How abortion undermines feminism

This is what's known as intellectual honesty. From Jeanette Pryor:

The philosophical foundation of all Feminism is the belief in the transcendent value of human life, both male and female, and the subsequent, radical equality of every human being. The objective morality of human behavior cannot be predicated upon thin air. When a woman asserts her right to educate herself, to select a spouse, or to choose a career, it is because she believes that self-determination is an exigency, ontologically rooted in a rational, free nature. [. . .]

The sonogram stands as an unimpeachable oracle. Turning back to gaze at the perfectly formed toes and fingers, at the beating heart, and cord bonding the baby to the mother who is his or her whole universe, the nature of the choice at the heart of the “Pro-Choice” question can no longer be camouflaged. The mother can choose to endure temporal suffering, or she can sever the cord, burn and cut the little toes and fingers, and stop the beating heart.

If we establish that women have the right to thus slaughter their babies, we establish as moral one human being’s right to kill another human being in order to avoid personal suffering. But, we cannot destroy another human being, without obliterating the very foundation of our rights. [. . .]

Instead of childishly screaming that the Oklahoma Abortion Laws were specifically designed to oppress women, it is time to behave maturely and consider that perhaps the law was motivated by the desire to affirm and protect the human rights of an innocent baby, and, in so doing, affirm the value of every human gifted with life.

Read the whole thing. The form of feminism defined above may, for all I know, exist, but the variety we normally come across has as its goal the accumulation and exercise of power. And abortion on demand is a perfect fit for the might-makes-right mentality.

Or so it seems. Arguments can be made that a woman who aborts her child may incur, in the long run, more suffering than if she had given birth to her baby. But feminists scream, too, when this truth is even hinted at.


Most recent posts here.

If you like the NHS you'll love Obamacare

Obama's choice for the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Donald Berwick, is definitely a fan, writing that the NHS “is not just a national treasure; it is a global treasure.”

Pat Austin has been all over this. See:
"Less discretion for doctors would improve patient safety" says Obama's pick for CMS
and How much do you know about the guy is about to make your health care choices for you?

Today's must-read (from yesterday): Jeffrey Anderson's Not NICE

So, if you combine a health care overhaul that won’t cut costs, with a pressing need to cut costs, where are we headed?

President Obama’s pick to fill the top post at Medicare and Medicaid provides a strong indication. We’re going down the only cost cutting road that government can travel. More exactly, we’re heading toward a nation-defining fork in the road. In one direction lies repeal; in the other, rationed care. In one direction, liberty; in the other, consolidated power.

President Obama’s pick to head the massive Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Donald Berwick, is a Harvard doctor with a stated fondness for nationalized medicine. He plainly wasn’t picked for his large-scale executive or managerial experience. He’s currently a professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit whose website reports it has “a staff of over 100 dedicated and talented people.” No, he was presumably picked because he and President Obama see eye-to-eye: Both share the same academic approach to problem-solving, both think our health-care system should be run through Washington, and both support a strong degree of bureaucratic control over questions of life and death. If confirmed by the Senate, he would become head of an agency with a budget larger than that of the Department of Defense.

In the private sector, costs can be cut through increased competition and choice, which will cause resources to be allocated more efficiently. But government-run health care can’t control costs except by limiting services. Last April, President Obama said, “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.” Thus, he said, “There is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place.” Dr. Berwick agrees. In fact, he’s been involved in that conversation for awhile.

Berwick doesn’t advocate cutting health costs by letting Americans control their own health care dollars, see prices, and shop for value. Rather, he prefers the approach employed by Great Britain’s National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE). NICE, whose name seems to have been inspired by George Orwell's 1984, decides which care people will get and which they won’t.

Don't forget CS Lewis's NICE. I would have thought the Brits were too literate to go there. Apparently not.

This part reminds me of something that Mark Steyn said (maybe it was here) about people spending their time choosing music for their iPods and deciding which movie to see, but leaving all the big decisions up to the government. Anderson:

Instead, under Berwick’s notion of patient-centeredness, hospitals would no longer limit who could visit patients, what food patients could eat, or what clothes they could wear; patients and families “would participate in the design of health care processes and services”; and patients and family members “would participate in rounds.” So, you could wear whatever you want, eat whatever you want, and apparently follow doctors around on rounds. You just wouldn’t get the drugs or treatments needed to keep you alive.

Let the kiddies have their fun. All that stuff is a usefully distracting. But don't let the masses determine the course of their own lives.

Read the rest of Mr. Anderson's revealing piece, and remember that it's only 185 days until November 2.

Most recent posts here.

Friday various & sundry

PhRMA hearts Harry and has produced a campaign ad as a way to say thanks so much! for ramming "healthcare" "reform" down the throats of America. J-Ru:

This seems to be a significant weakness in the Democrats’ newest populist campaign rhetoric — they are the ones getting bouquets from insurance companies, banks, and big drug companies. They must think the public won’t notice.

I think we're noticing. Harry's numbers are in the toilet.

But isn't it great the way Obama has put the brakes on all that lobbying? Timothy Carney reports: Lobbying figures are in: $10 million a day

You might notice that the top six entities all sided with Obama in supporting the legislation, as did nine of the top ten. That makes it hard to swallow Obama’s claim that passing the legislation represented “standing up to the special interests.”

We're not supposed to notice that, either.

Even CNN's Jack Cafferty has noticed that there's something wrong with Obama's response to Arizona's illegal alien crisis:

Arizona's tough new immigration law hasn't even gone into effect yet and it's already working. Mexico has issued an alert for Mexicans traveling to Arizona. Mexico urging its citizens to be careful that they may be harassed and questioned without further cause at any time should they go to Arizona.

That's not the case at all, of course, but it's ironic, isn't it? Travel warnings usually work the other way around with various countries warning their citizens not to go to Mexico because of all of the drug-related violence there.

However, no good deed goes unpunished. The Obama administration says it might challenge Arizona's new law in court. They're apparently concerned the law would take away resources needed to target criminals.

How utterly absurd. There are 460,000 illegal aliens currently inside Arizona's borders, and the reason they're there is that the federal government refuses to enforce our immigration laws. [. . .]

Shouldn't President Obama be embarrassed by some of this? This is a federal job. They're not doing it.

Oh dear. Does this make CNN the cable channel of fascists?


James Taranto notices something wrong with a study reported by Newsweek which finds that "the [tea party] movement's supporters are more likely to be racially resentful." The problem:

As for the claim that conservative views on these questions reflect "racial resentment," however, the survey provides no evidence one way or the other. It did not plumb the emotions of the participants, who were given a prepackaged assertion and permitted only a binary response. It's possible that agreement with a statement like "Blacks should do the same without special favors" reflects a resentful spirit, but it could also reflect a respectful one--a confidence that blacks are as capable as anyone else.

