BBC: What's the Matter With Americans?

The BBC has a snobby and biased piece up basically whinging that, in rejecting Obamacare, Americans are voting "against their interests."

The piece spends a great deal of time telling the reader that American health care is soooo expensive (without explaining why) and that Americans must be crazy not to want rationing. Well, that's my take on it, anyway.

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%...

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It would have been nice if the BBC had actually talked to those who oppose Obamacare, rather than just generalizing about them, insinuating that they're stupid or "just angry" if they don't think a government run system is in their best interests.

Protein Wisdom notes that " in other countries, people demonstrate for the government to do more things for them. Only Americans would turn out in the streets for huge demos, demanding that the government leave them the hell alone." Those silly Americans!

More analysis here.

Thank God Howard Zinn Is Dead

If only it had happened sooner, we wouldn't have generations of Americans believing his hateful anti-American view of American history.

I wouldn't usually hope someone was rotting in hell, but if I did, Howard Zinn would be the person. His unbelievable propaganda has been spoonfed to our children for decades, and we now spend far too many hours trying to deprogram them from the crap that man unleashed. Look at this:

This melodrama depends on simplistically dividing mankind into two groups – and only two: oppressors and oppressed. This is how Zinn describes and utterly distorts the early settlement of North America. The Pequot War serves as his example, as it will ours.

The war was climaxed when the Pequot stronghold in Fort Mystic was burned in battle and all its inhabitants incinerated in May of 1637. Finding themselves severely outnumbered the attackers had set fire to the Pequot compound. This is a tragic enough story, but Zinn won’t be satisfied until it becomes a story of native American innocence and victimhood versus rapacious and evil white settlers.

Thus the Pequot violence against whites that led to the war is almost entirely absent from the text. The most Zinn can bring himself to admit is that “Massacres took place on both sides.” In fact, the author details only the atrocities committed by one side: the Puritans. While graphic descriptions of Puritan violence are highlighted, Pequot atrocities are brushed aside. Here are some examples not to be found in Zinn::“[T]hey took two men out of a boat, and murdered them with ingenious barbarity, cutting off first the hands of one of them, then his feet,” writes 19th century historian John Gorham Palfrey about the Pequots’ assaults upon settlers. “Soon after, two men sailing down the river were stopped and horribly mutilated and mangled; their bodies were cut in two, lengthwise, and the parts hung up by the river’s bank. A man who had been carried off from Wethersfield was roasted alive. All doubt as to the necessity of vigorous action was over, when a band of a hundred Pequots attacked that place, killed seven men, a woman, and a child, and carried off two girls.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the settlers might have decided to resort to violent means to deal with the Pequots. But it does take someone more honest than Zinn.

The author mentions only briefly the atrocity the precipitated the war, which was the killing of a settler named John Oldham. Zinn morally justifies the murder by labeling the victim a “trader, Indian-kidnapper, and troublemaker.” This loaded account helps Zinn persuade his readers that it was the white man’s greed that led to the Pequot War. The settlers, writes Zinn, “wanted [the Pequots] out of the way; they wanted their land.”

Also absent from Zinn’s devious narrative are the atrocities that the Pequots committed against other Indians of the Connecticut Valley. The Pequots not only waged war on whites, but on their fellow native Americans as well. They were a belligerent people feared by weaker tribes.

Consequently, while Zinn portrays the Pequot War as a Puritan-versus-Indian conflict, the fact is that both Puritans and Indians fought against the Pequots, nothing could be further from the truth. Indian tribes—for example, the Narragansett—repeatedly urged the English newcomers to attack their enemies, namely the Pequots. Zinn writes that “Indian tribes were used against one another” by the Puritans when, in fact, the reverse was true. Indian tribes used the Puritans and their superior firepower to eradicate their fellow Indians who posed a threat to them.

In fact Indians were the majority in the attacking force at Fort Mystic, and by a vast margin. Whites comprised less than 15 percent of the 500-plus men who attacked the Pequot stronghold and burned it to the ground. After the horrific conflagration ended, it was the Mohegans who executed the Pequots’ captured chief.

Zinn’s account of the Pequot war is a microcosm of his book as a whole which is little more than an 800-page libel against his country.

What an evil man.

The Most Unprofessional President Ever

Obama Misrepresents the Citizens United Decision

The Supreme Court is not — and certainly should not — be above criticism. President Bush made it a point not to criticize the Court’s detainee decisions in Hamdan and Rasul — and probably missed a political opportunity. But he apparently considered it unpresidential to attack Court rulings.

By contrast, President Obama displayed an utter lack of tact in his criticism of the Court’s decision in Citizens United. Obama preened for political applause while members of the Court had to sit stoically on their hands. That Justice Alito betrayed his feelings in a minor way is understandable — and not simply because he’s from New Jersey, as my South Jersey wife said. In his preening, Obama flatly misrepresented the ruling. Citizens United is a 57-page opinion that most Americans wouldn’t have a good reason to read – and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t blame them for not reading it. Obama understands that most Americans are susceptible to misleading comments about the decision. In claiming that the Court had opened the floodgates to foreign corporations’ spending without limit in our elections, he sought to take political advantage of that susceptibility.

The man is a charlatan and has no respect for people who don't rubber-stamp his ideas.

Politics Are Only for Republicans, Right?

Rightwingsparkle explains why the same bill can get unanimous support one week after being "controversial" the previous one.

Quote of the Day

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 1802

More Polls to Make Lefty Heads Explode

Their campaign against Fox News seems to have backfired.

Americans do not trust the major tv news operations in the country- except for Fox News.

Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than distrust. 49% say they trust it to 37% who do not.

More Republicans trust Fox News than Democrats, and Democrats trust NBC more than any other outlet. These results aren't surprising and probably reflect a bit of the "echo chamber" mentality of the hard core of both parties. The interesting question becomes what do the mushy middle think of our media?

And interestingly enough, more people trust Fox News precisely because they think it isn't neutral and objective. As the press release says, it tells you where the future of news is heading; that is, that people no longer expect media people to be "objective" and would rather the biases be honest and upfront. I've thought for a long time that it's better to admit your bias (a la Keith Olbermann) and let the grownups determine for themselves what news they accept and what they reject, rather than trying to fool The People that you are completely objective and have no hidden viewpoints. Anyone who worked for their high school newspaper knows reporters and editors have viewpoints and frequently use the power of the press to push it (think civil rights, environmental issues, Watergate). Regardless of whether you thought Valerie Plame was newsworthy, it's arguable that pursuit of that story till somebody got convicted amounted to advocacy, not objectivity.

More Evidence of "Change"

Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

Remember when it was only those greedy Republicans who did shady things like no bid contracts? Democrats were really gonna clean up that mess.

Leftwing Speech Supporters Press CBS Not to Air Tim Tebow Pro-Life Ad

Yet another affirmation of their free speech bonifides here as leftwing groups pressure CBS not to air Tim Tebow's ad supporting life.

