Subtle creep of sharia, socialism

Still nothing from Steyn, not even a postcard with a hastily scribbled pun or depressing demographic tidbit. Nothing. But his colleague Andy McCarthy more than picks up the slack this morning. Excerpt from It's About Sharia:

The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic, and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome.

Second, that outcome is the death of freedom. In Islamist ideology, sharia is deemed to be the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society — for Islam is not merely a religious doctrine, but a comprehensive socio-economic and political system. As the former speaker elaborated, sharia embodies principles and punishments that are abhorrent to Western values. Indeed, its foundational premise is anti-American, holding that we are not free people at liberty to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, that people are instead beholden to the Islamic state, which is divinely enjoined to impose Allah’s laws.

Sharia, moreover, is anti-equality. It subjugates women and brutally punishes transgressors, particularly homosexuals and apostates. While our law forbids cruel and unusual punishments, Gingrich observed that the brutality in sharia sanctions is not gratuitous, but intentional: It is meant to enforce Allah’s will by striking example.

Read the whole thing. And if you know where to find the transcript of Gingrich's speech, which I'd rather read than watch, please pass it along.

Also picking up the slack this week is Stanley Kurtz, explaining that the methods of the socialist movement (much like that of those Islamists who "prefer a gradual march through our institutions") are more subtle than some might think:

The point is that the notion that Barack Obama is a socialist is too often dismissed as a lurid and impossibly extreme scenario, as if being a socialist had to mean throwing Molotov cocktails and demanding instant revolution. On the contrary, Harold Meyerson’s regular columns in The Washington Post show us that, even if their long-term goals are radical, it’s entirely possible for sophisticated socialists to participate in the everyday back-and-forth of American politics. This is the way to think about Obama.

One small case in point: Obama's acknowledgment, back in 2007, that the real goal of "health care reform" is the elimination of all private insurance, and the way to get there is by incremental steps.

Indoctrinating the minds of our children hasn't been overlooked. A FOIA request has resulted in the revelation (who knew?) that Howard Zinn, whose poisonous American history textbooks are widely used in our public schools and colleges, was a card-carrying communist. Stacy McCain:

What is important to note here is that Zinn evidently joined the Kremlin-controlled CPUSA not during the “Popular Front” era of the 1930s — when many idealists were seduced — but after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which Stalin cruelly and cynically sacrificed Poland to the Nazis. Zinn was a card-carrying Commie who advocated Marxism-Leninism after the Red Army’s ”Iron Curtain” occupation of Eastern Europe, after the treachery of the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss had been revealed, and even during the height of Stalin’s anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” purge!

One more:

Roger Kimball fears for Octopus Paul's safety:

Uh Oh. The friend who sent me the sad news from the London Telegraph — “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacks Octopus Paul” — rightly said that it sounded like something out of The Onion. But here’s the problem: how can you tell the difference between satire and “normal” Muslim insanity? It’s a question I haven’t been able to answer, but I hope that guards at the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre, where Paul plies his trade, will be extra vigilant. Look what happened to Theo van Gogh, and all he did was make a movie. Paul is “a symbol of decadence and decay” among people Ahmadinejad has identified “his enemies.” Bad news for Paul!

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Pertinent words from Milton Friedman

From the Foundry:

Tomorrow, July 31, would be Milton Friedman’s 98th birthday. To honor the great man, we offer a quote that, though written three decades ago, is shockingly relevant today.

In his last major work, Free to Choose, Friedman wrote words of hope:

Fortunately, we are waking up. We are again recognizing the dangers of an over-governed society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.

We hope that Friedman the sage is also Friedman the prophet.

But if [voluntary exchange] is accompanied by an excess of attempted command the combination of the two is tyranny and misery. [. . .]

Indeed, I am persuaded that government is failing to perform the functions that it alone can perform because we are trying to have it perform functions that it cannot perform.

And more. Watch the whole video. It couldn't be more relevant.

Bonus: Sit the kids down for this one:



If he can explain it to Phil, he can explain it to anyone.

Exit question: Has the ascendancy of Barack Obama awakened us enough to see that now is the time to start reversing the trend?

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Photo of the day

Lower!


Heh.

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Another baby dies of pertussis in CA

Very sad:

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — San Diego County health officials say a month-old baby boy has died of whooping cough.

The death reported Thursday marks at least the seventh infant to die of whooping cough this year in California.

The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency says the boy died Tuesday at Rady Children's Hospital, the county's first whooping cough death in nine years.

Whooping cough has become an epidemic in California, which has recorded about 1,500 cases through July 13. That's a fivefold increase over the same period last year.

Dean Sidelinger, county deputy public health officer, urges parents and caretakers to get vaccinations to avoid more deaths because the illness is highly contagious.

A typical case appears similar to a common cold for up to two weeks, followed by coughing fits that sometimes end with a whooping sound.

Related post here.

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New entity to blame for oil disaster?

Wow. Read this carefully:

A new report by the Center for Public Integrity, based on testimony from people on scene and Coast Guard logs, contains evidence that the platform sunk because of a botched response from the Coast Guard, which failed to coordinate firefighting efforts and to have the proper resources to fight the fire: [. . .]

The main source of the spill was not the blowout preventer, but the riser pipe to the rig. When the rig collapsed and sank a few days after the blowout, the pipe tore open and began pouring tens of thousands of barrels of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico. Had the rig been salvaged, it’s likely that most of the spill would never have occurred. [. . .]

The Coast Guard is not supposed to participate in firefighting, but instead assign an expert to coordinate the private firefighting efforts of the rig operator and its contractors. The Coast Guard failed to do so, and the result was an uncoordinated, “general response” effort that mainly relied on salt water to extinguish the fires. That is not the most effective way to fight rig fires; the best way is to use foam, which apparently wasn’t on hand. An expert would have known this, but as CPI’s report of the testimony shows, none was assigned:

Read the whole thing.

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Felons first at the DOJ

The Obama Justice Department, "serving as a political arm of the White House and the Democratic Party," makes a travesty of itself as it puts the voting rights of felons ahead of our military.

