'The pleasure of infants'

Read and enjoy this essay on the passion of the mother-baby relationship. Excerpt:

Here, sitting in the garden, looking at the eyelashes, would you trade the baby for the possibility of writing The House of Mirth? You would not.

People often compare having a new baby to the early days of a love affair, which is true as far as it goes, but one’s physical fixation on, and craving for, a newborn is much stronger and more intense that that. How often in a love affair can you literally find yourself in tears because you were away from a man for three hours?

I imagine a better metaphor would be addiction. There is an opium-den quality to maternity leave. The high of a love that obliterates everything. A need so consuming that it is threatening to everything you are and care about. Where did your day go? Did you stare blankly at the baby for hours? And was that staring blankly more fiercely pleasurable, more compelling than nearly anything you have ever done?

One of the minor dishonesties of the feminist movement has been to underestimate the passion of this time, to try for a rational, politically expedient assessment. Historically, feminists have emphasized the difficulty, the drudgery of new motherhood. They have tried to analogize childcare to the work of men; and so for a long time, women have called motherhood a "vocation." The act of caring for a baby is demanding, and arduous, of course, but it is wilder and more narcotic than any kind of work I have ever done.

I don't know if it's all that minor. What feminism does is distort the role of the mother and diminish the importance of the relationship between her and her baby. The mother is reduced to "caregiver" and easily replaced by other caregivers.

It's sad that Roiphe can only experience the intoxicating newborn period as a feature of a limited maternity leave, or "vacation to end all vacations," instead of life, which is what it is. I wonder what she'd find if she decided that being with her baby was her highest priority; if she stayed home with him and let the two of them naturally move on to the next phase in their relationship; if she concluded that that powerful urge to be physically close to her child is a message not to be ignored; and if she entertained the notion that her baby needs her presence even more than she needs his.

Read a few of the comments. Enjoyed this one:

It's a prolactin and oxytocin cycle. That's it. There're your magic narcotics. Feminists have them in their body too, in with all the rock salt and motor oil.

Salon's Broadsheet provides more responses. And comments.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

When is it okay to be a eugenicist?

*Update: See comment below, pointing out that the photo is a fake. Thanks, Yukio.

When you're Margaret Sanger, being praised on NPR. Read this from Jonah Goldberg, from whom I swiped this photo:


Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

"Sheer hell"

From David Broder, the poster child of conventional wisdom:

I sure hope that President Obama and his family enjoyed their week's vacation on Martha's Vineyard, because what he faces on his return to Washington is sheer hell.

Broder goes on to explain the breadth and depth of the political doo-doo that awaits Obama.

But it's even deeper for America. We got rid of the mean grown-ups and elected a cool kid who's not up to the job. The price we pay will be high, but how high no one yet knows.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Breitbart says good riddance to Camelot and Neverland

Wow. This is the antidote to the nauseating Washington Post wallow of yesterday, in which the paper carried Kennedy stories on the front pages of three sections. The A section featured a four-page spread of Kennedy whitewash. The front page was over the top with this headline:

'We Loved This Kind and Tender Hero'

That's a bit of a contrast to this from Zipline Conservative:

Michael Vick gets more heat over killing pit bulls then ol’ Ted received over Mary Jo Kopechne’s death.

But move along, folks, because it's the legacy that matters. Inside the Post were these stories (among others):
Four Brothers, One Enduring Spirit
A Family's Hold on Our Landscape
A Connection to the End
All Too Familiar Route to Arlington
Kennedy's Letter to the Pope

We noticed yesterday that all the flags in DC, including the 50 surrounding the Washington Monument, were still at half-mast for Kennedy. It seems Obama took some liberties with the flag code. Oh well.

Back to Andrew Breitbart, who takes no prisoners. Excerpts:

With the deaths of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Michael Jackson, the summer of '09 marked the merciful ends to Camelot and Neverland, iconic American fairy tales whose story lines should have come to merciful ends long ago when their charismatic protagonists took dark and irredeemable turns.

Our country was not built to support blood dynasties or to elevate the rich and famous to a higher ethical or constitutional plain. But through the power of celebrity, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Jackson worked the media to twist truths. They manipulated their constituencies and fans to obscure their misdeeds. They played the faithful to confer this manufactured innocence on the rest of us. And, in the end, they placed themselves above the law.

[. . .]

As long as he toed the liberal line, this trust-fund Robin Hood was protected by the liberal masses and the mainstream media. Hollywood did its job by not putting his story on the big screen.

Doing to the reputations of Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork what he did to Miss Kopechne only reinforced his value to the Democrat Media Complex as the memory of his brothers' more authentic Camelot began to fade.

Read the rest.

Related:
RS McCain
Daniel J. Flynn
Mark Steyn
Jonah Goldberg
P&P on Kennedy here

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

New era of opacity

What's in the healthcare bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee? That's for Sen. Dodd and company to know and for you to find out. But it won't be easy:

Three weeks ago Republicans on the committee wrote Mr. Dodd "to reiterate our request for a full copy of the bill as amended, in the four-week mark-up." Mr. Dodd has refused to comply. The Senate bill that is available on the committee Web site is 790 pages long. While that is some 300 pages shorter than the House health bill, that's in part because it doesn't include nearly 200 amendments that passed when the committee redrafted the bill. Amended sections of the bill might as well be written in invisible ink.

Whatever the amendments may be, we can be sure from these comments that the sum total is a god-awful mess:

The whole process was so haphazard that at one point during the committee mark-up Barbara Mikulski, the Democrat from Maryland, declared: "Giving me language on little pieces of paper on which I'm going to commit the sacred fortunes and honor of the United States for decades, this is not the way to go. We can't do this on the backs of envelopes."

It's got to be an utter disaster if Sen. Mikulski is disturbed by it. You can read the self-congratulatory press release and the summary here. An incomplete version of the bill is here. (I haven't found the 790 page version mentioned above. If you can locate it please let us know and we'll link to it.)

Meanwhile, Bob Dole is calling on Obama to present his own bill. That's never going to happen.

