Deceptions of Democratic Family Planning

If you are following the controversy over the family planning appropriations that were dropped from the Obama administration's economic recovery act, you'll see that no one on the left is willing to discuss taxpayer support for abortions, which will be a natural consequence of the program.

Steve Benen has a post up this morning applauding efforts to get "family planning back on track." He cites Amy Sullivan to claim that the family planning legislation is explicitly not about abortion:

The provision would have allowed states to cover family planning services - but not abortion - that they already cover for low-income women who don't otherwise qualify for Medicaid, just without first requiring states to obtain a waiver from the federal government. That's it.

As always, I'm tempted to call these people befuddled idiots, but the fact is these folks know exactly what they're doing, and thus their scheming is devious and dangerous.

The fact is that the Obama administration's family planning appropiations will funnel money to Planned Parenthood, which is the nation's largest abortion provider. Historically, the organization's main funding sources are the $50 million-plus grants awarded through the federal Title X program, as well as roughly $50 million sent to Planned Parenthood in annual appropriations through Medicaid funding. Planned Parenthood's own website - in a call to supporters - boasts that it receives millions of dollars annually from the federal Title X family planning appropriations.

Moreover, LifeNews reported this week that Congressional Democrats indeed sought funding for abortions in the stimulus bill, with the plan including "a measure to send more public funds to the Planned Parenthood abortion business to fund contraception and birth control." In addition, the National Abortion Federation has sent an e-mail to supporters urging lobbying action "to demand that President Barack Obama restore hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for contraception and abortion."

It's simply a lie to suggest that Democratic family planning funds will not reach providers of abortion services.

But that's not all.

Section 5004 of the Democratic stimulus package is the "State Eligibility Option for Family Planning Services." According to the Heritage Foundation, this item would "make Medicaid into a virtual money-machine for family planning clinics."

As part of that money-machine, the Democratic proposal will provide taxpayer money for family planning services to unpregnant minors. That's right. Under current law, "women of child-bearing age (15-44) are not eligible for Medicaid coverage until after they become pregnant," but the proposed legislation would provide a loophole to extend coverage to these kids. And let me stress that: Girls 15 to 17 years-old are children, not "adult women," so under the bill "a child would be able to receive benefits through a 'presumptive eligibility period' and beyond without parental knowledge that he or she applied for Medicaid."

Further, the availability of services is loosely defined as a "state option" to include "medical diagnosis and treatment services that are provided in conjunction with a family planning service in a family planning setting," and therefore by definition in-term pregnancy termination services. Also, the presumptive eligibility provisions of the law will "give the power to private clinics to provide easy access to so-called 'emergency contraceptives' and be reimbursed with taxpayer dollars."

As we can see, the Democrats are foisting family planning deceptions at multiple levels. By denying that abortion services are included in the Obama recovery plan, we see not only blatant rhetorical evasions by activists and bloggers to delegitimize conservative opposition to family planning, but there's a larger smokescreen of deception to the Democratic social agenda: The left wants to empower children with access to contraceptives and abortion services. Just seeing the definition of "women of child-bearing age" dropped down to 15 years-old is an indication of the repudiation of family prerogatives and conservative values in "progressive" family planning schemes.

The Republican minority in Congress deserves praise, not ridicule, for its unified opposition to the Obama economic "porkulus" package. The Democratic-left, on the other hand, deserves nothing but condemnation for its reign of spineless deceit and its agenda of promotion of social decay.

Los Angeles Times to Kill "California" Section

I cut my political teeth on the Los Angeles Times, so the fate of the newspaper is personal to me. Thus the news that the Times will eliminate its "California" section, which is the "Section B" local news pullout, is not good. Perhaps things are nearing an end for the paper, which was established in 1881.

L.A. Observed as the report:

Publisher Eddy Hartenstein has ordered the California section killed, leaving the L.A. Times without a separate local news front for the first time since the paper's early decades. The publisher decided to fold local news inside the front section — which will be reconfigured to downplay national and foreign news — despite what an official of the paper confirmed for me was the unanimous and vocal objections of senior editors. Advertisers were informed on Wednesday, and word began to leak on Thursday. Hartenstein reportedly planned to delay an announcement until the close of business on Friday, fearing it will play as another black eye for the Times. He's right about that. I'm told that in contentious discussions in recent weeks, the editors failed to persuade Hartenstein that if a section had to go, the more palatable cut would be to move the less-read Business pages.

The backdrop, of course, is the economy and the Times' continued free-fall in ad revenue. By getting rid of California, the Times can print the more profitable Calendar section at night and eliminate the expense of a second, earlier daily press run. (Times presses can only handle four sections per run, as this post from last Friday discussed. Note, too, that pressmen are the Times' only unionized workers.)

The move will apparently be spun as an enhancement in local coverage, but Times officials are bracing for howls of protest from print readers who already have been canceling subscriptions over the paper becoming thinner and less well edited. Some LAT officials fear this might be a tipping point. "We can't keep alienating our core readers," a senior person told me. Papers that have tried doing away with just their Business sections have been stunned by the backlash; the Orange County Register reversed its decision to mollify readers.

There's more at the link.

The Times is expected to makes an announcement at the paper's website this afternoon.

For me, the most important thing here is that "national and foreign news" will be cut. By shifting local coverage to the front pages, and by juggling the press runs to accomodate the Calendar section (the logistical motivations for which vary), the paper will lose whatever reputation it had earned as one of the nation's most important outlets for original reporting and analysis on Washington politics and international affairs. The Times will look like a "company town" paper to the Hollywood entertainment community, and since most media observers suggest local news will be the future of the print media industry, at least the Los Angeles Times will have perhaps the most glamourous local market with which cover for an expected worldwide audience.

What's Up With the "Bipartisan Brand"?

If I were a Republican member of Congress, a no-vote on the House stimulus package would have been a no-brainer. No matter how deep this economy's fallen, no serious analyst can credibly claim the proposed legislation was about reviving the economy (folks on the right called the bill a "crap sandwich," but this is a family blog and I normally don't use that descriptive language myself).

So I've been thinking about the political spin on both left and right today. Jon Henke, at The Next Right, quotes Ben Smith (who suggests Obama's got the "bipartisan brand") and argues:

The only way to beat the hand Obama is playing is to take the initiative, to change the subject, with new policies and arguments that put Democrats off their game. And even that will take quite some time.

I don't see much evidence that Republicans are able to do that right now. There's just no larger, unifying framework for a transformative policy agenda, and no apparent policy innovation being done. Without the unifying agenda and policy innovation, Obama will continue to set the agenda, and Republicans will lose ground at every step.

While certainly the GOP needs to seize the initiative, it's a bit hard when the economy continues its free-fall, for example, with new housing foreclosure numbers this week that were nothing short of mindboggling. And with the continued shake out of major retailers, it's trite, frankly, to suggest getting the Dems off their game's going to "take some time."

