Like, yay

Katrina Trinko on Mitt Romney's lack of resonance among certain deep-thinking young voters:

In March, on the eve of the Illinois primary, over a thousand Bradley University students gathered to hear Mitt Romney. Dressed casually, many in shorts and T-shirts, they stood outside on an unusually warm spring day in Peoria. They listened as 30-year-old Republican Representative Aaron Schock introduced Romney, and watched as Romney was presented with a bright red Bradley University hoodie. When Romney took the microphone, he passionately made the case for young adults to embrace the GOP.

“Every trillion dollars this president amasses, every year, guess who is going to pay that?” he asked. “Not me. I’m gone. I’m too old to pay it back. You’re going to pay it back.”

But there was no indication that Romney’s message resonated. Some of those watching called out “Obama 2012.” The first question was pointed: “So you’re all for like, yay, freedom, and all this stuff,” a woman said. “And yay, like pursuit of happiness. You know what would make me happy? Free birth control.”

Emphasis like mine. Read the rest. Also from Miss Trinko, this observation:

As a twenty-something myself, I’m used to people simply assuming I’m an Obama fan. And I’m also struck by how much success the Democrats and Obama have had in making voting for a Republican an act viewed as socially bizarre by large swathes of young adults not living in red states. Romney’s making compelling arguments for why young adults should vote for him: they’re the ones who will have to pay back the debt, and they’re the ones who would benefit greatly by an increase in number of jobs available. But unless his team manages to develop some new messaging style that really resonates among young adults, it’s hard to see him shifting a large chunk of the youth vote his way, although he may succeed in getting some of them too discouraged about Obama to bother voting for him again.

Or Obama may handle that all by himself with his long-running slow jam on jobs and the economy. Michael Barone notes that polls on the youth vote vary but agree on an important point:

Recent surveys of young people show inconsistent results. Gallup's tracking shows Obama leading Mitt Romney 64% to 29%, and a Harvard Institute of Politics poll shows him leading Romney 43% to 26% among those who said they had an opinion.

But a March survey of 18- to 24-year-olds by the Public Religion Research Institute showed Obama ahead of "a Republican" by only 48% to 41%. Only 52% had favorable opinions of Obama, and 43% had unfavorable opinions.

Where the surveys seem to be in accord is that young voters are less engaged, less likely to vote and less enthusiastic about Obama than in the days when he was proclaiming, "We are the change we are seeking."

Gallup shows only 56% of Americans under 30 saying they definitely will vote. [. . .]

The most recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed only 45% of young people taking a big interest in the election, down from 63% in 2008.

I wouldn't be surprised if young people ultimately turned out to be a non-factor in November, with Obama's popularity edge canceled out by youthful apathy, idealistic disgust for the process, and a small increase in support for Romney among our more astute young adults who haven't already given up.

By the way, I heartily approve this message from Mitt:

Romney rejected Democratic efforts to question whether he would have given the directive to kill bin Laden, saying “of course” he would have done so. “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”

More of that, please.

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Irrelevant, but in case you're reminded of the same song as I, here it is.

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Many thanks to Pew Sitter for the link. Thanks also to IOTW for their link.

Politicaljunkie Mom has more on the Like, yay generation.

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What, exactly, is Chen Guangcheng protesting?

You won't find the answer in today's Washington Post. Tim Carney calls them out:

Is Chen Guangcheng a rebel without a cause?

Chen Guangcheng is a Chinese “dissident” and a “lawyer” who was jailed by the Chinese government and held in house arrest after his sentence, until he escaped over the weekend, presumably to U.S. custody.

You’ll learn all that from this 1300-word Washington Post story today, but you’ll never learn why the Communist Chinese regime wanted to silence him -- that he has exposed the horrors of China’s one-child policy, including forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

Honestly. Search the article. “Abortion” never appears. Nor does “one-child” “family-planning,” or “sterilization.”

Of the five Post news articles I found discussing Chen, only one of them has the word "abortion."

And the Post is not alone. Read the rest. I guess the liberal media would rather not talk about China's unspeakable crimes against children (girl babies in particular), mothers, fathers, and families. Refreshers here.

Many thanks to Pew Sitter for the link.
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Obama dogs it at #WHCD

I somehow managed to get through the entire weekend without giving even a passing thought to the White House Correspondents Dinner, that noxious nexus of Hollywood and Washington. But this is fascinating. John Hinderaker:

Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.)

They pretended so hard that some libs didn't even get the joke. Mark Steyn:

That represents an amazingly swift victory for the man who, all but entirely via Twitter, injected the topic into the public discourse – Jim Treacher.

Indeed,  as The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta wrote:

My favorite DC/world disconnect at #WHCD dinner lst nite was when frmr politico now in NY asked why Obama kept talking about eating dogs.

It’s not really a “DC/world” disconnect so much as a housetrained media/freelance bloodhound disconnect. If you rely for your news on the poodles of the Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc, or the self-neutered attack-dogs of the late-night comedy shows, you would, like Ms Franke-Ruta’s friend, have been utterly in the dark. Jim Treacher forced the President and his palace guard to break their own embargo. Or as he put it:

I win.

Good for him.

Ditto. Or as "Jim" "Treacher" also put it, "Just more proof that we don't need @ABC News anymore."

By the way, don't underestimate the power of Twitter. Michelle Malkin saw its potential and created Twitchy to help you sort through it all.

Back to the WHCD, file the following Jimmy Kimmel joke under "many a truth is told in jest":

Everything that is wrong with America is here in this room.

But he may be exaggerating, just slightly. Were Bill Maher and Al Sharpton there?

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Oh brother.

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Steyn at his doggone best

Like a classic Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, Mark Steyn's weekend columns usually come with two titles. Today's: Democrats should let sleeping dogs lie, or Cuisines from My Stepfather. I'm not going to spoil your Steyn experience by giving away the best parts (probably the penultimate and antepenultimate paragraphs, but not in that order, or maybe the polygamy discussion on page one), but even so, you might want to go read it now.

One point that isn't being made much amid all the dogfighting:

This is nothing to do with young Barack being six or ten years old and meekly eating whatever was put in front of him. He was 34 years old when he wrote the passage quoted above and ten years older when he recorded the audio edition. And, as both versions make plain, he thinks it’s kinda cool, and he knows that to the average upscale white liberal it has the electric frisson of the exotic other.

Exactly right. Mark Krikorian alluded to this last week in a Corner post and I feebly chimed in here.
 
Steyn refers to the recent liberal media query, "Can Mitt Romney make boring sexy?" I guess that will depend on whether the majority of American voters are grown-ups. I was sure that, after four years of "hip" (but actually very backward) "leadership," the image of adult competence would appeal to voters like water to a man dying of thirst. I'm not so certain now. Obama's "coolness" may be a bug to me but it's a feature to others. How many young people will bother to vote remains to be seen, but Obama is flogging them relentlessly.