And let it not be said that the Republicans don't have their own healthcare reform proposals. They do.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Father Z on Catholic funerals

Q&A with Father Z:

Is it true that Pres. Obama is slated to give a eulogy during a Funeral Mass for the late Sen. Kennedy?

I am not quite sure, but this is what the news reports are suggesting.

I’m just askin’

If so….

Q. 1) When were eulogies during a Mass approved?

Q. 2) Should Sen. Kennedy have a Catholic funeral?

Q. 3) Will the sight of the most aggressively pro-abortion President in history giving a eulogy, in a Catholic church… during a Mass… for the most aggressively pro-abortion Catholic Senator give scandal to the Catholic faithful?

Short answers: Never, probably, and it should. Click for full answers and more from Fr. Z. I don't really want to delve into Obama's eulogy, who received communion, and so forth. At least not right before Mass. I do wonder if the holy water sizzled and burned some of the attendees when they blessed themselves with it. Just askin'.

Follow-up questions from Father Z:

Are funerals really no longer for the purpose of praying for the soul of the deceased?

Do the dead no longer need prayers?

I’m just askin’

What are funeral Masses for?

Related: Allahpundit finds this to be unseemly for sure.

Comments welcome.
Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
Most recent posts here.

Kennedy's platinum record on abortion

CMR's Matthew Archbold reports:

Time Magazine worries that the Pope hasn't made any statement about the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy in a piece entitled "After Kennedy's Death: Silence from the Pope."

As of yet, unlike some other world leaders, Pope Benedict has not commented or issued an official communique in response to Kennedy's death.

Matthew Archbold reminds TIME that Kennedy was just a senator. But what in the world could the Pope say? This is a case of "if you can't say something nice, say nothing."

Take a gander at Kennedy's sterling platinum pro-abortion record:

Voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP.

Voted NO on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion.

Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines.

Voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions.

Voted NO on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime.

Voted NO on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life.

Voted NO on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions.

Voted NO on banning partial birth abortions.

Voted NO on banning human cloning.

Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record.

"Committed to changing the world one life at a time"? Perhaps, but not in a good way. And anything but a champion of the powerless.

Comments welcome.
Cross-posted in the Green Room.
Most recent posts here.

Brickfair: One of these things is not like the others

Last weekend we attended the annual Brickfair, a celebration of all things LEGO. Among the usual cool and impressive creations built by adults as well as kids, like these --





Were these:




From what I could tell the three items weren't built by the same person (only one had a name attached). But I guess it just seemed natural to display them together. Or maybe they were grouped to tell a cautionary tale?

The bikinis I can understand. But I'm still baffled by the PP building and would have been interested to know the impetus behind its creation. Was the builder just a huge fan of Planned Parenthood?

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Quote of the day

"That should finally bury the system of privilege that restricted universities to clever people."

That's from Gerald Warner on new academic standards in the UK:

It’s another first for Britain. We have reached a crucial milestone in education reform, one that is truly historic, and progressive people across the country will surely be opening the champagne. For the first time ever, it is now possible to score zero marks in an examination on a specialised subject and still be awarded an advanced diploma.

[. . .]

There are many possible permutations, but the laudable aspect is that having no practical knowledge of engineering, construction, health and information technology will no longer be a barrier to receiving a prestigious advanced diploma in these subjects.

This finally removes the stigma of failure from youngsters who cannot pass examinations and their subsequent exclusion from trades and professions. The Government is planning to add 12 new subjects to the advanced diploma curriculum.

Read the rest. The last paragraph is not to be missed.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Steyn: "False eulogists"

Mark Steyn at his best on the rewriting of the Kennedy bio:

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation – or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture – declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it.

In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo Kopechne, 1940-1969. If you have to bring up the, ah, circumstances of that year of decease, keep it general, keep it vague.

"Chappaquiddick" is something that just "happened" to Kennedy. And hey, maybe it was worth it:

You can't make an omelet without breaking chicks, right? I don't know how many lives the senator changed – he certainly changed Mary Jo's – but you're struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy's Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not?

And Steyn reminds us of Kennedy's reprehensible treatment of Judge Bork:

When a man is capable of what Ted Kennedy did that night in 1969 and in the weeks afterward, what else is he capable of? An NPR listener said the senator's passing marked "the end of civility in the U.S. Congress." Yes, indeed. Who among us does not mourn the lost "civility" of the 1987 Supreme Court hearings? Considering the nomination of Judge Bork, Ted Kennedy rose on the Senate floor and announced that "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution."

Whoa! "Liberals" (in the debased contemporary American sense of the term) would have reason to find Borkian jurisprudence uncongenial but to suggest the judge and former solicitor-general favored resegregation of lunch counters is a slander not merely vile but so preposterous that, like his explanation for Chappaquiddick, only a Kennedy could get away with it. If you had to identify a single speech that marked "the end of civility" in American politics, that's a shoo-in.

Read the rest.

*Update: Not to be missed:
A Conservative Reflection on Ted Kennedy
Daniel J. Flynn

Why Ted'd Want his Death Exploited
Jonah Goldberg

Related from P&P:
Chappaquiddick was funny?
Cardinal Mahoney: Kennedy was "champion of the powerless"

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Michele Bachmann pulls rank

You go, girl.



“I’ve given birth here probably more times than you, sir.”

h/t: Michelle Malkin

A couple more from MM: Michelle Obama's hair and It ain't America no more, okay?

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

One-liners

Just for fun:

The government can!

Where do you think you're going?

A dog party! A big dog party!

A pause that will refresh

When morning comes to Morgantown

Chick-fil-A, you set me free

Goin' to the Chapel of Love

Women keep your virtue

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Chappaquiddick was funny?

I thought Melissa Lafsky's comment on Mary Jo Kopechne was pretty outrageous:

Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it.

An unfathomable degree of ideological blindness and derangement is necessary to imagine that a young woman might have seen her own death at Kennedy's hands as "worth it" if it furthered the career of the great man and the liberal cause. See Carolyn Tackett's takedown of Lafsky's piece.

But then Lafsky raises another question that leads to something even more stunning:

We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death . . .

