The Church of Obama

Another great read from Mark Steyn today at National Review Online:

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius, and many others believe in one-size-fits-all national government — uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment — and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.

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Obama: Birth control policy meets everyone’s needs

Via the Boston Globe, President Obama claims to have developed a compromise on the new HHS contraceptive regulations which conflict with religious liberty.

Capping weeks of growing controversy, Obama announced he was backing off a newly announced requirement for religious employers to provide free birth control coverage even if it runs counter to their religious beliefs. Instead, workers at such institutions will be able to get free contraception directly from health insurance companies.

So, in other words, organizations won’t be forced to buy insurance policies that include coverage of things they object to on moral grounds, those same organizations will “instead” be required to purchase policies that include coverage of things they object to on moral grounds.

Yeah, that’s completely different! Seriously, who’s going to buy this ridiculous line? There’s no difference, it’s pure semantics from the “Just Words” President. Employees will only “be able to get free contraception directly from a health insurance company” if their employer is paying for health insurance coverage from that health insurance company.

Companies that buy policies from insurance companies aren’t buying pieces of a policy, they’re buying a whole package of coverage. The package either includes contraceptives or it doesn’t. Using some accounting gimmick that says it’s “free” changes nothing.

President Obama versus religious liberty

A very strong statement on religious liberty today from Mitt Romney in the Washington Examiner:

President Obama versus religious liberty

The Obama administration is at it again. They are now using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.

….

My own view is clear. I stand with the Catholic Bishops and all religious organizations in their strenuous objection to this liberty- and conscience-stifling regulation. I am committed to overturning Obamacare root and branch. If I am elected President, on day one of my administration I will issue an executive order directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a waiver from its requirements to all 50 states. And on day one I will eliminate the Obama administration rule that compels religious institutions to violate the tenets of their own faith. Such rules don’t belong in the America that I believe in.

The America I believe in is governed by the U.S. Constitution and I will not hesitate to use the powers of the presidency to protect religious liberty.

….

What the Obama administration has done is indefensible. But this is about even more than President Obama denying America’s Catholics their constitutionally protected rights. This is about the preservation of our freedom. We must come together to make sure that these egregious violations of our Constitution do not stand.

The whole article is well worth a read.

Juan Williams turns into Al Sharpton

Though he’s on the left, so we disagree with Juan Williams on most issues, he’s always seemed like an honest and decent man. So it was pretty shocking to see this blatant play of the race card, full of Al Sharpton style demagoguery.

One part stood out as particularly ugly. Williams, reviewing his debate question to Newt Gingrich about Gingrich’s use of the term “food stamp president”, says:

He [Gingrich] used the same rhetorical technique of the segregationist politicians of the past: rejecting the premise of the question, attacking the media and playing to the American people’s resentment of liberal elites, minorities and poor people.

Really, Mr. Williams? Rejecting the premise of a question in a debate is a “segregationist technique”? Gingrich (who we do not support in the Republican primary) is offering ideas to help black young people. You may disagree with his ideas, but their intent is to try to help. Comparing a person to segregationists is just pure, unadulterated slander. It is disgusting and shameful what Williams wrote. Racism is evil. So is a false accusation of racism. Mr. Williams owes Mr. Gingrich an apology and a retraction.

Cain on Romney and religion

Herman Cain on the latest media-generated controversy over Mitt Romney’s religious views (via NRO):

Herman Cain refused to wade into the controversy over whether it is accurate to call Mitt Romney a Christian or not.

“I’m not running for theologian in chief,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union this morning. “I’m a lifelong Christian and what that means is one of my guiding principles for the decisions I make is I start with do the right thing. I’m not getting into that controversy. He’s a Mormon. That much I know. I’m not going to do an analysis of Mormonism vs. Christianity for the sake of answering that.”

Funny, the media seem to be much more concerned with this type of question than they were in the last presidential election cycle when Racist Reverend Wright’s parishioner was running.

Cain answered the question the way it should be answered, which is not to answer it. Theological differences are as old as religion. But they have no place in a political campaign. Values are a separate issue. It matters greatly if a candidate for office accepts or rejects America’s traditional Judeo-Christian values. But people with very different theological views can and do advocate the right values. All the candidates should follow Cain’s lead and refuse to play the media’s game.

On a related note, it was unfortunate to hear some conservatives, most notably William Bennett, attribute what is a legitimate theological debate to bigotry. Perhaps he meant only that it was bigotry in the context of whether to support a political candidate. In any case, theological differences are not bigotry. Bennett should know better than to use that kind of left-wing “argumentation” style.

Dog bites man: President Obama “comfortable” with higher taxes

From the NY Times:

President Obama said on Thursday that he was “comfortable” with a Senate proposal to pay for his jobs legislation with a tax surcharge on income above $1 million.

“I’m fine with the approach they have taken,” Mr. Obama said when asked at a news conference about the tax proposal put forth by Senate Democrats to cover the $445 billion cost of a jobs proposal that the Senate is expected to take up soon. The bill would, among other features, seek to stimulate the economy by lowering payroll taxes on workers and employers.

