The Banality of Race and Why David Remnick is a Shallow Suck-Up

Michael Knox Beran writes a wonderful review of David Remnick's book on Obama The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. The most tragic flaw of this book is that David Remnick did not discern that Doris Kearns Goodwin, who met Obama after her own extended immersion in Lincoln, may well be right when she says, “The tragic sense doesn’t seem to be there.”

According to Knox Beran, this is history by hagiography, even worse than Game Change, a wonderful read that is as filling for as long as a Chinese meal and as meager on the Republicans, who merit less than 80 pages, as it is generous with the Democrats, who get almost 200. We knew Halperin and Heilemann were media whores, or at least tinted left on the infrared-ultraviolet spectrum. But Remnick's excellent book on the downfall of the USSR had revealed to me, anyway, a fellow who could bring in the tragic pathos of a Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy onto current events. Winning a non-fiction Pulitzer at age 35 was certainly a confidence booster. However, Knox Beran's comparison of Remnick with a somewhat analogous predecessor, Lionel Trilling, is damning. Here's Edmund Wilson and Trilling in The Liberal Imagination:

Edmund Wilson once observed that “sincere reactionaries,” from Dr. Johnson to Dostoevsky, were beset by a “vision of human sin.” The progressive reformer, by contrast, was either “free from a sense of guilt” or had “evolved a psychological mechanism which enables him to turn moral judgments against himself into moral judgments against society.” Here is a clue to the banality, the moral vacancy, in modern liberalism that The Bridge too often reflects. If conservatives can be unintelligently narrow, liberals can be insufferably sanctimonious. In vain did Lionel Trilling warn the liberals of his day that their equation of progressive reform and moral virtue was a formula for self-delusion, a self-satisfaction that threatened to blind them to the evils of the very politics—so ostensibly liberal, enlightened, and humane—on which they prided themselves. “Some paradox of our nature leads us,” Trilling wrote in The Liberal Imagination, “when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.”

Knox Beran goes on to give Trilling more nods in his penetrating study of the struggle for social equity and its pitfalls.

What the progressive politics of social equity was to the liberalism of Trilling’s day, the progressive politics of race is to the liberalism of our own. Both are forms of moral escapism; both represent a flight from self-knowledge and self-doubt to a dubious refuge of self-righteousness, one that Trilling associated with tragedy. If 50 or 60 years ago liberals needed courage to denounce racism, today their exaltation of the virtues of color is a painless way for them to feel good about themselves without doing any moral heavy lifting. In pretending that racism is one of the profounder evils in contemporary American life, the bien-pensant liberal not only excuses himself from the demands of what Trilling called the “moral imagination”; he also conveniently overlooks the unfruitfulness of his own progressive solutions to the problems of poverty, crime, and ghetto despair.

Is Obama a post-racial, true tragedian, or is Doris Kearns Goodwin's intuition better than the liberal sopheads Jon Meacham and David Brooks, two pseudo-moderates who are faux-poseurs to the bone who both believe that Obama's still waters run deep?

President Obama, it is true, is advertised as a different, more thoughtful kind of liberal, one exempt from what David Mamet has called liberal brain-death.....But put Obama aside. He is a practicing politician. One does not expect to find reserves of tragic doubt in those who are daily engaged in political battles and the strife of sound bites. The soldier on the front line, under whatever banner he has enlisted, has got to do his best to close his mind against a certain suppleness of thought, the luxurious latitude of imagination in which the mere civilian can safely indulge. George W. Bush displayed the unsubtle confidence of a leader in pushing the War on Terror hard—some would say too hard. Obama displayed the same unshrinking confidence in pushing nationalized health care hard—some would say too hard. It is true that Lincoln eventually achieved the tragic humility that allowed him to say, “With malice towards none; with charity for all . . .” But the transfiguration took place only at the end of his life, after he had gone through torments that he supposed were worse than those of hell.

Remnick gets the final full-barrelled

coup de grace

by being damned with faint praise.

The Bridge is disappointing precisely because it is the work of a man who might conceivably have emulated Trilling.....It is just because the political leader, called to assert his will in a life of action, cannot permit himself to be hobbled by an excess of doubt or moral subtlety that it falls to a political movement’s scribes, to its clerks and philosophers, to warn of the temptations of smugness. Trilling performed this office for liberals in middle of the last century; conservatives have got a whole library on the subject that goes back to Saint Augustine, if not to the Book of Genesis. But Trilling is a prophet no longer honored in the liberal movement to which he was devoted. ... [Remnick's] book, with all its flaws, contains much brilliant writing and a good deal of useful insight. Its author is, into the bargain, the head of a great liberal institution, and he is engaged in work that does not absolutely preclude sustained reflection. It is therefore to be regretted that he has composed a panegyric upon the president that is lazily content with the obvious but shallow story line and with what, in 2010, has become the cheap morality of racial melodrama.

If The Bridge has its strengths, it must finally be classed as another attempt to sustain the myth that racial oppression is one of the cardinal sins of today’s America. This comforting baby’s bottle of modern liberalism is a largely fabricated fantasy, yet it is not without real dangers. It has not only spawned an unhealthy obsession with the color of our skins that too often comes at the expense of a more just interest in the content of our characters; it has lulled liberals into the sort of moral complacency that they so frequently deplore in others.

This "moral complacency" is visible daily from sports page, where NFL draft dish holds Stanford running back Gerhardt discounted for being white, to the daily liberal nods in deference to three lying black congresscritters who claim with no audio or video proof that they were called racial epithets & spat upon by Tea Party demonstrators the day of the health care vote. My guess is that Remnick's book will be called what the French describe as a "succes d'estime" and tens of thousands will be sold, but often used as door jams. As one read Game Change and am not about to fork over a 672 pp. version of the same hagiography dwelling on the personification of racial equality---when in real-world fact he was raised by his white grandparents in Honolulu at an elite prep school, in a local culture where racial differences were hardly noticed in a polyglot entrepot like Hawaii.

Much of Obama's unmerited hyper-adoration comes in spite of the fact that he tried to lionize an absentee bigamist drunk of a father who deserted him at age one and placate an OC mother who drove him as hard as she drove herself before abandoning him to her white parents. (Obama's white grandparents appear to be non-existent, according to three book reviews I read besides Knox Beran's.)

Obama is a narcissistic descendent of slaveowners, from his Kansas forebears and perhaps on both sides as his father's tribal north Kenya is heavily populated by ex-slavers descended from Arabs working out of Dar Es Salaam. Obama digested all this baggage and like many young blacks who have athletic skills and academic know-how, came out rather smug and with overly-high self-regard.

In the end, Remnick keeps sucking on the race baby-bottle of liberal self-justification, and the fatuous freaks in the unwatched cable TV like Norah O'Donnell demonstrate room-temp IQ when they use it as the default position to all the conservatives' opposition to Big Government expansion and absurd power grabs by a lame-duck Democrat Congress. Obama should be given credit for achieving the American dream, but he should NOT destroy the basis on which that opportunity presented itself, a society of free individuals who pay taxes, but otherwise do not have the government interfere in their lives.

To destroy that society would be to symbolically kill his parents: one of those Freudian, Jungian drives he probably is unaware of.

Economist Bearish on Greece Without Mentioning a Major Reason Why

Greece is going to face a lot of difficulties just treading water over the next couple of years, but the NEWL BOLSHIE Economist leaves out perhaps the single most important reason---labor unions and Communists calling for general strikes to further cripple the economy---now hanging by a thread over bankruptcy. Those familiar with Greek coffee house "culture" know that only a small percentage of the males actually do productive work for a living while a larger percentage are members of "public service unions" and other faineant enterprises which entail sitting around drinking coffee and arguing politics while the women do the majority of the labor required to keep the country going.

Why doesn't the Economist, formerly a journalistic enterprise, leave out the huge unproductive sections of the population, including radical "students" who riot on cue and SEIU-type union thugs who march for a state run by the proletariat? I left a hint in the para above and perhaps the more discerning among you might sniff out the clue and look no further.

Ueber-Left Mole Ambinder Shrieks: Are Conservatives Mad?

Public Education

Overton Window, Obama/Ginobli variation
Le
The left-handed Manu Ginobili is reputed to have the best feint-right, drive-left move in the NBA, one that continually catches the opposing guard or defender off his feet, even though he's probably been faked out dozens of times before by precisely the same move. Lefty Obama also thinks he has this down, but he may have hit the ball out of bounds with his new health care fiasco, which is currently about 40-60 on the positive-negative scale.

The Overton Window, mentioned by Glenn Beck, refers to a political science concept described at length by the mentoree of Mr. Overton himself, a senior member of the Mackinac Institute. Above's also a graphic on public education---but the Obama/Ginobili variation tries to convince you it will lower taxes or keep them the same while raising them surreptitiously across the board with accounting tricks---Medicare is a prime suspect.

Ambinder omplains about the conservatives' "theories" which aren't theories at all, but most often the PRINCIPLES of fiscal soundness, national defense that puts security before the rights of alleged terrorists, and basic due diligence in putting a huge program like the sloppily-crafted health care bill that a brain-dead Dem leadership allowed to supersede their own gold-plated cushy in-house health plan FOR MEMBERS ONLY.

