Non-Negotiable Demand on Healthcare

Let me make myself clear, from the Wall Street Journal:

In the health debate, liberals sing Hari Krishnas to the “public option” — a new federal insurance program like Medicare — but if it’s good enough for the middle class, then surely it’s good enough for the political class too? As it happens, more than a few Democrats disagree.

On Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment courtesy of Republican Tom Coburn that would require all Members and their staffs to enroll in any new government-run health plan. Yet all Democrats — with the exceptions of acting chairman Chris Dodd, Barbara Mikulski and Ted Kennedy via proxy — voted nay.

In other words, Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse won’t themselves join a plan that “will offer benefits that are as good as those available through private insurance plans — or better,” as the Ohio and Rhode Island liberals put it in a recent op-ed. And even a self-described socialist like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who supports a government-only system, wouldn’t sign himself up.

Dan Riehl, Riehl World View,makes a point:

Democrats: No Thanks On Public Option

As precious, as it is telling. When faced with an amendment requiring Senate members to join any passed public option, the Democrats declined. But the amendment passed nonetheless. Here’s one that will never make it through reconciliation. What’s good enough for you is not good enough for them.

Mike, Cold Fury, makes a blunt point:

Rope. Tree. Socialists. Some assembly required. And on a related note: still foolishly swallowing those lies about being “allowed” to keep your own private insurance?

It sounds like a threat to me.   What say you?   If the public option is not good enough for Congress, it is not good enough for you.

The New York Times is reporting the death of Walter Cronkite:

Walter Cronkite, an iconic CBS News journalist who defined the role of anchorman for a generation of television viewers, died Friday at the age of 92, his family said.

Mr. Cronkite had been reported to have been in ill health.   His passing was not unexpected.

Addendum and bump:(Eric)

With all the drooling going on from the press telling us what a great man Cronkite was, I have a question, which I hope to bring us back to reality. You know… the real world.

Would it be speaking ill of the dead to remind everyone the extreme screaming  leftist Cronkite was? We get complaints all the time when we make comments like this, but damn it, is it bad to speak ill of the dead when it’s the truth?

Let’s be careful who it is we are paying homage to, here, folks.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphereThe BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

It’s my brithday, so I’ve been concentrating on other matters, today. But… A few short notes, instead of  axing the Ramble altogether.

• The solution to the problem is remove the problem. Get government out of healthcare. I’ve been sayingt his for decades, now. John Stossel that point today, saying if they really wanted to reduce the costs of medicine, they’d deregulate it.   Seems the CBO agrees.  (Rick Moran comments) Yet, Democrats still are trying to force this one past us. As I said Wednesday, it’s about power, not service. Think I’m kidding? Why else would they be making priavte healthcare illegal? Yep… it’s right there in their plan.  It’s always been the intent.  And they don’t care if they have to kill the country to do it.  Resstance even from the Democrat party is starting to pop up to this monster. No way in hell they get anything substantial up by August. Which means Obama takes it on the chin again. Funny, how that works. When Obama gets a setback, America wins.
• The Religion of peace strikes again:  the peace of the graveyard.  Boortz has vid, too.
• Potter’s Field:  The final installment in the Harry Potter series would seem to be doing about as well as expected. .. it’s setting records.   I’m actually something of a fan of the series, but I’ll wait until the rush does down before trying to go see it.
• Bye Bye Card Check?: Starting to look that way. See? We CAN make a difference.

Martin Luther King:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

For reason unknown to this blogger, the Associated Press had some racist twit who goes by the name  Leanne Italie writes this piece of trash, which Italie argues is about combatting racism:

INSTILL PRIDE

Strive to provide activities and attend events where children can meet and befriend others who look like them in a meaningful way.

Cadamy said her 10-year-old daughter “expresses a desire to look more like Barbie than herself,” so she has encouraged her to learn more about black history and the civil rights movement as a way to foster racial pride.

“I’ve finally convinced her to wear her beautiful hair naturally, in a short afro, with a headband rather than trying to straighten it or wrangle it in some way. So, hopefully, we’re making progress.”