Correct. We can't judge the soul of another. And charity compels us to assume the best. But it has come to light, if it's true, that Teddy was fond of cracking jokes about Chappaquiddick. Close Kennedy friend Ed Klein relates the following:

I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too

Charming. Hear the audio here.

So not only might Mary Jo have felt that her death was "worth it" because it fueled an awesome career in the Senate, but also, perhaps, because it supplied the world, and especially the Lion of the Senate, with a decades-long stream of knee slappers about how he drunkenly drove his car off a bridge and left her to asphyxiate in his car.

Lest we forget the terrible facts of that night: the diver who recovered Kopechne's body the next morning

later testified at the inquest that Kopechne's body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He interpreted this to mean that Kopechne had survived for a while after the initial accident in the air bubble, and concluded that

Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim's side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.^[8]

Farrar believed that Kopechne "lived for at least two hours down there."^[16]

More from RS McCain:

It has often been written that Mary Jo Kopechne "drowned." She didn't. The cause of death was asphyxiation -- there was an air pocket inside the overturned car, and Mary Jo lived long enough to breathe the last remaining oxygen in that air pocket. And while Mary Jo was breathing her last . . . what did Ted Kennedy do?

Well, among other things, he began trying to concoct a cover-up story: "Why couldn't Mary Jo have been driving the car? . . . Why couldn't she have let him off and driven to the ferry herself and made a wrong turn?" His own cousin, Joe Gargan, talked Ted out of attempting to get away with that.

Kennedy beat the rap. Multiple witnesses have testified that Kennedy had been drinking all day. It was a clear-cut case of vehicular manslaughter, but he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

So much for all that. Let's get back to honoring Kennedy with wretched excess and political opportunism.

*Update 8/29: More on "was it worth it?" from Allahpundit.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

"A place where there is no love"

The BlogProf who has written a must-read on the greatest argument against abortion. He quotes some wrenching accounts from abortionists who at some point had to face the reality that was in front of their eyes: the dead baby. He notes that the abortion industry is working diligently to keep that reality, in the form of an ultra-sound image, from the eyes of mothers who would destroy their children:

Since we can now literally look into the womb with sonograms and so called 4-D ultrasound, there is no question as to what we are looking at. What are pro-aborts to do, then? Simple. Prevent women from looking at an ultrasound. The latest news on this front comes just a few states over from us. In North Dakota, an abortion business has recently sued to prevent women from seeing the ultrasound, which is now part of an informed consent law there, even though the abortion clinic does an ultrasound as a standard procedure before the abortion anyway. It's not the ultrasound, it's the mother seeing what the abortionists are seeing.

Read these and weep. They're from 1989 but relevant as long as abortion is legal and acceptable.

One day an employee at the mill asked to see the contents of the sock in the suction machine. I saw a beautiful arm, and I thought, ‘What are you doing?’ That was one of the last abortions I did.

“When I started working at the Fairmount Center in Dallas, I was a radical feminst and completely pro-abortion. But I became traumatized by what I saw every day. It’s hard to work in a place where there is no love.

“One woman came into the clinic forcing her daughter to have an abortion. The daughter was in the second trimester at 15 weeks. She kept going to the bathroom, and it seemed that something was definitely wrong. Then the girl started screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘It’s a baby! Mama! Mama!’ The doctor was in the middle of a procedure and couldn’t come. She’ll be scarred for life for seeing her baby in the toilet, which is where it landed.

“Another woman got an abortion because she had twins. Everyone went in to see what the twins looked like after the abortion. I had never been in the procedure room. I wanted to avoid it. In my heart, I knew they were babies, and I knew abortion was murder.

One night a lady delivered, and I was called to see her because she was uncontrollable. She was going to pieces, screaming and thrashing. All the patients were upset. I walked in, and there was her little saline abortion baby kicking and moving for a little while before it died of those terrible burns. I watched that more and more.

Oremus.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Lost and found after 18 years: Jaycee Dugard

You might think it would be impossible for your neighbor to imprison a girl for eighteen years, have two children by her, and make an outdoor home for them, "as if you were camping," in his quarter-acre suburban back yard. But this seems to be the case.

Even harder to believe:

But Garrido said he had "completely turned my life around" in the past several years. "You're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, from the victim," he said. "If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backward and in the end you're going to find the most powerful, heartwarming story."

My heart was further warmed by the fact that the man's lovely bride was in on the whole thing. It's all about family, you know?

At least one neighbor did know something was wrong, and reported it:

Damon Robinson, 38, said he knew Garrido had girls living in his backyard and raised the red flag to sheriff's deputies over two years ago.

"I put it in the police's hands. What else could I do," said Robinson, adding the deputies investigated his complaint, but nothing changed.

That doesn't sound like good news for the police department. Brace yourselves for all kinds of revelations from people who suspected that all wasn't hunky-dory with the Garrido clan.

From jail, the perp, in a phone interview with his local CNN affiliate -- this is his moment to shine, after all -- states:

"I feel much better now," he said. "This is a process that needed to take place."

Just the first of many necessary processes for the convicted sex-offender, we hope. I have mixed feelings about capital punishment but in my dreams there's a super-sized kettle of boiling oil for these two. There's plenty of room in there for Josef Fritzl as well.

See news video here of the girl's stepfather's reaction and background on the abduction. The stepfather witnessed it and was suspected for a time.

Thanks be to God for the two police officers who saw something inappropriate in Garrido's behavior:

Police officers "thought the interaction between the older male and the two young females was rather suspicious," so she confronted them and performed a background check on him, Kollar said.

Pray for this family if you're so inclined. They will need it.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Bioethicists exposed

Wesley Smith is the man when it comes to interpreting the horror that is ObamaCare:

Here’s the thing: Bioethicists are striving mightily to move us toward (in my view) some very dark places. Some–although certainly not all–counseling books about advance directives and some of the documents clearly push people toward the choice of refusing care. But that is a side issue. What has really been exposed in this debate is that most of the big punchers don’t believe in the human exceptionalism or the sanctity/equality of human life. Indeed, the overwhelming view is support for personhood theory, futile care theory, assisted suicide, health care rationing, therapeutic cloning, reproductive absolutism, a belief in “specieisism,” etc.