Mr. Obama, who previously had suggested paying for the jobs bill by limiting the value of deductions taken by households earning more than $250,000 a year, said the alternative offered by Senate Democrats would also meet his objective of “asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.”

This is a real “dog bites man” story. Of course he’s comfortable with it. We can’t imagine any plan to take more of other peoples’ money that would make the president uncomfortable.

And let’s note again that Obama and the Democrats (in and out of the media) still haven’t offered any definition of what constitutes a person’s “fair share” of taxation. The working definition seems to be “more”.

Bill Clinton wants more credit

So Bill Clinton is complaining that he’s not getting enough credit for his record as president?

OK, let’s apply the George W. Bush standard (as devised by liberals):

• The NASDAQ peaked in January 2000 at 4572.83
• The NASDAQ closed Friday (11 years later!) at 2,415.40
• If President Bush was responsible for the housing bubble crash, then Clinton was responsible for the NASDAQ tech stock bubble crash, right?

Why conservatives don’t hate Warren Buffett

E.J. Dionne’s columns don’t offer much in the way of argument or information, but they are valuable as a window into the mind of the left. For example, his column from the Washington Post website on September 28th, titled “Why conservatives hate Warren Buffett“.

Maybe only a really, really rich guy can credibly make the case for why the wealthy should be asked to pay more in taxes. You can’t accuse a big capitalist of “class warfare.” That’s why the right wing despises Warren Buffett and is trying so hard to shut him up.

But conservatives don’t hate Warren Buffett, they disagree with Warren Buffet on the issue of tax rates. And no one is trying to shut him up. It’s pure psychological projection from Dionne, who obviously hates conservatives. He doesn’t offer any evidence in the whole column, none, to back up his assertion that conservatives hate Buffett or anyone else, or that anyone is trying to shut him up. But this is pretty much an article of faith on the left – they’re motivated in large measure by hate, envy, and anger, so they just assume we on the right are motivated by the same emotions.

What’s really bugging Dionne is the fact successful Americans aren’t giving enough of their earnings to the government, and that anyone dissents from the idea that they should give more to the government.

Wealthy people, by definition, have done better within this system than other people have. They ought to be willing to join Buffett and Edwards in arguing that for this reason alone, it is common sense, not class jealousy, to ask the most fortunate to pay taxes at higher tax rates than other people do. It is for this heresy that Buffett is being harassed.

Wealthy people, by definition, do not put their money under a rock, they use it for all sorts of things – they invest in new or existing businesses, they pay employees, they purchase goods and services from other businesses, they give to charity – but Dionne and his fellow leftists don’t think any of that counts. Their comments suggest that only money given to the government counts as contribution to society.

Washington Post offers press release for White House “deficit plan”

In the “news” item from the Washington Post about President Obama’s latest iteration of his same old “deficit reduction” plan, the hackery begins right up top in the title: “Obama’s debt-reduction plan: $3 trillion in savings, half from new tax revenue“.

And the item begins:

President Obama will announce a proposal on Monday to tame the nation’s rocketing federal debt, calling for $1.5 trillion in new revenue as part of a plan to find more than $3 trillion in budget savings over a decade, senior administration officials said.

….

About half of the tax savings would come from the expiration next year of the George W. Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy.

But of course, raising taxes is not “savings”. The whole thing is written using Democratic Party language and talking points – “tax savings”, “tax cuts for the wealthy”, etc. The only thing missing is the official DNC logo at the top of the page.

Paul Krugman and the Flag Burners

There’s been a good amount of reaction to the blog post put up by Paul Krugman at the NY Times today. There’s been less reaction to the story that’s linked below Krugman’s on memorandum as I write:

A group of Muslim protesters set fire to an American flag outside the US embassy in London during a minute’s silence to mark the moment that the first hijacked airliner hit the World Trade Center 10 years ago.

You expect some Muslims fanatics to burn a US flag somewhere on any given day. You expect some irrational, angry leftist like Paul Krugman to post some irrational, angry bile on a day like today. So we don’t get particularly shocked or outraged by either event.

We tend to agree with William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

That’s how they feel, so in a sense I’m glad Krugman gave voice to it on this day. They can’t stand the fact that the attacks on 9/11 proved that their world view was wrong, and every mention of 9/11 is like a thorn in their political sides.

Clarity about how leftists like Krugman think and what they believe about America is important, especially important as we approach an election year. We should encourage them to be as open and honest about their real views as possible.

Update: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air isn’t outraged either:

It’s nothing Krugman wouldn’t say (and probably does say) the other 364 days out of the year, and Krugman says it in pretty much the same vacuous manner of the everyday sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome. After reading this, you seriously have to remind yourself that the New York Times pays Krugman to write it; this wouldn’t even pass muster for a Letter to the Editor at most newspapers. It’s so trite, sad, and cliched that it’s hardly worth the effort to rebut. He’s mailing this in from 2003. It’s as if Krugman hasn’t bothered to think about 9/11 in the past ten years at all, which says a lot more about Krugman than it does about 9/11.