ADDRESS RACISM WHEN IT HAPPENS

Point One:  Racial Pride is reserved for bigots.   There is an associated of  white
who proud of of their skin color,  They call themselves the Klu Klux Klan.   Fortunatly Klan members are rarer than AP reporterettte who can actually write. Bobby Byrd take pride in being white. I take pride in condemning the like of twits like Byrd, Barbara Bozer, and Italie

Stephanie Ward should tell her two children to take pride not for skin color but rather for who they are, for what they stand and for what they do.

Point Two, Address Racism when it happens.  Consider it done Ma’am.

Welcome, children of all ages, to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “We’re at the Hermann” Edition

•  A Wide Latina:  Joyner notes a typo at  the house of Matt Yglesias. I’ll not comment except to say that all humor has a some grain of truth at the center of it, else it’s simply not funny. Do the math.
• Growth of government:  We’re regulating clotheslines, now?  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
• Waxman-Markey “in Park”: Mostly based on voter reax. Could it be the miracle has happened, and they’re getting the message?
• Same on Government Healthcare. Apparently, the Blue Dogs are starting to understand they’re losing voter support in a directly inverse relation to their support of government healthcare plans. They’re taking action based on that.
• No Habla:  Well, whoever in Congress is getting the message, the White House still hasn’t.  Is it any wonder why the federal government is trying to herd people into the cities with impossible fuel costs and other measzures? Easier to tax and control.  Always about control. Always. Always. Always.
•  The Peasants are revolting:  At Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball says there’s a tax revolt coming. I think he’s right. Indeed, given the above, we’d better hope he is.
•  Nature continues to disprove global warming claims:  Coldest July day in Wisconsin in 100 years.  North Dakota, too.
• Note To Obama: Want to save the auto industry? Retore the dealers. Kill the Unions.
• Equal Time and all that:  Given my Pajamas Media piece on the Death of Jackson this morning, I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass on a chuckle from Iowahawk.
• It was 40 years ago today:  Apollo 11 lifted off 40 years ago this very day.  I remember as I do most events in my life, with remarkable clarity, huddling around the family’s black and white RCA-Victor console to watch the broadcasts of the flight.   Had it been a school day, we’d have likely watched the thing go up in ‘Assembly’. Space shots were rare enough back then, and new enough, that educators made use of the thing as a teaching moment. Being July, though, not so much.   As it was, I watched from home.  Billy Beck observes the day in his own way.   There’s a whole line of discussion that descends from Rand that Billy shows us on the point, that goes well outside the hit and run nature of the Ramble.  That said, I’ve always wondered what a private space agency would have brought us. I suspect it might have been more productive in terms of making use of our understanding of space… something beyond Spandex. Thing is, there’s no way for the test to be made…. then or now. I plan to listen, tonight to an album that was recorded in the shawdow of that event… The Moody Blues’ “To our Childrens’Childrens” Children” , which is pictured, here. It’s my all time favorite Moody Blues LP, and likely the single best concept album ever done. In my memory, nothing else comes close. Yes, even Pink Floyd’s “DarkSide of the Moon” produced that same year.

  I know… half of you weren’t around 40 years ago. To understand how earth shaking this was, you need to more fully understand how space travel and the prospect of it, had invaded our national culture. There’s a “MoonLanding Road” not five miles from my house. NASA photos still grace the walls of most government builidngs around the world. StarTrek, the Original Battlestar Galactica, and yes, even Star Wars, all sprang from that romance, if not that era. With that in mind, you’ll understand better some of the romance involved with that LP. I’ll pass along the lyrics of the first cut, which is mostly spoken, to give you a feel for not only the album but feelings of the day:

  Blasting, billowing, bursting forth
  With the power of ten billion butterfly sneezes
  Man with his flaming pyre
  Has conquered the wayward breezes
  Climbing to tranquility
  Far above the cloud
  Conceiving the heavens
  Clear of misty shroud

  Higher and higher
  Now we’ve learned to play with fire
  Go higher and higher and higher

  Vast vision must improve our sight
  Perhaps at last we’ll see and end
  To our homes endless blight
  And the beginning of the free
  Climb to tranquility
  Finding its real worth
  Conceiving the heavens
  Florishing on earth

  Higher and higher
  Now we’ve learned to play with fire
  Go higher and higher and higher

  (Shrug) As with most grand visions, the reality never quite matched the hype… the romance. Which perhaps left us a bit jaded, as a people. Yet, if we take the current administration as any indication, we’ve not stopped falling for grand romatic schemes involving the use of government power, and taxpayer money.