When Ambinder asks if the conservative base has gone mad, he puts this turd on top of his ice cream sundae I think it's because there's so much misinformation out there -- most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. when Harry Reid screams out in his high-pitched quivering tones in '07 that the Iraq War is lost, Nancy Pelosi snarkily promises to drain the swamp of corruption...and Barack Obama dishonestly promises the most transparent administration in history. The conservatives aren't mad, they are merely angry at the fact that the Obama Administration and its stenographers like Ambinder have gone stark raving mad!

And also, as having paid into Social Security and other benefits for forty-plus years in many cases, the conservatives feel that they are calumniated when nagged for liking social security---after paying for most of it---and also for being taxed enough already, as in TEA. This makes them angry.

It is the liberal progressive socialist leftists who are batshit crazy! Ambinder is merely batshit.

Is Laughing Boy Jon Stewart Too Chicken-Sh*t To Joke About South Park Threats

Not Really, Jon-Boy Plus With Bernie Goldberg, You Hit Below the Belt---for Which You OUGHT to be Appalled!

Comedy Channel Poseur Jon Stewart who makes faces and strikes poses about Bernard Goldberg knows that Goldberg isn't going to stick a knife in him with a note like the Islamo-fascist DOGS did to Theo Van Gogh, distant relative of the late great Dutch painter.

Jon-Boy isn't so quick with the pretentious f-you's and such to FoxNEWS, which actually does have the courage to report on the Islamo-fascist DOGS who threatened South Park with a Theo Van Gogh slice-fest last week. The stab-in-the-back cowards have a lot in common with Stewart, in fact, in that they pick on those brave enough to take the moral high ground against vicious Islamo-fascist back-stabbers and cowardly stiletto-sticking CARPET JOCKEY BOW WOWS.

Wet-a-bed piss-himself Jon-Boy only picks on the high ground types like Goldberg who would never, say, shank Jon-Boy in the Men's Room [in his case, Little Boy's Room for short equipment types] while he is relieving himself during his most productive part of his day.

You might think I'm a bit overboard in my contempt for cowardly people who pick on gentlemen and journalists, both of which Bernard Goldberg happens to be in generous portions.

It's a free country, as long as the Islamo-fascist DOGS don't take it over due to the Jon Stewarts of the Nancy-Boy "entertainment quivering coward media left" and Barack Obama of the dismantle-our-defenses-against-terrorist-Islamo-fascist-DOGS mainstream Demo-rat moral lepers of the Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi Congressional Cowardice Front.

ClyntOOn Aping SPLC in the Sky is Falling Department?

Billy Jeff is at it again, in full campaign mode, raising money for the Embezzler's Dream called the "Clinton Initiative" while piously intoning the latest BS belched from the GI tract of the Demo-rat dragon.

There's a new narrative taking hold in the wake of the recent Tea Party protests and the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing: The Tea Partiers' intense opposition to the Obama administration has led to overheated political rhetoric, which could in turn lead to violence, perhaps as devastating as Oklahoma City.
Former President Clinton is the leading voice of this new narrative. In newspaper interviews, television appearances and a widely discussed speech Friday, Clinton said it's "legitimate" to draw "parallels to the time running up to Oklahoma City and a lot of the political discord that exists in our country today." "Watch your words," warned ABC News, reporting that Clinton "weighed in on the angry anti-government rhetoric, ringing out from talk radio to Tea Party rallies."

Yes, any observer of American politics understands instinctively that CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE and OBSESSION WITH PROCESS are the two criminal faults bequeathed on this Land Leviathan belching fire through its dependence on a room-IQ state-controlled media (MessNBC, CNN, the fossil nets witha "C" in their acronyms) as well as the INNUMERABLE LAWYERS who prove daily the old business adage "Never let a lawyer get in the mid-process of a deal, it'll never happen. These janitors of the mind should only be allowed in after a workable deal is put together. Where do the parrots get their stock of words?

(E)arlier media stories depicting Tea Party gatherings as angry mobs, accusing protesters of throwing racial epithets at black lawmakers and of making threats of violence. The implication was that all this could be part of a nationwide trend. "Just this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that it had tracked an explosion in extremist anti-government patriot groups fueled, in large part, by anger over the economy and Barack Obama's presidency," NBC's David Gregory said on "Meet the Press" in early April. "In this highly charged political atmosphere, where you've got so much passion, so much disagreement, this takes it, of course, to a different level."

David the Dunce is the sad successor of sorely-missed Tim Russert, who brought brains, hard work, and sanity into the formerly must-watch MtP. David is now allowing his "guests" to say anything without fact-checking them or contradicting them, and the MtP f0rmat is soon going to turn into a version of the Gong Show or Geraldo on steroids without adult supervision. And the SPLC is the un-factchecked source of David's dithering?

Many of the claims that extremism is on the rise in America originate in research done by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that for nearly 40 years has tracked what it says is the growing threat of intolerance in the United States. These days the SPLC is issuing new warnings of new threats. But today's warnings sound an awful lot like those of the past.

In 1989, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of skinheads, saying, "Not since the height of Klan activity during the civil rights era has there been a white supremacist group so obsessed with violence. ..."

In 1992, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of other white supremacist groups, which it claimed had grown by 27 percent from the year before.

In 1995, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of right-wing militias.

In 1998, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of Internet-based hate groups, which according to one press account had "created the biggest surge in hate in America in years."

In 1999, the SPLC warned that the growing threat of Web-based hate groups was growing even more, with a 60 percent increase from the year before.

In 2002, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of post-Sept. 11 hate groups, which it said had grown 12 percent between 2000 and 2001.

In 2004, the SPLC warned (again) of the growing threat of skinhead groups, whose numbers it said had doubled in the previous year.

In 2008, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of hate groups overall, whose number it said increased 48 percent since 2000.

And in 2010, just a few weeks ago, the SPLC warned of the growing threat of "patriot" groups, which it said increased by 244 percent in 2009.

In the world of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the threat is always growing. Ronald Reagan's policies led to a growing threat. The first Gulf War led to a growing threat. The election of Bill Clinton led to a growing threat. The Internet led to a growing threat. Sept. 11 led to a growing threat. The war in Iraq led to a growing threat. Is it any wonder that Obama's presidency has, in the SPLC's estimation, led to a growing threat?

Byron York gives these professional Cassandras the coup de grace

Hate groups do exist across the political spectrum, and have for a long time. But they have nothing to do with the expressions of frustration over deficits, taxes and Obamacare that we have heard at so many Tea Party gatherings. That frustration, felt by Republicans, independents and even some Democrats, is an entirely mainstream reaction to the sharply activist course the president and congressional leadership have taken. While the level of frustration is indeed a threat, it is a political threat. Ask Democrats running in this November's elections.
It's important to distinguish between a political threat and a physical one. As Clinton might say, the hate accusers should watch their words.

"Culture of dependence" is what Obama Wants, Tea Partiers Fight!

Where's the lipstick? Ask the pigs!

Michael Barone has a short and masterful piece on just how the original "culture of independence" is superior to the Obamacide dependants because "independence has a moral dimension." This won't mean anything to the "educated elites" who administer the government giveaways, but it means everything to people owning and running small businesses and raising nuclear families not ravaged by divorce and secularism.

If some guy is getting $400, shouldn't he just shut up and collect the money? Shouldn't he be happy that his state government, headed recently by Rod Blagojevich, was getting an extra $50 billion?

But public policy also helps determine the kind of society we are. The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves.

That is the culture of dependence. The tea partiers see things differently. They're not looking for lower taxes; half of tea party supporters, a New York Times survey found, think their taxes are fair. Nor are they financially secure: Half say someone in their household may lose their job in the next year. Two-thirds say the recession has caused some hardship in their lives. But they recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens' dependence on it.

And, invoking the language of the Founding Fathers, they believe that this will destroy the culture of independence that has enabled Americans over the past two centuries to make this the most productive and prosperous -- and the most charitably generous -- nation in the world. Seeing our political divisions as a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence helps to make sense of the divisions seen in the 2008 election.

The grifters and the slackers and the unionized layabouts who make up the bulk of Obama's support are all too glad to get handouts. Add to that feminazis and deluded teenage-wasteland dwellers of all ages, and Obama got a clear majority in '08.

Interestingly, in the Massachusetts special Senate election the purported beneficiaries of the culture of dependence -- low-income and low-education voters -- did not turn out in large numbers. In contrast, the administrators of that culture -- affluent secular professionals, public employees, university personnel -- were the one group that turned out in force and voted for the hapless Democratic candidate. The in-between people on the income and education ladders, it turns out, are a constituency for the culture of independence.

Smart conservatives like David Frum, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argued in 2009 books that modest-income conservative voters have had stagnant incomes over the last decade and that Republicans should offer them compensatory tax breaks. That seemed to make sense in the wake of the 2008 election. But it's been undercut by developments since. As Roesgen discovered, tea party supporters are not in the mood to be bought off with $400 tax credits.

They have a longer time horizon and can see where the Obama Democrats are trying to take us. Lazarsfeld saw politics as just a matter of dollars and cents. The tea party movement reminds us of what the Founders taught, that it has a moral dimension as well. They risked all in the cause of the culture of independence. The polling evidence suggests that most Americans don't want to leave that behind.

