RedState

We should get on the phones today about David Hamilton

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:36:35 +0000

I have written about David Hamilton before.

He is the federal judge who believes it is a violation of the first amendment for Christians to pray at school events, but is not a violation of the first amendment when Muslims pray at school events.

He is also the judge who was cited by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for abusing his power by keeping an injunction in place on an informed consent law despite the law clearly being constitutional.

Barack Obama has naturally appointed the man to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals — the very court that said Hamilton had abused his power.

Call your Senator today and tell him to vote against cloture on David Hamilton’s nomination. Call 202-224-3121. Ask for your Senator. Tell him to oppose cloture and oppose the nomination of David Hamilton.

Gallup: R+4 on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:31:05 +0000

(Via AoSHQ) Shift of eight points since July, which for Gallup represents the GOP ‘edging ahead.’ The current numbers are GOP/Democrats 48/44. And 52/30 among independents. And this represents registered voters, not likely ones. Gallup tried to caveat this one every way that it could, but has to conclude:

Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters’ preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats. This is likely because more Americans usually identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans can offset this typical Democratic advantage in preferences with greater turnout on Election Day. Most of the prior Republican registered-voter leads on the generic ballot in Gallup polling occurred in 1994 and 2002, two strong years for the GOP.

Particularly interesting is this amusing graph:

…and yes: the Democratic line does look uncannily like the trajectory of an airplane just after it has lost all power to the engines, mid-flight. A real shame that this didn’t come out last Friday, huh? There’s a bunch of Blue Dogs who probably would have appreciated the opportunity to factor this information into their long-term voting strategies.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

U.S. Needs to Defend Honduras

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:29:51 +0000

Rep. Connie Mack has the top story at Human Events.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez — together with the likes of Cuba’s Castro brothers, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega — is spewing a populist, leftist, and strongly anti-American brand of politics that is spreading throughout Latin America. There, a rebellion against Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is gathering that the Obama administration seems eager to quell.

One country, Honduras, rejected the Chavista vitriol and embraced freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. This should have been seen as a win for freedom over tyranny. But instead, President Obama and his administration condemned the Honduran people and stood with a “who’s who” list of tyrants and thugs of Latin America.

Earlier this year, former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a Chavez ally, suggested that he might want to stay in power for another term. There was only one problem: the Honduran Constitution explicitly forbids and makes illegal any attempt to change the constitution. Mr. Zelaya, taking a page from the Chavez playbook, tried to change the constitution to allow him to run again and stay in power.

Liar, Liar, Charlie Crist’s Pants Are On Fire

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:57:50 +0000

Good grief. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has never had to run a real primary against a real Republican and it is starting to show.

About a week or so ago, Crist lied and said he had never supported Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, despite signing a letter of support, appearing with Obama on video, and producing a personal video in favor of the stimulus.

But it gets better.

When Barack Obama headed to Florida the other day, reporters asked Charlie Crist if he was going and Crist claimed he did not even know Barack Obama was in Florida that day.

According to an Open Records Act request, Crist very much did know.

E-mails obtained by the St. Petersburg Times this week through a public records request cast doubt on that claim. The messages prove Crist’s office was aware of the visit, and it seems unlikely his aide would have dismissed Crist going to Jacksonville without checking with Crist.

He’s not commenting further. He doesn’t have to.

Morning Briefing for November 11, 2009

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +0000

RedState Morning Briefing
For November 11, 2009

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

1. Forget Murtha and Rangel, Let’s Prosecute Catholic Bishops!

2. Pro-Abortion Senator who Could Live with Stupak is Attacked by Net-roots & Caves

3. The Stupak Minimum

4. Democrats Divided on Abortion

5. Charlie Crist And the Stimulus Love: “It’s a Bridge of Help”

6. Hope and Change Watch: AG Holder upholding PATRIOT Act.

———————————————————————-

1. Forget Murtha and Rangel, Let’s Prosecute Catholic Bishops!

The Democrats have a number of members being investigated for corruption. The FBI is looking into a few. William Jefferson (D-LA) is going to jail. The House Democratic Leadership is blocking other investigations.

Both Murtha and Rangel have issues. But Lynn Woolsey, Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, that congressional body that takes pride in the Progressive Movement’s eugenics experiments and efforts to sterilize black women and the mentally disabled back at the start of the twentieth century, does not want Charlie Rangel and Jack Murtha investigated.

Instead, Lynn Woolsey — a friend of Speaker Pelosi’s — wants Catholic Bishops investigated.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Pro-Abortion Senator who Could Live with Stupak is Attacked by Net-roots & Caves

The difference between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate debate on the Stupak amendment is stark.

The pro-abortion Members of Congress in the House, and pro-abortion groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, rolled over and did not threaten to derail the bill because Speaker Pelosi asked them to. So they played dead.

Senator McCaskill (D-MO), who is pro-abortion, publicly said she could live with the Stupak amendment. (This link also shows the deep net-roots anger against NARAL and Emily’s List for playing dead and letting Stupak pass at the request of the Speaker.)

Senator McCaskill is not the Speaker of the House, and she was not so lucky — she did not get a free pass.

She was instantly pounded by pro-abortion forces. Senator McCaskill has now changed her tune — she will not support Stupak in the Senate — all in the same day.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The Stupak Minimum

It may, in fact, turn out that Stupak is the undoing of the health care bill. I don’t know and, again, won’t second guess the House GOP Leadership, which firmly believes it made the right call. Our presumption going forward should be that they made the right call, regardless of our personal opinions.

More importantly, what I would suggest is that conservatives not turn the health care fight into a fight over abortion tactics and policy. The bill is two thousand freedom sucking pages of crap and is, with or without Stupak, very clearly not conducive to a culture of life. Abortion is only one aspect.

The GOP and outside interest groups should now agitate for the “Stupak Minimum,” i.e. the Stupak amendment language must be the baseline for pro-life language in the health care legislation. Anything less should be opposed.

