Donkasaurus Post

The WJS’s James Taranto, today, September 11, writes:
Remember when these guys used to complain that President Bush was “distracted” from Afghanistan by Iraq?
Was that not the case?  Was the time to focus on Afghanistan then, back in 2003, 2004, 2005,  after initiating the removal of the Taliban, or muddling along for years with a less [...]

Coal badly pollutes the air.  It is also responsible for most of the bio-accumulation of the neurological poison mercury in our food chain.  It’s removal destroys some mountain tops, watersheds, and even entire ecosytems.  Coal burning is also the main reason for the excessive atmopheric buildup of CO2 concentrations.    [Oil has similarly bad environmental and climate change effects, and our continued, and foolish, reliance [...]

David Brooks suggests the latter.
The Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby, who has been a big advocate of health care reform, seems to somewhat agree. 
Is health care reform a good idea? 
It does appear that for the extravagant amount that we pay; the huge amounts that are being frittered on endless offices of paperwork and insurance company profits even [...]

NY Times, September 11, 2009, in an article on “health care lessons learned” from the Clinton Adminstration:
Lesson 4: Leave the details to Congress.
Mr. Obama got a faster start than Mr. Clinton by not repeating his mistake of trying to write the law for the lawmakers.
According to Washington Post health care reporter Ceci Connolly, September 11, 2009, [...]

Either the NY Times — and Democratic Party leaders — are  living in a different world than the one in which most Americans are living, or the Times is largely only referring to the presidential campaign, not the past half year or so:
[Lessons the Obama Administration has learned from the Clinton Administration, according to [...]

The NY times article referenced immediately below, also goes on to state:
That 15-year-old lesson underscores how much the Clinton debacle has defined Mr. Obama’s drive for his domestic priority from the beginning, providing a tip sheet for what not to do.
And what lessons were those, exactly.   And is this why, at a time when more people, [...]

NY Times, 9-5-09:
In 1994, Democrats’ dysfunction over fulfilling a new president’s campaign promise contributed to the party’s loss of its 40-year dominance of Congress.
Republicans opposed the health care plan, so to express disappointment with the Clinton administration in not getting the plan passed, voters decided to vote for more Republicans?
It’s probably much more complicated than [...]