I guess when you can't come up with a pro-abortion message that doesn't sound like, "Yes, kill your baby because it's your choice," the only option you have available is to try to stop those supporting the babies from speaking out.

Quote of the Day

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Sexist Pigs Elected Scott Brown

That's what the New York Times is saying.

The defeat of Martha Coakley in last week’s special election to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy has reignited the debate over whether there is a glass ceiling for women in Massachusetts politics.

It seems hard to argue that the biggest problem with Martha Coakley's campaign was her vagina. Ineptitude, arrogance, Obamacare and the general contempt that Democrats seem to have for voters are more likely reasons for her defeat.

Quote of the Day

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow." --Federalist No. 62

Olbermann Says Citizens United Is Worse than Dred Scott

Maybe Democrats have good reason to assume that democracy will disappear, since they can't succeed within the rules.

Here's a Good Explanation of Today's SCOTUS Decision

A Great Day for Free Speech

The Supreme Court rules that you can't discriminate against speakers just cuz you don't like the political message.

“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

Liberals dislike free speech. But free speech is good, especially when consumers reject liberal ideas.

It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America's business. This past year has seen a "perfect storm" in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry's long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.

From Hot Air:

Brown wins, ObamaCare’s on life support, McCain/Feingold gets gut-punched by SCOTUS, now this. What happens tomorrow? Does Rupert Murdoch buy the Times or something?

It's a good week to be a conservative.

Coming to a blubonnet Comment Near You...

Hugo Chavez Mouthpiece Says U.S. Hit Haiti With 'Earthquake Weapon'

The United States apparently possesses an "earthquake weapon" that set off the catastrophic quake in Haiti and killed 200,000 innocents. Don't believe it's true? Just ask Hugo Chavez.

Citing an alleged report from Russia's Northern Fleet, the Venezuelan strongman's state mouthpiece ViVe TV shot out a press release saying the 7.0 magnitude Haiti quake was caused by a U.S. test of an experimental shockwave system that can also create "weather anomalies to cause floods, droughts and hurricanes."

The station's Web site added that the U.S. government's HAARP program, an atmospheric research facility in Alaska (and frequent subject of conspiracy theories), was also to blame for a Jan. 9 quake in Eureka, Calif., and may have been behind the 7.8-magnitude quake in China that killed nearly 90,000 people in 2008.

What's more, the site says, the cataclysmic ruin in Haiti was only a test run for much bigger game: the coming showdown with Iran.

The crazies have to assume American malfeasance; the idea that generous Americans help out willingly after natural disasters (not out of guilt) is too much for them to bear.

Teenagers Will Be Teenagers

Via Patterico's Pontification, we have the class prank.

A spelling prank in a class photo for more than 600 seniors at Cypress Ridge High School led to the suspension of three students.

Some students wore T-shirts spelling out “CLASS” as part of “Class of 2010” in a formal shot.

But in a later informal shot, students representing “C” and “L” moved from the front row, leaving behind a different three-letter word.

Administrators at Cy-Ridge cited the school's code of conduct and suspended the three students for three days. The penalty began Tuesday.

Senior Austin Knight says “C and L ran off” and it's not the fault of the other three students, who also were fined $135. The money will help pay the cost of retouching the photo.

Senior Raymond Carrigan says the students were “ignorant and disrespectful.”

Or just teenagers.

Health Care Reform We Can Believe In

Obama Retreats on Health-Care Bill

President Barack Obama expressed support for scaling back a health bill to "core elements," the first indication that the White House might be backing away from the type of broader overhaul that Congress had been working on.

Mr. Obama told ABC News that lawmakers should "move quickly to coalesce around" parts of the health-care bill that both parties can agree on, "core elements" that include insurance reform.

It's not clear why President Obama was hellbent on alienating Republicans from the process when he promised to be the President of All of Us.

What Scott Brown's Election Means...and Doesn't

There's a lot of hoopla out there today about what the Massachusetts miracle means.

Amanda Marcotte is crying, crying, crying deliciously tasty tears of bitter, stubborn stupidity, unwilling to honestly look at why so many liberals would vote for a Republican rather than the Democrat. Of course, she complains that Democrats won't do anything when they have this big majority, and is weirdly confused that Barack Obama and his Democrat-led Congress are so ineffectual in the face of a tiny Republican minority.

I wish Amanda would put asidde her liberal-colored glasses long enough to honestly think about why Republicans were more effective with smaller majorities and why Democrats just look like creepy clowns. To start with, when liberals want to point out how "Republicans got things done with smaller majorities," they never examine the legislation that those majorities passed. That legislation included security issues (such as FISA), tax cuts (which helped everyone), Medicare Part D (which Democrats support), and other moderate legislation. Moderate being the operative word.

Liberal Democrats misread the elections of 2006 and 2008 as being a mandate for their most radical agenda items, including socializing medicine. At a time when Americans are far more concerned about unemployment, Barack Obama and the Democrats frittered away their (and our) time on issues Americans don't care about. The truth is that Americans were simply tired of George W. Bush and the tone-deaf Republicans running Congress. That doesn't mean they suddenly wanted government seizing control of 1/6 of the economy, wrecking people's healthcare, livelihoods and choices.

If Democrats get anything from the Massachusetts miracle, one would hope it would be to temper their liberal excesses and aim for more centrist policies, the sort of thing Obama fooled voters into believing he supported. And Scott Brown may be just the Senator to do that.

Brown isn't a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He's pro-choice. He's an environmental activist. He says he would have voted for Sonia Sotomayor. But he supports the military and lower taxes. He's against the culture of corruption fostered by the Democrats. And, more importantly to me, he brings some ideological diversity to the GOP, which is likely to make it more appealing to independent voters.

I fully expect Brown to vote with Democrats on some issues and with Republicans on others. He won't be a reliable vote for either party.

Quote of the Day

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --Thomas Jefferson

Massachusetts Voters Show Some Sense and Elect Scott Brown

It's a great day in Massachusetts and in America. But liberals are whining that Democrats should cram through Obamacare even as Brown's victory repudiates the last year of Democrat rule.

The nuclear optionis in the Democrats' playbook because, of course, they are sore losers and they don't give a damn what you want. How many times do you have to hear that before you recognize their arrogance and stupidity?

Pandagon Watch: The Unbelievably Stupid Jesse Taylor Editon

God bless Chuck Serio for monitoring Pandagon for me (since Amanda Marcotte not only doesn't want me commenting on her site; she blocked my IP address so I can't even see it), because without him, we wouldn't get to see the naked stupidity and unbelievable callousness of jerks like Jesse Taylor.

Apparently, Jesse's wound up because Tim Tebow is making a commercial with a pro-life message, and the commercial will air during the Super Bowl.

The former Florida quarterback and his mother will appear in a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl next month. The Christian group Focus on the Family says the Tebows will share a personal story centering on the theme “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The group isn’t releasing details, but the commercial is likely to be an anti-abortion message chronicling Pam Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim.

