Noemie Emery has a fine article summarizing why the ACA is different, and more unpopular, than all the other seminal and sweeping bills passed by Congress.
You may have forgotten some of the details of the story. Emery gives you a refresher course. It’s also a good article to send to others, be they for or against the ACA.
I haven’t yet covered the story about this administration’s proposal that the FCC monitor newsrooms to see “whether journalists are producing articles, television reports, Internet content, and commentary that ‘meets the public’s critical information needs,'” although I plan to write more about it soon.
I’m strapped for time at the moment, but the topic is extremely important. So I’ll just do something uncharacteristic and quote Rush Limbaugh, who’s right on the money about this (please read the whole thing, although it’s long):
So this goes to the core of a free press…It’s a new world. There isn’t any news. That’s not what journalism is anymore. You don’t go into journalism because you want to report news to people. You don’t go into journalism because you want to find out first what’s happening and be the first to report to other people what’s happening.
…You go into journalism to advance an agenda. World peace, ending world poverty, destroying the powerful, whatever it is. But it is not related to the news anymore. By the way, Katy Bachman, who I mentioned yesterday that I’ve encountered in my professional broadcast career, writes at Adweek. She reported yesterday that the program has been dialed back.
It hasn’t. It has not been dialed back. They want us to think it has. Lanny Davis has stood up in outrage. Well-known Clinton defender, Lanny Davis, stood up in outrage. It’s typical. He says, “Obama needs to find out who did this and fire him!” Lanny, Obama would have to fire himself, and that isn’t going to happen. Can I tell you what else I found? I found a tweet. I have a got a screen shot here. It’s very small, and it could have been Facebook.
But it’s a tweet, and it is from a Democrat running for Congress in Virginia against Eric Cantor. The Democrat’s name is Mike Dickinson, and it looks like the tweet is from February 17th. So four days ago. I’m going to read you the tweet. “Fox News does nothing but tell lies and mistruths. They have unqualified political analysts. We need FCC to monitor and regulate them.”
That’s a Democrat candidate for Congress.
There’s more, much more. But the bottom line is this: if the MSM isn’t outraged, most people won’t be. Most people still are informed and stirred by the MSM. And the MSM is not outraged because it is fully on board with this administration.
That’s the brilliance of getting the left in control of the newsrooms. It means that a leftist administration will experience no significant pushback from an ostensibly free press, because the leftist media will compromise its supposed principles in order to reach the desired goal. They think the crocodile will never eat them.
These heartbreaking photos say it all.
Actually, I’m sure they don’t say it all, but they say an awful lot. What abysmal cruelty, for North Korea to reduce families to this situation:
Their backs stooped, dozens of elderly North and South Koreans separated for six decades reunited Thursday, weeping and embracing in a rush of words and emotion. The reunions come during a rare period of detente between the rival Koreas and are all the more poignant because the participants will part again in a few days, likely forever.
Six decades of separation.
Never again to see each other, but given this one last opportunity, with every moment a precious brew of joy and bitter sorrow:
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
This:
A clear majority of Americans, 59%, still view Hillary Clinton favorably a year after she left her post as secretary of state. Clinton’s current rating is noticeably lower than the 64% she averaged while serving in President Barack Obama’s cabinet.
The last time she had a higher unfavorable than favorable rating in the U.S. was in February 2008, when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Obama. The latest findings come from a Gallup poll conducted Feb. 6-9.
At the time Clinton signed on as Secretary of State under Obama, I couldn’t understand it. I thought it was a bad decision on her part, but I was wrong. She is a very smart political animal, and she seems to have rightly ascertained that it was only her temporary opposition to the Great Obama that had made her look bad, and that if she joined him it would burnish her image.
And so it has, no matter what she actually did while in his Cabinet, because what she did was every bit as awful as what Obama did, and she did it as his underling. Somehow, though, that seems to have helped her in the minds of the American public. Her favorability rating is a great deal higher than his right now.
Let’s take a closer look at her chart over time:
You can see that her favorability ratings have demonstrated some variability over time, but have never gotten that bad ever since the public came to know her. The lowest low was 47, recorded in 1996. I was trying to think what might have been happening re Clinton back then, and I came up with this, which may have been responsible. At any rate, Clinton has remained remarkably popular for so controversial a figure, and soared into the mid-60s and remained there during her entire tenure as Secretary of State.
No one ever said Clinton wasn’t smart. She knew exactly what she was doing. As for Benghazi ”“ at this point, what difference does it make?
It’s not as though what John McCain says matters at this point. However, he is still a US senator, and—although it may seem several lifetimes away—he was Barack Obama’s Republican opponent in his first presidential race, way back in 2008.