When Parker asserts that tea-party sympathizers are "racially resentful," then, he is imputing to them his own emotional reactions to the questions. The entire exercise illustrates only that political liberals are predisposed to believe that politically conservative views on racial matters are the product of resentment. It would not surprise us if this belief is true in some cases, but by conflating viewpoint and motive, this survey merely presupposes what it purports to prove.

Charlie Crist declares 'system broken,' announces independent run. Larry Thornberry calls this "nonsense on steroids" and makes the case that what's really broken is Charlie Crist and his political career. This Rubio ad will ensure that Florida voters notice Crist's flaming duplicity.


Michelle Malkin takes notice of Obama's "peculiar definitions of what he called the 'American way' and the profit motive":

If there were any doubts left about the Obamas’ ideological commitment to wealth redistribution and a command-and-control economy, those doubts have been thoroughly removed. We have a commander-in-chief who presumes to know when you have earned “enough,” who believes that only those who provide what he deems “good” products and services should “keep on making it,” and who has determined that the role of American entrepreneurs is not to pursue their own self-interest, but to fulfill their “core” responsibility as dutiful growers of the collective economy.

That famous mock-up poster of Obama as the creepy socialist Joker has never seemed more apt.

Power Line's Scott Johnson responds to that: At Some Point You Have Grabbed Enough Power

James Madison and others held that the "first object of government" was to protect the right of property. Numerous provisions of the Constitution and Bill of Rights were incorporated to protect the property rights of citizens from the power of the government.

Whatever else might be said about him, President Obama operates on a different philosophy of government from that of the Founders. As Michelle Malkin observes, he spoke the most revealing and clarifying 10 words of his administration this week: "I think at some point you have made enough money."

The Founders thought that at some point the government had enough power. Obama, however, is a devout believer in unlimited government. The common denominator among so-called health care reform and financial regulatory reform as well as Obama's other big proposals is the augmented power they confer on the government in general and the executive branch in particular.

RTR.

Most recent posts here.

Organ donation by default proposed in NY state

In light of a bill before the New York state legislature that would make organ donation the default option for all citizens (h/t: Mark Steyn), I'm going to re-publish a post of mine from September of 2009. First, the dope on the NY bill:

. . . Brodsky introduced a new bill in Albany that would enroll all New Yorkers as an organ donor, unless they actually opt out of organ donation. It would be the first law of its kind in the United States.

"Overseas, 24 nations have it. Israel has it. Others have it. And it works without a lot of controversy," Brodsky said.

Currently one of the biggest obstacles to being a donor is while 9 out of 10 are favorable to it only 1 out of 10 is signed up to be a donor.

Maybe they really don't favor it but would rather not admit that in a survey.

My post from last fall: Nudging toward Bethlehem: Organ donation without consent
(cross-posted in the Green Room, where you'll find a few more comments, including one from Ed Morrissey, who doesn't have a big problem with donation-by-default):

I've written before about attempts by institutions to change cultural norms by creating default options which "nudge" the masses in the direction desired by the elites. I called it "horribly insidious: a subtle extension of the nanny state where numerous decisions are pre-made and pre-packaged for us, and the exact opposite of what it once meant to be an American: independent-minded and self-determining."

This proposal concerning our organs, made by Obama's "regulation czar" in his 2008 book, is an outrage, amounting to organ donation without consent:

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken.

Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done.

Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation.

Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased’s family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one’s organs.

“The major obstacle to increasing [organ] donations is the need to get the consent of surviving family members,” said Sunstein and Thaler.

Read on. This idea is a real horror. It has nothing whatever to do with the merits of organ transplants or a person's beliefs regarding this personal issue. It's about one group making the decision for others.

Sunstein elaborates on the concept of "nudging":

“We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better,” they wrote.

“…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food,” said Thaler and Sunstein. “Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …”

Very progressive I'm sure. But what gives one entity -- especially the government -- the right to nudge an individual, through default options built into regulations and laws, toward a particular course of action? Who are they to make a judgment on our credit cards, our snacks, or our kidneys? The whole "nudge" concept presupposes that one group knows what's best for the rest of us. It's elitist to the core.

And statist.

Addendum: Something I added in a comment at the Green Room:

I understand that this is merely a proposal in a book. And it wouldn’t (heaven forbid) override anyone’s wishes or mandate organ donation. But it could ensure that all of the following would be eligible for organ harvesting: the lazy, the disengaged, the inattentive, the dysfunctional, the mentally ill, and anyone else who isn’t engaged or capable enough to make a positive decision on organ donation.

The default option is a powerful social engineering tool. It strikes me as wrong for the government to have an interest in this personal decision and actually steer individuals in the direction of organ donation.

That was then. Now this is actually being proposed as law.

Update: Cassy Fiano writes about this at Hot Air.

Update the second: See Bob Belvedere's post on this (and not just because he quotes me). If I may borrow his phraseology, he's spot-on with his observation and his quote. Please go read it.

Most recent posts here.

Navy submarines to go coed

What could go wrong?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military's ban on women serving on submarines passed quietly into history Thursday.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates notified lawmakers in mid-February that the Navy would be lifting the ban, unless Congress took some action against it. And Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole said Thursday that the deadline for Congress to act passed at midnight.

The Navy plans a press conference later Thursday to talk about the new policy.

"There are extremely capable women in the Navy who have the talent and desire to succeed in the submarine force," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said hours after the congressional deadline passed. "Enabling them to serve in the submarine community is best for the submarine force and our Navy.

I don't doubt their capabilities. But there are other factors to be considered. Like a few women among 130 or so men, confined in a very small space, for months at a time:

In general, the idea of converting submarines to accommodate coed crews has raised two primary concerns. Chief among them is privacy. Submarine crews of 130 to 140 men share the space equivalent to that of a medium-sized home, with few bathrooms and showers and little or no privacy. To sleep, men slip into racks that are stacked three or four high. They change clothes next to their beds, and they sometimes "hotbunk" or share their racks with others on alternating shifts.

Call me old-fashioned but this strikes me as a recipe for trouble. Debbie Schlussel agrees:

Women on subs will be a huge headache. It’s only just starting. Periods and pregnancies do not belong on Navy submarines. How many women on subs will get pregnant? And who will end up paying the tab for sending them home? You will. Social experiments in the military are always a disaster. And the U.S. taxpayer is always the loser.

Sadly, in this case, so is national security. You can’t run an effective Navy operation with women having to be flown home. That’s gonna happen. Good luck with it.

And since women will be vastly outnumbered, conflicts may arise among the men in competition for their attentions. Bad for morale.

Comments?

Most recent posts here.

