The Anchoress writes with her usual grace, this time about the turmoil in the Catholic Church over allegations of abuse coverups, and why she remains a Catholic nevertheless.
And what of the role of our friends in the media in this scandal about the Pope’s possible enabling of child-abusing priests? Here’s Britain’s Telegraph on the subject:
Did Joseph Ratzinger, when he was Archbishop of Munich in 1980, enable a priest already facing allegations to work in a parish and subsequently abuse boys? A headline in The Times on Saturday left readers in no doubt: “Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry.”…
Many Catholics ”“ and I am one of them ”“ believe that the Pope has been stitched up over this Munich case. The then-Archbishop Ratzinger did not allow a priest he knew to be a paedophile to continue in ministry. He gave permission for the priest ”“ a revolting pervert called Peter Hullermann, who was accused (but not convicted) of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform a sex act on him ”“ to receive counselling in Munich while suspended from priestly duties.
Without Archbishop Ratzinger’s knowledge, Hullermann was later transferred to parish duties. By the time he was convicted of sex offences, the archbishop had become Cardinal Ratzinger and had been working in the Vatican for several years…
The future Pontiff could have been more vigilant, but to bracket his delegation of decisions with Cardinal Brady’s complicity in a cover-up is unfair.
And then there’s one of our favorite newspapers (to fisk, that is), the New York Times. In its reportage on a different case of priestly pedophilia and allegations of coverup by the present Pope, the Times appears to have misrepresented the situation with what amounts to callous disregard for the facts. Read the whole thing.
Sexual abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church is and was all too real, and coverups were especially prevalent in decades past. That is a very terrible fact, and the Church still has very much to answer for in that regard. But—at least as far as the information obtainable so far goes—the current campaign to implicate the Pope smacks of agenda-driven overreach by the usual suspects at the MSM. Is it really any surprise?
…may not worry about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate, as he told Brett Baier. But it is heartening to learn that the majority of the American people still do:
A new Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans believes Democrats abused their power by using procedural shortcuts and controversial parliamentary tactics to pass the new national health care makeover…The poll asked, “Regardless of whether you favored or opposed the health care legislation Congress passed this past week, do you think the methods the Democratic leaders in Congress used to get enough votes to pass this legislation were an abuse of power or were an appropriate use of power by the party that controls the majority in Congress?” The results: 53 percent say the Democrats’ methods were an abuse of power, while 40 percent say they were appropriate.
Breaking down the results by party, 86 percent of Republicans say the Democrats abused their power, while 58 percent of independents agree. Nineteen percent of Democrats say their own leaders abused their power, while 70 percent say Democratic methods were appropriate.
The party breakdown is interesting as well. It follow the pattern of polls on many issues lately, with Independents siding largely with Republicans and the Democrats standing alone in a different universe. This was how the Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey and Massachusetts were accomplished. And this would be the required road if the Republicans are to win back the House and possibly even the Senate in 2010.
I take notes and write drafts for quite a few posts that never see the light of day. Some time ago—I think late in the 2008 presidential campaign—I noticed that then-candidate Obama almost never used the word “liberty” in his speeches. When I did an exhaustive search on it in preparation for a post I never did write, I found that, although “social justice” and “justice” and “fairness” came in for a lot of praise from Obama in his speeches, and “freedom” was mentioned now and then, “liberty” seemed to go missing for the most part.
In his scripted speeches, Obama tends to choose his words very carefully. So even back then I didn’t think that the paucity of references to liberty was an accident. Nothing that Obama has done since has convinced me otherwise; in fact, it has become increasingly clear that he believes that his version of social justice trumps liberty, and that he is determined to impose it on us whether we like it or not, and that he has the full cooperation of the Democratic Congressional leaders and almost all Democrat members of Congress in doing so—and that the rules that protect us from such encroachments on liberty are seen by them as annoying obstacles to be gotten around.
You can’t say Pelosi didn’t warn us. She made it crystal clear two months ago:
I am heartened by the fact that Americans appear to be aware of this willingness of Congress and the President to abuse their power. I am disheartened by the fact that the people seem more concerned with liberty than their own government is. But the Founding Fathers knew this might someday be the case. Let us hope that the safeguards they placed in the Constitution long ago will suffice to protect us now, and help us to protect ourselves. We will need every one of those safeguards.
