From last night’s All Stars.

On Obama’s health care plans:

I think he ought to wait until at least he offers a plan on the banks.
The reason our economy is in the tank and really sinking and there is a lack of confidence is because we’re in a financial crisis which, as Fred indicates, is not in any way caused by healthcare, and it won’t be cured by a reform of healthcare.
What the president is saying, which I think is true, is that in the long run, we have to have control over the cost of healthcare.
And I think what he told “The Washington Post” and some people in public and private before the inaugural is that he has a sort of grand strategy of getting the control of entitlements, retirement, Social Security, and Medicare, and that will save tens of trillions.
So the implication is he’s willing to waste a trillion here or a trillion there on stimulus pork as a way to win allegiance of Congress and get the reform of the entitlement.
However, in the speech he made to congress where he spoke about the reform of Medicare, which is the biggie of this, he didn’t speak about cutting its costs. He said it’s going to have to be in a package with the reform of all of healthcare, and the reform of all of healthcare he wants as an expansion of healthcare to almost 50 million uninsured.
And he himself has said it would require an increase of spending of about a trillion dollars.
So on the one hand he has the idea of cutting entitlements. On the other hand he offers expansion of healthcare of a trillion. So obviously he’s not serious about a cutting of entitlements in the long run.

On the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons:

Contrary to what the president just said, there’s nothing that we are doing or will do that will lessen Iran’s commitment to acquiring nukes. All of this stuff happening diplomatically is a charade, as it was in the past and is now.
The only thing that would stop the Iranians, conceivably, would be a complete embargo, including refined petroleum, meaning gasoline, which would shut down its economy.
A, that may not even deter them, and, secondly, the Russians and others, and even the Europeans are not going to go alone, which means that in the end, it will be Israel acting here–6 million Jews in Israel are not going to allow a country that is threatening genocide to acquire a genocidal weapon.
We have to prepare ourselves for an Israeli attack by the end of this year….
Look, I think even if the U.S. sold out the Czechs and the Poles and the Georgians and the Ukrainians in the bargain, I’m not sure Russia would help us on Iran, and even if it did, I’m not sure it has sufficient leverage to actually stop a determined Iran. I don’t see anything diplomatically stopping them.
I would agree, if you want to have a negotiation which looks nice and you know will fail as a way to set up an attack, that’s OK. But I’m not sure that’s how the Obama administration is thinking.