From Quin Hillyer:

At the Washington Times today, we have this jaw-drop-inducing story:

"The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote.... The Justice Department is so unenthusiastic about military voting that its website still lists the old requirement for a shorter 30-day military voting window, rather than the current law mandating 45 days. On the other hand, the Justice Department has no legislative mandate whatsoever to involve itself with helping felons to vote, but its website devotes a large section - 2,314 words - to advising felons how to regain voting privileges."

What the editorial doesn't describe is the content of those 2,314 words. It's amazing. The time and effort required to compile all the information, and the obvious priority the Obamites made it, really show the highly politicized cast of mind of this administration. The section includes a state-by-state list of where felons can call or write in order to try to get their voting privileges back. Yet, I repeat, this should be NO business of the Justice Department. It has no statutory or constitutional role to play in helping felons regain voting privileges. But it DOES have a statutory requirement to help DoD ensure voting rights for the military, yet it can't even be bothered, with an entire year to do it, to post even a simple link to the new law requiring that ballots be mailed to military personnel 45 days before an election.

Read the rest of Hillyer's piece as well as the editorial at the Washington Times.

More DOJ injustice: Please, Mr. Attorney General, Stop Obstructing Justice


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Propaganda doesn't create jobs

Joe Weisenthal:

Presumably the idea is: get everyone repeating this phrase, recovery summer, over and over again, and maybe it will actually happen.

Of course, the risk is that unemployed voters will wonder if there's a recovery summer for everyone else, and get even more angry that they're not taking part, punishing the Democrats in November.

Read the blogprof on the real state of the "recovery."

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Luxury-loving first family can relate to struggling Americans

I guess it would be crazy to expect the president and first lady to factor in the costs, to businesses and taxpayers, when they make a decision to go on a junket, whether it's a campaign stop at a New Jersey sub shop that will ensure a bad day for surrounding businesses, or a "mother-daughter trip" (note spin) to Spain that will cost taxpayers untold amounts in security and transportation. For a personal trip, entirely optional (and squeezed in before the real summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard).

Luxurious: The Obamas will spend four nights at Spain's most exclusive hotel, the Villa Padierna on the Costa del Sol near Marbella

It would be fascinating to learn just how many hard-earned American tax dollars have been spent by the Obamas in their pursuit of the high life.

To be fair, though, the president has assured us that he can relate to Americans who are struggling financially:

President Obama says he can relate to the plight of Americans striving in the struggling economy to pay bills while saving for their kids' education.

He says he and first lady Michelle Obama took a hit like everybody else when the economy nearly collapsed, telling ABC that a college fund for daughters Malia and Sasha has gone "up and down" with the stock market.

Obama says the first couple is "not that far removed from what most Americans are going through." He tells the network "it was just a few years ago that we had high credit card balances, we had two kids, thinking about college. We had our own retirement accounts, wondering if we were going to be able to get enough assets in there."

Absolutely galling.

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Stanley Kurtz is back, with a book: Radical-in-Chief

I became a huge fan of Stanley Kurtz during the 2008 campaign. Dr. Kurtz, a painstaking, scholarly, responsible researcher, was, in my view, foremost among those happy few who dug deep into the question the liberal media struggled so very hard to ignore -- Who is Barack Obama? Of course, Kurtz received the smear treatment for his efforts.

I have wondered what he's been up to since then. Now we know:

I am pleased to announce that my political biography of President Obama, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, will be published on October 19 by the Threshold imprint of Simon & Schuster. Here is the Amazon page. Here is the cover:

Given my various adventures during the last presidential campaign, it seemed best to remain discrete until now. The goal has been to minimize any possible interference with my research, which has proceeded non-stop since 2008. The book is under embargo, so I cannot detail its revelations. Today’s press release conveys the core argument, however. Here’s the text:

Part biography, part history, part detective story, RADICAL-IN-CHIEF reveals the carefully hidden tale of Barack Obama’s political past. Stanley Kurtz, who’s research helped inject the Bill Ayers and ACORN issues into the 2008 presidential campaign, presents the results of more than two years of digging into President Obama’s radical political world. The book is filled with previously unknown information about the president’s past, tied together by a bold argument about what Obama’s deepest political convictions really are.

RADICAL-IN-CHIEF marshals a wide array of never-before-seen evidence to establish that the president of the United States is indeed a socialist. Tracing an unbroken thread of socialist activities and political partnerships, from Obama’s youth through his community organizing days and beyond, the book confirms that the president’s harshest critics have been right about his socialism all along.

RADICAL-IN-CHIEF also exposes the truth about community organizers–the socialist beliefs they hold and hide, and how they trained and groomed a president. Obama’s community organizer colleagues had a strategy for slowly and stealthily turning the United States into a socialist nation. The Obama administration is carrying out that strategy today.

This book will forever change our national debate about who Barack Obama is.

I’m excited to be able to offer this book to the public, and look forward to reentering our collective debate over the political character of the Obama administration.

I'm sure Dr. Kurtz is fully aware of what will come his way when the book is released.

I'm going to add Radical-in-Chief to my Amazon store immediately.

Linked at MichelleMalkin.com (buzzworthy) -- thanks!

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Journolist Trig-mania

You really must read it to believe it. My personal favorite entry is this weighty question, so important to the 2008 presidential campaign and the fate of our country:

Shannon Brownlee
Sept 1, 2008, 11:37am

can your water break and not have it be a big gush?

Shannon, whoever you are, why don't you go ask your mommy? Or one of those dads on the list who know everything about pregnancy because their wives have had one or two babies? Like this guy:

Lamar Robertson
Aug 30, 2008, 9:35am

my wife and the mother of my two children just looked at this picture and immediately commented, “SHE’S WEARING A BELT!” let’s just say that’s not the accessory of choice for most women in their third trimester.

Open and shut case right there. The Telltale Belt.

This one starts out well but ends rather badly:

Harold Pollack
Aug 30, 2008 12:44am

Yuck on several fronts. We don’t have any evidence she did anything wrong here. If the baby was her daughter’s, what’s the problem here? Unless she actively prevented her daughter from having an abortion, we should leave this alone.

So preventing your minor daughter from aborting her child is "doing something wrong," but raising daughter's baby while pretending he's your own is not a problem.

To their credit, some of the Journolisters hung on to sanity and declined to indulge in what Sarah Palin calls sickness and darkness. The Daily Caller highlights the "heroes of Journolist" here.