Not only that, it's pretty much a joke to argue Obama's all about "bipartisanship." In his presidential leadership of Congress this week, "it was clear that his efforts so far had not delivered the post-partisan era that he called for in his inauguration address, when he proclaimed an end to the 'petty grievances' and 'worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.'"

On the left, Nate Silver, the numerical wonderboy of election projections, says the GOP played a bad hand:

The House Republicans are opposing popular legislation from a very popular President, and doing so in ways that stick a needle in the eye of the popular (if quixotic) concept of bipartisanship. They would seem to have little chance of actually blocking this legislation, since they are far short of a majority, and since the Senate Republicans, who can filibuster, have thus far shown little inclination to go along with them - with moderates like Susan Collins of Maine and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire voting routinely with the Administration ....

If the stimulus bill proves to be unpopular - and it might well - a House Republican can tout the fact that he voted against the package. But with the unanimous vote - as well as the near-unanimity on measures like the Ledbetter Act and Digital TV - the Republicans remove the emphasis from their individual judgment to that of their party. It is not clear why they would want this: the Republican brand, even under the best of circumstances, is not likely to be significantly rehabilitated by 2010, especially when the Republicans do not have agenda-setting powers.

Thus the Republicans, arguably, are in something of a death spiral. The more conservative, partisan, and strident their message becomes, the more they alienate non-base Republicans. But the more they alienate non-base Republicans, the fewer of them are left to worry about appeasing. Thus, their message becomes continually more appealing to the base - but more conservative, partisan, and strident to the rest of us. And the process loops back upon itself.

For being touted as last year's big breakout analyst, Silver's pretty sloppy. The bailout bill is not wildly "popular." Gallup finds a "slim majority" backing the package, and Rasmussen indicates that public support for the plan has slipped over the last few days (to 42 percent). For a president whose public approval is in near-stratospheric levels, these stimulus numbers are hardly impressive. (Related: "After Less Than a Week in Office, Barack Obama's Approval Rating Plunges 15 Points.")

Further, this notion that the Republican brand is in a death spiral is hardly a novel insight. More than a year before the 2008 primaries wrapped up journalists were bemoaning the GOP's evisceration and the dearth of Reaganesque heirs-apparent. The party's in for a long-term period of rebuilding and revitalization, and any construction project begins with the foundation. Rush Limbaugh's not getting all the attention from the president on down for nothing. And Sarah Palin's aggressive moves to consolidate her front-runner status are being facilitated by a media establishment ginning for some star power.

Finally, for all the talk of a dramatic Democratic electoral landslide, and the teary-eyed emotionalism of this month's inauguration, the U.S. has not sustained a partisan realignment. This fact means the upcoming elections at the national level will be close, and while no one on the right should get their hopes up for 2010, President Obama will have to run on his record in 2012, not the GOP's. Cries of "Republican obstructionism" might make good talking points for Democratic partisans today, but with foreclosures and long-term unemployment on your watch, blame-shifting's not going to help.

The Republicans are doing just fine in voicing a vigorous opposition. The "bipartisan brand" is radically overrated. President Martin Van Buren was known as an advocate for vigorous partisanship. He argued that the party in power needs a loyal opposition to represent other parts of society that it could not. The point's certainly not lost on this week's GOP.

Blagojevich Swept From Office in 59-0 Vote

Illinois Governor Rod Blogojevich has been removed from office by an impeachment vote of 59-0 in the state legislature. The Chicago Tribune has the story:

The Illinois Senate voted to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office Thursday, marking the first time in the state's long history of political corruption that a chief executive has been impeached and convicted.

The 59-0 vote followed several hours of public deliberation in which senator after senator stood up to blast Blagojevich, whose tenure lasted six years. And it came after a four-day impeachment trial on allegations that Blagojevich abused his power and sold his office for personal and political benefit.

The conviction on a sweeping article of impeachment means the governor was immediately removed from office. The Senate also unanimously voted to impose the "political death penalty" on Blagojevich, banning him from ever again holding office in Illinois.

Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn, Blagojevich's two-time running mate, has become the state's 41st governor.

Of course, there was never any doubt Blogojevich would be booted. When I saw him making the rounds this last week on the talk shows, especially his schmoozing on "The View," I thought, "Well, here we go with the grooming for this guy's own television gig." Joy Behar's all over the guy at 7:30 minutes:

More news at Memeorandum.

NBC Rejects Pro-Life Super Bowl Ad

Via Gateway Pundit and LifeSiteNews:

NBC has rejected an uplifting and positive pro-life ad submitted for its Super Bowl broadcast this Sunday. After several days of negotiations, an NBC representative in Chicago told CatholicVote.org late yesterday that NBC and the NFL are not interested in advertisements involving ‘political advocacy or issues.’

Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org said, “There is nothing objectionable in this positive, life-affirming advertisement. We show a beautiful ultrasound, something NBC’s parent company GE has done for years. We congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the first African-American President. And we simply ask people to imagine the potential of every human life.”

“NBC told CatholicVote.org that they do not allow political or issue advocacy advertisements. But that’s not what they told PETA,” said Burch. “There’s no doubt that PETA is an advocacy group. NBC rejected PETA’s ad for another reason altogether.”

According to an email posted on PETA.org, Victoria Morgan, Vice President of Advertising Standards for Universal, said: “The PETA spot submitted to Advertising Standards depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards.” Morgan even detailed “edits that need to be made” in order for the spot to run during the Super Bowl. The PETA ad depicts lingerie clad women in highly sexually suggestive poses.

“NBC claims it doesn’t allow advocacy ads, but that’s not true. They were willing to air an ad by PETA if they would simply tone down the sexual suggestiveness. Our ad is far less provocative, and hardly controversial by comparison,” said Burch.

“The purpose of our new ad is to spread a message of hope about the potential of every human life, including the life of Barack Obama,” said Burch. “We are now looking at alternative venues to run the ad over the next several weeks.”

Recall CatholicVote ran the "Vote Life" advertisement during the campaign, which turned out to be most watched political commercial on the web last year. Watch it here.

*********

UPDATE: Watch the PETA ad here. "Sexual suggestiveness" is putting it mildly.

Obama Signs Ledbetter Legislation

President Barack Obama has signed his first piece of legislation of the new Democratic era, "The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009." The Washington Post has the story.

But let me direct readers to the Wall Street Journal's review of the Democratic majority's labor agenda, "Trial Lawyer Bonanza":

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is an effort to overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Lilly Ledbetter had worked for Goodyear for almost 20 years before retiring. Only in 1998, after she took her pension, did she sue and allege wage discrimination stretching back to the early 1980s. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against her, noting the statute clearly said claims must be filed within 180 days, or sometimes 300 days, of the discrimination.

