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Saturday, October 10, 2009
Frist: "That's what leadership is all about"
Posted by on 10.10.09 @ 7:31AM
Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has made a lot of news lately. Apparently the White House has been trying to round up well-known Republicans to come out in favor of ObamaCare and Mr. Frist was one of the first to answer the call. He recently wrote a point/counterpoint in U.S. News with Dick Armey about how wonderful it is to require working people to buy health insurance, even before they feed their children. Since then he has been all over the place.
First he was interviewed by Karen Tumulty in Time Magazine, saying if he were still in the Senate, “I would end up voting for it. As leader, I would take heat for it. That's what leadership is all about.” He went on to say he especially liked the mandate. I mean, telling other people what to do – that’s what leadership is all about, eh, Billy?
Naturally, the “Democrats (were) Thrilled by (Former) Majority Leader’s Comment,” according to the New York Times. The article says they, “spent the day e-mailing links to the Time interview with Mr. Frist, a heart surgeon who has published a new book about health care and who was Mr. McConnell’s predecessor as Senate Republican leader.” Yes, all of the sudden they are willing to overlook his relationship to Hospital Corporation of America, which is run by his family.
But then he started backtracking. U.S. News reported, “Voters will be angry and mount a backlash against Democrats in upcoming elections unless the five different healthcare reform bills working through Congress are redrawn to prevent higher taxes and insurance premiums, according to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.” It went on to say that, “he would not vote for any of the five bills without major changes.”
I guess that’s what leadership is all about, too. Say one thing in the morning and the opposite in the afternoon. No wonder the Congressional Republicans are held in such low esteem.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Obama Vows To Use Nobel Glögg Prize To Push Socialist Agenda
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:29PM
President Obama has admitted he doesn't believe he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize that some glögg-saturated Norwegian political hacks awarded to him earlier today, but that doesn't mean he won't use it to push his socialist agenda.
In fact, he served notice today that that is exactly what he intends to do.
Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, sent out this email today signed by the president:
This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.
But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.That is why I've said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.
This award -- and the call to action that comes with it -- does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.
So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we've begun together. I'm grateful that you've stood with me thus far, and I'm honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Catchphrase for States
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 5:57PM
USA Today reports that at least nine states (and probably more) are not meeting their renewable portfolio standards. What coulda happened?
In their quest to draw more renewable power, states have come up against obstacles such as the recession, red tape and an outdated transmission system that makes it difficult to move solar or wind power from where it's made to where it's needed.
Some states, including Delaware and New Hampshire, require power companies that don't buy enough renewable energy to make payments to a fund for renewable-energy projects. That allows companies to comply with the rules but doesn't help move a state toward greater reliance on alternative energy.
You know how it goes: government imposes unattainable mandates on business, collects fines as a result, higher costs passed to customers.
Whatta bunch a dolts the utilities are to back this stuff! Good thing we can take our business elsewhere...wait a minute...
Re: Inconvenient Questions
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 4:13PM
Got some audio of Phelim McAleer's question to Al Gore at the SEJ conference this morning. The co-director/producer of "Not Evil Just Wrong" asked the former veep what he's done to correct the nine errors, as determined by a British court, in "An Inconvenient Truth." Listen to Gore flub the endangerment of polar bears issue.
I am told the NEJW Web site should have video of the exchange up later.
Hat tip and big thanks to Jason Fischer of the Wisconsin Radio Network.
More from Gore
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 3:06PM
In this clip (below) from the Society of Environmental Journalists conference today, Gore says:
"I think that the construction of the supergrid will bring in its wake a proliferation of new devices, new technologies, throughout the transmission and distribution network for electricity that will be comparable to what happened when the Internet connected millions of laptops and desktop computers and created cloud computing, and shifted the role of mainframes and supercomputers."
From the inventor himself!
Conservatives: Why Bother?
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 2:51PM
Philp Klein has been engaging my long-time friend Jim Pinkerton over the issue of conservative governance. Undoubtedly anyone seeking to change public policy must accommodate ideology with political reality on occasion. But the Medicare drug benefit, which Jim defends, is a perfect example of the worst sort of irresponsible politics divorced from serious governance.
First, the GOP continued the illusion of a government free lunch. Congress promised benefits without figuring out how to pay for them. This once was supposed to be the Democrats' modus operandi. Now it has become a hallmark of Republican "governance."
Second, with both Social Security and Medicare running huge unfunded liabilities, Congress made the fiscal bomb even bigger. Today the total unfunded liability for these two programs is $107 trillion. The unfunded liability of the drug benefit alone exceeds that of Social Security.
Third, the program was badly designed. The so-called "donut hole" is nonsensical, confounds the purpose of insurance, and invites future Congresses to spend even more by filling in the hole. Almost certainly "realistic" Republicans will help lead that charge.
Fourth, the drug benefit makes Medicare harder to fix, since Congress added a new program rather than integrating drug coverage into normal health care coverage. It's a policy mess that has become almost impossible to sort out.
The tendency of Republicans to use libertarian rhetoric while imposing statist policies--big spending, federalizing education, expanding Medicare, and much more--has another dangerous impact. It undercuts the limited government message and reduces the credibility of anyone claiming to represent freedom values. It's why voters became convinced that the Democrats were better on spending. Who can blame them? Under Republican government the GOP was spending money as fast as Lyndon Johnson and vastly expanding his social programs.
Conservatives have to ask: if the price of staying in power is making the largest addition to the welfare state in forty years, then what is the purpose of staying in power? If it is to simply to allow one rather than another set of political activists to exercise power, then anyone who believes in limited government should find other work To be fair to Bobby Jindal, his proposal is nothing akin the Medicare drug benefit. But the latter truly was both a philosophical and practical disaster. It is a good example of how giving in on essential principles is essentially the same as surrender..
Standing Up for the Irish
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 2:47PM
Although the European Parliament is dominated by the sort of Eurocrats who spent wildly and applied endless pressure on the Irish to approve the so-called Lisbon Treaty, which expands the authority of the European Union, it does include a few naysayers, particuiarly members of the United Kingdom Independence Party. In this video one of them, Nigel Farage, denounces the "bully-boys" who did so much to suppress independent thought in Ireland.
Al Gore's Threads
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 2:34PM
At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference today, he says pulling just one thread will solve three crises: climate, national security and the economy. Why didn't we elect this guy?!
A False Choice on Health Care
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 1:44PM
Jim Pinkerton and I have been going back and forth over my criticism of Bobby Jindal's health care op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this week. Today he has a new post up in which he acknowledges that conservatives and libertarians often agree on economic issues, but writes that the Republican Party is more open to a larger role for the federal government. On that point, he'll get no argument from me. However, just because Republicans have embraced policies such as the Medicare prescription drug plan, it doesn't mean that doing so has proven either successful practical politics or good governance.
When it was being debated, Republican supporters of the drug bill made many of the same arguments that Pinkerton is making now. They thought it would help the party close the gap on health care with Democrats and overcome the image of the party as a bunch of scrooges. But it did nothing of the sort. In the 2000 presidential election, those who identified health care as their most important issue voted for Al Gore by a 64 percent to 33 percent margin over George W. Bush, according to exit polls. Yet despite signing the prescription drug bill during his first term, in the 2004 election, Bush actually fared worse among health care voters -- which John Kerry won 77 percent to 23 percent.
Meanwhile, the bill added $9.4 trillion to our long-term entitlement obligations and helped cement the image of Republicans as a fiscally irresponsible. While this wasn't the primary basis for GOP defeats in 2006 and 2008, it did reinforce the broader critique of Republicans as incompetent.
I've written about this more extensively in the past, but a big problem we face is that because many conservatives have neglected health care as an issue, it has created a sense of desperation that allows a Jindal or Romney to come out with a proposal that substantially embraces the Democratic vision for reform, and get credit for being a Republican saying something about the issue. But I, for one, refuse to accept this false choice between indifference or acquiescence on the most important domestic issue of our time. That's why, in addition to criticizing Democratic proposals, I've written a lot about how to improve the health care system by expanding individual liberty (see here, here, here, here, and here). I'd much rather spend my time trying to argue in favor of such ideas -- win or lose -- than handing out gold stars to any Republican who shows up to the debate.
Just How "Surprised and Deeply Humbled" Is Mr. Obama?
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 1:30PM
According to the rules of the Nobel Prize nomination, a candidate receives an invitation for submission as a Nobel Peace candidate in September of the previous year, and must respond by the 1st of the subsequent February. That's right, in September of 2008, when nobody had even voted for the current President, Mr. Obama was under the illusion that he was qualified for a Nobel Peace Prize based on a few years as a community organizer, a little time in the Illinois legislature, an incomplete term in the United States' Senate, and a couple of books about his favorite topic -- himself.
By the February 1, 2009 deadline for submissions, before Mr. Obama had even stepped into office, he was no more surprised or humbled then than he is on this ignoble day.
This display is truly the antithesis of humility.
Now we know why he's been waiting so long to determine how to protect our troops in Afghanistan. Or is it too audacious to suggest such a thought?
Inconvenient Questions
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 12:58PM
Phelim McAleer, co-director/producer of “Not Evil Just Wrong” and asker of difficult questions, reportedly just had his microphone turned off a little while ago as he queried Al Gore at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Madison, Wisc.
If you want to see what a joke the SEJ and its meeting is, just take a look at their list of panels. Awards named for Rachel Carson and sponsored by Animal Planet and Planet Green; panels with titles like "Crane Conservation on our Fractured Landscape," "Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Justice," and "Green PR in the Blogosphere: How PR Practitioners are End-Running Professional Journalists and How We Should Respond;" and moderators from the ranks of the most activist of writers.
Phelim at work at the premiere of "The Age of Stupid:"
Told You So
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 12:16PM
Back on May 5, Joseph Shattan concluded his AmSpec piece on "The Four Pillars of Obamaism" with this observation: "Look to these four approaches -- the essence of an emerging Obama Doctrine -- to win our President a Nobel Peace Prize, even as the world itself descends into chaos and war." Emphasis added.
Media Mattress: Silent on Anti-Gay Stance
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 11:43AM
Confronted with a considerable record of liberal media gay bashing, including its own approving post of a Los Angeles Times article that said a gay man who seeks out sex from a 16 year old boy needs "experts in psychiatry and sexual misconduct," Media Matters went into black-out overdrive.
It is, admittedly, an awkward revelation for the crew at Media Mattress.
After participating in a furious witch hunt against a gay Republican Congressman for sending sexually suggestive e-mails and text messages to 16-year-old House pages, the Mattress dwellers are waking up to the realization that they helped undermine the political survival of Obama Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. Jennings, of course, condoned just such an affair.
So which is it, Mattress-ites? Are gays, as you eagerly posted in 2006, in need of psychiatric help for sexual misconduct when dealing with 16 year olds cavorting with older men? Is gay sex between an older man and a 16 year old, as the DNCC said, a "sex crime"? Did Mr. Jennings look a sex crime in the eye and respond by saying a condom should be used?
No wonder you have nothing to say.
Surely Mr. Jennings wishes you had learned to be quiet in 2006.
But the gay witch hunt was on. And you and your friends couldn't mount your brooms fast enough.
The word shameful comes to mind, but you would have to have a sense of shame in the first place.
How to Win a Nobel Prize in Just Twelve Days
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 11:25AM
Fox News provides a rundown.