The Democrats will never go for it. But above all else, we must remember the strategy must be to kill the bill, not improve it.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Democrats Divided on Abortion

A funny thing is happening on the way to the impending health care showdown, as the Democrats try to turn the newly-passed House bill into something that can pass both Houses of Congress: Democrats are divided over abortion, and their divisions threaten to wreck the bill. With government-run health care having passed the House with only a 3-vote margin of victory, 60 votes needed in the Senate, and pro-life and pro-choice Democrats both vowing to go to war over the bill’s abortion provisions, the whole legislative initiative can be put at risk by even a small number of defectors.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Charlie Crist And the Stimulus Love: “It’s a Bridge of Help”

We’ve got a video of Florida Governor Charlie Crist, in his own words, saying “During the town hall [with Barack Obama], I reiterated my support for the federal stimulus package, and pledged to the people of Florida that here in Florida we stand ready to use our share of the money quickly and responsibly to create new jobs and serve our most vulnerable citizens.”

But where it gets interesting is that Crist believes Florida needed to get its “fair share” of the stimulus. It’s a “bridge of help,” in Crist’s words.

That’s not very conservative language.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Hope and Change Watch: AG Holder upholding PATRIOT Act.

Actually, in this context ’same as the old boss’ would be a comfort. To me, at least, if not the folks who made such a hullabaloo over the PATRIOT Act; I’m not worried about the government abusing its authority so much as I worry about it making an utter hash of its attempt to try to use it. But of course said ‘abuse’ was not the least common election-year theme - usually in the context of how things would change, once the Republicans weren’t running things. And usually argued by people who really should have known better.

Which is why I’m more amused than anything else about this:

“Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the Senate’s version of legislation that would extend three provisions of the Patriot Act that are slated to expire at the end of the year.”

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Pro-Abortion House Dems Solidify Opposition to Conference Report with Stupak Amendment

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:06:06 +0000

From the Hill:

“More than 40 lawmakers vowed to oppose the final healthcare bill if the House language on abortion is not removed.

Reps. Diana DeGette (Colo.) and Louise Slaughter (N.Y.) led the group of Democrats in writing to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) threatening to withhold support for a final conference report if it strictly prohibits federal funding for abortion services.

“We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law,” reads a draft of the letter. DeGette and Slaughter, who is the chairwoman of the powerful Rules Committee, also wrote President Barack Obama requesting a meeting on the issue next week.”

The pro-abortion Democrats may have two options: a) accept pro-life language prohibiting federal funding of abortions, or b) kill their own health bill.

Watching the FCC

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:15:08 +0000

They haven’t passed the Net Neutrality regulations, phase one of the push for Single Payer Internet, but the FCC is already plotting phase two: a National Broadband Plan. Call it what you will: a socialist Five Year Plan, fascist-inspired industrial policy, what have you. It’s a frightening step by this administration.

It’s so frightening, in fact, that Senate Democrats think the FCC needs to be more plain spoken about their plans, currently being hidden in overly-fancy language. It’s not impossible to speak about Internet policy in plain language. It’s just not possible to plan fascist takeovers of industries in plain language without scaring voters, is all. Which is why they don’t do it.

Meanwhile, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel refutes Net Neutrality proponents who claim that the practices NN is meant to oppose, are not theoretical:

Net-neutrality advocates raise the specter of providers censoring websites by slowing or cutting off access to them in the absence of new rules. Yet they cite only three isolated instances of this in the past five years. Each was quickly resolved.

Once again, we get more evidence that Net Neutrality is really just the crisis that progressives are using to grow government. We have to stop them.

Pro-Abortion Senator who Could Live with Stupak is Attacked by Net-roots & Caves

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:02:02 +0000

The difference between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate debate on the Stupak amendment is stark.

Senator McCaskill is not the Speaker of the House, and she was not so lucky — she did not get a free pass.

She was instantly pounded by pro-abortion forces. Senator McCaskill has now changed her tune — she will not support Stupak in the Senate — all in the same day.

Pro-Abortion Forces on the Defensive

The precedent set by the Stupak amendment in the House has put the pro-abortion forces on the defensive. They lost a major battle and are now reacting very aggressively.

They cannot allow a Stupak type amendment to pass the Senate. It will make their position in Conference extremely weak, untenably weak. It will lock-in the pro-life victory in the House.

If the Senate also passes an amendment, close to or like the Stupak amendment, then the bill coming out of Conference would force the pro-abortion groups to oppose the Conference report, and they would have to join with the Republicans to kill ObamaCare.

The Stupak Minimum

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:09:19 +0000

Editor’s Note: I’ve taken out the top of this post, which responded to Ramesh Ponnuru’s post about my NRLC criticisms. I’ve been saying we should not let this become a debate on abortion or other single issues and therefore don’t think I can justify in my mind continuing that conversation. But, the larger point on the “Stupak Minimum” is worth keeping as it plays to our larger goal — defeat of the health care legislation.

As I wrote the other day,

I think the Stupak Amendment was an instance of the pro-life community not seeing the forest for the trees and it should have been opposed. But I am willing to admit I could be wrong. What I do know is that the House Republican Leadership has been very, very good at combating the Democrats’ legislative agenda. That House GOP Leadership encouraged a vote for Stupak should not be second guessed lightly. It is a lot easier for me to Monday morning quarterback the vote than it was for these men and women on the front lines to make a decision.

I am not going to second guess them and, in fact, as I wrote this morning, I suspect there will be pro-life language in the final bill, but weak enough for pro-choice votes. After all, the Democrats will throw zealous abortion advocates under the bus as fast as lightening if the end result is a federal take over of 1/6th the American economy.

Let me also suggest one strategy consistent with what I wrote this morning:

After the GOP is done demanding things come out, not be ameliorated or added, there will be no bill left that the left can support. Additionally, the GOP must orchestrate a strategy to put Democrats up for election in difficult positions — offering up amendments that the Democrats cannot say no to, but that take away votes from the overall legislation once agreed to.

The GOP and outside interest groups should now agitate for the “Stupak Minimum,” i.e. the Stupak amendment language must be the baseline for pro-life language in the health care legislation. Anything less should be opposed.

The Democrats will never go for it. But above all else, we must remember the strategy must be to kill the bill, not improve it.

Gov. Jodi Rell (R, CT) not running for re-election.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:29:53 +0000

This is interesting.

HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell says she will not seek re-election next year.

Rell made the announcement in a news conference with reporters Monday at the statehouse in Hartford.

