Man Pushed to Death on Subway Tracks

At the New York Times:

A 58-year-old subway passenger was killed on Monday after he was pushed onto the tracks of an onrushing train in Manhattan by a man who had been mumbling to himself as he walked along the platform, the police said.

The passenger, identified by the police as Ki-Suck Han of 52nd Avenue in Queens, tried to climb back onto the platform but did not make it; he was struck by a southbound R train in the 49th Street station. He was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, the police said.

The assailant fled and remained at large on Monday night, the police said. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, described the attacker as a black man in his mid-20s in a tan shirt and black pants who was carrying a black jacket and wearing a woolen hat.

On Monday night, two police officials and a priest were seen escorting a woman believed to be the victim’s wife from a Queens apartment to a van. They made no comment to reporters outside.

The police released a brief video from a surveillance camera in which the attacker is seen and heard cursing at the victim and telling him to stand in line “and wait for the R train.”

And see London's Daily Mail, "Caught on video: The moment 58-year-old man argued with 'deranged' stranger before being 'pushed' to death on New York."

Magician Wayne Houchin Hair Set on Fire on Dominican TV Show

That had to hurt.

The dude's head lights up like a dried out Christmas tree.

At London's Daily Mail, "American magician hospitalized after his HEAD set on fire in 'criminal attack' on Dominican TV show."

Scary Snowman

Pretty scary:

Who's Not Bargaining in Good Faith?

From Robert Samuelson, at RCP:

WASHINGTON -- Put Social Security on the table -- clearly and irrevocably. Protecting retiree benefits is the left's political equivalent of the right's "no new taxes" pledge. Congressional Republicans are abandoning their untenable position. Now it is time for President Obama and congressional Democrats to do the same. As long as they don't, they aren't bargaining in good faith, or in the national interest.

Supporting retirees is now the federal government's main activity. There's a huge redistribution from young to old -- a redistribution that will be made worse if retiree programs are largely excluded from deficit reduction, as many liberal groups urge. Either taxes will rise steeply or other federal programs (defense, food stamps, environmental protection) will be cut sharply. The young will pay more and get less. Or, given these unpalatable choices, true deficit reduction won't happen.

Doubters should ponder the numbers. In fiscal 2012, non-interest federal spending totaled $3.251 trillion. Of that, $762 billion went for Social Security, $469 billion for Medicare (insurance for the 65 and over population) and $251 billion for Medicaid (insurance for the poor -- two-thirds goes for long-term care for the aged and disabled). Altogether, that's 46 percent of non-interest spending. Defense, $651 billion and declining, was 20 percent.

As baby boomers retire and health costs rise, this spending will mount. In 2010, there were 40 million Americans 65 and older. By 2020, that number is projected to be 55 million; by 2030, 72 million.

All these trends are old news; I have repeatedly written about them. If we had begun cutting benefits years ago, changes could have occurred slowly. People would have received ample notice. Now we lack the luxury of time. Benefit cuts will be unfair to retirees; but avoiding cuts will be unfair to the young. That we have arrived at this juncture indicts our democratic system and many Democratic politicians, who have obstructed constructive change in retiree programs. Obama continues this short-sighted tradition.

What could justify it?

Well, nothing justifies it. But Democrat moral bankruptcy explains it.

Continue reading.

IRS Comes After Lindsay Lohan!

Robert Stacy McCain reports, "Why Does the IRS Hate Redheaded Celebrities With Large Breasts?"

Well, Lohan's going to wind up behind bars one of these days, IRS hatred or not.

House GOP Counteroffer Includes Calls for $800 billion in Increased Tax Revenue

That Jake Tapper report at the video isn't too optimistic.

And at the Wall Street Journal, "GOP Makes Counteroffer In Cliff Talks: Proposal Calls for $800 Billion Increase In Revenue, Half What Obama Seeks":

House Republicans on Monday made a fresh deficit-reduction proposal to the White House that calls for $800 billion in increased tax revenue, half of what President Barack Obama has proposed.

The GOP offer was immediately rejected by the White House, but it provides the most detailed statement to date of what Republicans are willing to concede for now. It comes days after the White House put forward its opening bid in the high-stakes deficit talks. With both sides now having made preliminary offers, the parameters for future negotiations between Republicans and the White House are becoming clearer.

Monday's proposal would make $600 billion in cuts in Medicare and other health programs over 10 years, compared with the $350 billion the president proposed. It would also slow the growth of Social Security benefits, a move most Democrats oppose. The tax-revenue figure is one Republicans say could be achieved without increasing income-tax rates, one of their core objectives.

"What we are putting forth is a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House," said House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), in a briefing for reporters.

The proposal was made in a letter sent to the White House and signed by Mr. Boehner and other GOP leaders, notably including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who has been an opponent of any tax increase both in Congress and as Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate. His support will be vital to any final deal.

The offer's outlines are similar to a budget deal that was emerging in private talks between Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner in mid-2011, when Mr. Boehner agreed to $800 billion in new revenues but Mr. Obama sought more. Those talks collapsed with each side blaming the other for the breakdown.

The immediate Democratic reaction was dismissive. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said the plan "includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve."

He stuck with the president's insistence that the GOP agree to raising tax rates on upper-income Americans.

Administration officials were surprised by the GOP offer. They played down its potential to advance talks, saying Mr. Obama continues to wait for Republican leaders to soften on higher tax rates.

Still, officials said, congressional leaders and the president could meet by the end of this week. Their last meeting was nearly three weeks ago. Discussions between congressional and White House staff continued over the weekend, officials said.

Continue reading.

And at The Hill, "House GOP makes a $2.2 trillion debt counteroffer to Obama on cliff " (via Memeorandum).

Socialists Outline Democrats' Agenda for Next Two Years

At New Zeal:

Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. Democratic Party does not set much of its own policy.

Democrat policy is actually dictated by the labor unions and radical think tanks, such as the Center for American Progress, and the Institute for Policy Studies.

The unions are dominated by the U.S.’s largest Marxist organization Democratic Socialists of America – which also works closely with the C.A.P. and I.P.S.

So, by a process of osmosis and deliberate orchestration, D.S.A., and their friends in the Communist Party USA, effectively dictate Democrat policy at state and national levels.

On November 16, the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee released After the Election: Keep Fighting, a blueprint for DSA action and priorities for the first segment of Obama’s second term.

It is basically a guide to action for long time DSA ally Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, over the next two years.

Diverting money from the military to social spending will be a huge part of the agenda. After all, a strong US military is the major block to world revolution.

The push will be towards universal socialist healthcare and an economy wrecking Financial Transactions Tax.

Ending poverty through massive re-distribution will be a big focus… capitalizing on the 50th anniversary of DSA founder Michael Harrington‘s famous book “The Other America,” which helped to launch Lyndon Johnson’s catastrophic and completely counter productive  “War on Poverty” in the mid-1960s...

So true. More at that top link.

I've been writing about this as well. See, "Campaign for America's Future, Top Democrat Activist Group, Launches Class-Warfare Website," and "Communist Party USA Pulls Out the Stops for Democrat Class Warfare."

BONUS: "Rachel Maddow and the Left's Depraved Agenda of Unchecked Power Over the Individual."

Where the Real Money Is

Taxes are going up. Even if a deal is reached to avoid the fiscal cliff, Democrats will continue to push for more revenue to finance their never-ending spending binge, and the middle class will take the hit.

This editorial's from June 2011 but still as timely as ever. At the Wall Street Journal, "Where the Tax Money Is":

Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)

In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016, as the costs of those entitlements are expected to grow rapidly. The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.