So despite Botox Queen Nancy's strident shrieks that the Tea Partiers are "astro-Turf" and not authentic, perhaps if she can bear it, Pelosi should look into the mirror and see what she looks like without botulism implants [see accompanying photo]!

Iceland Volcano Has Historical Precedent in 1783--Another Chernobyl?

Fat Al Fights Volcanoes With Fire!?

Iceland's location smack dab on the mid-Atlantic ridge separating the two tectonic plates on which Eastern North America and Western Europe lie, give it vulcanism second to none, and European history has been strongly affected by previous eruptions which have lasted much longer than from volcanoes sitting over "hot spots" like Hawaii or Sumatra. When Laki blew its top on June 8, 1783, the consequences still rock Europe today....

The 1783 event is rated as VEI 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, but the eight month emission of sulfuric aerosols resulted in one of the most important climatic and socially repercussive events of the last millennium.....The eruption continued until 7 February 1784, but most of the lava was erupted in the first five months. Grímsvötn volcano, from which the Laki fissure extends, was also erupting at the time from 1783 until 1785. The outpouring of gases, including an estimated 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride and estimated 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide, gave rise to what has since become known as the "Laki haze" across Europe. The consequences for Iceland—known as the Mist Hardships—were catastrophic. An estimated 20-25% of the population died in the famine and fluorine poisoning after the fissure eruptions ceased. ......

Consequences in Europe
An estimated 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide were emitted, approximately equivalent to three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006, and also equivalent to a Mount Pinatubo-1991 eruption every three days.[6] This outpouring of sulfur dioxide during unusual weather conditions caused a thick haze to spread across western Europe, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout 1783 and the winter of 1784.
The summer of 1783 was the hottest on record and a rare high pressure zone over Iceland caused the winds to blow to the south-east. The poisonous cloud drifted to Bergen in Norway, then spread to Prague in the Province of Bohemia by 17 June, Berlin by 18 June, Paris by 20 June, Le Havre by 22 June, and to Great Britain by 23 June. The fog was so thick that boats stayed in port, unable to navigate, and the sun was described as "blood coloured"......This disruption then led to a most severe winter in 1784, in which Gilbert White at Selborne in Hampshire reported 28 days of continuous frost. The extreme winter is estimated to have caused 8,000 additional deaths in the UK. In the spring thaw, Germany and Central Europe then reported severe flood damage.
The meteorological impact of Laki resonated on, contributing significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe. In France a sequence of extremes included a surplus harvest in 1785 that caused poverty for rural workers, accompanied by droughts and bad winters and summers, including a violent hailstorm in 1788 that destroyed crops. This in turn contributed significantly to the build up of poverty and famine that may have contributed to the French Revolution in 1789. Laki was only a factor in a decade of climatic disruption, as Grímsvötn was erupting from 1783–1785 and a recent study of El Niño patterns also suggests an unusually strong El-Niño effect from 1789-93.

Contemporaneous accounts, including some by that indefatigable 80-ish American meteorologist Benjamin Franklin, describe the following Winter as the coldest ever, with the Mississippi freezing over with ice at New Orleans, then run by the French, and Charleston, S.C.'s harbor, then almost the largest in the newly independent colonies, freezing over for a month! In other parts of the planet, devastating famines and other weather-related disasters across North Africa and even affecting India's monsoon, which didn't happen that Fall and threw the sub-continent into famine and hardship. In Egypt, a horrible famine killed unknown thousands who starved due to the changed weather conditions and the horrible sulfur dioxide ash actually choking the NIle or altering its beneficial flood-plain hydraulics.

Another Chernobyl, this time Choking All of Western Europe?

Some American meteorologists are dismissing the potential for longer term impact of the April, 2010 Icelandic eruption, and even cite the 1783 as a much more horrific event than the recent explosions, but the weather-based predictions of these Americans are of a piece with a lot a bogus Global Warming hoax predictions. However, a Norwegian vulcanologist who has actually studied Icelandic volcanos for a decade is not at all as sanguine as the American meteorologists:

The airspace over much of northern Europe remains shut and the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, is stranded in New York City because of the threat from a volcanic ash plume being belched out of Iceland. How long will the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano continue and what other kinds of activity can we expect? A volcanologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who has worked extensively in Iceland says a month-long eruption would not be out of the question. But the eruption could also continue for a year or more, he says.

If so, the prevailing winds would blow the nasty ash and rotten-egg gases over Norway, he says. The much greater danger is a much larger volcano buried under a glacier just to the east named Katla, which the much smaller multi-syllabic neighbor now blowing off might have alleviated pressures from the underlying magma basin to a certain extent. If that large system would blow, the effects on climate and the European economy might be very harmful, leading perhaps to a Second French Revolution?

This time around, given their feckless nanny-state cowardice, the guillotines might be manned by Muslims establishing their demographic dominance over tired-out layabouts. Srbenica in reverse, anyone, with this time the cowardly Dutch soldiers losing their heads?!?

50% Polled by Gallup say Obama Should be S-Canned in 2012!

Clift, Mouth Akimbo Brainlock per usual

Friday NIght Comedy by Jon Stewart ain't there, but for real rib-splitting, ROTLMAO, hilarity, listen to Eleanor Clift of the soon to be defunct tabloid-mag Newsweak on the McLaughlin Group in the PBS stable of barely credible "news summaries" of the week. This ancient, less-than-five-foot-mental and physical dwarf said to buy the latest issue with the cover saying that "the economy's back," 20% REAL unemployment to the contrary notwithstanding. Time Inc. with mental midget Klein & Co. also bleats sheeple in support of BHO, though his plunge in the polls is record-setting [except for Clift, who LIES that he has 50% support. Clift's most hilarious demonstration of total solipsistic autism that only a lifer inside the Beltway would utter was when she assured us all that the Fed and Bernanke were "in charge" of the economy and wouldn't raise interest rates, thereby ensuring an economic recovery.

Anyone with an IQ higher than room temp knows that the socialist paradigm Obama and the Botox biyotch & Dingy Harry are pushing like bad acid, killer China White heroin, or name your methyl alcohol substitute for booze---including Harry's immigration reform will be passed this year, which has as much cred as "The War is Lost, stop talking about the Surge" three years ago.

Gallup points out that Clinton was at 46% in April of 1994, the year Gingrich's "Contract With America" overwhelmed the Dems, and as a state-controlled media serf of the DNC, points out that Dole was defeated by Billy Jeff in '96.

Americans became somewhat less likely to say Clinton was deserving of re-election over the course of 1994. Gallup's last measurement before the 1994 midterm elections, in October, showed 38% of Americans (and the same percentage of registered voters) saying Clinton deserved re-election, with the majority of 57% saying he did not. The Democratic Party suffered huge losses in the 1994 midterm elections, but Clinton was elected to a second term two years later by a comfortable margin over Bob Dole.

Clinton's approval sagged to 38% that November and nothing Obama is going to do with stop his steady slide in the polls unless the economy comes around.

And Bob Dole, much like McCain in '04, was a candidate more or less anointed by the state-controlled media of the time. This time around, whether or not the Republicans pick a winner, it will not be the NYT & WaPo & LAT plus Bri-boy Will.i.am influencing the choice.

Even a much-brain like Clift admitted that the Tea Partyiers are an authentic voice of the people, although this early-dementia hanger-on disparaged them for being "White, Male, well-off, and gun-loving" as though these were semi-legal traits at best.

The World's Worst: Political and Social Freedom Dept.

Belarus Political Prisoner

Foreign Policy is a largely left-wing mag founded by Richard Holbrooke, who pitched me at lunch to subscribe in France in the early '70s, which is still even-handed enough to reward the inveterate truffle-snuffer that I am with the occasional hiccup to right-of-center.

The always condescending, always hypocritical. sometimes hysterical Euro-left will disdain America's contributions to keeping it from becoming a Soviet slave-annex as Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary became as a result of FDR's fatuous nincompoopery and Winston Churchill's grasping Realpolitik after the Second World War. But even these moral lepers cannot overlook a brutal dictator like Lukashenko,

often described as Europe's only remaining dictator. Having successfully abolished term limits, Lukashenko has ruled the country since 1994 and maintains complete control over the government, courts, and legislative process. Elections are decorative affairs, and opposition parties hold no seats in the rubber-stamp legislative assembly. Opposition activists, like the young woman above, are routinely arrested for demonstrating. Citizens need an internal passport to travel within the country.

We of course have the moral political equivalent of Lukashenko in the Castro brothers, giving Chinese and Russian offshore privileges to drill much closer to Florida that always hypocritical, often hysterical Nancy Pelosi allows the US to do---until suddenly BHO saw the light for everyone save California!

To give FP its due, Cuba and China are included among the world's worst, at 14 & 13 respectively:

Fidel Castro may have stepped down last year after 49 years in power, but Cuba remains a one-party state, now under Fidel's brother, Raúl. Freedom of movement and the right to choose one's residence and place of employment are severely restricted, and attempting to leave the island without permission is a punishable offense. Owning a cellphone and accessing the Internet from home were finally legalized in 2008, but the costs of both are far outside the reach of most Cubans.