The article indicates that her personal polling has slipped - all the way down to 59%; she was also looking at a Q-poll which had her six points ahead* her most likely Democratic rival. It’s possible that this was enough to trigger her desire to get out of political life, especially in a year that’s starting to look bad for non-conservative incumbents. Then again, it’s possible that this was enough to trigger her desire to switch political gears and enter a race where she’d end up being neither.

Note: that last is a guess. And a very speculative one, at that. And it may be the right guess, but the wrong election cycle…

Moe Lane

*Which tells you… pretty much nothing. Quinnipiac hasn’t been at its best this cycle.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Hiatt: ObamaCare Brings U.S. Closer to Bankruptcy

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:43:44 +0000

While the dollar hits a 15 month low, and gold hits an all time high, and the editorial page editor of the Washington Post (no less) is warning:

“The bill also could take America a step closer to bankruptcy. And for progressives in particular — for those who believe that government has a mission to help the poor and protect the vulnerable — that prospect should be alarming. If federal debt continues rising on its present path, hastened by a $1 trillion health-care bill, it is the poor and vulnerable who will be most harmed.”

This is also why some political risk analysts are connecting the dots between PelosiCare and the value of the dollar:

“If the Reserve Bank of India’s directors had any doubts about the wisdom of buying 200 tonnes of IMF gold — and likely dumping some U.S. Treasuries in the process — they had only to watch last weekend’s legislative activities on Capitol Hill. The proceedings provided plenty of reassurance that the move was a smart play.

“Nothing in the healthcare reform bill that passed the House of Representatives should give investors in dollar-denominated assets any confidence that U.S. policymakers are serious about tackling the government’s structural budget deficit.”

Amazing as it is that the Washington Post would be pointing out the obvious about the Democrats $1.2 Trillion health care spending plan, since liberal and progressive news writers have given aide, comfort and a criticism-free ride for those who are doing the spending.

It is apparent that there is no amount of money too high to spend for the House Democrats on health care reform. CBO confirms the amended House bill spends $3 Trillion.

But now Fred Hiatt has really stepped over the lines — he is “calling out” President Obama for his failure to cut keep his promise about the health bill spending and the deficit.

“True, the Congressional Budget Office has said that the bill is paid for. But the CBO is not allowed to count $250 billion in projected Medicare payments to doctors over the next 10 years, because the House — after first acknowledging that cost in its reform bill — decreed it had nothing to do with reform because lawmakers didn’t want to pay for it.“Nor is the CBO permitted to ask whether Congress will truly cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare programs in coming years, as the House bill assumes. History suggests that legislators will not be deaf to the complaints of seniors and those who treat them when it comes time for the axe to fall.

“As Post health reporter Ceci Connolly explained in a front-page story last week, the House bill also does not do much to lower costs.”

I asked a senior Senator who sits on the Committee on Finance when Congress has ever cut Medicare more than $100 billion, let along half a trillion — the answer was “never.” Will Congress make the cuts they say they will — answer: No. Then why is CBO accepting these promises — because CBO has agreed to let the cuts be paper ones, never real.

The Democrats have lost touch with fiscal reality, do not care about the cost of their bill and are especially giving the middle finger to all those independent voters concerned about spending and the deficit. The Democrats say they care about spending and the deficit, but they keep spending trillion after trillion. It is really ironic that Hiatt quotes a “progressive” budget analyst, about the debt, since progressives have been the ones pushing to spend trillions on health care.

In a nutshell, five percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product will be financed by debt:

“Under his plan, according to a CBO analysis, the government will be spending 24.5 percent of gross domestic product — the total value of the national economy — by 2019 while raising only 19 percent in revenue: a huge, unsustainable gap.

“In the kind of fiscal crisis that might ensue, as progressive budget expert Robert Greenstein said recently, “the risk is high that the people with the least political power in this country could bear a disproportionate share of the burden even though, by and large, they’re lower on the income scale.” The government would spend more and more on interest payments while likely stinting on college scholarships, inner-city schools, and, above all, aid to the poor and near-poor here and abroad.”

This is a surprise? The President lies about the debt and cost of his plan. CBO pretends — while protesting they are being forced to pretend — cuts to Medicare will happen that will not and never have happened. (A Democratic controlled U.S. House, U.S. Senate and White House will cut Medicare half a trillion — oh, we are really playing charades, is that it?)

The U.S. House leadership kept increasing the spending on their health bill without any limit, they just spent because they want too — and the U.S. House leadership lies about the cost of its bill.

We are living in a pretend land where we say everything is revenue-neutral and we promise not to go into debt, but our elected leaders are lying to the American people and to the world’s financial circles. When the editorial page of the Washington Post starts warning about moving closer to bankruptcy, and progress budget analysts are warning about debt, you can bet things are really far worse than you can imagine. I guess their warnings are better late than never.

And now, even the New York Times is writing about some kinda, maybe, sorta fiscal concern and the powerless factions advocating it — versus the let’s spend to pass this bill White House faction that is winning the let’s pretend contest of fiscal fantasies.

Democrats Divided on Abortion

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:59:32 +0000

“The health care bill, by virtue of its intrusive nature, makes neutrality impossible…Such a bill cannot be ‘pro-choice.’ It must be pro-abortion or anti-abortion.”

The Democrats’ divisions over abortion may surprise casual observers. If you’ve tried getting your news from the mainstream media any time in the last three decades or so, you have undoubtedly seen more variations on the headline “Abortion Divides GOP” than you could count. The basic narrative is usually some variant on the notion that the Republican Party would be one big happy family if it weren’t for those awful pro-lifers. The MSM will write stories from this template at the drop of a hat, with the goal of feeding a larger narrative that one side of the abortion debate is “divisive” and that this problem is a Republican problem because being a pro-lifer is synonymous with being a right-wing woman-hating extremist. The idea that there might be broader bipartisan support for the pro-life movement seems never to have occurred to the media.

That’s where this weekend’s vote over the Stupak Amendment, which amended the House version of the health care bill to bar federal health care dollars from being spent on abortions, comes in.

