Were there any other possible solutions which provided contraception at no cost to the user but did not infringe on our religious liberty? Yes. Obama could have decreed that women could get contraception at no cost to themselves

1. from a federal program:
   Expand HHS or some other department to create a contraception-only insurance program that all women can enroll in.  Pharmacies would dispense the medication and bill the government for reimbursement just as they would any insurer. If Obama is determined to create a new “right” to no-cost contraception, this is probably the least intrusive option.  And from the statist point of view, this is an especially good option, because such a program could easily be expanded to increasingly cover women’s health services and push people further into a single payer system.
2. from the doctor’s office:
   Pharmaceutical companies already keep doctor’s offices stocked with free samples. Obama could have required pharmaceutical companies to extend that system, which is already in place, so that doctor’s offices can dispense all the hormonal contraception methods (oral contraceptives, the patch, shot/injection, vaginal ring, implantable rods) directly to their patients, the same way that Planned Parenthood does. The government could reimburse the pharmaceutical companies directly or give them a tax break. Doctor’s offices could also be reimbursed by the government for any expenses involved for dispensing medication or for non-hormonal methods like IUDs or sterilization.  Pharmaceutical companies and doctors are already heavily regulated and micromanaged by the government, so while this plan adds to their burden, it at least doesn’t break new ground.
3. from an expanded Medicaid program:
   Expand Medicaid enrollment to cover contraceptive services for all women.  This is essentially the same as the first option, but managed by the states instead of the federal government.

None of these solutions are perfect, but they don’t infringe our religious freedom at all.  Given that there were other methods available for Obama to try to buy women’s votes with “free” contraception, it’s interesting that Obama chose the one which essentially declared war on churches.

He made his course clear back in 2008, when he said,

Any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion. And this goes for both sides. Even those who claim the bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages – the ten commandments, say, or the belief in Christ’s divinity – are central to the Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.  And the American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control, and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it.  Religious leadership needs to understand they don’t have to accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.

In other words, churches are free to have any doctrine they like, but they should not expect the government to permit them to act on their beliefs.  He’s demanding that churches “dumb down” their doctrine to accommodate believers, rather than continue to present high standards for believers to live up to.

He also made his plans clear by appointing Chai Feldblum to head the EEOC.  She admitted that when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

It’s abundantly clear that this is no political miscalculation. It seems that forcing churches to either comply with liberal political goals or get out of the public square was always his plan. Rahm Emmanuel said that ”You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”  Since there is no contraception crisis, Obama is creating one.

Twitter: @Laura_PH
Crossposted.  

Neither of the two people in the video who have been identified - Patrick Setterstrom and Ellen Cassin – have come forward to tell their sides of the story. In the video, Setterstrom, whose father is the sports director at Alabama’s TV station WKRG, began to unzip and approach the victim. Fortunately for him, Cassin was sober and/or intelligent enough to stop him. A few moments later, another Alabama fan did expose his genitals and rub them on the victim’s face.

What is shocking is the New Orleans Police Department’s initial reluctance to investigate.  They initially said that they could do nothing unless the victim came forward, which is perplexing given that it is the state, not the victim, who brings charges against the perpetrator.  They don’t need the victim’s consent.

A lot of people’s attitudes seem to be that this was just a case of drunkenness and team rivalry gone too far. Let’s test that theory with a little thought experiment. Imagine that this was a girl who drank herself stupid. Let’s imagine that she was touched, her breasts were fondled, and that a man rubbed his genitals on her while she was unconscious.  Can anyone imagine the NOPD – or any police department, anywhere – dragging their heels on investigating unless she came forward?  MacAoidh at the Louisiana blog, The Hayride, also disputes that notion:

And shame on the NOPD for trying to dodge this thing. It’s an assault not just on the victim but on public decency in New Orleans – and make whatever jokes you want about Mardi Gras, even at Mardi Gras you’re not allowed to dry-hump an incapacitated total stranger who would probably not consent if he wasn’t comatose with your junk out for everybody to see. And because of that, law enforcement has the OBLIGATION to do something about it.

This isn’t Gumps Gone Wild. It’s sexual battery. You can get 10 years for that, and it’s not acceptable for the cops not to ID this perp and bring his ass in for trial.

While the victim has so far not come forward, there has been enough pressure by the New Orleans DA’s office and an outraged public for the NOPD to finally decide to investigate.  As Dr. Helen comments,

Given the way that our society laughs and mocks men who are abused in this way, I can understand the guy not coming forward, but he must. It is only when individual men start to say “No, this is not justice for all” and endure the ridicule that men everywhere will no longer have to endure their rights and bodies being violated in this absurd manner without consequence.

Exactly.

UPDATE: It turns out this is not a college prank in any sense of the word. Brian Downing, the man Deadspin identified as the teabagger is in his 30s, married, with a child.  And at the moment he is on his way – with his attorney – to New Orleans to have a little chat with the NOPD. I’m sorry for his family, but I’m glad that it’s looking like there will be some consequences for his behavior.  And what little amusement there is in this whole train wreck can be found in the fact that the tips identifying Downing apparently originated on an Auburn message board.

Now we have Newsright – a “news registry” company which the Washington Post says aims “to convert unauthorized websites, blogs and other newsgathering services into paying customers.”  Let’s hope they learn from Righthaven’s mistakes and actually take Fair Use into account instead of just trying to bully bloggers out of existence.

The fact that about half of Newsright’s staff are lawyers makes that hope seem kind of futile, though.

How will Newsright’s service work?  NewsRight’s president and CEO, David Westin explains,

when an item is read on a browser, it sends a signal to the database in San Francisco that attaches the origin of the item, what website it appeared on, and the geographic area. Every time the item is used, the data is gathered and sent to publishers. The code attached to the piece specifies the publisher, keywords, dates, and the author. It’s up to the publisher as to what they assign the code to. Initially most items were assigned to the complete document, but increasingly publishers are attaching once to the headline, once to the lead, and once to the text. This has the advantage of giving more nuanced reporting.

This, like SOPA, is a fairly bipartisan issue. Lefty David Sirota sums up blogger concerns well in this video.

“What I worry about is that it ends up being used as a financial weapon against those voices out there who are citing that information in order to challenge it, scrutinize it, and question it. That you can imagine a situation where let’s say a blogger is out there, or an independent journalist is out there citing, excerpting pieces of a widely cited, let’s say a New York Times story or other news publication story and debunking it, showing where it’s wrong. And that news organization doesn’t like that. Then that news organization calls up that independent journalist and says ‘You have to pay us for the privilege of excerpting our story.’ Now if that is allowed to stand you’ve potentially created the situation where the democratic, small-d freedom of questioning and challenging what’s in the public square incurs an undue financial penalty.”

All of these efforts are to solve the problem of the legacy media trying to navigate and survive in a new media world. But instead of following the Hollywood model of enforcing digital rights management in ways that make their product less useful to consumers, they might consider trying something completely different. An amusing comment from Marcus Carab at the Techdirt article provides one example:

Dear AP – for a tenth of what you are spending on all these lawyers, you could have set up a premium news service with banks of additional quotes & photos that didn’t run in the articles, early access to some stuff, etc. and offered it to all these same bloggers. Sincerely, An Actual Business Model

In real life, armed forces are subject to the laws of armed conflict. Video games simulating the experience of armed forces therefore have the potential to raise awareness of the rules that those forces must comply with whenever they engage in armed conflict – this is one of the things that interests the ICRC.

While your Call of Duty addiction isn’t going to score you a free trip to The Hague for a war crimes tribunal, the ICRC is considering a report from the TRIAL organization which suggests ways to regulate gaming companies:

One possible course of action could be to encourage game designers/producers to incorporate [international humanitarian law] in the development and design of video games, while another could be to encourage governments to adopt laws and regulations to regulate this ever-growing industry.

So if persuasion doesn’t work, they’d like to get laws passed that require video game companies to “raise awareness” on behalf of the ICRC.  In other words, to do the ICRC’s work for it, without compensation. If this issue is so important to the ICRC, maybe they should partner with a willing gaming company to create a new game which complies with the Geneva and Hague Conventions - something like the US Army’s video game/recruitment tool, America’s Army.  Alternatively, they could pay for in-game advertising.  But to require private companies to provide free advertising to the ICRC is nanny statism run amok.

The FAQ assures us they have resources for both real-life warfare and for “creating an environment conducive to respect for the dignity of persons affected.”  However, in a separate post, the ICRC is asking donors for 1.15 billion Swiss francs (about $1.2 billion) due to the “sudden emergencies in the Middle East and North Africa that began during the first months of this year have resulted in the death, injury and suffering of tens of thousands of people.”  Given that, I suggest they spend less time worrying about regulating entertainment and more on those tens of thousands of real-life people.

It’s not just the loss of a House district. Louisiana vs. Bryson (that’s John Bryson, Obama’s controversial Secretary of Commerce) points out that with the loss of the House district comes a reduction in electoral college votes.  As Lyle Denniston writes at Scotusblog:

The result of these disparities, Louisiana said, is that the votes of its citizens are worth less “in terms of electoral power” than in a state like California, with a large population of undocumented aliens.  Here is how that comes about, according to Louisiana’s lawsuit: a state with a small population of illegal aliens winds up with a greater proportion of eligible voters per district, because fewer of its residents are deducted from the voting population.  The state illustrated the point with these figures: 748,160 voting-age individuals in Louisiana will elect a Representative in each district in the state, while only 656,452 Californians are needed to elect a member of the House in each district in that state.  That is a nearly 14 percent decrease in Louisiana’s electoral power, the state said.

While the trend has been to move from labels like “illegal alien” to “illegal immigrant” and “undocumented immigrant” or even “migrant” this lawsuit puts the issue into sharp relief by identifying them as “Non-Immigrant Foreign Nationals.”  The case will decide whether we have the right to exclude non-citizens from our political calculations.  If we’re going to count them for those purposes, granting non-citizens voting rights is just a small step from there.

Crossposted.

But not 32% less, along with less pleasant working conditions in which my husband is expected to perform the exact same job.

On the other hand… hey, doctors are rich, so let’s stick it to them! From Heritage:

She’s not alone. A group known as Docs4PatientCare, led by Dr. Hal Scherz, has brought together doctors across America to make the case for repealing Obamacare.

I realize that to some people, especially government employees math is hard. But healthcare is not now and has never been, anywhere in the world, FREE. It’s just a question of deciding who bears the cost for it. Some people are demanding that doctors do so. It’s only fair, they reason, that people so privileged as doctors be required to give back, besides, it’s immoral to make a profit off sick people.

They never seem to wonder exactly with what these doctors are privileged. Crushing education debt? Long hours? Incredibly high malpractice premiums? The right to have your name ruined by some yahoo looking for a quick buck when he sues you? The right to have a jury easily swayed by a convincing attorney award him the value of years worth of your labor?

