Must Read: Rep. Paul Ryan explains the urgent need to defeat the health care bilI

Via Robert Costa at National Review Online's "health care vote" blog:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, tells NRO...

“There are some issues where Republicans say ‘just let [Democrats] vote for it, so we can get a political advantage and pick-up seats. This is not one of those cases. This is a moment where we really want to do everything we can to defeat this. We fear that if you turn on this new entitlement than it will be virtually impossible to turn it off. The earliest you could do anything to change this would be in 2013, if there is a new president and if Congress is controlled by Republicans. Those are a lot of ifs. We believe that this is a major moment for America in determining whether or not America slips down the path toward becoming a social-welfare state or whether we can reclaim the ‘American idea’— the principles of a free-market democracy that has sustained us for so long. We really believe that this is one of those moments. This is the biggest vote that Congress will have taken since 1965. It’s the biggest program Congress has created since 1965. And, this is, in many ways, all the marbles. We want to defeat this thing and I am more than happy to help a Blue Dog Democrat get re-elected if that means he or she votes against this bill. It’s more important to me to defeat this bill than to defeat a particular Democrat. This is bigger than a seat in Congress.”

AND

“Congress historically underestimates the cost of these kinds of programs... I have no doubt in my mind that we’re creating a brand-new entitlement. That majority knows that... This bill, under whatever analysis you look at, all say that health-care premiums will go up. This bill will deprive choices for many Americans. It will encourage employers to dump their employee health-care programs...The rude awakening is coming. When the American people start losing their employer-sponsored health insurance, seeing the cost of their health-care premiums skyrocket, and losing their ability to shop freely in the market for health-care plans, it will be a real shocker to people once they realize the scale of this. They’ll realize all of this by 2010.” The Blue Dogs must know this, right? "That's what amazes me," says Ryan. "The Blue Dogs know this, they see it, they sense it, but Speaker Pelosi is very good at this. She's keeping them in town and she's surrounding them with people who tell them what they want to hear, saying things like 'you got to do this, it's good for the party,' 'the worst thing politically is to not do anything,' etc."

AND

“The Democratic leaders here have been waiting their entire adult lives for a moment like this,” says Ryan. “This is a ‘destiny moment’ for them. This is a chance to fulfill their ideological ambitions. In a strange way, I respect it. I respect the fact that they had the courage of their convictions. The big problem I have with it is that their convictions are completely antithetical to the principles that built this country. They’re completely antithetical to the whole notion of free-market democracy that has made America the greatest, most exceptional country in the world. They’re determined to do this. It’s all about ideology. This is not about the best health policy, it’s about ideological conflicts.”

Must Read: Bishop James Conley lays out the case against the current health care reform bills

James Conley (Auxiliary Bishop, Denver) has published the most lucid and persuasive explanation of the U.S. Bishops' opposition to the current health care reform bills that I have come across yet.

I have highlighted in red the passages that particularly captured my attention:

With more than 620 Catholic hospitals serving the public around the United States, hundreds of Catholic medical clinics and shelters, and even a few Catholic-affiliated medical schools, Catholics have a keen interest in healthcare reform. That interest isn’t new. It’s rooted in experience, including the experience of trying to help people with little or no health insurance at all. For decades, the U.S. bishops have pushed for an overhaul of our nation’s healthcare industry and the way it delivers its services. Why? Because the Church sees access to basic health care as a right and a social responsibility, not a privilege.

But Catholic support for the general principle of reform does not bind anyone to endorse a specific piece of legislation. God gave us brains for a reason, to think; and we need to use them, because the practical and moral problems we face on the way to good healthcare reform are as formidable as the goal is admirable. This is why the U.S. bishops’ conference has tried so diligently for the past three months to work with Congress and the White House in seeking sound compromise legislation. As of November 5, all those efforts have failed.

The bishops have a few simple but important priorities.

First, everyone should have access to basic health care, including immigrants. The Church would hope to see that access broadened as widely as possible. But at a minimum, it should include those immigrants who live and work in the United States legally.