Linked at MichelleMalkin.com (buzzworthy) -- thanks!
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Obama diminishes his office

Today's must-read: The Unpresidential President by James Ceaser. A few excerpts:

Barack Obama has managed a rare feat in American history: The longer he is president, the less presidential he has become. Obama has reversed the usual process of growth and maturation, appearing today far more like a candidate for the presidency—and a very ordinary one at that—than he did during the latter stages of his campaign.

He has also become practitioner-in-chief of what Alexander Hamilton referred to in Federalist 68 as the “little arts of popularity.” These arts, Hamilton well knew, would become an inevitable feature of democratic politics. But their spread from the province of political campaigns into the “normal” conduct of the presidency represents a dramatic reversal of the Founders’ design. The Constitution was crafted to prevent a campaign-style presidency; Obama is in the midst of creating one. [. . .]

It may be, however, that Obama has created a box for himself from which he cannot escape. He has so monopolized and personalized the public relations aspect of his office that now only his own voice can speak for the presidency. Profligacy in the use of public access—almost a speech a day—has made indirectness impossible. A president who has become his own chief point man puts at risk an asset that is helpful to his standing and vital for the nation’s political system: the dignity of the presidential office.

Lots more here. The author laments our current lack of leaders possessing something called "stature." Hard to deny:


We've touched before on some of the ways the Obamas have signaled their lack of respect for the office:

Obama's disrespect for presidency hits new low, in which Obama does a promo for George Lopez's new show. Astonishing but true.

What Not to Wear to a Medal of Honor Ceremony, in which the first lady dresses in a loud, sexy cocktail dress and dangley earrings for a posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony.

Paling by comparison with the above, but still missing the presidential mark, is the photo below:


Even Robin Givhan, an Obama booster, said of the first lady, "She gets the fancy jet. She has to dress for the ride."

And how about this photo as an indicator of how Barack Obama understands the significance of the office of the president of the United States:


Toss in for good measure our dignity-free VP, with his fondness, and Obama's, for repeating language worthy of four year-olds.

Also see Jimmie Bise: The Resolute Desk is Not for Sitting, Mr. President. Now Grow the Heck Up!

But it will not happen. As I wrote back in October,

Obama has many weaknesses, naivete and inexperience prominent among them. But of all his flaws, his ego is his real Achilles heel; it precludes self-correction and allows his other weaknesses to thrive. The international community is on to his narcissism (see Sarkozy), sees it as a vulnerability, and is using it as a means to manipulate him. Stay tuned to see how this tragedy unfolds. The omens aren't good.

See Power Line for other examples of Obama's smallness.

Linked at MichelleMalkin.com (buzzworthy) -- thanks!
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Obama's golf jones

We all have our obsessions. And it's become pretty clear that Obama's is golf.

I was in DC yesterday. Most people would not have chosen to spend the most unbearable part of the day outside. But a high of 99 degrees didn't deter Obama from hitting the links -- for nearly four hours:

President Obama hit the golf course Sunday as the Washington region experienced a humid heatwave that pushed the heat index into the triple digits.

Obama left the White House shortly after noon for the links at Andrew Air Force Base. White House Trip Director Marvin Nicholson, presidential aide Ben Finkenbinder and campaign photographer David Katz were his playing partners.

The game was cut short by a strong thunderstorm, and Obama returned to the White House shortly after 4 p.m.

Pity the guys who had to golf with him.


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Betty Draper's guide to parenting

Detachment parenting:



She's so awful, isn't she?

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Adams: Military votes not protected by DOJ

Your morning outrage, from former DOJ election lawyer J. Christian Adams:

In the 2008 presidential election, 17,000 soldiers, sailors, and Marines mailed home completed ballots that were never counted.

Usually these ballots didn’t get home in time, mostly because they weren’t sent overseas early enough. One cause of this catastrophe is the Keystone Cops routine the Department of Justice Voting Section uses to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of military voters. Unfortunately, all signs point to a comic sequel in the upcoming November elections.

Congress tried to fix the problem last year by mandating that all ballots must be sent overseas at least 45 days before the election. But Military Voter Protection Project Director M. Eric Eversole has accused Justice Department officials of encouraging states to seek an exemption to the law. The law indeed grants states the right to ask the Pentagon to opt out of the law. Even worse, Eversole says the Department is telegraphing to states that it doesn’t want to pursue litigation to enforce the law.

Some voting rights are more important than others, it seems. Where have we heard this before?

Exemptions to the 45-day mailing mandate were supposed to be rare, and granted only for the most extreme emergencies. States had plenty of time to amend their laws to comply with the new 45-day window. Many states did nothing. Instead of aggressively enforcing the new protections, Justice has told states that the waiver provisions are ambiguous and encouraged waivers in numerous ways.

The Department of Justice isn't even trying:

One need only look at 2008 for proof. That year the Justice Department set up no telephone hotline for military voters to complain if they didn’t receive their ballot in time. No email address for the armed services was in use either. No outreach via military email, such as the daily “Early Bird,” took place. In fact, on the DOJ webpage devoted to military voting, all complaints are referred to the Pentagon. Naturally, after being detoured to the Pentagon, the aggrieved solider will learn the Pentagon has no enforcement power at all! Justice does.

Disgrace is right. Read the rest. Hat tip to Doug Ross.

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Popular Manassas teacher Kevin Ricks accused of decades of molestation

Stoke the fire under that kettle. If convicted, alleged serial molester Kevin Ricks ought to be boiled in oil.

What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn't know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks's world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation.

They didn't know about his library of homemade pornographic videos and explicit photographs capturing his tequila-soaked sex acts with teenage boys he had handpicked. They didn't know about the makeshift shrine boxes containing mementos of the episodes, including sex toys, soiled tissues and hair trimmings.

But he was such a nice guy!

A four-month Washington Post investigation of Ricks's career as a teacher, tutor, foreign exchange host and camp counselor has revealed a pattern of abuse that dates to at least 1978 and has left a trail of victims spanning the globe. But despite the abuse, Ricks moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation's public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him.

In some cases, school officials and foreign exchange companies knew of or suspected Ricks's inappropriate behavior and simply let him go, leaving the next employer with no idea what was coming.