Judgment Day at The Onion
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:51AM
Once every epoch, the fates conspire to test someone to and beyond the limits of human ability. As happened before with Job after God's conversation with Satan, Aeneas after the fall of Troy, and Frodo after inheriting the Ring, the clock has struck h-hour for The Onion, and they are called to a higher task.
Can The Onion's editors and writers rise to the occasion? Can they summon the strength to tackle what may be the biggest parody opportunity of all time, and at least of recent memory?
Perhaps, years from now, scribes will write of The Onion's noble response, or poets will sing of their ignominious betrayal of their duty. It is not for us to know.
But for the headline writer who is right now wishing that these events would have taken place on someone else's watch, I would reassure him: so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
PS: If The Onion cannot do the deed, the nation turns its lonely eyes to Colbert.
DNC: "“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists"
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:50AM
I thought Michael Steele's reaction to the Nobel announcement was awful, because the only real way to respond to this award is mockery. But whatever milage Democrats may have hoped to have gotten from Steele's ill-considered statement, was more than negated by this absurdity from the DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse: “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize."
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:41AM
- The Nobel Appeasement Winner wants to bring segments of the Taliban into Afghan government (TimesOnline)
- Krauthammer: American decline not inevitable, but current foreign policy is an exercise in contraction (Weekly Standard)
- Senator Coburn introduces amendment to appropriations bill that would stop federal funding for political science research (Hill)
- A peace prize for a beer summit? ABC's list of Nobel Prize jokes.
Rising Nobel-ity
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:36AM
Very interesting news out of Norway about some American with a funny name winning the Nobel Prize. In other news, the NFL Hall of Fame has announced election to its membership of New York Jets rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen the hopes of Big Apple residents for the Jets to win their first Super Bowl since Joe Willie walked the sidelines." Also in the news, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has given the Honorary Award (popularly known as the "lifetime achievement award") to Hilary Duff.
The Runners Up
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:22AM
I admit that I've had a difficult time reacting to the Nobel announcement beyond making jokes on Twitter, but Mary Katherine Ham took the time to write about those who were passed over by the committee in favor of Obama. The list includes several Chinese dissidents. Check it out.
Poll Numbers to Make Any Democrat Nervous
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:17AM
The best hope to stop the Democratic attempt to wreck the health care system is the self-preservation instinct of moderate Democrats. Health care reform is growing less popular, especially among seniors, who used to punish Republicans for suggesting cuts in Medicare.
Explains Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal:
Among seniors, opposition to ObamaCare hit 63% in last month's Economist/YouGov Poll. But the number from that poll that should spook Democrats is this: 47% of seniors said they "strongly" oppose health-care reform, just 27% "strongly" support it. Seniors are the biggest consumers of health care, and their family members will probably take their concerns seriously. Seniors will likely cast about 20% of the votes next year.
The trend behind these numbers is that voters are turning away from Democrats. In 2006, the year the GOP lost control of Congress, Democrats enjoyed a double-digit lead in several "generic ballot" polls-a measure of voters' party preference. Democrats held that lead until this year. Today, Gallup's generic ballot shows Democrats have a razor thin 46% to 44% edge. According to Gallop's numbers, independents now favor Republicans by nine points.
The numbers may get worse for Democrats if they pass a health-care bill. Why? Because Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) wants to frontload the reforms with distasteful things. Under his plan, tax hikes and Medicare and Medicaid cuts kick in immediately, while new benefits are delayed for two-and-a-half years. Voters likely won't warm to reforms that slam them next year while promising benefits down the road.
The Democrats face the greatest danger if they win and pass something like the Baucus plan, which will impose costs before any alleged benefits. But the rest of us will be a greatest risk as well, since it will be hard to step back, no matter how bad the consequences, once the system has been nationalized. Which means that it is imperative to stop Obamacare.
Should Obama Turn Down the Nobel Peace Prize?
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:16AM
No. Absolutely not.
Many commentators, left and right, are saying that he should indeed turn it down so as to acknowledge his lack of accomplishments and avoid advancing his narcissistic image.
But the implicit premise in those arguments is that the Nobel Peace prize is an honor that President Obama doesn't deserve. The committee's decision to award Barack Obama the prize clearly shows that it is not an honor but a partisan joke. The prize has gone to some dubious characters in the past. But to award it to Obama...
Think of it this way: what would you do if you had woken up this morning to discover on the news that they'd given the prize to you? It's not that far-fetched a scenario, because most people have done on net as much as Obama to foster peace -- after all, he is prosecuting two wars and in fact bombing the moon. If I had won it, I wouldn't reject it. I would thank the committee and put it right next to (but below) my 1994 Oakdale School basketball championship trophy on my trophy stand.
UPDATE: ...and as a commenter suggests, I'd also cash the check. Their money is good even if their mental health is not.
UPDATE II: Another commenter suggests: "Hey, they really hurt his feelings with that Olympics business. This is the just the euros' way of cheering him up." Funny, that was almost the exact reason I was awarded the 1994 Oakdale basketball championship trophy after we were so crushed by losing to the Red Team. Except instead of "euros" they were parents.
What Role Did Glögg Play in Obama Nobel Peace Prize?
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:03AM
What role did glögg play in the shock decision by Norwegian parliamentarians to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama?
Glögg (pronounced something like gloog) is a tasty mulled wine drink popular in Scandinavia.
The question is worth asking because no one in his or her right mind could have voted to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a guy who has been president of the United States for less than nine months (I know -- it seems much longer, doesn't it?) and who hasn't accomplished much -- apart from destroying the U.S. economy and lining the pockets of his friends at ACORN.
President Obama hasn't done much on the international scene either and what he's done has been for the most part bad.
This is the kind of decision that must have seemed like a really good idea at the time when one was completely plastered and it's bound to lead to the creation of a whole new genre in comedy: Norwegian jokes.
The conversation between two Norwegians on the award committee might have gone something like this:
Ragnar: I dunno, Olaf, but we can really mess with the world's head if we give it to that Obama guy.
Olaf: Right on, Ragnar! I'll get the next round. Hic.
Ragnar: Yeah. Let's get King Harald really liquored up before he hands over the award. It'll be a hoot.
Olaf: It's a bonus that the dude's running two wars right now too.
Ragnar: Yeah, man. That's so fu**ed up. Cheers!
Hey, it's Norway. Maybe the prize deciders were stoned too.
Re: Nobel Obama
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 10:01AM
"Beyonce had one of the best peacemaking efforts of all time!"
Swedish Education as a Model for America
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 9:56AM
The British Conservative Party is looking at Sweden as a model for educational policy. So should the U.S. Observes Swede Anders Hultin in the British Spectator:
For us Swedes, it is gratifying to see David Cameron put our free schools model at the heart of his reform agenda. He has chosen well. In a few short years, the voucher system has transformed education in Sweden and led to the creation of almost a thousand new schools. But the Conservative leader has failed to grasp a key aspect of their success. To flourish, these schools must be allowed to make a profit.
This isn't just one of a long list of pessimistic predictions - it's the only crucial criticism; he can ignore the rest. The doubts I hear about school choice in England now are the same ones I heard when I helped draft the policy as an adviser in the Swedish education and science department in 1992. Who on earth, we were asked, would want to set up their own school? Surely low-income parents don't want choice - they just want their local school to improve. Our political opponents thought the policy such a dud they didn't even bother to attack it. Even we had our doubts. Our proposal was fairly simple: anyone could set up a school, and be paid the going rate (or, at the time, a bit less) that the state-run schools were receiving. But in our heart of hearts, we did not expect a rush of applicants. This is a symbolic policy, I was told by a colleague. It was in our manifesto, so we had to honour it.
Isn't it strange how little faith government places in the people whose lives it seeks to organise? Once we put our ‘symbolic' policy into practice, and handed power from government to communities, the effect was extraordinary. A thousand flowers bloomed. Or, more accurately, the number of independent schools grew from 80 to 1,100 - educating 10 per cent of all pupils at the compulsory education age and 20 per cent of those in upper secondary. The drive and energy came from outside government: we in the education department just paid the bills. This, perhaps, explains the success: it was a grassroots-led revolution. Where communities were unhappy with their school, they did not need to petition parliament or local government. They could find a school provider, and set up a new one.
The creativity of markets versus the control of bureaucracies. It is a lesson that should be widely applied.
House Ethics Committee Expands Rangel Investigation
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 9:10AM
It might still prove to be a toothless beast, but the House ethics committee voted to expand its investigation of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel. Reports ABC News:
The House ethics committee announced today that members have voted to expand their inquiry into House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel's financial irregularities, to include changes he made to financial disclosure statements.
It's the latest in several expansions of the Rangel probe over the past year, and it comes as Republicans are stepping up pressure on Democrats to remove Rangel, D-N.Y., from his powerful post atop the tax-writing committee.
The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct also said in a brief statement that it has authorized nearly 150 subpoenas in the Rangel investigations, has interviewed 34 witnesses who have accumulated some 2,100 pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than 12,000 pages of documents. Those details suggest a more aggressive investigation than previously known.
GOP lawmakers used the announcement of an expanded probe to renew their calls for Rangel to step aside pending the ethics committee's findings.
It's a tough issue for the Dems. He's a powerful and popular guy, a leading African-American who has handed out a lot of favors to a lot of people. On the other side, he appears to have violated more than a few laws and rules. What's a congressional Dem to do?
As Philip Klein reported, even some liberals are worried about the refusal of the Democrats to clean house. Protecting a "culture of corruption" could come back to haunt them in 2010 like it hurt Republicans in 2006.
Noble Laureate
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 9:01AM
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize goes to President Barack Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Accomplishments to follow?
Nobel Laureate
By Asher Embry
We often thought their choices odd.
This pick confirms their utter fraud.
Obama takes his place today
With Carter, Gore, ElBaradei.
(Pretty sure this won’t assuage
Either Clinton’s jealous rage.)
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
The Nobel Prize for Not Being George W. Bush
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 8:50AM
Hilariously, Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Previous winners include Kofi Annan (2001), Jimmy Carter (2002), and Al Gore (2007); the gag in my headline (swiped from PJ Doland) isn't really much of a gag. The Peace Prize is quite often nothing more than the vehicle through which the mandarins of transnational progressivism express their support for opponents of American hegemony in general and Bush in particular.
If Obama doesn't turn down the prize, as several commentators are urging, the signal will be that the American president is perfectly happy being a Carter-like posterboy for American weakness.
Nobel Obama
Posted by on 10.9.09 @ 8:14AM
President Obama joins Al Gore and Yasser Arafat as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I don't really know what else to say.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Domenech's Jeremiad
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 8:15PM
My friend Ben Domenech has an extremely provocative piece up at his website The New Ledger (which you should check out for some really top notch features). The topic is conservative advocacy organizations and think tanks. Domenech thinks they are eating up donor dollars when an entirely different set of individuals and/or organizations would be able to do much more with less.
Here's a clip (but you should really read the whole piece and see what you think):
Consider the example of one tenured think tank scholar, who I will not name, but whose identity may be fairly obvious. He is a resident scholar at a DC-area thinktank; he has co-written a book, which sold decently and prompted debate (more about its politics than its policy ideas); he is a contributing editor to several journals; and while he has never worked in government or on public policy, and has no advanced education in the discipline he primarily writes about, he is already living the life of a tenured professor. While he has never proposed a relevant policy solution on any matter, certainly not one that has been taken up by a politician, his students are an audience of readers who find his work of interest - he is now published regularly at more than a half dozen journals of opinion. For this he is well compensated.
