A question for all you math whizzes out there

My question is this: what race or racial mix will the next first black President of the United States be? I mean, OK, the first first black President was 100% white. (Yes, you are reading these sentences correctly.) Then the second first black President, Barack Obama, is actually not black but bi-racial, we are reminded.

So is the next first black President going to be 100% black or three quarters black? Or maybe some other mix entirely? Or maybe Indian? I'm of the mind that he or she will be 3/4 black, then we'll go 7/8, then 15/16, etc. and we will never get a 100% pure black man or woman as the President. What is this opinion based on? That's a good question, and I'll see if I can maybe come up with something, or maybe I'll ask some guy wearing a white sheet over his head.

Some people might be depressed when they realize that we might never get a prezzie with a perfect soul brother pedigree. But it's not really a big deal because no one is 100% white either. All us white folk have been mixed in with the descendants of Adam and Eve who were black. And that's a good thing, since the alternative is to be the evil creation of a crazy black Frankenstein named Yakub by using selective breeding and magnets.

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Common Sense on Bringing Down Health Care Costs

CATO dude Michael Tanner points out that the best way to bring down health care costs is to use less health care. He's right that the Republicans are not broadcasting this economic fact, probably out of fear of it's unpopularity. But it needs to be stated, so we have to let the libertarians say it. Excerpt:

No one is suggesting that people shouldn't have insurance. But insurance is ultimately meant to spread the risk of catastrophic events, not to simply prepay your health care. Your homeowners insurance covers you if your house burns down. It doesn't pay to mow your lawn or paint the fence.

I suppose I feel justified by this since I'm one of those catastrophic policy holders that the President doesn't considered to be really insured. Well, I don't smoke like he does, so I'll probably have less health problems. Besides, it's my life. And it's my money.

Man from K Street Owns in Obamacare Discussion

I was reading an old post which I'd linked in a comment thread which noted the strange relationship over the years between Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan. The discussion thread was interesting, but the comment that popped out at me was from the mysterious Man from K Street. (You can read it here.) And I thought, by Jove! I'd nearly forgotten about him! And besides, I could have had a V-8!

Googling "man from k street" turned up a recent comment on a Dreher blog post which I found to be worth noting:

The Man From K Street
September 9, 2009 10:04 PM
I clapped when the president said that he would make it illegal for insurance companies to punish people with pre-existing conditions. Terrific!

So terrific it's already been illegal since, um, 1996.

Julie and I were talking over the weekend about friends who are struggling to pay for health care between jobs, and how we'd be pleased to pay higher taxes if it would make it easier for families like them to sleep at night

You'll both be very, very pleased over the next decade or so then.

LOL

All I can say is that Rod really must suspend his critical faculties whenever Obama gets up and talks, which isn't a good thing to do since Obama has given around 300 speeches after about 230 days in office. In his big moment last week he was caught in several lies—not just the "illegals won't be covered" lie—and the polls show that the bump he got from the 47-minute speech is just that—a little bump which has flattened back down.

Jennifer Rubin on Waiting for Obama's "Magic Trick"

How do you cut waste, fraud and abuse and prevent rationing and expand "coverage" with an enormous new government program? Jennifer Rubin wonders. Her conclusion is that you can't, and that when the President claims he can, he's lying.

But in their frustration at the president’s vacuity, the Post editors overlook a key problem. There isn’t a way to do the things he has promised (avoid adding to the deficit and slow down health-cost inflation) with the sort of government-run system Obama is wedded to. You can’t do it unless you massively ration care, which, if we have learned anything in the past month, is not going to be an easy sell to the public. If you want to try to do these things, you can’t get there through a government-centric plan. What may get there is expanding the health-care insurance market, spurring individual health-insurance purchases, and real tort reform.

So it is not as if Obama is holding out on us or has some super-duper solution tucked in Larry Summers’s filing cabinet. The answer is that there isn’t any answer. Obama will either have to lie about the financial ramifications of the plan he is pushing and run roughshod over the CBO and private analysts, or he’ll have to try another sort of health-care reform. If his speech this past week is any guide, I’m betting he’ll lie.

Can we please get the number right?

From CNS News, "Once Again Obama Misstates Number of Uninsured Americans — This Time in a New York Times Op-Ed". Yes, but misstates equals overstates, naturally.

In fact, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 35.920 million uninsured U.S. citizens and 9.737 million uninsured foreign nationals residing in the United States. Counting the uninsured foreign nationals, that makes a total of 45.657 million—or “nearly 46 million”-- uninsured people in the United States.

But you cannot say, as President Obama has, that there are “nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance coverage” or that “46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage” unless you count 9.737 million foreign nationals as “Americans” and “fellow citizens.”

The breakdown of the almost 36 million who actually are American citizens is interesting as well. I heard that a large number of these people are eligible for Medicaid and most of the rest are people who have decided not to carry health coverage for whatever reason--cost most likely. So why not concentrate on these folks? Allow a wider diversity of low-cost plans for those who opt-out due to cost, and come up with some kind of auto-enrollment for those eligible for Medicaid? Because Obama wants to blow the current system up. That's the only sensible answer.

Obamacare "worse than we thought"

James C. Capretta and Yuval Levin explain why I'm hopeful that Obamacare will die in the waiting room. Excerpt:

The reasons for the public revolt are easy to see. The Democrats want to spend $1.5 trillion over a decade, impose an $800 billion tax increase in the midst of the worst recession in a generation, increase federal borrowing by $239 billion (on top of the $11 trillion the Obama budget already requires us to borrow through 2019), impose costly mandates on employers that will discourage hiring as unemployment nears 10 percent, force individuals to buy one-size-fits-all government defined insurance, and insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients. All of that would occur whether or not the plan includes a "public option," which at this point it does include and which will exacerbate all of these problems.

As these facts have become clear, Obama's standing has fallen and public opinion has grown decidedly less enthusiastic for the administration's approach. The trend is likely to continue, because the details of the plan reveal that its two most serious drawbacks--its cost and the prospect of government rationing--are worse than even most of their critics have grasped.

Then they go on to explain several drawbacks including the premium subsidy program and the centrally managed and controlled care implicit in the bill. Here's their conclusion:

Paying more for a great health care system might perhaps be justifiable, and there might even be a case for accepting a system worse than the one we have now in order to save money. But paying more for a worse health care system simply makes no sense--yet this is the bargain the president and his allies are proposing.

Pi Day

Not July 22, bloke.