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This, according to Hanson, is the essence of “Obamaism,” a view that can be summed up by the idea that “Michelle Obama could make $300,000 and she will always be more a victim than the Appalachian coal miner who earns $30,000, by virtue of her race and gender.”

Meanwhile, in the real world the Obama administration is pushing for higher taxes on people who earn $300,000 (even if they’re black women!) that will finance more generous social services for low income people. Under health care legislation likely to be signed by Obama soon, a coal miner earning $30,000 a year would get about 30 percent of the tab for his health insurance paid for by high-earners. If he’s supporting a kid, the subsidy level would be higher.

Richard Norton-Taylor notes the moral and legal consequences of the recklessness of the Iraq invasion:

Under the fourth Geneva convention,
adopted in 1949, occupying powers are obliged to protect the civilian
population of the country they are occupying. No wonder the British and
American governments backed away from the description of "occupying
power" – as evidence to Chilcot has heard – even though that was their formal status established by the UN.

Some
well-placed former public figures involved have said privately that
prominent policy-makers in London and Washington at the time could be
tried more easily for war crimes for breaching the fourth Geneva
convention than for other acts or omissions.

An interesting point from Krugman:

Take the CBO estimate
of the cost of subsidies and Medicaid expansion in the Senate bill —
that is, ignoring all possible cost savings. It’s $179 billion in 2018.
Take the CMS projection
of total health care spending in 2018: it’s more than $4.5 trillion. So
the direct cost of expanding coverage — the initial bump in the blue
curve above — is less than 4 percent of total health care spending.
That’s the amount by which, on the current trajectory, health spending
rises every 7 months.

And it's budgeted. Any Republican who voted for the unfunded Medicare Prescription Drug Entitlement has no logical standing to oppose this bill on fiscal grounds.