• Happy Birthday to me:  Well, tommrow, anyway.   And yes, the Ramble will still be here, though I likely won’t be in my usual twitter and Yahoo chat haunts for the next couple evenings.

This morning, James Joyner speaks to… and quotes… a Ezra Klien article:

Since obesity has somehow become our unofficial theme this morning, I’d be remiss not to mention Ezra Klein‘s observations about trying to eat healthy at Cheesecake Factory.

On first glance, I would have figure the salmon for the lightest entree, followed by the chicken piccata, the carbonara, and the crispy beef. Not so. The salmon weighs in at 1,673 calories — which is to say, a bit more than 75 percent of the food an adult male should eat in a day. The piccata is a comparably slim 1,385 calories. The crispy beef is 1,528 calories. And the carbonara? 2,191. The answer might be that someone looking for a healthful meal shouldn’t go to the Cheesecake Factory. But insofar as you’re already there, or your family wants to go there, making a good decision isn’t a particularly straightforward proposition.This is why the obesity crisis is such a tough issue: Calories are delicious. The Cheesecake Factory isn’t doing anything wrong, either ethically or culinarily. Human beings are wired to prefer abundance, salt, fat, sugar, and value. The Cheesecake Factory is giving people the whole package. Changing people’s eating habits so that type two diabetes don’t become the new chubby would be easy if the food was actually repulsive or the value was bad or it was all, in some other way, a trick. But it’s not. The food is enjoyable. The value is incredible. The cost is long-term, and remembering that we might get diabetes down the road is pretty hard when eons of evolutionary wiring are telling us to eat this stuff now now now now it’s right here now now!

People go to the Cheesecake Factory because they like being there, not because they’re being deceived. The only catch is that they really don’t know how bad the food is for them. Study after study shows we wildly underestimate caloric load of our foods, and we underestimate by more as the meal becomes larger. It’s not clear that nutritional information on menus would actually change eating habits. But it would at least give people a place to start. Diners know what they like. They know how much money they’ll have to pay to purchase it. No reason they shouldn’t also know what it’s going to cost their waistline.

James adds his own thoughts, and they’re worth reading.

For my part, I’m noting a pattern here. Follow my logic on this:

People don’t go to places like that to stay thin… they go to celebrate or at least do something out of the oridinary. Something special. To indulge themselves or their date, their family, what have you. A feast, for lack of a better description. Forgive me but calorie counting doesn’t strike me as a feast, a celebration, or something special.

Makes almost as much sense as creating a law demanding a Super-Snake Mustang get 45mpg. The result isn’t a supersnake, but a super worm, if that. It runs afoul of the whole purpose of the vehicle.

I should point out that Klien’s discomfort with that scenario speaks volumes to the nanny state mindset. OK, even he admits to finding the place enjoyable, but by God he’ll be the first to tell you how bad it is for you to enjoy yourself.

And wonder, often as not, aloud, if there isn’t something the government should do about such enjoyments.

Pattern: Isn’t Klien the one who not long ago was making lots of noise in support of stricter CAFE limits?  Isn’t he the one invariably trying to grow governmental control to protect us from ourselves, in his view?  More than granted, his nattering in this case is a step and a half away from calling for governmental control of the board of fare at a resturant… but it’s the kind of leap we’ve so often seen him take before, that it’s more than worth the mention. It’s the pattern that’s striking to me. That he identifies people enjoying themselvs as a problem, is troubling to me.