I feel like I have a bit of a hangover from yesterday, even though I’m not a drinking woman. As I wrote in an addendum I just added to yesterday’s “In defense of Hank Johnson” post, while it’s a wonderful thing to be linked by such blogosphere luminaries as Instapundit and Powerline, it’s also true that the best April Fools jokes are unexplained as such.
But an awful lot of readers (both new and old) thought I was being serious in my fanciful riff on the Guam video, despite the date being April First, and despite my putting a reference to April Fools Day within the body of that piece in what I assumed would be a big hint. I really didn’t want to put a note in the post itself saying “ALERT: April Fools spoof!” (I thought that would ruin the joke), although such a message appeared many times in the comments section.
But people don’t always read the comments section, and many just didn’t remember that the date was April 1st. I waited till today to write this explanation, since April Fools Day is now over and now The Truth Can Be Told. So here it is: that post on Johnson was a spoof. Unfortunately, too many people may have already gone away thinking I’m some sort of weirdo who spreads unsourced rumors on a daily basis.
Nothing could be further from the way I usually operate (hey, did you hear about…?). Perhaps the problem is that the truths that actually did appear in my piece yesterday—(1) the video itself; (2) the fact that Willard had a role as consultant and actor in the movie “Top Gun;” and 3) the fact that Johnson is one of two Buddhists in Congress—were already sort of quirky. This was especially the case with the video, which should have been a joke but unfortunately was not (at least, not an intentional one).
Johnson has since said that he was offering a metaphor about Guam. I leave it to you to watch the video and judge whether that is true (I don’t think so). And another fact that came out is that Johnson has been suffering from Hepatitis C and its treatment, which can affect the mind. That is true, and I wish him well in fighting the disease. But if his mind is this affected, he needs to step down from his Congressional post.
And that’s no joke.
It strikes me that this year people just do not seem to be in a joking mood. I noticed fewer April Fool prank posts around the blogosphere yesterday than in previous years. Perhaps because the truth has become more like the Onion than any joke could be.
Maybe I should just give up April Fools pranking. Maybe I will.
By now you may have heard of a recent episode involving Congressman Hank Johnson, who represents the Fourth District of Georgia in the House, one of the most Democratic Congressional districts in the US.
Johnson has received a certain amount of ridicule for expressing his concern about what one might call the geographic stability of Guam (at 1:16 to 1:35 in this video):
However, I would like to offer a spirited defense of the unjustly-maligned Representative Johnson. First of all, although this is a little-known fact, he and Admiral Willard, the man he is questioning in the video, are old friends. They met in 1986 on the set of the film “Top Gun.” Willard was a consultant and actor in the film (you can look it up), but the telegenic Johnson also played a bit role in the film as one of the other pilots.
Willard and Johnson struck up an acquaintance on the set, finding that they shared a remarkable gift for deadpan humor. They developed a number of routines that had the other “Top Gun” actors and extras in stitches, and were both known for keeping a straight face throughout the silliest exchanges, a skill that served them remarkably well during their recent encounter in Congress.
One of their old routines involved a bit about landing an airplane on the island of Guam. The joke was about how small and narrow the island was, so thin it couldn’t even hold a runway, and so any landing might cause the whole island to tip over. It may not sound so funny in print. But it was Johnson and Willard’s delivery that made it so special.
The exchange you see in the video has been much criticized. But it has actually been widely misunderstood. That portion of the question-and-answer merely represents an updating of their old routine, with both Johnson and Willard playing their familiar roles. Note how deftly Johnson sets Willard up with classic comic timing, drawing it all out with lengthy emphasis on just how tiny the island is. Then, after Johnson expresses his concern that Guam just might tip over and capsize (this time because of added people, rather than an airplane), Willard responds with perfect composure and the straightest of faces, “We don’t anticipate that.”
Some have wrongly suspected the two of staging an April Fools’ prank. But that cannot be true, since it happened last Friday, well in advance of that date. No, it was just a bit of welcome levity from two old buddies, designed to lend a certain amount of lightness to these heavy and troubled times. How sad that such well-intentioned efforts have been so universally misconstrued.
[NOTE: One other factor that has not been taken into consideration is that, between college and law school, Hank Johnson apprenticed as a patisier in several swank French restaurants. As part of his trade, he became expert in the creation of the marvelous dessert Å“ufs é la neige, which in English is called “floating island.” Here’s a description:
Floating island is made of egg whites served floating on a milky custard sauce. Some variations uses a thicker sauce, served on top of the dumplings, but usually the milk mix is thin, almost liquid, and the dumplings “float” on top.