Give back? That’s based on the theory they took something away from people in the first place. What did they take? No one seems to know.

But ask yourself – would you work hard and bear heavy responsibility without being well-compensated for it? At some point, wouldn’t you decide that if you’re going to be paid less anyway, you’d rather take an easier job? I would.

Doctors are already voting with their feet in Massachusetts, which has suffered under an Obamacare-type plan for several years. Sure, everyone is covered by insurance. But good luck finding a doctor.

Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients, according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society. For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.

And that’s not just in Massachusetts.

The House of Representatives will soon vote on repealing Obamacare, but the vote is largely symbolic because there’s little chance Harry Reid will permit it come to a vote in the Senate. Even if it did pass a Senate vote, President Obama would surely veto it. Obama promised that if we like our plan, if we like our doctor, we can keep them. I do like my doctor and I want to keep her. That’s why I’m doing my part to keep the heat on Congress to repeal Obamacare, and failing that, chip away at it and refuse to fund it. In other words, to stop giving her reasons to quit.

Crossposted.

• Being found guilty of 11 ethics violations.  (Charlie Rangel, D-NY)
• Stuffing your pants with classified documents, stealing and destroying them.  (Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor, went on to become a Hillary Clinton campaign advisor in 2008.)
• A prostitution scandal. (Democrat Elliot Spitzer, then Governor of NY, now cohost of Parker Spitzer and David Vitter, R-LA, still in office, were clients.  Barney Frank, D-MA, still in office; his boyfriend ran a prostitution ring from their home.)
• Having the FBI find $90,000 in your freezer.  (William Jefferson, D-LA, was re-elected while under federal investigation.)
• Being a Klan leader, and saying “white niggers” on TV. (Robert Byrd – D-WV, re-elected until he died while in office)  In contrast, Trent Lott, R-MS, was driven from his post as Minority Leader for  complimenting former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond at a birthday party.
• Being found guilty of defamation.  (Al Sharpton is currently a radio host, and regularly appears on cable network opinion shows.)
• Plagiarism and an ongoing series of gaffes. (Joe Biden)
• Calling Jews “hymies” and New York City, “Hymietown;” fathering an illegitimate child (Reverend Jesse Jackson, who is still active politically and still welcome as a guest on cable news networks.)
• Being an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam scandal. (Jack Murtha, D-PA, re-elected until he died in office.)
• Being caught on tape smoking crack cocaine.  (Marion Barry, Democratic mayor of Washington, DC, went on to serve on the Washington D.C. City Council and another term as mayor after his release from prison.)
• Association with a domestic terrorist. (Barack Obama)
• Swimming away and letting Mary Jo Kopechne drown, and offering to help the Soviet Union defeat America’s most formidable enemy: President Ronald Reagan.  (Ted Kennedy, D-MA, re-elected until he died in office.)

It’s a relief, after all that, to learn there are some lines that just can’t be crossed.  That line, according to the MSNBC brain trust, is speaking up after being widely – and utterly falsely – accused of being an accessory to murder.  Now that Sarah Palin is vanquished and her political career has been declared over, we can all rest easy; the public trust has been restored.

Presenting Assad with “a new Democratic alternative” — code for making President Bush look feckless — Mrs. Pelosi usurped the executive branch’s time-honored foreign-policy authority. Her message to Assad was that congressional Democrats will forbid the president from increasing pressure on Damascus to stop its murderous way. Several leading legal authorities have made the case that her recent diplomatic overtures ran afoul of the Logan Act, which makes it a felony for any American “without authority of the United States” to communicate with a foreign government to influence that government’s behavior on any disputes with the United States.

Glenn Greenwald griped, “Imagine if a leading Democratic Congressman told a leader of a foreign country he’d side with them against the GOP US President” and “Imagine John Kerry, 2006, to French President Jacques Chirac: ‘I’ll safeguard French interests against President Bush’.”  We don’t have to imagine situations where top-level Democrats have worked to undermine U.S. policy abroad.  There are plenty of examples.  David Freddoso referenced one when he tweeted in reply, “No need to imagine.  It happened in 02.”  Greenwald complained,

Had Cantor done this with any foreign nation other than Israel, this would easily be the leading political controversy of the week.

Liberals have whined for years about the “Israel exception” where Republicans are accused of violating the Logan Act with regard to Israel.  But if Democrats don’t violate the Logan Act in Israel, they certainly feel empowered to do so in the rest of the world.

1970: John Kerry, as an inactive Navy reserve officer, met during wartime with enemy officials while his government was trying to conduct negotiations with them.

1983: Ted Kennedy secretly offered to help the Russians “counter the militaristic politics of Reagan” during the Cold War.

1984: Top Congressional Democrats including Jim Wright, Edward Boland, Lee Hamilton, and Stephen Solarz wrote the “Dear Commandante” letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, which stated, “As members of the U.S. House of Representatives… We have been, and remain, opposed to U.S. support for military action directed against the people or government of Nicaraugua.”¹

1987: House Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX) took it upon himself to conduct negotiations with Ortega.  Nor was he the only Democrat involved – several were caught during CIA surveillance of the Sandinistas.

1992: Judiciary Committee Republicans sought a special prosecutor to investigate recent newspaper reports that a consultant who may have said he had links to the Clinton campaign sought to stall a final accord on reduced trade barriers after six years of negotiations among 108 nations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.  (They were denied, reducing the story to he said, she said.)

2002: Democrats David Bonior, Jim McDermott, and Mike Thompson took what turned out to be a junket sponsored by Saddam Hussein to Baghdad to oppose the embargo and the upcoming war in Iraq.

2006: Senator Ben Nelson met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, “without the authority and contrary to the wishes of the Bush administration, including the State Department.”

2007: Howard Dean admitted, “I am trying to build relationships with other governments in preparation for a Democratic takeover.  I want to make clear that there is an opposition in America and that we are ready to take power and that when we do, we are going to have much better relationships with them.”

Nancy Pelosi also met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2007, along with Congressmen Keith Ellison (D-MN), Nick Rahall (D-WV), Tom Lantos (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and David Hobson (R-OH).

2008: Then-Senator Obama tried to talk the Iraqi government into delaying the draw-down agreement in 2008.

Are all these examples actual violations of the Logan Act?  That’s for a court to decide, but the problem is that one never will.  Government officials, especially Democrats, violate it with impunity because they’re confident they’ll never be prosecuted.  It’s rare they even get bad press for doing so.  If these were social visits, perhaps Democrats should reconsider who they’re hanging out with.

Isn’t the real lesson here that the Logan Act is meaningless except for its value as a political cudgel?  If the Logan Act is not going to be enforced, it should be repealed.  I don’t know whether Cantor violated the Logan Act by making those comments to Netanyahu but if the DOJ thinks he did, by all means, prosecute him for it.  Democrats are going to be hit a lot harder by Logan Act enforcement than Republicans will.  And if the DOJ continues to enforce the law unequally (sanctuary cities get a pass, yet Arizona is prosecuted; some voter intimidation is more equal than others) then the 2010 teanami is going to seem like a pleasant day at the beach for Democrats in comparison to the 2012 wipeout.

Added: Gabriel Malor notes that libs are misstating what Cantor’s office actually said, Legal Insurrection provides roundup of liberal freakouts on this topic, and a reminder of who we’re dealing with – remember when Greenwald was reduced to sockpuppeting in order to receive a kind word?  Bottom line – let’s assume that everything the left is claiming about Cantor’s statements to Netanyahu are true.  Still doesn’t come close to what Democrats have gotten away with.  Either enforce the law or repeal it.

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¹Edwin Meese, With Reagan: The Inside Story (Regnery Publishing) 238.

Crossposted.

While running for City Council five years ago, Richmond lied under oath, was kicked out of the race and temporarily lost his license to practice law.  But there are still other questions about Mr. Richmond serious enough that Juan LaFonta, Richmond’s Democratic primary opponent, has joined other local Democrats in support of Joseph Cao.

Local media have brushed off allegations that Richmond bought a Rolex with funds from a nonprofit set up to provide computer training and enrichment activities to underprivileged children. But they’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater, because there is far more to the allegations found in the original reporting of local blogger Jason Berry:

• New Orleans Community Enhancement, Inc. (NOCE) shared an address with Mr. Richmond, and it was from that address that he applied for grants for the nonprofit, using his Louisiana House of Representatives letterhead.
• More than half a million dollars of state grant money was funnelled through nonprofits which then quickly disappeared, which shared his address. This includes NOCE and NOCAP (New Orleans Computer Access Project), a nonprofit set up by Richmond’s longtime associate and sometime campaign manager Ike Spears at about the same time and with the same mission as NOCE. The property was owned by Crowder Development, which was owned by Ike Spears.
• In spite of the influx of cash, the first NOCE audit in 2001, revealed “significant payroll tax liabilities” which had not been paid, and raised “substantial doubt of the Organization’s ability to continue as a going concern.”  The 2002 audit reported the same, and in 2003, auditor Desiree Honore admitted, “No accounting controls are exercised over cash disbursements and expenditure authorization, nor were cash accounts reconciled during the year.”  In spite of this, Richmond kept the money rolling in until 2004.
• NOCE director Tina Dixon – stepdaughter of former La. state representative and Public Service Commissioner Irma Dixon – embezzled at least $30,000 from the charity. She plea-bargained charges down to a misdemeanor theft, and was ordered to pay restitution of less than half of what she stole.  Her record was subsequently expunged. Rep. Cao has referred to her as Richmond’s “girlfriend,” although Richmond has refused to comment on the nature of their relationship.

The Times-Picayune and other local media have been less than eager to investigate these matters. Instead, they have attacked Cao for bringing them up: “For a former seminarian who’s still trying to preserve a squeaky-clean image, it’s some pretty nasty stuff,” one columnist wrote.

It is nasty stuff — very similar to the nasty stuff in which the Jefferson family engaged in order to enrich themselves, and Ike Spears’ close relationship with the Jefferson family makes it look even worse.

There’s no evidence that Cedric Richmond committed a crime, but it’s certainly fair to ask what he knew and when he knew it. He steered money to his friends’ non-profits, which were shoddily run, and funds were stolen. That’s a story, isn’t it?

It seems Louisiana has always suffered under corrupt politicians.  Lafcadio Hearn wrote in 1879, “Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists…but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”  At this point, it’s fair to say of Cedric Richmond, “Nothing proven.”  But can’t New Orleans do better than that?

Crossposted.

Human Events has been on this story for a while.

In a nutshell, under the GRA ["Guaranteed Retirement Account"] system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a “fair” pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions.  This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.

Read more about this and about the inevitable Soros connection at Human Events.