Also on campaign duty is King Barack's court jester, who, when he's not bragging about the immensity of His Majesty's royal stick, is wooing wealthy donors with humor, or something:

“I guess what I’m trying to say without boring you too long at breakfast – and you all look dull as hell, I might add. The dullest audience I have ever spoken to. Just sitting there, staring at me. Pretend you like me!” he said according to the pool report.

The breakfast was held at the Fairfax Hotel with more than 200 members of the Turkish and Azerbaijani communities, according to the campaign. Tickets started at $2500, with all proceeds from the event going to the Obama Victory Fund.

No doubt the chumps paid for their abuse upfront and were feeling the bite of buyer's remorse. I still can't believe Obama lets Joe out without a leash. (By the way, that wasn't the first time Biden blamed the dogs for not enjoying the lousy dogfood he dishes out.)

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Political ad: "Cool"

Related: Obama slow-jams America and is curiously proud of it.

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Sebelius didn't worry about constitutionality of mandates

Confirmed beyond a doubt (if you had any): the Obama administration has no respect for the US Constitution. They consider it an annoying hindrance, when they consider it at all. Commissar Sebelius, she who wields the power of "tooth-level surveillance" over the masses, admitted yesterday that the subject of constitutionality didn't even come up during the writing of the "health" mandates she and her omnipotent HHS imposed on the masses.

She protests that she's not a lawyer. But we know she's at least heard of the document in passing, because she took a solemn oath to support and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Just words. Shame on every senator who voted to confirm her.

I don't know whether she learned anything yesterday from Rep. Trey Gowdy, who walked her through several precedents on religious liberty, but she didn't seem to enjoy it. Hear her sigh at 4:05:



It's all about grabbing power and not worrying about the legalities. There's no real risk for the individuals involved. Kathleen Sebelius can impose unjust regulations on the people and violate her oath of office without fear of any negative consequences. When she leaves this job, she'll probably peddle her influence for astronomical fees. Not quite what the founders had in mind.

Hat tip to reader Elizabeth.

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White House is curiously proud of Obama's "slow jam"

The White House doubles down on Tuesday's night's embarrassing display of world-class lameness with this tweet:

Awwww yeah! #DontDoubleMyRate slow-jammed by the "POTUS with the Mostest" @JimmyFallon & @TheRoots WATCH: ow.ly/avBOJ
— The White House (@whitehouse) April 25, 2012

(I can't get it to embed properly, but you get the idea.)

Hot Air's Allahpundit, speaking in another context a couple of years ago, made a quip which I think applies here:

And like a two-year-old who’s just crapped on the carpet, he’s curiously proud of it.

Awwww yeah!

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Supreme Court eats SG Verrilli for lunch

Here are a few delightful highlights from yesterday's arguments on the Arizona immigration law.

When you've lost the Wise Latina:

“General, I’m terribly confused by your answer. O.K.? And I don’t know that you’re focusing in on what I believe my colleagues are trying to get to.”

"[Y]ou can see it's not selling very well -- why don't you try to come up with something else? Because I, frankly -- as the chief has said to you, it's not that it's forcing you to change your enforcement priorities. You don't have to take the person into custody. So what's left of your argument?"

Ouch. Justice Scalia wasn't buying, either, finding Verrilli's argument more or less absurd:

The day got no better for General Verrilli when he said that it is the federal government's position that Arizona does not have the power to remove illegal aliens from within its borders because "the Constitution vests exclusive authority over immigration matters with the national government."

Justice Antonin Scalia pounced: "But all that means is that the Government can set forth the rules concerning who belongs in this country. But if, in fact, somebody who does not belong in this country is in Arizona, Arizona has no power? What does sovereignty mean if it does not include the ability to defend your borders?"

Scalia noted further that "The Constitution recognizes that there is such a thing as State borders and the States can police their borders, even to the point of inspecting incoming shipments to exclude diseased material."

Speaking of which, Dana Milbank doesn't approve of Justice Scalia's tendency to tell it like it is, calling him "dyspeptic" and "ill-tempered" and finding his questions "verging on outright heckling." Which makes me all the more eager to to hear the audio, which will be released on Friday. For now there's the clunky PDF transcript and these delectable tidbits provided by Milbank:

“The state has no power to close its borders to people who have no right to be there?” he asked incredulously.

And: “What does ‘sovereignty’ mean if it does not include the ability to defend your borders?”

“Are you objecting to harassing the people who have no business being here? Surely you’re not concerned about harassing them.”

“We have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico?” 

“Well, can’t you avoid that particular foreign-relations problem by simply deporting these people?” Scalia retorted. “Look, free them from the jails and send them back to the countries that are objecting. What’s the problem with that?”

More from Ross Kaminsky:

One can imagine a wry smile crossing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's face when Roberts twisted the knife: "It seems to me that the Federal Government just doesn't want to know who is here illegally or not."

Verrilli's response was shorthand for the federal government wanting to be able to set the state's priorities, even if that meant not enforcing federal law despite damage to the state. Scalia was, as usual, ready with an incisive rebuttal:

Anyway, what's wrong about the states enforcing Federal law? There is a Federal law against robbing Federal banks. Can it be made a state crime to rob those banks? I think it is. But does the Attorney General come in and say, you know, we might really only want to go after the professional bank robbers? If it's just an amateur bank robber, you know, we're going to let it go. And the state's interfering with our whole scheme here because it's prosecuting all these bank robbers.

Even the left-leaning Justice Stephen Breyer was unconvinced of the Obama administration's position, wondering aloud how a provision that would require policemen call to check immigration status can be said to conflict with a federal rule that allows policemen to call to check immigration status.

That's when Justice Sotomayor inserted her comments about the argument not "selling well." Kaminsky also reports this embarrassing moment for Verrilli:

One almost felt bad for General Verrilli when he tried to respond with an argument about harassment, despite a clear answer to Justice Scalia at the beginning of the questioning that the federal government was not making any arguments based on racial profiling. When he tried to make that case, Sotomayor interjected, "Please move…" It could not have been an accident that Verrilli tried to play the profiling card in response to the Court's only Hispanic Justice, but even she wouldn't hear it.

Maybe there's more to this Wise Latina thing than I thought. 

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Paul Ryan to speak at Georgetown

Oops. That was awkward. I hit "publish" instead of "draft" and promptly ran out the door, coming back to find an unfinished product sitting out in public view. But since it's already out there, I'll correct my spelling and finish my sentences and leave it up.

What I had planned to do was amend it to focus more on Robert Costa's very interesting two-page interview with Rep. Ryan. I used a bit of that below, but there's much more to it, so go ahead and read it in preparation for today's Georgetown speech, if you're so inclined. (I was also going to work in something about Ryan being my first choice for VP. We can save that for another time, I guess.)