Now consider the other side of this coin, the modern blogger - again, an individual I will not name, but who is well known within the center-right blogosphere. This is a young man, a veteran, with a family, a blue collar background, and a day job as a low-level tech worker. He writes on his own time, with his work focused on breaking news, and gets thousands of hits every day to his work. He has broken at least three major stories over the past two years by my count, including a news-breaking video that got extensive play on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. He gets no money to do this work, and the amounts he's received from major sources have never been more than the occasional monthly car payment. He struggles to support his family, but he believes what he's doing is important, so he sticks to it. Continue reading…
A Latimer Move
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 4:25PM
Ramesh Ponnuru isn't impressed by Matt Latimer's attempt to be the conscience of conservatism. I opposed most of the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies from the right, so I should be Latimer's target audience, but I can't say I'm impressed with what I've seen either.
Colorado: Gonzo Widow Mulls 'Freak Power' Revival
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 2:11PM
Hunter S. Thompson's widow says she may consider a campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., a development that could provoke fear and loathing in Aspen, where real-estate developers have long dreaded a return of the late "gonzo" journalist's infamous 1970 "Freak Power" politics.
Anita
Thompson said in an exclusive interview Wednesday that she is
being urged to seek the office by current Sheriff Bob Braudis,
who is up for re-election in 2010 discussed the possibility
of retirement in an
interview last month with the Independent, a British
newspaper.
"I'll have to talk to Bob," Mrs. Thompson, 36, told the American Spectator when asked about her possible future in politics. "The Aspen Disease is spreading in Pitkin County, almost out to Woody Creek."
Sheriff Braudis was a personal friend of Hunter Thompson, a Kentucky native and author of Hell's Angels, whose later books such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas defined the intensely personal style he called "gonzo."
Thompson was 64 in April 2003 when he married his second wife, Anita Bejmuk, who had been his editorial assistant. His death in February 2005, at age 67, is believed to have been suicide.
In August, Thompson's widow completed her bachelor's degree at Columbia University in New York and returned to the rustic cabin in Woody Creek, Colo., that her late husband dubbed Owl Farm.
"I'm sitting here with my Siamese cat in my lap, looking out the window at the Rocky Mountains," Mrs. Thompson said during a telephone interview Wednesday morning. She was an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton's 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, although she endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy after Mrs. Clinton's defeat. Discussing the new president's foreign policy, she said of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "Most Woody Creekers want out completely."
Of
her potential campaign for Pitkin County sheriff, Mrs. Thompson
suggested she might use the "Freak Power" posters from her
husband's notorious 1970 third-party bid for the office. During
that campaign,
Thompson shaved his head so he could call the crewcut
conservative incumbent as "my long-haired opponent" and authored
a platform that promised: "Rip up all city streets with
jackhammers and sod the streets at once."
Since 2005, Anita Thompson has authored a book, The Gonzo Way, edited a magazine called The Woody Creeker, blogged for the Huffington Post, operated her own Owl Farm Blog, and has considered attending law school if she does not run for sheriff.
"I'll always have Hunter in my heart," Mrs. Thompson said, when asked about how she has coped with her husband's death. "But I have lots of friends, so I'm never lonely."
CLARIFICATION (2:45 pm.): Mrs. Thompson wishes it to be known that the suggestion of her seeking the office held by her friend Sheriff Braudis "has been a running joke for five years, just because of the posters."
Buy Now, Save Later
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 2:03PM
The Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday that the Finance Committee's health care bill would reduce the deficit by $81 billion over 10 years, but that analysis assumes that future lawmakers will follow through on the Medicare cuts proposed in the legislation. And as the CBO acknowledged, historically Congress has not followed through on cuts to government programs.
"These projections assume that the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation," the CBO noted. "For example, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) mechanism governing Medicare's payments to physicians has frequently been modified (either through legislation or administrative action) to avoid reductions in those payments."
Writing for Investor's Business Daily, David Hogberg reminds us:
The SGR is a formula put into law in the late 1990s that is supposed to trigger automatic cuts in Medicare payments to physicians if those payments grow too quickly....
But physicians groups have opposed the SGR since 2003 and successfully pushed Congress to suspend the cuts every year since.
Deficit Hits $1.4 trillion for 2009
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 1:48PM
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the annual deficit for the 2009 fiscal year ended last week was $1.4 trillion. That represents a shortfall of 9.9 percent of GDP, the highest since World War II.
Has the Old Quarterback Era Come to An End?
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 1:10PM
Brett Favre's triumph in leading the Minnesota Vikings to victory over his old team, the Green Bay Packers, has obscured the fact that the older quarterbacks are generally not doing as well this NFL season. Last year was the season of the old quarterback. Not only did Favre lead the New York Jets, a previously 4-12 team, to 8-3 before tearing his bicep down the stretch, but Kerry Collins and Kurt Warner came in and sidelined promising young quarterbacks. The result? The Collins-led Tennesse Titans went 13-3, the best record in the NFL, and Warner's Arizona Cardinals went all the way to the Super Bowl.
This year, things have been a little different. Warner has thrown four touchdowns to four interceptions as the Cardinals have sunk to 1-2 (they are coming off their bye week). Collins has thrown five touchdowns to six interceptions for a quarterback rating of 68.9. His Titans are 0-4 heading into a match with the undefeated Indianapolis Colts.
Do you bench Collins and Warner at this point, declaring it a rebuilding season? Or are Vince Young and Matt Leinart even bigger gambles given troubled NFL track records? That's the question these teams are facing. But with the exception of Favre, we are hearing more about the young guns like Drew Brees than we are the graybeards. Whether the quarterbacks are old or not, however, the season is still young.
President Obama and the Dalai Lama: A Historic Opportunity Squandered
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 12:07PM
President Ronald Reagan successfully led the Greatest Generation's ultimate triumph, over the transformational challenge posed by the Soviet Union and its strategic threat and rival model of governance, in part because he understood the gravest threats to communism were the free exercise of religion and free and independent labor unions.
Free and independent labor unions obliterated communism's exclusive claim to speak for the "proletariat," and enabled enslaved men and women to experience a core principle of America: individual liberty, for which they fought, often with great sacrifice. Thus, former Screen Actors Guild President Reagan worked closely with American organized labor to foster and defend workers' unions throughout the Eastern bloc, most notably Poland's Solidarity.
The free exercise of religion destroyed atheistic communism's ideological claim to be an historical, "scientific" inevitability. In this cause, Reagan united with Pope John Paul II to spur the peaceful implosion of the Evil Empire.
Today, our Global Generation confronts the transformational challenge posed by communist China's rise as a strategic threat and rival model of governance. Ominously, President Obama has not learned the lessons of history; and has sought to appease rather than implode the Beijing regime to free a billion souls from the shackles of statist servitude.
Ironically, though a Democrat, President Obama has not effectively marshaled the power of American organized labor to push for workers' rights in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Indeed, fearing communist China's economic leverage over the U.S. economy, President Obama has calculatedly muted America's call for the recognition of all human rights in the PRC, including the right to free and independent labor unions.
Similarly, President Obama has also missed a historic opportunity regarding the free exercise of religion. In refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama prior to meeting with the Beijing regime, President Obama is squandering this generation's opportunity to see an American President unite with a religious leader to free billions from oppression -- namely, the Dalai Lama.
There remains time for President Obama to realize his mistake; and embrace the moral and practical power of both American labor and the Dalai Lama to triumph over the transformational challenge posed by communist China's as a strategic threat and rival model of governance. Still, history's hands remorselessly round the clock....
U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter (R-MI) is the Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 10:48AM
- 25% of world's population is now Muslim (Fox News)
- The poor Sheikhs. Saudis want international aid to offset possible losses in oil revenue if world cuts dependence on oil (Houston Chronicle)
- Progressive Democrats are working to "save this president from himself" in Afghan War (Washington Examiner)
- Ways and Means Chairman Rangel brings $3 million defense pork project to CCNY that the Pentagon doesn't even want (New York Post)
Newsweek Writer Says Rangel Must Go
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 10:19AM
Over at Newsweek, Ben Adler makes the case --from a liberal perspective -- for Democrats stripping Charlie Rangel of his chairmanship. He's worried that if Democrats circle the wagons to defend Rangel, it will hurt them badly at the polls, just as the culture of corruption theme contributed to Republicans losing power:
The Democrats were not elected on a promise to return to the days of when the minority party had more power in policymaking, but they were elected on a promise to clean Congress's dirty laundry. Either Democrats prove that the days of Duke Cunningham-like behavior are over, or they will repeat the mistakes of the Tom DeLay-era Republicans, and voters may punish them at the polls for their hypocrisy.
I think Adler is right to be concerned. It wasn't just 2006 -- in 1994, Democratic scandals such as the Dan Rostenkowski House post offfice fiasco helped bring Republicans to power in the first place. While ideological voters tend to decide who to vote for based on issues, election outcomes are often determined on non-ideological grounds by swing voters. This is one reason why ideological types are often surprised when their team gets to power and it turns out that the public is not as supportive of their actual policy goals as they imagined.
Why Not Hendrik Uber Alles?
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 9:38AM
Hendrik Hertzberg peers across the Atlantic and nearly breaks into "Das Deutschlandlied."
I feel for Hertzberg. It must be difficult to live amongst the kind of rubes and morons who don't appreciate gun control, socialism, the urgency of global warming or, most importantly, hack columns that denigrate a certain great institution on a weekly basis.
The Day Ahead: October 8
Posted by on 10.8.09 @ 6:30AM
The Day Ahead: October 8th
On the Site:
- The First Ironman of Hawaii, by James M. Thunder
- School Choice Even Obama Supports, by Rishawn Biddle
- Ambulance Chasing--From Kabul to Gaza, by Ben Lerner
- White Collar Hero, by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
- Vaccine Preemption, by Jack Park
Comment of the Day:
Reader Etiquette Man on John R. Guardiano's Free General McChrystal:
This is exactly right, Jim, and your analysis of both MacArthur's military brilliance and Truman's correct decision to fire him is spot on.
If a soldier is given a legal order, he is obliged to obey it. Period.
I lost count of the number of stupid orders I had to follow after my first week of basic training. When I became a Warrant Officer later in my career and had to implement the nonsensical orders of 21-year-old 2LT's, often over my privately stated objections, I learned a hard lesson in tongue-biting, but I never undermined my commander and always presented a unified front to my troops. McChrystal is not doing this, and--as much as I loathe Obama--McChrystal is wrong.
I am really surprised that people who purport to have military experience actually think that soldiers should have the right to question legal orders. This is profoundly dangerous line of thinking, and one that disturbs me greatly.
What to Watch For:
- Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders are going to hold talks on Karabakh.
- The Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced.
- Bulgaria and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will meet and discuss border cooperation in Strumitsa (a more prosperous part of the country), and improving living standards.
Game of the Day:
Best of the Day:
Obama rules out troops slash in Afghanistan:
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Senate Dems Demand Health Care Bill Before a Vote
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 11:19PM
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces another potential obstacle before he can wreck America health care: eight Democratic moderates have requested that any bill be available for 72 hours before a vote. Reports National Journal:
Eight moderate Democrats further complicated the floor effort Tuesday by asking Reid to post on the Internet for 72 hours the full legislative text of a final bill and complete CBO scores "prior to the first vote to proceed on health reform legislation."