Second, reform should respect the dignity of every person, from conception to natural death. This means that the elderly and persons with disabilities must be treated with special care and sensitivity. It also means that abortion and abortion funding should be excluded from any reform plan, no matter how adroitly the abortion funding is masked. Whatever one thinks about its legality, abortion has nothing to do with advancing human “health,” and a large number of Americans regard it as a gravely wrong act of violence, not only against unborn children but also against women.

Third, real healthcare reform needs to include explicit, ironclad conscience protections for medical professionals and institutions so that they cannot be forced to violate their moral convictions.

Fourth—and this is so obvious it sometimes goes unstated—any reform must be economically realistic and financially sustainable. We can’t help anyone, including ourselves, if we’re insolvent. If we commit ourselves to health services, then we need to have the will and the ability to really pay for them. That’s a moral issue, not simply a practical one.

Note that these priorities do not attack the constitutional status of abortion. That’s a different battle. Nor do they take anything away from people who regard themselves as pro-choice. But they do protect the rights of the many, many citizens who see abortion as tragic and evil, and refuse to be implicated in supporting it.

Given the broad Catholic support for some kind of comprehensive healthcare reform, the historic links of the Democratic Party to the Catholic community, and the party’s total control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the reform legislation actually moving through Congress as I write these comments on November 5 is not only inadequate and baffling, but insulting and dangerous.

With the exception of a few leaders, like Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak, Congress has ignored or rejected every attempt at resolving the serious concerns voiced by the bishops—or alternately, has pushed solutions like the Capps Amendment that do not solve the problems, and even create new ones. The White House has done nothing to intervene. “Common ground” thinking in Washington apparently has more reality as public relations than as public policy. And as a result, all of the main healthcare reform proposals in Congress, including the huge, 2,000-page merged House bill, are fatally flawed. Unless they are immediately and adequately amended, they need to be opposed and defeated.

For all of Congress’ public talk about “consensus building” and “consensus health care,” Washington has proved once again that hearing loss can be job-related. Most American Catholics, from people in the pews to pastors and bishops, want healthcare reform to work. But too many people in Washington don’t know how to listen, or don’t want to listen, or just don’t care.

Source: First Things

WELL DONE, BISHOP CONLEY!

H/T American Papist

Bishops Call on Catholics to Oppose Health Care Reform Bills

The U.S Bishops issued the below bulletin insert this past weekend. The House is expected to vote on the "Pelosi" Bill this Saturday.

USCCB NATIONWIDE BULLETIN INSERT

Tell Congress: Remove Abortion Funding & Mandates from Needed Health Care Reform Congress is preparing to debate health care reform legislation on the House and Senate floors. Genuine health care reform should protect the life and dignity of all people from the moment of conception until natural death. The U.S. bishops’ conference has concluded that all committee approved bills are seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them.

Our nation is at a crossroads. Policies adopted in health care reform will have an impact for good or ill for years to come. None of the bills retains longstanding current policies against abortion funding or abortion coverage mandates, and none fully protects conscience rights in health care.

As the U.S. bishops’ letter of October 8 states:

“No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. It is essential that the legislation clearly apply to this new program longstanding and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates, and protections for rights of conscience. No current bill meets this test…. If acceptable language in these areas cannot be found, we will have to oppose the health care bill vigorously.”

For the full text of this letter and more information on proposed legislation and the bishops’ advocacy for authentic health care reform, visit: www.usccb.org/healthcare.

Congressional leaders are attempting to put together final bills for floor consideration. Please contact your Representative and Senators today and urge them to fix these bills with the pro-life amendments noted below. Otherwise much needed health care reform will have to be opposed. Health care reform should be about saving lives, not destroying them.

ACTION: Contact Members through e-mail, phone calls or FAX letters.

• To send a pre-written, instant e-mail to Congress go to www.usccb.org/action.
• Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at: 202-224-3121, or call your Members’ local offices.
• Full contact info can be found on Members’ web sites at www.house.gov & www.senate.gov.

Continued

House health care reform bill to create 111 new federal bureaucracies

...and we all know that once a federal bureaucracy gets created, it is almost impossible to get rid of it.

What a nightmare!!