Will any school officials be held accountable for entrusting their students to this monster? And are parents so ignorant or distracted that they don't hear alarm bells scream when a teacher takes kids to the movies, buys them iPods, and has sleepovers at his house??? Some parents did in fact catch on and complained to authorities. But nothing ever happened.

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Music break: You Was Right, Baby

Miss Peggy Lee:



Bonus: Sinatra and Ellington. I don't know why I'm charmed by this but I am:



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Obama drivels on about "moving forward" and "heading in the right direction"

Another Steynless Saturday morning. This is unsustainable. We need Mark to provide an antidote to Obama's mind-numbing blather.

One thing you can say for our president: he's consistent, ever-ready to point fingers, deflect blame from his exalted person, baldly misrepresent facts, impugn motives of opponents, etc.

What's worse -- his mendacity or the tiresomeness and utter predictability of it all?

“I can’t tell you that this plan will bring back all the jobs we lost and restore our economy to full strength overnight,” Obama said. “But I am confident that we are finally headed in the right direction. We are moving forward. And what we can’t afford right now is to go back to the same ideas that created this mess in the first place.”

Wake me up when it's over.

Obama was attacking Rep. John Boehner's plan for creating jobs, which our "leader" called "surprisingly short, and sadly familiar." (Why drag Barbara Boxer into this?) If Steyn weren't away he'd use that line to say something actually funny.

At the risk of putting you into a coma, here is what Obama said about Boehner's terrible ideas:

First, he would repeal health insurance reform, which would take away tax credits from millions of small business owners, and take us back to the days when insurance companies had free rein to drop coverage and jack up premiums. Second, he would say no to new investments in clean energy, after his party already voted against the clean energy tax credits and loans that are creating thousands of new jobs and hundreds of new businesses. And third, even though his party voted against tax cuts for middle-class families, he would permanently keep in place the tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans – the same tax cuts that have added hundreds of billions to our debt.

These are not new ideas. They are the same policies that led us into this recession. They will not create jobs, they will kill them. They will not reduce our deficit, they will add $1 trillion to our deficit. They will take us backward at a time when we need to keep America moving forward.

Is there any point in mentioning that Obama's ideas have been tried, too, and are bringing down Europe as we speak? As for killing jobs, well, I have to concede that he's the expert on that.

Cross-posted at Potluck.

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Arrogance unlimited

Rangel: No longer getting the respect he deserves from NBC!

Wow.

H/t: MKH

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No honor among lame ducks

Charles Krauthammer:

As John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, Kent Conrad, and Tom Harkin are already looking forward to what they might get passed in a lame-duck session. Among the major items being considered are card check, budget-balancing through major tax hikes, and climate-change legislation involving heavy carbon taxes and regulation. [. . .]

It’s a target-rich environment. The only thing holding the Democrats back would be shame — a Washington commodity in chronically short supply. To pass in a lame-duck session major legislation so unpopular that Democrats had no chance of passing it in regular session — after major Democratic losses signifying a withdrawal of the mandate implicitly granted in 2008 — would be an egregious violation of elementary democratic norms.

Perhaps shame will constrain the Democrats. But that is not to be counted on. It didn’t stop them from pushing through health-care reform the public didn’t want by means of “reconciliation” maneuvers and without a single Republican vote in either chamber — something unprecedented in American history for a reform of such scope and magnitude.

How then to prevent a runaway lame-duck Congress? Bring the issue up now — applying the check-and-balance of the people’s will before it disappears the morning after Election Day. Every current member should be publicly asked: In the event you lose in November — a remote and deeply deplorable eventuality, but still not inconceivable — do you pledge to adhere to the will of the electorate and, in any lame-duck session of Congress, refuse to approve anything but the most routine legislation required to keep the government functioning?

The Democrats could, of course, make the pledge today and break it tomorrow. Call me naïve, but I can’t believe anyone would be that dishonorable.

I can very easily believe it. When have these thugs displayed honor? They've relied on lies, bribery, and tricks to achieve their goals. And nothing is clearer than their disdain for the will of the people. So yeah, I do call Mr. K naive. The idea of extracting a promise to be good from this band of thieves is kind of pathetic.

Thanks to michellemalkin.com for the buzzworthy link.

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Obama admin promoting abortion in Kenya with taxpayer dollars

FOX reports:

A Republican lawmaker is accusing the White House of “unconscionable” and “illegal” acts for its role in Kenya's referendum on a new constitution, which would legalize abortion in the country for the first time.

Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey cited a report by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which estimated that more than $23 million in U.S. taxpayer funds have been spent on the referendum, and Smith and other conservatives have complained that at least some of that money has been spent in sport of the proposed constitution, possibly violating U.S. law.

“Under no circumstances should the U.S. government take sides,” Smith said at a news conference Wednesday. “Yet that is precisely what the Obama administration has done.”

He and other lawmakers accuse the Obama administration of offering incentives to Kenya to approve the controversial new constitution, promising that passage would “allow money to flow” into the nation's coffers. A federal law known as the Siljander Amendment makes it illegal for the U.S. government to lobby on abortion in other countries.

“We were unable to get any information prior to asking for those (USAID) reports,” Smith said. “There’s been no transparency in this process."

Supply your own outrage. This is just more of the same.

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Race and gender were factors in dealership closings

Sure, the Obama administration dealt a casual death blow to tens of thousands of auto dealership jobs. As Michelle Malkin wrote yesterday:

Under the guise of “saving” the American auto industry through a bipartisan, taxpayer-funded bailout now topping $80 billion, President Obama’s know-nothing bureaucrats pushed the car companies to eliminate thousands of jobs — with unjustified haste using dubious economic models.

More or less what we've come to expect. But it's even worse than that:

The Obama administration, already under fire for unprecedented allegations of racial bias, faces a new bias claim from a most unlikely source: one of the administration's own inspectors general.

Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout -- closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler -- were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky.

[D]ealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships. [Emphasis added.]

Thus, to meet numbers forced on them by the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler were forced to shutter other, potentially more viable, dealerships. The livelihood of potentially tens of thousands of families was thus eliminated simply because their dealerships were not minority- or woman-owned.

This is what happens when you elect a POTUS who sees the world through the lens of race. Read Victor Davis Hanson for a neat summary of the resurgence of racial discord in the age of Obama.