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Marc Thiessen refutes a lefty bishop's ignorant, inappropriate critique of the Ryan budget:

Using Obama’s campaign rhetoric, Bishop Stephen Blaire, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, recently wrote to Congress declaring that Ryan’s budget “fails to meet [the Church’s] moral criteria” because it does not require “shared sacrifice,” which Blaire [like Obama] defines as tax increases and cuts to “unnecessary” defense spending. Some of the proposed spending cuts in Ryan’s budget, Blaire said, are “unjust and wrong.”

Blaire has it backward. What is “unjust and wrong” is this bishop’s attack on a good Catholic layman.

Put aside for a moment the fact that “shared sacrifice” appears nowhere in the catechism of the Catholic Church. It is a reelection slogan for the Democratic Party. Put aside, as well, the fact that the bishop of Stockton, Calif., has near-zero competence to judge what military spending is necessary or unnecessary. The fact is Ryan’s budget does not cut spending at all — it simply slows the growth of spending. As Ryan explained in an interview on the Catholic Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), “our budget increases annual spending by 3 percent a year instead of the president’s proposal to go to 4 ½ percent a year.”

I consider that a negative, but that's beside the point for the moment. George Weigel notes:

Paul Ryan is the Catholic left’s worst nightmare and his demonization from that quarter has just begun. Ryan is a big boy, though, and he’ll fight his corner well. That argument might even lead to some consensus about empowerment-based anti-poverty strategies and fiscally responsible social welfare policies among serious Catholics of both political parties.

The smart, articulate, principled, and likable Ryan, who is better educated than Obama but lacks the pomposity and pretensions, also scares the bejeebers out of the secular left. Hence their silly stories. Below, Rep. Ryan pushes back against allegations that he's an avid disciple of Ayn Rand:

Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, recently called Ryan “an Ayn Rand devotee” who wants to “slash benefits for the poor.” New York magazine once alleged that Ryan “requires staffers to read Atlas Shrugged,” Rand’s gospel of capitalism. President Obama has blasted the Ryan budget as Republican “social Darwinism.” [. . .]

“I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them,” Ryan says. “They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman,” a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. “But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.”

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

Ryan enjoys bantering about dusty novels, but it’s not really his bailiwick. Philosophy, he tells me, is critical, but politics is about more than armchair musing. “This gets to the Jack Kemp in me, for the lack of a better phrase,” he says — crafting public policy from broad ideas. “How do you produce prosperity and upward mobility?” he asks. “How do you attack the root causes of poverty instead of simply treating its symptoms? And how do you avoid a crisis that is going to hurt the vulnerable the most — a debt crisis — from ever happening?”

He's making a speech at Georgetown today. If we have time later on, we'll compare it to the mendacious claptrap offered up by Obama in his May 2009 "Be a lighthouse and a crossroads" [thunk] speech.

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Obama slow-jams America

You've probably seen the video, "If I wanted America to fail." Let's call this one, "If President Obama wanted to make a mockery of himself and his office and mortally embarrass the American people":



Not counting Bill Clinton, I haven't felt this embarrassed for my country since Obama did a cheesy promo for the George Lopez Show (video no longer available). Sure, the president trivialized himself and put another ding in the dignity of the office as he desperately trolled for student votes and cavorted with moronic showbiz hacks who think POTUS rhymes with "mostus." (And what was that crack about Tim Tebow?) But those screams of adulation felt great!

Hat tip to Charlie Spiering, who calls those five excruciating minutes jumping the shark. But this is no washed-up sitcom. The next time a president's ego causes him to publicly highlight the country's, and his own, decline into absurdity and irrelevance, we'll just say he's "slow-jamming" us. (It certainly describes what he's done to the economy.)

The late-night gig wasn't Candidate Obama's only public appearance yesterday. John Hinderaker notes that Obama made another stop on his pandering tour of college campuses, during which his lips moved, and you know what that means. But is it really lying when he so clearly signals that he's doing so?

What a liar Barack Obama is! And, like many liars, he has certain “tells.” Note how he compounds his offense by assuring his readers that he is telling the truth: “I’m just quoting here, I’m just quoting…I’m reading it here. So I didn’t make this up.” Sure, it’s on his teleprompter, so it must be right. Any time Obama goes out of his way to assure his audience that he is telling the truth, you probably can assume that he is lying. Again.

And does he really believe interest rates will drive young voters to the polls? That's a far cry from 2008's vague promise of Hope-and-Change, as is the employment situation for new college graduates. Now there's an issue that might motivate young people to vote, but not for Obama.

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Oh brother. Check out Twitchy for fawning fan reactions, e.g., "We have the coolest president EVER!" Feeling very grateful right now for Mitt Romney's total lack of coolness.

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Alana Goodwin has the facts (remember those?) about the student loan interest issue:

In fact, Republicans in Congress aren’t opposed to keeping student loan interest rates low, and Mitt Romney has come out in support of the extension. Republicans mainly disagree with the way Democrats want to pay for it, which is by raising taxes on small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year.

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Jim Treacher tweets: President Dog-Eater is as funny as he is honest

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Western civilization had a nice run

Looks like this is the end. Stacy McCain sounds the death knell:

A New York group that describes itself as “an advocate and resource for people with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) parents” has announced a Mother’s Day fundraiser at a Soho sex-toy shop. “Join the queerspawn of COLAGE NYC on Sunday, May 13 for a very gay Mothers’ Day!” says the online invitation to the third annual event, advertised with the slogan ”HOT CHILD IN THE CITY: Flaming Parents Make Hotter Children!”

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Weigel on LCWR

George Weigel writes an illuminating piece on the controversy regarding the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and their rather peculiar brand of "Catholicism":

As Bishop Blair’s analysis of the LCWR’s assemblies makes unmistakably clear — and from materials readily available from the LCWR — there is very little in the Creed and the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is not up for grabs in the LCWR’s world: the Trinity; the divinity of Christ; the sacraments; the constitution of the Church as episcopally ordered and governed; the very idea of “doctrine”; the notion of moral absolutes; the nature of marriage; the inalienability of the right to life — Catholic teaching on all of these is not infrequently regarded in the LCWR and among its affiliated orders as impossibly old hat because of that teaching’s alleged linkage to “patriarchy.” That doctrinal implosion, further influenced by feminist leadership theory of the woolliest sort, set the stage for the tortured re-readings of poverty, chastity, and obedience to be found in the extensive literature that shapes the theological imagination of many of the sisters in LCWR congregations, those congregations’ leadership, and the LCWR itself. [. . .]
The shock in all this, therefore, is not the shock the LCWR unpersuasively confessed when the Vatican decision to take it into receivership was made public. The shock was that the Vatican had finally acted, decisively, after three decades of half-hearted (and failed) attempts to achieve some sort of serious conversation with the LCWR about its obvious and multiple breaches of the boundaries of orthodoxy.