This government confiscation is being considered along with a union pension bailout, which needs to occur before new financial transparency rules take effect on December 15.  It’s so patently insane for anyone – even Democrats like Harkin who don’t have to worry about campaigning again until 2013 – to give this idea a serious look that I wonder if it’s being put out there in order to make the union pension bailout seem more reasonable.  Yes, we’re requiring taxpayers to bail out irresponsible, corrupt unions but at least we’re not directly confiscating your savings to do so!

If this were to happen in a mad duck session after the Democrats get wiped out in the upcoming elections, then it’s certain that the GOP will quickly move to rescind such a policy/law/however they try to implement it.  Because otherwise the crowd of people with torches and pitchforks would come after them.  Even the GOP is not so stupid and statist that they’re going to permit this to happen.  Still – don’t relax, because it’s the (entirely justified) outrage of voters that will prevent this theft.

Crossposted.

So what’s wrong with equating politicians with prostitutes? After all, it’s a quick and vivid way of accusing legislators of selling their votes (and presumably their principles) for money. Countless political cartoons have portrayed supposedly greedy and ethically-challenged politicians in fishnet stockings and garters. Since when did this amusing metaphor hurt anyone?

The problem is, the accusation conjures up an image almost exclusively of women — typically streetwalkers, but sometimes high-class escorts… Also, the term seems to flow so easily off the tongues of men seeking to degrade successful, powerful (perhaps “uppity”?) women. Not long ago Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fl.) called Linda Robertson, an adviser to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a “K Street whore,” and he was rightly criticized for doing so. Whore, prostitute, hooker — it’s time to retire these sexist terms that only encourage our society to see women as commodities to be bought and sold.

Just kidding! That was what they said when Glenn Beck called Mary Landrieu a “high-class prostitute” for selling her healthcare reform vote in the infamous “Louisiana Purchase” deal.  Instead, they quickly endorsed Brown.

The use of the word “whore” is now highly specialized.  Calling a politician selling a vote a whore is evidently out of bounds for most of us.  And so is calling prostitutes whores, unless you actually are one.  The new, politically correct term is “sex worker.”  The San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival presented a one-day class titled “Whore College” which covered “effective marketing, stress reduction and legal issues” for women making the oh-so-empowering choice to sell sex.  We also can’t use the word whore in context of a woman indulging in frequent, casual sex.  As decades of feminism have taught us, that’s all about the “sexual empowerment” too.  Liberal feminists have wailed for years about Freud’s “madonna/whore” complex where any woman exercising her right to what she fondly supposes is consequence-free sex is classified as bad or unworthy of commitment.

Just as “the N word” is reserved for use by black entertainers, “whore” and similar insults are reserved for use by feminists.  Sometimes as an exercise in hipster irony – blogs by feminists that incorporate the word “whore” in their names abound – and sometimes as an exercise in shunning a woman who dares to have a differing opinion.  As Lori Ziganto notes,

Alleged feminists are some of the worst offenders, spewing sexist and outright misogynistic garbage at conservative women.

NOW has certainly proved that.

** I hit Publish too soon and made a few minor corrections.

“How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world? It’s something we’ll monitor, but Americans are somewhat self-absorbed.”

Hastings is perfectly entitled to charge his customers whatever he pleases, and he owes no explanations for the disparity.  But it seems unwise for him to literally add insult to injury.  I find the low regard he has for paying customers like me a bit shocking, and I’ll keep it in mind as I investigate other streaming entertainment options, especially free ones like Hulu and Boxee.  When Hastings’ “self-absorbed” customers complained, he proffered a weak apology, claiming it was a was a bad joke:

“My Big American Foot is in my mouth. Yesterday, I made an awkward joke with a reporter in Toronto about Americans (like me) being self-absorbed relative to Netflix pricing in Canada. I was wrong to have made the joke, and I do not believe that one of the most philanthropically-minded nations in the world (America) is self-absorbed or full of self-absorbed people.”

Hastings’ claim of a joke gone awry is not believable when you read the original comment in context, and even as a joke it lacks enough realism to be amusing.  But it is a view of Americans often stated by liberals.  (Of the $255,450 of Hasting’s political donations, $224,700 has gone to Democrats.)

It’s time that liberals who famously claim to be “the reality-based community” finally learn that their view of what Michelle Obama described as an “uninvolved, uninformed” America is informed by their own insularity and stinginess – not the facts.  Conservatives give more blood, time and money than liberals.  Many liberals, including Reed Hastings, call for higher taxes so that money can be redistributed through the government.  President Obama and Vice-President Biden’s 2008 tax returns show a similar contrast in what they demand of us and what they do – including Obama’s irony-rich demands that we should be our brother’s keeper when he, a millionaire, has an aunt living on the dole and a brother in abject poverty.  I do agree with Mr. Hastings that there are many “self-absorbed” Americans out there, but they don’t represent a majority that would justify his original statement.

Not only are Americans aware of the world around us, we are involved.  The fact is that American private donations to poor countries “dwarf that of other rich nations.” When there is a disaster somewhere in the world, we give generously.  The 2004 tsunami is a perfect example.  In addition to the $900 million worth of services and supplies provided by taxpayers via the government, corporations, non-profits and individual Americans gave an additional $2 billion.  After the earthquake in Haiti, Americans gave generously again.

It is remarkable that private philanthropic donations have been steady in spite of the fact that unemployment has nearly doubled since 2007.

Philanthropy from the United States to developing countries—which includes contributions from foundations, corporations, PVOs, individual volunteers, religious organizations and colleges and universities—held steady at $37.3 billion compared to $36.9 billion in 2007, and exceeded official U.S. aid by more than $10 billion. As with last year, PVOs accounted for the largest portion of U.S. philanthropy going overseas at $11.8 billion.

Hastings was entirely correct in his apology that Americans are not self-absorbed.  What is perplexing is why he said it to begin with, and why so many believe it is true.

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Originally posted at the Washington Examiner.

The Corps was finally forced to admit they built poorly designed, substandard levees whose failure was responsible for two-thirds of the flooding in New Orleans. Some revisionists on the left forget that they built and managed these failed levees for decades before ol’ George was even running for the highest office of the land. They apparently learned nothing from Hurricane Katrina. The year after the hurricane, the Corps installed faulty pumps and were caught stuffing floodwalls with newspaper instead of using the rubber gaskets the design demanded.

The President enjoys portraying himself as knowledgeable about Hurricane Katrina – he has never missed an opportunity to criticize the Bush administration’s response to the storm – but has failed to make any effort to reform the Corps. Instead, he allowed the Corps to obstruct local efforts to rebuild our rapidly eroding coastline – which would be a great improvement in our hurricane protection – and to prevent the oil spill from coming ashore. His passivity in the face of the Corps’ determined incompetence is hardly inspiring, in contrast to whatever soaring rhetoric his speechwriters load into the teleprompter.

Aside from what Mr. Obama passively allows, his actions toward New Orleans are much worse.  He promised reform in the Minerals Management Service and touted Ken Salazar, his pick to run the agency, as the new sheriff in town.  Instead, agency staffers viewed porn on the job and used drugs with employees of the oil companies they were supposed to be overseeing.  Rather than adequately enforcing safety regulations on drilling, the MMS sent out a trainee to inspect the Deepwater Horizon rig just before the blowout.  After the oil spill, the President allowed federal agencies to obstruct local efforts at every turn, even to the point of repeated lies and fictional maps pinpointing the location of phantom oil skimmers.

Considering how many people President Obama’s various policies have thrown into the unemployment line, including the drilling moratorium so ill-conceived that it’s been rejected by his own panel of experts, prevented by federal courts, and now even his own investigators are backing away from it, it’s surprising he’s willing to show his face here.

If you refuse to enact meaningful reform and continue to attack our economy, then on August 29th, go play some golf, Mr. President.

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Originally posted at the Washington Examiner.

I commented on his questionable faith before the election, in the context of wondering how anyone could support infanticide, as he did while in the Illinois Senate when he repeatedly voted to deny abortion survivors medical care.  The purpose of abortion, pro-choicers claim, is to terminate the pregnancy because women have a right not to be pregnant.  At the point the baby is no longer inside the mother, the pregnancy is over, and there is no justification whatsoever for denying medical care to a surviving infant.  So like many voters, I wondered how Obama could reconcile that position with his claimed Christianity.  To say nothing of sitting still for the vile rhetoric spewed by Jeremiah Wright each week.  That’s not Christianity, as I see it.  YMMV.  But put that speculation aside.

Obama denies the exclusivity of Christianity.  That’s the real dealbreaker.  The New Testament repeatedly asserts that Christ’s death on the cross provides the only possible avenue to heaven; that Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE life.  If you don’t believe that, you’re really not a Christian.  That’s pretty much the one point all the major denominations agree on, Catholics and Protestants alike.  The point is the crucifixion, and the need for it, so we may be reconciled with God.  And Obama says that he really doesn’t believe that.

What he believes: “I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

On whether he considers himself born again: “Yeah, although I don’t, I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.”

On who Jesus is to him: “Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. And he’s also a wonderful teacher.”

On who he looks to for guidance: “Well, my pastor [Jeremiah Wright] is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for. I have a number of friends who are ministers. Reverend [James] Meeks is a close friend and colleague of mine in the state Senate. Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely.”

On the existence of hell: “I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.”

On doctrine: “I think that each of us when we walk into our church or mosque or synagogue are interpreting that experience in different ways, are reading scriptures in different ways and are arriving at our own understanding at different ways and in different phases. I don’t know a healthy congregation or an effective minister who doesn’t recognize that. If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn’t have to keep coming to church, would they.”

On the existence of heaven: “What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.”

On what sin is: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

On being aligned spiritually: “It’s when I’m being true to myself.”

He further commented,

It’s interesting, the most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I’m talking to a group and I’m saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I’m just being glib or clever.

FALSANI:
What’s that power? Is it the holy spirit? God?

OBAMA:
Well, I think it’s the power of the recognition of God, or the recognition of a larger truth that is being shared between me and an audience.

However Obama’s beliefs can be classified, it doesn’t change a bit of the damage he’s done while in office.  But in practice, he’s his own god, creating his own belief system and his own doctrine.  He’s perfectly entitled to do so; whether that curious doctrine will get him into the heaven he’s not too sure even exists remains to be seen.  But since the media seems so shocked and offended by the fact that the public is confused about what Obama believes, I think it’s worth pointing out that Obama doesn’t seem too sure, himself.

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Crossposted to Pursuing Holiness.  At the Washington Examiner, check out my post suggesting Obama play more golf.

It’s difficult for lay people to get a handle on the science when it’s continually hyped.  This isn’t a new development – changes in climate have been poorly reported for more than a century. The catch is that it’s alternated between warming and cooling four times, and whether the trend is warming or cooling, the stories over the last hundred years use very similar verbiage. It’s always a crisis. Soon it will be irreversible. The end is near! You would almost think there was a Journolist for climate change.