Related:
Barofsky: Thousands of jobs needlessly killed by Obama admin
The Obama mandate: Sharing the sacrifice


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Apologies to Shirley Sherrod

Truth matters. Jonah is right:

I think she should get her job back. I think she's owed apologies from pretty much everyone, including my good friend Andrew Breitbart. I generally think Andrew is on the side of the angels and a great champion of the cause. He says he received the video in its edited form and I believe him. But the relevant question is, Would he have done the same thing over again if he had seen the full video from the outset? I'd like to think he wouldn't have. Because to knowingly turn this woman into a racist in order to fight fire with fire with the NAACP is unacceptable. When it seemed that Sherrod was a racist who abused her power, exposing her and the NAACP's hypocrisy was perfectly fair game. But now that we have the benefit of knowing the facts, the equation is completely different.

Watch the entire video. The clip was cut before she got to the moral of her story. Shannen Coffin:

It is not surprising that a black woman growing up in the deep South might harbor some suspicions of her white brethren; it is reassuring that Sherrod was able to overcome those preconceptions, and it is refreshing that she could admit to having had them — an honest admission that certainly doesn’t cast her in the most flattering light, until you listen to her whole story.

I apologize for my flippant condemnation of Shirley Sherrod.

Update 7/24/10: Sherrod's comments on Breitbart:

I think he would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That's where I think he would like to see all black people end up again.

And I think that's why he's so vicious against a black president, you know. He would go after me. I don't think it was even the NAACP he was totally after. I think he was after a black president.

Jonah Goldberg:

I see. So Shirley Sherrod, who didn't know who Andrew Breitbart was 72 hours ago, now knows him well enough to say that he wants to put all blacks back into slavery. If I were David Axelrod, I'd be calling this woman and beg her to stop talking. And, yes, she does owe Andrew an apology.

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The Obama mandate: "Sharing the sacrifice"

Read Michelle Malkin on the heavy, blundering hand of the Obama administration, which, contrary to its absurd claims, doesn't create (or even "save") jobs, but, rather, carelessly and cluelessly destroys them:

I encourage you all to read through the entire 45-page report. The superficial MSM coverage of the audit, released late Sunday, didn’t do justice to the independent watchdog’s damning indictment of the arrogant bureaucrats in charge of nationalizing the U.S. auto industry — or the devastating consequences of politically-driven “shared sacrifice” with Obama, his SEIU cronies, and campaign lackeys behind the wheel.

Obama had the chutzpah to drag an unemployed car dealership employee laid off by Honda up on stage Monday to attack Republicans over government unemployment benefits. I suggest Republicans match him with a stage full of unemployed Chrysler and GM workers who lost their dealership jobs as a direct result of the capricious mandates of Obama’s non-expert auto experts.

The worst, and most revealing, part:

Mr. Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team ‘could have left any one component (of the restructuring plan) alone,’ but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President’s mandate for ‘shared sacrifice.’”

Ah. Now it's all beginning to make sense. The suffering Obama hath wrought is for our own spiritual good. Unemployed auto dealership workers ought to be thanking Obama for allowing them the privilege of "sharing the sacrifice." And as things steadily worsen (see chart), and there's more and more sacrifice to be shared, we'll all be better off. (True, some of us don't seem to be sharing as much sacrifice as others; it seems some are exempt from the mandate.)

And our betters are just getting warmed up. The president will sign the Dodd-Frank bill today, a monstrosity which, Mark Calabria writes, will sow the seeds of the next financial crisis:

In choosing to ignore the actual causes of the financial crisis — loose monetary policy, Fannie/Freddie, and never-ending efforts to expand homeownership — and instead further expanding government guarantees behind financial risk-taking, Congress is eliminating whatever market discipline might have been left in the banking industry. But we shouldn’t be surprised, since this administration and Congress have consistently chosen to ignore the real problems facing our country — unemployment, perverse government incentives for risk-taking, massive fiscal imbalances — and instead pursued an agenda of rewarding special interests and expanding government.

At least we’ll know what to call the next crisis: the Dodd-Frank Crash.

Cold comfort, but so much more sacrifice to be shared.

More from the American Spectator's Jon Berlau, who characterizes the bill not as "reform" but rather as

pages and pages of massively costly, counterproductive and possibly unconstitutional mandates on nearly every type of business except for those government-sponsored enterprises at the root of the crisis. And while the bill claims to crack down on excesses on Wall Street, its harshest impact will likely be on Main Street businesses that had nothing to do with the meltdown.

Substitute "harsh impact" with "shared sacrifice" and you get the idea.

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What scares progressives

Highly recommended read: Kevin Williamson's Coyotes in the State of Nature. All good, but as a veteran homeschooling stay-at-home mother of a large family I found this part especially interesting:

The horror that progressives feel for gun owners is in many ways like the horror they feel for homeschoolers, whom they recognize, correctly, as one of the few truly radical movements in America. Prof. Robin West of Georgetown University’s law school offers a typical reaction to the phenomenon: “The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.” God defend the holy tax base!

Homeschooling families in fact have higher average incomes than non-homeschool families, a fact that Professor West acknowledges and then magics away through the device of the “radically fundamentalist movement family,” the one she locates on tarps in parking lots. Like Mr. Ignatius, Professor West is forthright about the statist origins of her horror: “Parents in many states have full authority, free of all state oversight, to determine the content of their children’s education,” a situation almost as unendurable as life in a 1,000-square-foot house. Professor West writes longingly of the golden age when practically all education was conducted under the tutelage of the state and opting out of the system was forbidden — and “parents who did so were criminals.”

Don't tell the elitist, materialistic, culturally-blindered Prof. West, lest her head explode, but homeschoolers are everywhere. And many of them are indistinguishable from normal people.

I sent the excerpt to husband, who emailed back:

Man, I am so sick of those people lording it over us with their tarps.

See what I have to submit to?

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Journolist: "Call them racists"

It was obvious in '08 that liberal media goons were running interference for their candidate, spinning him as the messiah and playing dead, or worse, on stories that might hurt his chances. Now there's documented proof of collusion:

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Much more at the Daily Caller. Breitbart comments:

American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do.

The only way that the media will recover from the horrifying discoveries found in the Journolist is to investigate and investigate until every guilty reporter, professor and institution is laid bare begging America for forgiveness. Will they do it?

Nah. They'll just keep lying and smearing.