So it's ix-nay to the Creed, the Trinity, and the Mass. That doesn't leave much, does it? Someday perhaps I'll understand why the Church has let this kind of thing go on for decades on end, ignoring abuses and basically waiting for heretical priests, bishops, and sisters to die off before intervening. 

Mr. Weigel's piece is worth reading in its entirety.

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He can do anything you can do better

He can do anything better than you. Yes he can!

Jim Geraghty quotes from From Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas:

Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it,” he said. “It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.” Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Barack Obama could be a poster child for the inflated self esteem culture that feeds on empty praise and impossible-to-quantify "achievement." Matthew Crawford was right:

But the praising of gifted students for being smart, by parents and teachers, has a far more pernicious effect, especially when such praise is combined with the grade inflation and soft curriculum that are notorious at elite schools. A student can avoid hard sciences and foreign languages and get a degree without ever having the unambiguous experience of being wrong.  [. . .]

There may be something to be said, then, for having the gifted students learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their egos will be repeatedly crushed before they go on to run the country. (pp. 203-4)

(Emphasis mine.) It's a bit late to make a dent in the Obama ego, let alone crush it.

In related news, if you're exceedingly lucky, the Obama campaign will rescue you from your dreary existence and make all your wildest dreams come true. Because either they think you're that shallow, or they themselves are: 



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Japan: A "net mortality society"

According to Nicholas Eberstadt,

Japan is now a "net mortality society." Death rates today are routinely higher than birthrates, and the imbalance is growing.

By 2040, Japan is on track to have nearly as many centenarians as new babies. Factors:

Japan's future population profile has already very largely been set. Well over 75 percent of the people who will inhabit the Japan of 2040 are already alive, living there today. The country's population trajectory will be driven by three fundamental and distinctively Japanese trends: (1) extremely favorable general health conditions-the Japanese now enjoy the world's greatest longevity, and the outlook is for further improvements; (2) an unusually strong aversion to immigration; and (3) the most pronounced and prolonged period of sub-replacement fertility of any nation in the modern world.

 Bring on the robots!

Though it can be represented in cold statistics, the human flavor of Japan's new demographic order may be better captured in anecdote:

* Rental "relatives" are now readily available throughout the country for celebrations when a groom or bride lacks requisite kin.

* "Babyloids"-small, furry, robotic dolls that can mimic some of the sounds and gestures of real babies-are being marketed to help older Japanese cope with loneliness and depression.

* Robot pets and rental pets are also available for those who seek the affection of an animal but cannot cope with having one to look after.

* In a recent government survey, one-third of boys ages 16 to 19 described themselves as uninterested in or positively averse to sexual intimacy.

* Young Japanese men are, however, clearly very interested in video games and the Internet: In 2009, a 27-year-old Japanese man made history by "marrying" a female video game character's avatar while thousands watched online.

* Japanese researchers are pioneering the development of attractive, lifelike androids. Earlier this year, a persuasively realistic humanoid called Geminoid F was displayed in a department store window, appearing to wait for a friend.

Those robots will really have their lifelike mechanical hands full with feeding, dressing, and bathing the growing proportion of dementia patients who will have no families to help them:

A looming old-age burden: Despite salutary trends in "healthy aging," Japan's extraordinary demographics can only mean that a rapidly growing share of the country's population will be frail in the years ahead-and that public pension allowances, health and medical services, and long-term care will be ever more pressing priorities for Japanese society. Not the least of the problems may concern Alzheimer's disease. A study commissioned by Alzheimer's Disease International suggests that, on current track, the prevalence of dementia in the Japanese population could rise to five percent by 2050-one person in 20. The caregiving implications of such an outcome are staggering-and given the coming erosion of the Japanese family, a steadily decreasing proportion of senior citizens will have children to turn to for support. Under such circumstances, an increase in long-term institutionalization among the elderly seems inescapable.

Lots of developed countries are losing the will to reproduce, but Japan's situation is unique. Read the whole thing.

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No compromise from US Bishops

This is excellent news. Via Vincent Phillip Muñoz, The Catholic Bishops Take On Obama:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a bold stand for religious freedom. In a recent statement, titled “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” the bishops call for repeal of contraception coverage mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services. The clarified position sets up a dramatic confrontation with the Obama administration—and would, if the bishops prevail, help preserve the religious liberty of all Americans.

The HHS mandate requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception and sterilization services. It is, according to the bishops, an “unjust law.” They write: “It cannot be obeyed and therefore one does not seek relief from it, but rather its repeal.”

The statement is a rebuke of President Obama and the so-called accommodation his administration proposed in February. It also raises the stakes between the president and the leaders of America’s Catholic Church.

The bishops call on Catholics in America, “in solidarity with our fellow citizens,” not to obey the law. They implicitly compare the HHS regulation to a segregation-era statute, and even cite Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In a not-so-subtle manner, the bishops tell the Obama administration that they are willing to go to prison rather than comply with the mandate’s provisions.

Abjectly pleading with the government for a watered down "exemption" from the blatantly unjust mandate would have been a disastrous response:

The bishops did not have to take this route, but all those who cherish religious liberty should be glad they did. If the bishops settled for a more expansive accommodation, they might have been able to get an exemption for their hospitals and universities (including my own, Notre Dame). That would have been the easy way to “preserve” religious liberty while also retaining the mandate.

But what, then, would the bishops have said to business owners who likely would not have been covered by a more expansive exemption? How could church leaders say that it’s wrong for church institutions to pay for contraception and abortifacients, but that Catholic business owners must cover these costs?

The exemption approach might have allowed the bishops to secure religious liberty for their institutions, but not for all their followers. That would have been a failure of moral authority and political strength to protect the common good.

A compromise is exactly what I feared. Thanks be to God, the bishops have nobly risen to the occasion. Perhaps the Obama administration's marked lack of interest in any sort of compromise helped them along? Anyway, it's time to gird those loins:

But it won’t be without confrontation. This statement from the bishops sets up a dramatic showdown between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Obama administration, a confrontation that may not be good for either side. It is hard to see what middle ground exists, or even if it does.

The Constitution was designed to prevent such fundamental clashes between church and state. Perhaps the best way out of this thicket would be for the Supreme Court to step in and stop it from happening. Striking down the contraception mandate would avert the disastrous situation of the president sending bishops to jail for being faithful witnesses to their religious convictions.

Read the rest. Bishops' letter here.

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Liberal-minded

Some interesting observations on the liberal mind. First up, Conn Carroll takes a look at Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion:

In his new book, . . . Haidt describes a study in which more than 2,000 Americans were asked to fill out questionnaires asking them how much they agreed with statements like this one: "I think it's morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot of money while poor children inherit nothing."