It’s not just the reporters, who doubtless struggle as much as the next non-scientist to grasp the information. As we have learned from Anthony Watt’s Surface Stations project, which studies how temperature information is collected, it’s the data. An astounding 69% of American temperature sensors have artificial heating sources like air conditioning units and exhaust fans within 10 meters. There’s no reason to believe other countries are doing any better of a job collecting data, and Watts intends to survey the Global Historical Climatology Network stations eventually.

As we have learned from the “Climategate” scandal and the less reported subsequent scandal at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, it’s also the scientists, who have strategized behind the scenes to shut out opposing views and to hide and manipulate data.

These are desperate days for global warming advocates, and they should be. The two groups we rely on the most to be skeptical and detail-oriented, scientists and reporters, have continued to badly fail us.

Originally posted at the Washington Examiner.

Clearly, a “coordinated Federal effort, proactively guided by a senior-level interagency body” will finally protect us from oil spills, overfishing, pollution, coastal development and the impacts of climate change. And reorganizing a lot of smaller agencies and departments under one big one is a great idea. It’s worked out so well at the Department of Homeland Security!

After all, what can’t government agencies do? (Besides basic functions like building adequate levees, securing the border, providing safe health care to veterans, and getting oil skimmers into the Gulf in a timely fashion.)

If you drill, fish, live on the coast or enjoy boating, the National Ocean Council is going to regulate you because this new government agency will essentially rezone our coasts to achieve these goals:

“Coastal and marine spatial planning identifies areas most suitable for various types or classes of activities in order to reduce conflicts among uses, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible uses, and preserve critical ecosystem services to meet economic, environmental, security, and social objectives.”

In fact, even if you don’t drill, fish, live on the coast or enjoy boating, the National Ocean Council will regulate you: “Concerns about water quality would be addressed by promoting and implementing sustainable practices on land.”

Who’s going to lead and guide us in implementing those sustainable practices? The National Ocean Council will be co-chaired by Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren. If his name sounds familiar, perhaps you remember it from the 1970s, when he co-wrote a book called Ecoscience which suggested compulsory abortion, mass sterilization, and a transnational “Planetary Regime” as solutions for the catastrophic overpopulation problem that absolutely, positively needed to be resolved by the year 2000, (that never happened.) He and his co-authors have walked that back somewhat, though Holdren has never unambiguously disavowed the book.

The formation of this new Council is a signal that offshore drilling will likely be regulated into nonexistence. The Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will also participate in the National Ocean Council. The Council is also specifically tasked to cede our maritime sovereignty to the United Nations via the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea; if this is ratified, the International Seabed Authority will be able to restrict or limit our access to undersea “solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources” if it so chooses.

Obama sees skyrocketing energy costs as a feature, not a bug, of his energy policies. If you recall he even said so before the election. He does not have the support of all Democrats. Mary Landrieu is fighting against the unnecessary and costly moratorium which is fueling the perfect economic storm Obama is inflicting on Louisiana. As she pointed out, this will cost us tens of thousands of jobs, and actually expose us to more environmental risks.

Unfortunately, because he can use Executive Orders and other methods to bypass Congress, he doesn’t need the support of all Democrats. If this Council achieves the goals set for it, Democrats can avoid those pesky Congressional battles to eradicate drilling, an environmental goal near and dear to liberal hearts. They can just use national and international regulations to drive drillers to less restrictive nations like Venezuela, to which American taxpayers just lent billions of dollars for offshore drilling. Two deepwater rigs down and 31 to go!

Originally posted at the Washington Examiner.

Conservative aversion to the media is indicative of a key fact about conservatives. Unlike liberals, who continually try to implement big government/socialist policies in spite of the fact that they fail every single time they are tried, our media aversion proves that conservatives can be taught.

We have been carefully educated by liberal journalists. This training began back in 1993 when Kurtz’ employer, the Washington Post, informed us that we were “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” During the Clinton administration, we were assured that all we cared about was Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity, and that – to paraphrase Polanski apologist Whoopi Goldberg – it wasn’t perjury-perjury. Move along.  Nothing to see here.

The lesson of how heartily most journalists seem to despise conservatives has been reinforced by decades of selective coverage. Trent Lott was run out of his leadership position for an intemperate attempt to compliment former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. Robert Byrd’s Klan leadership, Civil Rights filibuster and public use of a racial slur as recently as 2001 was glossed over. Ted Kennedy was promoted as a champion of women’s rights. (Mary Jo who?  What waitress sandwich? These are not the droids you are looking for.) The Washington Post pounded George Allen with days of front page Macaca coverage. Tea Party coverage has been minimized, except when some nut job is available to become the representative of us all. SEIU thugs beat and rampage at will and on camera, while their media advocates look the other way.

The media uncritically accepts and promotes the lie that Congressmen were spat on and subject to racial insults – in spite of the many video recordings disproving those claims.  The media engaged in a knee-jerk defense of ACORN after a handful of college students exposed it for the corrupt disgrace that it is. Sexual scandals of the left are minimized yet on the right are maximized.  Obama is permitted to demonize Republicans for not approving an unemployment extension, when the GOP is perfectly willing to approve the extension – just as soon as it adheres with the pay-go policies that Obama campaigned on and that Democrats passed. The Washington Post obliquely mentions that tiny detail, in the last sentence of the article. There are far too many examples to list.

Kurtz specifically complains that Sarah Palin is inaccessible to the media which parses her every word (while Gaffemaster Biden and 57 state corpse-man Obama get free passes), and which gleefully promoted lies by the young man whose main claim to fame is impregnating Palin’s daughter.  It sure is hard to imagine why Palin would bypass the “lamestream” press filter in favor of publishing on Facebook, where readers get every word and it’s all in context.

Kurtz continues, “Both [Sharon Angle and Rand Paul] seem to think the media’s primary role should be to help them — raise money, carry a message — rather than hold them accountable.”  The media’s primary role certainly does appear to be carrying messages for politicians – as long as they are Democrats. The Washington Post ombudsman eventually admitted - safely after the election – its clear bias in favor of President Obama. So why is Kurtz surprised that conservatives have assimilated the media’s new mission and would like to see it applied impartially?

In all fairness, there are journalists who will give conservatives a fair hearing, and who will report what they say in context. But the Washington Post has earned conservative’s suspicion.

Originally posted at the Washington Examiner.

Beginning this fall, high school seniors of the Chino Valley School District will have the chance to enroll in a new course called “Bible as/in Literature and History.”

[The class] will offer a survey of the Bible, beginning with the historical context of the Old Testament, and then will focus on the New Testament later in the semester. It will also provide students with a historical knowledge of the Middle East.

I’m certainly not opposed to students learning that yes, Israel was a nation long before 1948, and that Jews have been a part of that region for thousands of years.  Perhaps that will reduce the number of people who think they should “go back” to Germany and Poland.  If high school seniors learn Jewish history, then maybe Jewish students will be safer on California college campuses where Israel is routinely de-legitimized.

If it really is taught in that way, it could be a valuable addition to the curriculum.  But the article leads me to believe it’s a back door effort to proselytize.  Fred Youngblood, president of the Board of Education, said, “It is my belief that better understanding the Bible will help all students with their decision-making process. …The Bible has been a part of my life ever since I could remember. It has had a very positive influence on me and my family.   It is my hope that our students will have a better understanding of the impact the Bible has had on all that surrounds us.”

Social cons will celebrate this development.  California schools have whitewashed Islam and allowed Islamic proselytism, they’ll argue, and this doesn’t even come close to counterbalancing that.   But fiscal cons will groan, and rightfully so.  California already has a budget shortfall of more than $25 billion. Chino Valley School District already must cut the budget by $30 million.   Now is not the time to add an inevitable, expensive, legal battle.  Social cons would do better to work at getting Islam (and other religions) out of the schools rather than getting their own in.

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Cross posted to Pursuing Holiness.

President Obama and Russian President Medvedev enjoyed a burger and a walk in the park.

“Obama’s first time hosting Medvedev at the White House will probably be remembered most for the extent to which they got along like a couple of buddies.”

At least Obama didn’t say he got a sense of Medvedev’s soul.  But for a lot of friendly acquaintances, warmth often relies as much on what is not said, as what is said. For example, Medvedev apparently didn’t comment on the hypocrisy of Obama enjoying a burger and fries, while he and Michelle lecture the rest of us about our food choices and salt intake.

It’s also probable that Medvedev didn’t openly mock how Obama is working hard to shut down American drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while Russia partners with Cuba to drain those fields dry.  Chances are good that he refrained from congratulating our President on maintaining a federal bureaucracy so oppressive that local governments are legally restricted from attempting to protect themselves from catastrophic environmental damage.  After all, in Russia that sort of top-down management is unremarkable, and it’s not like they are interested in protecting the Baltic Sea. He probably doesn’t even wonder why Obama has been so slow to respond to the situation in the Gulf of Mexico.

While they did speak about economics, they apparently stuck mostly to trade issues. For his part, it’s unlikely President Obama commented much on the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s embrace of capitalism, it’s wildly successful 13% flat tax, or inquired why Russia is abandoning “fairness” by scrapping its capital gains tax. Medvedev probably didn’t remark on the dire financial repercussions of the Euro-socialism that Obama seems bent on implementing in the United States.

Perhaps they exchanged tips on how to deal with unruly executives – like Bob Dudley, who is now managing BP’s oil spill. Less than two years ago, BP claimed that Dudley had to flee Russia to escape the “orchestrated campaign of harassment” he was being subjected to by Russian authorities. But then, it’s unlikely Obama really needs help in that department, having already – without benefit of law – squeezed $20 billion from the company and the pensioners who rely on it. (While BP should certainly pay for the damage it’s caused, it should be held accountable in a legal, orderly way – not via a decree from the Oval Office.)

All in all, a great visit. Maybe that reset button worked!

For the last two months Louisiana has had to deal with the federal government’s deplorable management of BP’s oil spill, with various federal agencies actively hindering local efforts to protect and clean our shores and to keep our economy going. To add insult to injury, we now have a suggestion from Froma Harrop that we need a federal takeover, making the state of Louisiana a U.S. protectorate.

A modest proposal: The federal government should take over Louisiana. Might as well, at this point.

… It’s hardly news that Louisiana’s political class is not all it could be. But there comes a time when the U.S. taxpayer can no longer write blank checks to cover its dysfunction.

Considering that the spill is occurring  in federal waters, on a site the federal government leased to a company operating under federal permits, federal inspections and which recently received a safety award from the federal government, I’m not really sure to which local dysfunction Ms. Harrop refers. It’s also worth mentioning that for decades Louisiana has been denied the same level of federal royalties for offshore drilling that other states enjoy, so drilling here is a real moneymaker for the federal government.