[. . .]

But getting Main Street to pay attention is hard. The current health care debate, however, has focused people’s attention and the reports about what many of the country’s most prominent bioethicists really think. And they are letting our leaders know that they don’t like what they see. In a democracy, that is entire healthy and proper.

So perhaps some good is coming out of the Obama administration's outrageous attempt to take over our healthcare system. People are thinking about these issues. And Dr. Emanuel and company are revealing themselves for what they are. Articles referred to:

Betsy McCaughey:
Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief
Deadly Doctors
(more McCaughey here)

Jim Towey:
Death Book for Veterans
(my posts here and here)

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

"Obama's uncles" and other random notes

I've been busy and feeling some Obama battle fatigue. So if it's okay with you, dear reader(s), I'll be very lazy and just post the many links from Pundit (husband) that have accumulated while I was out trying to find shoes to fit #2 son's, er, unusual feet.

Here they are. (Not the feet.) I saved my favorite item for last.

From the Weekly Standard: Obama's uncles. This is tres drôle. You must read it.

Illegal health reform
The authors of this article explain why the individual mandate is unconstitutional. (I didn't think the government could make me purchase health insurance.) Query: What about all those czars? From where do they derive their authority? Just askin.

From K-Lo: Wow. File This Under 'Imagine If a Republican Did This' and Get the Drudge Siren on the Line
The National Endowment for the Arts is overtly recruiting propagandists from the arts community to promote the Obama agenda:

Throughout the conversation, we were reminded of our ability as artists and art professionals to “shape the lives” of those around us.

They're a brazen bunch. Read the whole thing at Big Hollywood. Pundit's comment: Creepy.

Two from the Foundry:
The Slippery Slope of Health-Care Reform (haven't read it yet)
Townhall Downfall: Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) Refuses To Go On Public Plan If Obamacare Passes
Watch the video: "I'm not saying it's so good!" Heh.

From the Enterprise blog: A Tale of Two $100,000 Jobs — A Tale of Two Americas

Most noteworthy is Brill’s discussion of the incompetent (at best) teachers who are kept out of the classroom in so-called “rubber rooms” around the city but nonetheless kept on the payroll for years–several continuing to make over $100,000 a year–thanks to union protections.

Meanwhile, in BusinessWeek Vivek Wadhwa highlights call centers created by entrepreneurs in Ohio who pay their best front-line workers more than 100K a year. That’s not a typo.

The first article referred to appears in the New Yorker: The Rubber Room by Stephen Brill. I admit I haven't finished it yet (it's 7 pages). But I will. Excerpt:

In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: “Children are fragile. Handle with care.” It’s a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.

These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.

The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off.

Oh my goodness. Absolute madness.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Socialism and the NHS

Ed West of the Telegraph on the ongoing din pro and contra the NHS: I bet those old folk don't #lovethenhs

Excerpt:

. . . any criticism of the institution is treated as treason.

Such is the case with Dan Hannan, who was castigated as “unpatriotic” and made a Goldstein-figure for making the very reasonable point that this institution needs drastic reforming. The thousands of Twitter-users, screaming “#welovethenhs!!!!”, acted as the mob attacking someone as an enemy of the people for pointing out a problem in the system.

Reading what many people had to say on this matter was like listening to someone on coke at 2 in the morning, explaining how they would solve the world’s problems, and what made it so unbearable was not their ignorance about other alternatives (”American ambulances leave boys to die if they don’t have Amex cards!!!!”) nor their failure to ask why our cancer survival rates are so poor, nor discussion about why we have such a problem with hospital bugs – but the sheer sanctimonious, smugness of the whole thing.

He notes that "Socialists are the spiritual heirs of Christianity, and I can see exactly why people find Christians so unbearable." Ouch. But I find it hard to disagree with this:

Socialists believe they are morally superior to their opponents, which is why they are so venomous to dissenters, and why in extreme cases they are so willing to kill them in larger numbers. Because socialism is a moral cause, they believe that those who oppose them want to harm the weak, rather than entertaining an alternative, which is that these Tory scum don’t see socialism as the best way to help the poor. Which it isn’t - as this scandal illustrates.

Horror stories:

Pamela Goddard, a piano teacher from Bletchingley, in Surrey, was 82 and suffering with cancer but was left in her own excrement and her condition deteriorated due to her bed sores.

Florence Weston, from Sedgley in the West Midlands, died aged 85 and had to remain without food or water for several days as her hip operation was repeated cancelled.

Many more from Critical Condition.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Government of the absurd

From Division of Labour: Cash for clunkers idiocy on display

The writer asks:

Are these "clunkers?" Can it really help the economy to destroy perfectly good assets? Are the people running the government the most economically illiterate bunch since FDR ruled the roost? Or are they dumber?

Click and watch some of these videos. I'd send them to my 20 year-old son but it would break his heart. He's driving a car with a bad transmission that's about to fail and won't be worth fixing. He bought it with his own money and will have to replace it with something very, very used. Many of these 'clunkers' are newer and have fewer miles than the P&P family car. And here we are deliberately destroying them. Life in the Obama-time has a streak of the absurd, does it not?

More madness: Cash for convicts, kitchen appliances, and coiffeurs. And stimulus dollars (ours) for all manner of perverse trash art.

Comments welcome.

h/t: Pundit via John Stossel

Most recent posts here.

Cardinal Mahoney: Kennedy was "champion of the powerless"

Oh really?

As a Catholic I pray for their souls but I wouldn't hold either Kennedy or Mahoney up as a role model for my kids.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Poll: Americans believe they know more about HR 3200 than their representatives

Rasmussen:

[J]ust 22% say Congress has a good or excellent understanding of the plan. Thirty-five percent (35%) say Congress’ knowledge of the proposal is poor.

Judging from the townhall meetings I believe they're correct. But to give credit where it's due, some of our representatives did sit in on a grueling half-day seminar on HR 3200. Rep. Jim Moran is proud of all that time he put in exploring the complexities of the bill. And he implies that the normal procedure is to neither read nor sit through a class in order to understand the legislation that he and his House colleagues impose on the masses.