This just in: Obama has a heart after all

Today, at the funeral of civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height:


Check out the Daily Mail for more photos, including one of Pelosi (face in default smile) and Biden, who might be praying, or dozing. (One of my kids thought Obama might have drugged him to keep him quiet.) It's good to see Mrs. Obama dressed appropriately for this somber occasion.

Most recent posts here.

'Poisoning the present by the way they present the past'

In case you missed it, awesomeness from Thomas Sowell: Filtering history for political ends

Excerpt:

The inhumanity of human beings toward other human beings is not a new story, much less a local story. There is no need to hide it, because there are lessons we can learn from it. But there is also no need to distort it, so that sins of the whole human species around the world are presented as special defects of "our society" or the sins of a particular race.

If American society and Western civilization are different from other societies and civilization, it is that they eventually turned against slavery, and stamped it out, at a time when non-Western societies around the world were still maintaining slavery and resisting Western pressures to end slavery, including in some cases armed resistance. [. . .]

It is not just the history of slavery that gets distorted beyond recognition by the selective filtering of facts. Those who go back to mine history, in order to find everything they can to undermine American society or Western civilization, have very little interest in the Bataan death march, the atrocities of the Ottoman Empire or similar atrocities in other times and places.

Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today, at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed.

An ancient adage says: "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." But apparently that is not sufficient for many among our educators, the intelligentsia or the media. They are busy poisoning the present by the way they present the past.

Read the rest.

Most recent posts here.

Arizona law is already working; Obama "sides with the lawless"

That didn't take long, and it will mean more jobs, as well as increased security, for the people of Arizona:

"Nobody wants to pick us up," Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store.

Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the law hope it creates jobs for thousands of Americans.

"We want to drive day labor away," says Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the law's sponsors.

An estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years as it cracked down on illegal immigration and its economy was especially hard hit by the Great Recession. A Department of Homeland Security report on illegal immigrants estimates Arizona's illegal immigrant population peaked in 2008 at 560,000, and a year later dipped to 460,000.

The law's supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents in a state with a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

New Mexico and Texas, take note:

Standing near potted trees and bushes for sale at a Home Depot in east Phoenix, Diaz, 35, says he may follow three families in his neighborhood who moved to New Mexico because of the law. He says a friend is finding plenty of work in Dallas.

h/t: Hot Air

iOwnTheWorld has a handy chart of legal action being considered by other states.

Must-read of the morning:
Andy McCarthy: Illegal Aliens: Law and Sovereignty in Arizona; Obama sides with the lawless over besieged citizens.

Excerpt:

Maybe that’s the Obama administration’s problem with Arizona’s new law: It is too short (16 pages), too clear, and too reflective of the popular will. Unlike the social scientists in Nancy Pelosi’s federal laboratory, state lawmakers didn’t need to pass the law first in order to find out what was in it. Essentially, it criminalizes (as a state misdemeanor) something that is already illegal (namely, being present in the United States in violation of federal law), and it directs law-enforcement officers to, yes, enforce the law. Democrats and their media echo-chamber regard this as radical; for most of us, it is what’s known as common sense. [. . .]

In adopting the Constitution, in giving their consent to our social contract, the sovereign states agreed to cede some of their authority in exchange for one overriding benefit. It was not to have an overseer to monitor our salt intake, design our light bulbs, prepare for our retirement, manage our medical treatments, or mandate our purchases. It was to provide for our security. It was to repel invasion by aliens who challenged our sovereign authority to set the conditions of their presence on our soil.

And here’s another commonsense proposition: A government that abdicates our national defense against outside forces is no longer a government worth having.

That's the voice of reason. The voices of unreason (chief among them Barack Obama and Eric Holder) are too numerous to mention, but my personal favorite: the boycott of Arizona Tea (made in New York, but let's not get hung up on the details). "It is the drink of fascists."

Edited to add an excerpt from Gov. Jan Brewer's justification for the law:

Brewer, on whether AZ feels "abandoned" by nat'l leaders on immigration: "Since I've been governor since last January, I have written numerous letters to the administration in regards to securing our borders with absolutely no response. So we have been facing this crisis, and it's devastating the people of Arizona. And I feel as governor I have a responsibility to protect the citizens. We've been inundated with criminal activity. It's been outrageous."

More Brewer: "And we're not going to put up with it any longer. And I hope that now we've got senate bill 1070 signed and ready to go into law that we'll get somebody's attention. But it is the federal government's responsibility to secure our borders. Our states cannot sustain it."

Brewer, on Obama calling the bill "misguided": "He has a right to say whatever he wants to say. But 'misguided' -- I think he's wrong. I have a responsibility to the people of Arizona. And I'm sure he's concerned because of the brouhaha and over-dramatic comments about racial profiling. I made perfectly clear when I signed the bill that we would not tolerate racial profiling. It's illegal."

Also check out Jennifer Rubin's post on Obama's senatorial record on illegal immigration.

Also behold a racist revealing himself to Michelle Malkin. Back away slowly from this guy.

One more: Kris Kobach, who helped write the law, defends and explains it in a NYT op-ed.

Many thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for linking.
Most recent posts here.

The wrong temperament

Christopher Buckley was right: temperament matters in a president. But he couldn't have been more wrong in his assessment of Barack Obama's temperament, which has been marked by petulance, condescension, and a reflex to impugn the motives of anyone who disagrees with him. His demeanor often suggests a petty dictator rather than a statesman. And presidential temperaments have consequences.

Read this excellent piece of Obamanalysis by Daniel Henninger. He observes that it is politically imprudent of Obama to give free rein to his nasty side:

Even Achilles had a heel, and Mr. Obama's may be his decision to be his own Saul Alinsky. Defining, demonizing and making a mockery of one's opponents was one of Alinsky's main rules for community organizers. But community organizers, though often charismatic, can also be annoying jerks.

Read the rest. His hubris makes him do it.

More observations on El Supremo's proclivity to go negative:

Jennifer Rubin: Obama's nastiness is not new

Well, actually this has been going on from Day One of the administration. The assault on Rush Limbaugh took place a year ago. And he called the Supreme Court out — with the justices sitting in the House — months ago. In fact, Obama has been vilifying and dismissing Republicans, the Supreme Court, Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies, Wall Street, and Tea Partiers for quite some time.

Well, the Politico reporters say, the president now uses “Mitch McConnell” or “Sarah Palin” by name. It seems to be a distinction without much difference since it was always quite clear whom he was slamming. It does fit the Politico storyline that Obama is somewhat desperate and that this is what politicians do — attack! — when they are in the dumps. But it’s ultimately a false narrative, one that disguises central facets of Obama’s personality: he’s condescending (recall the health-care summit), thin-skinned, dismissive of opponents, and prone to ad hominem and straw-men attacks. That’s nothing new — although it’s nice to see the sycophantic press wake up and take notice.

