Obama’s Foreign Policy

The cartoon below from Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily aptly and hilariously sums up American foreign policy under President Obama.

Enjoy, but not too much!

The Unintended Consequences of Health Care Reform

These days, further discussion of our hapless health care reform law is the one, sure-fire way to make bile rise in the back of my throat. But two stories caught my eye on this Palm Sunday that require me to pen yet another post on health care reform.

So, unless you’ve been enjoying the craggy environs of Tora Bora, you probably know that the Democrats successfully passed the remainder of their massive health care overhaul last week. And less than 48 hours later, we are already beginning to see some of the unintended consequences of their short-sightedness.

First, the AP tangles with effects of expanding coverage, and the toll it will inevitably take on our Nation’s shortage of doctors.

Better beat the crowd and find a doctor.

Primary care physicians already are in short supply in parts of the country, and the landmark health overhaul that will bring them millions more newly insured patients in the next few years promises extra strain.

[Link]

Second, an often overlooked point about expanded insurance coverage is that much of the responsibility for expanded coverage falls on U.S. companies that are already struggling in the midst of a grueling recession. Again, the AP notes:

The health care overhaul will cost U.S. companies billions and make them more likely to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees because of a change in how the government subsidizes those benefits.

[Link]

These two examples of unintended consequences really get at the broader problem of collectivism: any universal action by government takes a toll on the liberty interest of the individual.

Regarding the doctor shortage, the Democrats’ premise of expanding access to quality care naively assumed that there was enough quality care to go around. This simply is not the case, given that only  30% of all doctors in the U.S. practice as primary care physicians. Unsurprisingly, the anticipated influx of new patients into doctors offices, is forecasted to put a major strain on doctors and their staff, reducing the overall quality of care.

The prescription drug benefits issue, admittedly, gets a bit into the policy weeds. The phrase “prescription drug benefits” alone is enough to make the eyes glaze over. But the problem cited by the companies is significant. The new health care law forces businesses to pay taxes on all government subsidies received for providing prescription drug benefits to current and retired employees. While this may not seem like a big deal, the rule change has dire financial implications for some of our Nation’s biggest employers. For instance, just this weekend, AT&T announced that the new rule would cost it around one billion dollars per year, forcing it to consider changes to employee benefits. It is estimated that upwards of 2 million employees could have their prescription drug benefits scrapped entirely.

Apparently, in the Democrat mind, nothing says affordable, quality care quite like driving up costs, while reducing benefits.

Bottom line. Our recent government takeover of health care means that more people are forced to pay for crummy, expensive health care benefits. Sadly, I suspect that the externalities above are just the tip, of a very big ice berg.

Mac is Back – in Tucson!

Arizona Sen. John McCain was in Tucson this afternoon for a campaign rally with former running-mate Sarah Palin. Yours truly was stuck in class, and unable to attend the festivities. By most accounts, it was quite the shindig.

[Link]

Admittedly, I’m biased. But what’s stunning to me is that there was even a need for Sen. McCain to return to Tucson at all. I’m not railing against the primary process. It just strikes me that McCain’s record of service as a four-term Senator and former GOP Presidential Candidate – as opposed to J.D. Hayworth’s cringe-inducing ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff - would make the primary a no-brainer.  Alas, such is life…

Anyway, here’s hoping that today’s rally struck some chords, and that Arizona Republicans send Sen. McCain back to the United States Senate.

What Did Pope Benedict XVI Know?

The AP ran a troubling story yestderday afternoon, implicating Pope Benedict XVI in the latest sex abuse scandal to hit the Catholic Church.

The allegations, if true, imply that then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger knew of abuse allegations surrounding a Wisconsin priest who molested some over 200 children - but did absolutely nothing about it.

[Link]

The problem for the Vatican - not unlike the White House - is really its lack of accountability and transparency. People tend not to trust institutions that run for cover whenever a dark cloud hangs over head.