Here's the unlucky 13's designation:

China is home to more than half of the world's "not free" population, according to Freedom House rankings. The Chinese Communist Party keeps a tight grip on political power, depriving Chinese citizens of the right to elect their leaders, participate in political opposition, or hold their government to account. China uses one of the most sophisticated and extensive systems of Internet filtering in the world and imprisons more journalists and more individuals for their online activities than any other country.

Of course, the demure FP editors don't want to mention "Chinese Take-Out," the political murder of "criminals" who are young and healthy enough that a shot to their [non-reimplantable] brains leaves potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of fungible body parts to be sold in the most gruesome secondary market ever devised by human beings.

If you have a strong stomach, a click-parade through the 21 selected most-enslaved will be a salutary excursion that will remind you how some political entities slide backwards into a Communist or Muslim hell [the majority of the 21 suffer from one or the other political/religious infections] and you will see how this has remained a most-seen and most commented on site since Independence Day of 2009.

Some of the comments show the delusionary anti-semitism of those who believe that Israel is still "in charge" of Gaza, which doesn't make the top 21. Nasty police state Syria with its 5 [FIVE] internal intelligence agencies is included, as a tribute to rational analysis on the part of the FP editors.

Organized Crime Run From the Oval Office: Hypocrisy & SEIU Thuggery

The Wall Street Journal opens up its editorial with a simple blunt statement of fact:

There's almost a direct correlation these days between the Obama Administration's complaints about "special interests" and its own fealty to such interests. Consider its latest decree that federal contractors must be union shops.

The federal rule, which went live yesterday, implements an executive order President Obama signed within weeks of taking office. It encourages federal agencies to require "project labor agreements" for all construction projects larger than $25 million. This means that only contractors that agree to union representation are eligible for work financed by the U.S. taxpayer.

Only 15% of the nation's construction workers are unionized, so from now on the other 85% will have to forgo federal work for having exercised their right to not join a union. This is a raw display of political favoritism, and at the expense of an industry experiencing 27% unemployment. "This is nothing but a sop to the White House's big donors," says Brett McMahon, vice president at Miller & Long Concrete Construction, a nonunion contractor. "We've seen this so many times now, and how many times does it have the union label? Every time."

Crime Pays, if you are a union member or a slacker union boss. The House of Lies and Crime which is located at 1600 PA Ave. has as one of its chief practitioners, a creepy political hack named Bernstein:

It's also a rotten deal for taxpayers. White House economist Jared Bernstein blogged that these agreements "significantly enhance the economy and efficiency of Federal Construction projects." In fact, the carve-outs put an end to open, competitive federal bidding, which means higher project costs. They also mean taxpayers must finance the benefits and work rules of union members.

Mr. Bernstein could check all this with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which last year commissioned an independent study showing the Obama project labor agreements would likely raise the VA's construction costs for hospitals by as much as 9% in three of five markets—Denver, New Orleans and Orlando. In two others, New York and San Francisco, the study predicted a mixture of small cost increases and small cost savings.

The study reported "strong evidence to suggest that the result of a PLA [project labor agreement] that dictates work rules, double benefits, team structure and activities on non-union type contractors will be that production costs will increase—given these union-related requirements." It also rebutted a favorite liberal argument that such agreements lead to less labor strife, noting that there are "many examples for projects where there have been strikes but also no strikes—unrelated to whether or not a PLA is in place."

Crime-Boss-in-Chief Obama may be running out of string, as he is alienating the fawning puppets called the White House Press Corps so relentlessly that eventually, these cowards and intellectual dwarfs might just dare to call him out on such complete criminal robbing of the taxpayer. On second thought, their cowardice is probably even larger than Obama's contempt for them. Here's some more facts to consider as SEIU and the other RICO operations take over the country:

The Veterans study mirrors academic work showing that project labor agreements raise the costs of construction by 10% to 20%. The Beacon Hill Institute at Boston's Suffolk University in 2006 investigated the costs of building 126 Boston-area schools. It found project labor agreements raised winning bids for school construction projects by 12% and actual construction costs by 14%.

Boston's Big Dig, Seattle's Safeco field, Los Angeles's Eastside Reservoir project, the San Francisco airport, Detroit's Comerica Park—all were built under PLAs marked by embarrassing cost overruns. We'd list more, but newsprint is expensive.

The White House went out of its way to note that the Supreme Court has upheld such agreements in the past, suggesting it has a guilty conscience. In fact, the High Court has never ruled on the legality of these agreements under federal competitive bidding laws. Industry groups are now threatening legal action to defend the rights of workers who will be denied employment for the crime of not sporting Obama-Biden bumper stickers. It's a fight worth having.

I for one hope that the quivering sissies in the Republican Party man up and actually do something besides have Boehner do another flip-out in front of the Demo-rat crime squad in Congress. Just maybe someone has some balls somewhere........

1946, 1994, 2010 Knock Down the Dem Ducks All in a Row

Michael Barone compares the Republican victory of 1946 with circumstances surrounding the November, 2010 elections and finds interesting similarities.

I thought it would be interesting to look back at the biggest Republican victory of the last 80 years, the off-year election of 1946. Republicans in that election gained 13 seats in the Senate and emerged with a 51–45 majority there, the largest majority that they enjoyed between 1930 and 1980. And they gained 55 seats in the House, giving them a 246–188 majority in that body, the largest majority they have held since 1930. The popular vote for the House was 53% Republican and 44% Democratic, a bigger margin than Republicans have won ever since. And that’s even more impressive when you consider that in 1946 Republicans did not seriously contest most seats in the South. In the 11 states that had been part of the Confederacy, Democrats won 103 of 105 seats and Republicans won only 2 seats in east Tennessee. In the 37 non-Confederate states, in contrast, Republicans won 246 of 330 seats, compared to only 85 for Democrats.

One large similarity:

First, Democrats were promising (or threatening) to vastly increase the size and scope of government. Government’s share of gross domestic product had risen to over 40% in World War II, and it was obvious that there would be some scaling back. At the same time, the Allied victory in World War II had enhanced the prestige of the state, just as the 1930s Depression weakened faith in free markets. In Britain, the 1942 Beveridge Report urged creating a welfare state after the war, and the Labour Party won a resounding victory in the July 1945 election and promptly proceeded to adopt the Beveridge recommendations and more.

In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt in his January 1944 State of the Union address echoed the Beveridge Report. As I pointed out in my 1990 book Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, he called for “steeply graduated taxes, government controls on crop prices and food prices [and] continued controls on wages . . . Government should guarantee everyone a job, an education, and clothing, housing, medical care, and financial security against the risks of old age and sickness.” “True individual freedom,” Roosevelt said, “cannot exist without economic security and independence.”

Roosevelt, who declared after Pearl Harbor that he was no longer Dr. New Deal but was now Dr. Win the War, was clearly contemplating returning to his former role after the war was over. This despite the fact that in his second term the New Deal was proving unpopular. Gallup polls from 1937 to 1940 saw majorities opposing Roosevelt’s never-enacted “Third New Deal” and supporting cuts in government spending, favoring curbs in the power of labor unions, and opposing welfare programs. Majorities said that New Deal programs were deterring businesses from creating jobs. Roosevelt was evidently calculating that government’s success in the war effort would transform public opinion, as it indeed did in Britain.

There are some intriguing similarities between the political situation in 1946 and the political situation today. Democrats were promising (or threatening) to vastly increase the size and scope of government.
His successor Harry Truman took the same view. In September 1945, less than a month after the surrender of Japan, he called for continued price controls, a full-employment bill, a higher minimum wage, a public- and private-housing bill, and only limited cuts in the high wartime tax rates. In December 1945 he called for national health insurance.

The second is eerily parallel:

The second similarity is that the Democrats in 1945–1946 were closely allied with labor unions, which were deeply involved in politics and were avidly seeking more members and more bargaining power. At the end of World War II, labor unions represented 27% of the civilian labor force, up from 7% in 1934. This was primarily the result of government action. The Wagner Act passed in 1935 stimulated the growth of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions, which through sitdown strikes (which were plainly illegal) and other tactics organized the major auto, steel, and tire manufacturers between 1937 and 1941. Wartime government regulations encouraged unionization in defense industries. Wartime regulations banned strikes, and John L. Lewis’s United Mineworkers was the only union to defy it. But after the war, anticipating inflation, union leaders demanded sharply higher wages and workers went out on strike. The United Steelworkers got a handsome settlement in February 1946, the United Auto Workers (UAW) did so in March, and in April the railroad unions and the United Mineworkers went out on strike. Truman called for a law allowing the drafting of strikers in May but vetoed legislation to restrict unions’ powers in June. The number one strike year in American history turned out to be 1946. Some 4.6 million workers, more than 10% of the work force, were on strike at one point or another during the year, and strikes accounted for 1.4% of total working time—more than double those in the next highest years, which at that point were all in the future.

Today, of course, the union movement is much smaller. Unions represent only 7% of private-sector employees (but also represent nearly half of public-sector employees, as compared to zero in 1945–1946). But they proved a potent political force in 2008, spending some $400 million and providing highly competent organizers to help elect Democratic candidates. Unions in the mid-1940s were using their growth to increase their political power; now they have been using their political power to try to produce membership growth.