Peter Wehner: RE: Obama nastiness is not new

And for good measure, he cannot resist adding arrogance to his hypocrisy. Mr. Obama sees himself as our modern-day Socrates, the courageous voice of reason in an angry and rancorous world. His opponents are driven by base, if not corrupt, motives; they tell lies while he speaks Truth. One gets the sense from Obama that he is frustrated that more of us don’t acknowledge that he is a man of unparalleled wisdom and purity of heart. We don’t recognize the gift he is to all of us.

When challenged on his facts, he gets prickly and defensive; the more effective the challenge, the more contemptuous Obama becomes. One can see what is going around in his mind: “Do you presume to criticize the Great Oz! You ungrateful creatures. Think yourselves lucky that I’m giving you an audience…”

The problem for the president is that people are beginning to pay attention to that man behind the curtain.

Dennis Kneale: Obama is a bully

Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President? Barrack Hussein Obama has taken his gift for inspirational oratory—one of the traits that got him elected—and turned it into something darker and more insidious. Bam is a bully. Bad enough that he bashes Wall Street, but this President has gone farther than any in modern history in putting the wrong kind of “bully”back into what Teddy Roosevelt called the bully pulpit. [. . .]

Rather than trash an entire state, Bam could have privately lobbied Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and urged her to veto the bill. Or he could have said, simply, that he hoped to pass better solutions at the federal level.

That would have been statesmanlike, but this President gets pouty whenever anyone dares to disagree with him. He seems to view dissension not as healthy public debate but as a suspicious, pernicious challenge to his omnipotence and popularity.

Insert comparison to Bush as statesman here. RTR.

Karl Rove: It's Only Called the Bully Pulpit

But it is the president's intimidation that is most troubling. Mr. Obama has the disturbing tendency to question the motives of those who disagree with him, often making them the objects of ad hominem attacks. His motives, on the other hand, are pure.

Mr. Obama often makes it seem illegitimate to challenge his views, and he isn't content to argue issues on the merits. Instead, he wants to make opponents into pariahs. And it's not just business executives who are on the receiving end. We've also seen this pattern with the administration's attacks on the tea party movement and those who attended town-hall meetings last summer on health care.

This is a bad habit—and a dangerous one. The presidency is a very powerful office, and presidents need to be careful not to use it to silence dissenting voices.

RTR.

But of course, silencing dissenting voices is exactly what Obama and company hope to do.


Many thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.
Most recent posts here.

Liberal media's affair with Obama: Too hot not to cool down

From Josh Gerstein and Patrick Gavin of Politico, we learn that the media covering the White House isn't really that into Obama, and it's mutual. Why? Because Obama is just as he appears:

Reporters say the White House is thin-skinned, controlling, eager to go over their heads and stingy with even basic information. All White Houses try to control the message. But this White House has pledged to be more open than its predecessors – and reporters feel it doesn’t live up to that pledge in several key areas:

— Day-to-day interaction with Obama is almost non-existent, and he talks to the press corps far less often than Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush did. Clinton took questions nearly every weekday, on average. Obama barely does it once a week.

— The ferocity of pushback is intense. A routine press query can draw a string of vitriolic emails. A negative story can draw a profane high-decibel phone call – or worse. Some reporters feel like they’ve been frozen out after crossing the White House.

And so on. The course of true love never did run smooth. But it didn't have to be this way; Obama was, and is, the liberal media's guy. They rolled over and played dead so beautifully for him during the campaign. If only they had been willing to see Obama for who he was before they helped elect him; they'd be more prepared for these unpleasant traits of his. They're nothing new. Politico:

Much of the criticism is off-the record, both out of fear of retaliation and from worry about appearing whiny. But those views were voiced by a cross-section of the television, newspaper and magazine journalists who cover the White House.

“These are people who came in with every reporter giving them the benefit of the doubt,” said another reporter who regularly covers the White House. “They’ve lost all that goodwill.”

The article is lengthy. A few highlights:

A few days later, Gibbs said at one of his briefings, “This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”

Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.

. . .

One current focus of press corps ire are gauzy video features the White House’s staff videographer cranks out, taking advantage of behind-the-scenes access to Obama and his aides, such as a recent piece offering “exclusive footage” of First Lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden touring Haiti.

“I think someone out there might mistake them for news, as opposed to slick publicity handouts for the White House,” said [Ann] Compton. “To me, they’re mocking what we do.”

. . .

And just what happens when you upset the White House?. . .

“It’s not unusual to have shouting matches, or the email equivalent of that. It’s very, very aggressive behavior, taking issue with a thing you’ve written, an individual word, all sorts of things,” said one White House reporter.

Some of this may stem from that toxic Obama mix of arrogance and inexperience:

Compton said that if the Obama White House’s sense of being besieged by the press is authentic it bespeaks a kind of innocence born from a candidate and a president who have never confronted a full-on Washington feeding frenzy.

“They ain’t seen nothing yet,” the longtime ABC reporter said. “Wait ‘till they have to start really circling the wagons when someone in the administration under attack, wait ‘till there’s a scandal, wait ‘till someone screws up, then it’ll get hostile.”

Right. The press is overwhelmingly sympathetic to Obama's agenda. How will he hold up when a real crisis hits his administration?

But it's no wonder they feel betrayed. And it's always a little sad when the spark dies, isn't it? Take it away, Frank.

Thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.

Most recent posts here.

The state as parent: No Happy Meal toy for you, sonny

California doesn't have enough real problems to deal with? Santa Clara County wants to outlaw Happy Meal toys because they make kids fat:

Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the proposal would forbid the inclusion of a toy in any restaurant meal that has more than 485 calories, more than 600 mg of salt or high amounts of sugar or fat. In the case of McDonald's, the limits would include all of the chain's Happy Meals — even those that include apple sticks instead of French fries.

And guess what: Residents think their government is going too far:

. . . the proposal has caused a bit of an uproar on the Internet, where comments on YouTube and other sites say it is another example of the "nanny state" gone wild. [h/t: Sister Toldjah]

That's pretty much exactly what it is. I'm sure you can think of other cultural practices a busybody might want to modify, for our own good, like popcorn and candy at movie theaters (veggie platters would be more healthful -- but hold that Ranch dressing), fast food drive-thrus (they make eating way too easy for lazy fat folks), and restrictions on what the neighbors can offer trick-or-treaters (pencils, not peanut butter cups). Why not? It's for the children! And we're all children in the eyes of our statist handlers.