The New York Times makes the point crystal clear:

Pope Benedict XVI’s latest apology for the emerging global scandal of child abuse by predatory priests — an issue that the Roman Catholic Church should have engaged years ago — is strong on forgiveness but far short of the full accountability that Catholics need for repairing their damaged church.

[Link]

To wit, the Church has done precious little in explaining its actions in a widespread scandal that should never have happened.

Given the brouhaha, it's clear that papal Infallibility has its limits. But the obvious responses is that the Church policy of silence on this matter should end. It's time for the Pontiff to tell us what he knows.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Information Superhighway: Under Deconstruction

The New York Times Magazine ran a surprisingly intelligent article over the weekend, highlighting the piecemeal nature of modern composition. The essay rambles a bit, covering everything from politics to Lady Gaga, but the central premise is basically consistent throughout: our culture is going to hell in a hand basket, and its mostly the web’s fault.

Regarding the apparent social ‘cyberbalkanization’ caused by the internet, author Michiko Kakutani made the following observation:

THE WEB’S amplification of subjectivity applies to culture as well as politics, fueling a phenomenon that has been gaining hold over America for several decades, with pundits squeezing out reporters on cable news, with authors writing biographies animated by personal and ideological agendas, with tell-all memoirs, talk-show confessionals, self-dramatizing blogs and carefully tended Facebook and MySpace pages becoming almost de rigeur.

[Link]

Having concluded that all of modern composition is essentially subjective, Kakutani goes on to make cursory observations about deconstruction generally, questioning whether today’s writers and artists too often produce for the sake of an audience, rather than for the sake of producing.

A few thoughts.

The social concerns raised in the piece are legitimate. Ours is an increasingly atomized society. And, increasingly, we have the electronic tools to maintain our isolated status quo. Consider the recent web sensation Omegle. Omegle is a website that allows users to to chat anonymously with a complete stranger. The site functions not only in an instant messaging venue, but also as live, streaming video theater, courtesy of the webcam mounted atop your laptop. Moreover it’s free! In fact, there is no sign-up process, no wait period, and no restrictions. Anyone in the world can amble on to the site at any time, and the sky is absolutely the limit as to what conversations can transpire. Perhaps more troubling is that there are no social ties or attachments to the person with whom one is communicating, and not even the basic courtesies of human interaction are present through the emotional firewall of the computer.

Granted Omegle runs a bit afield of modern composition, but the points about subjectivity and cyberbalkanization are present in the example. The web tends to allow its denizens to engage in conduct that races to the social lowest common denominator. From hate speech on blogs, to copyright infringement and plagiarism in books, like Omegle, our social boundaries tend to break down on the information superhighway.

But the more interesting question that the piece fails to address is whether this phenomenon is really anything new.

Kakutani makes much hay about the polarizing tenor of our political discourse. But social factionalization has been alive and well from the earliest days of our Nation’s founding. In fact, the first newspapers in these States United were mom and pop operations devoted to partisan rancor, and fulminations on issues of the day – proof that even MSNBC, Rachel Madow and Keith Olbermann have their betters. And even while our pundits have become almost celebrity personalities in their own right, a comparison of the language then versus some of the most ardent language now shows that the extremes tend to change little over time.

As for cyberbalkanization, it seems equally plausible that Kakutani gets it exactly wrong. Perhaps we are not becoming more isolated, but maybe we have simply replaced “social balkanization'” with its cyberspace iteration. Prior to the advent of mass transit, people tended to travel little. And while families may have once ventured forth to conquer the American west, they almost always tended to settle once they reached a habitable place – the Indians be damned. Once settled, the central unit of life tended to be the micro-level family - as opposed to the macro-level social units of city, state, and nation. Given this, balkanization would tend to be the historical norm for society, not an aberration as Kakutani suggests.