The egg whites are beaten with sugar and poured into a mould lined with a thin layer of caramel. Alternately, the whites can be shaped with spoons and allowed to cook gently in sweetened milk with vanilla flavoring. A custard is made using milk, sugar, vanilla, and egg yolks; the mix is cooked in a bain-marie for a few minutes, but must remain thin enough to pour. The custard is topped with the egg whites dumplings. The dish is served at room temperature or cold.
It is therefore even more understandable that the floating island theme has achieved such a prominent place in Johnson’s memory.
What’s more (as if any more vindication were needed), there actually are floating islands—although, sadly, Guam is not one of them.
Another interesting although highly unrelated and irrelevant fact is that Johnson is one of only two Buddhists in Congress. The other is Mazie Hirono of Hawaii—also not a floating island.]
[ADDENDUM and EXPLANATION: Okay folks. While it’s a wonderful thing to be linked by such blogosphere luminaries as Instapundit and Powerline (I welcome new readers and old), it’s also true that the best April Fools jokes are unexplained as such.
But an awful lot of readers (both new and old) thought I was being serious here, despite the date being April First, and despite my putting a reference to April Fools Day within the body of the piece in what I assumed would be a big hint. I really didn’t want to put a note in the post itself yesterday saying “ALERT: April Fools spoof!” (I thought that would ruin the joke) although such a message appears many times in the comments section. But people don’t always read the comments section, and many just didn’t remember that the date was April 1st..
I waited till today to write this explanation and place it within the body of the post, since April Fools Day is now over and now The Truth Can Be Told. So here it is: this is a spoof.
Unfortunately, too many people may have already gone away thinking I’m some sort of weirdo who spreads unsourced rumors on a daily basis. Nothing could be further from the way I usually operate (hey, did you hear about…?). Perhaps the problem is that the truths that actually did appear in this piece, (1) the video itself; (2) the fact that Willard had a role as consultant and actor in the movie “Top Gun;” and 3) the fact that Johnson is one of two Buddhists in Congress—were already sort of quirky. This was especially the case with the video, which should have been a joke but unfortunately was not (at least, not an intentional one).
Johnson has since said that he was offering a metaphor about Guam. I leave it to you to watch the video and judge whether that is true (I don’t think so). And another fact that came out is that Johnson has been suffering from Hepatitis C and its treatment, which can affect the mind. That is true, and I wish him well in fighting the disease. But if his mind is this affected, he needs to step down from his Congressional post.
Did anyone doubt that, emboldened by his “success” in passing the HCR legislation that America didn’t (and still doesn’t) want and that is likely to lead to greater financial ruin, Obama would be inspired to press a cooperative Democratic Congress to enact still more legislation that America doesn’t want and is likely to lead to greater financial ruin?
Well, if you doubted it for even a moment (and I doubt you did doubt it), then doubt no more:
“But what I’m not going to be dissuaded from is us going ahead and taking on these big challenges that are critical in terms of America’s long-term economic health.”
The president said specifically that it was important for Congress to move ahead with legislation on energy and immigration policy as well as financial regulatory reform.
Note the typically Orwellian assertion that the first two have anything to do with our economic health, except to undermine it.
“Legislation on energy”—one may assume that translates to cap and trade which Obama himself said (back in the days when he was still telling a little bit of the truth now and then) would “bankrupt” those who tried to build new coal plants as well as causing utility rates to “skyrocket.”
As for “immigration reform”—that of course is designed to lock in the all-important Hispanic vote as well as the larger purpose of swelling voter rolls by 2012, in order to counter the fact that everything Obama is doing will lose him votes with current American voters.
Don’t doubt for a moment that this is the plan. The only question is whether Democrats in Congress will follow their leader with the same rigid discipline (and disregard for America’s future) they showed in passing HCR.
But I think we know the answer. Now that they’ve given up listening to their constituents, and already have large targets painted on their backs, what have they got to lose by supporting him? So I wouldn’t count on a single Democrat to go against the president, Pelosi, and Reid (unless they’re not needed for passage of the bills), although I suppose it’s still possible that some may surprise us and become profiles in courage . But I, for one, would be shocked were that to happen.