Presumably believing her own rhetoric about pro-lifers being beyond-the-pale extremists whose opinions no longer matter in today’s Democratic-run Washington, Speaker Pelosi had fought for months to resist any efforts to prevent taxpayer dollars from being used to finance abortions under Obamacare. This recalcitrance belied President Obama’s repeated rhetorical efforts to convince the public that the bill was abortion-neutral, and created a political problem even the New York Times was forced to acknowledge: especially since the 2006 and 2008 elections, in which Rahm Emanuel recruited many Democratic candidates to run in districts where the pro-life cause is strong, there are once again a fairly substantial number of Congressional Democrats who call themselves pro-life, and they really do not want to be compelled to choose between voting against a health care bill and voting in favor of taxpayer funding of abortion. The ultimate vote in the House on the Stupak Amendment drew surprising Democratic support: 64 votes, contributing to the measure’s resounding 240-194 victory. This reality came as a shock to pro-choice hardliners like Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro:

[W]hen Pelosi announced late Friday that she would allow an amendment strictly limiting insurance coverage of abortions, it touched off an angry yelling match between DeLauro and another Pelosi confidant, California Rep. George Miller, and tears from some veteran female lawmakers, according to people in the room.

Some of the lawmakers argued that Pelosi was turning her back on a decades-long campaign by female Democratic members in support of abortion rights. Miller rose to Pelosi’s defense, which resulted in an angry confrontation between him and DeLauro, said the sources.

Miller told DeLauro that there were “more pro-life votes in the House than pro-choice” and that abortion-rights advocates had better acknowledge that reality.

By this morning, this was entrenched as a Democratic talking point, as California’s Loretta Sanchez repeated on Morning Joe that even with a wide Democratic majority, pro-lifers are in the majority in the House and the pro-choicers have only about 150 votes.

Now, longtime pro-life activists are justifiably somewhat skeptical that “pro-life” Democrats really ever mean it. While there have at times been true warriors for the pro-life cause in the Democratic Party, notably the late Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey (who fought all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade in 1992), the usual pro-life Democrat tends to be a mushy-middle sort who isn’t up to change the Roe status quo and will choose party loyalty in any difficult battle over, say, the composition of the Supreme Court, but at the same time is willing to sign on to restrictions at the extreme margins of the issue, like partial-birth abortion and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

But the health care bill, by virtue of its intrusive nature, makes neutrality impossible, and thus may have pushed a number of these reluctant pro-lifers into a position where they had no choice but to vote for what they profess to believe. Contrary to what Obama claims, true neutrality is not possible when the government gets so deeply entangled in an area of life as this bill proposes to get the government into the provision of health care. Such a bill cannot be “pro-choice” in the sense of leaving mothers to make their own decision on their own private dime; it can only be pro-abortion, by providing federal subsidies for abortion coverage, or anti-abortion, by denying them where in the past they may have been funded by purely private insurance.

The Stupak Amendment “would bar anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a private plan that covers elective abortion. In addition, under Stupak, the public plans would not be allowed to offer abortion coverage prohibited under the Hyde amendment.” Pro-choicers claim that this is actually an expansion of the Hyde Amendment’s scope and would squeeze out private plans that cover abortion - but they somehow miss that that’s how the bill would work with regard to everything it touches, not just abortion. As Phil Klein puts it:

[T]he need for the controversial measure is a direct consequence of liberal efforts to have the government take over the health care system. The amendment, proposed by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA), would merely extend protections under current law that prevent taxpayer funding for abortion through government health care programs such as Medicaid. The only reason the Stupak-Pitts amendment would apply restrictions to the private market is that the government would be drastically expanding its role in the private market as a result of the health care legislation.

Currently, women are able to purchase private health care plans that cover abortion because it remains a legal procedure and we still have a private market for the sale of health insurance. But if the House Democratic health care bill becomes law, individuals will only be allowed to purchase health insurance through a government-run exchange. And because millions of Americans will be using government subsidies to purchase insurance through the exchange, suddenly lawmakers get to have a say on what kind of private insurance policies individuals can purchase. In addition, the federal government would be directly operating one of the plans, known as the “public option.”

In short, pro-life Democrats were left no other option than to demand a clear affirmative prohibition on the use of federal funds to subsidize abortion. Politico reports that Stupak threatened to vote against the bill unless his amendment was included and that “a big bloc of anti-abortion Democrats were threatening to derail the entire bill unless party leaders agreed to stronger restrictions” demanded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has pushed for health care legislation but refuses to support it without something on the lines of the Stupak Amendment. In all, 42 Members of the House (including the lone GOP vote for the bill, Joseph Cao) voted for both the Stupak Amendment and the final bill, well in excess of the 3-vote margin for error provided by the bill’s ultimate 220-215 victory. Stupak told the Wall Street Journal that he has more than enough votes to scuttle the whole bill if his amendment is removed:

“We won because [the Democrats] need us,” says Mr. Stupak. “If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don’t say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won’t vote with them the next time they need us - and that could be the final version of this bill.”

In the Senate, the health care bill already faces a rocky road; the death of Ted Kennedy and Joe Lieberman’s vow to join the GOP filibuster of the bill leave the Democrats starting with 58 votes (59 if they can get Maine Republican Olympia Snowe to stay on board with the bill), and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson says he needs the Stupak Amendment in the bill to support it:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) wants to see abortion language as restrictive as the Stupak amendment in the health care reform bill, his spokesman told POLITICO Monday.

“Senator Nelson is strongly prolife and was pleased the Stupak amendment passed with such strong support,” Thompson said in a statement. “He believes that no federal money - including subsidies or tax credits - should be used to buy insurance coverage for abortion. This is a very important issue to Senator Nelson and it is highly unlikely he would support a bill that doesn’t clearly prohibit federal dollars from going to abortion.”

Thompson said Nelson could not support anything less than Stupak amendment.

In terms of strategy, Nelson is still evaluating options, Thompson added.

The last line is significant: the bill needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster but only 50 “yes” votes, and unlike Lieberman, Nelson hasn’t vowed to filibuster. Nor have we heard a firm answer from putative pro-lifers like Gov. Casey’s son, now a Pennsylvania Senator, or from at-risk Senators like Blanche Lincoln who need to face strongly pro-life electorates to get re-elected (Sen. Reid is himself nominally pro-life but not expected to do anything about it).