One-third of respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaire according to their own views. One-third were asked to fill it out as they thought a "typical liberal" would. And the last third were asked to fill out the survey as if they were a "typical conservative."

Haidt found that moderates and conservatives could accurately predict how liberals and conservatives would judge each statement. But liberals were far less capable of mirroring their ideological counterparts' thinking. Those describing themselves as "very liberal" did worst. Apparently, contra Krugman, the more liberal you are, the less able you are to understand other people's beliefs.

That won't come as a surprise to many conservatives. If more liberals took the time to acquaint themselves with conservative arguments, and with, well, conservatives, there'd be fewer liberals. As proposed here a few weeks ago,

Liberals are vastly more insulated from diverse points of view than are conservatives, and have had to exempt themselves from real intellectual rigor to preserve their worldview.

For example, take Paul Krugman. Please.

Haidt notes a rather significant blind spot in the liberal psyche: 

Liberals, Haidt argues, fail to appreciate the "moral capital" that successful societies have built up over years of cultural evolution. "Moral capital" includes the values, virtues and institutions in a society that "enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible."

These well-meaning liberals have sure done a lot of damage:

When liberals passed the well-meaning welfare programs of President Johnson's Great Society, they failed to anticipate how the new system "increased out-of-wedlock births and weakened African American families."

It can't be denied that the liberal's arrogant we-know-better disdain for established culture and tradition, from which he so feverishly attempts to "free" us, has borne some pretty rancid fruit.

More from Carroll's review: 

Keynes and Krugman are just the latest in a long line of thinkers that suffer from what Haidt calls the "rationalist delusion," or the belief that one can simply deduce all moral truth through reason alone. "The rationalist delusion is not just a claim about human nature," Haidt writes. "It's also a claim that the rational caste (philosophers or scientists) should have more power."

Of course, because they know best. Which makes it all the more awkward when the philosopher king reveals that he just isn't all that smart. 

Next up, Victor Davis Hanson on liberals who don't even pretend to have principles. It Was the Power, Stupid!

In my dumber days, between 2001-2008, I used to wonder why the Left relentlessly hammered the war on terror (e.g., renditions, tribunals, predators, preventative detention, Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, Guantanamo Bay) when these measures had not only proven quite useful in preventing another 9/11-like attack, but had been sanctioned by both the Congress and the courts. In those ancient times, I was not as cynical as I am now. So I assumed that Harold Koh and MoveOn.org, though mistaken, were worried about civil liberties, or measures that they felt were both illegal and without utility.

But, of course, the Obama (who attacked each and every element of the war on terror as a legislator and senator) Left never had any principled objection at all. Instead, whatever Bush was for, they were in Pavlovian fashion against.

Yup. Read the rest.

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Music break: Our Day Will Come

This oft-recorded song was composed in 1963 by Bob Hilliard and Mort Garson. Extensive research tells us that Hilliard also wrote the lyrics for In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning, Any Day Now, and a particular favorite of mine, The Coffee Song. But don't let that distract you; this is pretty great:



More research explains the peculiar title of the jazzy 1963 album:

Her first album after leaving Verve Records, Blossom Dearie Sings Rootin' Songs was recorded for Hires Root Beer, on whose television commercials Dearie had sung. The album was originally available for 50¢ and two bottle caps. 

Alas, that deal has since expired.

(Speaking of expired, any disco-babies out there remember this version?)

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Your Saturday Steyn

Always one to look for the silver lining, Mark Steyn finds reason to praise disgraced Secret Service agent David Chaney and his fellow losers recently caught in a prostitution scandal in Colombia:

Twenty-eight bucks! What a remarkably precise sum. Thirty dollars less a federal handling fee? Why isn’t this guy Obama’s treasury secretary or budget director? Or, at the very least, the head honcho of the General Services Administration, whose previous director has sadly had to step down after the agency’s taxpayer-funded public-servants-gone-wild Bacchanal in Vegas.

All over this dying republic, you couldn’t find a single solitary $28 item that doesn’t wind up costing at least 800 bucks by the time it’s been sluiced through the federal budgeting process. Yet, in one plucky little corner of the Secret Service, supervisor David Chaney, dog-handler Greg Stokes, or one of the other nine agents managed to turn the principles of government procurement on their head. If the same fiscal prudence were applied to the 2011 Obama budget, the $3.598 trillion splurge would have cost just shy of $126 billion. The feds’ half a billion to Solyndra would have been a mere $18 million. The 823-grand GSA conference on government efficiency at the M Resort Spa & Casino would have come in at $28,805.

Chaney-Stokes 2012! Grope . . . and Change! Red lights, not red ink.

Mark also comes up with a plausible explanation for Obama's gaffe-tastic writing team:

And yet the more guys on the payroll, the less anyone does. For all the hooker-cavorting among a bored entourage with time on its hands, there was no one to proofread President Obama’s speech. So he stood up in public and attempted to pander to the Latins by referring to the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands by the designation of its temporary Argentine usurpers 30 years ago: “Las Malvinas.” Except that his writers got it wrong. So the president of the United States called it “the Maldives,” an entirely different bit of British Commonwealth real estate half a world away in the Indian Ocean. Were the speechwriting staff also face down in the hooker bar? “Jush a minute, baby. Hic. The preshhhiduh wansh a couple rewrites. ‘I call on London to return British Columbia to Colombia.’ Thash should do it. Lesh go back to my room and I’ll show you my prompter.”

Read the rest.

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Harry Reid on what seniors want

Er . . . junk mail?

“Madam President,” [Sen. Harry] Reid said to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the presiding officer of the Senate, “I’ll come home tonight here to my home in Washington and there’ll be some mail there. A lot of it is what some people refer to as junk mail, but for the people who are sending that mail, it’s very important.” “And when talking about seniors, seniors love getting junk mail. It’s sometimes their only way of communicating or feeling like they’re part of the real world,” Reid continued. “Elderly Americans, more than anyone in America, rely on the United States Postal Service, but unless we act quickly, thousands of post offices . . . will close. I’ve said this earlier today; I repeat it.”

The US Postal Service is also a great way to ship your buggy-whips and spats.

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Sarah Palin throws sleazy Secret Service agents into the doghouse

Turns out David Chaney was one of the agents assigned to Sarah Palin in 2008, and remarked on his Facebook page, "I was really checking her out, if you know what i mean?" (Wait -- Secret Service agents have FB pages?)

Sarah: "Well check this out, bodyguard. You’re fired!"



Partial transcript:

I hope his wife kicks him to the doghouse . . . It's pretty embarrassing . . . these boys not considering that there are ramifications for their actions, whether it comes to a budget . . . to GSA overspends to the Secret Service scandals, I've had enough of these men being dogs and not being responsible. . . .