So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks.

This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it.

Well, he's a sneaky f-ker, that's for sure. We've got $268 billion in ObamaCare taxes about to kick in, regardless of what happens with the fiscal cliff.

The left's appetite for ever-increasing revenue is insatiable.

'Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind...'

Inspired by William Jacobson, who's been posting Seals and Crofts videos at his sidebar over the last few day

'I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight...'

Says mixed martial arts fighter Ronda Rousey, at USA Today (via Instapundit).

Republicans Have Leverage in Fiscal Cliff Standoff

From Keith Hennessey, at the Wall Street Journal, "Time to Call the President's Budget Bluff":

... While the president has a strong hand, he is overplaying it. Republicans have some leverage. They need to use it effectively.

• The president's veto threat is a bluff. Without a new law, tax increases and spending cuts will likely increase unemployment to 9% and might trigger a new recession. Even if he could shift all the political blame for such a legislative failure onto congressional Republicans, Mr. Obama cannot afford to risk a new recession that would irreparably damage his second term. He can neither veto a budget-deal bill that Congress sends to him, nor can he allow Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to tie a bill up in the Senate. He can, however, try to bluff Republicans into giving away the store.

• The president's proposal for more spending and taxation puts him to the left of many in his own party, and Democrats up for re-election are not lemmings looking to follow Sen. Patty Murray, who has welcomed a plunge over the fiscal cliff. Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Mary Landrieu oppose the president's proposal to increase the estate tax. Sen. Chuck Schumer has defined "rich" at $1 million of income, much higher than the president's $250,000.

Many Democrats don't want to raise taxes on successful small business owners without Republican votes as political cover. Members of both parties are terrified at the prospect of subjecting 27 million additional tax filers to the Alternative Minimum Tax if there is no new legislative "patch," as Congress has annually passed for many years.

If exposed to the light of day, these intraparty Democratic divisions provide opportunities for Republicans to negotiate a centrist or center-right agreement. In the short run, this requires Republicans to publicly challenge their Democratic colleagues on these specific policy questions. In the long run, Republicans must refuse to engage in ad hoc summitry and insist upon a return to a regular, committee-based legislative process that includes annual budget resolutions and open-floor amendments.

I've been saying the same thing. Republicans are in good shape if they stand firm. It'll be Obama's recession if we go over the cliff. Fuck him.

More at the link.

Girl Bitten by Dolphin at Orlando SeaWorld

Wow, that hurt. Not the dophin's fault however.

At the Orlando Sentinel, "SeaWorld attack: Video captures dolphin biting little girl."

White House Data Debunk Myth Bush Cuts Built Deficit

A lovely chart, via Instapundit:

Also at Bizzy Blog, "Graphs of the Day: The Fiscal Mess Is Not the Fault of Bush’s Tax Cuts" (via Memeorandum).

Obama Digs In

At the New York Times, "Pushing GOP to Negotiate, Obama Ends Giving In":

WASHINGTON — Amid demands from Republicans that President Obama propose detailed new spending cuts to avert the year-end fiscal crisis, his answer boils down to this: you first.

Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table.

Disciplined and unyielding, he argues for raising taxes on the wealthy while offering nothing new to rein in spending and overhaul entitlement programs beyond what was on the table last year. Until Republicans offer their own new plan, Mr. Obama will not alter his. In effect, he is trying to leverage what he claims as an election mandate to force Republicans to take ownership of the difficult choices ahead.

His approach is born of painful experience. In his first four years in office, Mr. Obama has repeatedly offered what he considered compromises on stimulus spending, health care and deficit reduction to Republicans, who either rejected them as inadequate or pocketed them and insisted on more. Republicans argued that Mr. Obama never made serious efforts at compromise and instead lectured them about what they ought to want rather than listening to what they did want.

Either way, the two sides were left at loggerheads over the weekend with less than a month until a series of painful tax increases and spending cuts automatically take effect, risking what economists say would be a new recession.

Mr. Obama refuses to propose more spending cuts until Republicans accept higher tax rates on the wealthy, and Republicans refuse to accept higher tax rates on the wealthy while asking for more spending cuts.

“I’m puzzled why Republicans are locking into a principle that’s not sustainable and why Democrats aren’t taking the moment to put forward their own vision of entitlement reform,” said Peter R. Orszag, a former White House budget director for Mr. Obama.

It's simple really. The GOP won't budge on taxes and Obama won't budge on cutting spending or reforming entitlements. I personally think Obama wants a cliff dive and everyone's taxes will go up, so he can blame it on the Republicans. That's not going to look good for him, however, as I've indicated previously. Go over the cliff and watch out for a double-dip. The public will blame both parties, especially the Democrat Socialists.

Hitchcock's Blondes

Here's MoDo, at NYT, "Spellbound by Blondes, Hot and Icy":

Certainly, the master of the dark side had “a murderous fascination with blondes,” as the British Film Institute once noted in a tribute.

And now comes Hollywood’s murderous fascination with Hitchcock’s murderous fascination.

HBO’s “The Girl” depicts the making of “The Birds” and “Marnie,” with Toby Jones playing Hitch and Sienna Miller playing Tippi Hedren, fighting off rapacious birds and rapacious director at the same time.

In theaters, “Hitchcock,” with Anthony Hopkins as the auteur and Helen Mirren as his wife and collaborator, Alma Reville, depicts the making of “Psycho,” with Scarlett Johansson taking Janet Leigh’s place in the shower to be stabbed by that crazed mama’s boy Norman Bates. (The long-suffering Alma at one point erupts at her husband about his glittering fixation, snapping that she is “not one of the contract blondes you badger and torment with your oh-so specific direction.”)

Next spring, A&E will run “Bates Motel,” a prequel series to “Psycho,” featuring a young, creepy Norman, with Vera Farmiga as his (blond) mother.

Why the fresh fascination with the man with the famous profile? Perhaps the more Hollywood churns out rancid movies, the more it appreciates Hitch, who never got an Oscar. (“They take sadistic pleasure in denying me that one little moment,” Hopkins’s Hitchcock says.)

When he was asked about plot construction, the martini-dry director would echo the advice of the 19th-century playwright Victorien Sardou: “Torture the women!” And the Brit would slyly observe: “Blondes make the best victims.”

Well, it's a nice start at the essay, but collapses after that in some post-modern cultural psycho-babble that's not very well related to Alfred Hitchcock. Keep reading at that top link if you're not bothered by Ms. Dowd.

What the heck? A good chance to post the video trailer. The movie looks good, in any case.

U.S. Coast Guard Officer Killed by Drug Smugglers Near Santa Cruz Island

This is off the coast of Santa Barbara.

The suspects have been captured. Something like this has apparently never happened, although I can't imagine proper protocol was in play. A smaller Coast Guard vessel being rammed by a smuggling boat? That sounds messed up.

See the Los Angeles Times, "Coast Guardsman is killed after suspected smugglers ram his boat."

GOP Takes Aim at Entitlements

At the Wall Street Journal, "Senate Minority Leader Calls for Bipartisan Support of Changes to Medicare, Social Security to Get Deal":

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell outlined potential changes to Medicare and Social Security in an interview Friday, providing fresh clarity on the concessions Republicans would like to see from Democrats on cutting the costs of the federal entitlement programs.

Mr. McConnell (R., Ky.) said bipartisan agreement on higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and slowing cost-of-living increases for Social Security could move both parties closer to a budget deal that averts the so-called fiscal cliff, the combination of spending cuts and tax increases that start in early January unless Washington acts.