Meanwhile, their fraudulent candidate is wrecking the country as quickly as he can:

WSJ on Stimulating Unemployment:

Presidents typically invite Americans to appear at Rose Garden press conferences to trumpet their policy successes, but yesterday we saw what may have been a first. President Obama introduced three Americans—an auto worker, a fitness center employee and a woman in real estate—who've been out of work so long they underscore the failure of his economic program. Where are his spinmeisters when he really needs them?

Sure, Mr. Obama's ostensible purpose was to lobby Congress for the eighth extension of jobless benefits since the recession began, to a record 99 weeks, or nearly two years. And he whacked Senate Republicans for blocking the extension, though Republicans are merely asking that the extension be offset by cuts in other federal spending.

But Mr. Obama was nonetheless obliged to concede that, 18 months after his $862 billion stimulus, there are still five job seekers for every job opening and that 2.5 million Americans will soon run out of unemployment benefits. What happens when the 99 weeks of benefits run out? Will the President demand that they be extended to three years, or four? [. . .]

The one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won't entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation. Since February 2009, the jobless rate has climbed to 9.5% from 8.1%, and private industry has shed two million jobs. The overall economy has been expanding for at least a year, but employers still don't seem confident enough to add new workers. The economists who sold us the stimulus say it's a mystery. But maybe employers are afraid to hire because they don't know what costs government will impose on them next.

Read on.

Other items:

Sure, he's a thousand times better than Obama. But here's one of the reasons I do not want Romney for prez in 2012:

RomneyCare is a bust: “If you want a preview of President Obama’s health-care ‘reform,’ take a look at Massachusetts. In 2006, it enacted a “reform” that became a model for Obama. What’s happened since isn’t encouraging. The state did the easy part: expanding state-subsidized insurance coverage. It evaded the hard part: controlling costs and ensuring that spending improves people’s health. … What’s occurring in Massachusetts is the plausible future: Unchecked health spending shapes government priorities and inflates budget deficits and taxes, with small health gains. And they call this ‘reform’?”

I hope we can do better than Romney.


Michelle Obama assures us that our insurance will "be there" for us. This takes a load off of Don Surber's mind:

Finally after 40,000 years of civilization, families can control their own care.

What a relief.

People no longer have to sit around helplessly while their children die of smallpox.

Thanks to Mama Obama and Papa Barack, we now have control of our care.

And with the new Obamataxes, we will have control of our money.

Not only do we now control our own care, but “it gives us the comfort of knowing that our insurance will be there when we need it most — especially if we get sick.”

I hear that. The other day when I scratched my cornea, my insurance wasn’t there for me. It was nowhere to be found. I had to go to the doctor. When I came home, there was my insurance. Totally useless. Oh sure, it later paid the bill. But when I needed my insurance, did it wash out my eye? No. Did it put salve on my eye? No. Did it write out the prescription for pain medicine? No.

But now, thanks to Obamacare, my insurance will be there when I am sick.

And I will control my family’s care.

Thank you Mr. and Mrs. O. For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I’m Really Proud of My Country.

Who's writing Michelle's stuff, by the way? It's awful.


Mark Steyn update: he's still on vacation. Be brave.


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About that pink KitchenAid mixer

Instapundit writes:

GOOD CAUSE OR NOT, the pink KitchenAid stand mixer just doesn’t do it for me. In fact, I’m surprised how negative my reaction is. I think its appeal is based on looking more rugged and industrial. . . .

I adore the pink, though I go with the classic white in my kitchen. It's not the color but the cause that's problematical for me. Barbara Curtis linked to this a while back:

Unfortunately, Susan G. Komen has given over $3 million dollars between 2003 and 2008 to Planned Parenthood which is the nation's leading abortion provider.

While Susan G. Komen makes claims that these grants go for breast exams, once the funds go to Planned Parenthood they are fungible. For example, you can throw two twenty dollar bills into a purse one from a friend and one from your own account, but when you go to pay the light bill you use both.

The same is true with Planned Parenthood's money it receives from Komen. Whenever someone applies for a grant they can say that while this $5,000 is going to breast cancer research, 20 percent of that money is going to pay for administrative costs like keeping the lights on and paying rent. So in essence, the money that people are raising to fight breast cancer is also going to keep the lights on at Planned Parenthood.

Read the rest.

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Shirley, we hardly knew ye UPDATED

Geez. We just met, and now she's gone already. Guess that government job wasn't as secure as she thought.

To see the ugly face of racism, watch the video here.

*Update: Sherrod's story was grossly distorted out of context. Apologies to Mrs. Sherrod.

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Barofsky: Thousands of jobs needlessly killed by Obama admin

The latest installment of Obama the Giant Job Killer, via Ed Morrissey:

Last year, while the Obama administration seized two of the nation’s three main domestic auto manufacturers, it also shut down thousands of dealerships across the country, supposedly to stabilize GM and Chrysler. A new report from Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General of the TARP program, calls into question that decision. In a sharp rebuke to the White House, Barofsky says that the action needlessly cost tens of thousands of jobs and extended an already-disastrous downturn in employment:

President Obama’s auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships without adequately considering the jobs that would be lost or having a firm idea of the cost savings that would be achieved, an audit of the process has concluded.

The report by Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department, said both carmakers needed to shut down some underperforming dealerships. But it questioned whether the cuts should have been made so quickly, particularly during a recession. The report, released on Sunday, estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result.

Read the rest. The Obama administration either didn't know or didn't care about forcing all those people -- tens of thousands -- out of work. Tough luck for them; Big Brother can't worry about the little people who find themselves in the way when he's busy taking over the economy. Just as in the Gulf, it's, er, well, not optimal to destroy people's livelihoods, but them's the breaks.

Cross-posted at Potluck.

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Quote of the day

First the story:

Arriving in a small jet before the Obamas was the first dog, Bo, a Portuguese water dog given as a present by the late U.S. Sen Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and the president’s personal aide Reggie Love, who chatted with Baldacci.

Then the quote from Doug Powers:

There was some concern because the jet carrying the First Couple’s egos was a bit late in arriving due to rough weather over Shangri-La.