Lest you believe that the Democrats can hold the wavering pro-lifers in place by maintaining the Stupak Amendment, however, the pro-choice hardliners are also threatening to kill the bill unless it’s removed. As the Washington Post reported:

Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment — enough to block passage.

“There’s going to be a firestorm here,” DeGette said. “Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We’re not going to let this into law.”

The Post’s in-house left-wing activist, Greg Sargent, has a copy of the letter. DeGette has the pledged support of at least one member of the House Democratic leadership:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-choice lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from going to subsidize abortions.

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we’re all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that’s the case.”

Senate pro-choice Democrats, led by Barbara Boxer, have similarly drawn a line in the sand:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and replace it with a version resembling that passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday. And, in an interview with the Huffington Post, the California Democrat predicted that pro-choice forces in the Senate would keep that from happening.

“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”

“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”

Boxer’s reading of the political landscape might seem like the hopeful spin of an abortion-rights defender. But it was seconded by a far less pro-choice lawmaker, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

“It would have to be added,” sad the Montana Democrat of an amendment that mirrored that offered Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in the House. “I doubt it could pass.”

Boxer is relying on Senate procedural rules regarding the original bill, as opposed to the conference report, but in either event, as in the House, the battle over the original bill will be a warning shot about what could possibly pass both Houses following a conference:

Currently, the Senate bill’s language would allow for insurers participating in a health care exchange to cover abortions so long as they ensured that federal funds are not used to pay for the procedure. An amendment similar to Stupak['s] effort — which was offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — had already been voted down in the Senate Finance Committee.

To re-introduce such a provision, Boxer said, 60 senators would be required to cut off debate on the floor. And the votes for that, she said, likely won’t materialize.

Some pro-choice Democrats, led by Lynn Woolsey, Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are not just looking to strip the Stupak Amendment, but calling as well for an investigation of the Catholic Bishops’ role in the Amendment, a posture that effectively would require them to investigate the Bishops’ coordination with 64 of their own Members.

Unsurprisingly, given his extreme record on abortion, President Obama seems to have joined the chorus looking to water down or remove the Stupak Amendment, although in the end it seems unlikely that Obama has much say in the process, given that he’s likely to vote for just about anything he can call a health care bill:

Saying the bill cannot change the status quo regarding the ban on federally funded abortions, the president said, “There are strong feelings on both sides” about an amendment passed Saturday and added to the legislation, “and what that tells me is that there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo.”

+++

“I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” he said.

(Asked about the president’s position, press secretary Robert Gibbs refused to offer anything clearer than this)

At the end of the day, for all the conservative hand-wringing over Speaker Pelosi’s short-term tactical victory in allowing a vote on the Stupak Amendment and thus enabling passage of the bill through the House, the political reality remains: there may not be enough votes to pass the final bill with the Stupak Amendment, because of intransigence from pro-choice Democrats, and there may not be enough votes to pass the final bill without the Stupak Amendment, because of intransigence from pro-life Democrats. And that’s even before we get to the fissures among the Democrats and with the public at large over taxes, spending, individual mandates, the public option, tort reform, immigration, and euthanasia.

There are two ensuing lessons for Democrats, if that turns out to be the case. One is that a Democratic majority in this country is only possible if Democrats make real, rather than just rhetorical, concessions to the pro-life movement. And the other is that, for all of the grand ambitions of progressives, any bill that drives this far and this deep into American life is bound to expose long-dormant fault lines in any political coalition.

Obama’s Likely Voter Approval Index Drops After House Passes ObamaCare

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:37:47 +0000

I thought the President said passing ObamaCare — doing the exact opposite of what the public wants — will help their poll numbers?

links for 2009-11-10

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:03:37 +0000

CT Gov Poll: Rell Leaves Race In The Lead

Gov. Rell of Connecticut is not going to seek re-election. Can't say I blame her. She really fell into the job in a trial by fire way. She's got a family that is growing up too.
France on the Hudson

Very good piece about the elections in New York City. But it reflects the nation as a whole. The Democrats are increasingly becoming the party of the very rich and very poor. The GOP can fill the void with the middle class, but needs to really be about economic opportunity and freedom, not more handouts.
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl

You need this cookbook. Rare is there a cookbook that has a recipe on every single page that sounds delicious.

Charlie Crist And the Stimulus Love: “It’s a Bridge of Help”

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:00:45 +0000

Here’s a video of Florida Governor Charlie Crist, in his own words, saying “During the town hall [with Barack Obama], I reiterated my support for the federal stimulus package, and pledged to the people of Florida that here in Florida we stand ready to use our share of the money quickly and responsibly to create new jobs and serve our most vulnerable citizens.”

But where it gets interesting is that Crist believes Florida needed to get its “fair share” of the stimulus. It’s a “bridge of help,” in Crist’s words.

That’s not very conservative language — he says twice that Florida should get its “fair share.” That sounds more welfare queen than conservative. With the stimulus’s help and Charlie Crist’s support, Florida has seen a loss of 165,100 jobs since the stimulus passed. That’s one heck of a bridge of help.

Well done, Charlie.

“We’re Going To Take Whatever Steps Are Necessary”

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:30:57 +0000

So sayeth President Obama as he promises “to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.” But, like so many other promises he makes, this one can not be kept.

Whether or not this was an act of terrorism, and whether or not Hasan’s words and deeds foretold the senseless loss of life at Fort Hood, we have sadly become all too familiar with large-scale massacres of innocent life at the hands of people we never expected would commit them. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma City…the list grows longer by the day. There were vague warning signs before each of these horrible acts, yet they were ignored until hindsight allowed us to get a peek inside the minds of those who committed them.

Trying to make sense of the senseless is folly, and promising to prevent it a fool’s errand.

Like every other incident, there will be tears and mourning and remembrance for the victims today at Fort Hood. There will be hindsight and reflection, but ultimately the memory will fade for all except those that actually LOST a loved one at Hasan’s deranged bidding. There aren’t even any lessons to take away from it, save for the reminder that there are crazy people out there who wish to do others harm, and are more than happy to die for their efforts. Hasan’s own words bear this out:

We love death more then [sic] you love life!”