Jesse's enraged that the football star and his mother actually think not killing your babies is a good thing! Can you imagine?! The doctors told this woman she would die if she had the baby...and she selfishly didn't die but gave birth to a healthy baby who then went on to do wonderful things and have a great life! How utterly selfish of her!

Jesse's upset that Pam and Bob Tebow (a) didn't do what the doctors told them to do and (b) actually found a doctor who agreed to care for her so she wouldn't die (that selfish bitch!) and that the baby wouldn't die (that more selfish bitch!)

What this teaches us is that abortion is evil, so long as you have around the clock medical care and are lucky enough to defy the odds, not die and not have your baby come out stillborn. That’s the major problem with us pro-choicers: we keep forcing women to make hard moral choices like “Do I want to chance my own death?” rather than just telling them to suck it up and face it like a man. Well, if a man was about to potentially pass a lump of dead biological matter through their nonexistent vaginas and potentially die in the process.

Yeah, Jesse. That's the message. It couldn't be a message more along the lines of, Lots of people will pressure a pregnant woman to do what they've decided is the best thing for her and kill her baby, because making her own choice--which is what they spend so much time telling us they are for--is evil. These people always support a woman choosing to kill her own child for any reason whatsoever. But risking one's life for one's children is just plain stupid, vile and, yes, morally wrong.
Here's Jesse's flippant response to my argument:

Pam Tebow made a decision based on her circumstances. She chose to take a risk, and it worked out. Good for her, she should have had that choice. But there’s a rare breed of woman, called “most of them”, who might not have an all-day, every-day doctor on call, or who might be in more danger than Pam Tebow, or who make a different calculation and don’t want to run the risk of being the dead mother of a dead baby. Fie on their monstrous asses, though. Fie!

See, the problem isn't that Pam Tebow defied her doctor, risked her life, and loved her child more than herself. It's that she and her husband sought and found medical care to help her. Oh, and she didn't die like she should have.

But wait, there's more! Most people won't have famous and athletic children, and you won't know anyway, so it's ok to kill your babies (not just the ones that are medically risky but the ones you decide you don't want just cuz).

There’s also the teensy problem of the presumption that every woman having an abortion is somehow ending the life of Football Jesus. You will never know who 99.99% of people in this world are. You won’t read the novels they don’t write, you won’t listen to the music they don’t produce. This is not to say that human life isn’t valuable. This is to say that if your case against abortion is that your future child could be a one in a several hundred million talent, you need a better case.

Of course, Tim Tebow is about to fail miserably in the NFL like most of the rest of us six billion-plus schmucks would, so maybe this is a better ad than I thought...

I'm not surprised in the least that Jesse Taylor put together such an outrageously insensitve and stupid post. Like Amanda, women having abortions to prove that they have a "choice" is far more important than women actually making principled choices that have longer term consequences. So-called pro-choicers like Jesse and Amanda let the mask slip every time they write things like this, because it shows that they don't support women's choices; they only support women having abortions. Because choosing to have medically risky babies or financially risky babies or life-altering, career-changing babies is just plain stupid or, at best, simply unnecessary risky behavior.

Obama's EEOC Nominee: Society Should ‘Not Tolerate Private Beliefs’ That ‘Adversely Affect’ Homosexuals

Another "moderate" Obama nominee expresses outrageous opinions that could have the effect of law if their appointment stands.

Chai Feldblum, the Georgetown University law professor nominated by President Obama to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has written that society should “not tolerate” any “private beliefs,” including religious beliefs, that may negatively affect homosexual “equality.”

Feldblum, whose nomination was advanced in a closed session of the Senate Health Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on December 12, published an article entitled “Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion” in the Brooklyn Law Review in 2006...

“For those who believe that a homosexual or bisexual orientation is not morally neutral, and that an individual who acts on his or her homosexual orientation is acting in a sinful or harmful manner (to himself or herself and to others), it is problematic when the government passes a law that gives such individuals equal access to all societal institutions,” Feldblum wrote.

“Conversely, for those who believe that any sexual orientation, including a homosexual or bisexual orientation, is morally neutral, and that an individual who acts on his or her homosexual or bisexual orientation acts in an honest and good manner, it is problematic when the government fails to pass laws providing equality to such individuals.”

Feldblum argues that in order for “gay rights” to triumph in this “zero-sum game,” the constitutional rights of all Americans should be placed on a “spectrum” so they can be balanced against legitimate government duties.

The least Obama could do is pick people who had actually read the Constitution before expounding on it.

After the Last Few Elections, I Can't Get Too Hopeful

About Scott Brown's chances for victory in the battle for the Ted Kennedy Memorial Senate Seat.

But that doesn't mean I don't get some pleasure from watching the NO-BA-MA chants of Brown supporters:


I'm trying to keep from smiling at the fact that the guy warming the Ted Kennedy Memorial Senate Seat won't be able to vote after Tuesday. At least, if the Democrats do the legal thing. They don't have a very good history of obeying the law. Shoot, all they've got left is to blame President George W. Bush. But apparently, the voters ain't buyin' it.

But let me say that if Brown wins in Massachusetts, it's big.

This Will Make Your Child Straight

Apparently, this phone will make your child straight. At least,
that seems to be the complaint here.

Sociological Images has a post up featuring this cell phone for children which has big buttons representing parental speed dials. Assuming, of course, that all children not only have two parents, but that they're of opposite sexes as well. Heteronormativity is everywhere, but it's the everyday small things that can be most insidious.

Damn those rightwing phone providers!

Quote of the Day

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson

It's a Good Start

Obama wins more spending cuts than Bush

President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years.

The administration says Congress accepted at least $6.9 billion of the $11.3 billion in discretionary spending cuts Mr. Obama proposed for the current fiscal year. An analysis by The Washington Times found that Mr. Obama was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs.

Among the president's victories are canceling the multibillion-dollar F-22 Raptor program, ending the LORAN-C radio-based ship navigation system and culling a series of low-dollar education grants. In each of those cases, Mr. Obama succeeded in eliminating programs that Mr. Bush repeatedly failed to end.

Now if he can only manage to cut out Obamacare, cap and trade legislation and stimuli bills, we'll be all set.

The Reason for Obama's Inefficiency and Bad Decisions

White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government

A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office.

This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama.

The public is getting a bad return on its tax dollars because government workers are operating with outdated technologies, Orszag said in a statement that kicked off a summit between Obama and dozens of corporate CEOs...

The White House release that included Orszag’s comments said one “specific source” of ineffective and inefficient government is the huge technology gap between the public and private sectors that results in billions of dollars in waste, slow and inadequate customer service and a lack of transparency about how dollars are spent.

Barack Obama has found a new place to lay the blame for his failing presidency.

Obamacare and Maternity Health: What's Missing...

...from this article?

Perhaps the biggest loss for women's health reform is that with all the drama over abortion, maternity care has remained a huge blindspot — and a costly one, at that.