The real question is what will the RINO Republicans do. The Republican Party ultimately held firm in opposing Obamacare, but will this rare moment of unity continue? Watch Lindsey Graham and see.
However, let us reflect a moment on the fact that the election of Scott Brown still might actually make a difference. He came to the Senate too late to fulfill his promise to block Obamacare, because Pelosi and Reid finessed him by letting the House vote in the already-passed Senate bill and end his ability to oppose cloture for HCR. But right now he still represents that 41st vote against cloture for new legislation such as immigration reform. If all 41 Republicans stand firm in their opposition, they could succeed—that is, unless Democrats try new tricks like the dread nuclear option.
Senate rules now in place forbid that from happening before a new session in January of 2011. But hey, rules are for suckers—and Republicans. Democrats now say they are meant to be broken.
It should come as no surprise that it was all just a diversionary smokescreen:
When you cut through the hoopla, here is what Obama’s announcement added up to:
* Cancelled five lease sales off the Alaska coast that were planned over the next 2 years. One of the areas is estimated to hold up to 77 billion barrels of oil, or more than 3 times US reserves.
* A study of the southern Atlantic OCS, with the findings due back next year….no leasing.
* Delayed a planned lease sale off Virginia until at least 2012.
This Politico article reflects a common theme among pundits and those in the political game, treating politics as a sport in which people like a winner. The theory goes that Obama’s victory in passing HCR should lead to a significant boost in his standing in the polls.
It’s true that people like a winner. And I have little doubt that the passage of HCR will improve Obama’s ratings with those liberals and leftists who were frustrated with Obama during the time it seemed as though the bill would never become law. But I cannot imagine why anyone with a grain of common sense would think that mere passage of what is perceived by many people to be a bad law would raise his stock in the eyes of those who oppose it.
The public likes strength in a president. But most Americans would like that strength to be marshaled against our enemies and to work on our behalf, not vice versa. We the people would like to be the judge of what would benefit us, not a government and leader perceived as increasingly out of control. Politics is not a game where it’s all about who wins a certain battle, although those who reflect on these things for a living might come to think so. But for most people, a win is only a win if we are in agreement with the goal.
One of the strongest Democrat memes is that, as people come to learn more about this bill, they will like it better. That has not panned out at all so far; quite the opposite has been true. Of course, this doesn’t mean that things couldn’t reverse. But Democrats seem to underestimate the American public, assuming that all most people care about is immediate gratification: bread and circuses.
Obama pollster Joel Benenson certainly thinks so:
…[He] predicted the plan would grow in popularity over time, as the public learned it included a ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and helped seniors close the “doughnut hole” of prescription drug costs not covered by Medicare.
“When it comes to health care and insurance, once reform passes, the tangible benefits Americans will realize will trump the fear-mongering rhetoric opponents are stoking today,” he wrote.
I like to think that most Americans are not children in a toy store, looking at the shiny objects and coveting them no matter what they cost. Of course, some people operate just that way. But perhaps not as many as Obama and the Democrats are counting on. Amazingly, quite a few citizens take the long view and realize that such entitlements and perks must be paid for, and that we are in a financial crisis that only promises to get worse as already-existing entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security increase the number of their beneficiaries at the very same time that the number of working people to pay for them decreases as a proportion of the total population.
That’s not rocket science, it’s common sense. But common sense is something that political pundits, Democrat politicians, and our president seem to lack. Or perhaps their goals are not our goals.
So many states are fighting Obamacare in the legal arena because they are already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and they know this law and its demands will push them right over the precipice. That is one of the dirty secrets of passing a mandate like Obamacare during a financial crisis like this one, requiring that the states expand their Medicaid coverage to include those who earn 133% of the poverty level.
This is a first: to establish a universal floor for eligibility that applies to all states. There is an additional new requirement that childless adults be covered in all states; this was not a mandated category before Obamacare and will account for the bulk of the expansion. Florida, for example, estimates that its Medicaid rolls will expand by a whopping 50% at least as a result.
To do this, the bill promises to federally fund that expansion—but only until 2014. After that, the states will have to pay 10%, which may not sound like much but with the high cost of medical care it’s actually a big deal (Medicaid also covers dental benefits and nursing homes, the latter likely to be an even bigger cost in light of the aging boomer cohort).