Other than applying a legally questionable financial squeeze to BP, I’m not sure how much the federal government has accomplished in the 61 days since the Deepwater Horizon accident besides generate frustration in local officials. However, a lot has been accomplished in spite of them.

• The vacuum barges built by the La. National Guard are back on the job after the Coast Guard stopped them.
• Kevin Costner’s oil centrifuges are finally being deployed after decades of government foot dragging.
• BP finally trial ordered 600 feet of the miles of boom – of the sort La. Governor Bobby Jindal begged for within a week of the explosion – which sat in a Maine warehouse even after Maine’s senators wrote the secretary of the Interior, the administrator of NOAA, and the commandant of the Coast Guard about it.
• The sand berms Jindal finally decided it would be easier to get forgiveness than permission from the federal government for were being built at a record pace until the federal government stopped the dredging on Tuesday.
• The economy destroying oil moratorium – which was decidedly not supported by the experts as Obama’s Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar initially claimed – has been temporarily stopped by a judge who suggested the federal government find better reasons than because I said so and noted that it failed to give any consideration to less draconian measures until the President’s commission finally meets in mid-July, three months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion.  (I suggest safety inspections by people more experienced than trainees and enforcing existing law.)

All things considered, I’m wondering why Louisiana shouldn’t just secede from the federal government. Might as well, at this point given the feds response.

Added: Via @pomitical, it’s 3a.m. -

What has always repelled me most about Mike Huckabee is his dishonesty, especially given how the man who made Judicial Watch’s 2007 “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list puts himself forward as the Christian candidate.

He was deeply dishonest in his treatment of Mitch Romney’s faith. It’s certainly fair to disagree with Romney’s Mormonism, and if you think some Mormon beliefs are a bit nutty, well, so do a lot of people. (And in all fairness, others consider my Christian hedonism equally odd.) But that sneaky way he wondered whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers – when it beggars belief that Huckabee was unfamiliar with the basics of the Mormon faith, having spoken at the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention in Salt Lake City – was disgraceful.

He did manage to muster a weak disavowal for his supporters who dishonestly push-polled on his behalf – again, way to be moral and upright! A Christian leader who fails to stop his supporters from being dishonest on his behalf is either not a Christian or not a leader.

In the New Yorker’s article about him – which reminds me of nothing so much as the hagiographic coverage Obama enjoyed during the election – Mike Huckabee, America’s Christian Candidate, defended the faith thusly:

Other members of the group politely admitted that they had no doubt that most Israelis, and anyone else who had not accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour, would be spending eternity in Hell. (“That is an issue,” a man named Randy Rebold told me apologetically.) Huckabee’s formulation is considerably more politic. “If somebody asked me, How do I get to Heaven, I would tell them that the only way I personally am aware of is faith in Christ, because I believe the New Testament,” he said. “That’s the only map I got. Somebody says, Well, I got a different map. O.K.! You know what? If it works, I’m not going to argue with you.”

If it works. I’m not going to argue. Is Huckabee in some doubt about whether Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life – the only mediator between God and man? Because that’s kind of a deal-breaker where biblical Christianity is concerned. If he doesn’t believe that, he’s not really a Christian. And if he’s embarrassed to say that Christianity is exclusive in this regard – just as every other faith is exclusive in its claim to truth – then perhaps a reassessment is in order.

As if that weren’t enough, Huckabee promoted the classic “poor, uneducated and easy to command” smear with this lovely anecdote about a 1979 rally he helped coordinate -

More than ten thousand Christians came to a “Freedom Rally” at the Reunion Arena, in Dallas, to protest Robison’s expulsion. “There was this amazing energy coming up from these evangelical Christians,” Huckabee said. “I remember almost being frightened by it. If someone had gotten to the microphone and said, ‘Let’s go four blocks from here and take Channel 8 apart,’ that audience would’ve taken the last brick off the building.”

That’s all it takes to drive us to violence, evidently – we’re simply awaiting orders. No biblical mandate nor earthly law could have protected that building from the howling, frenzied mob had someone just gotten to the microphone to give the command.

The icing on the New Yorker cake was this straw man worthy of the Democratic Party -

In defiance of libertarian laissez-faire, Huckabee has extended his Christian vision to include the poor. “If there are a certain number of kids from single-parent homes who aren’t going to school and don’t have health care, you can say that’s not government’s job,” Huckabee told me. “Well, sweet and fine! But you know what? If the kid’s sitting outside the door of the hospital choking with asthma, do I sit there and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think, philosophically, government should get involved’? I’d much rather the kid get help than I sit around and say I’m so pure in my ideology.”

Because people who oppose Huckabee’s big government programs – like his mandated public school weigh-ins – want to kill children. No child sits outside an emergency room suffocating due to lack of health insurance, and nobody of import has ever argued that she should. She absolutely will get treated, and for Huckabee to pretend that is not the case is dishonest. If challenged that he’s arguing that point against essentially nobody, because no mainstream politician or pundit espouses denying emergency treatment to dying children, the Huckster would probably clarify, “I’m only arguing against laissez-faire libertarians.” The truth is he’s pulling an Obama, dishonestly framing an opposing argument as a ridiculously extreme position. That’s a typical political trick, and I’d let it pass without comment if he didn’t keep reminding us all what a good, moral Christian candidate he is.

It’s the same argument he’s used time and again – if you don’t agree with him on the proper care and treatment for illegal aliens, clemency, or support his tax increases, then you must drink a different kind of Jesus juice than he does.

Crossposted.

Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish which is very hard-hit by the spill, spoke for a lot of people when he begged to know who “they” are with the red tape: “Give me somebody to put my hands around their neck!”

With the foot-dragging on allowing Louisiana to protect the wetlands with sand berms, the inexplicable failure to supply much-needed boom and accept help, the “what did he know and when did he know it” questions, and the politically motivated drilling moratorium, a lot of people – as they bring beloved pets to the pound – are wondering if the person Nungesser is looking for is the President.  The vacuum barges designed and operated by the Louisiana National Guard are now pending approval and funding by BP.   Can’t the man who promised his election would be “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” at least clear out some red tape?

Members of a panel of experts brought in to advise the Obama administration on how to address offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon disaster now say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar falsely implied they supported a six-month drilling moratorium they actually oppose.

Salazar’s May 27 report to President Barack Obama said a panel of seven experts “peer reviewed” his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on all ongoing drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. That prohibition took effect a few days later, but the angry panel members and some others who contributed to the Salazar report said they had only reviewed an earlier version of the Interior secretary’s report that suggested a six-month moratorium only on new drilling, and then only in waters deeper than 1,000 feet.

It’s admirable that the Obama administration brought in a panel of recognized experts to consult on drilling safety.  It would have been nice if the Mineral Management Service had taken a break from surfing porn and done something like that before eleven people lost their lives.  But instead of taking their advice and implementing reasonable safety precautions, they’ve misrepresented the views of the panelists and provoked furious responses, including, ”The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions.”

Contra Salazar’s original disingenuous report, these experts emphatically oppose the moratorium:

“A blanket moratorium is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill,” the letter says. “We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do.”

Obama is the king of straw men and false choices.  But the choices here are not limited to either unsafe drilling or long term destruction of the Gulf coast economy.   The moratorium was a political decision, and a bad one.  It should be reversed immediately.

Update: Is the moratorium legal?  Hornbeck, one of the suppliers, says no.

The company filed suit late Monday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans to bar the Interior Department from enforcing the six-month moratorium ordered by President Barack Obama in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the huge oil leak in the Gulf.

… At the center of the suit  is Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar’s May 27 report on safety measures in the Gulf, which led to the moratorium. Hornbeck said the government’s own inspections of 29 of the 33 drilling rigs turned up nothing more than minor violations.

“The report contains no finding or evidence of a systemic failure by rig operators, drillers or other participants in offshore drilling operations to comply with current regulations or existing permits,” the suit said.

Ed Morrissey’s take on this –

Instead of just relying on its own intellectual candlepower for the decision, Barack Obama and Ken Salazar apparently wanted some cover for their decision, and tried pulling a bait-and-switch on their own expert panel. That certainly isn’t going to instill confidence in the leadership of this administration or its competence, both in the crisis at hand and in general. Shooting themselves in the foot in their public-relations efforts and antagonizing the people they need to solve the catastrophe is the last thing they or any of us need at the moment.

In the headlines post, Buzz grows: Is it time to nuke the oil leak? jake-the-goose made this comment:

I was down in New Orleans yesterday – the fear and anxiety down there is off the charts on this whole subject. For any of us living across the U.S. – unless you are down there – you simply cannot imagine the state of fear that exists.

Wetlands will literally sink under this oil attack – and that will lead to unimaginable consequences.

The fear is unreal – you have to be there to appreciate it.

jake-the-goose on June 3, 2010 at 9:49 AM

And that’s true.  There is no part of our local economy which will go unaffected by this oil spill.  It’s hard to imagine, looking at the current circumstances, that this isn’t going to take a decade or more to get over.  And it’s going to have serious effects nationally.  Louisiana is the second largest fishery in the country.  Louisiana supplies 80% of the United States offshore oil production – and unlike other energy producing states, we do not receive 50% of federal royalties for that.  We’ve just undergone a battle royale to get to 37.5%, and even that doesn’t start until 2017.   Oil companies have dredged over 10,000 miles of canals in our wetlands over the years, causing a great deal of damage and making us more vulnerable to hurricanes.  We lose about a football field’s worth of wetlands every 45 minutes.

The upside to this unpleasant situation is that we at least had jobs, not just working on the rigs, but in all the support industries.  Now we stand to lose that too, with the upcoming shutdown of at least 33 deep water rigs, and rumors of closures of even rigs closer in to shore.  It’s going to absolutely devastate our economy.  So yes, people are worried and scared.  But we haven’t lost our sense of humor.  Breaux Mart has a new product in the bakery:

That’s New Orleans for you.

And related – this isn’t from New Orleans, but a whole lot of us here found it amusing; it’s been making the email rounds:

Some Idaho orthopedists grew weary of the low reimbursement rates the government gave them for caring for worker’s comp patients.  So they got together and agreed not to treat those patients anymore.  They hoped that their boycott would force the Idaho Industrial Commission to increase the fee schedule – their payments.  While they were at it, they decided to stop working with Blue Cross of Idaho – also a notorious underpayer – until a better deal could be negotiated.  Unions behave this way all the time, and it’s often very effective.

In a similar case in Colorado last February, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in and charged the doctors with price-fixing.