The 79th Congress did not increase union powers, which were already broad under the Wagner Act, but Truman’s veto did prevent it from imposing restrictions on unions. The 111th Congress has refused to seriously consider their card-check bill, which would effectively abolish the secret ballot in private-sector unionization elections, but the stimulus package passed in February 2009 allotted one-third of its funds to state and local governments, which helped preserve the jobs of many public sector union members—and the flow of dues money to public-sector union leaders.

The number one strike year in American history turned out to be 1946. Some 4.6 million workers, more than 10% of the work force, were on strike at one point or another during the year. Union issues were of much higher salience in 1945–1946 than they are today, and in that earlier time Americans tended to favor higher wages for workers to compensate for the end of wartime overtime premiums. But at the same time they supported by large margins limits on union powers and the ability to strike. Gallup polls suggest that that support increased during 1946, just as recent Gallup numbers reveal that opinion about unions has become sharply more negative in 2009 and 2010. The majority seemed to feel then and perhaps feels now that unions had taken advantage of their political alliances to get better treatment for their members than the non-union majority of the population was getting.

Barone does not predict the same crushing defeat of the Democrats, but

The parallels between the political situation in 1946 and 2010 are limited but instructive. Americans once again are faced with proposals that would vastly expand the size and scope of government. And they are faced by proposals to increase the power of labor unions. Public opinion polls show that in 2010, as in 1946, most Americans reject such policies. Republicans in 1946 were prepared to advance policies that turned America away from such policies. The question is whether Republicans in 2010, with the prospect but not the assurance, of winning a majority in the House and perhaps a majority in the Senate, are similarly prepared.

CNN Swirling Downward in Porcelain Maelstrom Bowl

Anderson & Strongboy DungeonMaster out on Bike Parole [h/t: Gawker]

Anderson Cooper cut off his figurative private parts when he last year derided the Tea Party activists with a sexual slur, at once showing his own sleazy sexual orientation and his inner affinity with Keith Overbite in the classless moral leper department. Jon Klein farmed out AC to 60 Minutes so Cooper could do some Brokeback Mountain riding with Scott Pelley, a soul sister with a yen for sidesaddle sex.

Now the Doppelganger of David Brooks named Ross senses an imminent near-death experience in the offing for CNN's news division. Rats like Amanpour are beginning to crawl down the hawsers and the Klueless Klein may have to take a trip to Davey Jones' Locker as he lives out Ted Turner's confident prediction fifteen years ago when Fox went 24/7 that CNN would "crush Fox like a bug." Through his atheistic vodka haze, Ted confused just who was the windshield and who was the bug.

I for one wish a bon voyage to CNN experiment in mediocrity and after having watched Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper combine to get NEGATIVE monies on Celebrity Jeopardy [where they were kept on because celebs compete in final without fear of accountability], I can understand why this collection of second-rate Demo-rats are having such a tough time of it. I can't wait until Larry King sets a new negative dollar record, eclipsing Wolfie's who blew a question on Israel that any third grader would know [WB used to be the DC correspondent for the Jerusalem Post].

MSNBC is going down with flags flying and their freebooting is being rewarded by being hanged as knaves.

Alas, Cooper & Wolf & Campbell are doing an air dance on air for being fools!

Mark Steyn on America's Post-American President

Hillary the Crone recently slapped down the PM of Canada for not inviting Inuit to a meeting of Canadian province chiefs. Imagine if Sarah Palin were Secretary of State and her half-Inuit husband Todd accompanied her to Ottawa! Steyn hits about ten home runs in this five or six para masterpiece.

The Obama administration came into office promising to press the “reset” button with the rest of the world after eight years of the so-called arrogant, swaggering Texan cowboy blundering his way around the planet offending peoples from many lands. Instead, Obama pressed the ejector-seat button: Brits, Czechs, Israelis, Indians found themselves given the brush. I gather the Queen was “amused” by the president’s thoughtful gift of an iPod preloaded with Obama speeches — and, fortunately for Her Majesty, the 160GB model only has storage capacity for two of them, or three if you include one of his shorter perorations. But Gordon Brown would like to be liked by Barack Obama, and can’t understand why he isn’t.

Go to the link above and read the entire piece, with more mordant wit and brilliant humor than all the NYT Sunday Times columns put together---although that is NOT saying much of anything!

Karzai Corruption Echoed by Empty-Headed Lehrer & Obama's State-Controlled Media

mentions that Karza is invited to Washington in May for talks. But Karzai
should fear for his own personal safety according to a diplomat who recently spent some time in Afghanistan who tells me that the US and UN are scapegoating Karzai with highly-inflated charges of corruption which basically is the cost of doing business in Afghanistan. This official says the real problem was the dearth of funding over the last decade and a half as well as misplaced confidence in eradicating an opium poppy agribusiness too prosperous for farmers to abandon and replacing the poppy growers with traditional agricultural produce. These were only two of the many miscalculations the US has made.

The official says that two-thirds or more of the funds allocated to institutions and dispensed by the US and NGOs actually reach the intended recipients. This is under Karzai's first term and by regional standards and previous Afghani benchmarks, is a great improvement. Yet the US and its FOUR ambassadors keep bumping into each other accusing Karzai of malfeasance and incompetence. And Richard Holbrooke has overemployed his trademark bullying and browbeating to such an extent that he is persona non grata in Afghanistan and is basically regarded as a Pakistani agent.

Holbrooke is now effectively lost any cachet with India as well, leaving him pincered in a Pakistani vise which limits his effectiveness as a regional ambassador and effectively means that Hillary Clinton is the only US official able to deal with all three countries. Given her limited time and skills, this means the US regional policy is at a standstill.

Obama Hits 50% DISAPPROVAL RATE while 47% approve

USATODAY is no longer the highest circulation newspaper in the dead-tree world, having been passed by Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal recently. And this may be why its poll is more honest and straightforwqrd than the left-leaning garbage outfits like Harris churn out with bogus slanted questions designed to make the GOP bad. Maybe recent articles by Upchuck Blow and Roger Cohen in the NYT exhibiting symptoms of extreme dementia and half-assed "thinking" are why the New York Times circulation keeps sinking by about 5%/annum as it approaches selling only ONE/THIRD as many dailies as the WSJ!!! Pinch Sulzberger with his crack-addicted staff of Bong-toker Keller and skank/whore Abramson are literally scuttling the old grey derelict as it heads for the scrapyard of history.

USATODAY buries the lede below the fold:

Obama's approval rating was 47%-50% — the first time his disapproval rating has hit 50%.

Ashamed of its own integrity, another giant indicator of a colossal Dem blunder is buried deeeeep in the story:

There was a strong reaction against the tactics Democratic leaders used to pass the bill. A 53% majority call Democratic methods "an abuse of power;" 40% say they are appropriate.

And when asked about incidents of vandalism and threats that followed the bill's passage, Americans are more inclined to blame Democratic political tactics than critics' harsh rhetoric. Forty-nine percent say Democratic tactics are "a major reason" for the incidents, while 46% blame criticism by conservative commentators and 43% the criticism of Republican leaders.

What is the superlative of Pyrrhic victory? Pyrrhicest or most Pyrrhic?

The Democrats ought to examine the grammar as well as their own tiny deformed consciences!!!

Gallup Shows 50% of Americans consider Obamacare a "bad thing."

The state-controlled media hasn't quite managed to control Gallup yet, so a poll yesterday shows a MAJORITY of respondents consider the monstrous unconstitutional mess passed by Queen Botox and the Pickininny Twins [Harry & the Negro] a "bad" thing.

I think numbers like that will make good campaign fodder for the Republicans to take over the House and show the Botox biyotch the door---sadly, it looks like Michael Steele cannot control his own inner negro and is starting to behave like a Black Caucus Crime Syndicate member, with a private jet no less.

Maybe {T]axed [E]nough [A]lready is the way to go!?!

Fox Cable & TV Network Both on Top, Cable Dominates

Roger Ailes is the uncrowned king of TV or at least TV news on cable. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune writes:

Much as Fox News Channel's commentators, such as Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, overshadow its news reporting in the public's mind, Ailes' cable news outlet (and the whopping $700 million or so it adds to the bottom line) tends to eclipse the rest of his purview in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire.

Ailes is also chairman of the Twentieth Television and Fox Television Stations, which includes the Chicago duopoly of WFLD-Ch. 32 and WPWR-Ch. 50. As head of the station group, he'll be part of the decision whether Fox Broadcasting will sign former "Tonight Show" host Conan O'Brien. The move will hinge in part on whether it can be cost-effective.

"We all like Conan," Ailes said. "It's an arithmetic problem."

Additionally, Ailes is chairman and CEO of Fox Business Network, which he launched 21/2 years ago as a challenge to NBC Universal's CNBC, which he turned into a moneymaker back in the 1990s. He believes Fox Business is less than two years from the black.

I only wish our home's Comcast carried Fox Business or I'd be watching that too....! It is simply amazing how the state-controlled news networks and dead-tree papers are losing eyeballs and readers while the News Corp.'s Fox network and cable eat the opposition alive, with the exception of CBS on the nets. American Idol and several other creative programs like Fringe and Human Target keep coming up with great TV fare, and the cable news commentators are the only ones to challenge the DNC talking point version of political events that the stenographer nets like ABC, NBC & CBS plus CNN & the MessNBC trainwreck peddles shamelessly as "news." Someone should instruct them on the difference between editorial comment and news content, since the ole-timey nets keep peddling hooey and losing viewers.