In return for the support of Democrats, he said, Republicans would agree to include more tax revenue in a budget deal, though not from higher rates.

"Those are the kinds of things that would get Republicans interested in new revenue," Mr. McConnell said.

Democrats played down Mr. McConnell's comments and framed the debate from their own point of view: If Republicans instead agreed to raise income-tax rates for high earners, a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff could be quickly reached.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said there was "nothing new" in Mr. McConnell's comments. A senior administration official said the White House would make no new offers until Republicans changed their opposition to raising top tax rates.

Democrats said they were still awaiting a formal GOP proposal. "Republicans are still choosing not to put forward an actual offer, and we can't respond to an interview," said Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.).

Mr. McConnell's cost-saving suggestions, however, mark a clearer articulation of the compromises his side was demanding.

Republicans have said they would agree to revenue increases if Democrats went along with proposals intended to put safety-net programs on sounder financial footing. Democrats have countered that Republicans have been vague about what they want.

Mr. McConnell on Friday resurrected suggestions that were on the table during deficit-cut talks between Mr. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) in the summer of 2011, negotiations that broke down in finger-pointing on both sides.

Talks to avoid the fiscal cliff, which government economists say could throw the U.S. economy into recession, were at "stalemate," House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Friday. Still, he said, talks had not collapsed and added, "I'm willing to move forward in good faith."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) said it was premature to expect major compromises. "It's too early," he said. "It's 31 days away."

Tensions between the two sides increased Thursday when Republicans dismissed a White House proposal that included $1.6 trillion in new taxes and $50 billion in infrastructure spending, among other things.

Mr. McConnell reiterated his rejection of that plan in Friday's interview, saying he laughed when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner presented it. "He noticed that I laughed," Mr. McConnell said. "That pretty well summed up my view of what he was saying."

The White House defended its offer. "This is the approach that garnered the president a lot of support in the election," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. He said the president's proposal shouldn't have come as a surprise to Republicans.

On taxes, Mr. McConnell repeated Friday the GOP's position that any new revenue should come from capping deductions, not raising rates. "It is revenue and it's from the group of people they want to get revenue from," he said, arguing for Democratic support.

Well, of course the Obama-Dems have no interest at all in cutting spending, much less compromising with the Republicans.

See the Heritage Foundation, "Chart of the Week: Obama’s Fiscal Cliff Plan Has $4 of Tax Hikes to $1 of Cuts."

And here's the latest at the Washington Post, "‘Fiscal cliff’ talks at a stalemate over tax hikes."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

More at Jill Stanek's, "Stanek Sunday funnies 12-2-12," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Suckers’ Leap."

Obama Honors Rosa Parks Anniversary With Picture of Himself

Yeah, it's a bit much, like propaganda for the leadership cult.

At Twitchy, "Narcissist in chief: President Obama honors Rosa Parks anniversary with picture of himself; Update: Adam Baldwin with the win."

Today is the 57th Anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Pic: President Obama on Rosa Parks bus twitter.com/whitehouse/sta…
— The White House (@whitehouse) December 1, 2012

Also at Gateway Pundit, "Figures. Obama Honors Rosa Parks Anniversary With Picture of Himself on a Bus."

Barack Obama: Worst. President. Ever.

I missed this clip when it came out in September, but William Jacobson's got it: "Disheartened Obamaphiles should just stop talking."

And following the links there takes us to Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, "Emboldened Obama now even more reckless with America's future":

Again and again, the first term revealed Obama’s idea of bipartisanship: Dissenters are unpatriotic and must surrender. Compromise is a one-way street for him.

As polarizing and ineffective as that approach was, he was rewarded with four more years. A different man might see that as a mulligan — a second chance to get it right.

Not Obama. His behavior now is even more troubling.

That he’s willing to risk sending the economy back into recession and killing even more jobs leads me to believe his second term will be far more radical than the first. A stranger to humility, he thinks re-election confers a blank check.

His demand that spending cuts and entitlement reform be put off, while Republicans give him the tax hikes and the stimulus he wants, suggests he’s not serious about facing the mountain of debt. In that case, no progress is possible as the nation hurtles toward disaster.

The fear is reinforced with his sudden bid to have sole and permanent authority to raise the debt limit. As it stands, Congress’ power to set the ceiling serves as a practical check and balance.

His effort to eliminate it is something that happens in a banana republic. Is that where Obama wants to take America?

Sadly, many Americans believe the answer is yes. A friend wrote to express that view forcefully:

“Obama has deliberately destroyed the world’s best medical system. He is deliberately destroying the world’s strongest economy and currency. He has destroyed the world’s best political system by governing by executive order. He has started destroying the world’s best military.”

I don’t accept the idea that the president is intentionally trying to destroy America, but I do believe his policies are weakening it.

Well, I do.

Obama's deliberately perverting the Constitution and amassing enormous power at the expense of the public good. Most people on the left don't care. Even the so-called antiwar freaks that wanted Bush administration war crimes trials have hooked their wagon to this administration --- obediently falling in line in the service of raw power. It's disgusting. Folks like Kevin Gosztola are epic hypocrites even while make a living foisting themselves off as civil libertarians. What they want is progressive power, more damned power. I'm no longer a fan of Ralph Nader, but the guy's got creds. He's run presidential campaigns against both parties. He's consistently spoken out against abuses no matter whom the occupant in the White House. As for President Obama, he's the worst hypocrite of all, and now the biggest tyrant in American history.

Hugh Hefner Engaged to 26-Year-Old Playboy Centerfold Crystal Harris

Man, how old is this guy, 80?

No, he's 80-freakin'-6!

At DListed, "Hugh Hefner Is Going to Marry His Runaway Bride":

You know it's real love when your groom looks like a drunk trout making out with bait on a hook (or an old Popeye smoking an imaginary pipe) when he kisses you.

Sad excuse for a gold digger, 26-year-old Crystal Harris, was supposed to marry 324-year-old Hugh Hefner two summers ago, but she dumped him just days before the wedding. For the next year, Crystal spent her days gargling on the douche dick of Dr. Phil's son and when she wasn't doing that, she was talking shit about how Hef grossed her out. But because nothing will make a gold digger realize she's made a huge mistake like an eviction notice on her condo door or the repo man taking her Mercedes, Crystal ran back into Hef's wrinkly arms this past May. And now, the wedding is back on.

More at the link, and at TMZ, "Hugh Hefner & Crystal Harris — We're Getting Married!" (via WeSmirch).

More at New York Daily News, "Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris engaged again: Playboy honcho, 86, set to wed 26-year-old ex on New Year's Eve."

Photo: Crystal Harris on Twitter. And more of the hottie at Centerfold.

Rachel Maddow and the Left's Depraved Agenda of Unchecked Power Over the Individual

You don't have to go much farther than Rachel Maddow's marquee MSNBC broadcast to understand how far America's fallen from the society's basic standards of decency and self-government. When AIDS protesters launched their disgusting bare-naked Capitol Hill protest last week, Maddow thought that was sweeter than a load of steaming hot-passion lesbo giz. Robert Stacy McCain had the perfect headline, "Naked Protesters: Unattractive People Demand Action to Protect Boondoggle":

In terms of newsworthiness, it might be a clever idea to have, say, Brad Pitt and Anne Hathaway stage a naked protest in Harry Reid’s office, demanding action to reduce out-of-control federal spending. On the other hand, it’s hard to see the logic of sending out a bunch of ugly freaks to harass John Boehner about their pet boondoggle...

