more to make up for the limits on your out-of-pocket expenses, and more for routine checkups. Oh yes, and later on, Obama explains that his bill will be paid for by increased taxes on drug companies and insurance companies.

There is no way to increase all of these costs for the insurers without causing a corresponding increase in health-insurance premiums.

So you can keep your health-insurance-except that its cost will be driven up by all of the regulations imposed by Obama’s bill. This is a well-documented phenomenon. In fact, the states in which health-insurance is most expensive-places like New York-are those which have the greatest number of “mandates” dictating benefits that insurers have to provide.

That’s why most of us grasp that the “public option” is not really an option, in the long run. Obama’s bill is designed to drive up the costs of private insurance, making it even more unaffordable-and thereby herding all of us into a government-managed insurance plan as the only remaining alternative.

And that brings us to the next implausibility in the speech.

4) The “public option” will not be subsidized by government.

President Obama would have us believe that a government-run insurance company would be less expensive than private insurance because it avoids “some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs, and executive salaries.” Does anyone actually believe this? Obama himself acknowledges that the “public option” leads to less efficiency when it comes to delivering mail. Why should we believe the government is suddenly going to become a model of efficiency in the health-insurance market?

It is obvious what is actually going to happen. Since the whole purpose of the “public option” is to provide a cheaper competitor against private insurance, the government will do whatever is required to ensure that this is the case-including subsidizing the public option.

After all, weren’t Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac supposed to be self-supporting enterprises, too? Why should “affordable health-care” end up any differently than “affordable housing”?

Read the rest of this entry »

Yet Another Washington Flop in the Making

Obamacare will be one of many federal failures.

By Deroy Murdock, National Review Online

Don't Tread on US!

As the health-care reform debate roars on, Uncle Sam resembles a restless college senior who is flunking economics, finance, and management. Despite a report card full of Fs, he suddenly announces: “I want to go to medical school!”

Similarly, Pres. Barack Obama stood before a joint session of Congress Wednesday night and re-embraced a government option for health insurance. As he explained, “Sometimes government has to step in to help deliver” on the promise that “hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play.”

Alas, too often when Washington steps in, failing grades follow.

• Medicare, the Great Society’s shining jewel, is a battered gem. Its hospitals program already bleeds ruby-red ink. “Medicare Part A again will spend more in benefits than it receives in revenues” this fiscal year, observes Heritage Foundation analyst Bob Moffitt. Its Trust Fund is an accounting fiction, but even that fantasy disappears in eight years, with depletion in 2017. Even worse, Heritage’s Brian Riedl calculates that between 2009 and 2083 Medicare’s budget will zoom from 3.1 percent to 14.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Its unfunded liabilities (promises backed by campaign balloons instead of cash) equal $36.3 trillion.
• Social Security, the New Deal’s cornerstone, is as cutting edge as a 78 RPM record. In 2016, barely six years away, it will begin paying more in pension checks than it collects in payroll taxes. Congress then will be unable to use Social Security’s surplus like a ShamWow to absorb red ink. Social Security’s unfunded obligations equal $17.5 trillion — again not financed by anything but congressional speeches.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: These two government options in the home-mortgage arena are widely considered the twin jet engines that flew the economy into a hillside. These were supposed to be money-making, quasi-private companies, with no federal involvement beyond an implicit guarantee that government would cover their losses. Emboldened by this cozy federal safety net, these enterprises embarked upon financial acrobatics they otherwise might have avoided. Rather than generate profits between 2009 and 2019, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, Fannie and Freddie will cost taxpayers $389 billion.
• The Hope for Homeowners program began last October 1. Congress gave it a hefty $300 billion to help some 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. According to an August 10 Newsday editorial, “It has produced exactly one refinanced loan.” One down, 399,999 to go.
• “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?” Obama asked in August. “It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Yes, indeed. Its two-year fiscal deficit approaches $8 billion. It has pried some 60,000 mailboxes off of America’s streets, the Lexington Institute reports. It also is weighing the cancellation of Saturday services. Even as e-mail, digitally attached documents, and online banking decrease demand for first-class snail mail, the Post Office keeps hiking the cost of stamps. What sort of business actually raises prices while customers walk away?
• The Internal Revenue Code is like John Donne’s poetry: It means something different to everyone. Perhaps flummoxed by its 67,000 pages, even IRS advisers offer conflicting answers to identical questions. But today’s U.S. Tax Code will be a triumph of window-like clarity compared with the U.S. Health Code that Obamacare would trigger. Just wait until every medical lobby — from the American Stethoscope Council to the National Tongue Depressor League — hikes up Capitol Hill to demand exemptions, loopholes, and subsidies.
• Although Washington already owns 54 percent of the square mileage west of the Rockies, it obsessively purchases new acreage. More than on private property, land-use restrictions on federal soil often prevent thinning of foliage. Flames frequently follow.

“Most western wildfires burn federal land,” William Welch wrote in September 9’s USA Today. To date this year, 123,554 private acres burned in California, versus 271,000 federal acres.

Rather than inaugurate a frivolous, bottomless government option for health care, Washington should launch a “private option” for nearly every federal activity outside the Pentagon.