The future will show whether Hasan did it for Allah and his fellow Muslims, or whether he just snapped one day, but what the rest of us STILL face is the notion that no one can be fully trusted, no one can be relied on to protect us from this, and no one..CERTAINLY not the Federal Bureaucracy…can be looked to for providing any of us with personal safety and security. So long as there are people in the world that consider people like this coward, Hasan, a hero there will be more acts of violence against innocent people. It is still, ultimately, up to each of us to protect ourselves and be ever-vigilant and ever-watchful of those around us that might do us or our loved ones harm.

Had Hasan’s classmates and peers and superiors bothered to do so, a great loss of life might have been avoided on November 5, 2009. They didn’t, and it wasn’t.

And today America mourns once again.

Forget Murtha and Rangel, Let’s Prosecute Catholic Bishops!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Instead, Lynn Woolsey — a friend of Speaker Pelosi’s — wants Catholic Bishops investigated.

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.

And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.

The take away here is not that a leftist who champions killing babies is upset with a group of men opposed to such barbarity, but that the champion of baby killers thinks it is perfectly legitimate to sick the IRS on the opposition. Because the Bishops operate under §501 of the tax code, they should shut up.

The health care legislation carves out new exceptions in the tax code. Once we are all forced under that legislation, will Lynn Woolsey be able to sick the IRS on us if we dissent? Seems likely. Doctors and health care providers are also on notice. Should you disagree with the government that gives you tax breaks, prepare for the government to treat you as an enemy combatant.

Hope and Change Watch: AG Holder upholding PATRIOT Act.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:15:15 +0000

Actually, in this context ’same as the old boss’ would be a comfort. To me, at least, if not the folks who made such a hullabaloo over the PATRIOT Act; I’m not worried about the government abusing its authority so much as I worry about it making an utter hash of its attempt to try to use it. But of course said ‘abuse’ was not the least common election-year theme - usually in the context of how things would change, once the Republicans weren’t running things. And usually argued by people who really should have known better.

Which is why I’m more amused than anything else about this:

Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the Senate’s version of legislation that would extend three provisions of the Patriot Act that are slated to expire at the end of the year.

Holder wrote in a letter today to Senate Judiciary Committee members that he offers “strong support” for the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act, which would reauthorize the “lone wolf,” records and “roving wiretap” powers. By contrast, a House version of the bill would not continue the “lone wolf” provision, which lets the government track targets who don’t have any discernible affiliation with terrorist or other foreign groups.

…although I admit that I’m kind of curious of which member of the current ruling party thought that it was a good idea to hamper lone wolf surveillance. The timing for that seems… suboptimal.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Liberal Fascism - Chapter 4

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:07:21 +0000

Confession: We have a liberal troll who, when I don’t get a post up on Monday, sends me needling emails about what losers we all are for even attempting this. If nothing else, his email serves as a good reminder that I need to post. But this week I did not read. I got busy at the SPN Conference, then came home sick. Luckily, Warrior is always diligent and we can use his. Besides, this is a group effort. Shame on y’all for letting a left-wing troll who also emails praise for Hitler beat you guys to harassing me. In any event, read Chapter 5 for Monday. — Erick

“Franklin Roosevelt’s Fascist New Deal”

Favorite Chapter Quote, “He [FDR] spoke in generalities that everyone found agreeable at first and meaningless upon reflection.” pg 129

In Chapter 4, Goldberg goes a long way toward establishing the idea that, in the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century, Fascism was on the ascendency. And one of it’s most hearty acolytes was FDR. “The notion that FDR harbored fascist tendencies is vastly more controversial today than it was in the 1930’s, primarily because fascism has come to mean Nazism and Nazism means simply evil.” Pg 123 The fascist (Hitlerite) nature of New Deal fiscal policy was actually invoked as a point in its’ favor at the time.

The “intellectual home of the New Deal” (pg 123) was the New Republic, which often admired the fascist goings on in Mussolini’s Italy. Since fascism was melding with nationalism internationally at the time, FDR, whether a “true” fascist or not, became a totalitarian by default. His only ideology was an amalgamation born of expediency and ambition.

Goldberg gives some personal and political background on FDR, emphasizing his strong support of Wilson’s excesses. In the area of militarism, his ardor for military preparedness was extreme even for a time of national obsession with it. In collusion with Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and other “Big Navy Boys” (pg 126), he went so far as to leak info that Republicans could use to bash an insufficiently militaristic Wilson.

As Asst. Secretary of the Navy, he worked for a racist journalist named Josephus Daniels. When not banging out horribly offensive editorials about blacks, Daniels supported the modern-day laundry list of left wing causes: gubmint education, gubmint healthcare and so on. When the war ended, Daniels and FDR pushed for a peacetime draft, new sedition codes and shouted “that America might need to become a super-Prussia.’” Pg 127

After a crushing defeat as VP candidate on the Cox-Roosevelt ticket in ‘20 (the American public was fed up with Progressivism by this time), he contracted polio and stayed out of the public imagination for the next decade or so, coming out to nominate Al.Smith in ‘24 and again in ‘28. Goldberg remarks that this series of events was actually in FDR’s favor politically. There’s nothing worse than an over-exposed politician. (BTW, what time is The Won scheduled to appear today to address the blah blah blah league of shameless, slobbering media sycophants?)

In the next few pages, Goldberg chronicles FDR’s defacto “Third Way” philosophy/governing style, ostensibly between capitalism and socialism. I was reminded on pg 129 of how his management style was to set two departments or individuals on the same task and sit back and watch. (This was Hitler’s mgt style as well.) The resultant triangulation, though practical politically, resulted of course in an ever-shifting center as public opinion and other factors swelled and ebbed. Although modern libs speak fondly of “the Roosevelt legacy,” in reality no such thing existed – the New Deal had no unified plan. Pg 130

What it did have was many, many similarities with Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. All touted the middle way, which sounds innocuous, as it is meant to, but is ultimately utopian because it rejects the cold hard reality of trade-offs. Thomas Sowell, Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and popular conservative author waxes eloquent on a number of issues involving the idea of trade-offs. His recent book, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, is replete with examples of just the kind of political choices the Third Way crowd (including The Won) try to avoid by using vast and technologically sophisticated arrays of rhetorical smoke and mirrors.