Living fossil Howard Raines makes even more of a fool of himself than when he hired Jason LNU to file stories made up of whole cloth. Get what this shit-canned failure has to say:

Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines, in a March 14 Washington Post essay, asked, "Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration?"

Ailes is dismissive of Raines ("All the other channels apparently give him what he wants," he said) and even more so of the notion that Fox News has not faced criticism.

"That's hysterical," Ailes said. "Fox has taken more incoming; we have a bigger bull's-eye on us than anybody. What he's upset about is we haven't been hit." Obama, whose administration took flak from other news operations last year when it tried to isolate Fox News, last week sat for an interview with the channel's Bret Baier.

Of course, the nets and cable clowns who dutifully parrot the Obama Party Line like Agitpreppie halfwits have been blowing whistles and finger-pointing Fox News for years, only to see Ailes' handiwork rise in the ratings until the Fox cable evening prime time laps ALL FOUR opponents at once, frequently pulling in double what the lame-o quarterwits at CNN & MessNBC can muster in an evening.

Now Howell can go back to his uneasy retirement and experience hysterical foam-at-the-mouth brain seizures as the Wall Street Journal gains paid subscriptions way over 2 million daily while the fishwrap birdcage lining he used to edit sinks below 800K a day toward flatline city.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving exit of an NYT alimentary canal.

What We Can Expect from Socialized Medicine

Theodore Dalrymple is a medical doctor who is also a compassionate and insightful writer concerning the insane downward spiral a country experiences when it decides to take over medical care of the entire country, and his experience in the UK is echoed by a Labor [Dem in US parlance] minister in the Blair government who now can speak the truth:

Americans would do well to ponder a recent admission by a former British minister in the Blair government. On March 2, the Guardian reported that the ex-minister, now Lord Warner, said that while spending on Britain’s National Health Service had increased by 60 percent under the Labour government, its output had decreased by 4 percent. No doubt the spending of a Soviet-style organization like the NHS is more easily measurable than its output, but the former minister’s remark certainly accords with the experiences of many citizens, who see no dramatic improvement in the service as a result of such vastly increased outlays. On the contrary, while the service has taken on 400,000 new staff members—that is to say, one-fifth of all new jobs created in Britain during the period—continuity of medical care has been all but extinguished. Nobody now expects to see the same doctor on successive occasions, in the hospital or anywhere else.

That's just for starters and the hysterical leftists who pushed this abominable monstrosity through US Congress should all have to memorize this article before they are kicked out of office this November. Not that the Dems had read the original bill in the first place. What I liked the most about John Boehner's calling the slipshod sloppy lazy-ass Dems out from the rostrum was for not even reading the bill, which the illiterate CBC members were incapable of anyway. But the British example is instructive:

The ex-minister admitted that most of the extra money—which by now must equal a decent proportion of the total national debt—had been simply wasted. (The same might be said, of course, of the increased outlays put toward state education.) But his explanation for this state of affairs was superficial and self-exculpating, to say the least: he said that the NHS received more money than it knew what to do with because of managerial inexperience. “It was like giving a starving man foie gras and caviar,” he said.

Of course, wasteful spending is no surprise for someone who worked in the Federal government for over a decade, as I did in the State Department in several foreign countries, overseeing in a couple the military and direct aid projects in their sausage-making final stages. Waste and USG "assistance programs" are synonymous. But Dalrymple all but admits that for all practical purposes, the much derided "death panels" are a facet of the British NHS as a doctor follows government guidelines rather than his own best judgment in diagnosis and treatment problems:

As it happens, the NHS knew exactly what to do with the money: give it to its staff, new and old. British doctors, for example, are now the second-highest-paid in the world, though not necessarily the happiest. They have accepted the money on condition that they also accept—as quietly as mice—increasing government interference in their work. When you go to a family doctor in Britain, he is more likely to do what the government thinks he ought to do and will pay him a bonus for doing than what he thinks is right. This is sinister, even when what the government thinks is right happens to be right.

This is moral corruption at its most dangerous---the health of the tax-paying citizen is subordinated to NHS "guidelines" set by anonymous officials for political and budgetary reasons, not to cure the illness of the citizen. Dalrymple has worked in UK hospitals all over the country and he believes the meretricious dishonesty all leads to a complete breakdown of any rational or humane goals in the NHS health program, which has now become a cash cow bribing doctors to forget about their own training and diagnosis.

There is a possible explanation other than managerial inexperience for the waste, namely that the waste was intended and desired: indeed, that it was the principal object of the spending. Experience has long shown that further spending by state-monopoly suppliers of services (if services is quite the word I seek) benefits not the consumers but the providers. And they—ever more numerous—naturally vote for their own providers, the politicians. Thus the NHS has become an enormously expensive method of ballot-stuffing. Personally, I would rather have outright electoral fraud. It would be less expensive and slightly more honest.

Just before the last election, the chief executive of one of the hospitals in which I once worked was overheard saying, “My job is to make sure that the government is reelected.” (The government’s job, in turn, was to make sure that she remained chief executive.) She also explained that the hospital could expect no increase in its government funding, unlike other hospitals—because it was located in an area in which most people voted for the government anyway.

So now the USA can expect the national health care system to be taken over by cadres of SEIU thugs who enforce political correctness like the commissars of Stalin's USSR, minus of course the gulags which would be very un-British who prefer to muddle through their intermittent periods of national fecklessness. I would say that the latest of which periods [perhaps the Regency of George III was an earlier example in the social-moral sense] began with the election of Clement Atlee in 1945 by an nation exhausted by six years of heroic resistance to Nazi tyranny. But now the US might mimic the UK as a nation no longer willing to be a world power and ready to relax into slacker carelessness. In the UK, it was the ueber-Labor TUC's "I'm all right, Jack" socialism which rotted the intestinal fortitude of the UK until Margaret Thatcher gave it a brief reprieve from its downward slide into mediocre lassitude.

In the USA, it will be Andy Stern and the SEIU along with other union juggernauts which will guide Dem policy-making and reduce our foreign policy to retreat from terrorist threats and abandoning our true allies like Israel to flirt with the Castros and Chavezes and Putins and Ahmedinejads who reflect Obama's socialist statist autocratic goals more than the messy Knesset or the Honduras Supreme Court.

Like Kipling at the Diamond Jubilee in 1897, we should ask our poet laureate to compose an American "Recessional" from greatness and a unique way of life.

Barack Obama Suffers From "Narcissistic Personality Disorder"

Oh what a good boy am I!

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined in the DSM-IV as

a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

An acutely inteiligent commenter on Ann Althouse gave the link and it seems utterly appropriate to this second-rate one-term wonder.

Paternalistic Ideology Or Nanny-State Diaper/Enema Fixation?: Rep. Ryan Wants to Know Why Dems Chose Diapers & Enemas.

Rep. Ryan's a Highbrow With Huge Pre-Frontal Lobes

Rep. Paul Ryan represents my native state of Wisconsin, in the same district former DoD Secretary Les Aspin represented---Kenosha, Racine, Janesville. The First District in WI has always been out of step with prevailing mindlessness in DC. Hollyweird Immortal Orson Welles and movie star/crooner Don Ameche were born in the friendly confines, as was hero of The Game in 1958, Baltimore Colts Fullback-of-the-Century Alan Ameche, who crushed the New York Giants' hope for an NFL championship in the contest which turn football rather than baseball into our national obsession.

Paul has distinguished himself in the six terms he's served so far to the extent that Obama has been said to consider Ryan a one-man think tank on health care as well as other complex legislative Gordian knots strewn before a Twenty-First Century Congress---a very interesting compliment from Professor-in-Chief cum POTUS Obama. Heeeeere's Paul Ryan:

Through any analytical lens, the legislation will not address the central problem of skyrocketing health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families' premiums could rise 10 to 13 percent; private-sector actuarial estimates top these already high numbers. The higher costs are driven by federalizing the regulation of insurance, narrowing consumers' options and reducing competition among providers. The health-care market would be dominated by government programs and the largest insurance companies, operating as de facto government utilities.

Rather than tackle the drivers of health inflation, the legislation chases the ever-increasing premiums with huge new subsidies. Already, Washington has no idea how to pay for the unfunded promises in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and creating this new entitlement would accelerate our path to fiscal ruin. When you strip away the double-counting, expose the hidden costs that must be funded and look at the price tag when the legislation is fully implemented, the claims of deficit reduction are as hollow as claims of cost containment.

Ryan's crisply-written pellucid prose makes the scrambled-egg verbiage of philosophical spaghetti the Democrats deliver from their short-order chefs look even more opaque and gooey than their muddled cooking process-oriented legislative mindset usually turns out:

This legislation includes a range of job-killing tax hikes and controls on all Americans -- to fund this new entitlement and to penalize employers and individuals who don't play by Washington's new rules. The CBO said last July that "requiring employers to offer health insurance, or pay a fee if they do not, is likely to reduce employment." The mix of mandates and higher costs will drive Americans into government exchanges, with an ever-enlarging number reliant upon taxpayer subsidies for their care. The architecture is designed to give the government greater control over what kind of insurance is available, how much health care is enough and which treatments are worth paying for.