This kind of thing is de rigueur in the UK, where everything is padded, sanitized, and circumscribed for you, in the name of ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety, mate. Mark Steyn:

You only have to spend, oh, 20 minutes in almost any corner of the British Isles to have that distinctive local formulation proffered as the explanation for almost any feature of life. The signs at the White Cliffs of Dover warning you not to lean over the cliff? It’s Health & Safety, mate. Primary schools that forbid their children to make daisy chains because they might pick up germs from the flowers? Health & Safety, mate.The decorative garden gnomes Sandwell Borough Council ordered the homeowner to remove from outside her front door on the grounds that she could trip over them when fleeing the house in event of its catching fire? Health & Safety. The fire extinguishers removed from a block of flats by Dorset buildings risk assessors because they’re a fire risk? Health & Safety. Apparently the presence of a fire extinguisher could encourage you to attempt to extinguish the fire instead of fleeing for your life.

It's all for your own good, you see.

I personally agree with one of the moms quoted in the LAT article: "the toys are crap." Of course they are. And so is the food. But face it: If government banned everything crappy there wouldn't be much of anything left. Solution: don't get into the habit of bringing your kids to McDonald's. Do it once in a while, for a treat. Or not at all. Problem solved.

And by the way, not that it matters to those who are using obesity as a tool to regulate our lives and businesses, the "obesity epidemic" is highly disputable:

In fact, a new comprehensive meta-analysis of data from more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., reveals that, for a decade now, obesity rates all over the world among both adults and children have been largely flat or actually declining. The study points out that alarmist claims from public health officials about an “obesity epidemic” are all explicitly based on the mistaken assumption that obesity rates are continuing to rise.

But, as with global warming or our health care emergency, the foundational crisis for all that regulation doesn't need to be real.

Thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.

Most recent posts here.

Don't follow Hugo on Twitter

New social networking low: Hugo Chavez will soon be blessing the world with his masterful tweets. Love this from one of his flunkies: "I'm sure he'll break records for numbers of followers." (H/t: Hot Air)

Other items:

MSNBC -- If it only had a brain:

During the Monday 12PM ET hour of live coverage on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer described the "firestorm" over a newly passed immigration law in Arizona and fretted: "does this lead to a situation where neighbors are turning in neighbors or families turning against families?" Later in the segment, a headline on screen read: "Law Makes it a Crime to be Illegal Immigrant."

Repeal, baby, repeal. Jeffrey Anderson on the desire, and the need, to repeal:

After more than a month’s worth of polling, this much is clear: Americans want Obamacare to be repealed, and they’ll reward the political party that strongly champions that cause. Over the five-week span since the Democrats passed Obamacare, which they did so in clear and open defiance of the American people's will, Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters has shown that Americans favor repeal by 16 points (56 to 40 percent) —more than twice the margin by which President Obama was elected. These results have been remarkably consistent, varying by only two points in either direction (with 54 to 58 percent supporting repeal, and 38 to 42 percent opposing it). In this week’s poll, Americans favor repeal by a full 20 points (58 to 38 percent).

Read the rest.

For your edification: Chapters 1 and 2 of Peter Robinson's 5-part video chat with Mark Steyn on The End of the World as We Know It. Part one is about birth rates and what drives them. I love it when Mark talks demographics.

Marc Thiessen is at least twice as smart as I am but he's about two weeks behind the curve on this one: Chris Christie for President?

At the Goldman Sachs hearings, Sen. Carl Levin has a severe attack of Tourette's, right in front of the C-SPAN cameras! Allahpundit thinks he did it on purpose, just to get attention. You know, like a four year-old boy, or a vice president.

Most recent posts here.

Of course: Price controls on insurance

From the WSJ:

ObamaCare Mulligan: About those lower insurance costs we promised . . . .

When President Obama signed his health-care reform last month, he declared it will "lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government." So why, barely a month later, are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance? [. . .]

National Democrats now want the power to do the same across the country, because they know how unrealistic their cost-control claims really are. Democrats are petrified they'll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike. So the purpose of this latest Senate bill is to have a pre-emptive political response on hand. [. . .]

Most of ObamaCare's unrealistic "savings" come from cranking down the way Medicare calculates its price controls, and Mr. Foster writes that they'll grow "more slowly than, and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers' costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries." He expects that 15% of hospital budgets may be driven into deficits, thus "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries." Isn't reform grand?

The official who will preside over this fiscal trainwreck is Donald Berwick, the Harvard professor and chief of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who the White House has nominated to run Medicare. Dr. Berwick explained in an interview last year that the British National Health Service has "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn." He added that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."

In fact, the real choice with medical care, as with any good or service, is between rationing via politics and bureaucratic lines or via a competitive market and prices. As Democrats are showing by trying to pass a new insurance bill, they want all U.S. health care to function like price-controlled Medicare. Dr. Berwick's job as the country's largest purchaser of health care will be to find ways to offset the higher insurance and medical costs that ObamaCare's subsidies and mandates will cause, which will inevitably mean political rationing of care.

Read the rest.

Related:

• "Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report"
• Peter Orszag Touts the Wonders of Powerful Rationing Board

Most recent posts here.

"Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report" UPDATED

*The Prowler's account is denied by the The Office of the Medicare Actuary.
**The Prowler reaffirms original story.

Original post:

I've run out of polite pejoratives. Get a load of this: DEMOCRATS HID DAMNING HEALTH CARE REPORT FROM PUBLIC UNTIL A MONTH AFTER VOTE

As you may recall, the story was that Congress went ahead with the ram-through, declining to wait for Medicare's Office of the Actuary's report on the costs of the bill.

Scratch that. The report was submitted to HHS, and to the White House, at least a week before the vote. It "set off alarm bells," and was hidden from the public.

From The Prowler:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

And not one 'public servant' at HHS leaked anything about the report's existence or contents. They were 'too scared.' Way to earn that salary.

I don't suppose Sebelius or Obama broke any laws by hiding the report, but it's unequivocally unethical. Sebelius, at least, should be hauled before one of those blowhard committees, sworn in, and required to disclose what she knew and when she knew it. It's outrageous. This is the woman who's been given enormous powers over our healthcare under the new law. And we pay her salary, too.

Related story: Orszag Touts the Wonders of Powerful Rationing Board
Those death panels are gonna be awesome! (No, he didn't actually say that.)

*Update: The Office of the Medicare Actuary denies this story.
**Clarification from The Prowler, 4/28/10:

Our sources stand by the facts that prior to final passage of the health care reform bill on Sunday, March 21, the Office of the Actuary had provided senior leaders inside HHS with data that indicated the then-bill would increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on Americans. And that data was not provided to anyone publicly until after the legislation was passed.

That the report was issued after the bill's passage is not in dispute. What is in dispute is who had data and when were those estimates initially available. According to our sources, researchers in the actuary's office had several models prepared, at least one of them based on the Senate health care reform bill, which was passed several months before the House vote. Data from studying the Senate bill indicated that -- big surprise -- the bill would increase health care costs.