The FTC charged Roaring Fork Valley Physicians I.P.A., Inc., which represents about 80 percent of the doctors in Garfield County, Colorado, with violating the FTC Act by orchestrating agreements among its members to set higher prices for medical services and to refuse to deal with insurers that did not meet its demands for higher rates.

Those doctors lost, and if they want to continue to work as physicians, they will do so at the prices set by the government.

Now the Obama administration has stepped it up a notch. The FTC only deals with civil complaints. In order to deal with the Idaho orthopedists, Obama sent in Eric Holder and the Justice Department, which is at liberty to file criminal charges.  You see, those Idaho orthopedists collectively agreeing that they had enough and weren’t going to take it anymore, were actually engaged in two antitrust conspiracies.

… the Justice Department has unambiguously stated that refusal to accept government price controls is a form of illegal “price fixing.”

The FTC has hinted at this when it’s said physicians must accept Medicare-based reimbursement schedules from insurance companies. But the DOJ has gone the final step and said, “Government prices are market prices,” in the form of the Idaho Industrial Commission’s fee schedule.

The Sherman Act, which is being used here against physicians, exempts trade unions.  Obama may have one boot on BP’s neck, but the other seems pretty firmly planted on that of America’s doctors.

h/t to Dr. Wes, who writes,

Given the 21% cut to Medicare payments that occurred today (but CMS is ‘holding claims’ for ten days to allow for another stop-gap measure to be implemented), ask yourself two questions: (1) “Where was the AMA?” and (2) Are you ready to be a government employee?”

Crossposted.

I definitely felt going in that a lot of other people felt the same way I did but they really would just love to have someone with somewhat of a megaphone if you will as far as saying what needs to be said. … I know there are a lot more like me who are concerned about radical Islam and wish more were being done.

Another candidate who has been equally direct is Florida’s Lt. Col. Allen West. In this video, after every other man waffled and one even joked about taking the 5th, West provided a concise history of Islamic war on the west and concluded with

“…until we get principled leadership in the United States that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail because we will never clearly define who this enemy is and then understand their goals and objectives which is on any jihadist website and then come up with the right and proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic but to secure western civilization.”

Barber’s response:

I love Mr. West. He’s dead on when he identifies and says we can’t look at this as in the same context as other religions. This is a totalitarian and an authoritarian ideology that is out there. It’s not subject to one nation, it’s not necessarily one people; it’s an ideology we’re combating. And if we don’t recognize it for what it is [...] we’re going to be taken over. Look what’s happening in France.

We don’t project strength as a nation anymore. And if we don’t start doing that again, we’re constantly going to be vulnerable. Ronald Reagan has one of the best quotes, “We were never brought into war because we were deemed to be too strong; only when we were deemed to be too weak.” And that’s exactly what the administration is doing now. We are not being strong with the conflicts that we’re in.

On the recent South Park/Comedy Central/EDMD brouhaha he said,

There’s an absolute double standard in the media and anywhere else. That’s going to be another thing I would address in Washington. The biggest thing a Congressman has is a megaphone – he has access to be heard. And that’s what our leaders today aren’t capitalizing on.

I asked Barber why he is the superior GOP candidate for his district. After all, like Dede Scozzafava, Martha Roby received the NRCC endorsement.

She’s definitely the establishment candidate; she’s got a long pedigree in her family. Her father’s a federal judge, her uncle’s the probate judge in Montgomery, so you’ve got all those contacts which give her the advantage to raise money, no doubt about it. The reason I chose to run, because running for public office of any kind just wasn’t on my roadmap initially was the fact that, as a business owner, someone who hires people all the time, and Congress being a job; that you’re applying for a job for what you’re doing, you try to match the skill set for the job. And when you look at what’s going on in Washington today, out of control spending, big deficits, we’re getting into programs we shouldn’t be doing, we’re not holding people accountable – all those things – those are all issues that business owners face every day.

We have to be fiscally responsible. We have to control our budget. We have to hold people accountable for their decisions. As business owners, it’s our money we’re investing so we’re invested in every single decision we make, so I really wanted to see someone there with real world business experience. There’s nothing else that would help rein in some of these out of control decisions that we’re making because the people who are down here living in the world they’re creating up there are crying foul. And it’s harder every day to stay in business because they’re taking the incentive out of being a business owner every day.

And the second thing was the military experience – in my district we have two major military installations. We have got 200,000 veterans, and in Washington we have less than 25% of our leaders who have ever served in the armed forces. I think that’s where that disconnect happens when you talk about national security, when you talk about being strong on immigration. And so my platform is on quit hiring political experience, because there’s plenty of that in Washington, and let’s start hiring some real-world experience and start focusing on what accomplishments that they achieved in life, and put those kind of skill sets in Washington and I think you’ll find a change in the decisions that are being made.

One last blast from his megaphone:

I’m a huge FAIR Tax supporter; it’s one of the things that got me involved in the tea party, I think tax reform is the #1 way we can fix our government. Corruption is rampant because the #1 tool that is used is the tax code today. So if we really want to address corruption, the best solution I have found for that is the FAIR tax. And I think that’s something if we had more people in Washington really educating people on, that it would become a campaign issue for most people in the United States. They would start asking people, “Do you support HR 25?” and if you don’t they probably would not even consider voting for you.

I’m tired of waffling politicians who try to take all sides of an issue. Barber’s directness and willingness to support something not fully poll-tested is really refreshing; that’s why I’ve donated to his campaign. He’s willing to get out there and use his megaphone to try to sell conservative ideas, something I think the GOP has done a very poor job of in the last decade. As to whether a GOP Tea Party candidate can defeat the GOP establishment candidate… well, it wouldn’t be the first time, even when the Tea Party candidate enjoys less funding. As Glenn Reynolds put it,

…in many ways Tea Party activism is the substitute for cash that is to say you don’t have to pay people to go out and do yourself because Tea Party people will do it for free. I read over 6000 people traveled in from out of state to work as volunteers for Scott Brown and you know, and so that’s as good as money and indeed a lot of the publicity, a lot of the support of the Tea Party people produce is far more valuable than paid political ads.

Recommended: Stacy McCain talked Tea Parties, Pool Halls and Blue Dogs with Rick Barber back in February.

Instalanche, and thanks for the link!

Edited: I added a few links I originally forgot to include and clarified that the controversial ad was about the WTC mosque.

President Obama added,

The Taliban preys on civilians – killing, raping, and mutilating the people of the middle east; stealing and brutalizing their children; and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Its leadership, indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, has no agenda and no purpose other than its own survival. It fills its ranks of fighters with the young boys and girls it abducts. By any measure, its actions are an affront to human dignity.

Okay, I totally made that up. It was really the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament Act that he signed. The Taliban, he’s looking to cut a deal with.

Crossposted.

A little perspective is in order: the reason this is such a shocking disaster is precisely because this sort of thing is so rare.  I’m not insensitive to how it’s going to affect the Gulf Coast.  I live here.  I’ve got shrimpers and fishermen in my family.  And I promise you, in spite of this awful accident, we don’t want drilling shut down.  Most people want it expanded.  We need the jobs, the country needs the oil, and the federal government, with its massive spending binge, would surely like to have the revenue.  A little known fact: other states split drilling revenue 50-50 with the federal government.  Louisiana, on the other hand, has never received that.   We’re fighting just to get to  37.5%.   And even that doesn’t start until 2017.

Conservatives chant “Drill, baby, drill!” because we know that right now, oil is the most cost-effective form of energy available.  We think it’s great that research is being done into green energy.  We’d love it if hydrogen fuel cells, the wind and the sun could power how we live.  But they can’t right now.  So we need to continue drilling for oil, because these sort of accidents are part of the cost of doing business just as Chernobyl was part of the cost of nuclear energy.

At some point soon they’ll stop the thousands of gallons of oil per day from spilling into the Gulf.  Some fish, birds, and assorted critters will die – others will be saved with the help of volunteers, just like they were after the Exxon Valdez disaster.  The coastline will be cleaned, and the tourism and fishing industries will eventually come back and wildlife will return to the affected areas.  We’ll figure out what caused the explosion on the rig, and try to prevent it from happening again.  We’ll learn new lessons about how to prevent spills and how to mitigate the damage when the do happen.  And we’ll keep drilling – or we should.  Because the last thing we need in this train wreck of an economy is higher energy prices.

ADDED: Politics of fear – AP plays the otter card and Ace sums up:

It’s the childishness of this all though that bothers me, the refusal to accept the simple proposition that in life, there are choices, and choices have consequences, and sometimes it’s necessary to accept some downside to get a lot of upside. People don’t seem to acknowledge the upside of petroleum — like being able to drive places, or having heat and electricity in their homes, and so on — because it “just happens,” by magic, I guess.

On the other hand, show them a dying otter and they want to stop this all.

Crossposted.

Added x2: If you’re in the Gulf Coast area and you want to volunteer to help with the cleanup, register here.

At the heart of the South Park controversy is whether Trey Parker and Matt Stone – and by extension, Comedy Central – have the right not to obey Islamic law. Abu Talhah al Amrikee/Revolution Muslim thinks they do not; that it’s reasonable and normal that the death penalty be administered for the offense of insulting Islam:

Abu Talhah al Amrikee, the author of the post [on the Muslim website threatening the creators of the show], told Foxnews.com he wrote the entry to “raise awareness.” He said the grisly photograph of van Gogh was meant to “explain the severity” of what Parker and Stone did by mocking Muhammad.

“It’s not a threat, but it really is a likely outcome,” al Amrikee said, referring to the possibility that Parker and Stone could be murdered for mocking Muhammad. “They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.”

If I were to post my opinion that a likely outcome to his comment is a pack of furious New Yorkers, upon seeing this guy out on the street [insert address here], would tackle this guy and administer a righteous beating, I suspect Mr. al Amrikee might feel threatened. Ibrahim Hooper would be on every cable news show worrying about Islamophobia and explaining why we need to be more sensitive.

This is why Bill O’Reilly’s response is so disgraceful.

He would have advised them not to do it, and he thinks this will blow over. Why should we allow that, especially since it seems clear that South Park’s creators don’t want to let it blow over? Is there any other reason why they keep coming back to this topic? Madison Conservative wrote about Comedy Central’s decision,

There are lots of cracks about the phrase “the terrorists have won”. Well, this is one of the clearest, truest signs that they have. It’s utterly abominable, and everyone responsible for this craven, pusillanimous decision is a worthless coward.

Add everyone who wonders whether we ought to go along to get along – mustn’t upset the Muslims! – and like O’Reilly, doesn’t know “if the risk, reward is worth it.” I’d be very interested in finding out precisely what O’Reilly thinks would be worth it. We have the right not to obey Islamic laws, and we’d better exercise that right if we want to retain it. Now. Not later, when compliance like Comedy Central’s has become so ingrained in us that we have to overcome that before we can fight back against our prospective oppressors.