Yes, ugly freaks. Very ugly, and f-king depraved. But there's more:

Exactly why the federal government has a program to provide housing for AIDS sufferers but not, say, people with herpes or chlyamida, can only be explained in terms of identity politics. Over the past 30 years, clever organizers have succeeded in making AIDS a propaganda sledgehammer with which to bludgeon politicians. “AIDS funding” includes a vast category of government spending, of which HOPWA is a classic example, that is considered sacrosanct because anyone who doesn’t support it will be slammed as a heartless homophobe.

Now that's where you're gonna get Rachel Maddow all lathered. Anything to expand the role of government over the individual, using tactics so depraved to make one vomit, and Maddow is totally down with it. She is the perfect representative of how far to the left the so-called establishment has shifted in recent years. Progressives want nothing less than the destruction of traditional values and the respectful nature of the individual, the decent, respectful nature of the individual. It must be destroyed to make way for far-left cultural values and the secular state enforcer.

For more on this check out Sheldon Richman's essay at Reason, "Rachel Maddow's Blind Deference to Government Power." I don't think the essay is introduced as well as it should be --- for example, the key quotation at the piece does not coincide with the video to which it links. But the fundamental argument is a good one: that Rachel Maddow is totally in the service of the expansion of government power over the individual. Indeed, Richman's offering a theory of Maddow's philosophy of the general will, in which the atomized individual is meaningless except to the extent that it fuels the social mass subservient to state power. Here's the key section:

Echoing President Obama and Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren, Maddow apparently believes that no private accomplishment is possible without government support through spending on infrastructure, education, and research. But that is wrong. All of those things can be and have been provided in the private market. Government has a way of crowding out private efforts and then asserting its own importance because of the lack of private alternatives. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Government doesn't just crowd out private-sector activities; it also substitutes inferior ones in their place. No one is pleased with education—which has been under government control for close to 200 years. If the infrastructure is in disrepair, who's to blame for that? Politicians don't think about fixing things until they need a rationalization for "stimulus" spending. Why does it take a recession to make them think about the roads and bridges? American history is rife with examples of private roads and bridges, whose owners didn't wait for an economic crisis to fix them. Their incomes—their businesses—depended on satisfying customers. That goes for education and research too....

Maddow needs to be reminded that we live in a world of scarcity. That doesn't mean great things can't be accomplished, but it does mean that if politicians and bureaucrats decide what is to be built, the scarce labor and resources used in those projects will be unavailable for other projects—particularly those that private entrepreneurs are willing to take risks on. It's Bastiat's broken-window fallacy again. We readily see a government project being built. (Don't worry, the politicians will make sure of that.) What we don't see are all the things not being built because government preempted free enterprise.

But we must ask: Who is better qualified to determine how scarce labor and resources should be invested, politicians or private individuals? Politicians operate under a perverse set of incentives and lack critical information. They aim to please electoral constituencies and special-interest donors, while having no market feedback to guide them in choosing among the many alternative projects; they risk no capital of their own and acquire resources by force—taxation. Why would we expect them to make good decisions? They may call what they do "investment," but in economic terms, it is consumption not investment.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs—at least when government provides no safety net of bailouts, guarantees, subsidies, cheap credit, and the like—do risk their own capital or must raise it from investors who are free to say no. (Try saying that as a taxpayer.) It's not an infallible process, but if consumers are ultimately unhappy with what is produced, they are free to withhold their dollars and send the misguided entrepreneur into bankruptcy, a process that will transfer resources to more able hands. That's a kind of clout which political subjects can only wish they had....

Maybe that's why Maddow prefers government "greatness" to private "smallness." She doesn't want plain people calling the shots, which ultimately they would do in a freed market. She seems more at home with the governing elite and their court intellectuals, who promise to take care of the rest of us rather than let us look after ourselves through the vast mutual-aid society known as the free market.

Right.

Maddow wants the state bureaucrats and socialist political hacks to rule over all the private social and economic space of the individual and the family. It's totalitarian, for there is no end to what the left would like to do. Again, you have to get the context of Richman's essay, which isn't as well devoloped as it should be. The link at the post goes to one of those MSNBC "Lean Forward" promotional spots the network's been running for a year or so now. Maddow stands out in front of the Hoover Dam in one of the more classic ones, extolling the virtues of the gargantuan New Deal infrastructure projects put in place during the Franklin Roosevelt-era of progressive socialist government. Maddow pines for a revamped, steroid-fueled homosexualized New Deal. She and her cohorts at MSNBC ---- self-declared socialists like Lawrence O'Donnell --- are hell bent on eviscerating private initiative in the name of state power and secular values. I'm blown aways sometimes watching those shows, for example, Ed Schultz's recent Blitzkrieg broadcasting assault on Walmart.

These are bad people. They are, by definition, un-American, for what they propose for our governing future is the European model of an ever-enveloping state sector, with crushing bureaucratic power, economic stagnation, and a growing entitlement state with double-digit employment a permanent feature of economic life. Recall from yesterday, "Professor Harvey Mansfield: Obama Voters 'Are Voting for Dependency, for Lack of Ambition, for Insolvency...'"

This is the new reality. Polls are showing an even greater tendency toward socialism and socialist organization in the American polity. The voters ratified this vision of government when they reelected President Obama. But as I've been saying, nothing is permanent in politics. At some point the left's entitlement goody bag becomes so stuffed that even the most productive people in the world aren't able to fill it. We're seeing it happen in California, as the bills are coming due in this once great state. It's only a matter of time nationally. The left is preparing the grave for its own catastrophic fall from indulgent, decadent power.

Georgia Bulldogs QB Aaron Murray Hit by Quinton Dial (VIDEO)

I almost couldn't believe this yesterday:

And at Deadspin, "Quinton Dial Nearly Decapitated Aaron Murray, Got Away With It":

Alabama leads Georgia 10-7 at halftime of the SEC Championship, thanks to a late Crimson Tide field goal that might not have happened if they'd been flagged for this brutal hit on Bulldogs quarterback Aaron Murray. Quinton Dial went after Murray after the QB tossed an interception, blindsiding Murray with a helmet-to-helmet crash that somehow escaped on-field penalty. (The SEC office, having the benefit of replay, may choose to enact some punishments later.) [CBS]

My friend Em on Twitter, a big Bulldogs fan, was pissed. Check Em's timeline as well. Looks like some 'Bama fans were down with that cheap ass criminal shot.

This Tuesday: Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2012

Did you forget?

December 5th is almost upon us. Some of the most beautiful women in the world, plus music and entertainment.

'Between super-efficient traditional vehicles on one side, and battery or plug-in hybrid technologies on vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt on the other, it’s possible the traditional hybrid is being squeezed...'

From Bill Howard, at Extreme Tech, "Why hybrids are dying: Gas engines are good enough on mpg, plug-ins are sexier":

The sporty five-passenger SUV that I’m whipping around country roads gets 35 mpg on the highway. And it’s not a hybrid. It’s the Mazda CX-5 Skyactiv with a host of high-efficiency technologies that gives the CX-5 hybrid-like fuel economy without the $2,000-$4,000 bump in price that comes with many hybrid vehicles. Between super-efficient traditional vehicles on one side, and battery or plug-in hybrid technologies on vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt on the other, it’s possible the traditional hybrid is being squeezed. Except Toyota, the 800 pound gorilla of hybrid nation.

RTWT at that top link.

The Latest Congressional Cliffhanger

From Mark Steyn, at the Orange County Register, "America not paying its fair share":

Previously on "The Perils of Pauline":

Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape?

Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress' decision to set up... a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can't, form a committee. Those who really can't, form a Super Committee – and then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by "automatic sequestration."

Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: it would chop off everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, over the course of a decade, the sequestration cuts would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about what the United States government currently borrows every month. No sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month's worth of debt over the course of a decade.

Continue reading.

'Nothing better illustrates the argument that the “left” hates Israel far more than they care about the Palestinians...'

At Augean Stables, "The “how would you like it if we said that about you?” meme: Reflections on Rudoren’s FB Page."

The strong empirical evidence from many independent sources (cited by a number of commenters at Rudoren’s page in this thread) including Gazan, is that Hamas uses their own people as human shields and tries to benefit from the misery they inflict on their own people by blaming Israel. They even brag about it.

Dying Patients on Liverpool Care Pathway Never Told That Life-Saving Treatment Was Being Withdrawn

The socialist state is a cold, calculating killer.

The Telegraph UK has more on Britain's National Health Service hospitals that send their patients home to die, and in this case, the patients aren't even told what's happening. See, "Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told":

Almost half of dying patients placed on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway are never told that life-saving treatment has been withdrawn, a national audit has found.

The study suggests that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.
It also reveals that thousands of dying patients have been left to suffer in pain, with no attempt to keep them comfortable while drugs were administered.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, last night described the disclosures from records held by 178 NHS hospitals as "totally unacceptable".

He said the failure to consult patients would now be examined by an independent inquiry, which will also look at payments made to hospitals for meeting targets to place people on the pathway.

Each year around 130,000 patients are placed on the pathway. The national audit by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool and the Royal College of Physicians examined a representative sample of 7,058 deaths which occurred between April and June last year, at 178 NHS hospitals. Of these, X were on the pathway.

The new disclosures demonstrate just how routinely hospitals are placing patients on the pathway without informing them that steps which could hasten their death have been taken. The national audit found...

Well, that doesn't sound so lovely now, does it?

And it's not like it isn't coming here. Perhaps we'll have some other name besides "death pathways," but we'll have identical death by rationing soon enough.

Check Paul Hsieh's report from October, at Forbes, "Get Ready For ObamaCare's Medical Rationing":

ObamaCare supporters are now waging a high-profile public relations campaign to make medical rationing palatable to the general public.

The latest front is the opinion pages of the New York Times, which recently published two Op-Eds openly advocating medical rationing. The first was by their economics columnist Eduardo Porter, “Rationing Health Care More Fairly” (8/21/2012).

Porter argued that rationing was “inevitable” and the only question was how best to implement it. He advocated a system like Great Britain’s, which doesn’t pay for medical therapies costing more than $31,000 – $47,000 per year of life gained. Similarly, he praised New Zealand’s approach of not paying for vaccines that cost more than $20,000 per year of life gained.

For Porter, the only question was the precise dollar value the government should set on a year of a patient’s life. Supporters of government-run health care used to argue against market-based approaches because “you couldn’t put a price on human life.” But that’s precisely what Porter wants the government to do.

The second pro-rationing piece was by Obama administration advisor Steve Rattner, “Beyond ObamaCare” (9/16/2012). Rattner stated up front, “We need death panels.”

Rattner advocated restricting medical spending on the elderly, especially on patients in their last year of life, because such spending “consumes more than a quarter of the [Medicare] program’s budget.”

One big problem with Rattner’s approach is that we often can’t know what will be a patient’s final year of life until after they’ve died. It’s easy for a bureaucrat to say in retrospect, “This unnecessary spending didn’t extend the patient’s life.” But the treating physician doesn’t always know whether a patient will live or die from a surgery or procedure. If the surgery succeeds and the patient lives another 5 years, then it was money well spent. But if the patient dies, a bureaucrat can classify it as “wasteful.” Do we really want the government deciding whether or not a doctor is allowed to save your grandmother’s life?

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article, former Obama administration officials have also advocated a more indirect form of rationing. They’ve proposed a fixed cap on aggregate private medical spending (not just government spending). Such a cap has already been enacted into law in Massachusetts and the authors wish to extend that to the rest of the country. Of course, any cap on private medical spending necessarily means the government must restrict Americans’ right to spend their own money for their own medical care.

One of the co-authors of this NEJM article, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, has already laid the intellectual groundwork for overt rationing in a 2009 Lancet article, “Principles For Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions.” Dr. Emanuel is a former White House health care advisor and the brother of Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff.

Dr. Emanuel proposes rationing based on a combination of factors including patient age, expected “quality adjusted life years,” and the patient’s “instrumental value” to “society.” Given that the government would be making (and paying for) these rationing decisions, value to “society” will become “value as determined by the government.”

Such rationing completely inverts the relationship between the individual and the state. Rather than the state existing to serve the individual, the individual’s existence is sustained at the discretion of the state. This is the opposite of the American founders’ intention that the government be the people’s servant, not their master.

None of this should be surprising. Lots of folks warned of the horrible, horrible inevitability of rationing under ObamaCare while it was being debated. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, for example, "ObamaCare Is All About Rationing." But critics were dismissed as cranks and racists, conspiracy theorists pushing crazy fever swamp theories "death panels" hatched by Sarah Palin and her "unhinged" followers. The critics were right, although for the time being, it just doesn't matter.

As I've been saying, the new era of socialist dependency government is upon us. The voters ratified the ObamaCare monstrosity last month. Things are now starting to take effect. Death be upon us now, too late to cry about it, however. The wheels of the gargantuan maw of progressivism are rolling, and political dissenters are being eliminated by campaigns of demonization from the shock troops of the Democrat Party regime. There is hope, of course. And that lies in the electorate waking up before too much damage has been inflicted. We'll have midterm elections in 2014 and perhaps libertarian-minded tea party conservatives will be elected in greater numbers. Perhaps even the possibility of a GOP majority in the Senate will open up. I'll have more on that. In the meantime, folks should hunker down and take care of themselves and their families, for the weakest among us will be the first to make the last journey down the left's pathway of death.

RELATED: At London's Daily Mail, "Now sick babies go on death pathway: Doctor's haunting testimony reveals how children are put on end-of-life plan," and "Doctors 'are withholding treatment from dying cancer patients because they think it is futile to continue'."

Professor Harvey Mansfield: Obama Voters 'Are Voting for Dependency, for Lack of Ambition, for Insolvency...'

A great interview with Professor Mansfield, at the Wall Street Journal, "The Crisis of American Self-Government" (via Memeorandum):

Cambridge, Mass.

'We have now an American political party and a European one. Not all Americans who vote for the European party want to become Europeans. But it doesn't matter because that's what they're voting for. They're voting for dependency, for lack of ambition, and for insolvency."

Few have thought as hard, or as much, about how democracies can preserve individual liberty and national virtue as the eminent political scientist Harvey Mansfield. When it comes to assessing the state of the American experiment in self-government today, his diagnosis is grim, and he has never been one to mince words.

Mr. Mansfield sat for an interview on Thursday at the Harvard Faculty Club. This year marks his 50th as a teacher at the university. It isn't easy being the most visible conservative intellectual at an institution that has drifted ever further to the left for a half-century. "I live in a one-party state and very much more so a one-party university," says the 80-year-old professor with a sigh. "It's disgusting. I get along very well because everybody thinks the fact that I'm here means the things I say about Harvard can't be true. I am a kind of pet—a pet dissenter"....

the electorate that granted Barack Obama a second term was unwise—the president achieved "a sneaky victory," Mr. Mansfield says. "The Democrats said nothing about their plans for the future. All they did was attack the other side. Obama's campaign consisted entirely of saying 'I'm on your side' to the American people, to those in the middle. No matter what comes next, this silence about the future is ominous."