That ruling put to rest Ms. Ledbetter's creative theory that decisions made decades ago by a former boss affected her pay all the way to retirement, so that each paycheck was a new discriminatory act and thus fell within the statute of limitations. Yet that is exactly the theory Congress would now revive with the Ledbetter bill. There would no longer be time limits on such discrimination claims. They could be brought long after evidence had disappeared or witnesses had died -- as was the case with Ms. Ledbetter's former boss.

For the tort bar, this is pure gold. It would create a new legal business in digging up ancient workplace grievances. This would also be made easier by the bill's new definition of discrimination. Companies could be sued not merely for outright discrimination but for unintentional acts that result in pay disparities.

Since these supposed wrongs could be compounded over decades, the potential awards would be huge. Most companies would feel compelled to settle such claims rather than endure the expense and difficulty of defending allegations about long-ago behavior. The recipe here is file a suit, get a payday. And the losers would be current and future employees, whose raises would be smaller as companies allocate more earnings to settle claims that might pop up years after litigating employees had departed.

The Democratic majority is also resurrecting the concept of "comparable worth" with the Paycheck Fairness Act. This idea holds that only discrimination can explain why female-dominated professions (teachers, secretaries) tend to command lower wages than male-dominated professions (plumbers, truck drivers). Yet most of these pay disparities are explained by relative experience, schooling or job characteristics. Teachers do tend to earn less than truck drivers, despite more education. Then again, truck drivers work long, hard, often unpredictable hours. The market -- not some secret patriarchy - places different values on different jobs. And in the case of teachers, the main salary setter is the government.

The paycheck fairness legislation would nonetheless require labor officials to use comparable worth in creating "voluntary" wage guidelines for industries. Voluntary or not, these guidelines would become the basis for more litigation against companies that didn't follow them. Meanwhile, the bill strips companies of certain defenses against claims of sex-based pay discrimination. It also makes it easier to bring class actions, and it allows plaintiffs to claim unlimited punitive damages even in cases of unintentional discrimination.

The Democratic War on Babies

It never ceases to amaze me, but here it goes again: Katha Pollitt, at the Nation, argues that funding family planning is an economic stimulus, and since funding for birth control would logically include money for abortion services, Pollitt's case is essentially to kill more babies in the diabolically-harebrained expectation that this will "create" more jobs:

The production, prescribing, buying and selling of birth control is an economic activity - funding more of it means more clinics, more clinic workers, more patients,more customers, more people making the products. Moreoever, the provision removed from the stimulus bill would spend money now- about 550 million, over ten years, a drop in the bucket - to save the government much more money later, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates would happen within a few years ....

More important, what about the economics of actually existing women and families? This is no time to be saddling people with babies they don't want and can't provide for, who will further reduce the resources available for the kids they already have and further limit parents' ability to get an education or a job. In a Depression, birth rates go down for a reason. People.Have.No. Money. Furthermore, when people lose their jobs they lose their health insurance. A year's supply of pills is around $600 retail. That's a significant amount of money to low-income women.

The idea that family planning contributes to economic growth was discredited over a century ago, with the historical repudiation of Thomas Malthus' claim that overpopulation would cause a lower standard of living (Nancy's nihilists are not up on literature, apparently).

The Democrats want a war on babies. I cringe at the thought of just being around people like Katha Pollitt, and for my readers with infants and young children, hold your loved ones close - you might have one too many for the state-planning mandarins of the Obama-Pelosi new age.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

House Democrats Pass $819 Billion "Porkulus" Bill

In one of the most amazingly corrupt feats of political gamesmanship ever, the Democratic House majority rammed through an $819 billion economic recovery plan yesterday without a single Republican vote, COMBINED with the defection of 11 Democratic representatives. A bipartisan opposition! Now that's what I'm talking about!

Robert Stacy McCain quips:

Man, if all it took to get Republicans to vote conservative was to elect a Democratic president, this is a change I can believe in.

And don't miss Rush Limbaugh at the Wall Street Journal:

There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all - I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.

Lesbians Can Be Expelled From Private Religious Schools

California's 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego has upheld the right of a private Lutheran school to limit the enrollment of students whose conduct is inconsistent with the religious beliefs of the institution. The case represents the assertion of judicial protection of freedom of association.

Note this from the Los Angeles Times story:

In ruling in favor of the school, the appeals court cited a 1998 California Supreme Court decision that said the Boy Scouts of America was a social organization, not a business establishment, and therefore did not have to comply with the Unruh Civil Rights Act. That case also involved a discrimination complaint based on sexual orientation.

"The school's religious message is inextricably intertwined with its secular functions," wrote Justice Betty A. Richli for the appeals court. "The whole purpose of sending one's child to a religious school is to ensure that he or she learns even secular subjects within a religious framework."

On its face, the case seems a straightforward confirmation of the bedrock First Amendment guarantees. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority in the precedent-setting Roberts v. United States Jaycees:

... the Court has concluded that choices to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships must be secured against undue intrusion by the State because of the role of such relationships in safeguarding the individual freedom that is central to our constitutional scheme. In this respect, freedom of association receives protection as a fundamental element of personal liberty ... The Constitution guarantees freedom of association of this kind as an indispensable means of preserving other individual liberties.

Despite such basic principles of human freedom, the response to the 4th District's ruling on the left has been entirely predictable. Freddie de Boer of the Extraordinary Bloggers has this:

Hey, why would someone like me be more invested in building a legal defense of gay marriage specifically and a larger lattice of rights to defend gay people generally? Why, maybe because of things like girls getting kicked out of their private high schools because the administration of said high school believes them to be lesbians.

This is why I am concerned with legality, rights and government first. Because right now, today, gay people are the subject of explicit, systematic discrimination. As we have said several times, these are of course connected phenomena, and I want to change both law and culture.

Notice the ultimate totalitarianism here, where Freddie wants to control both law and culture.

It's okay, though, right? That's expected of the International ANSWER-sponsored progressive gay-rights steamroller. It's what's been going on all along since November 5th and the No on H8 Stalinism that has attacked, boycotted, and excoriated regular folks who expressed a legitimate policy preference at the polls, peaceably. The progressive nihilists want their culture war - and they want it now!, even if there's little substantive connection on the issues other than excessive emotion and juvenility.

Notice how Freddie's discussion at the post is all about "discrimation" and "rights," but the rights discussed only favor the two lesbians who were expelled for behavior inappropiate to the norms and values inherent to a private sectarian educational establishment. Just forget the First Amendment rights of those "Christianists," naturally, those torture-loving bigots.

