l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 奥巴马说‘我们还发现买保险是件复杂的事情’。多谢分享，天才，或许在政府管理1/
6美国经济之前你该多想想”
Thus Spake Obama
The incompetence of our neo-monarchy
By Mark Steyn
t is a condition of my admission to this great land that I am not allowed to
foment the overthrow of the United States government. Oh, I signed it
airily enough, but you’d be surprised, as the years go by, how often the
urge to foment starts to rise in one’s gullet. Fortunately, at least as far
as constitutional government goes, the president of the United States is
doing a grand job of overthrowing it all by himself.
On Thursday, he passed a new law at a press conference. George III never did
that. But, having ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with
Obamacare, the president announced that he is now ordering them not to
comply with Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known
) passed a law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The
regulatory bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your
health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your health
plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The insurance
industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of Obamacare. Now
the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce Obamacare.
“I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this,” mused former Vermont
governor Howard Dean. But he’s obviously some kind of right-wing wacko.
Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to “pass” a “
law” allowing people to keep their health plans. The same president who had
unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep their health plans
indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that effect: It only counts
if he does it — geddit? As his court eunuchs at the Associated Press
obligingly put it: “Obama Will Allow Old Plans.” It’s Barry’s world; we
just live in it.
The reason for the benign Sovereign’s exercise of the Royal Prerogative is
that millions of his subjects — or “folks,” as he prefers to call us, no
fewer than 27 times during his press conference — have had their lives
upended by Obamacare. Your traditional hard-core statist, surveying the
mountain of human wreckage he has wrought, usually says, “Well, you can’t
make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” But Obama is the first to
order that his omelet be unscrambled and the eggs put back in their original
shells. Is this even doable? No. That’s the point. When it doesn’t work,
he’ll be able to give another press conference blaming the insurance
companies, or the state commissioners, or George W. Bush . . .
The most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the
boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of
reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is
complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should have
thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the economy. By “
we,” the president means “I.” Out here in the ruder provinces of his
decrepit realm, we “folks” are well aware of how complicated insurance is.
What isn’t complicated in the Sultanate of Sclerosis? But, as with so many
other things, Obama always gives the vague impression that routine features
of humdrum human existence are entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette,
informed that the peasantry could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have
responded, “Let them eat cake.” There is no evidence these words ever
passed her lips, but certainly no one ever accused her of saying, “If you
like your cake, you can keep your cake,” and then having to walk it back
with “What we’re also discovering is that cake is complicated to buy.”
That contribution to the annals of monarchical unworldliness had to await
the reign of Queen Barry Antoinette, whose powdered wig seems to have
slipped over his eyes.
Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronounced the day after his election,
he’s “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Naturally,
Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us five years ago, “I know more
about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Well,
apart from his signature health-care policy. That’s a mystery to him. “I
was not informed directly that the website would not be working,” he told
us. The buck stops with something called “the executive branch,” which is
apparently nothing to do with him. As evidence that he was entirely out of
the loop, he offered this:
Had I been I informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, “Boy, this is
going to be great.” You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t
think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, “This is going to be like
shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,” a week before the website opens, if I
thought that it wasn’t going to work.
Ooooo-kay. So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not
smart enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to
inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough to
check that his website works before he goes out and tells people what a
great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough to know
that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well it works
if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s smart enough
to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know enough not to
let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the very best of
hands.
Michael Beschloss is right: This is what it means to be smart in a neo-
monarchical America. Obama spake, and it shall be so. And, if it turns out
not to be so, why pick on him? He talks a good Royal Proclamation; why get
hung up on details?
Until October 1, Obama had never done anything — not run a gas station, or
a doughnut stand — other than let himself be wafted onward and upward to
the next do-nothing gig. Even in his first term, he didn’t really do:
Starting with the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus, he ran a money-no-object
government that was all money and no objects; he spent and spent, and left
no trace. Some things he massively expanded (food stamps, Social Security
disability) and other things he massively diminished (effective foreign
policy), but all were, so to speak, preexisting conditions. Obamacare is the
first thing Obama has actually done, and, if you’re the person it’s being
done to, it’s not pretty.
The president promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Certainly,
other men have succeeded in transforming settled, free societies: Pierre
Trudeau did in Canada four decades ago, and so, in post-war Britain, did the
less charismatic Clement Attlee. And, if you subscribe to their particular
philosophy, their transformations were effected very efficiently. But Obama
is an incompetent, so “fundamentally transformed” is a euphemism for “
wrecked beyond repair.” As a socialist, he makes a good socialite.
But on he staggers, with a wave of his scepter, delaying this, staying that,
exempting the other, according to his regal whim and internal polling. The
omniscient beneficent Sovereign will now graciously “allow” us “folks”
to keep all those junk plans from bad-apple insurers. Yet even the wisest
King cannot reign forever, and what will happen decades down the road were
someone less benign — perhaps even (shudder) a Republican — to ascend the
throne and wield these mighty powers?
Hey, relax: If you like your constitution, you can keep your constitution.
Period. And your existing amendments. Well, most of them — except for the
junk ones . . .
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America:
Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn | o*****t
发帖数: 1540 | 2 相反，奥巴马觉得征税异常简单：“你们应该再多交点税，看看这些穷人们吧，他们都
不能安心的Vote D了”
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【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: 奥巴马说‘我们还发现买保险是件复杂的事情’。多谢分享，天才，或许在政府管理1/
: 6美国经济之前你该多想想”
: Thus Spake Obama
: The incompetence of our neo-monarchy
: By Mark Steyn
: t is a condition of my admission to this great land that I am not allowed to
: foment the overthrow of the United States government. Oh, I signed it
: airily enough, but you’d be surprised, as the years go by, how often the
: urge to foment starts to rise in one’s gullet. Fortunately, at least as far
: as constitutional government goes, the president of the United States is
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