The debacle of the past year's "debate" has been a missed opportunity for real reform. Democrats and Republicans alike have put forward proposals that address the drivers of health-care costs, yet they have been ignored in this sharply partisan crusade. House Republicans continue to offer common-sense solutions, with specific legislation. Last May, Sens. Tom Coburn and Richard Burr and Rep. Devin Nunes and I collaborated to address rising costs while securing access to quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans. The Patients' Choice Act takes on the discriminatory and inflationary tax exclusion, delinking the tax benefit from employers and attaching it to individuals through universal tax credits. The tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage subsidizes insurance instead of health care, hides the true cost of coverage and disproportionately favors the wealthy at the expense of the self-employed, the unemployed and small businesses. Health-care economists across the political spectrum and reform-minded Democrats such as Sen. Ron Wyden identify the backward tax treatment of health care as a problem that must be addressed.

The Patients' Choice Act includes additional reforms -- such as an emphasis on preventive care, medical malpractice reform and interstate shopping -- that could be advanced one at a time in a bipartisan fashion to fix what's broken in health care without breaking what is working.

Ryan's sad summary of the Democrats' demolition derby political habits condense Si, se puede 's childish enthusiasm into the juvenile delinquency of majority-plus-one smash-and-grab politics.

This year I re-introduced my own proposals to tackle our entitlement crisis head-on. My plan, "A Roadmap for America's Future," fulfills the mission of health and retirement security, lifts our crushing burden of debt, and spurs economic growth and job creation. In stark contrast to the vision being pushed by the majority in Congress, my plan unapologetically seeks to apply our nation's timeless principles -- our Founders' commitment to individual liberty, limited government and free enterprise -- to today's challenges. It does so in a way that honors our historic commitment to strengthening the social safety net for those who need it most.

If this debate had actually been about health care, we could have worked together to get a grip on costs, make quality care more accessible, address exclusions for preexisting conditions and realign the incentives of insurance companies with those of patients and doctors. Yet this process -- including its embarrassing conclusion -- demonstrates that the debate has never been about health-care policy but, instead, paternalistic ideology.

Should the Democrats' health-care train wreck make it to the president's desk, it will be a pyrrhic victory, and its devastating consequences will take their toll on our health-care system, our budget and our economy.

The toll might exceed King Pyhrrus's slaughtered soldiery in its long-term body count.

UPDATE: The American Spectator says Mark Levin and other superior "Constitutional Lawyers" [as opposed to "community organizer B-Listers"] might get this pathetic attempt at Grand Theft Larceny before the SCOTUS & kill the infant in its crib.

Andy McCarthy: Legal and Media Mafias Target America

NPR Online blows an ueberleftie LAT writer named Kathleen Hennessy to shreds for barfing on the shoes of Ginni Thomas [wife of SCOTUS justice Clarence].

Which brings to mind the infection of the Dem Party called lawyeritis.

I've been writing a lot lately about the disconnect between the American legal profession and the American mainstream. The legacy media is no different from the bar on this score. Because of that, it is shriveling into extinction. It can't survive on a competitive playing field by enraging its consumer base — the only potential savior on the horizon is the possibility of a bail-out by our current Leftist government (i.e., Democrats forcing the public to underwrite what the public doesn't want to buy). Today is just the latest example of why it is heading downn the tubes. That's one part of the silver lining. The other is that the hit piece is likely to have the opposite effect from what the Times intended.

Yep, Sotomayor and Ginsberg can spew ultra-left agitprop and get nominated and elevated to a Dem administration's SCOTUS [Ginsburg unanimously because Bob Dole confused being a gentleman and a political leader].

Reagan and the two Bushes on the other hand escaped the disease called law school, though RWR did a stint in the media which taught him what a RICO-racketeering crime spree the MSM and Hollyweird pull off on a daily basis. As Andy notes about the latest abortion the LAT pulled off:

The Court's ballyhooed "impartiality" is only threatened because a conservative male justice is married to a conservative woman who has a life and career of her own, which was once thought to be the feminist ideal.

All this because Ginni decided to open an informal Tea Party network! Quel horreur!

Of course, Hennessy would have been okay with an ACORN underage prostitution ring from Costa Rica, because that's who she and her LAT sidekicks believe are the real heroes in the politics of cacique-pimp victimless crimes.

Transparency: Pelosi Style.

Miss Piggy at Rest

Pelosi's Pig in a Poke is the op-ed title with the airhead quote ""We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," worthy of John Kerry or Joe Biden, or Obama sans teleprompter.

The corrupt farce AKA ObamaCare stumbles and lurches its way, hopefully toward oblivion, while the Dems start talking about extra-constitutional hi-jinks like "The Slaughter Option," named for the feckless denture queen of the Bronx, which would pass the Senate Bill through the House by "deeming" it appropriate. Sounds so absolutely desperate that it resembles the Enabling Act of 1933 [Godwin Alert!] which ushered in young Adolf with the nodding approval of war hero Hindenburg. Just call the Dems' recent outing of Massa and "temporary" demotion of Charlie Rangel a new politics of Magical Realism. Here's the WSJ's Taranto:

Pelosi is not alone in equating knowledge of the bill's contents to enactment of it. Consider the lead paragraph of this Associated Press dispatch about Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who cast the deciding vote allowing passage of the Senate's version of ObamaCare;

A moderate Democrat insisted Tuesday she remained opposed to pushing a health care bill through the Senate with a simple majority vote, despite saying she wanted to see what was in the legislation[my emph].

These people are trying to sell us a pig in a poke. Actually, that's not quite right: They've failed to sell us a pig in a poke. At nearly every opportunity, voters have responded to the ObamaCare sales pitch by shouting "No!"--even going so far as to elect a Republican to the Senate from Massachusetts.

But if Pelosi and President Obama have their way, we will get their pig, and will we ever pay for it. Is it any wonder that, as the Associated Press reports, "Americans have come to detest Congress ever more deeply as it nears the end of a nasty fight over health care"?

Michael Barone is less cutting, but more thorough in his dissection of the Health Care corpse.

In fall 2009, Democrats could have pivoted on health care to craft a popular bill or a watered-down unpopular bill to be passed by a bipartisan safe-seat coalition. Instead, they plunged ahead and rammed through unpopular bills on party-line votes.

Pelosi got a 220-215 margin in the House in November after accepting an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak that banned funding of abortions.

In the Senate in December, Majority Leader Harry Reid predictably had to pay a high price -- the Cornhusker kickback and the Louisiana purchase -- for the 59th and 60th votes. That's always the case when you need 60 out of 60.

Scott Brown's election in January in Massachusetts deprived Reid of his 60th vote. The only way forward for the Democrats is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then trust the Senate to fix it through the reconciliation process. Pelosi has had six weeks to get the votes for that and hasn't done so yet.

It's beginning to look like the goal of health care legislation was a bridge too far. There's a reason it's hard to pass unpopular legislation on party-line votes. It's not the Senate rules. It's called democracy.

David Broder closes the door on the horrific deficits being run up by Congress which passed a "pay-as-you-go" plan & then immediately junked it, leaving poor Jim Bunning as the lone honest man in the den of thieves, and for holding out on a "jobs bill" that Reid had reneged the p-a-y-g provision, was roundly scolded by the creepy Andrea Mitchells of DC. Broder mimics Cassandra:

The record of the Washington politicians is summarized in the report that came out of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week. That nonpartisan scorekeeper announced that it projects the cumulative national debt to increase in the next decade by $9.8 trillion.

That unimaginable (and indigestible) sum is more than a trillion dollars higher than the Obama administration's estimate. It means a lower future standard of living for Americans because of vastly increased debt.

As Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, pointed out in his commentary on the CBO report, it projects the annual cost of interest on the debt to rise from $209 billion this year to $916 billion by 2020.

Most of that debt is now held overseas by nations such as China and Japan, so we are draining huge sums from ourselves and handing them to others to use in buying us up -- or competing against us.

That is the story that has been written and is still unfolding in Washington, with budgets shaped by both Democrats and Republicans. It is a saga of national ruin.

Our national fortune is being looted by the RICO syndicate called the House and Senate, with a lot of help from the president. And Broder points this out in straightforward prose:

While the federal government was handing out tax rebates and now is preparing to extend many of the Bush-era tax cuts, 13 states were raising personal income taxes, 17 were passing sales tax and various business tax increases and 22 were lifting excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol or gasoline.

California, with chronic budget problems, a Democratic-controlled Legislature and a Republican governor, bit the bullet and temporarily raised its income tax rate across the board and its sales tax by 1 percent and also lifted its vehicle tax.

All the states except Vermont operate with a constitutional requirement that they balance their budgets. But I was reminded again during the governors' conference how different the psychology is in the state capitals and in Washington.

Governors live in the real world, where budgets mean something more than a formula for shifting burdens to the next generation and where there is much less room for partisan game-playing.

So starting in 2020, we will be paying a $trillion each year to finance the pig in the poke that Queen Botox is keeping from our eyes until the bill passes. She will be dead physically as well as morally by then, perhaps, but her legacy and that of this sophomoric president will be hemorrhaging money overseas at the rate of $3billion a day.