What's especially interesting is Freddie's spurious extrapolation to gay marriage. Gays do not face discrimination on questions of marriage. Same-sex marriage is not a civil right, and has yet to be considered one in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence. Homosexuals are free to marry, in any case, as is everyone else. They cannot, however, simply strongarm their way to a same-sex right that society does not recognize nor want, for fear of cultural destabilization and anti-social licentiousnesss. Moreover, the plight of the two girls can hardly be taken as representing a larger social climate of intolerance toward gays. Poll after poll finds phenomenal support for equal treatment under the law, as Newsweek recently found:

Seventy-four percent back inheritance rights for gay domestic partners (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 73 percent approve of extending health insurance and other employee benefits to them (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 67 percent favor granting them Social Security benefits (compared to 55 percent in 2004) and 86 percent support hospital visitation rights (a question that wasn't asked four years ago). In other areas, too, respondents appeared increasingly tolerant. Fifty-three percent favor gay adoption rights (8 points more than in 2004), and 66 percent believe gays should be able to serve openly in the military (6 points more than in 2004).

The same poll found that just 31 percent "support FULL marriage rights for same-sex couples," to quote from the language from the questionnaire.

To gain said rights, secular progressives demand that the great majority of Americans capitulate to their coercion and hostility. And if they don't - as we've seen - marriage traditionalists involuntarily subject themselves to Soviet-style show trials and aggressive boycotts designed to stifle freedom of speech and association, which are exactly the same issues that the District court protected by ruling in favor of the Lutheran school.

As a red herring, the plaintiffs alleged that the school master sat too close to the girls during their questioning, "intimidating" the students in an "prurient fashion," although the court rejected such claims outright. Pam Spaulding's playing this "abuse" angle in a classic leftist victimology shake-down grab. As for the Extraordinary Brotherhood of Traveling Bloggers, Freddie's post is one in a series labeled "Same Sex Marriage and Nomenclature," so no doubt we'll be seeing more jackbooted opposition to the traditional majority dripping like death from their page.

I'll have more on the august work from this extraordinary bunch, with special attention to the extra-extraordinary blog-master Mark Thompson, who was once considered a freedom-loving libertarian, but who now cheers the rationality of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli citizens, and who has now apparently joined forces with a some ultra-orthodox gay-marriage ayatollahs who want to ram down cultural change on the rest of us.

Majority Backs Tax Cuts Over Increased Spending

Well, this is the perfect follow-up to my previous entry (hammering Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman), "Democrats to Milk Economic Crisis for Trillions."

It turns out that Rasmussen's new survey finds 53 percent of Americans favoring tax cuts over jacked-up spending (via Memeorandum):

Paul Krugman, last year's winner of the Nobel Prize for economics and a regular columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote that you should “write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.”

If you follow that advice, you’ll be writing off a majority of Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 53% say that it’s always better to cut taxes. Only 24% share Krugman’s views.

Krugman was recently named the most influential liberal in the media. In making that selection, Forbes.com noted that Krugman’s “prose is as pungent as his academic credentials are impeccable. Last year's Nobel in economics was widely seen as a vindication of his politics.”

Clearly, his New York Times column was based on his convictions rather than his sense of public opinion, and his purpose in writing is to persuade, not report. The survey data simply highlights how much persuading he has ahead of him.

Republicans overwhelmingly say it’s always better to cut taxes, and so do 50% of those not affiliated with either major party. Twenty-three percent (23%) of unaffiliateds take the opposite view and agree with Krugman.

Democrats are evenly divided—38% say tax cuts are always better while 34% disagree.

Democrats to Milk Economic Crisis for Trillions

No one doubts Americans are facing the most severe economic crisis in decades, but while conservatives are inclined toward targeted tax cuts and perhaps a market-oriented jobs-relief stimulus, Democrats on the progressive left have turned to end-of-times economic rhetoric to justify the biggest expansion of the pork-barrel welfare state in American history.

Paul Krugman, who is generally recognized as the most important leftist advocating an unprecedented governmental spending bailout, is a perfect case in point. I read Krugman's "Letter to President Obama" last night, and the scope of this man's proposals, and the economic fearmongering used to justify it, is truly breathtaking:

How bad is the economic outlook? Worse than almost anyone imagined ....

There's nothing in either the data or the underlying situation to suggest that the plunge in employment will slow anytime soon, which means that by late this year we could be 10 million or more jobs short of where we should be. This, in turn, would mean an unemployment rate of more than nine percent. Add in those who aren't counted in the standard rate because they've given up looking for work, plus those forced to take part-time jobs when they want to work full-time, and we're probably looking at a real-world unemployment rate of around 15 percent — more than 20 million Americans frustrated in their efforts to find work.

The human cost of a slump that severe would be enormous. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research group that analyzes government programs, recently estimated the effects of a rise in the unemployment rate to nine percent — a worst-case scenario that now seems all too likely. So what will happen if unemployment rises to nine percent or more? As many as 10 million middle-class Americans would be pushed into poverty, and another 6 million would be pushed into "deep poverty," the severe deprivation that happens when your income is less than half the poverty level. Many of the Americans losing their jobs would lose their health insurance too, worsening the already grim state of U.S. health care and crowding emergency rooms with those who have nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, millions more Americans would lose their homes. State and local governments, deprived of much of their revenue, would have to cut back on even the most essential services.

I love the tweaking of the unemployment estimates, designed to get closer to that magic number of 25 percent unemployment in the 1930s, which would make all those FDR analogies slightly more compelling. Krugman dismisses tax cuts as an insufficient stimulus, and suggests that we need "to spend $800 billion a year to achieve a full economic recovery. Anything less than $500 billion a year will be much too little to produce an economic turnaround."

And where's all that spending going to go? It's not just road, bridges, and telecommunications infrastructure:

FDR rebuilt America not just by getting us through depression and war, but by making us a more just and secure society. On one side, he created social-insurance programs, above all Social Security, that protect working Americans to this day. On the other, he oversaw the creation of a much more equal economy, creating a middle-class society that lasted for decades, until conservative economic policies ushered in the new age of inequality that prevails today. You have a chance to emulate FDR's achievements, and the ultimate judgment on your presidency will rest on whether you seize that chance.

The biggest, most important legacy you can leave to the nation will be to give us, finally, what every other advanced nation already has: guaranteed health care for all our citizens. The current crisis has given us an object lesson in the need for universal health care, in two ways. It has highlighted the vulnerability of Americans whose health insurance is tied to jobs that can so easily disappear. And it has made it clear that our current system is bad for business, too — the Big Three automakers wouldn't be in nearly as much trouble if they weren't trying to pay the medical bills of their former employees as well as their current workers. You have a mandate for change; the economic crisis has shown just how much the system needs change. So now is the time to pass legislation establishing a system that covers everyone.

What should this system look like? Some progressives insist that we should move immediately to a single-payer system — Medicare for all. Although this would be both the fairest and most efficient way to ensure that all Americans get the health care they need, let's be frank: Single-payer probably isn't politically achievable right now, simply because it would represent too great a change. At least at first, Americans who have good private health insurance will be reluctant to trade that insurance for a public program, even if that program will ultimately prove better.