The moderates want the text as amended and modified CBO scores available electronically 72 hours before a final vote on the measure. If Reid determines he must acquiesce to the moderates to get the bill passed, such efforts could delay a final vote further by a few weeks at least.
"Whether or not our constituents agree with the direction of the debate, many are frustrated and lacking accurate information on the emerging proposals in Congress," the senators wrote. "Without a doubt, reforming health care in America is one of the most monumental and far-reaching undertakings considered by this body in decades. We believe the American public's participation in this process is critical to our overall success of creating a bill that lowers healthcare costs and offers access to quality and affordable health care for all Americans."
Of course, letting people know what their supposed representatives are voting on scares Reid and his colleagues who are dedicated to nationalizing the health care system.
The Onion Explains ObamaCare
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 10:01PM
What would President Barack Obama's proposed takeover of health care mean? The Onion explains:
President Barack Obama held a nationally televised address Tuesday to "clarify any misunderstandings" about his health care proposal, assuring Americans that under the new bill senior citizens-and not the federal government-will have the right to choose how they are executed.
"Let me dispel these ridiculous rumors once and for all and set the record straight: Under my plan, seniors are going to be killed the way they want to be killed, end of story," said the president, who acknowledged that "wiping out" the nation's elderly population has always been his No. 1 priority. "If your grandmother would rather be euthanized in the privacy of her own home than be gutted and hanged on a high school soccer field, she is entitled to that right."
Americans Will Lose President's Cup
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 9:46PM
Three years ago I predicted the U.S. would lose the Ryder Cup, and they did. Last year, when they were heavy underdogs, I predicted the U.S. would win the Ryder Cup, and they did. I hate to say it, but this year my premonitions are going the other way again. I see the International squad, a big underdog, winning a close battle.
Woods and Stricker are exhausted, Mickelson's back is hurting, Kenny Perry's mother just died, and Hunter Mahan can't seem to actually win a tourney and can't possibly be as good for a third straight team competition as he was in his first two. Justin Leonard is due for a really, really strong week, but I don't see Sean O'Hair or Lucas Glover getting hot. On the international side, Y.E. Yang has Tiger's number, Angel Cabrera is utterly unflappable, and Camilo Villegas may turn into the surprise start of the whole competition. Adam Scott has something to prove -- and he will indeed prove it. Els and Goosen will be solid and steady, and Robert Allenby won't miss a full shot (he may miss some putts) all week.
Obviously, I haven't mentioned all the players, but you get the idea. I see the International side as being more inspired, more motivated, and scrappier. The American side's greater depth of talent will keep us close, but alas, I see a win for the team of The Shark.
Doctor Donors Obey Obamacare
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 5:59PM
The Washington Times' new blog The Conservatives yesterday had a great post about all those white-smocked doctors at the White House the other day. SOme of this info has since gotten out elsewhere, but just in case you missed it, take a look. It's excellent reporting by our friend Brian Faughnan. These docs are hardly disinterested parties; they are big Obama donors.
CBO's Caveat
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 4:55PM
While the Congressional Budget Office gave a fiscal thumbs up to the Senate Finance Committee's health care legislation, it included an important disclaimer: the estimates were only preliminary, and could change significantly once the current draft of the bill is converted from plain English into legislative language. But the Democrats have already blocked an effort to wait for the legislative language for a vote on the bill.
"CBO and JCT's analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman's mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language," CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote his a letter to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.
Later in the letter, under a section titled "Important Caveats Regarding This Preliminary Analysis," Elmendorf cautioned: "The Chairman's mark, as amended, has not yet been converted into legislative language. The review of such language could lead to significant changes in the estimates of the proposal's effects on the federal budget and insurance coverage."
Last month, Democrats on the committee killed an amendment proposed by Sen. Jim Bunning that would have required the committee to have the actual legislative language of its health care bill evaluated by the CBO before voting on it. It failed by a 12-11 vote, with Sen. Blanche Lincoln the lone dissenting Democrat.
"Let's be honest about it, most people don't read the legislative language," Sen. John Kerry said at the time.
The reason this could prove significant is that Sen. Olympia Snowe -- the one Republican who could potentially vote the bill out of committee -- was a strong advocate of waiting for legislative language.
"The American people are rightly entitled to see what we are legislating and we should not be afraid of having a better and more complete understanding of exactly what we are doing," Snowe said in a statement last month. "The fact is words matter and so do the numbers. This amendment represents a common sense, practical, pragmatic, good government approach to understanding the totality and the collective impact of what we do. We want to be sure that we are absolutely confident in the integrity of the product that we are going to be voting on in the final analysis."
CBO Says Baucus Bill Will Reduce Deficit by $81 Billion
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 4:25PM
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Finance Committee's health care legislation would reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion over 10 years.
The CBO said the bill's cost of $829 billion would be financed by taxes and savings, and that it would cover 29 million uninsured.
Will have more, but the bottom line is that this is good news for the Democrats because they now have a bill that they can point to that, according to the official scorekeeper, is deficit neutral and costs under $900 billion. The question is what happens when this gets merged with the more liberal and costly Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill.
CBO Delay in Releasing Finance Committee Cost Estimate
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 4:00PM
The Congressional Budget Office was expected to release a cost estimate of the Senate Finance Committee health care bill by mid-afternoon today, but a Republican staffer on the committee just told me that at about 3 p.m. the CBO told members, "We know you're expecting this, but there's been a delay."
The source did not have any more detailed information about how significant the delay was and declined to speculate further.
Republicans Call for Hearings on Jennings
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 1:51PM
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Domestic Policy Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) have requested that controversial Obama "czar" Kevin Jennings appear before the Oversight committee.
In a letter to Committee Chairman Eldophus Towns (D-MD) and Subcommittee Chairman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Issa and Jordan write, "The vetting undertaken by this Administration during its hiring processes, as well as the standards it imposes, appear inadequate. In some cases, individuals have displayed troubling behavior that renders them unfit to serve the American people. This is especially true for Mr. Jennings."
Conservative Leaders Decry Continuing Culture of Corruption
10.7.09 @ 1:18PM
Rangel & Pelosi: the Culture of Corruption Continues
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
- Tacitus
RE: In 2006, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi criticized the Republicans for instituting a "culture of corruption." However, while serving as Speaker of the House, Pelosi has overseen a deterioration of principled governance that is spiraling out of control. The most recent revelation that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel has withheld over $600,000 in assets is indicative that the culture of corruption is alive and well under Democratic leadership.
ACTION: We urge you to contact your elected representatives in Congress and remind them that Charles Rangel is ill-suited to remain in his position as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and if he does not step down voluntarily Speaker Pelosi has a responsibility to remove him.
ISSUE IN BRIEF:
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 12:49PM
- Obama's Copenhagen trip cost $1 million, and no gold, silver, or bronze to show for it (Telegraph)
- Dreams from a terrorist? Bill Ayers claims he wrote Obama's first book (American Thinker)
- Washington Post: Grown in the USA marijuana has a competitive advantage over Mexican drug cartels.
- Cindy Sheehan moving to Washington to protest Afghanistan War full time. The California recession is so bad even the activists have to move back east (ABC)
Obama's Bottom Line
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 12:37PM
I was looking back at the transcript of President Obama's February news conference, and I thought it would be interesting to remind people what he saw at the time as the primary point of the stimulus package:
My bottom line is to make sure that we are saving or creating 4 million jobs....
So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs....
But my bottom line is, are we creating 4 million jobs, and are we laying the foundation for long- term economic growth?...
Later, the following exchange took place:
QUESTION: -- how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working?
Can they -- should they be looking at the metric of the stock market, home foreclosures, unemployment? What metric should they use? When? And how will they know if it's working or whether or not we need to go to a Plan B?
MR. OBAMA: I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs. That's bottom line number one, because if people are working, then they've got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments. Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence. And they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers.
So step number one, job creation.
Over 2.7 million jobs have been lost since Obama signed the economic stimulus bill.
Media Mattress Stuck on Sweet 16
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 12:28PM
Do the folks at Media Mattress -- sorry, Media Matters -- really believe in giving a pass to adult-child sex?
Let's walk through this v-e-r-y slowly for Eric Boehlert over at Media Mattress, where sleeping with the state run media is the achievable aspiration today and everyday.
Here's the link to Boehlert's story in which I, yes, moi, am called "monumentally dumb." Why might this be Mr. Boehlert's view? Well, because I did not note that the now famous "Brewster" in the Kevin Jennings situation (or "witch hunt" in Mattress parlance) was really 16, not 15. According to no less than "Brewster" himself, who has now stepped forward to say so. And, which, under Massachusetts law, makes the formerly young Brewster not that young at all for consensual sex but rather legal, barely. So to speak.
In his indignation, Boehlert does the usual bodacious liberal dance. As if, had he been defending O.J. way back when wifely murder was accused, Boehlert would have suggested to the jury that Mr. Simpson was really innocent because his murdered wife had cancer and was surely going to die anyway. So what's the big deal?
In other words, Boehlert the Bodacious, the issue here is not Brewster's actual age at the time. The issue is what Mr. Jennings thought his age was -- and thinking that thought, how did he respond? More to the point, is he carrying around these thoughts today and trying in some fashion to make them the official policy of the U.S. Department of Education?
As all now agree, Mr. Jennings himself has been revealed on tape -- a tape played on Sean Hannity's show -- saying this (relevant remarks highlighted):
And I said, "Brewster, what are you doing in there asleep?" And he said, "Well, I'm tired." And I said, "Well we all are tired and we all got to school today." And he said, "Well I was out late last night." And I said, "What were you doing out late on a school night." And he said, "Well, I was in Boston…" Boston was about 45 minutes from Concord. So I said, "What were you doing in Boston on a school night Brewster?" He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, "Well, I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him." High school sophomore, 15 years old. That was the only way he knew how to meet gay people. I was a closeted gay teacher, 24 years old, didn't know what to say. Knew I should say something quickly so I finally said, "My best friend had just died of AIDS the week before." I looked at Brewster and said, "You know, I hope you knew to use a condom." He said to me something I will never forget, He said. "Why should I, my life isn't worth saving anyway."
Boehlert responds to this by saying: "As anybody who's been following the Kevin Jennings Witch Hunt knows, the boy in question was at least 16 years old, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts where the incident occurred. This has been known for days. The Spectator, however, just doesn't like that fact, so it opts for its own version of the truth."
In other words, the "O.J.'s-wife-was-going-to-die-anyway" defense. The boy was really 16, not 15, so no problem.
Well, hello? "Brewster" could have been 35 for all we care. The point to all not blinded from too much time being rolled in the Media Mattress is that the issue was what Mr. Jennings thought the boy's age was. And quite clearly, as Jennings himself says on the tape, he believed "Brewster" to be 15 -- to quote exactly "High school sophomore, 15 years old." Which is to say underage for consensual sex by virtue of the laws of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Overwhelmed by the boy's gayness instead of his childishness (would he have made the same suggestion to a 15-year-old heterosexual girl?) Jennings dished the condom advice.