The US spent $86 billion on maternity care in 2006 and another $26 billion caring for babies born preterm, now also at a record high of 12 percent. Prematurity is a leading cause of infant death, yet the majority of premies are induced or surgically delivered too early. This over-medicalisation means that childbirth costs Americans more than twice per capita what other countries with better outcomes spend. Medicaid picks up nearly half the bill in the US. If we gave just a little attention to improving care, we could literally save billions.

"Improve quality and reduce costs" — this has been Obama's mantra for health reform. How is it that instead of addressing real threats to women's and babies' health, "reform" has led us toward rolling back abortion access? Advocacy groups have been defending "abortion rights" and, to a lesser extent, "birthing rights," but it's possible that such a single-issue focus has helped to marginalise. To what other bodily system or medical procedure do we attribute rights? We don't have endocrine rights or MRI rights; men don't have testicular rights or Viagra rights. Rights belong to human beings. We have rights.

Or do we? A society that would force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy would also force her to have major abdominal surgery. Women won't get real health reform until we reform this fundamental lack of respect for women. The bus stops here.

The author, an abortion supporter, notes that women's health care is about far more than abortion, even though that one procedure sucks all the oxygen out of any conversation. She then goes on to discuss the difficulty many women face trying to have a Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC).

The Vbac ban is only a subset of a much larger problem. Decades of research tell us that optimal maternity care is something very different from what most American women receive. Optimal care means that the physiological birth process is supported with minimal intervention: labour begins spontaneously, women are free to move around and push in upright positions, and providers avoid surgical intervention unless absolutely necessary.

Meanwhile, the majority of labouring women are confined to hospital beds, strapped to mandatory but ineffective fetal monitors, induced or sped up with artificial hormones, and consequently experiencing unnecessary pelvic trauma and the highest cesarean section rate on record, at 32 percent (10-15 percent is considered the maximum we would expect for health reasons). If you question whether this has anything to do with women's bodily integrity, talk to a woman who's had an infected caesarian scar or an episiotomy that tore into her perineum.

But why do women face so many roadblocks to birth the way they want? The author doesn't address it, but the answer is simple: money and liability. Sites like this one help the prospective plaintiff look for a John Edwards-style ambulance chaser to help them get their jackpot justice. This forces doctors, hospitals and insurers to go to greater lengths to thwart lawsuits. That means forcing women to have cesareans rather than allowing them to determine the risks and rewards of vaginal births, pain medication, fetal monitors and so on.

Those really concerned about protecting women's bodily autonomy should include tort reform in any health care bills. I don't expect that to happen in the Democrats' Obamacare debates.

John Yoo Cleans Jon Stewart's Clock

Via National Review Online, we get to see what happens when you send a comedian in to do a journalist's job.



As NRO's Daniel Foster notes,

There are legitimate reasons to find the “enhanced interrogation techniques” Yoo’s legal opinions underwrote troubling, and good-faith debates on the subject have long animated The Corner. But what Yoo’s victory indicates is that Bush’s interrogation policies — right or wrong — were soberly and sincerely crafted responses to a difficult problem, not slapdash sadism.

Liberals have argued that GWB was simply a sadistic bastard wanting to torture innocents. The interview clearly counters that argument. It also shows what lawyers do so well versus comedians.

Democrat's Bad Behavior a "GOP Dirty Trick"

Now, I guess, reporters doing their job (asking uncomfortable questions) have mind control powers/

A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is describing the video above, which shows a Weekly Standard reporter getting pushed around by a DSCC consultant, Michael Meehan, as a "dirty trick" by "Washington Republicans."

DSCC spokesman Eric Schultz refused to go into detail about the incident, or to criticize Meehan, who confronted reporter John McCormack, in McCormack's telling, after the reporter followed candidate Martha Coakley down the street asking unwelcome questions.

Meehan is a veteran Democratic staffer, Bostonian, and Obama appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors. But friends said they found the video both inappropriate and out of character.

"It is no surprise that Washington Republicans are trying to use every dirty trick they have to throw the Coakley campaign off their stride, but we are determined to end this campaign talking about the issues that matter to voters, like creating jobs and lowering middle class taxes," said Schultz in a written statement.

We used to call guys who asked politicians "unwelcome questions" reporters, but that was sooo 2007, I guess.

Here's the video:


Kudos to McCormack for not allowing Coakley's thug to bully him. Somebody needs to give him (McCormack, not Meehan) a raise.

Is the photo of the incident a game changer?

In France, Shouting at Your Wife Could Make You a Criminal

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments.

People who love each other shouldn't shout, hurl epithets or threaten each other with violence. But some people--in fact, most people--do one or more of these things at some point in their relationships. In France, that could be called "psychological violence."

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands - although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.

To me, this creates a whole new can of worms for police officers to deal with in domestic violence situations. What if nagging is considered psychological violence? How many times asking your spouse to take out the garbage does it take to become psychological violence? If your spouse notes that your trousers are too tight, your belly too big, your breasts droopy, does that amount to psychological violence? Could saying truthful things like, "You've gotten a lot more gray hair in the last year or so" be considered psychological violence if the "victim" is sensitive about graying hair?

Moreover, this sort of idiotic law makes a mockery of real domestic violence, which is nothing to laugh at. It's hard to classify punching someone in the face with calling the same person a bitch. It's insulting to those who actually suffer domestic violence.

When Are Parents No Longer Financially Responsible for Their Children?

It could be as old as 23 in Virginia if a new bill passes.

Married parents don't have any legal obligation to pay for their adult children's college education or living expenses. But a bill just introduced in Virginia's legislature would require divorced parents to pay for such expenses.

HB 146 would extend child support beyond age 18 to age 23 when the "child" is attending college. Right now, child support in Virginia usually ends soon after the child reaches the age of majority.

Such provisions have been struck down in some courts and upheld in others. But such laws create an unfair burden for divorced parents that married parents do not have to bear.

As an intake lawyer for a non-profit law firm for over 6 years, I saw cases of aging divorced parents forced to pay the college bills of ungrateful offspring with whom they had an acrimonious relationship, even though they could ill-afford to do so – like a father dying of an incurable liver disease forced to pay his estranged daughter’s graduate school expenses, under a state law permitting child support to be awarded for adult children.

In my personal case, for example, such a law would require me to provide material support for one of my children but not for the others. Such a law creates an unfair advantage for children of divorce, rather than simply placing them on an equal footing.

The law should do what it can to protect children, providing those outside marriage with similar provisions as children within a marriage receive. But forcing parents to bear the financial burdens of their adult children is unfair.

Stupid Quote of the Day

Comes from News Writer:

Violence of any kind, perpetrated against anyone, is terrorism.

Really? Really?

I can think of lots of "violence" that News Writer wouldn't consider terrorism. Like, say, abortion.

But there are lots of other examples of violence that would not come under any person's definition of "terrorism." Burglary which ends in the death of the burglar, for instance, would be violent but not considered terrorism. Or a robbery of a convenience store. Or even a football game (soccer games in Europe can get pretty violent, too).