This is why progressive leftists love Paul Krugman. The guy's a Princeton economist and Nobel laureate. More importantly, the man's an "establishment" statist who can use his "credentials" to discredit those who rightly repudiate his socialist program.

But folks shouldn't be fooled by the sky-is-falling rhetoric. This morning's Wall Street Journal has a useful piece, "A 40-Year Wish List," which notes that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once said to President Obama, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

But check out David Harsanyi, "The Biggest Con — Ever":

Democrats have concocted a surefire political victory. They've notified America that the so-called "stimulus" bill might take a long time to work — which is exceptionally handy, considering we always come out of a recession at some point.

The problem is there is no evidence that colossal government spending and expansion will help a nation claw its way out of economic trouble or, more importantly, generate a single job through real economic growth.

So what do you do with an unproven idea? Well, you go big. Make the proposal the most expensive to ever adorn paper — or, more precisely, a trillion scraps of paper. Scare the holy living hell out of detractors with doomsday scenarios worthy of Nostradamus.

Tammy Bruce on the Anti-American Left

From Gateway Pundit who links to Tammy Bruce on O'Reilly Factor (and remember this is what's best about Fox News):

"It takes a liberal to suggest or to say directly that liberating 53,000,000 people is a war crime. It takes a liberals to say that keeping this nation safe from another horrific attack by terrorists amounts to a war crime."

Tammy Bruce
O'Reilly Factor
January 27, 2009

Jewish Anti-Zionism

Cathy Young's recent post on Eric Alterman got me thinking about Jewishness, Zionism, and anti-Semitism, but I didn't really have enough intellectual wraparound at the time to write a post about it (in other words, I'm "duh" on some of this stuff).

Well, now I have the wraparound.

Cathy's discussing a feud she's had with the Nation's Eric Alterman, which ended up getting some big media play at the time, here and here (related: "Eric Alterman and the Politics of Anti-Semitism"). The comment at the post from "Fat Man," discussing whether Alterman was a "self-hating Jew," was rather provocative:

No, Alterman is not a self-hating Jew, the only person he has any regard or love for, is himself.

What Alterman is, is a Jew hating Jew. Unfortunately, there are more than a few of them including Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt and the late (PTL) Harold Pinter.

The Jihadists love them because they conform to and prove their theology of Jewish degradation. The leftists who have taken up the support of Jihadists as their greatest cause (in order to demonstrate that their support of the Soviets was humanitarian, no doubt), are thrilled with the Jew hating Jews because they prove that there are men even more craven than the leftists.

That's some serious talk, and, again, I had no comment, but Carl in Jerusalem (discussing "baseless hatred") linked to David Solway's piece today at FrontPage Magazine, "The Beginning of the Night," so it got me thinking:

This degree of self-abhorence must be nearly unprecedented, for rarely, if ever, has an ethnic or national collective turned against an entire nation made up of people with whom it shares an ancestral tradition and a millennial archive. History furnishes many examples of a social or intellectual group targeting a particular class of a society with which it is in one way or another associated or identified. But to defame an entire country with whose inhabitants one shares a cultural or genealogical relation, to dispute its founding principles, to cast suspicion upon its moral character, to support its enemies and to question its right to existence is surely a unique phenomenon. Even those Germans horrified by the abominations of the Nazis, or Russians sickened by the excesses of the Communists, rarely went to the extremes of repudiation evinced by the truants of the Jewish faith.

The late Harold Pinter won a Nobel Prize, not for his over-rated plays, but for his anti-Israeli (and anti-American) posturing. Equally influential are fellow Jewish anti-Zionists like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Naomi Klein, Joel Kovel, Tony Judt, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev, Sara Roy, Henry Siegman, Avrum Burg, Jaqueline Rose and Richard Falk, to mention only a sparse handful, whose denunciation of Israel is so extreme and untextured as to be scarcely distinguishable from antisemitism.

Such apostates do not scruple to trade in apocrypha when indulging their animus against their own people, even when they can be readily exposed. In Fabricating Israeli History, Efraim Karsh has abundantly demonstrated how left-wing Israeli “New Historians” have cooked the documents they work with. The lamentable Naomi Klein falsely accuses Israel of having cynically profited from “endless war” and calls for academic and economic boycotts. Noam Chomsky’s gross fabrications have been outed by Peter Collier. The list goes on ....

What these Jewish quislings have not understood is that Jews, as Primo Levi insisted, are not permitted to forget. Survival demands that contemporary Jews retrieve the Maccabean strain in their heritage, eschew the myopia of complacency, and take the necessary measures—starting with memory and awareness—to combat a menace that remains perennial. But countering the dissimulation and calumnies of the anti-Zionists is not easy. We know that a lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth. But it seems that a truth repeated a thousand times becomes an irritation.

Given the virulent anti-Zionist advocacy of so many prominent Jewish self-haters, one remains skeptical of ever achieving collective assent or reasonable consensus. Masking the syndrome of self-contempt as a quest for “justice,” these Jewish turncoats seek redemption in a denial of both history and genealogy. Diagnostically speaking, it is not so much a mental illness or clinical aberration we are witnessing, but a sickness in the soul supple enough to contort itself into a spurious idealism, a simulacrum of ideological nobility.


Few of these people, I suspect, have ever been viciously targeted and physically assaulted merely for being Jewish. Very few have ever lived under the constant threat of military invasion, of suicide bombers wreaking carnage in their public spaces and of randomly incoming missiles on their towns and cities as a matter of everyday existence. They hail largely from among the privileged who have been spared the traumatic experience of confronting the bloody and unflinching enmity of their antagonists. They have jobs, salaries, leisure, prestige, comfort and security. They are bubbled in their groups and organizations. Their children do not live in Sderot where an entire generation of Israeli youngsters, growing up amidst the relentless shelling of their homes and playgrounds, suffers from acute PTSD and severe psychological regression.

This state of fortunate exemption has allowed them the luxury of sanctimonious censure of those who are on the receiving end of all they have managed to avoid. Our renegades would do well to read George Steiner’s Language and Silence. Steiner writes: “If Israel were to be destroyed, no Jew would escape unscathed. The shock of failure, the need and harrying of those seeking refuge, would reach out to implicate even the most indifferent, the most anti-Zionist.”

But of course, it is not only a question of Israel. “Somewhere the determination to kill Jews,” Steiner continues, “to harass them from the earth simply because they are, is always alive.” Those Jews who affect otherwise are living in a fool’s paradise.

I'm sorting through all of this stuff myself. In fact, in the wake of Israel's Gaza campaign, and both the global parade of violent anti-Semitism, as well as the academic and journalistic abandonment of Israel, the existential question of the Jewish state seems all too real.