At one level Mr. Obama's silence reveals the exhaustion of the progressive agenda, of which his presidency is the spiritual culmination, Mr. Mansfield says. That movement "depends on the idea that things will get better and better and progress will be made in the actualization of equality." It is telling, then, that during the 2012 campaign progressives were "confined to defending what they've already achieved or making small improvements—student loans, free condoms. The Democrats are the party of free condoms. That's typical for them."

But Democrats' refusal to address the future in positive terms, he adds, also reveals the party's intent to create "an entitlement or welfare state that takes issues off the bargaining table and renders them above politics." The end goal, Mr. Mansfield worries, is to sideline the American constitutional tradition in favor of "a practical constitution consisting of progressive measures the left has passed that cannot be revoked. And that is what would be fixed in our political system—not the Constitution."

It is a project begun at the turn of the previous century by "an alliance of experts and victims," Mr. Mansfield says. "Social scientists and political scientists were very much involved in the foundation of the progressive movement. What those experts did was find ways to improve the well-being of the poor, the incompetent, all those who have the right to vote but can't quite govern their own lives. And still to this day we see in the Democratic Party the alliance between Ph.D.s and victims."

The Obama campaign's dissection of the public into subsets of race, sex and class resentments is a case in point. "Victims come in different kinds," says Mr. Mansfield, "so they're treated differently. You push different buttons to get them to react."

The threat to self-government is clear. "The American founders wanted people to live under the Constitution," Mr. Mansfield says. "But the progressives want the Constitution to live under the American people."

Continue reading (via Memeorandum).

The party of dependency and insolvency. Oh boy, what a legacy to leave to your children.

Don't Promote Grover Norquist as Voice of Resurgent Tea Party Movement

When I posted on Grover Norquist the other day I had in the back of my mind the longstanding controversy he's had with the counter-jihad movement on the conservative right. The controversy came to head around the time of CPAC 2011 and folks don't seem to be mentioning it too much as the anti-tax crusader is in the news.

So I thought I'd mention this now that Norquist is being touted as the ostensible voice of a resurgent and even stronger tea party movement.

Astute Bloggers had some push back the other day, "LOOK HOW THESE PSEUDO-CONS ARE FAWNING OVER NORQUIST":

Grover Norquist, the shady Islam apologist in the GOP, has been sugarcoated lately by at least one writer for Big Government. Why are they keeping on with this nonsense? Robert Spencer's already stressed why it's better for Republicans to avoid this awful man, yet not only they, but even some right-wing writers are continuing with superficial approaches to a man who's opposed discussion of Islam at CPAC ...What matters now is that it's almost like we're back to square one in regards to Norquist's two-faced approach, and those right-wing writers and politicians who continue to gloss over his shady standings have a lot of explaining to do.

More at the link, and note that I doubt it's appropriate to subordinate one issue to the other, to care less about anti-tax policy than anti-terror policy, and vice versa. It's all of a piece with the progressives. I do think folks should be careful about elevating Norquist as some standard-bearer for a resurgent anti-tax movement. He's a very influential guy with sound ideas on small government. But don't make him a hero. He's practically treasonous with his Islamist alliances. The tea party can do fine without him. In any case, here's more on the dude's two-faced approach to conservatism, at FrontPage Magazine, "Norquist Loses His Grip":

Anti-tax promoter Grover Norquist is losing his vice-like grip on the Republican party. The head of Americans for Tax Reform, who as recently as last year counted 238 members of the House and 41 members of the Senate among those who had signed his anti-tax pledge, has seen those numbers decline to 217 in the House, one shy of the 218 needed for a majority, and 39 in the Senate. Both totals represent an all-time low. Last Wednesday, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) disavowed his pledge not to raise taxes, even as he acknowledged doing so could hurt his reelection chances in 2014. ”I don’t worry about that because I care too much about my country,” he said. “I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist.” Americans might not like seeing their taxes go up, but Grover Norquist’s fall from grace has its benefits: as he goes down, so goes his pro-Islamist agenda.

That agenda was laid bare by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) in a speech on the House floor, October 4, 2011. “My conscience has compelled me to come to the floor today to voice concerns I have with the influence Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, has on the political process in Washington,” said Wolf. “My issue is not with ATR’s goal of keeping taxes low..My concern is with the other individuals, groups, and causes with whom Mr. Norquist is associated that have nothing to do with keeping taxes low.”

Wolf mentioned Norquist’s “association and representation” of terrorist financier and vocal Hamas supporter Abdurahman Alamoudi, and terrorist financier Sami Al-Arian. In 2004, Alamoudi, one of the most prominent and influential Muslim Brothers in the United States, was sentenced to 23 years in prison for supporting terror. Alamoudi, a self-described supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, had cultivated ties with the Clinton White House that eventually enabled him and his associates to select, train and certify Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military. Fearing a loss by Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, Alamoudi befriended Norquist to ensure his access to senior levels of the U.S. government would be maintained, if Republicans took charge. He gave Norquist $20,000 to establish the Islamic Free Market Institute, and Alamoudi’s longtime deputy, Khaled Saffuri, became the founding director.

Norquist and Saffuri eventually became an integral part of the Bush administration’s Muslim outreach efforts during the 2000 campaign, with Saffuri named as Muslim Outreach Coordinator. During that campaign, Bush was also introduced to Sami Al-Arian. In 2006, Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to provide support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Wolf illuminated the bigger picture of that relationship, noting that Norquist was an “outspoken supporter of Al-Arian’s effort to end the use of classified evidence in terror trials.” Al-Arian ran the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), and Norquist supported their efforts to weaken or repeal the Patriot Act as well, despite the terrorist atrocities perpetrated on 9/11. Wolf also revealed that Norquist “was scheduled to lead a delegation to the White House on September 11, 2001, that included a convicted felon and some who would later be identified by federal law enforcement as suspected terrorist financiers.” One of the members of that delegation was Omar Ahmed, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR was named an un-indicted co-conspirator when the Holy Land Foundation was convicted of sending million of dollars in funding to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations.

Another relationship Norquist cultivated was with Suhail Khan, who has ties to a variety of Islamist movements. Khan’s father, the late Mahboob Khan, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of the founders of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), whose anti-Semitic activities at American colleges has been documented on numerous occasions by FrontPage, including their latest attempt to organize a divestment campaign against Israel at the University of California, Irvine.

In 2007, Norquist promoted Suhail Khan’s candidacy for election to the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) board of directors. He was subsequently appointed. In 2012, at an irregular meeting of that organization, the board voted to dismiss accusations made against both him and Norquist by Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy and a former defense official in the Reagan administration. Gaffney has been hammered by the ACU and others for suggesting that the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood reached the highest levels of the U.S. government, despite the reality that it was Gaffney who drew attention to Abdurahman Alamoudi and Sami Al-Arian, both of whom ended up as convicted felons for their terrorist activity. Yet it is Gaffney’s credibility that has been called into question for daring to draw attention to Norquist’s unseemly activity...

More at that top link.

And see Pamela Geller, "Grover Norquist's Jihad."

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia Commons.

We're All Abortionists Now!