Unlike Medicare, which is solely a federal program, Medicaid is a joint federal-state program. Each state operates its own Medicaid system, but this system must conform to federal guidelines in order for the state to receive matching funds and grants. The matching rate provided to states is determined using a federal matching formula (called Federal Medical Assistance Percentages), which generates payment rates that vary from state to state, depending on each state’s respective poverty level. The wealthiest states only receive a federal match of 50% while poorer states receive a larger match.
Medicaid funding has become a major budgetary issue for many states over the last few years, with states, on average, spending 16.8% of state general funds on the program. If the federal match expenditure is also counted, the program, on average, takes up 22% of each state’s budget.
States must follow federal guidelines and cover certain populations, but they have quite a bit of leeway about the details of how they will do so: for example, managed care vs. fee for service. The states facing financial ruin would like to trim their Medicaid budgets. The prospect of Medicaid cuts at the state level is not a pretty one. But neither is bankruptcy at the state level (not to mention the federal level).
Obamacare takes away the ability of the states to balance their budgets in this way. Obamacare tries to squeeze blood from stones. How can a state cut its budget in the face of these burgeoning requirements? The federal government can laugh at the idea of balancing its own budget—for a while, that is. But states are unable to print money or borrow vast quantities from China, and are therefore more restrained by reality.
One can see this phenomenon as a small fractal of the policies that led us here in the first place. Increased benefits lead to increased debt, and the federal government cannot bail the states out indefinitely. We are running out of “other people’s money” at both state and federal level, and yet not only cannot give up any of our entitlements but instead are actually bent on expanding them. It’s a spiral that, if continued, has no possible end except astronomical taxes or runaway inflation or bankruptcy—perhaps all three in due time.
This may come back to haunt the Democrats; I certainly hope so. We’re always told not to sign a contract without reading and studying every word. Well, HCR was one whopping big contract that the Democrats signed by proxy for the American people, on the advice of slick con artists Pelosi and Obama.
Under ordinary circumstances a great deal of time would have been taken for the task of designing a major bill with huge consequences for the public and the economy. But Obama and Pelosi and Reid couldn’t risk taking that time; they didn’t want the voters or the leaders’ Congressional underlings to read it and figure out what might actually happen as a result. So no real debate, no Republican input, and no care was taken. The bill seemed to spring fully-formed from some leftist bureaucratic Zeus’s head.
But all of the deliberation and conferencing that were bypassed for this law aren’t ordinarily entered into merely to create some nicey-nicey bipartisan cover, but to actually iron out legislation that might make sense, be coherent, and do what it’s intended to do. The lengthier and more deliberative process at least has a chance of protecting we the people from those who pass the laws on our supposed behalf. But the focus for this particular bill wasn’t so much on what it would say or what it would actually do to the public or the economy, but on constructing it in such a way as to game the CBO system and get the votes in Congress.
Now we discover embarrassments involving who may get subsidized and how much they will have to pay anyway (Althouse thinks Americans will “freak out” when they find out), who is exempt from paying the individual mandate penalty (hint: maybe Muslims), how the bill will hurt large corporations such as Caterpillar and Deere and AT & T and make them lay people off, and how much uncertainty the whole thing will add to the economy (economies don’t like uncertainty).
Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or “political.”…
What’s more, now that the CEOs are objecting, the Democrats would like them to shut up about it:
Democrats don’t like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet …
The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don’t make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.
This highlights the abysmal economic ignorance of the Democrats in Congress, as well as that of our very own president. They don’t seem to recognize that there is a financial reality that cannot be stopped by spin and words (although spin and words can get bad legislation passed by “hiding the decline”), that once this bill is actually let loose on our gasping and choking economy there will be actual real consequences in the actual real world, and that these things will not be hidden or blocked by Obama going out on the road again to tell us, as he pisses on our leg, that in fact that wetness we’re feeling is just the gentle touch of a soothing rain.
[NOTE: You might call the revelations of these unintended economic consequences a kind of poetic justice—as in Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings“:
…
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!]
…wears the strangest tennis outfit I’ve ever seen in my life.
This is a good example of a fashion principle I’ve noticed: if a woman isn’t naturally a girly-girly sort, ruffles or bows or glitter will not make it so. Much better to stick to something more streamlined and classic, which can be feminine without looking like you’re trying too hard.