I'll have more later.

Palin Forms PAC in Signal of 2012 Intentions

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has launched a political action committee, which is a sure sign of the former vice-presidential candidate's intentions for 2012. Susan Davis reports:

Need another indication that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is eyeing a 2012 bid? Today she launched a new political action committee, SarahPAC, to dole out political donations to Republican candidates.

“SarahPAC believes America’s best days are ahead. Our country, founded on conservative principles and the fight for freedom, must confront the challenges of the 21st century with integrity, innovation, and determination,” states the PAC’s Web site, which boasts that the governor of the oil-rich state is committed to “energy independence.”

More at the link.

The way things are turning out for Barack Obama's first hundred days, the 2012 GOP primaries may be even more heavily contested than anticipated. Some might think that a younger candidate like Palin ought to consider waiting until 2016, after perhaps a second Obama administration. But given the toughness among congressional Republicans right now in lining up against this week's stimulus package, perhaps we'll see President Obama's first term as a repeat of Bill Clinton's - a repudiation, in other words, which took a Herculean rescue effort on the part of the Clinton White House and the DNC to fend off a Republican upset in 1996. Had Bob Dole not been the GOP standard-bearer, who knows? Clinton never won a majority of the vote. A better candidate could have driven down the Democratic numbers.

I think Palin's right to stay in the game while the getting's hot.

There was all kinds of debate and dismissal of Palin after the Republican ticket was trounced in November. But she's the star, and it's her nomination to lose. She's apparently lining up a mutimillion-dollar book deal, and while she'll no doubt have her work cut out on the wonkier side of things, Palin's a natural superstar in the great communicator mold. In her introductory speech as John McCain's runing-mate, her address to the Repubican National Convention, her vice-presidential debate, and in her fabulous performance on Saturday Night Live, Palin showed the world a combination of poise, command, and true star power.

With Palin-apostles like Rush Limbaugh already setting the tone for "heartland conservatives" across the country, Palin'll be in even better positioned to capitalize on her stature as the odds on front-runner at this stage of the game.

Benicio del Toro Walks Out on "Che" Interview

Sonny Bunch interviewed Benicio Del Toro, the star of the biopic "Che," only to have the film star storm out the door, pleading "uncomfort," when asked about the Cuban revolutionary's mass murder:

“I’m getting uncomfortable,” Benicio del Toro said after fielding a question about his new movie’s portrayal of the Bolivian and Cuban revolutions. “I’m done. I’m done, I hope you write whatever you want. I don’t give a damn.”

With that, the Oscar-winning actor walked away, abruptly terminating an interview conducted late last week to discuss director Steven Soderbergh's "Che" ...

Mr. del Toro doesn’t deny that Guevara’s persona had some darker aspects. “We have to omit a lot of stuff about his life,” he said, “but we’re not omitting the fact that he’s for capital punishment, which is the essence of that.” ...

“They didn’t do it blindly; they had trials,” Mr. del Toro said. “They found them guilty, and they executed them - that’s capital punishment” ...

Read the whole thing. I've written a least a couple of post on Che's hold on "progressive" culture, so I'll let Michael Goldfarb have the last word:

At 4.5 hours long, it can't be very easy to watch either, but hopefully that doesn't stop all the asthmatic children who, with the right amount of love and encouragement, can still grow up to execute the enemies of the revolution.

(But don't miss the short video clip with Bunch as well.)

Choke on Change: Obama Appoints Another Political Hack

ABC News reports that President Barack Obama is set to appoint former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson as chief of staff to incoming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. According to the piece:

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration, a recent lobbyist for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is in line to serve as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Patterson is one of over a dozen recent lobbyists in line for important posts in the Obama administration, despite a presidential order severely restricting the role of lobbyists in his administration, the magazine reported.

And don't forget, Geithner's a dissimulating tax cheat who should have never been confirmed at Treasury in the first place.

What happened to all those Democratic "most ethical" pronouncements anyway? Maybe Bob Woodward's right that "the nanny or household tax problems" are just the tip of the iceberg for this administration.

As Pat Houseworth notes:

He called for change, so what does he do? ... he appoints a Treasury Secretary that is a tax cheat to run the IRS ... nice move Barry! He plans to close down GITMO in Cuba ... of course "The Ebony Messiah" has no clue what to do with the terrorists housed there ... lots of luck with that one Barry. He appoints a hired gun, anti gun stooge, Eric Holder, as Attorney General ... this is the guy who ordered his Jack Booted ATF agents to break into a young Cuba refugees home at gun point to kidnap him and return him to Castro's Cuba, against his dead mother's wishes ...

Barry Barack Obama = Out of his league/out of his mind! And for those that voted for this lightweight, choke on your change!

Marc Thiessen at the New York Times?

Patrick Ruffini noted yesterday that the New York Times should pick Rush Limbaugh or "a comparable full spectrum heartland conservative" to replace William Kristol on the op-ed page. Ruffini also said that "The Times needs someone who is as far to the right, in as hard-edged and partisan a way, as Paul Krugman is to the left."

I haven't seen any news of Limbaugh's interest (yet), but if Steve Benen's post this morning is any indication, perhaps Marc Thiessen should throw his hat in the ring. Thiessen, who was a top speechwriter to President George W. Bush, is apparently generating the kind of white heat that the conservative punditocracy needs during this time of political opposition. As Benen notes:

Marc Thiessen, up until recently George W. Bush's chief speechwriter, has been on a roll lately. It's almost as if he perceives an opening for a new generation of outrageous right-wing commentators, and wants to stake his claim to the leadership.

Last week, Thiessen argued that if Barack Obama changes Bush's national-security apparatus in anyway, he'll invite domestic terrorism and will shoulder the blame for American deaths. Also last week, Thiessen argued in a print column that Obama "is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office."

Yesterday, Thiessen kept the madness going, praising the torture of Abu Zubaydah and heralding those Bush administration officials who did the torturing.

Sounds like the right man for the job, and you know he's getting to the netroots denizens when we see posts like this one, denouncing Thiessen, a former staffer for the late Senator Jesse Helms, as "an unneutered-pitbull."

Personally, Thiessen won my vote with his essay on Bush's conservative legacy:

... many conservatives who are angry with Mr. Bush today will take a better view of his presidency with the passage of time. While he took actions that dispirited some conservatives - from bailing out the auto industry to taking North Korea off of the list of state sponsors of terror - Mr. Bush did more to advance conservative priorities than any other president.

Mr. Bush enacted sweeping tax cuts. And he has the best record on judges of any Republican president - his appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will be judged favorably over time compared to Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter and John Paul Stevens (all put on the high court by Republican presidents). Mr. Bush enacted free-trade agreements with 17 nations, more than any president in history. He created Health Savings Accounts - the most important free-market health-care reform in a generation. And he defeated Democratic efforts to use the State Children's Health Insurance Program (Schip) to nationalize health care.