It's a symptom of government run amok. . . . It's like, who's minding the store around here? . . . . The president, for one, he better be wary, there, of when Secret Service is accompanying his family on vacation. They may be checking out the first lady instead of guarding her. . . .

The president, the CEO of this operation called our federal government, has got to start cracking down on these agencies. . . . The buck stops with the president.

Move over, Rover

Greta makes a good point about Romney "liking to fire people." Wouldn't it be wonderful if he enthusiastically applied that penchant to the rot in the federal government?

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Eating dogmeat is overrated

Mark Krikorian observes that it isn't just that Obama flunked Geography 101; it's that he's sure he aced it, along with every other field of human knowledge. Maldives, Malvinas, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off:

Obama’s problem is that he thinks he’s a suave cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world, who’s garnered invaluable international experience living abroad as a child — and yet he doesn’t know Shiraz from shinola. And the citizen-of-the-world schtick isn’t just boob bait for the Upper West Side — he actually believes himself to be a global sophisticate, and yet he knows no more about the outside world than a rube from the hollers of West Virginia.

Again, that lethal combination of arrogance and ignorance is an inestimable liability in a leader. And alas, one's childhood consumption of dogs, snakes, and grasshoppers is no substitute for intellectual curiosity or hard work, and will not magically enhance one's knowledge of geography or history. Nor will it confer any other special qualities, despite what little Barry was told by stepdad Lolo Soetero:

He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

Insert your own crack about snakes here.

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Mitt Romney, top dog

Thanks to Jim Treacher, I finally have a reason to jump on board the Romney bandwagon:

Romney button courtesy of John Hawkins.

If you're looking for rational political analysis, this isn't the place. I can't get enough of the Obama-eats-dogs jokes, including the terrible/hilarious dog recipe puns. As someone said on Twitter, this proves that no one read Obama's book. Because the following was just sitting there, waiting for someone to notice it:




Treacher: "On Facebook, there’s a page called Pet Lovers for Obama. I’m going to go check out their recipes." (And yes, Twilight Zone fans, the "It's a cookbook!" joke has been covered.)

A sampling from Twitter:

@iowahawkblog: The first trick Obama taught Bo: roll over in egg batter.

@jamestaranto: So Obama went to an Indian restaurant and ordered lassi. Was he ever disappointed when it arrived.

@James Taranto: Beagle with a shmear.

@jamestaranto: At least no one will say Obama isn't qualified to be dogcatcher.

@jimgeraghty: This president should be evaluated on his record in office, not on his actions as a child that horrify and shock every dog owner in America.

@jimgeraghty: Seamus lived to tell the tale. Well, bark it, at least. As for the dogs Obama... "encountered" in Indonesia, well...

@jimgeraghty: Bo is warned: after the election, Obama will have more... flexibility.

@ConnCarroll: Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. Obama ate a dog. 

More from Twitchy, and thousands more here.

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Dem senator temporarily loses mind, toys with introducing budget

But after an intervention from Sen. Harry Reid and company, he promptly came to his senses.

Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D), in a rogue move, made an aborted attempt to introduce a budget in the Senate. I know, it sounds crazy; everyone knows that kind of thing just isn't done in Harry Reid's Senate. Needless to say, Sen. Conrad didn't get very far. John Hinderaker:

The Democratic Senate has not adopted a budget in three years. This is not only flagrantly irresponsible, it is a violation of federal law. Outgoing Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, who is retiring at the end of the year, apparently felt pangs of conscience, because he decided it was finally time for his committee to mark up a budget. He announced that the committee would do so, starting tomorrow.

A standard markup process begins with the committee chairman laying out a proposal, with the chairman and the ranking minority member giving opening statements. This is followed by an amendment process, in which amendments to the proposed legislation (here, the budget resolution) are offered and voted on. The markup process concludes with a committee vote on the bill or resolution as amended. In this case, Conrad assured ranking Republican Jeff Sessions that amendments would be allowed, and as recently as a few hours ago, Conrad’s and Sessions’s staffs were working out details of the amendment process.

Then, earlier this afternoon, Conrad gave a press conference in which he made the stunning announcement that there will be no budget markup after all. Instead, he will present a budget to the Budget Committee tomorrow. There will be no amendments and there will be no votes; not, at least, until after the election. Apparently Conrad had been proceeding on his own initiative, and at the 11th hour Harry Reid–supported by members of his caucus who do not want to have to go on record in favor of any budget–shut down the process.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) was appropriately disgusted:

“Chairman Conrad’s stunning announcement, forced on him by his party, is a defining moment in 2012 and a national embarrassment for a Senate majority that is unable to meet the great challenge of our time," Sessions said. "It’s been 1,084 days since the last time the Senate’s Democrat majority passed a budget plan, despite a simple majority threshold for passage. Our nation has never needed a budget more, and, as a party, Senate Democrats haven’t produced a plan for three years or conducted a committee mark-up for two. Today Chairman Conrad announced that the promised mark-up was effectively being cancelled—there will only be opening statements, no amendments or votes—following an apparent uprising from the Senate Democrat Conference that remains unwilling and unable to work on a budget plan. They have forfeited their claim on leadership. Majority Leader Reid’s unflinching decree that the Senate will not pass a budget reveals a party in Washington incapable of addressing the colossal spending and debt that threatens our nation with decline."

If Sen. Conrad believes the Senate is morally and legally obligated to come up with a plan to steer us away from the approaching cliff's edge, he's in the wrong party. That he and his fellows allow themselves to be led by the likes of Reid attests to a gutlessness and dereliction of duty of historic proportions.

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Space shuttle sighting

We spent the morning chasing down the space shuttle Discovery. (Actually, husband did the chasing. I was ready to give up and go home when I saw that Route 28 was a parking lot. So all credit goes to him.) Discovery crossed our path three times, and the third might have been the best, when it made a low pass directly over our car as it (the shuttle, not the car) approached Dulles for the landing.

What was really lovely was to see so many people taking time from their routines to come out and wait and watch for it:

People took to rooftops and parking lots, or simply pulled over to the side of the road for a chance to see the shuttle pass. Americans do still care about the space program, it seems. The real space program, I mean, not the watered-down, politicized version heralded by Obama in 2010:

Obama remakes NASA's mission:

In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.” Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.

No we can't:

In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Hope and change:

“[Obama] asked NASA to change…by reaching out to ‘non-traditional’ partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations,” Bolden said. “NASA has embraced this charge.”

“NASA is not only a space exploration agency,” Bolden concluded, “but also an earth improvement agency.”

As a child of the Space Age I find this terribly sad. It's no surprise that Obama doesn't get the space program; its history is too much the story of merit, excellence, and quantifiable success, and too peculiarly American, for it to resonate with him. NASA has been in decline for a long time, but to turn it into an arm of the UN is pretty hard to take.