As Kate at Small Dead Animals put it -

You see – there’s the difference between an “extremist” and a “moderate”. The “extremist” is the one with the death threat. The “moderate” is the one who explains what you’ve done to deserve it.

Crossposted.

Back in 2006 when the cartoons were published and the death threats against the cartoonists began, CNN issued a report with this statement:

CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam.

It seems Matt Stone and Trey Parke are more equal than the cartoonists who published their work in Jyllands-Posten.  But kudos to Anderson Cooper for finally showing the MoToons and for drawing attention to the fact that fatwas and death threats are a frequent response by radical Muslims to insults to their faith.

Crossposted.

“I want people to question where the priorities are — to see people getting together to accomplish a goal, by creating awareness for something as simple and as basic as the right to be educated,” Keller said.

Miss Keller is wrong. There is no “right to be educated.” She is entitled to seek out an education, but not to have taxpayers deliver one to her, even in part. States are cutting budgets in many areas, and there is no reason why tertiary education should not feel some of that pain along with roads, entitlements, elementary and secondary education, and pretty much every other area of life. If colleges are finally weaned off the government teat, perhaps they’ll make a real effort to reduce costs, which have risen four times faster than the rate of inflation, to levels students can better afford.

I agree that now would be a good time to for people to question their priorities. More and more people are concluding that our taxpayer-funded colleges lack accountability, common sense, and are a bad bargain. For example, Fort Hays University in Kansas used stimulus money to pay students to earn C or better grades. A lot of parents are tired of paying top dollar to give leftist, race baiting, anti-American, plagiarizing nut jobs the privilege of indoctrinating their children.

Not everyone should go to college, and not everyone should go to college right out of high school. There are many benefits to learning a trade and then going to college later on in life. In my husband’s case, he started as an electrical helper, worked his way up to licensed electrician, and went to night school in his thirties to get an electrical/electronics engineering degree. He practiced values that millennials have largely avoided – delaying gratification and being self-supporting. He wonders why – having paid for his own higher education – he should pay for someone else’s. After all, this is schooling they are voluntarily undertaking and from which they’ll benefit by higher lifetime earnings. The fact that college students have the audacity to protest – and in some cases, protest violently – at being required to pay for it illustrates that they badly need an education. Just not the one they’ll receive from a university.

Crossposted.

We’re already at the breaking point, and the nation cannot afford for the Democrats to add more people to the government health care rolls:

Facing relentless fiscal pressure and exploding demand for government health care, virtually every state is making or considering substantial cuts in Medicaid, even as Democrats push to add 15 million people to the rolls.

It’s unfair to doctors.  If we push them too far they will opt out of the system:

The Medicaid program already pays doctors and hospitals at levels well below those of Medicare and private insurance, and often below actual costs. Large numbers of doctors, therefore, do not accept Medicaid patients, and cuts may further discourage participation in the program, which primarily serves low-income children, disabled adults and nursing home residents.

… Dr. Beck said that over eight months last year, his practice wrote off $36,000 in losses from treating 17 Medicaid patients. The state-imposed payment cut, he said, was “the final straw.”

“I’m out, I’m done,” Dr. Beck said in a telephone interview. “I didn’t want to. I want to take care of people. But I also have three children and many employees to take care of.”

It will result in rationing services:

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, is proposing the largest cuts in the history of TennCare, his state’s Medicaid program. To trim 9 percent of the TennCare budget, he would establish a $10,000 cap on inpatient hospital services for nonpregnant adults and would limit coverage of X-rays, laboratory services and doctor’s office visits.

What’s missing from the article: the typical “Obamacare will cure all our ills” gloss over the very real problems with health care delivery by the government.  Even better, it once again puts the lie to the concept of “free health care.”  No matter who delivers it, health care costs money and it is a limited resource.  While the insurance companies are demonized for denying claims, Medicare denies them at nearly double the average of private insurers:

The number of Democrats pushing for the public option is growing, but now is not the time to compromise on fighting for the real reforms proposed by the GOP.  Newt Gingrich may be feeling hopeful that the President will work in an open, bipartisan manner on new legislation” but Obama will not change his stance.  He’s said it repeatedly: he wants single payer.  And many on the left have openly admitted that the public option is the path to single payer.

If Democrats want to ram it through – and it seems they do – in spite of the facts that even the New York Times is now reporting, then let them do it without the cover of bipartisanship.

Crossposted.

“I’m legit! I’ve passed the stinkin’ armrest-test. And still, the lady asks me to get up and come with her off the plane,” Smith wrote on his Twitter page yesterday.

“I get up without a fuss at all, quietly grab my bag, make eye contact with a fellow Fatty who was praying he’d pass, and leave.”

At her popular “fat acceptance” blog, Kate Harding worries,

But there are still probably millions of fat people who dread getting on flights — and not just on Southwest — because they don’t know if they’ll actually be allowed to use the tickets they paid for, or if they’ll be removed from the plane like criminals, forced to fly standby and in some cases, forced to fly standby and pay twice as much for it.

“Praying he’d pass,” and verbiage like dread, criminals, and forced, certainly do evoke a sense of victimhood.  It’s true that since most households don’t possess an airline seat, a true “armrest test” is impossible to complete until you actually board the plane, thus subjecting yourself to possible humiliation if you don’t fit comfortably.  If only there were some way for people to take responsibility for themselves and find out in advance if they’re too large for one seat!  Wait, perhaps there is.

It’s possible to look up the size of seats on airplanes in advance!  You can call the airline and ask, or you can look it up online.  Now that you know Southwest’s seat is 17 inches wide, grab a roll of tape and go sit down.  Put pieces of tape on either side of yourself.  Measure the distance between the pieces of tape.  If the result is greater than 17″, definitely get two seats.  If it’s close to 17″, think about getting two seats so you don’t have to worry about being asked to disembark.  It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work!

If Kevin Smith passed the “armrest test,” his seatmates weren’t complaining, and the other “Fatty” was permitted to fly, then, yes, Southwest has a problem with arbitrary enforcement and they should tighten that up and enforce the policy all the time. Southwest actually has a pretty clear “Customer of Size” policy, and I think it’s really decent of them to refund the cost of the extra seat if it turns out the flight is not full.

It should be noted that although Smith says his seatmates did not complain, the Southwest rep noted they were both leaning away from him.  Smith said they were already like that when he sat down, and that he spoke to them both and said they had no problem with him.  I will accept both of those things as true: Smith’s seatmates had no problem with him and were already leaning away, and Southwest staff documented their leaning.  And now I’ll speculate that the Southwest staff concluded, from that leaning, that Smith’s seatmates felt encroached upon, and acted on it.

“Fatties” aren’t the only ones who feel victimized in this situation.  I used to fly a lot for business and when I had a really large seatmate I always leaned away.  I do not like strangers touching me, and often even when the armrests are down, a large passenger can “ooze” (as one of Kate’s commenter’s admitted she did) into the next seat.  I wished – in my younger years I lacked the courage to say anything about it – that someone in a position of authority would make this person get the two seats they obviously needed, so that I wouldn’t have to spend the entire flight contorting myself to get away from them.  But most people want to be nice, and not hurt anyone’s feelings. In the meantime you’ve got someone annexing space you’ve paid for and causing you emotional stress and physical pain as you try to get away when there’s no place to go.  It’s bad enough to try to sleep on a hotel bed; it’s worse to do so after having to rigidly hold yourself in some unnatural position for a three hour flight.

The airline seat width remains completely unaffected by anyone’s feelings about it.  Nor do they stretch, no matter how much we all might wish it.  So while you folks in the “fat acceptance” crowd are perfectly entitled to seek rights, privileges and/or entitlements related to your size, as long as the seat size remains about 17″ wide, it is you who must adjust, and not the other passengers.

Crossposted.

The one place where we have many African-American executives was in the mayor’s office. But one of the things that we saw in cities where African-Americans had risen to the level of city hall, was that they inherited what we call “hollow prizes.” They became mayor of Detroit just as the auto industry was hollowing out the city, just as the tax base was hollowing out.

And when you look at the particular structural constraints facing this president: reduction in the tax base, mobile capital, the real question became whether or not Barack Obama, in becoming president, inherited a hollow prize in the United States.

What a classic example of race-based blameshifting, and a victim mentality – and so typical of the Ivy-league left that so heavily populates David Brook’s “educated class.”

Who “hollowed out” Detroit – the auto industry, or big government/over-regulation together with the unions’ ever-increasing demands?  Liberal policies are destructive.  One need only look at Michigan, California, and other Democratic strongholds to see their results.  Who is “hollowing out” America with unbelievable foreign debt to finance those destructive liberal policies?   Bush’s overspending was vast, but Obama approved every penny of its tripling.

As for this “inherited” nonsense – an inheritance is when you passively and unexpectedly receive a windfall.  In fact, President Obama fought tooth and nail for this office, didn’t hesitate to break his deal with McCain on public financing, and cheated by illegally taking foreign campaign donations via his website.  He generally lied, misled and worked hard to fool the public that he was a centrist, post-partisan candidate who would cut the budget “line by line” and clean out corruption.  Describing his office as an “inheritance” is a slap in the face to each citizen of our republic, which was begun with the express purpose of rejecting “inherited” rulers.  Blaming his predecessor and whining about what he received after fighting hard for several years to receive it indicates he’s a clueless, entitled, spoiled brat.

It’s classic Veruca Salt behavior.  She scammed her way into getting a golden ticket, upon arrival at the chocolate factory immediately started bullying the other winners, didn’t bother to read the rules because she had no intention of following them, and was generally whiny, boorish and over-demanding until she met her very timely downfall.

The president who said, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” wants a European-style welfare state.  Whether it’s by incrementally nationalizing industries, purposeful business-killing regulatory over-reaches, making offers banks can’t refuse, or misdirection and outright lying to voters… he doesn’t care how – he wants it now.

And I take great pleasure in the fact that we’re stopping him from getting it.

Crossposted.

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so…

The educated class supports abortion rights, so…

The educated class supports gun control, so…

The educated class is internationalist, so…

The educated class believes in multilateral action, so…

…so the great unwashed is against those policies.  Just because David Brooks and the rest of the, um, “educated class” is for them.  There is absolutely no other reason to oppose those policies except a national temper tantrum against our rightful overlords.  Just admit it, folks, and let’s go sit in the corner for our time out.

Hey, it was about time for another “poor, uneducated and easy to command” moment from our educated class arrogant, elitist jackass class.  David Brooks probably thinks that song is about him, too.

Crossposted.

David Gelbaum has been giving generously – and anonymously – to charities for years but because of the beating his alternative-energy investments have taken, cannot do so this year. The Associated (with terrorists) Press wailed about this crushing $19 million blow to the ACLU budget, and prominently noted the Sierra Club as another charity taking a big hit of $12 million. Oh, and you know who else was affected? Some unnamed charity that serves Iraq and Afghanistan veterans isn’t getting $50 million this year.