Every last one of these people needs to be voted out of office. They don't even try to earn the salaries we pay them.

Back to the poll:

Forty-seven percent (47%) say Obama’s understanding of his own plan is good or excellent, while 27% rate his knowledge of it as poor.

I haven't seen any evidence to support that. Obama constantly misrepresents the contents of HR 3200. But he is a prodigious reader, or so they say; perhaps he made short work of the monster-bill on a slow weekend. Which would explain why he believes he owes himself a deluxe vacation and a teetering stack of more engaging reading material. Though I thought it was all about spending quality time with his daughters. Whatev.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Et tu, WaPo?

A Washington Post editorial:

Bad-News Budget: Wanted: An Obama plan for fiscal sustainability.

NO ONE LIKES to be the bearer of bad news -- especially when it could threaten your multibillion-dollar health-care reform bill. And so the Obama administration did not exactly rush to publish yesterday's required mid-session update to its federal budget estimates of last February. Still, once the numbers finally emerged in the dog days of August, they retained the power to stun: Instead of a cumulative $7.1 trillion deficit over the next decade, the White House now projects a $9 trillion deficit. These figures imply average annual budget deficits greater than 4 percent of gross domestic product through fiscal 2019, a rate of debt accumulation faster than projected GDP growth. This is not a sustainable fiscal path.

The extra $1.9 trillion in red ink mainly reflects the Office of Management and Budget's adoption of more realistic -- that is, more pessimistic -- estimates of economic growth and unemployment. White House officials protest that their original, rosier numbers made sense at the time; actually, plenty of forecasters, including those at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, made more accurate calls. This situation was foreseeable and should have been acknowledged earlier.

[. . .]

Still, the Bush administration's irresponsibility notwithstanding, it is time to stop crying "we inherited it."

[. . .]

The new deficit numbers make it even more urgent that any health-care reform not only be fully paid for and certifiably budget-neutral in the eyes of independent analysts such as the CBO but also promise meaningful reductions in the cost growth of health care. So far, none of the plans under discussion measure up. The time is fast approaching for the president and Congress to face that reality, too.

Related: How wee-weed up is the economy?

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Randall Terry disrupts Moran/Dean town meeting

But Terry leaves, with an escort, before the question and answer period begins. You can watch the entire meeting here. Terry was escorted out shouting, "Abortion is murder and Howard Dean is a baby-killer." The crowd screamed, "Take him out!" The clip is about five minutes long.

For the record, Dean has denied that he personally performed abortions. But partial birth abortion is okay with him when it would "save a woman’s life or protect her from serious injury."

Things got interesting during the Q&A when, at 1:26, a woman asked whether Moran and his family would be willing to "live under the same plan," and have they ever lived under socialized medicine. The crowd roared. Moran's answer: yes, and no. Too bad she worded her question so poorly. His answer indicated that he wanted to keep his current plan. The next woman tried to ask the same question but the mike was gone before she could clarify. The next woman apparently took a turn that wasn't hers and got cut off. At 1:33 another man asked if Moran would "go on the plan with us" and again Moran said yes. What he means, I'm sure, is that he'll keep his current plan. Why can't they just ask if him if he'd be willing to commit personally to using the public option, which both he and Dean support?

At 1:38, a great question: Who are these experts who run Medicare? Next question: Why have we not considered tort reform? Dean's answer: people who wrote the bill didn't want to take on the trial lawyers. Another good question at 1:55: Why should we trust the government to run healthcare? Moran said the public plan would be self-supporting. He never dealt with the prediction that the public plan will eventually kill off private insurers.

Most absurd moment might be this one, when Moran proudly announced that he sat in a room for four hours in lieu of reading the bill. I'm sure he's referring to this, which struck me as a joke at the time.

Coverage by Politico and the Wall Street Journal. More thoughtful and detailed coverage from Smitty, who was there.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

PJTV on the Frankfurt School

Video history lesson from Bill Whittle: The Frankfurt School
Grab a beverage and settle in. 26 minutes. Not funny (and not intended to be) but very edifying.

Related: Know your enemy: the Frankfurt School

h/t: RSM

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Cool idea

A nice way to say thank you.



Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

How wee-weed up is the economy?

Answer: "Worse than expected."

Budget deficits may be twice as bad as White House is predicting

Obama Raises 2010 Deficit Estimate to $1.5 Trillion

Obama Budget Office: 10-year Deficit Grows by $2 Trillion, Unemployment to Hit 10%, Economic Growth Due in 4th Quarter

GDP decline twice as bad as Obama WH predicted

Ed Morrissey believes Orszag should resign:

Why did the OMB hold out this long against CBO predictions? Simple; the Obama administration needed sunnier numbers in order to justify its plans to spend vast sums of money on its social-engineering agenda. Even in the best of times, these programs would be disastrous, but during a deep recession, they will kill any hope of economic growth. In short, OMB indulged in political hackery, hoping to continue their deception long enough to get ObamaCare and cap-and-trade through a compliant Congress. Now they have to admit that they either conducted an incompetent analysis while most significant economists scoffed at their projections for growth, or cooked the books.

Yes, they're either fools or knaves, but no, they don't have to admit it. Why should they?

Orszag should resign as OMB director after this performance. (I have no expectations that he will, but he should.) Remaining in the President’s budget office only extends the credibility crisis to everything else produced by the White House on the economic agenda. How can anyone trust Obama and Orszag after the complete failures of Porkulus and the budget projections, especially given the political manipulations involved?

They can't and they don't. And once lost, trust is very hard to rebuild.

*Update: Orszag "doubles down on his hackery." But hey, it's only money.



Comments welcome.
Linked by Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
Most recent posts here.

Out of touch

Obama's Atty. General Holder has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA for aggressively defending our country by using hardball interrogation tactics with terrorists. Aside from the injustice of going after CIA officers who acted in good faith and saved lives, some see it as a terrible move politically and wonder why the administration would choose to make such a risky move. Charles Murray has one explanation --

The late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael famously said after Nixon’s landslide reelection, “How can he have won? Nobody I know voted for him.” My proposition for today is that the entire White House suffers from the Kael syndrome.