Oops. I think I just harshed my own own mellow. Never mind. It really was a thrill seeing those piggy-backed planes fly by. Everybody oohed, aahed, and even applauded. Here's a pretty picture:

(We didn't take that. More of other people's shuttle photos here.)

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Click here for a really gorgeous shot.

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GSA's Neely: More advance prep gone wrong

In yet another case of governmental advance preparation gone awry, here's GSA's Jeffrey Neely, making extra-sure conditions are optimal for an $800K+ agency blowout in Vegas at taxpayer expense.

Eric Randall:

General Services Administration regional commissioner Jeffrey Neely had a rough Monday as he very publicly invoked his 5th Amendment rights during a Congressional hearing into his agency's spending scandal, and photos of he [SIC!] and his wife doing all that aforementioned spending leaked around the internet, thanks to ABC News' Jake Tapper.

Click on the ABC link for more details and photos of your government at work.

I'd suggest some kind of public humiliation for Mr. Neely but the ability to feel shame for one's wrongs is more or less extinct among our "public servants."

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See John Hayward's post on today's hearings, including video highlights that should embarrass and anger every American.

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Many thanks to Larwyn for the link.
The same to Michelle Malkin.

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Obama does advance prep, too

If there was one government agency which Americans thought merited our confidence it was the Secret Service. The sorry episode in Cartagena, in which our allegedly incorruptible men-in-black allegedly drank heavily and caroused with prostitutes, embarrassing the United States and potentially compromising the president's security, will undermine that confidence. To what degree depends on how much rot gets exposed in the various investigations that will ensue.

I wonder if this will open the door a crack into looking at waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars by the agency. Inquiring minds would like to know whether agents doing advance security prep have to pay for their own booze and hookers, or are allowed to lump those necessaries in with the other closely guarded costs of keeping the president safe.

Maybe the president should just stay home more. It would be cheaper for us and safer for him.

Just kidding! In an oddly related story, President Obama candidly admits to doing some advance prep of his own:

Just two days after President Barack Obama gave a sharply edged response to news anchor Larry Conners of KMOV in St. Louis after Conners had asked the president about Americans who “get frustrated and even angered when they see the first family jetting around [to] different vacations and so forth,” Obama told a panel at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia that part of his job there was to scout out locations for a future vacation with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Obama was speaking on a panel with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff when he made the remarks. The panel was moderated by Chris Matthews of MSNBC.

“I want to thank President Santos and the people of Colombia for the extraordinary hospitality in the beautiful city of Cartagena,” said Obama. “We're having a wonderful time. And usually when I take these summit trips, part of my job is to scout out where I may want to bring Michelle back later for vacation. So we'll make sure to come back sometime in the near future.”

If you think he's just a smidge tone-deaf, well, you're wrong. Americans know how hard he works, blah blah blah.

Perhaps Obama was just making nice with the Colombians. But let his comment serve as a reminder that we'll have the privilege of supporting the security costs, whatever they may be, of at least another decade's worth of Obama vacations. Would anyone like to try to calculate how many that might be?

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Update: Yet another case of governmental advance preparation gone wrong.

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Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- thanks!

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It's really not about "work"

Re SAHMs and WOHMs: Debating who "works hardest" is rather beside the point. There's more to life than frenetic activity, and she who runs herself into the ground first does not win. In fact, it's not a contest at all.

That last line, "it's not a contest," is one of husband's favorites. Along those lines, here are four tweets from said husband (@campion1581). He doesn't say much, but when he does it's gold:

The value of a mother raising her children is not fundamentally economic, any more than the mother/child relationship is economic.

And the worth of the SAHM does not depend on how hard she has 2 work. To argue this way concedes to the materialistic terms of the feminist.

It could be the easiest thing in the world and it would still be infinitely more valuable than, say, being an RIAA lobbyist.

Motherhood is not a "job." A child is not a product. A home is not a factory.

I married way up. :)

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Paco Enterprises links -- thanks! Same to Pew Sitter!
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Motherlove vs. the State

Bookworm on why the Left hates Ann Romney:

For the last many years, I have been the single most important influence on my children.  Yes, they go to school (public school, yet); and yes, they both have thriving social lives; and yes, I’ve been unable to insulate them from a Leftist pop culture that his hostile to traditional norms and to conservatives generally, but I’m still the most important person.  Of all the influences in their lives, I am the one who is most present, most consistent, and most trusted.  I’m sure they’ll pull away as they get older, and they may even rebel, but I’ll still be that little voice in their brain, imparting facts, values, and analyses.

I am the counterweight to the state.  Therefore, I am dangerous.  I am subversive simply by existing.  My love for my children is a dominant force that works its way into their psyches and that trumps the state-run schools and the state complicit media world.  Some mothers, of course, are entirely in sync with schools and media.  They happily reinforce the statist message.  But those of us who don’t are a powerful anti-statist force and we must be challenged.

The Left’s problem with Ann Romney transcends her husband’s wealth, her (and his) Republican identification, and her decision to work for her children, rather than for a paying employer.  The Left’s problem with Ann Romney is that she represents the triumph of the individual.  No wonder they hate her so much.

Read the rest. It's undeniably true. No culture warrior she, Mrs. Romney holds her decision up as just one of many equally "wonderful" "career choices" for women. But she also reports that her husband often told her, "Ann, your job is more important than mine." Let GK Chesterton expand on that a bit:

But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

In Huxley's Brave New World, "home" and "family" are lost, incomprehensible, repellent concepts:

"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."

They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.

"And do you know what a 'home' was?"

They shook their heads. [. . .]

Home, home-a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by
a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages.
No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and
smells.

(The Controller's evocation was so vivid that one of the boys, more
sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on
the point of being sick.) [. . .]

And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a
rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reek-
ing with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, in-
sane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group!
Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children) ...
brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk,
a cat that could say, "My baby, my baby," over and over again. "My
baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger, and that
unspeakable agonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby
sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My little
baby sleeps ..."

"Yes," said Mustapha Mond, nodding his head, "you may well shudder."

The most disgusting obscenity one could utter was the word "mother." 

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Follow-up: It's not really about "working"

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Linked at Pew Sitter - thanks!

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Music break: She's No Lady

This video is a little better but not embeddable.

(Not to be confused with the awful Tom Jones hit, "She's a Lady," which I won't even link to.) 