Mr. Bush won a Supreme Court ruling declaring school vouchers constitutional and enacted the nation's first school-choice program in the District of Columbia. He has been the most pro-life president in history, securing passage of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He refused to fund the destruction of human embryos for research -- and was vindicated by the scientific breakthroughs that followed.

Mr. Bush increased defense spending by nearly 73%, the largest increase since the Truman administration. He unsigned the International Criminal Court treaty, withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and fulfilled Ronald Reagan's promise to deploy defenses against ballistic missiles. This is a conservative record without parallel.

In his final months, Mr. Bush confronted a challenge Truman never faced - a massive financial crisis. It is hard for many Americans to appreciate the magnitude of the economic collapse the president averted. But history will show that Mr. Bush's actions in the fall of 2008 rescued our economy and saved our financial system.

I don't know if Rush Limbaugh's going to warm up to that argument, but it'll certainly outrage the screaming weanies of the hardline left's nihilist netroots.

T-Shirt Hell Going Down

Via Tigerhawk, T-Shirt Hell is going out of business:

I'm done. I'm finished. I can't take the stupidity anymore, so I'm leaving and I'm taking my website with me. As of Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009, T-Shirt Hell will be no more.

No, I'm not selling out to some douchebag corporate entity. No, we're not being sued by any of the over 40 companies that have sent us cease and desists over the years. No, I'm not going to jail (yet) and no, it's not because of the economy. Although, the recent dip in sales certainly does make the idea easier to accept, even though we still sell over 3000 shirts a week.

I started this company in June of 2001, nearly 8 years ago, with the intention of producing the best satirical, the most controversial, the funniest t-shirts on the internet. Generally speaking, I feel I've accomplished that and am satisfied with what we've put out. I made a shitload of dough along the way. I've done cocaine off the better body parts of supermodels. I've even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi. But these perks are besides the point.

I just don't feel like dealing with idiots anymore. I'll give you an example of the kind of misguided morons we deal with on a regular basis at T-Shirt Hell. We released a new shirt a couple weeks ago that says "It's not gay if you beat them up afterwards". I will not explain the irony or the social commentary of the slogan because anyone with half a brain should be able to handle that on their own. Problem is, we've been besieged with emails from angry people complaining about the "fact" that the shirt is hate speech or that we're promoting gay bashing and should take it down immediately.

Examples of T-Shirt Hell's idiots and morons at the link.

Please see my previous post for some important background perspective.

Progressive Psychopathology

From Dr. Sanity's long post up this morning:

Progressives operate under an economic model that is more genetic as opposed to cognitive. They are still functioning with the herd mentality and have yet to embrace modern civilization or individualism, preferring instead to function on an instinctual, rather than a rational level. This is why they find capitalism and market economics so repugnant.

The economic primitivism that is unceasingly promoted by the political left is a remnant of the cave-dwelling days of mankind; an idyllic era of history to which the left desperately yearns to return. The word "Progressive" is thus a simple rhetorical manipulation to diguise the essential backwardness of the left's economc thinking.

Thus, even the most perfect and glib manifestation of neo-Marxism and postmodernism ... as well as the ultimate incarnation of progressive therapeutic sensibility ... cannot hope to escape from reality.

Human nature is what it is. This is not tragic, it is simple truth. The biological fantasies of the utopians; and the delusional fantasies of Marxist, communists and socialists and all their heirs, have led to incalculable levels of human suffering all over the globe, as the proponents of these theories have tried to force humans to some "ideal" state. All these systems have failed the real-world tests in the last century; and all current versions of these ideologies will also eventually fail and fade away.

Conservatives and the New York Times

William Kristol never really took hold for me as a conservative columnist at the New York Times. Kristol's neocon creds are unimpeachable, but he never really shook things up at the newspaper or in punditland. He was, in a word, milquetoast.

Thus all of the stirrings on the left and right at the news of Kristol's last column yesterday are quite interesting. Leftists want Kristol dead and buried, so it was incomplete shadenfreude yesterday at some of the top nihilist blogs. Driftglass well represents this derangement:

Change I can believe in ....

If true, I would have to rate these six words as the happiest to be published by the New York Times as a result their own actions in the last year:

"This is William Kristol’s last column."

Of course, based on the Law of the Conservation of Villager Idiocy, I assume he has been let go to, oh, say, boss PBS, or take over as editor-in-chief at the L.A. Times, or run Citibank, or work part-time as the $175,0000/month rebranding manager for the Palin/Plumber '12 exploratory committee.

But for the next little bit I can dream that a just Universe has laced up its kicking shoes and finally, finally, finally punted this smirking, bestial, blood-soaked hack into the ranks of the unemployed and that the next we'll hear of him will be a mention in the Walton Family house organ as "Greeter of the Month" at the Sadr City WalMart.

Bestial, blood-soaked hack? Whew, that does really capture the essence of the hardline left's excoriation the Bush administration's war "cheerleaders."

On the right there's some chatter about who should replace Kristol at the Times. Since I rarely read the paper's editorial pages, Patrick Ruffini's argument really hit home:

Let me first state that I don't particularly care who writes for the New York Times op-ed page, and think all the handwringing about who will replace Bill Kristol is a collosal waste of time for conservatives ....

I will, however, say this about the selection process for the New York Times op-ed page.

The goal of conservative new media should not be to legitimize the status quo in media, but to challenge it and shift the balance of power. To hang on the prestige of a Times appointment is a mostly useless exercise by navel-gazing pundits whose sole concern is accurately describing the status quo, not moving the ball forward.

Doubly disturbing is the notion that the Times' token conservative should be someone who is acceptable to sensibility of liberal (and hence more civilized) Times readers; that only a certain type of conservative will do - a "smart," "reasonable" figure worthy of dining with President Obama.

I have a great deal of respect for Bill Kristol and David Brooks (or for that matter, Charles Krauthammer and George Will), but they play a very defined role in the process - which is to represent a safe flavor of Beltway-centric conservatism that is acceptable within the Acela corridor. I appreciate that someone has to play this role, but by engaging in this parlor game, we are playing with fire: feeding the left's desire to elevate a narrow elite of Times-worthy conservative pundits whose job it is to hold the braying Coulterite masses in check.

Hmm, the Coulterite masses? That's interesting, mainly because I've noted many times on this page that I'm actually not the biggest fan of folks like Coulter and Malkin. It's mostly the lack of nuance, not to mention a kind of unwashed right-wing anti-intellectualism, which I don't think should dominate conservative punditry.