Finally, Kakutani’s discussion of modern composition and its increased digitization, identifies a truly modern animal – but one with only baby teeth. Never before has information been so widely accessible, and so easily lifted and passed off as one’s own. But ultimately this has had little effect on book publishers’ willingness to publish and sell books. For better or worse, Random House and Harper Collins are still publishing the latest David Sedaris. And while book sales declined last year, the dip seems consistent with the rest of the economy. All of which is to suggest that the printed word remains alive and well, contemporaneous methods of plagiarism notwithstanding.

What Kakutani really suggests is that the problem of digitization is the way in which it herds society into processing information piecemeal. But the problem of course is that information is by definition piecemeal. Kakutani does little more than state the obvious. Given a static essay, blog post, or news article, what more can the reader do - whether in print, on-line, on Amazon’s Kindle - than deconstruct it bit by bit? Deconstruction does not mean that the printed word is dead, or that society’s thinking has been inexorably altered. It simply means that given a static piece of information, individuals will interpret the data. This is not a new construct of thinking, but a window into how the mind works.  

In the end, our alleged, modern dilemmas described by Kakutani, can be pithily dismissed by the ancient wisdom of King Solomon: “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1.9). Apparently, we moderns have our betters too. 

Boehner’s Ultima Ratio

Yesterday evening, House Democrats voted to supplant the will of the American people for the hubris of Nancy Pelosi, quite nearly making Obamacare the law of the land.

[Link]

But as the vote drew to a close, the moment was not without high political theater. And perhaps most surprisingly in the age of Twitter, it was not without rhetorical eloquence.

Knowing that Speaker Pelosi had her votes well in hand (thanks to Congressman Stupak’s capitulation), House Minority Leader John Boehner took to the floor of the United States House of Representatives, offering a last stand eloquent enough to make Daniel Webster himself rap his cane upon the House floor.

After discussing the past year of half-hearted bipartisanship, Boehner described the rub of Obamacare’s passage:

"Today we stand here amidst the wreckage of what was once the honor and respect that this House was held in by our fellow citizens. And we all know why it is so. We have failed to listen to America. And we have failed to reflect the will of our constituents."

Boehner’s remarks will doubtless garner little in the way of media attention. In fact, with the health care bill nigh the law of the land, his remarks may well be relegated to the Congressional record, tucked away in the musky corner of history. Yet, rarely has an American politician spoken so forcefully on a matter of such consequence.

And so, for the sake of posterity, Leader Boehner’s last stand appears in full below.

Stupak’s Dance with the Devil

With the Democrats health care monstrosity all but passed, it is worth taking a look at the deal made this afternoon between Congressman Bart Stupak and the White House.

A quick recap, Stupak and his ‘pro-life’ cohorts had long been holdouts on the Democrat health care reform bill, wielding enough influence to leave Speaker Nancy Pelosi just shy of the votes necessary to pass the Senate bill via reconciliation.

Today, however, presumably to assuage the concerns of ‘pro-life’ Democrats, Rep. Stupak reportedly secured an Executive Order from President Obama to limit taxpayer money for abortions – a limitation that runs flatly against the provisions of the Senate bill which expressly provide for taxpayer funded aborting. The move clears the way to passage of the Democrats health care reform bill.

[Link]

Aside from the obvious compromise of principle, the first problem for Rep. Stupak is that he is relying upon the word of the most pro-choice President in American history to protect the unborn - a point eloquently made by Congressman Pitts of Pennsylvania.

Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., added that pro-life Democrats should be alarmed by a promise coming from a politician with a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.

"This puts the fate of the unborn in the hands of the most pro-abortion president in history," he said.

Naturally, there is reason to doubt whether the President will keep his word, given how deftly the President manages not to keep his word. But the greater concern may be that Stupak was obliged to cave at all. How viable over the long-term is the pro-life Democrat in a party that would effectively force one of its own to vote against one’s core principles?

In all, today’s vote and the circumstances that precipitated it were troubling. Stupak may have gained the admiration of his Democrat colleagues by handing them a win at the expense of the unborn. But what does it profit a man to gain the world, yet forfeit his soul? (Mark 8.36).