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Field marks of the cultural elite

Pity the Postmodern Cultural Elite A must-read from Victor Davis Hanson, in which he delineates the characteristics of the cultural elite:

An estrangement from truth:

One requisite to being a cultural elite, unfortunately, is a certain allegiance to untruth, to saying one thing and doing another. Consider the manifestations of falsity from ecology to race. Often exempt from worry over a weekly check, and distanced from the mechanics of how things work, the elite clamors for a green cap-and-trade revolution. It rejects compromise with a fossil fuel near future that would transition us in a half-century or so to renewable energy.

An estrangment from nature:

The cultural elite class tends to romanticize nature, since it has little contact with it. Energy Secretary Steven Chu cheaply announces that California farms will dry up and blow away, with no clue how the tomatoes in his salad or the lamb chops on his plate are grown, cleaned, shipped — and land in his mouth.

The further the distance from nature, the greater the desire to experience it vicariously, symbolically, or representationally. The more we don’t clean and eat the fish we catch, the more we don’t know an apple from a cherry tree, so the more we idolize something like a three-inch Delta smelt and shut down 500,000 acres of icky distant irrigated land to ensure the minnow-like, but beloved, fish has enough oxygenated water in the California delta. [. . .]

In short, money, privilege, and status create in the cultural elite both a fear of mixing it up with others that might jeopardize position and placement, and yet guilt for that very sense of entitlement and exemption. All that, in turn, only heightens the shrill and sanctimonious rhetorical demands on less blessed others to prove their morality.

An unfamiliarity with physical labor:

An elite is often characterized as staying fit entirely by the workout, the gym, the jog — never by chain sawing, digging, climbing, or hammering. Yet here too arises contradiction. The elite, being largely progressive, champion the muscular classes to the degree they can stay distant from them. Having good abs by crunching is far different from having big arms by using a five-foot long pneumatic drill.

Ambiguous as to gender:

Here I am worried, as I have expressed previously, about the marked differences in the way our cultural elite express themselves. Hollywood offers an instructive example. Why can’t any of our actors talk like a Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Bill Holden, or Gregory Peck? I’m not asking for Jack Palance or Fess Parker, just a normal male mainstream voice. I know there are Al Pacinos and Robert De Niros, but they too seem to fade before the new wave of DiCaprios. Elites talk (and probably sound) like the freedmen in Petronius’s Satyricon.

Today’s male’s voice is often far more feminine than that of 50 years ago. Sort of whiney, sort of nasally, sort of fussy. Being overexact, sighing, artificially pausing, all that seems part of the new elite parlance. In terms of vocabulary, the absolute (“he’s no damn good,” “she’s a coward,” “he ran the business to hell”) is avoided. Pejoratives and swearing resemble adolescent temper tantrums rather than threats that might well presage violence.

In other words, sexuality, sex roles, and gender differences sound as if they are less distinct among the elite.

Unhindered by logic:

There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal.

Sorry I chopped it up. Read the whole thing.

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Sparkly Vampires

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Saturday reads: Campus "diversity," Big Brother and your BMI

Another empty, Steynless Saturday. But somehow the world continues to turn.

The jury is still out on whether the cap on the oil well is working: Does it work or not? BP tries to make sense of puzzling readings from busted well. It's all about the pressure and how quickly or slowly it's rising or falling. Or something. The good news is that, at least for now, the oil isn't gushing.


Okay, now it's getting personal. Big Brother now wants to know how fat I am. Actually, he has assumed the legal right to know:

New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.

The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”

The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national exchange.

(What could go wrong?) The liberal assertion that they believe in the right of individual privacy is another Orwellian lie.

Wow. ROTC members and future farmers need not apply? From How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others:

"Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, "has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions." Excelling in these activities "is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission."

Who "diversity" does not encompass:

Most elite universities seem to have little interest in diversifying their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class "white ethnics," social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after raising children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. While these kinds of people would surely add to the diverse viewpoints and life-experiences represented on college campuses, in practice "diversity" on campus is largely a code word for the presence of a substantial proportion of those in the "underrepresented" racial minority groups. 

Quotas are especially bad for Asian students. The whole thing is appalling. See Jonah Goldberg for a punchline to this depressing story. Exit question: Why would  conservative parents choose to send their children, and their money, to these institutions?

Trivia: Julie Mason, from the ick files, makes the perfect choice of creep to play another creep.


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Sickening: Canadian judge slaps wrist of mother who strangled 14 year old daughter with head scarf

The judge, Sal LoVecchio, gave the woman three years probation. He saw jail time as a form of "vengeance."

Magomadova, 40, a refugee from the wartorn country of Chechnya, was originally charged with second-degree murder for killing her daughter Aminat, 14, on Feb. 26, 2007, at their Calgary home.

But LoVecchio deemed she did not intend to kill her, even though such an act required at least 2 1/2 minutes of continuous strangulation to cause death, and convicted her last October of the lesser included offence of manslaughter.

An expert testified that Magomadova may have strangled her daughter for up to five minutes.

But Judge LoVecchio's heart apparently went out to the bereaved mother:

“Aminat is gone and she will very soon lose (her son) as well,” he said.

$%@#&?!

But relax, folks. Justice was served by LoVecchio's agonizing. He "wrestled" with the deadly "family dynamics" before making his bizarre decision:

LoVecchio said he wrestled with dynamics of the family in reaching his conclusions.

"This was a family in crisis with events spiralling out of control," he said, alluding to the friction between Aset and Aminat leading up to the deadly confrontation that morning.

"It cannot be reduced to simply a case of mom choosing to kill her daughter as a form of discipline because she misbehaved. Quite simply, the events of that morning cannot be seen as a single isolated event."

Is "a form of discipline" a euphemism for "honor killing"? Honor killing, like this act of filicide, is indeed a wonderfully effective way to control a child. Aminat will never misbehave again.

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Pushing back against Berwick and Obama

Sen. Mitch McConnell and the GOP are pushing back against Obama's recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service:

In retaliation, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) blocked a Democratic request Wednesday evening to advance two of President Obama’s nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Also Wednesday evening, Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee demanded a public hearing on Berwick.

(Via Doug Ross)

Three cheers. If only these efforts could have some effect.