Then, hilariously, Boehlert wants to know why I focused on the silence of Speaker Nancy Pelosi when it comes to the Jennings issue. I say hilarious because Boehlert knows as well as the rest of us, but just hopes none of us will notice. Unlike GOP leaders Senator Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner -- and for that matter President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator Harry Reid and a slew of other Democrats -- Representative Pelosi is the Member of Congress who demanded the ousting of GOP Congressman Mark Foley and castigated him for texting underage male House pages for sex. Foley, she cried, not to mention the GOP House leadership of the day, had failed to "protect the children." She labeled Foley's behavior "abhorrent." All the while during this episode she kept under wraps that she had marched in a parade celebrating Harry Hay -- quite famous for advocating exactly the same behavior that was apparently desired by Congressman Foley. Sex with underage boys.
In sum, as pointed out before, Mr. Jennings has felt the need to say he would have handled things differently with Brewster, whom he did in fact believe to be 15, not 16.
So the question for Mr. Boehlert is simple: Was Mr. Jennings right in giving the advice he gave to a boy he believed to be 15? Yes? No? Maybe?
Will Mr. Boehlert roll over in the Media Mattress and answer? Will the Mattress speak on the advisability of sex between adults and children? Should this in fact be the policy of the Department of Education?
Stay tuned.
Arlen Specter, Potential Cap 'n' Traitor
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 12:22PM
Newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter is walking a political tight rope on cap and trade. Facing a liberal primary challenge from Joe Sestak, he has told the Democratic base he's on board with their vision of climate change legislation. But representing a manufacturing state that could be hard hit by such a policy, Specter is exercising his characteristic caution. From the New York Times:
While most environmentalists viewed the bill as being far weaker than the legislation crafted by Boxer and other Democratic leaders, Specter nonetheless was one of the few congressional Republicans to attach his name to a climate change bill.
Specter, however, has yet to endorse the Kerry-Boxer bill, saying that he believed the bill could be structured in a way that is "economically responsible" and "environmentally effective" but also saying that it needed a number of modifications. Among them: the inclusion of a price collar guaranteeing more price certainty than the House version, a combination of incentives and payments to ensure commercial deployment of carbon capture technology, and the inclusion of adequate allowances to protect energy-intensive manufacturing.
Cap and trade is going to prove an even tougher sell than health care.
Rep. Price on Health Care
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 11:17AM
Rep. Tom Price of Georgia denounced the Democrats' health care reform plans in stark terms this morning at an American Spectator and Americans for Tax Reform press breakfast. Price said that the policies in the current HR3200 plan "violate any principle of good health care that you could think of."
"The die for this vote [on health care] was cast in November," Price noted. "We don't have the votes" to block Democratic legislation, he confessed, adding that he expected that the left would be able to implement harmful policies before the Republicans would be able to regain power in congress. "We may have some very dangerous waters ahead."
With the Democrats poised to overhaul the health care system with a plan that Price thinks will include a public option, the liberal movement would seem to be ascendant. But the tea parties and grassroots opposition to the Democratic idea of health care reform, Price argued, would in fact shortly benefit the Republican Party. "The angst, anger, concern, and fear...are for real," Price observed, before predicting that, because of that grassroots movement, the 2010 elections will be a "remarkable, resounding" victory for the GOP. Price also completely discounted the administration's credibility on health care and among the grassroots, saying that the photo-op that President Obama had with a group of doctors earlier this week was "clearly staged" and not representative of larger groups of practicing doctors.
Edmund Burke Wants You To Buy Health Insurance!
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 10:40AM
Generally, I'd let Phil and Jim fight amongst themselves, but one quick point is in order: In over 1,700 words on the subject of Bobby Jindal's health care reform ideas, I see a lot of poll numbers, conservative and Republican name-dropping, and discussion of the differences between libertarianism and conservatism. I don't see many arguments for why Jindal's suggestions are good policy. I would think that a "governing conservatism" might be concerned about something like that.
Is Chris Christie In Trouble?
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 10:25AM
Today on the main site, Peter Ferrara urges Republicans not to run like Chris Christie, the GOP nominee for governor of New Jersey. Yesterday came the first poll (pdf) in recent memory showing Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine in the lead. Coincidence?
Whatever the weaknesess of Christie's own approach, it is clear that Corzine's strategy is taking a toll: Pound away at Christie with huge negative ad buys in attempt to drive his numbers down to Corzine's level. And that's roughly where the Farleigh Dickinson poll has Christie, trailing Corzine 43 percent to 44 percent.
The fundamentals here still favor Christie, I think. First of all, Corzine's lead is within the margin of error. When you look at the questions besides the head-to-head matchup, the governor's numbers are terrible. Corzine's numbers remain stuck in the mid-to-low 40s even after the ad blitz, a terrible place for an incumbent to be. It shows the voters have made up their mind about him. Finally, unlike past races where New Jersey has teased Republicans by giving the GOP candidate competitive poll numbers and then a decisive defeat on election day (think Dick Zimmer), Corzine has actually trailed for most of this year.
Corzine could still pull it out if enough people vote for the independent candidates, splitting the anti-Corzine vote and letting the governor be re-elected with 40 to 45 percent. There has long been concern that Christie was too soft to beat the New Jersey Democrats' hardball tactics. But I wouldn't look at this one poll and conclude Jon Corzine is going to get four more years just yet.
Regnery in NC
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 10:25AM
American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery visited North Carolina last month for a conservative leadership conference, and my former employer Carolina Journal (a John Locke Foundation publication) caught him for a few minutes to discuss his book "Upstream" and the future of conservatism:
Official at ACORN Funder to Head Corporation for National and Community Service
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 9:50AM
President Obama announced he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington to be chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America.
My readers will remember that "the Corporation" assumed a prominent role on the infamous NEA Conference call, where "the Corporation's" Nell Abernathy joined White House and NEA officials to nudge artists to produce works supporting the Obama Administration's legislative priorities.
Although the charity Corvington works for, Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, has granted funding to ACORN during his tenure, it is unclear if Corvington has ties to ACORN.
Nonetheless, Corvington is part of the same cluster of organizations that provides financial and other support for ACORN which is a longtime fixture in the activist community.
Since 2001 the Annie E. Casey Foundation has pumped at least $1,705,500 into the ACORN network, according to philanthropy database information.
Of the $1,705,500, at least $850,500 was earmarked for ACORN operations in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the ACORN branch office first shown in the recent undercover videos that debuted on BigGovernment.com. Those videos show James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute and receiving mountains of advice on evading laws pertaining to tax evasion and prostitution (among other things).
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a major funder of other groups on the left.
Looking at just the first letter of the alphabet, its grant recipients are labor federation AFL-CIO, abortion rights think tank Alan Guttmacher Institute, and liberal policy shop the Aspen Institute.
Although most of its grants go to groups on the political left, the foundation has funded at least one think tank on the political right. It has provided a few grants to the American Enterprise Institute.
(modified from a post at BigGovernment.com)
Pinkerton Redefines Conservatism
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 7:33AM
Earlier this week I criticized Bobby Jindal for writing a health care op-ed in the Washington Post in which he endorsed a requirement that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions, among other big government proposals. Because the requirement would also drive up the cost of insurance and lead to a federal mandate forcing individuals to purchase insurance or pay a tax, I argued that this was inconsistent with conservative principles. I wasn’t alone in thinking this. Ramesh Ponnuru also criticized Jindal’s proposal, and liberal blogger Ezra Klein wrote a post titled, “Bobby Jindal Embraces the Democratic Plan for Health-Care Reform.” Yet surprisingly, Jim Pinkerton writes that he was "surprised" by my negative reaction:
Why the surprise on the Spectator’s attack on Jindal? Because while the libertarian Cato Institute can always be expected to uphold ivory-tower free-market purity--completely abstracted from the chore of actual governance--conservatives, for the most part, have given themselves the task of forging a “governing conservatism.” Libertarian heroes are figures such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ayn Rand, none of whom ever ran for office, much less were ever in charge of anything. Indeed, the great value of libertarian thinking is its purity; Cato, for example, provides an enormous service to the country by consistently upholding the “gold standard” of ideological purity.By contrast, conservatism is a lumpier and more organic philosophy. Conservative heroes include Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, all of whom not only won elections, but sought real change through the legislative and political process. Jindal is in that category, a conservative actively involved in governance. And so for conservative intellectuals who wish their side to win elections and then go on to make real policy changes, they might conclude that they need to work with Jindal and others like him, in order to hammer out art-of-the-possible solutions. Or maybe not.
Libertarianism and conservatism have a much more nuanced relationship with one another than Pinkerton lets on. It’s true that on social issues and national security matters, there are lots of divisions between conservatives and libertarians, but when it comes to economic issues and free markets, there is less daylight.
The “libertarian heroes” Pinkerton mentions all played an influential role in conservatism. Hayek and Friedman are revered within the conservative movement, and Friedman’s economic ideas formed part of the foundation of Reaganomics. Due to her extreme atheism, Rand is more controversial among conservatives, but her moral defense of capitalism has been influential too. And this year, all of the talk of “going Galt” as well as the anger at the tea parties directed at government bureaucrats mooching off of their productivity is Randian in nature.
Also, if he's going to make a case for pragmatic governing conservatives, it’s odd that Pinkerton would use the example of Barry Goldwater, who is best known for getting absolutely clobbered in a presidential election because he wanted to run a campaign based on principles. As Goldwater wrote in the Conscience of a Conservative:
"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents" interests,' I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause, I am doing the very best I can."
Robert Poole, one of the early editors of Reason magazine, has called Goldwater “20th-century America's first libertarian politician.”
And as for Ronald Reagan, he himself declared that, “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism… The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is… I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path.”
While Pinkerton acknowledges that a government insurance mandate is “un-libertarian,” he asks, “Is it really un-conservative?”
Well, a mandate means that lawmakers in Washington would be forcing every breathing individual in America to purchase a product. Government bureaucrats would define what constitutes an acceptable version of that product. Every year when they file their taxes, Americans would have to submit documentation to the Internal Revenue Service proving that they have an acceptable version of that product. If they don’t abide by the requirement, they will be forced to pay a tax to the federal government.
Thus, the mandate violates just about every conservative principle that there is. It’s a violation of individual liberty. It's unconstitutional if you were to strictly interpret the document the way most conservatives would prefer. It would infringe on states’ rights. And it would be a tax increase.
As a policy matter, I don’t accept Pinkerton’s false premise that in order to be serious about health care, conservatives have to embrace big government solutions such as Jindal is offering. As it happens, I have written on numerous occasions about alternative solutions to the health care crisis that involve getting government out of the way (see here, here, here, here, and here).
Ultimately, I think, Pinkerton makes a mistake by conflating conservatism with Republicanism. Republicans thought that passing the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society in the form of the Medicare prescription drug plan was a good example of practical politics and good governance. But most conservatives saw it as a betrayal of small-government principles.
UPDATE: Cato's Michael Cannon responds that "Hurting the Sick Is Not Good Politics."
The Day Ahead: October 7
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 6:30AM
Today on the main site:
- Price Fixing, by Wayne Crews and Ryan Young
- Healthcare Reform for the “Party of No”, by William Tucker
- O-lympics, by Lisa Fabrizio
- Acting Like a Bunch of Christies, by Peter Ferrara
Comment of the Day Tuesday, October 6th:
Reader John II on Keynes’ Uncertainty Principle:
A keynote running through all the responses thus far (and sounded as well in Mr. Skidelsky’s remarks) is that economics of itself is not adequate to the task of understanding, much less explaining, the human condition.