Bill Maher on Love

Normally, I find paint drying on the wall more entertaining than the comedy of Bill Maher.

But his column discussing spring and love over at the Huffington Post is too funny not to commend for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

[Link]

Obama’s Health Care Denouement

Since returning from the seashores of Old Mexico (see the music video here), the lone topic dominating the American media has been the same topic that has dominated the American media since the Dems bungled attempts to pass health insurance reform last summer.

According to Politico, the President delivered his ‘closing argument’ on health care reform to the American people earlier this morning:

Obama backed away from the statistics and put a human face on his signature domestic policy initiative. He invoked the stories of the people he met in the homestretch of his health care campaign: Leslie Banks, a single mom from Pennsylvania whose insurance company doubled her premiums; Laura Klitzka, who beat her breast cancer but her medical bills landed her in debt; and Natoma Canfield, who wrote a letter to Obama about how her rate hikes forced her to give up her insurance coverage.

“The time for reform is now,” he said. “We have waited long enough. In just a few days, a century-long struggle will culminate in an historic vote.”

[Link]

If this is the President’s closing argument, then I’m not sure it bodes well for proponents of health care reform.

This gets a bit into the weeds of persuasive communication, but the rule of thumb is that if one has the facts and law to make one’s point, then it is best to advance arguments putting forward the facts and the law. On the other hand, if one hasn’t the facts and the law, then one makes an appeal to the emotions of the audience in hopes of persuading them that yours is the better argument normatively even if the facts and the law do not bear out your position.

Here, the President cited little in the way of statistics, cost projections, and the consequences of a government-run insurance exchanges - for instance, mightn’t it be cheaper for small businesses to incur a government penalty, than to actually provide insurance to employees?

The President’s remarks are, however, quite heavy on sob stories (not that they aren’t compelling) and laden with emotional appeals. The leap of logic being ‘we should do something, look at all of these woebegone people who need our Government’s help’; as opposed to looking at the big picture of what would actually happen if the Dems were successful in their attempts.

Final Answer?

Regardless, according to Speaker Pelosi, we should know the outcome Sunday. But the problem with having so truncated a timeline is that it obliges vulnerable Democrats to support a measure that some 55% of the American people oppose. And the problem with supporting something that 55% of the American people oppose is that it tends to make vulnerable Democrats about as popular as the President.

Naturally, most of the Blue Dog Dems are not so masochistic as President Obama. The latest whip count shows the measure failing by at least six votes on Sunday. This includes switches from this morning by Congressmen Boccieri and DeFazio.

Finally, there is also the question of whether this is really the end of the health care debacle at all. Senate Republicans have signaled a “two-fold” attack on the House bill in hopes of making it a political liability for the Democrats in the fall.

The goal would be a) to drag out the process, or b) to prevent the bill from coming to the Senate at all.

First, if the House bill passes on Sunday, it goes to the Senate for consideration. Then, any changes made to it in the Senate would ultimately send the bill back to the House for its consideration. This becomes increasingly likely given the disparities between the measures’ abortion provisions, and the potential “sidecar” bill being considered by House Democrats to eliminate the Senate’s more permissive funding of abortion.

Second, if the Bill passes the House, then Senate Republicans can (viz., will) use procedural rules to argue that the House bill cannot be ‘reconciled’ with the Senate measure. This strategy involves using the Senate’s arcane reconciliation rules that forbid changes to Social Security. Senate Republicans will argue that the House bill affects Social Security (which it does), and, therefore, cannot be reconciled with the Senate bill. Such an invocation of the rules would require a 60 vote majority to waive objections. And the Dems haven’t 60 votes thanks to Sen. Scott Brown. The strategy is summarized neatly in the link below.

[Link]

In all, this may be little more than President Obama’s ‘closing argument’ to his penultimate denouement.