In other words, HHS and the White House were in possession of the data, but not in the form of an official report.

Thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.

Most recent posts here.

Obama hopes to whip up 2010 enthusiasm, except among old white guys

The Washington Post and Politico are running stories today on Obama's efforts to rekindle the 2008 magic in order to spare his party a titanic debacle in 2010. BarackObama.com has produced a video which aims to cajole supporters to drag "Claudia" (any relation to Cousin Pookie?) to the polls in November. Amazingly, our post-racial president lists the groups his campaign is targeting: the young, African-Americans, Latinos, and women. (Take note, all you old white guys: Obama doesn't need your vote.)

It's not going to work. Obama fever has run its course and conferred immunity on a good part of the population. Those "surge voters" have reverted to their default state of apathy toward politics. Efforts to re-energize them have failed repeatedly since the election. Getting them whipped up for a midterm election is a doomed proposition. Tim Kaine all but concedes the impossibility of the task before them:

Kaine and Pfeiffer acknowledged the difficulty of transferring the grass-roots supporters that Obama cultivated over a historic two-year presidential bid to an array of other Democrats. "I don't think the magic has evaporated, but you have to acknowledge that the 2008 election was so historic and cathartic that you just don't hit that pitch in elections that often," Kaine said.

He's wrong about that magic. It has evaporated. But the anti-Obama magic is powerful. The reality of his agenda has energized lots and lots of voters who can hardly wait for November.

Most recent posts here.

Golf, summit, repeat

The White House calls the president's weekend in NC a "break," but it's really just another golf op:

He had hardly checked into the Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa Friday afternoon before he was on the links for a quick nine holes, finishing after nightfall. Saturday morning, he was up at dawn for another round, this time a 5 1/2- hour full 18 holes.

Mark McKinnon of the Daily Beast puts the president's golf jones, and the media spin on it, in perspective:

Obama was criticized by foreign press recently when, unable to travel to pay respects to the president of Poland who was killed in a plane crash, he went golfing.

But there was not a critical peep from the American press.

On Memorial Day last year, the press reverently reported that Obama placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns in the morning, and then observed a moment of silence that afternoon—on the golf course before teeing off. (I can only imagine how this would have been reported if Bush’s moment of “silent remembrance and solemn prayer” was on the green.)

And here’s how ABC reported an outing after Obama had just returned from a trip to Germany visiting the horror of the Holocaust camps: “Nobody would fault Obama for taking Sunday to catch up on sleep and unwind after the breakneck travel schedule. But instead of vegging out on the couch, Obama returned to the White House for only about 90 minutes, then hopped in his motorcade and went right back to Andrews to get in nine holes of golf at one of the three courses on the base.”

And how about this headline from The Washington Post: “Just the Sport for a Leader Most Driven.” Richard Leiby reports, “To some, Obama’s frequent outings reflect a cool self-confidence.” The article then quotes a sports psychologist who said Obama seemed able to play golf despite the grim reports by the media about the wars and the economy.

That bears repeating. Here is a journalist remarking about Obama that he is “able” to play golf despite war casualties and economic disaster. For Bush, the press couldn’t believe that he would dare golf at such a time, but for Obama they marvel that he can.

When the going gets tough, the tough go golfing. And then they hold summits. Yes, it's been less than two weeks since the last one. But for this administration, you can never have too many opportunites to lecture, posture, and perhaps bow to foreign leaders. The reputed point of this two-day meeting:

“to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.”

The summit, which will bring together 250 participants from 60 countries, will be held Monday and Tuesday. Obama will address the summit on Monday evening and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will close the summit on Tuesday evening.

In other news:

Well, this would be one way to deal with the UK welfare state:

As an election slogan it would certainly have some appeal:

“We should cut all your benefits and starve you into going back to work.”

Those are the words of Lord (Digby) Jones, a former Labour trade minister, on a television programme in which two middle-class youngsters said there was no point looking for work because they got £12,000 a year in benefits.

Renunciations of US citizenship are on the rise. Hat tip to The Virginian, who notes:

When our family immigrated, people were leaving the "old country" for the new world; for economic opportunity, for freedom, to escape stultifying governments. We are becoming more and more like those lands that we left.

Jim Geraghty: House Democrats, Out on a Limb for Obamacare, Hear a Snapping Sound:

. . . just about every vulnerable House Democrat justified their vote by saying the bill would reduce costs and reduce the deficit, and now the Department of Health and Human Services finds that pledge has . . . well, reached its expiration date.

No, I don't know what they were thinking, either. But the word "delusional" comes up more and more every day. (The Campaign Spot has had a makeover. Go see.)

Most recent posts here.

Sunday night miscellany

Does anyone else remember Life's Miscellany feature in the back of the magazine? As a kid, I thought the 'c' was hard. I still say it that way inside my head. Anyway, here are some miskellaneous items:

Reminder from the Other McCain -- never trust Lindsey Graham:

Liberals thought they could count on Graham because he has backstabbed conservatives so often. They’ve now discovered to their chagrin that he’s a bipartisan backstabber.

Under the Hot Air headline, "No seat is safe":

“It’s not a lifetime appointment,” said Sean Duffy, a Republican district attorney here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, where he has established himself as one of the most aggressive challengers to Mr. Obey since he went to Washington in 1969. “There are changes in this country going on, and people aren’t happy.”

That's what's known as an understatement.

Glenn Reynolds on Arizona's immigration law:

But it occurs to me in light of Krauthammer’s comments that there’s another clause in the Constitution that may be relevant: Article IV Section 4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Were I representing Arizona, I’d argue that the federal government is in default on its “protection against invasion” responsibility, and that this empowers the state to resort to self-help. Not sure how that would play out, but it would make an interesting law review article. And a fun oral argument.

Oh boy: SAVE ARE Teacher!

In Massachusetts, teachers were telling kids that they would lose their homes if they did not get more money.

Till death do they part: Humans and their pets from hell:

"I loathe my cat," said the freelance writer in New Palestine, Indiana. "Actually, loathe might be too weak of a word. I hate it. The stupid, stupid cat pees. On clothes. Only on clean clothes. And beds. Regardless of what spray I buy, what medicine she takes, she just really, really likes to pee."

Matador loses a couple of gallons of blood:

Mexican television footage aired on the Web site of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo shows Tomas working the animal with his cape when the bull makes a quick turn toward the matador and catches him in the groin, lifting him into the air for a few seconds and shaking its head with Tomas dangling from its sharp left horn.

Once on the ground, Tomas rolled away and held his hands up as if to say he was OK, but a large, dark red stain was already spreading through his glittering gold suit.

