After Rep. Roy Blunt, leader of the supposed House GOP Health Care Solutions Group, suggested Thursday that Republicans won't offer a health care plan of their own, Minority Leader John Boehner insisted one was still in the works.

Of course, the Republican plan as in 1993 is to stop health care reform at all costs to prevent an enduring Democratic majority. Bill Kristol, who told Republicans 16 years ago that there was "no crisis" justifying health care reform then, now simply calls on his party to "kill it." With spinmeisters Frank Luntz and Alex Castellanos supplying the talking points that a supposed "government takeover of health care" is "too much, too fast, too soon," obstructionists like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe boasted his party would "stall" President Obama's health care initiative to ensure a "huge gain" in the 2010 election. In a nutshell, the GOP is proposing to extend the status quo for a nation gripped by a collapsing health care system.

Here, then, is the Republican 10-Point Plan for Health Care:

1. 50 Million Uninsured in America
2. Another 25 Million Underinsured
3. Employer-Based Coverage Plummets Below 60%
4. Employer Health Costs to Jump by 9% in 2010
5. One in Five Americans Forced to Postpone Care
6. 62% of U.S. Bankruptcies Involve Medical Bills
7. Current Health Care Costs Already Fueling Job Losses
8. 94% of Health Insurance Markets in U.S Now "Highly Concentrated"
9. Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity
10. Perpetuating Red State Health Care Failure

For the details and data behind each, continue reading.

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Anyone surprised that the FoxNews "experts" would have their knickers in a twist over Obama's video to the Iranian people for Nowruz? I mean, nobody could have predicted that William "The Bloody" Kristol would label it "appeasement," could they?

The talking heads mulled this new approach in diplomacy as Kristol referred back to his hacky National Review op-ed, repeating the criticisms verbatim. Whatever, dude. Considering that your whole world revolves around demonizing Iran, it stands to reason that anything less than a full military assault will be appeasement to you, as you confirm later in the segment.

Brit Hume, is apparently so undone by talking to Iranians like people, that he sputters incomprehensibly that this isn't the kind of "diplomacy" that the Bush administration practiced:

HUME: You know, Condoleezza Rice said something to me last year that when she said it, I was surprised. She said almost no governments in the world practice diplomacy the way the United States does. Huh? I said. She said that is that we practice diplomacy always backed up by the possibility or even the threat of some force, forceful action, whether it be economic or whatever. See, most governments in the world think diplomacy…you don’t do that. You talk, when that doesn’t work, you talk some more and you keep talking and eventually, you hope through diplomacy of this kind to persuade regimes you’re having trouble with to behave differently. Well it appears that Barack Obama, by this statement, has joined the rest of the world…she said…Rice told me, she said, the United States does it that way, the Brits do, to some extent, and the Australians do.

Well, it appears that President Obama has joined the rest of the world in practicing the diplomacy of talk. The worst thing that could happen would be for the Iranian government to respond favorably and positively, want to engage, have a discussion. And then we would be on a track like that, which will lead nowhere in the end. It’s not as if there’s not enough evidence to figure out what kind of government this is and what its intentions are, that’s been abundantly clear for many, many years. And an endless round of talk, first there would be talks about talks, and then there’d be talks, and they’d be talking and that means well, the Iranian regime would continue to do what it’s been doing but everybody in the world would sit by nodding affirmatively that this is the right approach, that’ll go nowhere.

My, aren't we a little ray of sunshine? So Hume is advocating "diplomacy" as performed by a psychotic: Do what we want or ELSE! (Why do I keep thinking of the movie The Princess Bride: "You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")

Chris Wallace actually points out that this form of "diplomacy" hasn't actually been all that successful:

WALLACE: Bill Kristol, President Bush didn’t recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran. He didn’t engage in diplomacy without preconditions. Where did that get us?

KRISTOL: It got us three rounds of sanctions, agreed to by the UN and by the Europeans. Why did the Europeans…

WALLACE: Has that had any effect on Iran?

KRISTOL: If not, then we have to consider the use of force. If you want more sanctions…the reason the Europeans went with sanctions was because we were threatening! It’s because we deposed Saddam Hussein, that’s when they got interested in sanctions suddenly, in 2003. And because they were worried that the Bush administration might actually do something. With Obama taking away the threat of force basically off the table, the willingness of the Europeans and the Russians to be serious about sanctions are going to diminish. Appeasement begets appeasement. Appeasement does not lay the groundwork for toughness among your allies, who are already weaker.

Oh, Billy, Billy, Billy. You pathetic little warmonger. When even your enablers tell you your techniques aren't working, your answer is to escalate. Brilliant logic.