I recall with fondness a wise old American history teacher I had in my undergraduate days who remarked on the brevity and directness of the US Constitution. He suggested that the Founders obviously regarded the personal and private sphere of human relations as belonging to a higher order than the public and the civic—with the latter arranged in service to the former and not the other way around. (He was no “individualist” because he also suggested that the Founders understood the most basic unit of the larger social order to be the family.)
Amid all this rumination over the shape and motive of the Constitution, he suggested a metaphor that I have never forgotten. He said that, in America, the state is (and should be) fostered primarily not as a controlling agency but as a referee—a third party on which the private principals in the game of life depend for knowledge and enforcement of the rules and for peaceful and disinterested settlements of their disputes. When the proper roles blur and the state starts behaving like a player, true freedom is diminished or lost.
My own brief (and that of others on this thread) against what is broadly called Keynesian economics—which I also had to study in college back in the 1960s under the tutelage of teachers who seemed to me to have little of the breadth of learning and none of the good sense of that American history teacher—is moral. And I think it may be relevant to the discussion that Keynes himself suffered a bit of trouble in that department.
What to Watch For:
- New IMacs, Mac Remotes, and Mac Minis are being released.
- The Mojave Cross makes it to the Supreme Court. It has been in the Mojave Desert since 1934, commemorating fallen soldiers from World War I. The ACLU has argued that the cross’s presence violates the Church vs. State clause in the First Amendment.
- The NHL season begins.
Durbin to Media: Ixnay on the Actsfay!
Posted by on 10.7.09 @ 2:55AM
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is angry that an Illinois radio station publicized his schedule:
Mike Moyers, general manager/vice president of STARadio Corporation, which owns WTAD-AM (930), said Christina Angarola of Durbin's Chicago office called WTAD on Monday to inform them they would no longer be included on the list of those receiving news releases from the senator when he plans to visit West-Central Illinois.
Moyers said Angarola was not pleased that WTAD chose to make public the time and place of Durbin's September 4 visit to Quincy's Blessing Hospital to hold a meeting on health care with officials from the hospital, Quincy Medical Group and Quincy Mayor John Spring and State Senator John Sullivan (D-Rushville).
Darn those guys. Reporting the facts? How dare they!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Climate Robo-Educators
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 4:01PM
A few weeks back (and in subsequent op-eds) I introduced the latest student indoctrination effort to fight global warming, via the Alliance for Climate Education, which seeks invitations from high schools to deliver assembly presentations during class time. The group, which has started out targeting six regions of the country (the San Francisco Bay area, Southern California, Houston, Chicago, New England, and Washington, D.C.), presents climate misinformation and lies (To students: “You’ve lived through the ten hottest years ever recorded in history”) so as to recruit teens for the cause of further spreading alarmism.
Last week a report in the student newspaper for the private Loomis Chaffee School, near Hartford, Conn., illustrated that the presentations ACE educators deliver are heavily scripted. For confirmation, you might watch the group’s promotional video trailer, note the script highlights delivered by San Francisco rapper Ambessa Contave, and then catch the reported remarks from ACE’s New England educator Rouwenna Lamm:
- “We all need to lower our emissions and raise our voices.”
- “In 2009, we’ve inherited a world that’s all about living large.”
- “Did you know that the average American teenager uses 20 football fields just to live?”
- “You can’t see that, but what it means is ‘living large’ cranks up the world’s thermostat way too hot.”
- “Climate change is real, it is dangerous and it was be stopped. You didn’t start it, you don’t want it, but you have to fix it.”
- “Don’t discount the power you have as individuals and collectively.”
Most of the bulleted remarks copycat Contave’s recorded points. The outcome at Loomis? After giving classroom lectures on the science of climate change (certainly excluding the lack of upward change during the last decade), and at the end of Lamm’s evening presentation, many students immediately signed online ACE’s “Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels.”
Next up: Grade school global warming warning songs to the tune of “We Are the World."
UPDATE 4:39 p.m.: Rouwenna also delivered at Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mass., with the following mathematical logic: "The answer is by having each of the 22 million students nationwide install three energy-efficient light bulbs. Sixty-six million light bulbs equals 500,000 cars—it's that kind of math that helps any audience see the light in a world otherwise discouraged by images of a crumbling Polar ice cap and of bears stranded on ice floes.”
The Undecider
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 2:12PM
Pat Buchanan's prediction of how Obama will handle Afghanistan strikes me as about right:
Obama is thus being told by the McChyrstal camp: If you do not send the 40,000, you lose the war and the presidency. He is being told by the Biden camp: If you send the 40,000, Afghanistan will be your Vietnam; you will not win it by 2012; and you will lose the presidency.
Look for Obama, not a natural Decider, to split the difference and send a few thousand U.S. troops to train the Afghan army.
Call him the Undecider.
The Rush Rams?
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 11:25AM
There are reports that Rush Limbaugh and St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts are interested in acquiring the St. Louis Rams.
The Flip Side to Castle
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 11:22AM
While Rep. Mike Castle's announcement gives the Republicans a slightly better than even chance of taking Joe Biden's old Senate seat (in a race against Beau Biden, no less), it also makes it highly likely that the GOP will lose Delaware's sole House seat. Many national Republicans were willing to take the risk, however, believing that Castle was either going to move up or out, putting the House seat at risk either way.
Iran to Use Faster Centrifuge at New Nuke Site
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 11:07AM
Iran is planning to use new centrifuges at its recently-disclosed nuclear site that can enrich uranium at double or triple the rate of other centrifuges, Reuters reports, citing an article from an Iranian newspaper.
"We have put our effort on research and development of new machines in the past two or three months so that we would be able to produce machines with high efficiency and completely indigenous," Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's head atomic energy official told the newspaper in an interview.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 11:01AM
- Rumors are surfacing that Ahmadinejad has Jewish roots (Foreign Policy)
- McCain blasts Jim Jones for pandering to the left on Afghanistan policy (Fox News)
- Why Obama is struggling with the Andrew Jackson/Scots-Irish vote (Atlantic)
- Small town receives $49,000 federal grant to build exhibit exploring lacrosse's effect on Native Americans (Watertown Daily Times)
Castle to Seek Biden's Senate Seat
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 10:52AM
Rep. Mike Castle, seen as the most electable Republican in Delaware, is set to announce a bid for the Senate seat once held by Joe Biden, the Politico reports. Beau Biden, the vice president's son, is expected to be his Democratic challenger. A Rasmussen poll released last week gave Castle a 5 point lead over Biden.
Climate Has Changed for Red Sox Captain
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 9:29AM
Catcher Jason Varitek is aging and his skills deteriorating, and Boston Red Sox fans seem prepared to bid him a fond farewell. So what does Boston Herald sports columnist Gerry Callahan liken it to?
He is a 37-year-old catcher with more miles on him than Al Gore’s Gulfstream, and this is what usually happens to 37-year-old catchers: They get old.
The Day Ahead: October 6
Posted by on 10.6.09 @ 6:32AM
Today on the main site:
- Keynes' Uncertainty Principle, by Joseph Lawler.
- Capitalism: A Love Story, by James Bowman.
- Pelosi to Polanski to Jennings: Why Sean Hannity is Right by Jeffrey Lord
- Plus more.
Comment of the Day -- Monday, October 5th:
Reader HD on Now that Ireland has Caved:
The EU is likely doomed to failure simply because it is an artificial construct. The member nations share no common language and it's unlikely that this could be forced on them by fiat. Also, the Euro, while doing well at the moment, could serve to hamstring the members that now see capitalism, instead of socialism, as the way forward. These intrepid Europeans could find themselves subsidizing nations with less will to strike out on the journey to prosperity. In any case, the common currency holds down nations that see a future in having a strong economy, which the European Parliament will undoubtedly work toward redistributing to lazier member states. We have yet to see what the actual benefits to the citizens of EU members are, although the imagined benefits are trumpeted loud and long
What to Watch For:
- Windows Mobile 6.5 arriving today
- House of Representatives will discuss Financial Services Industry in a Committee Hearing at 10AM. The agenda will be to "strengthen" investor protection and regulation.
- Game of the Day: Middle Tennesee at Troy, ESPN 7pm.
Monday's Best:
David Letterman apologizes publicly to his wife, and admits to having slept with an intern.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Report: ACORN Embezzlement Was $5 Million, Not Merely $1 Million
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 7:02PM
The Louisiana attorney general's office says the embezzlement at ACORN years ago involved $5 million, not the originally reported figure of close to $1 million, according to BigGovernment.com which cites a report from NOLA.com.
The $5 million figure is reportedly mentioned in a subpoena. My sources inside ACORN say the $5 million figure is an exaggeration.
Current ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis reportedly today denied the figure was $5 million. Lewis is scheduled to speak at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., tomorrow at 10 a.m.
Meanwhile, Karen Inman, who was a national board member at ACORN until Lewis expelled her for asking too many questions about the embezzlement, writes about ACORN's corruption at the Minnesota Public Radio website. Inman is a co-founder of the reform group 'ACORN 8.'
Inman's post was published hours before the news broke that the embezzlement figure had been upwardly revised by the Louisiana attorney general.
Michelle Malkin adds that the $5 million figure isn't new at all.
(This post was revised repeatedly as new information came in.)
Mark McKinnon's Civility Dodge
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 6:53PM
It burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it's falling, it's crashing! Watch it! Watch it, folks! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie! It's fire -- and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my, get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames, and the -- and it's falling on the mooring-mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is the, one of the worst catastrophes in the world. Ohhhhh! It's -- it's -- it's the flames, [indecipherable, 'enty' syllable] oh, four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it ... it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now ... and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity ...
-- Radio announcer Herbert Morrison in a live broadcast as the zeppelin Hindenburg crashed and burned on May 6, 1937
To read Mark McKinnon over at the Daily Beast you would think he's a latter day Herbert Morrison and this year's Hindenburg is a bag of wind called "civility."
Ohhhhhhhhh the civility weeps McKinnon.
Can one weep if one is a crocodile? Crocodile tears, recall, are said to have been shed by these reptiles -- while busy eating their victims. In a word, the phrase means hypocrite.
Mr. McKinnon, a former aide to both George W. Bush and John McCain, is described by his former bosses as a man of "creativity" (Bush) and President McCain cites him as "almost a genius." Oops. President McCain is still Senator McCain so perhaps that's why the "almost" is in there.
Among Mr. McKinnon's activities these days (he announced in 2008 he wouldn't campaign against Obama) is as a columnist over at the left-leaning Daily Beast. From there he has issued his latest mournings for civility. His target this time is Mark Levin, the author of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto and, famously these days, one of the top talk radio hosts in America.
Mr. McKinnon posits the usual yada-yada-yada, his schtick always being some version of the idea that conservative X is a "hate-monger." For this column he zeros in on Levin, who, stands accused by McKinnon of lacking civility.
The McKinnon column on Levin seems to have been essentially lifted with filler from the "Controversies and Criticism" section of Wikipedia. A heading that comes with a warning from Wikipedia itself that "undue weight" has been given to what, when one reads, are obviously contributions from people who clearly -- yes -- hate Mark Levin. No word from McKinnon on why its OK to hate Levin, because -- ooops! -- he hates Levin himself.
