Crossposted from Flopping Aces

He picked the wrong side in the delusional notion that the Mullahs will give him a deal on nukes!

When tyrants see weakness, they seldom agree to give up something of value! That should be the driving motivation behind our dealings with Iran’s government. Sadly, the opposite is true.

We stand at a pivotal moment, not just for the people of Iran, but also for the hopes for peace in the wider world. Nothing should be more important than encouraging the Iranian people to remove the bloodthirsty regime which has been behind so much misery and death for many throughout the world including Americans.

No vain pursuit of a worthless short term agreement on nuclear issues should stand in the way of what would truly be a game changer in the global war on terror. Yet, this is what Obama is doing. He won’t lift a finger to help the Iranian people get rid of the Mullahs that govern Iran because he thinks he can get them to make a deal on nukes. He’s wrong and the entire world will pay the price as the opportunity to for REAL CHANGE slips by.

Photo at right from “The Price of Freedom” posted by an Iranian blogger living in London.

Thanks Missy for collecting some excellent thought pieces on the problem. Here’s a sampling:

Obama, Siding With the Regime
By Robert Kagan
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

…Obama never meant to spark political upheaval in Iran, much less encourage the Iranian people to take to the streets. That they are doing so is not good news for the president but, rather, an unwelcome complication in his strategy of engaging and seeking rapprochement with the Iranian government on nuclear issues.
…
Whatever [Obama's] personal sympathies may be, if he is intent on sticking to his original strategy, then he can have no interest in helping the opposition. His strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the government’s efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in league with the opposition’s efforts to prolong the crisis.
…
If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what “realism” is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China’s leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats — though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest. We’ll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate.

Oh dear, how inconvenient for the White House
By Melanie Phillips
The Spectator (UK)
Tuesday, 16th June 2009

… [I]n all this ferment, Obama stands exposed. Everywhere his strategy of abasement to tyranny is going belly-up. Korea test-fired its nukes and gave Washington the finger. And of course the flip-side of the grovelling to America’s enemies is his arm-lock on its ally. Having been so conspicuously even-handed in Iran between tyranny and resistance, there is one area where Obama is not being even-handed. It is only towards Israel, the prospective victim of Iranian genocidal and potentially nuclear aggression, that Obama is playing the heavy and making demands that he is making of no other country.

And now Israel is also fighting back. Netanyahu’s adroit challenge to the Palestinians to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state immediately laid bare Palestinian rejectionism — and has now put Obama in the position of forcing Israel to bring into being a state which rests on the belief that Israel should be destroyed.

To this now explicitly demonstrated fact, Obama seems resolutely blind. To the condemnation of Hezbollah by the Lebanese, he was deaf. Now Iran may be on the point of finally getting rid of its regime, Obama is struck dumb. As the world struggles to find its way out of tyranny and into freedom there will be no assistance from the White House, whose present incumbent is simply on the wrong side of history.

Obama’s foreign policy is quickly turning into one massive sh&@ball. By comparison, Jimmy Carter’s foreign outlook seems sound!

More here.

also:
Did I say 1.3 trillion for the ObamaCare idiocy? Was I WAAAAAAY off or what?

Health Systems Innovations Network, a consulting group, went ahead and estimated the full cost of a bill that included the subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and reduced the number of uninsured by 99 percent. With these assumptions, they estimated (pdf) the cost at a staggering $4 trillion over 10 years, resulting in the shift of 79 million Americans to government-run health care. The report does not include possible tax increases or spending offsets, but notes that, “this would be a challenging proposal to finance with budget neutrality.”

And now the Democrats are getting a bit worried and have given the folks with common sense an opening to fight back:

The Senate Finance Committee is delaying its first public drafting session on major health care legislation until after the July Fourth recess, a lengthy setback but one that even Democrats say is critically needed to let them work on reducing the costs of the bill.

The Finance Committee’s bill is believed to have the best chance of bipartisan support. The drafting session had been scheduled for Tuesday. But new cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office on health care proposals came in much more expensive than expected, emboldening critics and alarming Democrats.

The Democrats are scrambling:

Congressional Democrats and the White House are scrambling to regain their footing after a series of setbacks has stalled political momentum to reform the nation’s healthcare system.

~~~

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee postponed the markup of its healthcare reform bill by one day, to Wednesday. On the eve of that markup, the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce publicly ripped the bill.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) initially planned to release his bill Wednesday, but he has pushed back his timetable because of cost estimate concerns.

“Will we have something out tomorrow? Not sure,” Baucus said Tuesday. “Thursday or probably Friday,” he added.

Perhaps more importantly, the unity that Democrats touted earlier this year has cracked. As conservatives lambaste Democrats, liberal healthcare groups are not rushing to their defense because so many questions about the legislation have not been answered.

Of course with the MSM still behaving like Obama’s own mouthpiece it will be difficult, but not impossible, to stop the idiocy:

ABC is refusing paid ads for its health care program at the White House. Thus they’re refusing even a paid-for alternative viewpoint.

We requested the rates to buy a 60 second network spot immediately preceding the broadcast of the Town Hall meeting. We would have produced a spot specifically for this program.

Here is statement from Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients Rights.

“It is unfortunate – and unusual – that ABC is refusing to accept paid advertising that would present an alternative viewpoint for the White House health care event. Health care is an issue that touches every American and all potential pieces of legislation have carried a pricetag in excess of $1 trillion of taxpayers’ money. The American people deserve a healthy, robust debate on this issue and ABC’s decision – as of now – to exclude even paid advertisements that present an alternative view does a disservice to the public. Our organization is more than willing to purchase ad time on ABC to present an alternative viewpoint and our hope is that ABC will reconsider having such viewpoints be part of this crucial debate for the American people. We were surprised to hear that paid advertisements would not be accepted when we inquired and we would certainly be open to purchasing time if ABC would reconsider.”

And as Ed Morrissey notes, the Obama camp is actually helping to kill this crap:

Meanwhile, the Administration hasn’t been completely absent from the work on the bill — but their contribution may hurt more than it helps. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried explaining that a public plan would help competition, but obviously doesn’t understand markets or competition:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sebelius said that President Barack Obama does not want to drive health insurers out of business, but make them more competitive by offering working families and small businesses the option of a public plan without the high overhead costs of marketing, administration and profits.

“I think there is a lot of understanding that the private market has really failed to provide affordable coverage to Americans,” Sebelius said. The industry has had “a lot of opportunities” to get rid of coverage restrictions and other unpopular policies, Sebelius said, and really “hasn’t served Americans very well.”

Sebelius apparently doesn’t understand that markets provide competition, and government stifles it. This clueless statement assumes that the “private market” is a single entity rather than a series of competitors working in a government-regulated market, competing for customers. If competition exists between the government and the “private market” as a monolithic entity, the government will prevail — which is exactly the argument Obama’s critics have made in casting the public option as a Trojan horse for single-payer nationalization. This statement couldn’t be more idiotic if Joe Biden had said it.

Hell, it wasn’t just a month and a half ago that a Obama Democrat admitted ObamaCare will kill private insurance: