From last night’s “All-Stars.”

On Obama’s latest statements on Iran:

It had two parts. The use of the emotive words “appalled,” “outraged” was new and right. But the policy of engagement remains unchanged.
Major asked him about hotdog diplomacy, meaning the administration weeks ago had said U.S. embassies around the world will be open on the Fourth of July welcoming for the first time in decades Iranian diplomats as a way to symbolizing opening and negotiation.
To do that at a time when the regime is shooting people from rooftops is bizarre. I mean, remember, even the senior Bush, the president who was the most hyperrealist and unsentimental, sent his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft to China after Tiananmen, after the massacre, but at least they waited six months.
This would be the welcoming of Iranians into American embassies to celebrate U.S. independence ten days after the shooting on the streets. That, I think, is disturbing in and of itself.
But secondly, the president speaks about all of these events in an odd way. He says there is a debate happening in Iran about its future. You know, when one senator yields to another in the Congress, that’s a debate. Even, if you like, when you’re having dueling demonstrations in Tehran, you could call that a debate.
But when you have demonstrators out in the street being shot from rooftops, that is not a debate. That’s a massacre or a revolution. And the president refuses to understand or to acknowledge that what’s at stake here is the legitimacy of the regime and not just elections.

On the state of the health-care and energy debate:

[Obama] is getting pushback in the Congress, and even appeared to be getting a bit in the press today, which I think is the big story….
[H]is charisma can take him only up to a point–and that point is at which reality asserts itself. The two issues in which he is in trouble in the Congress, on health care reform and on energy, he is up against the contradictions of the policy.
On health care, it is the idea that it is going to pay for itself. He repeated that today. There is no way that is going to happen. And the CBO has told us a week ago that his plans, his ambitious plans as translated in the Senate, are going to cost a $1 trillion or a $1.5 trillion.
And on energy, he is persistent in making the case that by insisting on alternative sources, which are more expensive, and taxing and regulating the more efficient and older-style energy like oil and gas and coal, which we have in abundance, he’s going to make us more prosperous.
That’s an absurd proposition. And, in the end, the absurdity meets reality in Congress, and that’s why he’s in trouble.