From website of the House Republicans:

The House Republican Conference has compiled a list of all the new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs created in H.R. 3962, Speaker Pelosi's government takeover of health care:

1. Retiree Reserve Trust Fund (Section 111(d), p. 61)

2. Grant program for wellness programs to small employers (Section 112, p. 62)

3. Grant program for State health access programs (Section 114, p. 72)

4. Program of administrative simplification (Section 115, p. 76)

5. Health Benefits Advisory Committee (Section 223, p. 111)

6. Health Choices Administration (Section 241, p. 131)

7. Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman (Section 244, p. 138)

8. Health Insurance Exchange (Section 201, p. 155)

9. Program for technical assistance to employees of small businesses buying Exchange coverage (Section 305(h), p. 191)

10. Mechanism for insurance risk pooling to be established by Health Choices Commissioner (Section 306(b), p. 194)

11. Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund (Section 307, p. 195)

12. State-based Health Insurance Exchanges (Section 308, p. 197)

13. Grant program for health insurance cooperatives (Section 310, p. 206)

14. "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321, p. 211)

15. Ombudsman for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321(d), p. 213)

16. Account for receipts and disbursements for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 322(b), p. 215)

17. Telehealth Advisory Committee (Section 1191 (b), p. 589)

18. Demonstration program providing reimbursement for "culturally and linguistically appropriate services" (Section 1222, p. 617)

19. Demonstration program for shared decision making using patient decision aids (Section 1236, p. 648)

20. Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicare (Section 1301, p. 653)

21. Independent patient-centered medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302, p. 672)

22. Community-based medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302(d), p. 681)

23. Independence at home demonstration program (Section 1312, p. 718)

24. Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research (Section 1401(a), p. 734)

25. Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission (Section 1401(a), p. 738)

26. Patient ombudsman for comparative effectiveness research (Section 1401(a), p. 753)

27. Quality assurance and performance improvement program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1412(b)(1), p. 784)

28. Quality assurance and performance improvement program for nursing facilities (Section 1412 (b)(2), p. 786)

29. Special focus facility program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1413(a)(3), p. 796)

30. Special focus facility program for nursing facilities (Section 1413(b)(3), p. 804)

31. National independent monitor pilot program for skilled nursing facilities and nursing facilities (Section 1422, p. 859)

32. Demonstration program for approved teaching health centers with respect to Medicare GME (Section 1502(d), p. 933)

33. Pilot program to develop anti-fraud compliance systems for Medicare providers (Section 1635, p. 978)

34. Special Inspector General for the Health Insurance Exchange (Section 1647, p. 1000)

35. Medical home pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1722, p. 1058)

36. Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1730A, p. 1073)

37. Nursing facility supplemental payment program (Section 1745, p. 1106)

38. Demonstration program for Medicaid coverage to stabilize emergency medical conditions in institutions for mental diseases (Section 1787, p. 1149)

39. Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (Section 1802, p. 1162)

40. "Identifiable office or program" within CMS to "provide for improved coordination between Medicare and Medicaid in the case of dual eligibles" (Section 1905, p. 1191)

41. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Section 1907, p. 1198)