The problem here is that McKinnon has swallowed whole the notion trailed about for decades by the left that it's OK to let people get away wholesale with everything from abject racism to character assassination to outright lying -- if they're just nice about it! In other words, perhaps fitting for a PR guy, McKinnon's world is the ultimate triumph of form over substance.
In McKinnon's world, Sonia Sotomayor can use race as a reason to make decisions from the federal bench -- but joking about her weight (as Levin is said to have done by an anti-Levin Wikipedia contributor) is off limits. The National Organization for Women is defended by McKinnon against another alleged Levin joke -- but no word as to McKinnon's opinion on the civility of NOW falling silent as Bill Clinton's female targets came forward back in the nineties with charges ranging from sexual assault (Kathleen Willey) or, even more graphically, a rape charge from one-time Clinton supporter Juanita Broaddrick.
Which re-enforces the image that for all his so-called "creativity" and "genius " McKinnon simply is tone deaf or willfully ignorant of substance. A typical Mark Levin show is routinely spent illustrating issues from economics to history to constitutional law to politics and philosophy. One can only conclude that these issues either don't interest McKinnon or he simply would rather do PR.
But for whatever reason, it is way past time that this McKinnon argument be dispatched. If you preach a doctrine that judges should use race to make rulings from the federal bench (Sotomayor) -- but do it with sweet civility, you are still a racist. (Something Martin Luther King himself once noted.) If you use ugly appeals to class warfare (a favorite of another McKinnon client, the late Texas Governor Ann Richards) -- but are as sweet as apple pie while you ruthlessly divide and hurt people, egging them on to hate -- this is immorality, not civility,
Mark McKinnon, it seems, has a serious problem when it comes to civility and immorality that Mark Levin has never had.
Understanding when one is used to mask the other.
Americans Say No Thanks to "Public Option"
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 5:13PM
It turns out that the American people are more worried about losing their private insurance than getting a "public option." Explains Rasmussen Reports:
Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters nationwide say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance coverage is a higher priority than giving consumers the choice of a "public option" health insurance company.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% take the opposite view. They say it's more important to give people a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option.
Most liberal voters say giving people the choice of a public option is more important. But most moderates put guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance first, and conservatives overwhelmingly agree with them.
It's time for Congres to pay attention. First do no harm, runs the Hippocratic Oath. That's a good place for legislators to start.
Jindal's Incoherence on Health Care
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 4:56PM
Bobby Jindal takes to the pages of today's Washington
Post to
argue that:
A majority of so-called Republican strategists believe that health care is a Democratic issue. They are wrong; health care is an American issue, and the Republican Party has an opportunity to demonstrate that conservative principles work when applied to real-world problems.
I agree with Jindal about that, but the problem with the 10 solutions he offers in his article, is that they don't really conform with conservative principles. Or more accurately, his proposals are a grab bag, with a little bit of everything but no unifying vision.
Some of his ideas, such as allowing purchasing pools, making policies portable, increasing transparency, reforming the legal system, and expanding HSAs would be aimed at creating a free market for health care in this country. Yet several of his other ideas involve more government regulation. One involves "permitting young people to stay on their parents' plans longer..." But this is nothing new, these so-called "slacker mandates" already exist in 17 states, and they involve government forcing insurers to allow adults to stay on their parents policies, in some cases as late as 30 years old. A better way to encourage younger people to get insurance is not through more mandates, but less mandates, which would allow them to purchase cheaper, more basic health insurance plans.
A more problematic part of Jindal's article is his endorsement of a requirement forcing insurers to cover everybody with pre-existing conditions. Whatever you may say about such a requirement, it's completely inconsistent with conservative principles. The problem is that you can't enact such a policy in isolation. If the government requires insurers to cover everybody who applies, then it will also have to cap the price of insurance so that insurers can't just say, "sure, we'll cover you -- for $5,000 per month." But taken together, these two policies -- known as "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" -- have had disastrous implications at the state level. While those with pre-existing conditions can now get "affordable" insurance, the price of insurance skyrockets for healthier individuals. Given that insurers can't deny anybody coverage, people decide -- quite rationally -- that they may as well wait until they get sick to purchase insurance. The result is that healthy people exit the insurance market, and insurers flee to avoid getting stuck with disprortionately sick patients. But instead of learning their lesson, the response by policy-makers is to advocate expanding the role of government even more. Healthy people cant exit the market, policymakers argue, if they're required by law to purchase insurance or pay a tax. The result is the individual mandate. However, government can't mandate health coverage if a lot of people still can't afford it -- so the answer becomes expanding Medicaid and introducing new subsidies for people to purchase insurance. And so on. The point is that government begets more government, and you can't simply embrace one aspect of the big government health care proposals while ignoring the obvious ramifications of such a policy.
So, in his effort to come accross as a pragmatist, Jindal borrows some ideas from each side of the debate and packages them together, but in practice, the ideas are completely incoherent.
I wrote about an alternative way of covering those with pre-existing conditions here.
Looking for An Idea Man
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 4:54PM
That is definitely the biggest difference between 1993 and now: When George Bush went down to defeat in 1992, the Republicans who would vie to fill the leadership void were already known quantities. Many of them had been climbing the ladder for more than a decade and, like Gingrich, had an identity independent of the old leadership. While there are some names I can think of trying to fill the GOP's void now, it isn't comparable to the early Clinton years.
Waiting for the CBO
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 3:50PM
The health care legislative process is more or less frozen for now while everybody waits until the Congressional Budget Office puts a price tag on the updated draft of the Senate Finance Committee bill. Only then will the bill be able to be voted out of committee, allowing Democrats to begin the difficult process of trying to merge it with the more liberal Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill.
While the Finance Committee was hoping to have a vote tomorrow, it is now expected to be delayed at least until Wednesday or Thursday, according to a staffer for a Republican on the committee. Next week, the Senate is only in session for three days because of Columbus Day, and next Thursday is October 15 -- the date after which reconciliation becomes an option for Democrats.
ACORN New Orleans HQ Closing, Up For Sale
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 1:52PM
Following up on my post over the weekend, the New Orleans headquarters of ACORN is closing and the property itself, a former funeral home, is up for sale.
ACORN insiders told me after the news above went out that the property on Elysian Fields Avenue in the Big Easy has been up for sale for six months.
Nevertheless a photograph below of a "for sale" sign on the property is a perfect illustration of ACORN's big problems that grow more serious with every passing day. I wrote about ACORN's slow-motion collapse weeks ago right here at the American Spectator, well before the undercover sting videos surfaced.
I am reposting the blog post from the weekend with the photo added below...
* * * * *
I broke this story exclusively on BigGovernment.com on Saturday:
A credible source claims the embattled left-wing advocacy group ACORN is poised to announce massive staff layoffs but an ACORN spokesman denies this is the case.
A credible source close to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now revealed that the activist network intends to lay off all staff members operating out of its New Orleans headquarters. All information provided by the source to this reporter in the past has turned out to be correct.
However, ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson of the public relations firm The Advance Group in New York City said the source was incorrect. In an interview Friday afternoon with Levenson he said (referring to BigGovernment.com), “You guys just can’t get it right. You’re wrong again.” When pressed to elaborate, Levenson declined to do so. Levenson received media attention earlier this year when Fox News host Glenn Beck ejected the combative publicist from his studio during a commercial break. Beck said at the time that Levenson accused him of being a racist.
My source said that one of the employees to be cashiered in the Crescent City is the daughter of disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke. Rathke’s wife, Beth Butler, also works for ACORN but it is unclear at this point if she too will be laid off. Rathke’s son also reportedly is employed by ACORN.
ACORN also plans to lay off two-thirds of its Washington, D.C., staffers as soon as Wednesday of next week, according to the source. Layoffs will also extend to ACORN’s affiliate the ACORN Institute.
The source also revealed that all or most of ACORN’s development staff in the group’s New York City office will soon be laid off if they haven’ been laid off already.
ACORN’s already tarnished image took a major hit last month when BigGovernment.com unveiled undercover sting videos in which ACORN staffers across America were shown advising a pair posing as a pimp and a prostitute on the finer points of avoiding prosecution for prostitution, importation of underage illegal aliens to serve as sex workers, obtaining government grants under false pretenses, and tax evasion.
The adverse publicity generated by the videos and the group’s never-ending scandals is slowly but surely drying up ACORN’s funding sources.
More Thoughts on the Patrick Gaspard-ACORN Connection
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 1:19PM
Kyle Olson of ACORNcracked.com has more thoughts and evidence at BigGovernment.com on the connection between Obama White House political director Patrick Gaspard and ACORN.
Gaspard used to be ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political director when she ran ACORN's New York chapter. ACORN founder Wade Rathke now denies the connection after writing about it in a blog post but nobody except for a few gullible reporters actually believes Rathke at this point.
Olson has been on ACORN's case a long time and does good work.
No Contract...For Now
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 12:53PM
The Economist's Democracy in America blog opines:
Probably the signal difference between this year's GOP and 1994's version of the party can be summed up in three words: Contract with America. The Contract, at the time, drove Democrats insane. They thought it represented a return to Reagan-era governing formulas that were proven failures. But while some of the Contract's planks were pernicious (the balanced-budget amendment) and others were irrelevant (the black-helicopter crowd's "National Security Restoration Act", which forbade the president from placing American troops under UN command, or from mind-melding with extraterrestrials), the document did represent a coherent blueprint for what Republicans promised to do if they were given power.
Republicans couldn't actually keep much of their contract when they took power in 1995; some died in the Senate, some was vetoed by Bill Clinton. Nancy Pelosi found herself with similar problems keeping her legislative promises in 2007. But the GOP today isn't even trying to outline a programme of governance.
I'm not going to argue that Republicans really have a coherent governing philosophy -- in fact, my most recent column criticized the GOP for failing to effectively communicate an alternate vision for health care reform. But one thing that's important to note is that the Contract with America was unveiled just 6 weeks before the 1994 midterm elections. Regardless of what you may think of the GOP's prospects next year -- at this point I think they'll make big gains but won't take back Congress -- comparing Republicans now to Republicans in the fall of 1994 isn't really fair or predictive. It would be much more telling to look back at Republicans in the fall of 1993. At that time, you probably could have argued that the GOP was defined more by total opposition to Clinton than anything else.
With that said, reading some news accounts from the time, I was struck by an October 8, 1993 New York Times story headlined, "Gingrich Stakes Claim to House Minority Leadership." The article concluded: "Representative John Linder, a conservative freshman from Georgia, praised Mr. Gingrich as 'the principal idea man of our party.'"
Is anybody ready to fill that role this time around?
The Economics of Fear
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 12:15PM
The TARP special inspector has concluded that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made numerous misleading or false statements to legislators in order to ram through the original TARP.
Meanwhile, John Taylor notes that the financial panic began not after the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Bros., as is commonly thought, but after the unruly rollout of the TARP.
So it seems entirely possible that Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, during September and October of 2008, lied about financial conditions to the public and bent the rule of law in dealing with the banks, and that these abrupt measures threw the financial world into a panic. And yet Bernanke is the guy that President Obama wants running the Fed for another term?