News Writer is trying very hard to create some giant terrorism umbrella to cover a whole bunch of murderers she finds personally offensive, such as abortion doctor killers and crackpots, in order to diminish the distinction between jihadis and general murderers. She also wants us to believe that it's racism that causes conservatives to notice jihadis are typically Muslims who want to kill bunches of civilians for Allah.

So – Maj. Nidal Hasan? Terrorist. Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab? Terrorist. Zacarias Moussaoui? Terrorist. Khalid Sheikh Muhammed? Ramzi Binalshibh? Ramzi Yousef? Omar Khadr? Ayman al-Zawahiri? John Allen Muhammed? Terrorists, all. Jose Padilla? Er, foreign-sounding name (check), brown skin (check) – Terrorist! Barack Hussein Obama? Um, can I get back to you on that?

On the other hand — Jim David Atkisson? Crazy loner who thought liberals were the root of all evil so he opened fire on a Unitarian Church. James Von Brunn? Crazy white supremacist loner who opened fire in the Holocaust Museum. Scott Roeder? Crazy anti-abortion loner who shot Dr. George Tiller to death at his church. Michael Griffin? Crazy anti-abortion loner who killed Dr. David Gunn. Robert Poplawski? Crazy loner who was convinced President Obama was going to take his guns so he killed four police officers. Eric Robert Rudolf? Crazy loner who bombed a park during the Olympics, a gay bar and a women’s health clinic and then hid in the North Carolina mountains for years. Tim McVeigh? Crazy loner who blew up the federal building in OKC because he didn’t like the Democratic government. Warren “Gator” Taylor? Crazy loner who thought Obama was going to take his guns AND tax him to death, so he held a bunch of people hostage in a Virginia post office. Johnny Wicks? Crazy loner pissed off at the federal government about his Social Security claim so he opened fire at the Las Vegas federal courthouse. Glenn Beck? Crazy commentator who urges crazy loners to act on their crazy thoughts.

Shoot, News Writer isn't even bothering to distinguish between leftwing whackos (such as the Holocaust Museum killer) and rightwingers. Or between guys (they're always guys! Are we anti-male, too?) who kill people and radio hosts who "urge crazy loners to act on their crazy thoughts." No examples cited, notice.

I guess to News Writer, a guy putting a bomb in his undies and a radio commentator running a show are pretty much the same thing. Except, of course, that the second guy has a constitutional right to discuss whatever he wants to on his show. The first guy is a terrorist.

Game Change

Political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have a new book out about the 2008 campaign season. DRJ at Patterico's Pontifications lists some of the major bombshells in the book, then notes,

Imagine how many Washington campaign insiders and political reporters knew about these scandals but managed to keep them bottled up before the election. Except for the Sarah Palin stories, of course. The Palin reports were widely discussed by journalists, but stories that would damage the top Democratic candidates went largely unreported.

But there was no media bias covering Barack Obama. Naaah.

The Light Skinned African American with No Negro Accent

That's what Harry Reid said about Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. Oh, and he apologized for it...today.

Liberals are playing the nothing to be seen here card because, you know, Democrats aren't racist. As one commenter put it:

But my read on this is as a Democratic Party leader, Reid was wearing a strategist's hat, when contemplating Obama's potential candidacy. He was merely giving voice to a reality that exists: there are aspects of the African American identity that voters find more off-putting. The Presidency cannot be won without a plurality of the nationwide white vote, both those enlightened and educated, and not so.

I might take issue with the "lighter skin" both as a basis in fact (there surely are succesful darker skinned pols) and whether it should even be mentioned.

"dialect" is touchy of course, but it's also a fairly standard metric, as a candidate is often evaluated by how they speak, relative to their constituents. (And nearly every southerner working in business in NYC, that I've met, scrubs their southern accent pretty quick. No offense intended to those south of the Mason-Dixon.)

Emphasis mine.

Translation: Reid wasn't being a racist for saying things that any conservative would be a racist for saying because he's a Democrat. Forget the fact that Republicans went far out of their way to avoid racist stereotypes of Obama but were still branded racists.

Of course, Barack Obama had a different take on racism back in 2002 when Trent Lott needed to be run out of office for complimenting a very old man.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D-13th), who hosted WVON's Cliff Kelley Show, challenged the Republican Party to repudiate Lott's remarks and to call for his resignation as senate leader.

"It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do," said Obama.

He said: "The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party."

85,000 Job Loss for December

One more lump of coal in the stocking for Barack Obama who, really, deserves it.

Democrats have tried to spin the job loss numbers as not too bad. I even heard some government official (sorry, wasn't paying close enough attention to get his name) on the BBC World News trying to say that these numbers were a good thing, since the U.S. isn't losing jobs as fast as we were last January. Riight.

In reality, the job numbers are terrible news for Democrats (don't tell Delaware Liberal, though). Average Americans measure the economy by the unemployment rate, only giving a passing glance to GDP growth. Regardless of how well GDP does, until Americans are seeing more "Now Hiring" signs in store windows, they are going to say the economy is lousy, and they aren't going to allow Obama and the Democrats to try to blame George W. Bush for their screwups.

Is Defaulting on Your Mortgage Immoral?

That's one argument bankers are trying to make to shame borrowers into staying in their underwater homes. But, apparently, more people are refusing to be shamed.

Let's face it. If you owe $225,000 on a house now worth $175,000, you have to ask yourself how much worse life can be if you walked on the mortgage. That $225,000 mortgage could be costing you as much as $2,000 per month, while you might be able to rent a comparable house for $1,200 down the street. It's pretty hard to argue that "not being a failure" is worth the extra 800 bucks a month. And if the mortgage is the albatross around your trying-to-get-debt-free neck, it may be pretty tempting to tell the bankers they can have their overpriced property back.

Sure, foreclosure isn't pretty and it can ding up your credit pretty badly, but how smart is it to overpay by 25% or more on a property? As the linked article notes, businesses do this all the time, defaulting on loans for properties that aren't worth the money anymore. I don't think those businessmen are feeling ashamed of those financial decisions.

I'm not advocating backing the U-Haul in your driveway and leaving the bank high and dry regarding your mortgage. But the fact that so many banks are putting onerous fees on loan renegotiations means they don't want you to work out a deal on your home. Under those circumstances, it's hard to have any sympathy for the bank that gets stuck with tons of bad loans.

Obama Priorities

From Attack Cartoons:



I'd file this under "humor," except it's not really funny so much as true.

When New Zealanders Support and Harbor Al Qaeda, We'll Bomb Them, Too

New Zealander with severely limited understanding of America thinks it's racism, as opposed to terrorism, that makes Americans willing to kill Yemenis in the War on Terror (oops! I know that term is obsolete these days, but bear with me).

The US just murdered 49 Yemeni civilians - including women and children - trying to kill a Al Qaeda leader.

Now, I was thinking - "would they ever send cruise missiles into NZ?" Would places like Aotearoa, Australia, or Canada ever find 50 civilians murdered in an explosion as the US attempted to kill its enemies?