The consequences of being duped into such chimerical sophistry can be seen in CA today. In a section on incremental decision-making from Chapter One of Applied Economics (pg 3), Sowell quotes “a noted economist” who succinctly renders the real-world denoument of “I want it all” thniking thusly, “…no voting system could prevent the California electorate from simultaneously demanding low electricity prices and no new generating plants while using ever increasing amount of electricity.” See? No trade-offs! We in CA, like a troop of spoiled children, want our cake and eat it too.

BTW, CA is rife with similar examples. Want to lower rents for poor people? Simple. Just legislate rent controls. Want green space and undisturbed views? No problem. Pass a slew of land use restrictions. What’s the trade-off, otherwise known as cost? Well, as far a rent control, no new housing will be built because investors can’t realize sufficient return to bother with it. Thus creating an artificially expensive housing shortage and a deterioration of existing property (how does one maintain apts with rising repair costs {there’s that word again}and no new revenue?) And the law of unintended consequences comeuppance of land use restrictions? You guessed it, another housing shortage. Or as Dem demagogues put it, an “affordable housing crisis.” Also, as a side benefit, service workers who can’t afford astronomically high rents and real estate prices must commute many more miles to work, further contributing to their economic woes (and thereby magnifying yet another liberal boogyman — the ever-expanding, though truly fantastical, carbon footprint.) Which leads to even greater demands on energy and greater consumption of it, which leads to…well, you can probably begin to see the fallacy of “the third way” by now.

Another off-shoot of third way thinking is Authoritarianism because it assumes an elite group of “experts” can resolve all conflicts and solve all problems. And though exclusively Quixotic in result, like night follows day they will inevitably use force to try. Just how far this science fiction has advanced in the general population was seen dramatically during the campaign when one BHO supporter confidently and joyfully declared that she would no longer have to worry about paying rent or putting gas in her car once the Obambi was elected. One doesn’t have to go back that far for examples either. Recently a man in New Orleans, upon hearing from the Annointed One that, although Katrina restorations were going painfully slow, there was nothing he, POTUS, could do, asked “Why don’t you just write a check?” Why indeed? In the land of “the third way,” all things are possible. (And to decide that they aren’t would be racist, homophobic, xenophobic, selfish, greedy and probably unpatriotic as well.)

Goldberg cites politico-historical antecedents pushing the middle-way shell game as a “Bismarckian attempt to forestall the Red menace.” We’ll see shortly how much communism’s reputation had improved in 50 years when the groundswell for socialist programs by Father Coughlin et al actually pressured FDR into adopting some of them as a way of fending off political pressure from the further left. Liberalism is pragmatism as informed by William James and its’ proponents often are impatient to implement their policies. In 1932, eschewing America’s failure to keep up a war planning model during the Roaring Twenties, the cries for action by Stuart Chase epitomized the Progressives’ anxious insistence on taking action now! Asked he, “…why should Russians have all the fun of remaking the world?” Pg 133

Two more American fascists grew from the ripe international collectivist/nationalist soil of the twenties, a time when Oswald Mosley of the Bristish Union of Fascists set his sights on becoming Prime Minister and semi-fascist parties were springing up everywhere, e.g. Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Finland, etc. Father Charles Coughlin and Huey Long are now often posited as “right-wing” by the modern left. Goldberg spends several pages debunking such nonsense. The author chronicles some of the basics on page 138, where he notes that Coughlin railed against “international bankers” who were purportedly preventing “prosperity and justice.” (I hate to keep asking “Sound familiar?” but if the shoe fits…) Coughlin also supported gubmint activism, FDR and “state capitalism.” Again, Goldberg recounts that disparate ideological flavors within the broader rubric of Progressivism/Fascism were the players assigning terms of derision to opposing factions. The Zeitgeist of the era was composed of “hybridized versions of Marxism” and “most differences were between left-wing and right-wing socialists.” Pg 139

After having decided that FDR wasn’t radical enough for him, Coughlin, an execrable anti-Semite, founded the National Union for Social Justice. Listed on page 142 of Liberal Fascism is the wish list of leftist nostrums he wanted to foist on the country: a guaranteed “living wage,” snatching private property when convenient, gubmint support for the unions, wartime nationalization of industry, etc. I guess old King Solomon was right, there IS nothing new under the sun.

Huey Long qualifies as fascist because of one trait which is inevitably found in all statists – hubris. He truly believed that he embodied the vox populi and indeed was quite popular in his time. Yet the overweening nature of his mob rule mentality was what made him dangerous. As he himself said, “There is no dictatorship in Louisiana. There is a perfect democracy there and when you have a perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship.” Pg 144

So, of the big two fascist threats to FDR, one was grossly populist and the other horribly elitist. In addition, Upton Sinclair and Dr. Francis Townsend, two more leftist threats to the New Deal crowd’s power, brought pressure on Roosevelt to move further left and move he did. Social Security was a sop to keep these baying collectivist hounds quiet and mollify their influence viz a viz his own and stands as yet another example of “third way” Roosevelt expediently “splitting the difference.”. Pgs 144-5 (Five largest current budget items? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt and defense. Well, one of these is constitutionally mandated anyway.)

That Roosevelt and Hitler both made a fetish of catering to “the forgotten man” seems fairly mundane until one realizes that only half the proposition is “compassion.” The other half is stirring up “resentment against ‘fat cats,’ ‘international bankers’ and ‘economic royalists’” and eventually in Hitler’s case, the Jews. Even without the racial aspects (are heterosexual Christian white men the new Jews?) the crowd of heavies could easily be translated today as Wall-Street, bankers and “the rich,” who of course keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. And let’s hope they do get richer, because if Obama has his way and they don’t, not only will the poor get poorer (which I don’t concede is happening anyway), but we will ALL get poorer.