Here’s what McCain had to say yesterday about Obama:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday called President Obama “the most naé¯ve president in history” because of his foreign policy tactics.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “played us so incredibly,” McCain said on a Phoenix radio station.
“This is the most naé¯ve president in history,” he said.
“The naé¯veté of Barack Obama and [Secretary of State] John Kerry is stunning,” he added, citing the administration’s plans for Iran and Syria.
Now, in a way, that’s a hard-hitting comment. It certainly deals in extremity: McCain says “most naé¯ve…in history” and “stunning.”
These are not mild words on McCain’s part. But they betray a profound misunderstanding of what might be going on here. We’ve had the “Obama, fool vs. knave” discussion on this blog many times, and the answer is not something we even have to be certain of (although by now I’m pretty sure it’s “both”) in order to see that McCain isn’t even considering the “knave” possibility.
How hard is it to see that Obama has a philosophy of foreign policy intervention that, even giving him the benefit of the doubt, seems at best to be focused on reducing our power and influence, and making us into a clone of various western European countries? That’s not naé¯veté, that’s intent, and the intent is crystal clear.
And that’s at best. At worst—well, you fill in the blanks. I have filled them in several times, but if you’d like a refresher, it’s here:
[Obama’s] not just interested in smallness and irrelevance for their own sakes. He’s interested in weakening America’s influence, and in doing so he allows other forces to rise, forces that previous administrations had opposed. Those forces could be summarized as being either leftist or Islamicist, depending on the country and the situation. In studying Obama’s decisions in the foreign arena, it is difficult to escape the idea that Obama prefers that these groups gain more power around the world. And since he can’t come out directly for them, sometimes he must support them by apparent indirection and inaction.
The Obama Doctrine.
I was going to end this post with a statement to the effect of, “Maybe it’s McCain and many other Republicans who are the naé¯ve ones.” That may be very, very true. But then I reconsidered and thought, “Perhaps not all of them are as naé¯ve as they appear.” Perhaps at least some of them actually know more than they let on and are just being quiet about it, because they realize that saying it would put them in the “crazy, racist, extremist, hateful” camp.
That’s the beauty of the Obama presidency.
Another article in the “unfortunately, not the Onion” category.
This is where PC thought takes us, ultimately:
Once my partner and I finally stopped orchestrating schemes, we actually did something that stuck. We never planned on not teaching our son gender pronouns, it just happened. Once he started trying to talk and would point to a random person on the street with a question mark on his face, we’d say, “Oh, that’s a person”, as opposed to, “that’s a man/woman or girl/boy”. When he actually started being able to verbally ask about people, we’d either tell him the person’s name or we’d say it’s a person and groups of persons were people.
At two and a half the terms: his, her, he, she, woman, man, girl, boy are not part of his vocabulary.
These parents (we know the writer is a woman, because in the article she refers to her pregnancy, but we don’t know the sex of the other parent whom she refers to as her partner, relentlessly avoiding any gender-revealing pronouns) obviously subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language: “holding that the structure of a language affects the perceptions of reality of its speakers and thus influences their thought patterns and worldviews.” If we don’t mention girls and boys, men and women, they don’t exist, or they don’t exist in quite the same way they would if we named them as such.
Parents have a lot of freedom to raise their children as they see fit, provided they don’t molest, beat, or starve them. There are more subtle forms of mistreatment, though—including being so far out in la-la land that you don’t recognize some of the basics of our society and every other society that has ever been (as far as I know), which is the recognition of gender differences.
The author writes, “the long term implications of this are yet to be seen,” and it’s possible her son will be just fine with it. It’s possible he’ll consider it one of mom’s (or mom and dad’s, or mom and mom’s) amusing peccadilloes, a harmless eccentricity on the order of setting the table with the fork and spoon reversed, or banning candy from the house, something that can be made up for later as parental influence wanes and the wider world becomes dominant. It’s possible he’ll end up in a therapist’s office screaming what crazy parents he had and how they harmed him. It’s possible he’ll become a proud professor of gender studies and spread the word about what a wonderful way this is to raise kids.
It’s possible this is the wave of the future. Somehow, I don’t think so. Is it child abuse? In my opinion, yes, but not in any actionable, legal sense. One consoling thought is that most (although not all) parents who hold similarly rigid ideas that lead to strange social experiments with their children slowly learn, as those children grow older, that life and culture have a way of intervening, and that it might be time to lighten up. Another is that many (not all) children are more resilient than we think.
As for this particular child, I wish him luck. He‘ll need it.