The newspaper El Pais said Tomas' injury was so serious that the bullring doctors who first operated on him did not even take time to anesthetize him.

That's pretty much all the blood a body contains. He's in serious condition after massive transfusions.


Mean streets:

A homeless good Samaritan who lay dying on a Queens sidewalk as two dozen coldhearted pedestrians strolled by wouldn't have acted so callously, his grieving family said yesterday.

"That shouldn't have happened," said Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax's cousin, Edwin Tacam. "Hugo wouldn't have done that."

Tale-Yax, 32, was repeatedly stabbed in the chest at 5:40 a.m. last Sunday while rescuing a woman from a knife-wielding thug on 144th Street near 88th Road in Jamaica, cops said.

A surveillance camera later caught 25 passers-by walking past him -- including one who stopped to snap a photo of the dying man on his cellphone.

Oremus.


So long to all that: Journalist opts for a double mastectomy and zombie breasts:

Having a BRCA mutation is like winning an especially crappy lottery. One in one thousand women win a heightened risk of breast and ovarian cancer! Choose from a fabulous double mastectomy, estrogen blockers, or the thrill of waiting for your twice-yearly mammograms to come back with cancer while you get felt up by every clinician in the state!

Some people would call me crazy for having a voluntary mastectomy at 28. But they haven’t grasped the full horror of the odds I’m looking at.

My problems have just shriveled to one tenth of their previous size.


Most recent posts here.

Not a real post

I got nuthin' this morning -- no time and nothing to say. So take a look at some of Anthony Sacramone's strange herring:

If you’re looking to raise the I.Q. of your kiddies, Mensa’s here to help. Years ago I devised one of my own brainiac games. It was called Cromwell and was like chess, only the king, the queen, and the bishops were all dead. Two new pieces were added: this guy Phil and his young son Leonard, who played the lute. Tournaments could last years, as no one was sure of the object, given that pieces could not only move in any direction for any number of spaces but also across boards, even games, so that a knight could wind up owning Park Place. Needless to say, it failed to catch on, but it did catch fire, which landed me in court more than once. Then I turned 12.

Another:

Finally, for those who hate the Yankees, witness their first triple play in 350 years. Yes, not since Ezekiel Fear-the-Lord threw to Samuel Temperance Search-the-Scriptures, who tossed it to Elijah Miserable Reprobate has New York seen such a thing…

Read the rest. Happy Sunday.

Most recent posts here.

Quick takes

Not much time this morning, so I'll just toss out a few items:

A brief Corner post from VDH. Unexcerptable.

Our president has the heart of a despot. He cannot tolerate a real debate on issues, or any kind of speech that takes issue with his agenda. Charles Krauthammer:

I was intrigued and appalled by the tone of the speech and the rhetoric as we saw in that sound bite. The way — and he‘s done this before — he tries to denigrate, cast out, and to delegitimize any argument against his.

RTR.

Obama gets it completely wrong at a naturalization ceremony.

Arizona governor signs immigration bill, against Obama's wishes. (Is that allowed?)

A couple of items from Jennifer Rubin's Flotsam and Jetsam:

How to kill the recovery: “Vast tax increases will be inevitable under President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint, the nation’s largest business groups complained on Friday. The groups blasted tax increases on businesses and wealthy individuals and families in the budget in a letter to members of the House and Senate, while warning that escalating public debt threatened the underlying economy.”

Kill the slams on the tea partiers! “House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Thursday he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a mistake when they called anti-health care protests ‘un-American’ last year.” Maybe he figured out these people are voters.

I told you not to tell them that. (Read the rest. Jen-Ru rocks.)

Steyn on Clinton and Comedy Central:

I suppose the thinking runs something like this. All things considered, the polls on Obamacare aren't totally disastrous, and the president's approval numbers seem to have bottomed out in the low forties, and when you look at what that means in terms of the electoral map this November, you've only got to scare a relatively small percentage of squishy suburban moderate centrists back into the Democratic fold, and how difficult can that be?

Hence, Bill Clinton energetically on the stump, summoning all his elder statesman's dignity (please, no giggling) in the cause of comparing Tea Partiers to Timothy McVeigh. Oh, c'mon, they've got everything in common. They both want to reduce the size of government, the late Mr. McVeigh through the use of fertilizer bombs, the Tea Partiers through control of federal spending, but these are mere nuanced differences of means, not ends. Also, both "Tim" and "Tea" are three-letter words beginning with "T": Picture him upon your knee, just Tea for Tim and Tim for Tea, you're for him and he's for thee, completely interchangeable.

RTR.

Most recent posts here.

Saturday's Mass at the Shrine UPDATED

Saturday, 1 pm, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, DC

This Pontifical Solemn High Mass is the first Tridentine Mass to be offered from the main altar of the Basilica in 45 years. Bishop Slattery of Tulsa will celebrate the Mass, offered in honor of Benedict XVI's fifth anniversary as pope. The event will be televised by EWTN and Father John Zuhlsdorf will provide commentary (or so I'm told).

Speaking of whom, Father Z was in the house at the practice, taking pictures with his phone. The images don't do the church justice but give an idea of its scale -- massive. Father Frank Phillips, pastor of our favorite parish, was there, too, as was Father Paul Scalia, and many others.


The music promises to be glorious: Palestrina's "Tu es Petrus," sung by the Choir of the Basilica, as well as chant from the Canticum Novum Schola and contributions from a youth choir made up of children from several area choirs. The kids rehearsed two of the greatest of all Latin hymns, "Adoro Te Devote" and "Salve Regina." Nicely done.

The online schedule suggests congregants be seated by 12:15.

I'll try to update later.

*Now is later. The huge crowd was standing room only. Mass came off without a hitch unless you count the youngest (scratch that -- second-youngest) torchbearer passing out in the sanctuary and smashing the glass part of the torch to smithereens as a "hitch." Lots of wonderful, traditional priests were present. #2 and #3 sons, who participated, did not pass out. And the bishop's cappa magna was amazingly long -- 30 feet? Hope I can find a picture to post.

Fr. Z is live-blogging the post-Mass party.

*Update on Monday, 4/26/10: I'm still waiting for the WaPo or other major media outlet to cover this story. The silence on this well-attended event -- 3000-4000 people -- is deafening. But a few blogs are covering it, in addition to Father Z:

A Priest Life
Te Deum Laudamus!
Femina diligere missam latinam
Renew America

**Updates:

Video of the bishop's entrance, with cappa magna.
Video of procession.
Video of the recessional.

"On Faith" WaPo discussion

Catholic Standard article

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/04/your-reactions-to-the-pontifical-mass-in-washington-part-2/

Another update: A lovely photo via Fr. Z:


More photos here.

Most recent posts here.