42. Public Health Investment Fund (Section 2002, p. 1214)

43. Scholarships for service in health professional needs areas (Section 2211, p. 1224)

44. Program for training medical residents in community-based settings (Section 2214, p. 1236)

45. Grant program for training in dentistry programs (Section 2215, p. 1240)

46. Public Health Workforce Corps (Section 2231, p. 1253)

47. Public health workforce scholarship program (Section 2231, p. 1254)

48. Public health workforce loan forgiveness program (Section 2231, p. 1258)

49. Grant program for innovations in interdisciplinary care (Section 2252, p. 1272)

50. Advisory Committee on Health Workforce Evaluation and Assessment (Section 2261, p. 1275)

51. Prevention and Wellness Trust (Section 2301, p. 1286)

52. Clinical Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1295)

53. Community Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1301)

54. Grant program for community prevention and wellness research (Section 2301, p. 1305)

55. Grant program for research and demonstration projects related to wellness incentives (Section 2301, p. 1305)

56. Grant program for community prevention and wellness services (Section 2301, p. 1308)

57. Grant program for public health infrastructure (Section 2301, p. 1313)

58. Center for Quality Improvement (Section 2401, p. 1322)

59. Assistant Secretary for Health Information (Section 2402, p. 1330)

60. Grant program to support the operation of school-based health clinics (Section 2511, p. 1352)

61. Grant program for nurse-managed health centers (Section 2512, p. 1361)

62. Grants for labor-management programs for nursing training (Section 2521, p. 1372)

63. Grant program for interdisciplinary mental and behavioral health training (Section 2522, p. 1382)

64. "No Child Left Unimmunized Against Influenza" demonstration grant program (Section 2524, p. 1391)

65. Healthy Teen Initiative grant program regarding teen pregnancy (Section 2526, p. 1398)

66. Grant program for interdisciplinary training, education, and services for individuals with autism (Section 2527(a), p. 1402)

67. University centers for excellence in developmental disabilities education (Section 2527(b), p. 1410)

68. Grant program to implement medication therapy management services (Section 2528, p. 1412)

69. Grant program to promote positive health behaviors in underserved communities (Section 2530, p. 1422)

70. Grant program for State alternative medical liability laws (Section 2531, p. 1431)

71. Grant program to develop infant mortality programs (Section 2532, p. 1433)

72. Grant program to prepare secondary school students for careers in health professions (Section 2533, p. 1437)

73. Grant program for community-based collaborative care (Section 2534, p. 1440)

74. Grant program for community-based overweight and obesity prevention (Section 2535, p. 1457)

75. Grant program for reducing the student-to-school nurse ratio in primary and secondary schools (Section 2536, p. 1462)

76. Demonstration project of grants to medical-legal partnerships (Section 2537, p. 1464)

77. Center for Emergency Care under the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (Section 2552, p. 1478)

78. Council for Emergency Care (Section 2552, p 1479)

79. Grant program to support demonstration programs that design and implement regionalized emergency care systems (Section 2553, p. 1480)

80. Grant program to assist veterans who wish to become emergency medical technicians upon discharge (Section 2554, p. 1487)

81. Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (Section 2562, p. 1494)

82. National Medical Device Registry (Section 2571, p. 1501)

83. CLASS Independence Fund (Section 2581, p. 1597)

84. CLASS Independence Fund Board of Trustees (Section 2581, p. 1598)

85. CLASS Independence Advisory Council (Section 2581, p. 1602)

86. Health and Human Services Coordinating Committee on Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1610)

87. National Women's Health Information Center (Section 2588, p. 1611)

88. Centers for Disease Control Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1614)

89. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Office of Women's Health and Gender-Based Research (Section 2588, p. 1617)

90. Health Resources and Services Administration Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1618)

91. Food and Drug Administration Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1621)

92. Personal Care Attendant Workforce Advisory Panel (Section 2589(a)(2), p. 1624)

93. Grant program for national health workforce online training (Section 2591, p. 1629)

94. Grant program to disseminate best practices on implementing health workforce investment programs (Section 2591, p. 1632)

95. Demonstration program for chronic shortages of health professionals (Section 3101, p. 1717)

96. Demonstration program for substance abuse counselor educational curricula (Section 3101, p. 1719)

97. Program of Indian community education on mental illness (Section 3101, p. 1722)

98. Intergovernmental Task Force on Indian environmental and nuclear hazards (Section 3101, p. 1754)

99. Office of Indian Men's Health (Section 3101, p. 1765)

100.Indian Health facilities appropriation advisory board (Section 3101, p. 1774)

101.Indian Health facilities needs assessment workgroup (Section 3101, p. 1775)

102.Indian Health Service tribal facilities joint venture demonstration projects (Section 3101, p. 1809)

103.Urban youth treatment center demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1873)

104.Grants to Urban Indian Organizations for diabetes prevention (Section 3101, p. 1874)

105.Grants to Urban Indian Organizations for health IT adoption (Section 3101, p. 1877)

106.Mental health technician training program (Section 3101, p. 1898)

107.Indian youth telemental health demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1909)

108.Program for treatment of child sexual abuse victims and perpetrators (Section 3101, p. 1925)

109.Program for treatment of domestic violence and sexual abuse (Section 3101, p. 1927)

110.Native American Health and Wellness Foundation (Section 3103, p. 1966)

111.Committee for the Establishment of the Native American Health and Wellness Foundation (Section 3103, p. 1968)

Political Cartoon: Health Care Reform and Abortion

I was pleasantly surprised to see this cartoon posted at the Chicago Tribune's website. The cartoon is by the Tribune's new (and only) in-house cartoonist, Scott Stantis.

Wow. Another conservative political cartoonist for Chicago!

Combine Mr. Stanis with the Sun Times' Jack Higgins and that makes Chicago two for two at its major newspapers. How many cities can say that!

NOTE: To see my previous post on Mr. Higgins' excellent new book, click here. For my post on Mr. Higgins' interview with the National Catholic Register, click here.

More Good Work Being Done By The Folks At Food-for-the-Poor

From the Food for the Poor website:

In the rural parts of countries in the Caribbean and Latin America, Food For The Poor is shedding light on the millions of people there who need help. It is common for the organization to ship food, clothing, and even medical supplies to these countries where children and families are often forgotten. Now there are dozens of tall stacks inside the organization’s warehouse with a new kind of donation – lighting.

The large shipments of fixtures will be going directly to the poorest parts of these countries where some may be receiving lights for the first time, or where the donated lights will be used to replace old, broken fixtures.

There are more than 21,000 lighting fixtures, on about 320 pallets, inside the Christian charity’s warehouse.

“For us, turning on a light means flicking a switch,” said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor. “Most people who live in the remote communities to which we travel do not have any power in their homes. There is no electricity. So, this new lighting will be going where people congregate, where they go for help, and where there is a power source in place. This large donation is intended to help the masses, and they will be grateful.”

The fixtures will be sent to at least 10 countries including Jamaica, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Trinidad and El Salvador. It will be primarily used by those running and serving the poor in institutions supported by Food For The Poor such as hospitals, clinics, schools and orphanages.
Food For The Poor, the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. We provide emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, visit www.foodforthepoor.org.

Wall Street Journal declares House health care bill "The Worst Ever!"

A year ago tomorrow, millions went to the polls in search of "change."

Many seemed oddly oblivious to the fact that the change being offered was somewhat ambiguous and that not all change is good.

Fast forward a year later.

Now, a lot of people (not a majority I grant you, but nevertheless a lot) are calling for health care "reform." And like a year ago, there seems to be an odd assumption that if it is reform, it must be good.

But, I must ask, are the supporters of the House health care bill really willing to trade away our individual liberty and the future prosperity of our nation in the name of this so-called reform?

If the average person calling for reform were to dig into the details of this House bill and really understand what is being proposed would he or she still support this plan?

The editors at Wall Street Journal have dug into the details, and what they have found is not pretty. Frankly, the details of the bill are downright frightening. This bill will fundamentally change the role of government in American society. And, not in a good way.

This editorial is a must read for anyone who cares about the future of this great nation, so I am posting the complete editorial below. Please forward to anyone who might be interested.

A vote on this bill is expected to happen sooner, rather than later. If you can find the time, call or write your representative in the Congress as soon as possible. If enough people contact them to oppose this bill, they will listen.

Here is the Editorial:

The Worst Bill Ever

Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.

•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges" where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.

At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this "firewall"—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.

Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.

• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.

As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.

Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint state-federal program—up from today's 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.

• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.

This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.

Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.

Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.

• The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.

The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.

The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.

***

All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.

October's Most Popular Post

During the month of October, the most popular post to All Hands On Deck! (based on post-specific visits) was my post: Rick Santorum: On President Obama, Conscience Clause Protections, and Belmont Abbey College.

If you have not yet read the post, you can read it here.

Three other posts I personally liked were:

a. Trace Atkins and the West Point Glee Club perform "Til The Last Shot's Fired." Found here.
b. BBC Reports that Global Warming Ended in 1998; Now Predicts 10-20 Years of Cooling. Found here.
c. Notable Film: "13th Day." Found here.