Dispatches from Rocky Point

The tide is rolling out here in Rocky Point, leaving ripples of sand set in orderly phalanx standing firm against the mighty sea. Naturally, our trip has been most agreeable, and we have the tanlines to prove it.

With any excursion out of the country, one cannot help having certain reflections about the differences between hither and yon. In stark contrast to Tucson, here in Puerto Panesco, every day is a party. The hotels and condominiums lining the oceanfront cater particularly to the college student spending spring break here on Rocky Point's pristine sands. Music blares pop and hip hop music circa 1998, while the odd drunk frat brother bellows catcalls toward the nearest bikini clad coed.

But this is the point really. Puerto Panesco typifies the college spring break experience. For us non-collegians, we've sampled the local fare, enjoying shrimp burritos seaside, and made a few purchases at the city market - which ubiquitously sells the same trinkets. This too is part of the appeal. No one comes to Mexico for the quality shopping. One comes to Mexico for the experience, the warm, and the cheap drinks - all of which Mexico has in abundance.

In all, it has been a terrific trip, and a welcomed deviation from the Tucson norm. It reinforces the good commonsense of taking a break every now and again. And it makes one appreciate good company, kind friends, and new places. Muy bien!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Spring Break from Blogging

Apologies readers. No posts for a bit. The next few days will find me portside in sunny Puerto Penasco, Mexico.

On the kind invitation of a friend, the wife and I will make the trek into the Northwest Mexican State of Sonora for a couple of days hanging out at the beach.

Unless I wind up in a Mexican prison, yours truly should return to Tucson by Wednesday (it’s only a three hour drive from here – why didn’t I realize this as a 1L?).

For now, enjoy the photo at left. When I turn down my Corona at sunset I’ll think of my favorite readers. Adios!

Congress Takes on Earmarks, Kinda

Dartmouth Professor, and former Chief Economist of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Andrew Samwick made a quick post over at Capital Gains and Games flagging the Washington Post piece this morning on Congressional earmark reform.

Samwick notes:

It's not the $20 billion hit to the budget -- federal spending may not even go down if special interest projects are replaced by meritorious projects. It is the lack of transparency and the potential for corruption that is the problem

[Link]

In my brief stint on Capitol Hill, earmark reform was often a bitter point of contention in our office. One project I had was to research the amount of money earmarked for a particular project over a ten year period. The earmark was obviously beneficial only to the denizens of the earmarking Senator’s state, and over a ten year period the sums appropriated added up to a staggering figure.

This is not to say that earmarks are the inheritance of only one party. The issue is a problem for both sides of the aisle with most Democrats and many southern Republicans, having long used the earmark as a means of manipulating the Federal fisc to deliver for the home state or district.

But the problem with the Democrats plan in the WaPo is that it singles out for-profit companies as the bulwarks of corruption. But this only gets at half the equation - consider the ACORN saga as the obvious example of non-profit earmarking corruption. In turn, House Minority John Boehner proposed a ban on all earmarks, both for-profit and non-profit, as a means of balancing the ledger.

The issue with earmarks, as Samwick notes, is not so much one of economics as it is one of normative, good governance. How much faith can ‘we the people’ have in government, if our taxpayer dollars are buried deep in annals of ‘must-pass’ legislation, and allocated for the odd, wealthy donor?

We should probably have little faith in Washington anyway, but the point is that earmarks are a veritable cesspool for corruption - which is really saying quite a bit given that we are talking about the cesspool of cesspools of corruption, Washington, DC.

Lolcat of the Week

The lolcat of the week below, more or less, adopts my pessimistic view of life in toto. Enjoy!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Is Obama Trying to Ban Fishing?

UPDATE (3/10/2010): The Christian Science Monitor has more on the Obama Administration's Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force and its potential plans for our Nation's waterways.

According to CSM, the real concern for anglers rests the President's ties to 'anti-use' organizations, and their presumed representation on the President's Task Force:

But critics still worry about the Obama administration’s ties to environmental groups that espouse “anti-use” policies that put some habitats out of reach even for rod and reel fishermen, who take only 3 percent of America’s landed catch every year.