The answer is, of course, no. For some reason, predominately white, English speaking people would never have to fear the same violence the US feels entirely justified in visiting on Arab countries. I wonder why...?

This sort of post is just one reason I can't take PiTOR seriously. Is skin color really the only difference he sees between New Zealand and Yemen? Is kiwiland harboring Al Qaeda members planning to blow up Americans and we just haven't discovered it yet? I realize the Obama administration is completely incompetent, but it's difficult to believe that Barack Obama sits in the White House saying, "Let's bomb those sand n*****s back to the Stone Age! Yeah!"

This sort of idiotic argument played better when a white man occupied the White House.

A Nutbag Lefty Synopsis of 2010

Had a great laugh over this pile of manure from Delaware Liberal, which attempts to paint 2009 as a terrific year for Democrats, which will surely lead Americans to vote for even more Democrats in November. Conversely, Delaware Dem saw only crazy racists on the Republican side of the aisle. Don't believe me? Here's its take:

First, they claimed that the President has not shown us his birth certificate, even though he and the Hawaiian government have; that he was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii based on some obviously (or obvious to anyone who can read English and has a fourth grade education) forged documents; and that even if he was born in Hawaii, Hawaii is not a state but rather some weird alien foreign world that you have to take a space shuttle to. Next, a number of whack job conservatives and racists started making death threats against the President, and some even started killing people (three police officers in Pittsburgh, an abortion doctor in Kansas, and a security guard at the Holocaust museum). Then, the Republican base got all revolutionary on our asses because they were all outraged! They said they outraged!!!!!! because the government was preventing us from going into a massive Depression that would rival the Great Depression in severity by passing the Stimulus bill, I guess because these Republicans enjoy economic depressions, since they always cause them (personally I think Republicans were outraged because a black man and/or a Democrat was President, but whatever). So they all proclaimed that they were holding tea bag parties across the land. The porn industry and BDSM enthusiasts got all excited. And during the health insurance reform debate, they got all hot and bothered by a lie from their leader about this supposed imaginary government death panels that would kill grandma, even though the insurance company death panel killed grandpa last year. As the year progressed, Republicans continued to ramp up their revolutionary rhetoric as if King George III himself had reanimated and taken over the Presidency and was taxing the Republicans without their being represented (even though the Republicans are represented in Washington and the largest middle class tax CUT was just passed).

I have to conclude that Amanda Marcotte has become a Delaware Liberal contributor, because it's impossible to believe there are two liberals stupid enough to write such drivel.

But I will agree that Republicans might not win enough seats to control the House and Senate after November (although hardened Republican pollsters like Nate Silverman has predicted that Dems could lose as many as 50 seats in the House). But it's simply delusional to argue, as Delaware Dem does, that the GOP has "no chance" of winning control.

I'll be honest. I'm not even terribly concerned about winning control of the House this time. If Republicans win even a handful of Senate seats in November, the progressive juggernaut blows up completely. And don't be fooled by idiots like Delaware Dem; Democrats know that the chances of them losing either the House or the Senate are better than even, which is precisely why they are trying so hard to cram unpopular legislation through right now. They are preparing for being the minority party in just a few short months.

For extra amusement, read Nate Silverman's column from one year ago in which he gleefully discusses the Republican death spiral.

White House Lies about Lying about Holding Health Care Hearings on C-SPAN

It's getting tiresome watching the White House lie so blatantly about what it has promised, said, or not said.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to answer questions about the president's campaign commitment to hold health-care negotiations on C-Span. Gibbs said he had not seen a letter from C-Span's Brian Lamb to congressional leaders requesting the coverage and thus could not comment on it.

On Wednesday, Gibbs was asked again about the C-Span commitment. The story had gotten pretty big in the intervening time, and presumably Gibbs had had a chance to familiarize himself with it. So reporters tried for a second day to get him to comment on the president's commitment to holding televised health-care talks. Gibbs' answer? "We covered this yesterday." Gibbs referred reporters to the transcript of Tuesday's briefing and said, "The answer I would give today is similar."

But of course, he hadn't answered the question at all.

It appears even the press is getting tired of the lying that comes out of this White House and isn't going to let it go without noting it.

Abortion Increases Breast Cancer Risk?

Thanks to Chuck Serio for this link.

Less than two months since the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force issued new guidelines recommending against routine mammograms for women in their forties, a second breast cancer scandal involving a U.S. government panel of experts has come to light which has implications for healthcare reform.

An April 2009 study by Jessica Dolle et al. of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center examining the relationship between oral contraceptives (OCs) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in women under age 45 contained an admission from U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) researcher Louise Brinton and her colleagues (including Janet Daling) that abortion raises breast cancer risk by 40%. [1]

Additionally, Dolle's team showed that women who start OCs before age 18 multiply their risk of TNBC by 3.7 times and recent users of OCs within the last one to five years multiply their risk by 4.2 times. TNBC is an aggressive form of breast cancer associated with high mortality.

Given the push by feminists for more contraception earlier, I don't really expect to see any lefty bloggers (*cough* Amanda Marcotte *cough*) changing their minds about marketing The Pill to your 15-year-old. But they should, considering the risks.

Obama's Other Broken Health Care Promises

Besides lying about open and public debate about health care, here is a list of other Obama lies on the subject:

Individual Mandate: There were not a lot of actual policy fights in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary, but one of the few major policy disagreements between then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was over the individual mandate. Clinton was for it and Obama was against it. On January 31, 2008, Obama made the case against mandates in a Los Angeles, CA, debate: “Now, under any mandate, you are going to have problems with people who don’t end up having health coverage. I think we can anticipate that there would also be people potentially who are not covered and are actually hurt if they have a mandate imposed on them.” Both the House and Senate bills now contain an individual mandate. According to the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under the Senate plan, 19 million Americans would pay $29 billion in taxes/fines and still receive no health care in return.

You Will Not Lose Your Doctor: On June 15, 2009, President Obama promised the American people: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” Again, the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services confirms that the current Senate health bill breaks this promise. Seventeen million Americans will be forced out of their existing health insurance. Worse, the CMS explains that continued Medicare cuts will encourage more doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients entirely, and the 18 million people added to Medicaid will also make it next to impossible for those already on Medicaid to find a doctor who will treat them.

No Tax Hikes for People Making Less than $250,000: On February 24, 2009, President Barack Obama promised the American people: “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” Speaker Pelosi believes the Senate bill’s excise tax on insurance plans breaks this promise, and she is right. But it is not the only way that Obamacare shatters the President’s no-middle-class-tax-hike pledge. There are a slew of new taxes in the Senate bill, many of which will hit the middle class, including taxes on medical devices, tanning beds, insurance user fees, and brand name drugs (not to mention the individual mandate which is enforced by a tax or the employer mandate which kills jobs and punishes the poor).