Mark Tapscott has a suggestion for 2011: Do not fund Berwick's position:

The only salutary response available to a congressional majority intent on upholding separation of powers among three equal and coordinate branches is to exercise the most basic power given to the House by the Constitution - the power of the purse, to decide how federal money will be spent through appropriations. Presidents can appoint but the House has no obligation whatsoever to fund positions held by individuals whose views are clearly noxious to the maintenance of the constitutional morality that insures republican stability. [emphasis added]

Henninger misses it on one critical point, though, when he observes that "within Mr. Obama's circle, they all think like this. Defeat Dr. Berwick, and they will send up 50 more who would pursue the same goals."

No, precisely because they all think like Berwick, we can be certain that there will be 50 more Berwicks from Obama no matter what if the president is not forced to reverse himself on this decision. That won't happen unless a GOP-led House makes it crystal clear that every time Obama appoints another Berwick, funds will be withdrawn for that position.

You cannot persuade an opponent who has nuked you once from doing it again and again without responding with such force that the costs he must bear are unacceptable to him.

Exactly. This is more than a political squabble. We're in a fight to save our country from Berwick and his socialist ilk. The Obama way is to get around even the semblance of checks and balances (think of all the czars who need no approval at all). Berwick's appointment is only good through the end of the year. God willing, we'll be in a much stronger position to fight come January. The power of the purse will be an important weapon against Obamacare. (And while they're at it, perhaps Congress could decline to fund Sam Kass, Obama's latest czar appointment. Pleeze.)

If you haven't read Mr. Henninger's piece yet, a few excerpts:

Dr. Berwick's ideas on the design and purpose of the U.S. system of medicine aren't merely about "change." They would be revolutionary.

One may agree with these views or not, but for the president to tell the American people they have to simply accept this through anything so flaccid as a recess appointment is beyond outrageous. It isn't acceptable. [. . .]

Let's look, then, at what President Obama won't let the American electorate hear Dr. Berwick say in front of a committee of Congress. These excerpts are from past speeches and articles by Dr. Berwick:

"I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do."

"You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach."

"Please don't put your faith in market forces. It's a popular idea: that Adam Smith's invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can."

"Indeed, the Holy Grail of universal coverage in the United States may remain out of reach unless, through rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest, we can reduce per capita costs."

"About 8% of GDP is plenty for 'best known' care."

"A progressive policy regime will control and rationalize financing—control supply."

"Young doctors and nurses should emerge from training understanding the values of standardization and the risks of too great an emphasis on individual autonomy."

And so on. Dr. Berwick hasn't been shy about articulating his socialist worldview, in which the incompetent masses cannot be expected to run their own lives, but must be cared for by a system overseen by elites. Like himself. But the Obama administration wasn't eager for Berwick to air his views before a Senate committee, or the C-SPAN cameras.

The icing on the cake is Berwick's relationship with his own Institute for Health Care Improvement, which has handily conferred upon him health care coverage for life. Obama opted for the recess appointment shortly after Sen. Grassley started asking inconvenient questions about the provenance of the Institute's zillions of dollars in donations.

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Rats bicker as ship sinks

Obama reassures Dems:

Facing criticism from House Democrats, President Barack Obama promised their leaders Wednesday night that he'll actively support their agenda [getting reelected] and Democratic lawmakers as they head into tough midterm elections this fall, according to a congressional leadership aide.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer were among those in the Oval Office meeting. The aide, who was briefed on the meeting, spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.

The meeting came as congressional Democrats, fearing disaster in the fall elections, have expressed frustration with the Obama team and its efforts to help Democrats. They also were angered when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said over the weekend that enough seats were in play for Democrats to lose the House. [. . .]

Obama said that he understood the criticism and promised full engagement and support on substance [getting reelected] and message [please reelect us!] through the fall, the aide said. With high unemployment dragging down incumbents, a key focus will be on jobs and how individual congressional districts are helped by Democrats' policies.

Just a second. President Obama, who has lost the faith of the country through the disastrous course he has embarked on in concert with the power-grabbing Democratic Congress, is supposed to somehow be able to help them retain power? How is that going to work?

Those few who can plausibly break free of the whirlpool as the Obama ship goes under will try to do so, but that's not possible for most of them; they were as contemptuous of the will of the people as their leader. No amount of bickering will change the past 18 months.

And Obama's and Congress's assault on America is ongoing: The Dodd-Frank financial bill

enshrines permanent bailouts, saves Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s hides forever, and would impose at least $20 billion in new tax hikes over the next decade.

Follow Michelle's links.

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Berwick: Rationing for thee, lifetime coverage for me

Airing the awful truths about healthcare rationing in an election season was more than the Obama administration could bear. So the president lamely, and dishonestly, accused the GOP of obstructionism and appointed Dr. Donald Berwick, the NHS's #1 fan, during recess, thereby avoiding all that unpleasantness.

Now it turns out there's another reason or two why the Obami didn't want Dr. Berwick to undergo scrutiny. Byron York reports that Obama admin did their end run shortly after Sen. Grassley began to grow curious about the finances of Berwick's own Institute for Health Care Improvement:

Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been asking questions about the Institute's finances. Specifically, Grassley wanted to know more about the millions of dollars in grants and contributions to the organization: where did that money come from? Given the zillions of dollars that changed hands during the debate over Obamacare, it was a reasonable question.

But it was a question the White House did not want to answer. Not long after Grassley inquired about the Institute's donors, the White House decided to bypass Senate confirmation for Berwick. The president's recess appointment means that Berwick will not have to answer Grassley's, or anyone else's, questions.

And through his own Institute, Berwick has finagled a pretty fabulous perk, though perhaps it's not the best kind of PR for a man who believes so strongly in redistributing your wealth in the name of social justice. His organization has bestowed upon him healthcare coverage for life:

Now comes word that Berwick enjoys his nonprofit's generosity in the form of health care coverage for life. That undoubtedly would also have been a topic of questioning had Berwick gone through the normal course of Senate confirmation. But the recess appointment avoided all that.

As it turns out, Berwick himself does not have to deal with the anxieties created by limited access to care and the extent of coverage. In a special benefit conferred on him by the board of directors of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, a nonprofit health care charitable organization he created and which he served as chief executive officer, Berwick and his wife will have health coverage "from retirement until death."

Nice coverage if you can get it -- and no death panels!

Is it just me, or is every last one of these people a consummate, over-the-top, hypocrite?

Cross-posted at Potluck.
Linked by Larwin -- thank you.
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