[Hat tip: Bryan Preston.]
…is bullish on the GOP’s chances of gaining control of the Senate in 2014:
Barring some sort of change in the national environment or meltdown in the Republican nominations process — neither of which is impossible — Democrats are likely in for a very long night on Nov. 4.
Trende left two other strong possibilities: relentless attacks on Republican nominees by the MSM, and Republican nominees placing feet firmly in mouths.
A grave line has been crossed. Real, physical violence is finally catching up with the huge reserve of pent-up rhetorical violence we’ve suffered through since 1999.
We’ve spent 15 years fearing this.
Now we’re living it.
[NOTE: Ukraine violence, too, despite the “truce.”]
Ace describes a new movie about coming of age in the digital era:
There’s a documentary called Sexy Baby, directed by a couple of women interested in exploring current sexual mores. (Trailer here: Content Warning.)
There are several storylines, two of which are particularly interesting. The one that’s relevant here is 12-year-old Winnifred’s story. She’s very precocious, and “gets it” on an adult level. She notes, for example, that FaceBook and other social media pictures of girls must always at least include the suggestion of being open for sex — of being “DTF,” as she says. (Down to F***.)
She says (or implies) that she’s rather trapped by the current market forces, in which boys just won’t take an interest in girls who don’t broadcast that sexual availability.
Remember, she’s 12.
The trailer is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.
Ace goes on to note that feminists generally attack those who attack this system, calling that “slut-shaming” and accusing them of blaming the girls.
Feminists, of course, are actually at least partly responsible for the problem, telling girls it’s liberating to sleep around, which helps lead to the skewing of teenage sexual behavior more to the adolescent male ideal—with a vast vast assist from the internet.
It’s a mess, and the hookup culture among teens that I wrote about here is arriving at earlier and earlier ages, and fueled by the visual stimuli of easily-available porn on computers. Individual teens can resist it if they are very strong, but the pull and pressures to give in to it (whatever a girl or a boy might secretly wish to do or not do) is incredibly powerful. It’s one thing to know that holding off from easy sex at a very young age will protect you and help you in the end. It’s another to actually have the strength to do so.
Now that Chris Christie’s candidacy seems to have been damaged, even though there is still no proof (or even evidence) that he knew what his aides were doing in Bridgegate, next on the list is Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.
Walker is rightly perceived as being a strong contender for 2016 on the Republican side. In fact, as I’ve said several times, he’s my favorite for the nomination at the moment. So it stands to reason that he and anyone who ever had anything to do with him will be investigated and investigated and investigated until something is found on him or on someone connected with him. A connection will do, because the assumption for a Republican is that he is responsible for every bad act of everyone around him.
No need, really, to point out the contrast with the press’ treatment of President Obama, who has had to deny knowledge of almost everything around him and everything under him, as well as people he was affiliated with and praised (mentor and pastor Reverend Wright comes to mind). But I’ll point it out anyway.
The Christie brouhaha and the Walker aide investigation not only have the goal of trying to bring these particular men down. They also serve as notice to anyone else even thinking of running on the Republican side, letting them know what’s ahead for them, no matter how uncorrupted they may appear to be or how uncorrupted they think they actually are. How many politicians can know exactly what every aide of theirs is doing at all times?
Meanwhile, it’s not okay to look at Hillary Clinton’s actual record or that of her husband, who would be First Man (or whatever it’s called) if she were elected.
In case you’re interested in what WaPo article actually says about the charges against Walker’s aides, here are some quotes:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has been eyeing a 2016 presidential run since his battles with labor unions made him a Republican star, is in the midst of dealing with the fallout of two criminal investigations at home that could complicate his move to the national stage.
One is ongoing, and while the other is now closed with no allegations of wrongdoing by Walker, it has the lingering potential to embarrass him.
The article goes on to describe the hopefulness that just oozes out of Democrats who no doubt will be doing their best to use guilt by association against Walker if actual guilt cannot be found despite all the effort:
Prosecutors said then that Walker was not a target, and he was not charged.
But Wisconsin Democrats hope the new e-mails could still prove politically harmful to Walker, perhaps providing examples of times when he appeared to be aware of the router or of political work being performed on the county’s dime.
Democratic officials in the state are salivating over the chance to draw comparisons to Christie, who enjoyed an image among national Republicans as a stand-up fighter for conservative causes until internal e-mails revealed a plot by aides to create a massive traffic jam as possible political retribution against a Democratic mayor.