Your Health Premiums Will Be $2,500 Lower: On October 15, 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) promised the American people: “The only thing we’re going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed onto you. And we estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, Americans in large-group employer-sponsored plans would, on average, see their premiums remain flat, while individuals who purchase insurance in the non-group market would see much higher premiums in 2016 under Obamacare than they would under current law. And many believe those estimates are optimistic. According to the Lewin Group, once fully implemented, health care spending per worker will increase for all employers who do not currently offer coverage — $316 per worker under the Senate bill and $800 increase per worker under the House bill.

Health Reform Reduces the Deficit: On September 10, 2009, President Barack Obama promised the American people: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period.” Even the President’s most ardent supporters are now admitting the Senate bill is full of budget gimmicks to make it appear Obamacare will reduce the deficit. When the true cost of Obamacare is considered, the final tab comes to $2.5 trillion with an honest accounting of Medicare reimbursement rates netting a $765 billion deficit all by itself.

Tax Payer Funded Abortion: On September 10, 2009, President Barack Obama promised the American people: “No federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” While the House bill’s Stupak amendment language fulfills this promise, the Senate’s Nelson compromise does not. If the Senate language were to become law, it would overturn the precedent set by the Hyde Amendment, the FEHBP (Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan), Military insurance through TRICARE, and the Indian Health Service. Your taxdollars most definitely would be paying for elective abortions.

Smart people knew last year that Barack Obama lied every time he opened his mouth, but BO has reached Clintonesque levels in less than a year on the job. All we need to hear him say now is that it depends on what the definition of "health care" is.

Quote of the Day

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Spencer Roane, 1821

Nancy Pelosi: Of Course Obama Lied to Get Elected

The video where Nancy Pelosi admits that Obama "was for a lot of things on the campaign trail" but essentially lied to get elected is priceless.

Quote of the Day

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816

Another Obama Lie: Open and Public Debate on Obamacare

Democrats are looking to avoid public debate on Obamacare, and it includes "informal negotiations" between Democrats and Democrats to shove the bill down American throats.

The idea is to bypass the public hearings that a conference committee could generate, as well as to exclude Republicans from representation at the talks. While the latter is completely predictable — after all, only a couple of Republicans were ever consulted on ObamaCare, and only to get past a filibuster vote — the former violates pledges made by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama during the last two elections. They explicitly demanded an end to backroom deals made in secret; Obama himself pledged to have all of the negotiations on health-care reform televised on C-SPAN.

Anyone believe Obama meant anything he said during the campaign?

Pandagon Watch: They Don't Get Christianity

Thanks to Chuck Serio for the latest Pandagon tip.

Pam Spaulding displays her ignorance of Christianity in this post, discussing Brit Hume's statement that Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity in order to receive true redemption. Hume's statement:

Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News Chris Wallace Sunday.

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith, said Hume. He is said to be a Buddhist. I dont think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

Spaulding's response:

How does this prescription for redemption explain Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford, John Ensign and all of the rest of the Christian GOP sexual hypocrites?

I always have to remind myself that Pandagonistas are willfully ignorant about the basic tenets of Christianity, including redemption. The commenters continue the ignorance:

--"Buddhism, at least the Mahayana sects, typically emphasize making up for your sins after you sin, to correct your personal karma and avoid reincarnation as a hungry ghost, or somebody’s dairy cow."

--"Gotta love that “get out of jail free” card. It just takes timing. Don’t yell, “God damn it!” if you’re about to get hit by the bus—eternal damnation for that. But you can eat a boiled baby every day, and so long as you have the good sense to die of something lingering, like cancer, you can pray your sins away, and get into heaven.

So if I’m Woods, I keep sleeping with every man and woman alive, until the syphilis gets bad enough, and then convert.

Unfortunately, it will turn out that the Greeks were right after all. Alas!"

--"So, basically, if you’re a Christian all you have to do is apologize to God and you’re off the hook? Sounds like a great racket to me. Unfortunately, as a Buddhist, I have to acknowledge my mistakes and deal with the consequences. It’s a little rougher, but considerably more adult, IMHO.
(BTW: I’m talking not about the Christian tradition in its entirety, but the mind-numbingly simplistic take on it these folx seem to have...)"

Christian redemption isn't the idea that you can do whatever you want, ask for forgiveness, then go out and do it some more. It's the idea that, as humans, we are sinful by nature, whether we cheat on our wives, curse out the guy that cuts us off in traffic, or envy someone else's garden furniture. And because we are sinful, we needed Christ to die for our sins so that we could have fellowship with God. IOW, unlike Buddhism, which relies on the idea (as one person put it) of recognizing your grievances, correcting them and "living with the consequences," Christianity shows that we personally cannot save ourselves and must rely on Christ's sinless life, death and resurrection for salvation.

It's somewhat more humbling.

None of this, of course, negates the effects here on earth of our sins. Christians still "live with the consequences" of our actions, regardless of whether God has forgiven us or not. After all, we still have to live with and deal with those we've wronged, even if God forgives us.

One commenter stated, "What would make an impression would be if Christians could be statistically demonstrated to behave better as a group than non-Christians.

So, Christians, feel free to conduct population studies that show Christians are less likely to receive speeding tickets, have their taxes audited, get divorced, wind up on child-abuse lists, &c;. It should be relatively easy to provide clear documentation of a behavioral effect...or of its lack."

But, in fact, Christians are happier (or at least, profess happiness) than other groups and those who attend church regularly are less likely to get divorced than those who rarely go to church or those who never attend. We also have evidence that Christians are more generous with their own money and time (especially conservative Christians), and less likely to participate in anti-social behavior.

This doesn't mean you won't find Ted Haggards, Mark Sanfords or John Ensigns among Christians. It just makes it more rare. And more newsworthy when it happens.

UPDATE: Ann Coulter has a nice column on this subject.

The Hope and Change You Voted For

The Obama White House is more concerned about saving face and blaming the Bush administration for failures than protecting the American people from terrorists.

On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration.

"The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we'd declassify it if necessary."

Get it? It's more important to blame GWB than admit the Obama Dream Team f*cked up.

This administration is a disgrace.

Democrats Don't Really Want Health Care Reform

And here is the proof.

Neither of the Obamacare proposals now before Congress includes a medical malpractice reform provision despite the fact that the public wants one -- and that it would cut annual health care costs by $200 billion. A medical malpractice reform provision would protect doctors from expensive lawsuits filed by avaricious class-action plaintiffs' attorneys who have driven malpractice insurance rates into the stratosphere. Judging by Federal Election Commission data on the political contributions of people associated with the top 15 class-action plaintiffs' law firms, it's no accident that malpractice reform is not part of health care "reform": Trial lawyers are investing heavily in their Democratic friends who control the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Since Jan. 3, 2009, 581 contributions worth $1,261,023 have been made by donors identifying themselves as employees of the 15 firms (contributions by employees who did not identify their employer are not reflected in this data). Democratic candidates and committees received $1,241,978, or 98 percent of the total. The most generous of these lucrative sources of Democratic campaign cash was the Dallas-based Baron & Budd, best known for the late Fred Baron, who was finance chairman for former Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential run. Thus far in 2009, Baron & Budd employees have contributed $212,958 to 21 Democrats, and not a cent to Republicans. Second on the list is the New York-based Grant Eisenhofer firm, with employees contributing $184,078 to seven Democrats and no Republicans. Of the 138 total recipients from employees of all 15 of the firms, 122 were Democrats and just 16 were Republicans. The Democrats received contributions averaging more than $4,700, while the GOPers averaged $646.