An awesome piece, from Ellis Washington at WND, "UNDER OBAMACARE, WE'RE ALL ABORTIONISTS NOW!":

Regarding the approval of the Obamacare individual mandate by the Supreme Court June 28, in a Volokh Conspiracy blog entry by Nick Rosenkranz, “Constitutional Law after Obamacare,” there was an insightful comment by a reader named “Wolfwalker” who wrote: “[M]ost of the legal community is a bunch of fascists who have lost all respect for the Constitution much like the federal government itself. Mr. Rosenkranz, I can write your speech in two sentences: The decision upholding Obamacare is the worst decision issued by any Supreme Court since Dred Scott v. Sanford. It renders all constitutional limits on federal powers completely meaningless.”

Wolfwalker’s comment on Mr. Rosenkranz’s blog is the most astute and succinct synopsis I’ve yet read on Obamacare, both from a constitutional and historical perspective.

Indeed, Obamacare renders all constitutional limits on federal powers completely meaningless. “And there’s the rub,” as Shakespeare would say. Obamacare demonstrates to all America the tyrannical, fascist power President Obama and the Democratic Socialist Party is willing to wield like a cudgel to smash the God-given, unalienable rights of the people. By the Supreme Court unconstitutionally acquiescing to Obamacare, all Americans are shackled “under the despotism of an oligarchy,” as Jefferson wrote in an 1820 letter to William Jarvis.

For example, religious rebellion to the Obama administration’s abortion/contraception mandate have achieved new life after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals judge to review a challenge to the health-care law by Liberty, a Christian university.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously dismissed Liberty University’s challenge to the law’s individual and employer insurance mandates, including the tyrannous mandate by the Department of Health and Human Services that employee health insurance cover contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization drugs and abortions. This prompted Liberty University’s appeal to the Supreme Court; however, the Court dismissed the appeal when it issued its controversial decision upholding Obamacare in June.

Liberty University’s case against Obamacare was given renewed vigor by the high court Monday (Nov. 26) when it granted the school a new hearing, ordering the 4th Circuit to reassess the case Liberty University v. Geithner in reply to a new appeal. Liberty filed after the June decision. Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit legal services organization representing the Virginia university, believes that these latest legal developments renews the religious challenge to Obamacare, probably sending the question to the Supreme Court for hearing during its 2013 term.

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel founder, chairman and dean of Liberty University’s law school, said, “Today’s ruling breathes new life into our challenge to Obamacare. Our fight against Obamacare is far from over.

“Congress exceeded its power by forcing every employer to provide federally mandated insurance,” Staver continued. “But even more shocking is the abortion mandate, which collides with religious freedom and the rights of conscience.”

At least 35 Christian universities and businesses have filed suits challenging the health-care mandates, including Louisiana College, Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University. The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission joined the legal fight in October, signing a friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) brief in support of a joint challenge by evangelical Wheaton College in suburban Chicago and the Roman Catholic Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. The ERLC was among 11 evangelical groups signing the brief filed by the Christian Legal Society in support of the Wheaton and Belmont Abbey appeal. Others suing the federal government over Obamacare include Christian publisher Tyndale House, Priests for Life, Hobby Lobby and the EWTN Catholic television and radio network....

If Obamacare and its unconstitutional individual mandate becomes the law of the land, then President Obama and the Democratic Socialist Party would have succeeded in achieving his 100-plus-year progressive dream of perverting and deconstructing America’s republic; to in essence make all Americans slaves to a Marxist, socialist government. This atheistic, Leviathan state will then have de jure and de facto control over every birth, life and death decision for over 320 million people. However, most galling of all to me is that Obamacare has effectively made all Americans (including Jews, Christians and all religious people of faith) co-conspirators of the abortion industry’s machinery of death. Under Obamacare, we are all abortionists now!

Egypt Is Collapsing Thanks to Obama Foreign Policy

At IBD:

The democratic "New Beginning" President Obama announced in Cairo in 2009 becomes a new, bold Egyptian tyranny. An imperfect ally was swept away by what has generated into an Islamist perfect storm.

Apparently confident that an eloquent mea culpa would prompt an abundant supply of Islamic goodwill, Barack Obama in his first year as president appeared at Cairo University before an audience that included leaders of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and gave a speech meant to shake the world.

He apologized for the "overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government" during the Cold War and sought "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world" based on "common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

Keep reading...

'The ideology of Islamism has been on the rise for generations and now aims to expropriate the Arab Spring...'

From Charles Hill, at The Caravan, "World Order in the Age of Obama" (via WSJ):

The ideology of Islamism has been on the rise for generations and now aims to expropriate the Arab Spring. The ambitions of the1979 Iranian Revolution and Sunni fanaticism are transmogrifying into the kind of major religious war that the Treaty of Westphalia sought to forestall.

Thucydides traced the war that ruined ancient Greece to Sparta’s fear that Athens’ growing power was crossing the line where it would be impossible to contain. Israel faces that threat from Iran, as today’s international structures for the maintenance of international security have failed to halt Iran’s drive, propelled by religious ideology, to possess nuclear weapons. Israel, bereft of its traditional sense of American support, is making ready to act against Iran’s menace to its existence. President Obama’s priority must repair relations with Israel by visiting the Jewish state and convincing its leaders that the U.S. understands Israel’s uniquely dangerous position.

And there now grows a deepening appetite for gain. America, perceived as eager to shed the burdens of world order in order to be “fundamentally transformed” through European-style social commitments, talks of engagement even when Iran’s “diplomacy” is a form of protracted warfare. The enemies of world order translate the American election results into the lexicon of abdication, telling themselves that their time has come: there is a world to be gained.

Only America’s return to world leadership can halt this deterioration. “Sequestration” will relegate the U.S. to a second rate power and must be reversed to enable American strength and diplomacy to be employed in tandem. Without this the prediction of a Kepler for today must be grim. As the biographer of Augustus Caesar wrote in the years just before the Second World War, “Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires. Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces. Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other.”

In this maelstrom lie opportunities not for idealism but for the cold, austere use of power, soft and hard, in order to, as Augustus was advised, teach the arts of peace to all. The old platforms for the region, including the “peace process,” are gone. New structures must be built and only the US can lead the construction job. Peace is not at hand, but statesmen can see the possibility of laying foundations for a new Middle East in Syria-Lebanon, Egypt-Gaza, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and even, should we finally get serious, in Iran.

Communist Party USA Pulls Out the Stops for Democrat Class Warfare

If you know your Marxism-Leninism, it would seem impossible for the Communist Party to not only endorse but ally with the Democrat Party in the United States, as the latter ostensibly remains a party of free market capitalism. But we're not in the old traditional free market America anymore. In today's political realm, the forces of the far-left --- the forces of the proletarian revolution envisioned by The Communist Manifesto --- have made common cause with the party in power as the hegemonic institution capable of emancipating the working classes. It's frankly an astounding development, one that truly makes mockery of all those on the left who've ridiculed conservative commentators for their warnings of Barack Obama's communist roots. But there are no more Truman Democrats. The party is now officially the party of class warfare and the CPUSA is fully on board.

Here's this, from WND, "COMMUNIST PARTY USA: GO, OBAMA, GO!":

The Communist Party USA, which just days ago boasted of its celebration over the election victory by Barack Obama, now is organizing teleconferences and promoting rallies in support of Obama’s plans to raise taxes – and to demand full government funding for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid “and other basic human needs.”

According to a statement from the communists, it is the “will of the voters” that Obama be allowed to “end … tax breaks for the wealthiest.” And the party said no spending cuts should be allowed because they would be borne by the “working class families, starting with children and youth and the most vulnerable.”