It was the only explanation I could think of as I watched the news last night about the coming prosecution of CIA interrogators. When it comes to political analysis, I’m no Barone or Bowman or Ornstein, but this is not a really tough call. Attempts to put men on trial who obtained information that most Americans will believe (probably rightly) saved the nation from more terrorist attacks will be a political catastrophe, all the more so because I bet that the defendants will come across as straight-arrow good guys (and probably are), while the prosecutors come across as self-righteous wimps (and…). How could the White House not have thought this through?

-- and he's got the graph to prove it.

Here are a couple of reminders of what the interrogations were all about.

Comments welcome.

h/t: Pundit
Linked by Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
Most recent posts here.

Obama's disrespect for presidency hits new low

G-Lo, that is. I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. The sitting President of the United States of America has filmed a cheesy promo for a late-night talk show and thereby trivialized his office as well as his own phony vision. Click and watch* the video of POTUS-as-shill. (The video was originally linked to Lopez's website but was changed, so I've linked to the youtube video.) I'll save you a minute of your life by telling you that our transcendent, intellectual, rara avis president appears only at the beginning of the commercial, which goes on to play on, and further cheapen, the hope-and-change theme.

Reaction from Peter Roff: Obama doesn't know how to be president

So imagine my shock, surprise, and amazement the other night when I happened to catch the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, Barack H. Obama, playing second fiddle to a second-rate comedian in a TV spot promoting a new late-night television talk show—and on basic cable no less.

The spot, which looked like it had been filmed inside the White House, was decidedly unfunny, which does not auger well for the talk show it was promoting. But more than that, having the president of the United States appear in a commercial, while still in office yet seemed, well, unseemly.

There are those in recent days who have written that Obama is, perhaps, overexposed, that he has become too accessible and, as a result, he is unable to persuade the nation that his vision for change in America is, after all, the right one. The idea that he has time to appear in commercials promoting new TV shows does not make him more presidential; it makes him smaller. It reduces the people's opinion of him and therefore reduces his effectiveness as a leader.

David Axelrod and company may have designed a campaign to win the White House that presented Obama as more like a "rock star" or "pop idol" rather than as a candidate for public office. But now they're in the big show, and they have to act like it.

That last sentence is precisely parallel to Robin Givhan's bottom line on the first lady's uber-casual exit from Air Force One last week:

She gets the fancy jet. She has to dress for the ride.

It's all about respecting the office. That's what's so jarring about this photo:


Givhans understands what's wrong here:

When the first couple disembarks from Air Force One, military personnel stand at attention, shutters click and minions scurry. It's not as though they are climbing out of their own personal RV with their backpacks -- like celebrities caught unawares by the paparazzi. Ultimately, the first lady can't be -- nor should she be -- just like everyone else. Hers is a life of responsibilities and privileges.

It isn't just that the first lady looks sloppy, is showing too much leg, or is wearing unflattering clothes, though all of these are true. It's the stark contrast between our military on either side, respecting, by extension, the office of POTUS, and Mrs. Obama in the center, not respecting the office or those who have entrusted it to her husband.

The office of president is the honor that it is because the president was chosen by the people to be our representative. It should be intrinsically humbling, because who can truly be worthy of that trust? It's the president's responsibility to uphold the dignity of the office itself, which has been entrusted to him temporarily, on loan. It shouldn't be viewed as a personal windfall, like hitting the Powerball number or winning American Idol. It's not an opportunity to be used for self-promotion or the pursuit of expensive pleasures. We don't want our president to be seen as crassly enjoying the perks too much or reveling in his celebrity status.

The Obamas don't seem to get it. But what about their handlers? Do the Obamas refuse to take advice, or are their advisors clueless as well? It's hard to understand how this promo could have been planned and filmed without anyone raising an objection.

h/t: Pundit, Jim Geraghty

Comments welcome.

Cross-posted in the Green Room.

Most recent posts here.

EJ Dionne: Obama saved the economy

And we're ingrates.

If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted aggressively -- and had not spent piles of money -- a very bad economic situation would have become cataclysmic.

But because the cataclysm was avoided, this is an invisible achievement. Many whose bacon was saved, particularly in the banking and corporate sectors, do not want to admit how important the actions of government were. Antigovernment ideologues try to pretend that no serious intervention was required.

I think that's us. We just don't know what's good for us. How sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child:

So everyone goes back to complaining about high deficits and the shortcomings of government as if nothing had happened. This is now creating problems for Obama on health care.

Well, yes; the gigantic, ineffectual stimulus bill has made Americans feel like chumps and put a damper on the passage of the next couple of gigantic government-expanding bills. And it has helped to seriously erode America's trust in Obama's word and his ability to handle the economy. But what we really hate are the power grabs.

As for the problems with healthcare reform, let us count the ways.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Scorsese to accentuate the negative in Sinatra movie

From John Nolte on Big Hollywood:

Not sure which is more revolting, Scorsese’s determination to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Sinatra or his determination to do to The Voice what he and Leo did to Howard Hughes: reduce and distill a great man who accomplished great things down to his worst elements; focus on the flaws instead of the many, many accomplishments…

Like anyone who lives to see his 82nd birthday, Sinatra the man is defined by more than just wherever some storyteller decides to point his soda straw focus. Sinatra the man was also a “man,” a virile, strong, fiercely independent, two-fisted scrapper who fought for everything he achieved. Regardless of his gifts as an actor, there is no way the eternal boy-faced DiCaprio can fill those shoes convincingly — especially if Scorsese wins the day and tells the story of the sixties, which began with the singer’s 45th birthday.

Tina Sinatra, the late star’s daughter, is said to be unhappy with the “dark direction” of the film’s script and wants a more “sanitized” version of her father’s life story. …

“Marty wants it to be hard-hitting and showcase the violent, sexually charged, hard-drinking Frank, but Tina wants to show the softer side of her dad and let the focus be on the music,” a source told the New York Post.