And I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to hear that Kristol is employing a bit of revisionist history. Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, following the speech where Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil". The Iranian people had been leaning towards more moderate leaders like Rafsanjani. But then when the President of the United States (who has already invaded and occupied two countries in the Middle East) starts posturing aggressively against your country, what do you think Iranian voters are going to do but elect someone who will stand up to such bullying? And the EU sanctions got stricter in 2007, not 2003 as Kristol suggests, because of the US insistence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear program, all intelligence to the contrary.

So essentially, ignoring the realities of what put us in this stalemate, Kristol thinks that upping the rhetoric and posturing even more aggressively is the answer, something that puzzles Juan Williams:

WILLIAMS: Why do you think he’s taking anything off the table? He simply offered an opportunity to have the discussion. The second point to make is in terms of these elections that are scheduled, I think you have to have some faith in the Iranian people that they are in fact hoping for some moderation and change and view this as an opportunity to isolate the hardliners.

Pearls before swine, Juan. They'll never get it.

What have I said, over and over? Bill Kristol is NEVER right. And even Foreign Policy Magazine agrees with me, as they list the worst predictions of 2008 and who else but our favorite war-mongering chickenhawk neocon, William "The Bloody" Kristol.

“If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. … Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.” —William Kristol, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006

Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist William Kristol was hardly alone in thinking that the Democratic primary was Clinton’s to lose, but it takes a special kind of self-confidence to make a declaration this sweeping more than a year before the first Iowa caucus was held. After Iowa, Kristol lurched to the other extreme, declaring that Clinton would lose New Hampshire and that “There will be no Clinton Restoration.” It’s also worth pointing out that this second wildly premature prediction was made in a Times column titled, “President Mike Huckabee?” The Times is currently rumored to be looking for his replacement.

Oh Hallelujah! What a Christmakwanzukkah present that would be. Also in the Hall of Shame:

2. Jim Cramer of Mad Money, for advocating holding onto BearStearns stock six days before it lost 90% of its value and was eventually sold to JP MorganChase.
3. Dennis Blair and Kenneth Lieberthal, for seriously underestimating the potential risks to oil tankers along shipping lanes.
4. Donald Luskin, for not only denying the existance of a recession, but questioning the sanity of anyone who thought we might be in a recession.
5. The Economist Magazine, for their rose-colored view of Kenya's presidential election.
6. Business Week for their prediction that Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg would duke it out for the Democratic nod, only to have surprise underdog John McCain win the presidential election.
7. Scientist Walter Wagner for his opposition to the Large Hadron Collider by suggesting everything from mini-black holes to all out planetary destruction would result.
8. Goldman Sachs analyst Arjun Muti for predicting $200/barrel oil by year's end.
9. Charles Krauthammer, for his completely wrong forecasting of the battle between South Ossetia and Georgia...(not predicting foreign warfare correctly is a specialty of Krauthammer, evidentally).
10. Henry Paulson, for assuring that the banking industry was stabilized by his magic spewing of $700 billion to various industries with little to no oversight.

Please, can we call out an end to taking seriously people like Kristol, Cramer and Krauthammer now?

Fascinating.  Does the guy want us to attack Russia?

"Today, many are dead and Georgia is in crisis, yet the Obama campaign has offered nothing more than cheap and petty political attacks that are echoed only by the Kremlin," said McCain aide Tucker Bounds in the statement. "The reaction of the Obama campaign to this crisis, so at odds with our democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow, doesn't merely raise questions about Sen. Obama's judgment -- it answers them." 

What is he trying to say? 

"Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin must understand the severe, long-term negative consequences that their government's actions will have for Russia's relationship with the U.S. and Europe," McCain said.

And, describing the Russian assaults that have gone beyond the disputed territory and into sovereign Georgia as "Moscow's path of violent aggression," the GOP nominee suggested that Putin's aim may be to overthrow the pro-U.S. government in Georgia.

"This should be unacceptable to all the democratic countries of the world, and should draw us together in universal condemnation of Russian aggression," McCain said.

As I blogged yesterday, neocons loves them some military conflict, as long as they don't have to fight it. The biggest neocon chickenhawk of them all, William "The Bloody" Kristol is rah-rahing for it: (reg. req'd)

When the "civilized world" expostulated with Russia about Georgia in 1924, the Soviet regime was still weak. In Germany, Hitler was in jail. Only 16 years later, Britain stood virtually alone against a Nazi-Soviet axis. Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and '30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers? 

Have you learned nothing from your warmongering ways?  If you're so hot to fight, suit up, Kristol.  Our resources are tapped out by your last cheerleading effort. Matt Yglesias agrees with me.

If Kristol really thinks we should go to war with Russia, he's being crazy and irresponsible. If he doesn't think that, then he has no business busting out these Munich analogies. Nowhere in his column does he propose a single concrete step with any meaningful chance of altering the situation - it's all dedicated to mocking doves, but utterly lacking in viable alternatives.

That's it in a nutshell.

UPDATE:  Where is John McCain getting his foreign policy positions vis à vis Georgia?  Wikipedia, of course!