But that pant crease was so sharp!

David Brooks really doesn't get it:

History happened. The administration came into power at a time of economic crisis. This led it, in the first bloom of self-confidence, to attempt many big projects all at once. Each of these projects may have been defensible in isolation, but in combination they created the impression of a federal onslaught.

Love that euphemism -- "first bloom of self-confidence." Good grief. How about towering arrogance, a disdain for the will of the people, Alinsky tactics, and "projects" that massively expand the government and its influence?

Jennifer Rubin explains it all for Mr. Brooks:

History happened? Oh, let’s see if we can’t be more precise than that. “As government grew [by itself? did someone grow it?], the antigovernment right mobilized. This produced the Tea Party Movement — a characteristically raw but authentically American revolt led by members of the yeoman enterprising class.” History happened and government grew. (Like magic!) And now Brooks is disappointed.

Brooks writes that the Democratic party did this and that, that opposition grew, and that we wound up in the big- vs. little-government debate. What’s missing from this autopilot version of politics? Hmm … could it be Obama, the moderate fellow, who did the government-growing?

I have a rule of thumb: when a writer, especially a good one, excessively uses evasive or convoluted rhetoric, he is hiding something. Let’s try this: Obama, a very liberal politician, was smart enough to know he couldn’t win the presidency as a hard leftist. He posed as a moderate. New York Times columnists sung his praises. Pundits assured us that he was beyond ideology, a sort of philosopher-king with very neat pants. He got into office. He governed from the far Left. The president signed bill after bill, spending money we didn’t have and running up the debt. Obama insisted on a mammoth health-care bill the country hated. He egged Congress on to pass it. Meanwhile, the country recoiled. They hired a moderate on advice of pundits and media mavens and got a far-Left liberal, a ton of debt, an expanded federal government, and a slew of new taxes.

How’s that?

Bingo. What's the matter with David Brooks, that he can't see that?

Most recent posts here.

Another reason not to trust government

Who could be surprised by this report? According to Medicare's Office of the Actuary:

President Obama's health care overhaul law will increase the nation's health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation.

A report by economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs. It also warned that Medicare cuts may be unrealistic and unsustainable, driving about 15% of hospitals into the red and "possibly jeopardizing access" to care for seniors.

The mixed verdict for Obama's signature issue is the first comprehensive look by neutral experts.

Not so mixed, really. Mostly bad. Extending coverage to millions looks good on paper, but when the costs go up and the quality and access go down, what is the net gain? Can that be calculated?

Why weren't we provided with this report before the bill was rammed through? Answer: The Democrats in Congress chose not to wait for it. A letter from the Chief Actuary to Congress, pre-passage, makes that clear:

I regret that my staff and I will not be able to prepare our analysis within this very tight time frame, due to the complexity of the legislation.

Hat tip: Legal Insurrection

This is just one shady detail from Obamacare's sordid legislative saga. But it makes it all the more obvious that Congress doesn't care about the costs. If they did, is this the way they would approach this issue, or any other?

As Daniel Henninger points out in a piece in yesterday's WSJ, our representatives can't hide their spending the way they could before the internet. And since Obama took office, the spending has been astronomical. The end result is just what you'd expect: a ballooning deficit of trust in government:

Something unique happened in the first Obama year, about the last thing the Democratic Party needed: The veil was ripped from the true cost of government. This is the ghastly nightmare Democrats have always needed to keep locked in a crypt.

Before the Internet, that was easy. Washington, California, New York, New Jersey—who knew what the pols were spending? The Democrats (and their Republican pilot fish) could get away with this. Not now. Email lists, 24/7 newspapers, blogs, TV and talk radio—the spending beast is running naked.

When the financial crisis piled in atop a recession, the Democrats' academic/pundit economists blandly convinced the party to wave a $787 billion stimulus at the problem in early 2009. Then, on April 30, the Democrats passed an FY 2010 budget of $3.5 trillion. This year the FY 2011 budget hit $3.8 trillion, reaching a post-World War II high of 25% of GDP. In March, they passed the trillion-dollar health-care bill. Total headline spending commitments in one year: about $9 trillion. That's a lot of "trust" to ask for during a recession with 9% unemployment. And now a sense is building of some broad middle-class tax grab. After soaking the rich, comes the deluge.

Demonization? No need. They did it to themselves.

Mr. Henninger focuses on the Democrats' spending orgy, but the same principle applies to the process, a mixture of corruption and exertion of raw power repellent to American sensibilities.

H/t: MP
Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
Most recent posts here.

Blago to subpoena President Obama

What are we to make of this?

NBC Chicago:

Former governor Rod Blagojevich's defense team asked Thursday to issue a trial subpoena to the President of the United States of America.

The motion, intended to be heavily redacted, was improperly edited -- the full document was easily viewable if the text is copied and pasted to another document.

Blago hopes that Obama can help his cause:

The defense motion, filed Thursday afternoon, request to call President Obama as a corroborating witness and argued that Obama could verify that Blagojevich didn't try to sell his seat.

The redacted portions were all about President Obama:

1. Obama may have lied about conversations with convicted fraudster Tony Rezko

2. Obama may have overtly recommended Valerie Jarret for his Senate seat

3. A supporter of President Obama may have offered quid pro quo on a Jarrett senate appointment

4. Obama maintained a list of good Senate candidates

5. Rahm Emanuel allegedly floated Cheryl Jackson's name for the Senate seat

6. Obama had a secret phone call with Blagojevich

That's the short version. See NBC Chicago for full details.

Anne Leary is all over this, putting the various pieces together. She's wondering about Andy Stern's recent resignation:

From the subpoena, it sure sounds like Andy Stern was involved, who was the most frequent visitor to the White House. It seems odd Obama would call a lower level official and not Stern--if he were going to make such a phone call, but then I'm not a pol like Barack. Maybe he thought he had plausible deniability . . . .

Read the rest.

Of course Blago is a liar. But he's not the only one. And Obama's involvement with these crooks can't do him any good. Barbara Hollingsworth reports:

Blago’s lawyers also accused Obama of not telling FBI agents the truth when he said Rezko never relayed a quid pro quo offer from a lobbyist who wanted to hold a fundraiser for Obama in exchange for favorable legislation, and again when he denied having any conversations with Rezko about a license for a casino linked to the Chicago mob.

Others aren't taking this seriously except for its entertainment value.

NR reaction:

The motion filed Thursday says Obama was interviewed for two hours by prosecutors and FBI agents regarding the Blagojevich case, and the defense filed a motion asking for all transcripts, notes and reports from that interview. But the defense never received the documents, the motion said. . . . Get the popcorn!

I'll just say it once: If it were Bush, how would the liberal media be handling this story? Would they not be crucifying him?

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