[Link]

The article adds some extra depth that the ESPN Piece lacked, but it still doesn't really get at the root of the issue: No one knows what the task force will actually recommend to the President. See below for more details.

Pax Plena (3/9/10): The Obama Administration has certainly made some questionable policy choices over its year and a quarter in office. But rumblings about the President’s new Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, and its plans to potentially ban fishing on our Nation’s public waterways absolutely takes the cake.

According to ESPN:

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

[Link]

To be clear, neither ESPN nor the White House has specified what exactly the new federal strategy is. The news of the day is that the comment period closed, meaning that the public no longer has the opportunity to weigh-in on the task force's recommendations.

The problem, of course, is that the Administration has given no hint as to how wide the restrictions on fishing are that it is considering. But given the threat of a nuclear Iran, skyrocketing unemployment, and a deficit that seems to expand faster than Joe Biden’s ego, should the pressing issue of this Administration really be to ban/limit recreational fishing?

Politically, the move makes even less sense. In fact, it’s almost as if the President is bent on alienating every slumbering interest group that has yet to oppose him. The monstrosity we are calling health care reform, if rammed through the Senate, would effectively isolate 53% of the American people. Banning fishing on public waterways would not affect nearly so many people, but it might well generate nearly the same level of widespread opposition.

The real political problem is it creates a needless headache for a President that does not need needless headaches. What better way to reinforce the image of Obama as a big-government tyrant, than to…well, act like a big-government tyrant? If it walks like a duck, etc, etc…

More to the point, banning fishing is just bad policy. As the article notes, the science on the scope of overfishing on our public waterways is murky at best. This makes any ban little more than an ill-conceived exercise in conjecture - guesswork with the potential to affect millions of jobs dependent upon the recreational fishing industry.

Apparently, nothing says 'let's create jobs' quite like putting an entire industry out of work.

For Those Who Thought the Oscars Sucked

This video is for you. " A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever". Enjoy!

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

The Modern Persecution of Christians

The persecution of Christians almost seems an anachronism, hearkening back to the days of pre-Constantine Rome where the evil Emperor would cheerily send a believer to the lions with a quick thumbs up or down.

Today’s religious persecution is more often described as a form or religious ‘intolerance.’ The ACLU, for instance, has made much hay about the ‘stigmatization’ of Muslim groups by the U.S. Government.

But what one rarely hears discussed, at least until it reaches the headlines, is the quiet persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority nations. Sadly, one such example hit the wires yesterday.

According to the AFP, some 500 Christians were slaughtered by members of the Muslim, Fulani ethnic group near Jos, Nigeria. 

"People were attacked with axes, daggers and cutlasses -- many of them children, the aged and pregnant women."

[Link]

Surprisingly, the news has sparked relatively little outrage.

The CNN “top” headlines featured tornados in Oklahoma (no surprise there), the Oscars, and inexplicably, the long-dead Natalie Wood.  It also featured a lengthy piece on the Christian missionary who was arrested “on suspicion of kidnapping” Haitian orphans.

If one can draw any conclusion about the persecution of modern Christians from CNN, it is that such persecutions are relatively uninteresting. Apparently, 1 Christian, allegedly kidnapping 20 kids in Haiti, is much more attention grabbing than 500 Christians being slaughtered by Muslims in Nigeria. Even the AFP described the martyrdom as a mere “sectarian slaughter.”

There’s no deep point to be made here other than the obvious. But for a Nation such as ours, where fully 76% of the population pledges fealty to the Christian faith, surely the present-day persecution of Christians deserves more coverage than the Oscars.

Mountain Top Blogging

Today's post comes from a fairly novel place. My wife and I joined some friends for a hike up Wasson Peak in the Tucson Mountains.

Like most mountain top experiences, the view of the valley is much better from the top.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Dems Out of Touch on Jobs

Today, the Department of Labor released the latest jobs numbers from last month. Some 36,000 Americans received pink slips according to Government estimates in February.