That's said, we need fighters, and one thing I'm going to do myself over this next few years is to abstain somewhat from intra-conservative squabbles over doctrine and ideology. Whatever happens on the right is nowhere near as diabollically disastrous as the venomous effluvient seeping from the funk-cheese cracks of blogs like Driftglass and their nihilist link sponsors.

Be sure to read the rest of Ruffini, where he makes the case for Rush Limbaugh as Kristol's replacement at the Times.

Obama's Post-Partisan Wimp Factor

From Doyle McManus's commentary yesterday at the Los Angeles Times:

The debate about how big the federal government should be has been at the core of American politics since the Articles of Confederation. In his inaugural address, Obama dismissed it as one of "the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long," but it's too fundamental a question to wave away, even in the face of a crisis as big as this one.

From Jacob Weisberg's column at Newsweek:

Obama's vagueness about the federal role comes at a moment when clarity is especially needed. Our government is about to become bigger, more powerful and more expensive in order to deal with a sprawling economic crisis. Washington will take on responsibilities it hasn't shouldered in 75 years, such as directly alleviating unemployment and perhaps nationalizing banks. Many who would ordinarily reject such interventions on principle can justify them as misery relief, Keynesian stimulus or emergency management. But some see in the expansion something further-reaching—a redefinition of the government's relationship to markets transcending the current crisis.

Is Barack Obama an ideological wimp? Is the new president actually too chicken to take a firm stand on a vigorous policy program for fear of alienating GOP partisans and voters in the political middle? For someone who's seemed so self-confident in his abilities and ideas, these questions bear consideration.

In 1987, Newsweek hammered George H.W Bush with a cover story featuring the headline "Fighting the Wimp Factor." Bush 41 was no wimp, by any measure, but as Ronald Reagan's (likely) successor, he had a big presidency to follow.

Barack Obama should not be struggling with ideological wimpiness. He's probably won the closest thing to a policy mandate since Lyndon Johnson's landslide of 1964. His predecessor's been repudiated by the leftist media establishment, and the general public is skeptical that Bush 43 will win a big legacy.

But as the quotes above suggest, President Obama, aka "The One," is looking to be stymied by perhaps the shortest presidential honeymoon in memory. This not the time, from the Democrats' perspective, for weak knees. The first 100 days is when you get what you want, and if there was ever a national suspension of disbelief, it's now - we're in the moment of a new-age presidential love fest. Obama should have little worry at this point of alienating centrists, much less his partisan opponents. Obama's got a plan, and it's amazing he's not taking advantage of his bully pulpit to push it through like, well, a man.

It's time to get down to some legislative business. If you're not going to fight, get out of the ring.

Obama’s YouTube Presidency?

A year and a half ago, Vanity Fair declared the 2008 presidential race "the YouTube election."

Now with our apparently most tech-savvy chief executive yet, the New York Times is calling Barack Obama's administration "the YouTube presidency":

Lyle McIntosh gave everything he could to Barack Obama’s Iowa campaign. He helped oversee an army that knocked on doors, distributed fliers and held neighborhood meetings to rally support for Mr. Obama, all the while juggling the demands of his soybean and corn farm.

Asked last week if he and others like him were ready to go all-out again, this time to help President Obama push his White House agenda, Mr. McIntosh paused.

“It’s almost like a football season or a basketball season — you go as hard as you can and then you’ve got to take a breather between the seasons,” he said, noting he found it hard to go full-bore during the general election.

Mr. McIntosh’s uncertainty suggests just one of the many obstacles the White House faces as it tries to accomplish what aides say is one of their most important goals: transforming the YouTubing-Facebooking-texting-Twittering grass-roots organization that put Mr. Obama in the White House into an instrument of government. That is something that Mr. Obama, who began his career as a community organizer, told aides was a top priority, even before he was elected.

His aides — including his campaign manager — have created a group, Organizing for America, to redirect the campaign machinery in the service of broad changes in health care and environmental and fiscal policy. They envision an army of supporters talking, sending e-mail and texting to friends and neighbors as they try to mold public opinion.

The organization will be housed in the Democratic National Committee, rather than at the White House. But the idea behind it — that the traditional ways of communicating with and motivating voters are giving way to new channels built around social networking — is also very evident in the White House’s media strategy.
Like George W. Bush before him, Mr. Obama is trying to bypass the mainstream news media and take messages straight to the public.

The most prominent example of the new strategy is his weekly address to the nation — what under previous presidents was a speech recorded for and released to radio stations on Saturday mornings. Mr. Obama instead records a video, which on Saturday he posted on the White House Web site and on YouTube; in it, he explained what he wanted to accomplish with the $825 billion economic stimulus plan working its way through Congress. By late Sunday afternoon, it had been viewed more than 600,000 times on YouTube.

The White House also faces legal limitations in terms of what it can do. Perhaps most notably, it cannot use a 13-million-person e-mail list that Mr. Obama’s team developed because it was compiled for political purposes. That is an important reason Mr. Obama has decided to build a new organization within the Democratic Party, which does not have similar restrictions.

Still, after months of discussion, aides said the whole approach remained a work in progress, even after Friday, when the organizers e-mailed a link to a video to those 13 million people announcing the creation of Organizing for America. Mr. Obama’s aides know they have a huge resource to harness, but fundamental questions remain about how it will run and precisely what organizers are hoping to accomplish.

I thought that Saturday's national video address via YouTube was a good thing. I hope the administration continues to deliver a weekly message in that format, as I simply don't take time out to listen to a radio address, but I'm always online and would like view and write about the administration's weekly initiatives if delivered in the video format.

That would be cool, frankly.

What's not so cool is if YouTube and other newer forms of popular communications are used simply to build the authoritarian Obama cult (Organizing for America could be a 21st century "progressive youth" indoctrination system if folks turn the campaign efforts into heavy-handed state-building intolerance of political difference). Already, more and school boards and local municipalities are changing street names and buildings after President Obama, so if somehow YouTube becomes the Obama administration's ministry of propanda (already happening with Google), this is not going to be healthy for the democracy. The fact that the Obama White House has been trying to work out a system to disable tracking cookies from YouTube page views gives some indication of the less benign planning that's going into this administration's YouTube presidency.

Abortion Stimulus: Family Planning Will Help Economy

I'm looking over the papers this morning and it's literally all economics all the time.

The Wall Street Journal reports that lending at the big U.S. banks has declined even after these same institutions rolled up the TARP funds from the 2008 financial bailout. No worry, it seems, as the New York Times reports that bank nationalization may be the next step anyway. Market Watch says the U.S. economy was in a "free fall" in the 4th quarter, although USA Today offers a glimpse of recovery in its story, "Majority of Economists Expect a Slow Recovery This Year."

There's lots more, but the best story is the news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the Democratic stimulus plan working through the Congress will include hundreds of millions in funding for "family planning services":

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

Gateway Pundit says, oh, that's great, "Much like how a genocide would reduce costs."