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What makes Michelle's head ache and more #waronwomen fun

Sorry for the repetition (this was tacked on to yesterday's #waronmoms post), but it's too juicy to risk losing in the shuffle. It's an excerpt (via Laura Ingraham) from a 2007 Vogue piece on Michelle Obama, entitled "The Natural" (irony apparently unintended):

Then, too, there is that little-discussed fact that staying home with children can be—how else to put it?—less than intellectually stimulating. "The days I stay home with my kids without going out, I start to get ill," she says. "My head starts to ache." When she mentioned it to her mother, Marian Robinson told her daughter she didn't think Michelle could handle the boredom of staying home with kids. Obama was surprised to hear that taking care of her had been boring, but now she embraces the idea of discussing it openly.

LOL.

Apparently Andrea Mitchell missed the memos on Michelle's work history and her aching head:

She's a stay at home mom. . . . [Obama's] wife is a homemaker and has not worked outside of the home.

Oookay then.

Flashback from 2009: Michelle Obama, the home economist's mentor.

Don't look now, but more wimmin are speaking for you and deciding whose "life
experiences" are valid:

TERRY O'NEILL: What would we be saying if Hillary Clinton [sic] had said this: that Ann Romney has never, has not worked for pay outside the home a day in her life?  That's my understanding that's an accurate statement, and that raises the exact issue that Hilary Rosen was trying to get to, which is do Mr. & Mrs. Romney have the kind of life experience and if not, the imagination, to really understand what most American families are going through right now? I think that that was what Hilary was getting out, and so she left out the words "for pay outside the home."

Er, Hillary Clinton? Mitt Rotney? Get a grip, girls! Remember, as Rosen said, there is no war on women. Oh, wait . . . .

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around Jay Carney's assertion that he knows, personally, "three Hilary Rosens." If it's true, are we to believe that all three are likely to be admitted to the White House? What are the odds of that? And if it isn't true, well, why tell such an implausible lie? Is he also losing his grip, or has his tenure as the Mouth of Sauron taken the predictable toll on his soul?

One more item. Phil Lawler just did his taxes:

Do you realize that you can deduct child-care expenses--unless you care for your own children. And you can deduct education expenses--unless you educate your children at home? If you drop you toddler off at the day-care center, the cost is a deductible expense. But you can’t pay yourself, and you can’t deduct the expenses you run up keeping your child out of that day-care center. [. . .]
And you wonder why a liberal Democrat might think that a Mom “never worked a day in her life.” 

Bingo.

Many thanks to MichelleMalkin.com and Larwyn for the links. Thanks also to Mommy Life for the link and kind words.

PoliticaljunkieMom comments here.

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Hilary Rosen's failed attack on Ann Romney [updated]

Wimmin, shwimmin. Aren't we getting tired of this? But I'm grateful to the Left for making my bumpy transition to defending Romney a little easier. First Pravda, now Hilary Rosen:

"I am raising children too," Rosen tweeted at Mrs. Romney. "But most young American women HAVE to BOTH earn a living AND raise children. You know that don't [you]?" Rosen's tweet was a follow-up to her claim that Ann Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life" and "never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing."

Ann Romney tweeted, after Rosen's initial insult, "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work."

It's not surprising that Ms. Rosen can't relate to Ann Romney's experience, but it's a real leap for the former, a fifty-something lesbian, to assume she can speak for "most American young women." She certainly doesn't speak for me, most of the young mothers I know, or for my twenty-something daughters and daughter-in-law.

Michelle Malkin points out that conservative women just can't win:

This is how the Left’s war on conservative women works:

We’re damned if we do stay home and we’re damned if we don’t.

We’re damned because we conservative moms drive the Left and its feminist shills mad with our mere existence, our exercise of free will, our fierce belief in protecting our families from the Nanny State, our embrace of free-market principles, and our rejection of the perpetual victim/grievance mentality.

From Hillary Clinton to Hilary Rosen, progressive feminists have shown nothing but the most reflexive, regressive contempt for women on the other side of the ideological aisle.

If doesn’t matter if you’re a conservative stay at home mom, work at home mom, or work outside the home mom. If you’re Right, the Left is gonna hate.

Yup. But they reserve a special fear and loathing for women who've given birth to  more than four children. A few excellent Twitter responses to Ms. Rosen:

@Greg Pollowitz: Too bad Ann Romney didn't do something meaningful with her life like lobbying.

@charlescwcooke: Actually, @hilaryr, if Dept of Education was half the teacher my mother was, we wouldn't have a nation in which people bought your nonsense.

@charlescwcooke: Actually, @hilaryr, if the federal government ran its budgets like most mothers do, we wouldn't have a $900bn structural annual deficit.

@charlescwcooke: An astonishing number of liberals on Twitter have feeds featuring both nonsensical "war on women" claims and mean comments about Ann Romney.

Twitchy has lots more, including David Axelrod and Jim Messina hastily washing their hands of Rosen's comments.

And speaking of women being forced by difficult financial circumstances to work when their kids are small, here's Barack Obama on his own wife's titanic struggle:

President Barack Obama said that after his two daughters were born, he and his wife—both Harvard Law School graduates—could not afford the “luxury” of having her stay home with the children.

In 2005, when Obama began serving in the U.S. Senate (and his daughters turned 4 and 7), he and his wife were earning a combined annual income of $479,062. Barack Obama was paid a salary of $162,100 by the U.S. taxpayers, and Michelle Obama was paid $316,962 to handle community affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center.

$162K? How could a family of four survive on that?

“Once I was in the state legislature, I was teaching, I was practicing law, I'd be traveling,” he said. “And we didn't have the luxury for her not to work.

“And I know when she was with the girls, she’d feel guilty that she wasn’t giving enough time to her work,” said Obama. “And when she was at work, she was feeling guilty she wasn’t giving enough time to the girls. And like many of you, we both wished that there were a machine that could let us be in two places at once. And so she had to constantly juggle it, and carried an extraordinary burden for a long period of time.”

Et cetera. Suffice it to say the Obamas clung bitterly to their lucrative sinecures and personal chef. But they were crying inside all the while, so that makes it admirable.

Back to Ms. Rosen. Is there anyway this can't backfire on the Left? Howard Fineman tweets: "Great idea to win suburban swing voters: attack MS-suffering mother of five."

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Just heard Laura Ingraham quote from this 2007 Vogue piece on Michelle Obama, entitled "The Natural" (irony apparently unintended):

Then, too, there is that little-discussed fact that staying home with children can be—how else to put it?—less than intellectually stimulating. "The days I stay home with my kids without going out, I start to get ill," she says. "My head starts to ache." When she mentioned it to her mother, Marian Robinson told her daughter she didn't think Michelle could handle the boredom of staying home with kids. Obama was surprised to hear that taking care of her had been boring, but now she embraces the idea of discussing it openly.

Because she was so brilliant, staying home with her little girls made her physically sick. Lol.

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Wow. Jim Geraghty:

White House visitor logs indicate that “Hilary Rosen” visited the White House 35 times.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the current CIA director, nine times.

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Linked by Michelle Malkin -- thanks!

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