Facing the nation right now is the fiscal cliff which was set up by earlier decisions from the White House and Congress not to address longterm budget problems then. The scenario now is that without new legislation immediately on spending cuts, sought by Republicans, or more taxes, demanded by Democrats and the Communist Party USA, automatic changes will create both spending cuts and new tax liabilities.

Many Washington observers say, in fact, that’s a goal for Obama, in order to allow him to blame the GOP for the nation’s ills, and for him to work on tax increases amidst the backlash from Americans facing huge new liabilities.

“The national legislative struggle is the first challenge to continue the deep organizing that resulted in the election victory, in order to win priorities that benefit the 99 percent,” the party said in a statement.

It has organized a teleconference on the fight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 4, at 605-475-4850 (1053538#) with Art Perlo, chair of the Economics Commission CPUSA. And it is promoting that the AFL-CIO and “hundreds of organizations” will hold a Candlelight Campaign against Cuts on Dec. 10, all in support of the “Five Weeks to Protect Our Future.”

According to preliminary reports from Washington, Obama already has picked up on one of the suggestions from the Communist Party USA National Committee, which wrote a week ago that there needs to be an “enhanced version of the American Jobs Act … as part of a green New Deal to create millions of jobs for infrastructure, renewable energy, education and support to state and local government services.”

As part of his demands to Congress regarding a compromise to avoid the “fiscal cliff” Obama has proposed $50 billion in new stimulus spending, reports said. He also wants $1.6 trillion in new taxes and the authority to borrow what he pleases.

“The will of the voters is being put to immediate test as the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations play out in Washington. Labor and the broad alliance that re-elected President Obama clearly supported an end to tax breaks for the wealthiest and keeping hands off Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other basic human needs,” the party statement said.

The communists noted that there already was a round of protests held two days after the election, “spearheaded by AFL-CIO and hundreds of organizations.”

The group continued, “Coming out of the election, the big fight is the crisis over the federal budget. Forces representing corporate power and the richest of the 1 percent are trying to achieve their long-held goals of looting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and cutting all government programs that help people or serve a public good.”

There's more at the link, and at the CPUSA website, from November 21st, "Defeat for the Right, Victory for the People & Democracy":

In January when the newly elected Congress convenes, it can give its full attention to the state of the economy. And again, jobs and a robust economic recovery should be at the top of its "to-do list."

In due time the nation's budgetary problems can and should be resolved, and resolved easily, if we go where the money is - the incomes of the wealthy, corporate profits, and the military budget.

Without stopping to catch its breath after the long election grind, the AFL-CIO and its allies are organizing for a working-class and people's solution along these lines. But organized labor can't do it alone.

The coalition that mined the country for votes over the past several months and the rainbow electorate that elected the President must spring back into action.

A broad appeal to many who cast their ballots for Romney is in order too. The division in the country that obtained on November 6 should not be seen as some sort of hardened divide.

Moreover, the popular movement must bring its political and numerical weight to bear on Congress - Democrats and Republicans alike.

Not least, President Obama needs to hear from the tens of millions who reelected him. The President is the most popular politician in the country. Nobody has the political and moral authority that he has. He isn't a radical, but by the same token to classify him as a run-of-the-mill capitalist politician doesn't fit either. Of the Democratic Party presidents of the 20th century, none had the deep democratic sensibilities that he possesses. It is crucial that he lead this struggle.

But he can't and won't do it alone. He needs a mass movement that will nudge him forward as well as have his back as he goes up against recalcitrant Republicans, big sections of monopoly capital, and wavering centrist Democrats in Congress in this and in subsequent battles.

Which is where communists, socialists, and left and progressive people come into the picture. Our main task is to build broad people's unity, guarantee the participation of the key social and class forces, counter the right-wing narrative with a working-class and people's narrative, and bring forward an alternative program.

See that? I've highlighted that key passage for good measure. The president "isn't a radical" but nevertheless possesses "the deep democratic sensibilities" needed to bring about the proletarian victory over the capitalist oppressors.

Really.

There is no other interpretation, for if the Communist Party will not attack this president as a tool of finance capitalism and the scourge of the working classes, who will? Just change the terminology around a bit and President Obama fits the bill as the mass leader of those "communists, socialists, and progressives" committed to the destruction of business and free markets, a process we've been observing close up in the weeks since the election.

This is the new reality.

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Campaign for America's Future, Top Democrat Activist Group, Launches Class-Warfare Website."

* "Socialism v. Capitalism."

U.N. Gives Palestinians 'State' Status

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Nearly 140 countries voted in the U.N. on Thursday to recognize the Palestinian territories as a "nonmember observer state" over the strenuous objections of Israel and the U.S., marking a milestone with potentially far-reaching consequences for the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict.

The 138-9 vote, with 41 abstentions, came on the 65th anniversary of the assembly's resolution calling for the partition of British mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

The new status, which is akin to the Vatican's own stature in the world body, marked a rare victory for the Fatah party's diplomatic path toward statehood after its rival Hamas's military strategy had taken the spotlight during the recent Gaza conflict.

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah, who were crowded around outdoor television screens during the vote in New York erupted into applause, whistles and hugs, as some people fired guns into the air and beeped car horns in celebration.

"We didn't come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel; rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine," Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, told the assembly to a standing ovation.

The immediate question was whether the vote spurs or further delays the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians that Israel says are needed to finalize the status of the West Bank and Gaza territories.

While Mr. Abbas argued the vote would create the momentum to resume moribund talks, the U.S. and Israel denounced the vote as a "unilateral" move in the multilateral assembly.

"Today's unfortunate and counterproductive resolution places further obstacles to peace," said U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice. "No resolution can create a state where none exists."

She added, "Palestinians will wake up tomorrow and find that little has changed saved the prospect of direct talks have receded."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the vote as an empty gesture that makes little difference for Palestinians, and makes peace prospects more remote.

"The decision at the U.N. today won't change a thing on the ground,'' he said prior to the vote. "Peace will be reached through agreements reached between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and not through declarations passed at the U.N.''

RELATED: At Legal Insurrection, "“defamatory and venomous speech that was full of mendacious propaganda”."

The Joy of Hate

Greg Gutfeld's new book, The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage.

Gutfeld goes on about intellectual fascism, at the clip:

RELATED: "Progressives Are the Biggest Threat to Freedom of Speech in America." Progressives are the least tolerant people despite espousing tolerance as basic to their creed. They're awful, just f-ked people.

'Because the Night'

At Maggie's Farm, "Patti Smith 'Because the Night' Boston 11/26/2012."

"Why Conservatives Must Surrender on 'Redistribution'"

Check the essay from Josh Barro at Bloomberg.

I responded to the guy on Twitter, but I'm a small fry I guess and got no response from the f-ker. (Or, more likely, I'm right and got no response from the f-ker.)

@jbarro Your piece is a joke. What improves economic outcomes for all economic classes is GDP growth. The 1990s showed this...
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 30, 2012

@jbarro ...and that was during a period of retrenchment of the welfare state. GOP has ideas. Grow the economy, expand the pie for everyone.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 30, 2012

Anyway, here's this from The News Junkie, at Maggies' Farm, "Barro at Bloomberg makes the case for government redistribution":

For better or worse, we have had extensive government redistribution for generations in myriad forms. The real issue is not redistribution, it's how much, from whom, to whom, in what form? Further, it's a question of at what point redistribution interferes with freedom, growth, initiative, and opportunity for all.

Keep reading.

Rick Santelli Explodes Over Obama, Fiscal Cliff, Walks Off Camera: 'I Can't Even Talk About It Anymore!'

Pat Dollard has the video.