British versus Canadian Death Panels: Who's Deadliest?

Kane Gorny is another victim of the Brit National Health Service and its "lazy nurses" who wouldn't give him water at his hospital bed, allowing him to die of dehydration:

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.
Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.
They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.
The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.
She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. 'He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.' Kane, aged 11. He worked for Waitrose and had been a keen footballer and runner until he was diagnosed with a brain tumour the year before his death
A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police.
Sources say they are investigating the possibility of a corporate manslaughter charge against St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London. Mr Gorny, from Balham, worked for Waitrose and had been a keen footballer and runner until he was diagnosed with a brain tumour the year before his death.

As the Toronto Sun demonstrates, Canadian Death Panels also abhor brain tumors:

Suffering from brain cancer, Kent Pankow was literally forced to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. for lifesaving surgery — at a cost to family and friends of $106,000 — after the health-care system in Alberta left him hanging in bureaucratic limbo for 16 crucial days, his tumour meanwhile migrating to an unreachable part of the brain, while it dithered over his case file, ultimately deciding he was not surgery worthy.

Now, with the Mayo Clinic having done what the Alberta Cancer Board wouldn’t authorize or even explain, but with the tumour unable to be totally removed, the province will now not fund the expensive drug, Avastin, that the Mayo prescribed to keep him alive and keep the remaining tumour from increasing in size — despite the costs of the drug being totally funded by the province for other forms of cancer.

Kent Pankow, as it turns out, has the right disease but he has it in the wrong place.

Had he lung cancer, breast cancer, or colon cancer, then the cost of the drug — $4,555 per treatment, two times a month — would be totally covered by Alberta’s version of OHIP.

But he doesn’t. And so he is not only a victim of brain cancer, he is also a victim of arbitrary discrimination.

Canada's death panels are already notorious for forcing one of the 10 Provincial Premiers to go to the USA for his open-heart surgery, as the primitive Canuck health service isn't up to world standards. And the Sun admits this:

Our supposedly universal federal health care system, the pride of most Canadians and the political struggle of America, is only as good as the length of the waiting line and whether you have the right disease at the right time.

After writing more than 150 letters to everyone from the prime minister to virtually all health authorities both federal and provincial, and being ignored in return, Kent Pankow’s wife, Deborah Hurford, decided to finally go public......“When Kent goes for his Avastin IV injection, he sits next to patients who receive the same drug for free because they have another type of cancer — like colon cancer,” Hurford says.

“Brain tumour patients deserve the same rights as other cancer patients, including access to the same lifesaving treatments — and without additional costs.

“I can’t begin to tell you how frustrated, angry, disgusted and appalled I am with both the Alberta health system and the individuals within the system who continue to perpetuate such an archaic and inhumane approach to the treatment of patients.” she says. “It seems like they are doing everything in their power to ensure that Kent succumbs to an early and unnecessary death.”

“The Avastin is working. The size of the remaining tumour has remained static since October,” she says. “But how can anyone afford almost $10,000 a month for a drug — even if it is saving a loved one’s life?”

Highlighted above is the hand of the Canuck death panel, which discriimates, as does the Brit version of a "national health service," against brain cancer victims.

Of course, Kate Sebelius and her moronic minions don't know or care about anyone over 65, as long as they can decrease their Medicare benefits and send them to an early grave, which IS WHAT OBAMACARE IS ALL ABOUT!!!

EU Fears the Greeks Even When Bearing Them Gifts

A German Newspaper reminds the Greeks on how to behave as adults.

If you're reading this, you've entered a country different from yours. You're in Germany.

Here, people work until they are 67 and there is no 14th-month salary for civil servants. Here, nobody needs to pay a €1,000 bribe to get a hospital bed in time.

Our petrol stations have cash registers, taxi drivers give receipts and farmers don't swindle EU subsidies with millions of non-existent olive trees.

Germany also has high debts but we can settle them. That's because we get up early and work all day.

We want to be friends with the Greeks. That's why since joining the euro, Germany has given your country €50bn.

The "non-existent olive trees" refers to Greek dishonest reporting of agricultural assets to gain EU subsidies. Greek taxi drivers are notorious crooks in general and feed off tourists by cheating them. And the Greek work ethic is more of a job ethic---you show up at "work," hang your coat over your chair, and then go out to earn a second salary while your bureaucratic slot earns a paycheck. Mexico has the same system.

Strikes and attacks on Parliament have caused the Greek Finance Minister Papaconstantinou to tell the EUrotards that

European allies should now act to pledge aid should Greece need help financing its growing debt. “Obviously, the EU must undertake responsibility, which it hasn’t done yet,” he told lawmakers. EU nations are working on a contingency rescue plan for Greece to be funded by European governments, according to two people briefed yesterday in Berlin by an EU official.

Doesn't look like the Eurofamily is going to have great days ahead of it.

UPDATE

The Economist has more on this story....

Stark Follows Rangel to the Ethical Toxic Waste Dump. Corrupt Black Caucus Still Supports Rangel

Pete Stark is Charlie Rangel without self-control. One of his long-time aides told me that Charlie had fathered five children out of wedlock by five different mothers, but was doing the right thing by overseeing their lives as an over-the-horizon parent. Stark fits into a more usual Dem stereotype of all-out crook with anger, er, management issues.

Pelosi is doing her best to dumb down the House to her level of incompetence, keeping Harvard grad Jane Harman off the Chair of the Special Cte on Intelligence because Jane was smarter, better looking, and has a streak of independence called morality. Instead, the class-dunce Pelosi [aside from her highly-developed Medici genes] appoints an ESL moron from Texas with less seniority than Harman, but also dumber than Pelosi, a hard combination to find.

The CBC or Corrupt Black Caucus still supports Rangel, among other reasons because their life bios mirror his in the ethics department, where they are virtually unassailable as a bloc of thirty who will steal everything that isn't nailed down with impunity. I worked for William Clay, Sr., in St. Louis back in the day as a campaign organizer and found afterwards that the guy is a total crook. Ditto for his twenty-nine colleagues in the CBC.

I once leafletted Sander Levin's house back in 1968 while working in Ann Arbor for Gene McCarthy, and although the unions run Sander, he isn't personally corrupt like the CBC and Stark and others in the Dem squirearchy at the very top of the pile of shit comprising the Dem majority, soon to be diminished drastically.

FOOTNOTE: Ever notice that the Dems always pull out homey anecdotes like Louise Slaughter's false teeth and Tom Harkin's "farmer" named Smith from Buffalo Grove, IA? Harkin is a corrupt old liar, to be sure, but it turns out that for once a media hound actually looked into the "farmer's" pedigree, which happened to be that of a brother of one of Harkin's employees. The fossil has no shame and at least Jim Bunning did something on principle, which is a word not in Harkin's vocabulary.

Pelosi Does Laugh-Riot Stand-up in Front of Press on ObamaCare

"My cameltoe deserves an "A" for attractiveness, but you'll just have to take my word for it!

Nancy "I smile all the time" Pelosi is examined in an article in The Hill giving herself a pat on the back for messing up health care:

The public option, for example, has been stripped from the bill because Republicans were so adamantly against it, she said.

and

When asked to grade the past year, Pelosi said, "I think I get an A for effort."

Unaware of her dyslexic confusion, Nancy P. deserves an "I" for Incompetence. And the public option was stripped from the bill because a large minority of her own party were against it besides those mean nasty Republicans. This superannuated bimbo has been telling the country for almost a year that when "Americans see what the bill contains, they will be in favor..." but Queen Botox can't show America what's in the bill because there were no committee hearings where differences were aired out, no transparency whatsoever, and thankfully by the end of November, there will be no Female Speaker to disgrace the House of Representatives with specious captious spurious BS promulgated with a bunch of ethical moral lepers like Charlie Rangel and John Murtha [RIP] watching her back. The preposterous frozen smile will be ejected from the Speakership just as Dems who vote for an abortion-on-demand bill will be ejected from their office---voted out by angry taxpayers who don't want to mortgage the family health to room temp IQ Dems who practice nepotism by the planeload. But between now and then, the insufferable crone continues riding her broomstick on the compliant nets and unwatched cable shows like CNN & [P]MSNBC. Senator McCain is a voice of sanity among the pols on TV this Sunday:

"This bill was written by Dems, for Dems," he said. "What they try to do is peel off a couple of Republicans and call it bipartisan."

Doubts have circled this week that the House does not have the votes to pass the Democrats’ healthcare overhaul.
Centrist and anti-abortion lawmakers who have doubts about the cost of the president’s proposal and its support for the Senate’s abortion provisions have indicated that they are still not on board with the plan. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who attached an amendment to the House bill with strict prohibitions against federal funding for abortions, said this week that there are 15-20 lawmakers who are not on board with the current plan

.

Rep. Paul Ryan [R-Wis] thinks that only a dozen or so will refuse the weird old lady's pleas to include infanticide as a taxpayer-paid benefit to Americans who want to kill their children.

My guess is that the tricky old withered witch of the west will sneak a codicil demanding all health employees will be required to join the SEIU in one of those double-secret footnotes hidden in an amendment rushed through at the last minute. Then they can join CALPERS and remain Dem voters for life---or until California declares bankruptcy that the USG will refuse to cover.