Democrats reacted to the dire news with a hearty thumbs up!

On the floor of the Senate, Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid said:

"Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good," Reid said Friday on the Senate floor.

[Link]

Lost your job last month? Congratulations! According to Sen. Reid, that's really good news.

Sen. Reid's rhetoric offers zero consolation for the 36,000 Americans who joined the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed. The Democrats gross, political angling only underscores how out of touch Democrats are with the problems facing the American people.

With some 14.9 million Americans out of work, spinning unemployment figures as 'good news' is just crass - even for a partisan such as Reid. Unbelievable.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Heaven Via XKCD

I really, really, really hope that Heaven is a lot like this…

Via xkcd webcomics.

Obama's Health Care Flip Flop

The news wires are reporting that President Obama intends to use the controversial reconciliation budgetary process to ram his bloated health care bill through the United States Senate.

[Link]

The process essentially moves the goalposts closer for Democrats in the middle of the game. Rather than requiring them to get a super majority in overcoming the Republican filibuster of the bill, they now need only a simply majority to pass the bill using a budgetary mechanism that is reserved for passing massive omnibus budgets.

It's all inside baseball in some ways, but the difference is that rather than passing the health care bill with a meaningful consensus, the Dems plan will force a health care bill on the American people that most Americans do not want.

The move will surely bring its set of political perils for Democrats, but for our purposes it’s notable that the decision is inconsistent with what the President had previously said of the process.

As the video below demonstrates, in numerous instances, the President said that he would pass health care reform only if it was supported by broad consensus. Assuming what he said was true, it seems the Obama of today is more interested in playing politics than in building general agreement on an urgent issue.

The Tea Party Grows Up

Politico had an interesting piece this evening about the Tea Party Movement of Arizona and its refusal to endorse J.D. Hayworth in his GOP Primary bid to unseat Arizona Senator John McCain.

The telling quote from the article is below:

“The tea party is a non-partisan, grassroots movement that stands for limited government, free markets and fiscal responsibility. Both McCain and Hayworth’s records during their many years in Washington leave much to be desired on these issues,” said Robert Mayer of the Tucson Tea Party. “It is their job to hold themselves up to these values and fight for our votes.”

[Link]

In contrast to some of the protest rhetoric that came out last summer, this is the reasoning of a sophisticated political movement.

For starters, the Tea Party clearly allows room for political nuance in the positions of the respective candidates vying for its support. This is evident in its refusal to endorse either candidate - even though the obvious choice for the Tea Party would seem to be J.D. Hayworth and his anti-establishment rabble-rousing.

The reality, of course, is that Sen. McCain is in a much stronger position to actually deliver on the ideals the Tea Party Movement espouses. It's a difference between listening with one's heart and one's head. While Hayworth may appeal to the Tea Party base and its mad-as-hell heartstrings, Sen. McCain appeals to their better judgment.

The non-endorsement can be viewed, then, as a victory of sorts for Team McCain. The Senator's ads against Hayworth's spending proclivities, and Hayworth's questionable ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff are clearly making in-roads among the conservative rank-and-file.

More to the point, even the Tea Party seems to recognize that Sen. McCain will be in the best position to take on the Democrats' challenger, and defend his seat come November.

It seems our little Tea Party is finally growing up.

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Waking Up

This morning, I have a reaction paper to write for one of my classes that falls somewhere between two and four pages in length. Despite setting two alarms, in my sleep induced stupor, I have found ways to mysteriously disable both of them without fully waking up.

Needless to say, this week's reaction paper will probably trend more toward two pages, rather than four.

Fortunately, the web short below does an amazing job of capturing my feelings every time the alarm rings. Lest you become wary of an eight minute web video, the graphics are just outstanding and in hi-def.

Do yourself a favor: Bookmark it, revisit it, or just kill the eight minutes to check it out.