(h/t Tim Carney's twitter)
Obama to Gays: Let Them Eat Rhetoric
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 11:55AM
President Obama is scheduled to speak to Human Rights Campaign's dinner this Saturday in order to quell concerns within the gay community about his failure to act on gay marriage and the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy. I think that this is a telling metaphor for his presidency. Faced with a difficult dilemma -- whether to keep his promises to an important political constituency at the risk of causing a huge controversy that will threaten other domestic priorities -- his solution is to just give a speech. In this case, the matter happens to be gay rights, but it could just as easily be any other issue. The problem for Obama is that while speeches are enough during a campaign, they have diminishing returns when you're president, because at some point you have to actually make decisions that are sure to anger one side or another.
UPDATE: Obama booster Andrew Sullivan is harsher:
If Obama wants to support gay equality, he knows what to do. If Pelosi and Reid want to support gay equality, they know what to do. If HRC believes in gay equality, they also know what to do.
So spare us the schmoozing and the sweet-talking and do it. Until then, Mr president, why don't you have a nice steaming cup of shut-the-f***-up?
Obama Capitulates to China, Again
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 11:28AM
Bowing to China, President Obama won't meet with the Dalai Lama while the Tibetan leader visits Washington. The Post provides some historical background:
For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been "drop-in" visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.
While liberals pride themselves on being less bellicose and more open-minded than conservatives, their moral relativism inevitably leads to appeasement of totalitarian regimes and fear of taking a stand for human rights.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 10:45AM
- Broken chains of command? Telegraph reports Obama is furious at McChrystal for publicly lobbying troop increases.
- Maybe if the president had met with McChrystal more than just one time since he took over command in Afghanistan, this communication breakdown would not be happening right now.
- After a box office flop, Director Michael Moore can now accurately say that Capitalism did nothing for him (News Busters)
- $5 million in federal pork to replace a beach in New Jersey (Ashbury Park Press)
- Senator Mikulski gets $43 million in earmarks for top campaign contributors (Baltimore Sun)
Are Conservatives Helping Obama With the Left?
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 10:16AM
The Wall Street Journal has an article exploring whether conservative attacks on President Obama have allowed him to shore up support among liberals even as he disappoints them on a number of issues. This is something that first struck me during the Joe Wilson "You Lie!" episode. Even though President Obama gave a health care speech to a joint session of Congress in which he opened the door to ditching the government health insurance plan, liberals were too busy snarling about Wilson to get angry about it.
This phenomenon is nothing new to politics. President Bush, for instance, still enjoyed strong support among conservatives for much of his presidency, even as he passed the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society and expanded the federal role in education. While there was always criticism along the margins, and a temporary uproar, it would be quickly forgotten once a liberal made some outrageous charge. It wasn't really until Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers in 2005 that we saw a widespread and sustained conservative revolt from which he never really recovered.
So as Obama enters the stage of the health care debate in which he'll have to find a way to talk liberals into accepting less, his best ally may be his critics on the right. One can see a White House pitch to liberals that more or less amounts to, a loss on health care means victory for Joe Wilson, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
Community Reinvestment Second Act
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 10:15AM
In today's Forbes, Peter Schweizer has background on the Congressional Democrats' renewed interest in expanding the Community Reinvestment Act:
As we try to shake off the financial crisis, here's a bright idea. Take a law that has led to the writing of an enormous amount of bad mortgages and expand it. Then take enforcement away from bank examiners and give it to housing activists.
Sound like a poisonous cocktail? Well, it is what the Obama administration and Democrats are currently stirring up on Capitol Hill.
Although in my opinion the jury is still out on the CRA's precise effects on the housing market collapse, it is plausible that it played some significant role in our current economic disaster, and it is also certain that it is the plaything of the recently discredited ACORN. Those facts should give legislators pause, but pausing is not something that Congressional Democrats are good at doing.
Olympic-Sized Ego
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 9:13AM
I haven't had much to say about the Olympics, because I was rather ambivalent about the whole thing. When I was living in New York City during the 2012 bidding process, I was adamantly opposed to it getting the Olympics because I didn't want my tax money to finance corrupt government-financed construction projects, not to mention the endless congestion it would cause in a city that was already a nightmare to move around in. Therefore, if I lived in Chicago, my guess is I would have also been strongly opposed to it getting the 2016 Olympic games, but not living there, I couldn't really care one way or another. Yet in all of the controversy surrounding Obama's trip to Copenhagen, the thing that stood out for me most was this part of President Obama's pitch to the Olympic Committee:
"Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night, people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of the U.S. Presidential election. Their interest wasn't about me as an individual. Rather, it was rooted in the belief that America's experiment in democracy still speaks to a set of universal aspirations and ideals."
"Their interest sprung from the hope that in this ever-shrinking world, our diversity could be a source of strength, a cause for celebration, and that with sustained work and determination, we could learn to live and prosper together during the fleeting moment we share on this earth."
It struck me that Obama actually seems to think that the whole world is intimately familiar with this moment in Chicago a year ago, and that they were all moved by it, and that somehow it inspired everybody in "every corner of the world." In other words, it's pretty obvious that he's bought his own fawning press coverage.
But it took this post from Marty Peretz to really hammer home the risk of having a man like this in the White House:
So this question arises: If Obama could not get Chicago over the finish line in Copenhagen, which was a test only of his charms, how will he persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons capacity or the Arabs, to whom he has tilted (we are told) only tactically, to sit down without their 60 year-old map as guide to what they demand from Israel.
What I suspect is that the president is probably a clinical narcissist. This is not necessarily a bad condition if one maintains for oneself what the psychiatrists call an "optimal margin of illusion," that is, the margin of hope that allows you to work. But what if his narcissism blinds him to the issues and problems in the world and the inveterate foes of the nation that are not susceptible to his charms?
Chicago will survive its disappointments and Obama will, as well. It is the other stage sets on which the president struts--like he strutted in Cairo and at the United Nations--that concern me.
One of the central criticisms of Bush's foreign policy was that he believed that the projection of U.S. military force abroad would convince other nations to accede to his demands. Obama's belief in international institutions is quite typical of liberalism, but what gives his approach a twist is the additional belief that the power of his sheer awesomeness alone will convince other nations to remake the world in accordance with his administration's goals.
A Hero of the Anti-Totalitarian Resistance Dies
Posted by on 10.5.09 @ 5:07AM
Marek Edelman, who while confined to the Warsaw ghetto fought the Nazis, has died. Reports the New York Times:
Marek Edelman, a cardiologist who was the last surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Germans, died Friday in Warsaw. He was 90.
A friend, Paula Sawicka, told The Associated Press that Dr. Edelman had died "among friends, among his close people," at her home, where he had lived for the past two years. For many years he lived in Lodz, Poland's second largest city.
Dr. Edelman was one of a handful of young leaders who in April 1943 led a force of 220 poorly armed young Jewish men and women in a desperate and hopeless struggle against the Germans.
He was later persecuted by the communists, who launched their own anti-Semitic campaigns. He also worked with Solidarity, which helped bring down the Polish communist regime. May this hero who suffered so much battling totalitarianism rest in peace
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Fear and Loathing in Lower Glennbeckistan
Posted by on 10.4.09 @ 4:44PM
Since returning Thursday from my trip to Kentucky -- where I went to cover the investigation of Census worker Bill Sparkman's death -- I've been catching up on sleep and working on a very long article about the trip:
So here I was alone, looking at the locked gate across Hoskins Cemetery Road. I wrote down the time in my notebook, got out of the car and took a few photos of the bridge and gate with my small Kodak digital camera. It was actually a lovely scene. The large hardwood trees lining the banks of the stream were still summer green in late September. The afternoon was cool and breezy, the sky was overcast with heavy clouds, and the only sounds were the wind in the trees and the quiet burbling of the little brook flowing east, parallel to Arnetts Fork Road.
Just then, I heard the sound of a car approaching from the direction of Big Double Creek Road. Standing by the roadside, I flagged down the blue sedan and approached the driver's side window. The driver looked to be in her early 30s, and there was a child's car seat in the back, but no child.
"Excuse me, ma'am," I said to the lady, trying to smile as friendly as I could. "I'm a reporter, covering the murder y'all had up here."
She nodded in recognition - obviously, the locals knew all about the case - and I continued.
"I'm up here to see the place where they found that fellow's body and get a few pictures and, frankly, it's kind of scary, y'know?"
She nodded again and said, "Yeah, I know."
"So what I was wondering," I said, "was whether you wouldn't mind just waiting here for a few minutes, while I walk up to the cemetery - just wait here, to make sure I get back."
She shook her head. "Well, I don't think so, but I'll tell you what. My husband's up at the house" - she gestured westward up the hill - "and I can send him back down here, if you want."
"Could you?" I asked. "About how long would it take him to get here?"
"About five minutes."
So it was agreed, and I felt much better about my situation. No doubt her husband was a stout, hearty soul who would accompany me to the graveyard and assure my safety. Unless, that is, the lady's husband was some hillbilly meth-cooker, a dangerously violent ex-con with deep hostility toward nosy outsiders and, for all I knew, the same guy who'd killed Sparkman.
Crazy fears like that crop up in a man's mind when he's short on sleep, hyped on coffee, far from home, and standing at the scene of a notorious crime in the Appalachian backwoods. But I'd wait for the lady's husband to come back. He was probably a mild-mannered, clean-cut Baptist church deacon, and I was just being paranoid.
On the other hand, these woods were reportedly crawling with marijuana growers who plant their crops in isolated forest clearings, and late September is harvest time for these outlaw agriculturalists. Maybe there was some weeder, dressed in camouflage, rifle at the ready, guarding his crop planted nearby. Maybe, even at that very moment, I was a target in the crosshairs of a scope on a high-powered rifle held by a mountaineer marksman. One squeeze on the trigger and - boom! - that would be it for me.
Honestly, you think about things like that at such a moment, in such a place.
"Be careful," my wife had told me before I left on this trip, which I'd undertaken against her advice. I reminded her I'd survived my 10-day excursion to Africa in February 2008. "If they didn't kill me in Kampala, I think I'll be all right in Clay County, Kentucky." . . .
That's about 600 words. The whole article is nearly 4,000 words -- and that's only Part One.
Just What is NATO For?
Posted by on 10.4.09 @ 5:30AM
Now Bosnia wants to join. Reports the Kuwait News Agency:
Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency Chairman Zeljko Komsic on Saturday submitted a request for receiving the NATO membership action plan. The military alliance's Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said after his meeting with the Bosnian delegation on Friday in Brussels that the bid was "the best way toward lasting stability in the Euro-Atlantic region." "I would like for all Western Balkans countries to be integrated into NATO, " he said.
The Bosnian delegation also included Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj and Defense Minister Selmo Cikotic. The action plan in question is meant to prepare candidate countries for a full-fledged NATO membership. Rasmussen also discussed Bosnia's contribution to the NATO mission in Afghanistan with the Bosnian delegation, and the progress made in the Partnership for Peace program.
What conceivable value does Bosnia--an artificial state which remains sharply divided internally along ethnic lines--add to the Western alliance? Why should Americans promise to defend such a bizarre and unstable geopolitical creature?
Bosnia's request illustrates yet again why Washington should step away and leave Balkans affairs to the Europeans. Even if the latter make a mess of it--again!--it doesn't matter for the U.S. which is, if people haven't noticed, rather busy elsewhere.
- Obama's Vision Through History
- Joe Being Joe
- Two Weddings and a Demerol