In my new Pajamas Media article, this morning, I look at one of the more overlooked lessons of Jackson’s death; The way the story got to us:

On the day Jackson died, I went looking in the mainstream media for confirmation about what everybody else already knew — and I found none. Fox, CNN, and MSNBC were all running the TMZ footage of the ambulance backing out of the Jackson property, and repeating information from other gossip sites. On newspaper sites, including the New York Times, it was as if the event hadn’t happened yet. For at least the first two days, the original sources for the hottest story on the planet were not mainstream.

I examine what that means, by way of some rather slippery defense of the MSM’s inaction, being put up by the LA Times.

Send  in the clowns, there ougbt to be clowns, video:

And there are.   Didn’t clowns used to funny?

Hat tip:  Gateway Pundit.

Welcome to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• A Pretty Pathetic Presidential Picthing  Performance: Did you guys see this in Pittsburgh? Neither did I, but a freind did.  Joyner apparently noticed it too. I happened to listen to Pitt radio this morning and one of the guys had talked to the catcher. Says the guy couldn’t get it over the plate, something at least GWB did. But you know, we shouldn’t be too hard on Barry. After all, Baseball is something American children grow up playing. That’s an advantage Obama never had. Does that make Obama a victim?
• New 8 track?  Speaking of Joyner, he notes something that got by me here… Cheap Trick has issued a new album on 8 track tape. I knew they’d been releasing albums, but this one was interesting. I think I still have a box of 8 tracks in the garage, but nothing to play them on. At one time the back seat of my Z-28 was given over to tales.
• Another FBI probe of Murtha:  You’d think the voters in PA would start getting the message.
• Speaking of fighting tooth and nail for what you believe in: Here’s another example.  OK, OK, I know, but consider this for a moment. What these folks are doing isn’t all that unlike leftists. Anti-Abortion types are nut cases but leftists are not, when they use the same tactics?
• Question of Logic:  If we destroy the economy to pay for healthcare, would there be any money to pay for healthcre going forward? If we have to destroy our economy to pay for ANYTHING, seems to me obvious that the anything isn’t sustainable. Yet that’s where we seem to be headed.
•  The record of Obama’s “Science Czar” isn’t all that great…. unless you’re a liberal ideolouge. Like Obama, as it happens  We used to hear from Obama about how  we see politics removed from science. What we have here with the science Czar is pure politics, so I suppsoe we can say that’s one promise Obama’s kept, right?
• How to know you’re on the wrong sightseeing tour Of the Grand Canyon. Ouch.
• The Daily Sotomayor:  Annoying watching Sotomayor dancing around her support of institutionalized racism. More annoying though is the likes of Lindsay Graham letting her get away with it. As David points out, they did some damage but didn’t sink her and they should have, on principle. Look, I know… Graham himself said it as I did yesterday:
  

  “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed.”

  Still, that doesn’t relieve him of the responsibility to speak out loudly and fight tooth and nail for the truth. I’m getting very tired of people who won’t do that. If he can’t or won’t, we should find someone who can and will. Does anyone thnk that the Democrats would play it other than down to the wire tooth and nail? Look at the confirmation hearings on Justice Thomas. And his chances of getting confirmed were no lower then, than are that of Sotomayor, now. Perhaps the willingness to fight for one’s principles has something to do with the Democrats being in power now? Wat an example of truth telling? Here you go.  And here, as well. Why should we be fighting so? Because when we don’t, they get away with lies like this.

If Sonia Sotomayor were a horse, thny would shoot her.    Ok, Sotomayor was never going to convince Rush Limbaugh to support her, but her weak and unconvincing testimony hoa lost support from Eva Rodriquez,  Washington Post:

I’m surprised and disturbed by how many times today Sonia Sotomayor has backed off of or provided less-than-convincing explanations for some of her more controversial speeches about the role of gender and ethnicity in judicial decision-making. 

And the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) – In endorsing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy did some creative rewriting of history. And he put quote marks around it.

Trying to head off criticism of a controversial comment, Leahy misquoted Sotomayor’s own words in kicking off the second day of her confirmation hearings.

Sotomayor’s public comments are as much a part of the hearings as her lengthy judicial record. Here’s a look at some of the claims made Tuesday about those comments, and the facts.