The AP notes that “Gelbaum says he hopes others will step forward and replace his donations.”

Which is why they so helpfully focused on the ACLU and Sierra Club Foundation.  Even the Sierra Club donations were “earmarked for outdoor programs for military families, including a popular summer camp program for children of deployed veterans.”  Though it’s difficult to discern given the AP’s focus on the ACLU, obviously Gelbaum’s charitable impulses were focused on supporting the troops and their families.

I eventually found the name of the military charity taking such a big hit.  While several other media outlets focused on the ACLU in the headline, they did at least mention the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund by name somewhere in the article. While the IADIF is not well known, it provides grants to military support organizations such as the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.  No, not the despicable anti-war IVAW. Though the IAVA has a lot of liberal connections, including with the Soros family and Democracy in Action, Blackfive had this to say about it:

I agree with IAVA on many, many issues including TBI and PTSD care. I admire the work that IAVA has done (their staff in DC busts their asses for us vets) and Paul Rieckhoff and I have teamed up on issues.

In fact, of the $380 million Gelbaum has given in the last 4 years, $246.6 million of it has gone to the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund, so this is a really huge blow to them and the troops they serve.  That may well have been cause for a victory dance on the part of the Associated (with terrorists) Press.

UPDATE: Unrelated to the IAVA, if anyone feels moved to help a specific military family Blackfive has a story about one who could really use the assistance right now.  A local school board is unfit to shine the shoes of the man whose career they’re trying to destroy over a lousy school uniform dispute.  Is there anything more obnoxious than a low level bureaucrat?  Go read the story and see how you can help a military family whose savings is now wiped out and who needs to hire a lawyer, have a better Christmas.  Even if you can only Paypal them $5, $10, or $20 bucks it’s worth doing to show you support them.

Crossposted.

How much influence does New Orleans’ mayor have on Senatorial elections?  Well, Mayor Marc Morial and his LIFE organization won it for her the first time she ran.  She may well be relying on that happening again.

This is Mitch’s 3rd try at City Hall.  In 1994, he was beaten by Marc Morial.  In 2006 he was beaten by Ray Nagin.  In context, this was not a bad thing: keep in mind that Nagin was actually the reform candidate.  People forgave Nagin his Katrina behavior because after the runoff, it was down to him and Mitch Landrieu.  Voters asked themselves who they trusted to be in charge of millions of recovery dollars, and they picked Nagin.  Landrieu had recently spent nearly a million taxpayer dollars redecorating his Lt. Governor office, and had ties to Marc Morial, corrupt former mayor and like Mitch, son of a former New Orleans mayor.  In spite of travesties like this, I still think that was the right decision. Bad as Nagin has been, I believe Landrieu would have been worse.

The Landrieus are deeply entrenched in Louisiana politics.  At 27 years old, Mitch was a shoe-in for family La. House seat his father and Mary previously occupied and has been in politics ever since.  Mitch and Mary’s sister, Madeleine, is a Civil District Court Judge who, like most CDC judges, ran unopposed last election.

While nothing illegal has ever been proved, Mary Landrieu more or less stole her Senate seat using ACORN approved methods of getting out the zombie vote, paying people to vote early and often, and holding back precincts so any necessary adjustments could be made.  Woody Jenkins, discouraged by Louisiana election code which requires trials to begin no later 15 days after the election, tried to take his case to the Senate instead.  He did a lousy job proving it, and now as an incumbent, she’s entrenched.

One organization Mary relied on heavily to get her into the Senate was LIFE (Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors).  LIFE was closely associated with Marc Morial, sometime mayor of New Orleans, and like Mary and Mitch, son of a New Orleans Mayor.  Marc’s dad (Dutch Morial) succeeded Mitch’s dad (Moon Landrieu) as mayor.  Like his father, Marc Morial tried – and failed – to amend the city charter so they could run for a 3rd term.

During Mitch’s most recent run for mayor, Nagin rightly made a campaign issue of Landrieu’s ties to Marc Morial.  Pre-Katrina investigations led to a thirty-seven-page indictment that

alleged that Morial cronies skimmed money from an $81 million city contract; an ex-cop was charged with pocketing $800,000; and two city officials were accused of receiving $100,000 each. Meanwhile, Morial’s uncle was accused of skimming more than $500,000 from the city transit authority, and Morial’s aunt was convicted on federal charges of paying kickbacks to a school official.

Morial’s brother Jacque eventually pled guilty to failing to file taxes.  Pampy Barre, a close associate of both Dutch and Marc Morial eventually went to jail – after turning government snitch and taking New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas – another Morial/Landrieu crony – down with him.

Although it’s a long time until Mary Landrieu is up for re-election, a big part of successfully ditching her involves keeping her brother out of City Hall where he would have the opportunity – like Marc Morial before him – to influence her election.  Here’s his competition.  Mitch’s classlessness at hijacking a charity’s groundbreaking event (at which he was scheduled to be one of 14 speakers) to make his announcement is a good illustration of his character.

The Baton Rouge Tea Party is doing a great job keeping the heat on Mary because of her willingness to be bought, but the first step in preventing her 2016 re-election is keeping Mitch out of New Orleans’ City Hall.

Cross-posted.

Joe expressed skepticism based on Obama’s past anti-Israel associations, and his willingness to meet unconditionally with Israel’s enemies and let them dictate terms to him, and encouraged people to look into it themselves instead of taking his word for it.

Shep wrapped up the interview with this statement:

I just want to make this 100% perfectly clear. Barack Obama has said repeatedly and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend of the United States no matter what happens once he becomes President of the United States. His words. The rest of it… man… some things, it just gets frightening sometimes.

Thanks for clearing that up for us, Shep.  It’s pretty scary stuff, telling people to go do some research for themselves.  And hey, Shep’s concerns about hateful things spread out over the internet have certainly been borne out.

Like Obama giving Palestinian snipers a moral victory by labeling half of Israel’s capital a “settlement.”

Nominating Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council.

Awarding Mary Robinson, who served as Secretary-General at the wildly anti-Semitic World Conference Against Racism,  the Medal of Freedom.

Planning to appoint an anti-semitism czar who has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League.

Letting Iran walk all over him on the path to nuclear capability.

That Joe, what a nut!  I can certainly see why Shep was so frightened.

But let’s not pretend the left really cares about the truthful use of imagery in the media.  Sorry, that claim just won’t fly after:

• The use of carefully cropped photos to make Republicans and conservatives look sinister.
• Using photos with inconvenient truths like stage management and Communist symbols cropped out.
• The denigrating, sexist focus on Sarah Palin’s shoes, especially shots angled to have someone appear to be looking up her skirt.
• Years of tightly cropped photos of anti-war and pro-illegal immigration protests to make crowds seem larger or to hide the Mexican flags.
• The Obama halo photos.
• The media’s habit of passing by hundreds or thousands of sane people and zeroing in on Truthers and other whack jobs at tea party protests.
• Shamelessly edited video. To say nothing of Keith Olbermann.
• And the most damning indictment of all: the open secret of Pallywood.  Instead of exposing this travesty of journalism, our media routinely uses blatantly dishonest anti-Israel imagery.

There is no excuse for what Fox News Hannity did, and I’m glad they were caught at it.  I’m not aware of anyone on the right defending it.  But spare me the outrageously outrageous outrage, lefties.  You don’t have a leg to stand on.

Added: WoosterOh is quite right; it wasn’t Fox News, it was Hannity.  I had just left several lefty sites crowing about “Faux News” getting caught and see?! SEE?!  We told you it wasn’t a real news organization!  So I typed Fox News.  Sorry ’bout that.

Crossposted.

I asked McClintock about a pet peeve of mine – the fact that this bill may make Christian Science prayer treatments eligible to receive taxpayer reimbursement as a medical treatment. First, let me point out that the ACLU would be screeching like a goth in the sun if a mainstream Christian denomination tried this.  Second, I can’t help but wonder if Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who inserted this provision, has been hanging around with Barney Frank’s boyfriend.  It was introduced in the House by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and actually removed by Nancy Pelosi.  Because it is still in the Senate version, it may remain in the final bill.  Thanks, GOP! But McClintock – who was also not enthused about that provision – made a larger point:

But the other point that you raise is there is not just you know funding for let’s say Christian Science programs. It’s the government imposing all of these mandates on the insurance that – for every one of us that we’re required to pay for whether we want it or not, whether we need it or not we end up being required to pay for it because Nancy Pelosi and her friends believe that we should.

[T]he frightening thing is that under their bill everyone of us will be forced to purchase insurance that meets all of those mandates or end up being fined for not carrying such insurance.

It has been noted since then that we will either buy government-approved insurance, pay prohibitive fines, or go to jail. Up to a year for misdemeanor noncompliance, and five years for felony noncompliance. McClintock described it as “brazenly unconstitutional” and he agreed that a court challenge is inevitable.

It will be challenged, if it is adopted, but that misses the point. It should never be adopted. Every member of Congress takes an oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. If they’re acting in a manner that is brazenly unconstitutional, the ultimate remedy is the ballot box.

Congressman Diaz-Balart noted how hard it is to get people out of entitlement programs once they are created:

once you have you know thousands or millions of people in this entitlement program how do you get rid of it?

You know Speaker Pelosi she needs to be willing to sacrifice a huge number of her House members in order to get that part of the bill done. I think it’s because she believes that this is irreversible and I don’t know if it’s totally irreversible. But it’s clearly very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse which is why the battle is now.

One thing that particularly encouraged me about my conversations with both men is that it seems the GOP is finally starting to comprehend three things:

• Fiscal conservatism is not optional, now more than ever.
• If they want to get the message out, they need to be more receptive to alternative media than the GOP has been in the past.
• They need to embrace the tea party conservatives if they want to regain power.  As Roger Pilon put it -

The question, therefore, is not whether Tea Party conservatism is a help or a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power?  To the contrary, it is whether the Republican Party is a help or a hindrance to the Tea Party movement?  It will be a help only if it returns to its roots.  The mainstream media, overwhelmingly of the Democratic persuasion, will continue to push Republicans to be “moderate,” of course – meaning “Democrat Lite” — to which the proper response is:  Why would voters go for that when they can get the real thing on the Democratic line?  If Tuesday’s returns showed anything, it is that Independents, a truly mixed lot, are up for grabs; but at the same time, they are looking for leaders who promise not simply to “solve problems” but to do so in a way that respects our traditions of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.  When Republican candidates stand clearly and firmly for those principles, they stand a far better chance of being elected than when they temporize. That is the lesson that Republicans must grasp — and not forget — if they are to return to power.