“The Sixties were a very swinging time for Frank - he was having sex with a garden variety of bimbos and cementing his Rat Pack status. It’s a really key time to his mythology. Tina really wants to make sure that a sanitized Frank comes through, and that it’s not overly negative.”

First off, the story of the Rat Pack has already been told in a pretty terrific 1998 HBO film, but what an absurd claim that this “swinging time” is anything close to “key” to the mythology of an individual who won two Oscars, will reign forever as the Beethoven of 20th Century music, openly fought for Civil Rights as early as the 1940s (!) and quietly did more for charity than any entertainer before or since.

Frank Sinatra was a Great Man, a flawed man to be sure, but one no more defined by the 15% of his ring-a-ding period than Scorsese is by 20% of a post-”Casino” life spent directing one bloated, over-rated, disappointing chase for an Academy Award after another.

Read the rest. Focusing on the music, as daughter Tina advocates, would be a valid way to tell the story of Sinatra's life. A sordid drag-through-the-mud approach, taken together with the absurd casting of DiCaprio, makes for an unpalatable product imho.

A little treat for fans:



Related post: Is this some kind of sick joke?

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Best of Steyn

John Hawkins has compiled an awesome list of best Steyn quotes from 2008. Here are a few of my faves from the past year:

9/04/08

I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin - whoops, I mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin - as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz, half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn't worked since he was an extra in Deliverance.

10/30/08

And tonight Chris Matthews' doctors announced that his leg tingle has metastasized leaving his entire body like a vibrating cellphone whose ringtone is locked on "I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy."

11/21/08

If it bleeds, it leads

I didn't think I could like Sarah Palin more than I do, but the nancy boys at MSNBC bleating all over the screen about the Great Turkey Carnage is hilarious. This is a great caption:

TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM MEDIA

Or was it: MEDIA DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM TURKEYS.

12/18/08

Poor fellows. It's six weeks since the end of the election campaign, and they're still capitalizing abstract nouns.

12/26/08

To live is messy but liberating: free societies enable the citizenry to fulfill their potential – to innovate, to create, to accumulate – while recognizing that some of their number will fail. But to attempt to insulate free peoples from moral hazard is debilitating and ultimately fatal.

1/05/09:

Liberalism is the default mode of the culture — to the point where the left-of-center position is so pervasive it's no longer a position at all, but rather something uncontentious, received wisdom, part of the air we breathe.

1/10/09:

Hamas is a mental illness masquerading as a nationalist movement.

01/30/09:

"If the Democratic Party wants it, it's 'stimulus.' If the Republican Party opposes it, it's "politics . . .'"

Re the stimulus:

And by then we’ll probably need a new round number. What’s the name for the avalanche of dough that comes after a trillion? I asked Senator-designate Caroline Kennedy, and she said: “Cotillion?” Close enough. By 2011, we’ll need a cotillion-dollar stimulus package to . . . um, “create jobs” and, er, “help middle-class families.”

2/11/09:

"To discard “the West” with nary a thought is to reject not race but the civilization that built the modern world, and the even smaller group of countries within it that have demonstrated any sustained tradition of liberty.

2/12/09:

When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia.

02/13/09

"President Obama chose to nominate Tim "Indispensable" Geithner and Tom "Home, James!" Daschle, men whose enthusiasm for the size of the federal budget is in inverse proportion to their own urge to contribute to it."

3/19/09:

"A land without the law of contract is a banana republic. That's heavy on the change, not so much on the hope."

3/27/09

In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children's future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president's "false choice," that "chaotic and unforgiving capitalism" is exactly what we need right now.

05/09/09

"Seems like only yesterday that an unmanned drone on the 49th Parallel meant Nelson Eddy doing the 'Indian Love Call'."

07/24/09

"Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show."

7/31/09:

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks – drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.

Government health care would be wrong even if it "controlled costs." It's a liberty issue. I'd rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.

A classic:

"A society whose political class elevates "a woman's right to choose" above "go forth and multiply" is a society with a death wish. So today we're the endangered species, not the spotted owl. We're the dwindling resource, not the oil."

Seasonal:

"If I were ever to write my own seasonal advice book, I would do so under the nom de plume (or, indeed, nom de plume pudding) of Persimmon Coxcomb."

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Update on death panels and the VA death book

Hot Air has the video of a Chris Wallace interview with Jim Towey and the VA's Tammy Duckworth on the end-of-life-pushing booklet being used in veterans' hospitals to "counsel" our veterans on whether their lives are worth living. (Earlier discussion and excerpts from the booklet here.) Duckworth actually tries to defend the booklet. She points out that the booklet is free -- hooray! -- and implies that Towey is motivated by profit.

Jim Towey is one of many who see that government healthcare will of necessity steer the vulnerable toward declining life-extending treatments. Towey's point is that this is already taking place at the VA.

It's very frustrating to read columns like today's from Howard Kurtz. He simplifies the rationing and end-of-life counseling controversies, dismissing the death panel issue by ignoring a critical aspect of the story: that under government healthcare, seniors and others will be nudged and coerced into dying sooner rather than later. There's irony in the fact that his thesis is that the MSM have plunged into the healthcare issue and explored its complexities and nuances. Not so. Instead, he and others have focused on the fact that the words "death panel" do not appear in HR 3200. His conclusion: that it's all a fantasy made up by Sarah Palin:

For all the sound and fury, news organizations have labored to explain the intricacies of the competing blueprints. "NBC Nightly News" ran a piece examining how Obama's public health-insurance option would work. ABC's "World News " did a fact check on the end-of-life provision in the bill. "CBS Evening News" highlighted problems with the current system by interviewing some of the 1,500 people waiting at a free makeshift clinic in Los Angeles. Time ran a cover story on health care, titled "Paging Dr. Obama." And major newspapers have been filled with articles examining the nitty-gritty details. Those who say the media haven't dug into the details aren't looking very hard.

ABC News can keep their worthless fact-checks. Mr. Kurtz needs to read some of the following on the push toward death:

Mark Steyn:

The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It’s that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place. The only way to “control costs” is to restrict access to treatment, and the easiest people to deny treatment to are the oldsters.