 Charlie Savage, New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s testimony about abortion and privacy rights at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Tuesday raised a puzzling legal question: when is a Supreme Court ruling a precedent?

Bottom line, Sotomayor is a  chronic liear, John, Powerline:

Pat Leahy opened the questioning of Judge Sonia Sotomayor by asking her some softball questions about her controversial speeches and decisions. In response, Sotomayor’s characterization of her “wise Latina” speech was strikingly disingenuous:

It seems the about the only thing the Obama Adminstration looks for in vetting is a creative sense of history.    Dirty Harry Reid:  This nomination is lost.

Just to show that I have a non-judgemental side, I present  this interesting tale posted by Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom:

There is a good case to be made that Bridget Kevan got a bum deal when she was arrested for dropping her kids and friends (two 12 y/os, and an 8, 7 and 3 y/o) at the mall and returned to her home for a rest. Now this is Bozeman, Montana — population 27,000. Not exactly NYCity, Chicago or El-Lay so Bridget’s decision to let the kids free range can be debated from “no problem” to “bad judgement” with reasoned discourse from both sides. Bridget’s arrest does seem more of an over-reaction, or, as she describes it, as a opportunity for the police and prosecuter to “make an example of her.” Of the few things that troubled me about her tale was how she lapses into “I’m being persecuted because I’m an educated woman! I’m a professor, dammit, these things are not supposed to happen to someone like me!”

I am struck by Darleen’s comment:

By the time my oldest was about 14, I would take the girls to the mall and drop them off with a budget and a mission for them to buy their own school clothes. It was a fast learning lesson in smart shopping because they knew they didn’t get one cent more for clothing until Christmas.

Tough love?

So my quewtion is not if Professo4 Kevan was right or wrong.   Rather as to using the local mall as a daycare center, how mamy  have “been there, done that”  as wither the drop-offee or the drop-offer?   As more me. I have.   I have get the age, but me and by brother were  left to wonder a mall on our own.

• Ayn Rand Interview: Boortz, today, runs an Ayn Rand interview from 1959 with Mike Wallace of all folks.
• Obama loses another six polling points:  So says CBS. All in the last month, yet. Given it’s CBS, I figure we’re not being given the half of how bad the falloff is.
• China has banned electroshock therapy for internet addiction:  Well, that’s comforting.
• Why keep it from the Democrats? The answer’s simple, really.  William Teach explains. He’s right, of course.
• A tacit admission the Stimulus didn’t work:  Obama now says Unemplyment will continue to go up for several months. We’re now at 9.5% unemployment and rising. Remember we were told that all this spending of borrowed money would keep us under 6%?
• Another Oil discovery: In North Dakota. We’re moving off the stuff why, again?
• Sotomayor Day II: I wonder, sometimes about the fulitlity of all this. I mean, is there a hope in hell that she’s nt going to get confirmed, given the makeup of the Senate?  Other than going through the motions, what is the point? I know, gotta be done, but damn…
• If TOTUS falls in a forest, does anyone notice?  Apparently. 
• Madoff slammed: Started that 150 year sentence today. Which means with time off for good behavior, he’ll be paroled in three to five.
• Florida killings: Something smells, here. Large families like this one aren’t known for being overly rich. So why the huge planning and a military style attack? The haul isn’t worth the effort, one would think, unless they had a lot more money than we’re being told, or revenge was a motive.
• Anyone want a used shark? Check here.

First the New York Slimes beathless headline, article by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane:

C.I.A. Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders

The text of the article:

WASHINGTON — Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials

Evidently, the Slimes headline writers are either not required to read the article for which they write the headline, or else they are too stupid to understand the article.    It the Slimes is the Paper of Record, the record is a 78.

No where in the actual  article do the authors, Mazzetti and Shane, use the term assassinate, or describe any plan of CIA to pursue end that were themselves illegal.    Further, the authors express no reservation about killing al Qaeda operative with Predator missiles, even it there has been a signficant collateral damage cost in human lives.