Using populist demagoguery to get elected is also a tried and true strategy to gain power and is not bad, in and of itself. Hitler had his own version of “It’s the economy stupid.” Between 1932 and 1939, conditions in Germany improved markedly, more so than in the U.S.: employment increased, marriage and birth rates went up and suicide rates went down. Hitler admired Henry Ford for producing cars destined for the average volk. Hitler himself had such a scheme in mind, the fruition of which provided me with the automobile on which I learned to drive – the Volkswagon. (Of course, Hitler wasn’t able to deliver to his volk…)

Indeed, Mussolini and Hitler admired FDR’s approach. The Nazi party’s official newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, praised him lavishly. While reviewing FDR’s book, Looking Forward, Mussolini essentially enthused, “This guy’s one of us.” Pg 147 Speaking of FDR’s book, the Volkischer Beobachter stated flatly that several sections of it could have easily been written by a National Socialist. Pg 148

Goldberg dovetails back to the most startling similarities between Nazi Germany, New Deal America and Fascist Italy – the imminent and continual need for a war or, in William James construction, “the moral equivalent of war.” And it was needed of course as a pretext for mobilization, organization and social planning. Democracy, by its’ nature, is sloppy. It’s like herding cats. Pg 149 The socialists/collectivists/progressives want action and more action and they want it NOW. Although Prez Obeyme’s socialist health insurance plan won’t take effect until 2013, it must be passed NOW. It’s a crisis you know. And it’s just the latest in a long line of them: war on poverty, war on drugs, global cooling, global warming, etc.

In the next few pages, Goldberg iterates the endless depredations on liberty conjured up under the New Deal. Although not quite as violent and out of bounds as during Wilson’s turn, it still reeks of head-crackers, jackbooted thugs breaking down doors and the merest and most innocent non-compliance resulting in jail time. One Jacob Maged, a 49 year-old immigrant dry cleaner spent three months in jail for charging 35 cents to press a suit rather than the National Recovery Administration’s (NRA) mandated minimum of 40 cents for all “loyal Americans.” Pg 155

The antics of the alphabet agencies during the thirties is quite a colorful read. The NRA’s leader was a character dubbed Hugh “Iron Pants” Johnson. Blue Eagle propaganda parades and mobs rivaled Germany’s Nuremberg Rallies for ersatz pomp and sheer size. Even school children were not immune to the president’s super-sized exercise in Orwellian methods. One-hundred thousand of them to be exact, were dragooned into Boston Commons and forced to swear an oath “to do my part.” (Did I ask, “Sound familiar?” yet?) Pg 155 During a 1934 visit to Italy, one of FDR’s Colombia eggheads known, infamously in my opinion, as one of the “Brain Trust,” Rex Tugwell, admired Mussolini’s handling of the press. Said he, “I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary…Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has. But he has the press controlled so that they cannot scream lies at him daily.” Yeah, lies like, “Hey Il Duce, your feather-brained schemes are leading us down the path to death and destruction.” Some “brain trust.” Pg 156

The chapter’s gravamen is perhaps the necessity for contemporary leftists to distance FDR, a liberal hero, from what fascism eventually led to, i.e. the Holocaust. Liberal intellectuals co-opted the Soviet taxonomy already in place and villainized conservatives as a strawman to protect one of their leading lights and sterilize the very real dangers of their pedantic and insufferably self-righteous ideas. Pg 157 Most people today still don’t recognize that FDR and Progressivism’s “ideology of power” created one of the modern left’s favorite patsies – the horrid “military industrial complex” of Eisenhower’s phraseology. Pg 158 And have you EVER heard “internment camps” and “FDR” mentioned in the same breath by the (formerly) popular press? Neither have I.

Since power is the sine qua non of the liberal existence and since they are convinced of their own eternal righteousness, any group or party other than themselves who wields it cannot be trusted. We saw this little detail in stark relief when the rent-a-mob protests against G.W. Bush were replaced by the grass-roots anger of ordinary citizens over the Won’s plans to nationalize on fifth of the economy. As Goldberg so exquisitely puts it, “Dissent by the right people is the highest from of patriotism. Dissent by the wrong people is troubling evidence of incipient fascism. The anti-dogmatism that progressives and fascists alike inherited from Pragmatism made the motives of the activist the only criteria for judging the legitimacy of action.” Pg 158 (And a strong contender for Favorite Chapter Quote.)

The chapter concludes by suggesting that liberalism’s ultimate motivation is to create a tribal community, that is, a foil to the frustration and isolation brought on by modern, technologically driven lifestyles. FDR opined that “we have been extending to our national life the old principle of the local community” as a foil to the “drastic changes” taking place in modern America. Pg 159 How much more so is this true now? Quite unfortunately, the necessary adjustments are not to be had through any kind of gubmint, much less the Leviathan we have now on the federal level. That is of course, unless the gubmint decides to do far less to “help” us than it is doing now, a prospect I find difficult to believe and dang nigh impossible to achieve as Town Hall attendees, Red State members and TeaPartyExpress patriots are finding out now. Make no mistake though, I believe we should try. We must try. The price of failure will be national humiliation and personal oblivion. In sum, another contender for Favorite Chapter Quote, “The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.” pg 160

Goldberg ends the chapter by restating one of his original premises, that American traditions, history and culture are bulwarks against any widespread socialism of a traditional nature in this country. No gulags, bloody purges or gas chambers are likely for us. We will experience the more benevolent kind of socialism along the lines of Britain’s current social disaster.

“We’re from the gubmint and we’re here to help you!” is the new fascists’ rallying cry. That’s why the book has a smiley face wearing a Hitlerian mustache on it. If we don’t work hard to stop it, we will soon get “genteel fascism.” Pg 161 That’s why the inimitable C.S.Lewis says it best:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

– C. S. Lewis

Next week: Chapter 5 “The 1960’s: Fascism Takes to the Streets”

Devil’s Dictionary of Healthcare Reform

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:53:13 +0000

Ross Kaminsky has the top story at Human Events today. It is well worth a read.

2010 — The year in which Democratic health care “Reform” plans will raise your taxes, impose penalties on your company, and cause your health insurance premiums to increase dramatically, a remarkable achievement given that it is three full years before the plans suggest making any substantive changes to our actual health insurance system; The year in which the US will see a dramatic drop in applications to medical school.

AARP — An interest group which earns billions of dollars by selling Medigap insurance to senior citizens, insurance which Democratic “Reform” plans would make all but required for seniors by gutting Medicare and Medicare Advantage spending; See “Endorsement”