Charles Krauthammer:

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

Charles Lane:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren't quite "purely voluntary," as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, "purely voluntary" means "not unless the patient requests one." Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that's an incentive to insist.

Wesley Smith:

If the counseling is as important as its supporters have been saying, why not just ensure voluntariness? Why, instead, would the administration rather kill the counseling provision altogether? Maybe they plan to put the provision in by regulation instead of legislation? Inquiring minds want to know.

None of this makes any sense if Section 1233 was truly benign. Maybe the “alarmists” were onto something after all.

Eugene Robinson:

If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.

Sandy Szwarc:

More importantly, it is clearly an effort to coerce seniors to sign such an order. There are multiple loopholes that open doors for its misuse, and abuse of the elderly, while also including no protections for these patients.

Betsy McCaughey:

“In so many words, it is [mandatory] — because although it is presented in the bill as a Medicare service, when a doctor or a nurse approaches an elderly person who is in poor health, facing a decline in health, and raises these issues, it is not offering a service. It is pressuring them,” McCaughey said Monday. “I would not want that to occur when I am not at my parents’ bedside.”

Lee Siegel:

This reeks of the Big Brother nightmare of oppressive government that the shrewd propagandists on the right are always blathering on about. Except that this time, they could not be more right.

There's a lot more where that came from. It drives me crazy to read in the MSM that the "death panels" have been thoroughly debunked. They haven't.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

When is a co-op not a co-op?

When it's "federally controlled, federally funded, and federally staffed."

From Michael Leavitt, former head of HHS:

Responding to a building wave of opposition to the "public option," the Obama administration is now signaling that it may dress up government health care in yet another set of clothes. This time, it will be called a health insurance "co-op." Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) is floating the idea, Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) has offered his initial support, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has listed three conditions it needs to meet.

Mr. Schumer's conditions are a national structure, federal financing, and a ban on federal appointees who have ties to the insurance industry. This "co-op" would be federally controlled, federally funded, and federally staffed. Expressing his opposition to smaller organizations and his demand for a national "co-op," Mr. Schumer says, "It has to have clout; it has to be large." He adds, "There would at least be one national model that could go all over the country," which would require "a large infusion of federal dollars."

I'm quite familiar with real co-ops. As a teenager, I filled my family's tractor with fuel purchased at a farmer's co-op, which was organized by local people to solve a common problem. My family got its electricity from a rural electric co-op. I was later a director of an "insurance reciprocal," a form of a co-op. Co-ops are a part of American culture: people uniting to solve common problems. What the Democrats are proposing bears little resemblance to this.

The Democrats are insisting that their version of a "co-op" wouldn't be government-run health care, but I ran Medicare and Medicaid as secretary of Health and Human Services, and I know this isn't true. When Washington provides the money, names the directors and ultimately pays the bills, government controls health care. Lobbyists will lobby, Congress will respond, and bureaucrats will decide who gets care, what drugs are prescribed, what procedures are covered, and how much money providers can charge. This is true for Medicare, it's true for Medicaid, and it would be true of Mr. Conrad's "co-ops."

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is from Iowa farm country. He knows co-ops, and hopefully he also knows a plan for a government takeover when he sees it. He's said he's against a "public option," no matter what it's called. Yet Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, describing what he wants out of "co-op" legislation, spoke plainly, as reported by Politico earlier this summer, when he said, "It's got to be written in a way that accomplishes the objective of the public option."

You don't have to be a farmer to recognize the pig behind the lipstick but apparently it doesn't hurt.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Wow: Unassisted triple play in the ninth

Only the 15th in baseball history and second to end a game:

With runners on first and second in the ninth inning and a run already in, Jeff Francoeur hit a line drive up the middle that appeared headed toward center field for a single. But both runners were stealing on the 2-2 pitch, so Bruntlett was in perfect position as he moved over to cover second base.

He caught the liner easily, stepped on second to double up Luis Castillo and then turned to tag Daniel Murphy for the third out. Murphy tried to backpedal away from Bruntlett, but had nowhere to go.

And that was that. Game over.

I'm glad I wasn't there because I'd probably be one of those unfortunates who bent down to tie my shoe and missed it entirely.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.

Ice cream vendors inspire fear and loathing

From John Stossel, an alarming sign of the decline of American parenthood:

Ever since Katherine had an inconsolable meltdown about not being able to have a treat, Ms. Sell has been trying to have unlicensed vendors ousted from the park. She has repeatedly called the city’s 311 complaint hot line, joining parents nationwide who can’t stand the icy man or his motorized big brother, the ice cream man…

“I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it’s really predatory for them — two of them — to be right inside the playground like this.”

“Predatory”? Please. Rather than just saying “no” to their children, the Times reports that:

Parents in most places improvise solutions — running the other way when they hear the jingle or telling their children that they left their wallets at home.

Running away?

Weak. And laughable. But what a mess. One wonders how these parents will handle a real crisis. Like adolescence.

You might want to read the whole NYT article. The good humor man is politically incorrect in so many ways. A Mr. Softee VP notes that times have changed:

Jim Conway, a vice president for Mister Softee, said the company encouraged vendors to be sensitive to customers’ complaints. But parents, he said, are different from when he was young. Those who dislike the ice cream man, he said, tend to be “New Age parents whose kids can’t seem to do anything without them.”

Another Mr. Softee points out the obvious:

“But moms have a choice,” he said. “We should be mature enough to tell our kids, ‘No.’ ”

Wanting the trucks to go away “is not a valid issue,” he said, adding, “It’s like a mother being angry at a store being at a particular corner.”

No need to worry. The ice cream is killing you and its manufacture and sale are killing the planet. Between ObamaCare and Cap & Trade the good humor man doesn't have a frozen confection's chance in a very hot place to survive.

One fun quote:

“There used to be this image that was wholesome and cool,” Mr. Semanko said. But these days, in Tacoma, there is a guy in an old mail van with no shirt on, smoking a cigarette, he said. “I heard one kid complain that the guy actually burped on him. That’s creepy to people.”

A far cry from the good humor man of old (I guess).

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.