We are at war with al Qaeda.  Killing members of the organization is both legal and moral.   Yet killing an al Qaeda operative and  several other innocent people with a Predator missile is  acceptable, but it becomes a moral outrage we replace one missile, the Predator, with a round of .45 ACP.

I  can accept the premise that the devil is in the details and agree with the Bush(43) decision not to implement the program.    What I do not accept is feigned moral outrage on the part of some leftards.

On a side note, I question the veracity of Mazzetti and Shane.

The next day, June 24, he told the two Congressional Intelligence Committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Vice President Cheney was never in the CIA’s chain of command and was never in a position to isssue any kind of instructions.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense Nightly Read on the Sphere… The Ever Truckin’ BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “Just Passin’ Through” Edition.

• First, some Housekeeping: We’ve upgraded the WordPress Core software over the weekend to version 2.8.1.  The result of the upgrade seems to be that the loading on the PHP server is less of an issue.  Load times are back wherethey oughtta be for the most part.  Also, I’m still running a somewhat reduced footprint on Twitter, becase of the PHP loading issues and because of added problems caused by Twitter’s API not- so- occationally barfing on it’s walking shoes, which really messes with PHP on my server.  I still want to switch servers, given a lower cost factor yearly, but at least there’s not the urgency about it. the hiccup that some I-Phone users noted has been dealt with… thanks for telling me about it. I won’t have an I-phone… I have a Palm, so I’d never have seen it. Thanks again.
• Sotomayor: Well, it happened today, (OK, day one of it at least) and I’ve not had the chance to look at the transcripts at all, though I suppose I’ll comment on it later tonight.. and I’d think David will have some comments as well. But from what I’m hearing, it’s going about as expected, with her judicial activism coming under fire… and of course the pro-life protestor showing up.  One of the better watchers of this ordeal, today, has been the lovely Michelle Malkin.
• So, when does the jobs surge come?  Jennifer Rubin asks the question.
• The Quote:  You know, I’m starting to think I’m going to have to start quoting Levin every day, doing a quote of the day thing. Boortz today runs a passage of Levin’s book that I found solid the first time I read it. I wonder what Billy Beck would think of it. Levin says:
  

  “For the Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve utopia if individuals are free to go their own way. The individual must be dehumanized and his nature delegitimized. Through persuasion, deception, and coercion, the individual must be subordinated to the state. He must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state – not family, community and faith, all of which have the potential of threatening the state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state.”

  I’ve been taken with the book since I scored a copy of it a few weeks ago. Maybe Levin’s publishers wouldn’t like me quoting something ut of the book daily…. copyright stuff being the mess it is… but it deserves that attention, I think. Let’s leave it at this… Drill the book to go to Amazon and buy the thing. And no, before you even ask… I’m not getting squat for the mention or the link.

• Gore Admits it:  The congressional Climate bill is a way to bring about what he calls “global governance.” Play that against the Levin quote, and do the math, kiddies.
•  Mr. Obama goes to the Op-Ed pages:  Here.  And Keith Hennessey responds. My own response?  I wonder, myself, what Paul Krugman will say now, given the rather loud rejection in the article of a second ‘stimulus’ package by the President, since by Krugman’s lights, anyone not supoprting a second stimulus doesn’t understand basic logic.  Those worshiping on the altar of Keynes won’t like it much, either, I think. Irony, since I don’t think Keynesian types… Krugman included,  have much for logic, either, as a rule. So much for that, I guess.
• Some tech problems with DTV:  Scott Fybush explains.  Scott covers the Northeast well, but I cannot imagine that these issues are not being seen all over the country.

Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s leader, has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, a news report said on Monday, days after fresh images of him looking gaunt spurred speculation that his health was worsening following a reported stroke last year, reports AP in Seoul.

So says The Fiancial Times, who also says:

Monday’s report came after Mr Kim made a rare public appearance last week at an annual memorial for his late father and North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

Television footage showed him thinner. He also limped slightly, and his mouth looked twisted in what was believed to be the result of a stroke.

This would seem to require a different gameplan than simply putting up with Kim’s aggression, because anything we put up with now will be standard operating procedure for Kim’s stated heir, whoever that is.