Trial lawyers know who to pay off. This has nothing to do with protecting "the little guy." It's all about where the money is. Don't let Democrats tell you Republicans are for greedy rich people.

Banning

Patterico has been banned from Little Green Footballs for disagreeing with Charles Johnson, so Patterico is asking for people to tell their tales of LGF banning.

I haven't been banned from LGF, primarily because I've never tried to comment there. I'm sure I wouldn't last long. I have been banned from commenting at Echidne of the Snakes, and can't even see Pandagon after frustrating Amanda by calling her on her bullshit. I've also been banned and restored at a couple of other sites.

I must say that the first time or two I was banned from someone's site, I felt ashamed and chastised. But once I was banned from the Mahablog for offering a (respectful) counterargument to the one presented in a post, I realized that liberals use banning when they can't rebut conservative ideas. So, the fact that Charles Johnson has resorted to banning anyone for pointing out inconvenient truths doesn't surprise me in the least. Johnson is determined that all conservatives are racists and all racists are conservatives, and he isn't about to let facts get in the way of that premise.

Oh, How Short Their Memories

I'm constantly amazed at the short memories liberals and their accomplices in the media have. Take this column by Mike Allen at Politico:

The GOP is blaming Obama for the attack. But Republican lawmakers, candidates, pundits and commentators -- and the Bush administration -- blamed the CLINTON administration for 9/11. In September 2006, Secretary of State Rice told the New York Post editorial board, “Nobody organized this country or the international community to fight the terrorist threat that was upon us until 9/11. … We just weren’t organized as a country either domestically or as a leader internationally. But what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton Administration did in the preceding years…We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda.” … Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a few hours after the attacks: “We had Bill Clinton backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again.” … Then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), later CIA director, in The New York Times, 10/22/01: “[T]he fact is that the Clinton administration was not very interested in our intelligence community, did not spend very much time worrying about, or using it, or investing in it. … It’s impossible not to go there if you really do an anatomy of why we are where we are today.”

The blogosphere wasn't in full swing in September 2001, but within months, there were plenty of lefty bloggers telling us how safe we were with Bill Clinton at the helm and how terrible GWB was at protecting American interests. My question for Allen and leftwingers now trying the, "B-but you said" defense is this: why was it impermissible to blame terrorist attacks on the previous administration when a Republican was the president but the same attacks are reasonable today?

Perhaps their memories are short. Or perhaps Allen and his ilk don't read Pandagon, Daily KOS, Echidne of the Snakes or even backwaters like Iowa Liberal. If he did, he would have read repeatedly how inept George Bush was at national security and how Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 was a completely accurate documentary that really told the truth about the jihadi attacks. And most would be telling us that the attack at Fort Hood as well as the underwear bomber are still GWB's fault, one year after he left office.

For the record, I didn't blame Bill Clinton for 9/11 any more than I blamed George Bush for it. But after watching the left compare President Bush to Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin, I am no longer in a forgiving mood. I've promised not to compare Barack Obama to Hitler or Stalin, but neither will I give him a millimeter of slack when he stumbles and falls flat on his face. Particularly when his government was warned about the underwear bomber back in October. Thank a liberal.

Obama's Non-War on Terror

A terrorist war Obama has denied

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to play down and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York -- a trifecta of political correctness and image management...

Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant -- an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians -- and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point -- surprise! -- he stops talking.

People who want to blow up airlines and do the work of Al Qaeda are not the same as penny ante thugs holding up a liquor store and don't deserve the same constitutional protections, since their attempts to harm America will not be stopped with one arrest. But the Obama administration is determined to revert to Bill Clinton's approach to terrorism: it's simply a police action. As Krauthammer notes, any president who can't call a jihadist a jihadist is putting us all in danger's way unnecessarily.

Happy Tax Year!

One thing 2010 will bring for sure: tax increases that affect everyone. Congress failed to reauthorize dozens of tax breaks, effectively raising taxes on every American. Nice gift for the new year, huh? And believe me, this is only the beginning. Among those breaks not renewed are:

■Deduction of state and local general sales taxes (section 164) (Personal Tax Incentives)
■Additional standard deduction, up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples, for state and local property taxes (section 63) (Personal Tax Incentives)
■Research tax credit and alternative simplified credit (section 41) (General Business Tax Incentives)
■New markets tax credit (section 45D) (Community Assistance Provisions)
■Empowerment zone incentives (sections 1391 and 1202) (Community Assistance Provisions)
■Renewal community tax incentives (sections 1400E, 1400F, 1400I, and 1400J) (Community Assistance Provisions)
■District of Columbia Investment Incentives (sections 1400, 1400A, 1400B, and 1400C) (Community Assistance Provisions)
■Net disaster loss designation and $500 limit per casualty for personal casualty losses attributed to federally declared natural disasters (section 165) (General Disaster Relief Provisions)
■Expensing for qualified disaster expenses (section 198A) (General Disaster Relief Provisions)
■Biodiesel and renewable diesel incentives (section 40A) (Energy Incentives)
■Alternative motor vehicle credit for heavy hybrids (section 30B) (Energy Incentives)

The Senate may take up these provisions, but don't count on it. They're too busy cramming unwanted and disasterous Obamacare down the throats of Americans who have said loudly they don't want it.

Clueless

Linda Chavez hits the nail on the head in her description of Barack Obama and his administration.

Clueless. It’s the word that best describes the Obama administration’s first year in office. They’ve proven themselves clueless about creating jobs; clueless about handling growing nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea; and now, most devastatingly, clueless about protecting Americans from terrorist attacks on our own soil. And with nearly one year under the belts, they can’t keep blaming the Bush administration for everything that goes awry.

I disagree with her last sentence. Obama will continue blaming GWB, even though most people aren't buying it anymore. It plays well in the moonbatosphere. Point out Obama's My Pet Goat moment? They argue about George Bush's response to the shoe bomber. Show why Obama's economic policies don't work? They complain that Obama inherited a lousy economy. And so on and so forth.

Didn't Obama campaign on being a "new kind" of politician? It would be refreshing if he simply quit whining about being the POTUS and just did his job. When was the last time you heard a new CEO whinge for a year about the company he "inherited"? Time for BO to put on his big boy pants and do his job.

Happy New Year!

What are your New Year's resolutions? Mine is to be debt free (with the exception of the mortgage and second mortgage, a.k.a., student loan) by mid-2010.