‘Failure is good. Most people learn from their mistakes. But there are still risks.

For instance, Obama’s public option has failed, at least for today. So what does he learn?

Does he realize this isn’t what people want, and move on to what they do want, working in the “post-partisan fashion on which he campaigned? Or does he think that he just hasn’t been able to effectively explain his vision, because if he had, we’d have all come to our senses and agreed? Could he go so far as to propose ways to silence his critics so his vision could emanate forth without distortion and misrepresentation?

Learning can lead to very different responses depending on one’s view of themselves and their place in the world.

‘I never paid much attention to what Mr. Polanski did, but when I discovered the details last weekend, I was horrified. Althouse has written the best piece I have yet read.

However, I have not seen mentioned the one thought I keep having on the matter:

How has anyone been able to work with this guy? If you’re an actor, and he’s directing you, how do you not imagine and recoil at the image of his heinous act? If you’re an investor, and having a meeting about putting money behind his next project, how do you not imagine and recoil at the image of his horrendous act? If you’re a woman who is a mother, and you meet him in a room, any room, how do you not recoil at the image of what he has done? How do you not wonder how he is actually in that room, a pedophile roaming free so your children remain unprotected?

I love the movie Chinatown. It is one of my favorite films. I don’t know if I can watch it again without getting angry.

I have a sixteen year old daughter. This girl was thirteen. I just can’t imagine it without recoiling in horror. If there is any justice, this guy Polanski won’t be let out of prison, ever again.

…and I did nothing. Then they came for the car companies, and I did nothing. Then they came for the insurance companies, and when I objected, I was abandoned by all the other insurance companies.

That’s what I’d think if I were a Humana executive, but I’m not. And I worry about how the rest of the industry has gotten in bed with Baucus and can’t see the trap.

Come on you guys, don’t you see your fate? Can’t you see it’s time to rally together and stand up to these incursions? As long as you allow it, they will keep taking, and taking and taking. It’s only inevitable if you enable it.

When I first read the transcript of Obama’s interview with Stephanopoulos, the criticisms from the blogosphere looked hyperbolic. I only saw Obama getting mired in details that wouldn’t make much sense to most people. This quibbling has been his MO for obscuring parts of the debate he doesn’t want to have illuminated.

But then I read in the WSJ that the CBO estimates that “the Senate’s individual mandate will result in new revenues of some $20 billion over 10 years.” What? The editorial then asks “If that $20 billion doesn’t count as tax revenue, then what is it?”

So, Joe Wilson is correct? Obama’s quibbling has more to it than obfuscation.

It’s to hide the lies.