The salivation is not just limited to Wisconsin Democrats. Note, also, the article’s ridiculous characterization of Christie’s pre-scandal standing, stating that he had “enjoyed an image among national Republicans as a stand-up fighter for conservative causes.” The writer, Rosalind S. Helderman, is either abysmally ignorant of Republican and conservative opinion or purposely misrepresenting it. I vote for the latter.
The goal of this all is not just to discredit Walker. Most Republicans and conservatives will continue to support him, unless a smoking gun is found, which it almost certainly won’t be. Liberal Democrats weren’t going to vote for him anyway, although they’ll enjoy trashing him some more. It’s moderate Democrats and Independents, and especially those so-called low information voters, who are the particular intended audience. Something vaguely scandalous around Walker can serve to lower his appeal (which rested at least in part on his perceived integrity) to swing voters, and that would be exceedingly valuable to liberals and the left.
A law protecting the rights of vendors to refuse to provide services to same sex-couples in the context of marrying or celebrating their marriages was passed in the Kansas House and killed in the Kansas Senate. So it’s now moot, at least for Kansas, which doesn’t allow gay marriage anyway but was intent on protecting such vendors from lawsuits.
But the debate around the bill reveals something that those familiar with the left and gay marriage activists’ m.o. already knew: that gay marriage was only the start, and the intent was always to force people not only to allow it in the legal sense but to fully accept it in every sense, whatever their religious beliefs may be.
I’ve skimmed quite a few articles in the MSM about the bill, and all of them so far have had headlines and ledes that have mischaracterized it, always in the same way. A USA Today piece by Kirsten Powers is typical of the genre. Headlined “Jim Crow laws for gays and lesbians?”, it says that the Kansas statute is a “bill protecting the religious freedom of businesses and individuals to refuse services to same-sex couples.” No, not across the board; the bill only applies to a refusal of services around the celebration of same-sex marriages.
Powers’ column at least goes on to speak mostly of marriage, although she never clarifies that the bill is limited to those services. She also confuses the fact that Christians may indeed choose to help perform or service the marriage of gay people with the fact that they should not be compelled by law to do so.
Also typical is this one from CNN, which begins this way:
Denying services to same-sex couples may soon become legal in Kansas.
House Bill 2453 explicitly protects religious individuals, groups and businesses that refuse services to same-sex couples, particularly those looking to tie the knot.
No, not particularly those looking to tie the knot. Only those looking to tie the knot. That’s a big, big difference.
The following was the wording of the bill, which occurs way way down towards the end of the lengthy CNN article, down where most people will not be reading it:
No individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender:
“Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.”
Anyone who turns away a gay couple not only can’t face a civil suit, but if anyone tries to sue, they could get nailed with the other side’s legal fees.
There are some small concession in the bill to gay couples.
If an employee at a nonreligious or government business refuses to serve a gay or lesbian couple for religious reasons, the manager is obligated to find another employee who will oblige.
It also explicitly says that the law does not authorize discrimination against anyone, including clergy, who performs or supports same-sex unions.
This, of course, is not analogous to refusing to serve a person because of his/her race or even because of his/her sexual orientation, although those are the analogies from the same-sex marriage lobby.
Christian belief does posit marriage as being between a man and a woman, and has for millennia, as has Western society as a whole. Until a few years ago very few people questioned that.
I’ve written before that I personally have no problem with gay people marrying. But I have a huge problem with compelling Christians to be part of such celebrations or face lawsuits or the loss of their businesses. And I have a huge problem with propaganda that misrepresents what those who oppose gay marriage are suggesting and why. But such propaganda doesn’t surprise me in the least, nor should it surprise anyone else.
About a year ago I wrote, in a lengthy piece about gay marriage:
I’m not personally a follower of a religion or religious subdivision that still subscribes to such beliefs in the literal sense. But I respect religious people and think I understand the reasons for their objections to same sex marriage. I believe that…SSM [same-sex marriage] is merely one step in a long “progressive” march towards the eradication of religion and/or its demonization (a word that has an ironic twist in this context, does it not?).
I see absolutely no reason to change my mind.
Absurd to have to discuss whether Hillary Clinton’s past is fair game if she runs in 2016.
The answer is “of course it is.”
And of course the press and the left knows this full well. The game being played is the usual one of setting up double standards for the different sides in terms of what’s allowed and what’s criticized. Part of this game is the simultaneous lauding of a Democratic member of a favored victim group (in this case, women) as strong and yet at the same time in need of special protection because of his/her victim status.
Obama has been the template. The only difference is the victim group in question; for Obama it’s African-Americans. Any discussion of his past (or any criticism of him at all, really) is racist, just as any discussion of Hillary will be sexist.
Count on it.
And count on the rules being reversed for Republican women and Republican African-Americans.