Past Winners:

September, 09: Bill Dempsey, ND '52, responds to Fr. Jenkins.
August, 09: Correspondence: A Letter to Notre Dame
July, 09: 41 st Anniversary of Humanae Vitae
June, 09: Catholic Ob-Gyn Discusses His Pro-life Medical Practice

The Politics of the Past

Daniel Henninger has an interesting piece out in the Wall Street Journal.

He notes that we are living in an amazing time marked by decentralization and increased individual choices. Yet, oddly, the Democrats are pushing centralization and decreased individual choice as the solution to a myriad of our nation's problems.

This approach, he argues, makes the Democrats (and President Obama despite his rhetoric) the party of the past, not the future.

An excerpt:

...I think what we are seeing with this massive legislation is that the Democrats in Washington have a bigger problem: Their party is looking so yesterday.

In a world defined by nearly 100,000 iPhone apps, a world of seemingly limitless, self-defined choice, the Democrats are pushing the biggest, fattest, one-size-fits all legislation since 1965. And they brag this will complete the dream Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1939.

The culture still believes the U.S. has a hipster for president. But the Obama health-care bill, and maybe this whole administration, is starting to look totally out of sync with the new zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

Everything about the health-care exercise is looking very old hat, starting with the old guys working on it. Max Baucus, Patrick Leahy, Pete Stark—all were elected to Congress in the 1970s, and live on as the immortals in Washington's Forever Land. But it's more than the fact that Congress looks old. The health-care bill is big, complex, incomprehensible and coercive—all the things people hate nowadays.

It's easy to make jokes about how insubstantial the millions of people seem to be who are constantly using technologies like Twitter. But these new digital and Web-based technologies, which have decentralized virtually everything, now occupy most of the average person's waking hours at work or at home. Mass media is struggling to stay massive in a world whose people want to break up into many discrete markets.

The one lump that won't change is government. Government in our time is looking out of it. It'd be one thing if government were almost cool in an old-fashioned way, but it's not. When everyone else's job gets measured by performance, its hallmark is malperformance—whether in Congress, California or New York.

We define the past 25 years in terms of entrepreneurs and visionaries in places like Silicon Valley who took a small idea and ran with it. Congress does the opposite. It take something already big . . . and make it bigger.

We've got Medicare for the elderly, with spending claims out to Mars, so let's create Medicare for All! One of the least noticed parts of the health-care legislation is its intention to make Medicaid even bigger, when Medicaid's cost is arguably the main thing destroying California.

There was a time when contributing to the common good meant joining something relatively small like the Peace Corps or Teach for America. Now it means being willing to just fall into line behind some huge piece of legislation.

Read Mr. Obama's speech last week at MIT on climate change: "The folks who pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized." This, ironically, sounds a lot like the 2007 antiHillary "Big Brother" TV commercial. Its message was that Hillary represented something big and ominously coercive. Boot up that ad now and put Obama's face where Hillary's is.

The larger point here isn't necessarily partisan. It's a description of the way people live their lives in a 21st century world, and how disconnected politics has become from that world.

If we were really living in the world of leading-edge politics that many people thought they were getting with Barack Obama, he would have proposed an iPhone for health care—a flexible system for which all sorts of users could create or choose health-care apps that suited their needs. Over time, with trial and error, a better system would emerge.

No chance of that. Our outdated political software can't recognize trial and error. What ObamaCare is doing with health care—the "public option"—may be fine with the activist left, but I suspect it's starting to strike many younger Americans as at odds with their lives, as not somewhere they want to go. Wait until EPA's ghost busters start enforcing cap-and-trade.

People thought something small, agile and smart was coming to government, but so far it's turning out to be just big-box politics...Full article

Free Speech = Hate Speech?

How do you get rid of free speech that threatens your agenda?

Label it "hate" speech and ban it. This approach is a common practice on university campuses; liberals are now trying to take it national by lobbying the FCC to crack down on "hate speech" on the airwaves.

Michelle Malkin writes in the Washington Times:

The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on "hate speech" over cable TV and right-leaning talk-radio airwaves. President Obama's speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige.

Over the past week, an outfit called "So We Might See" has conducted a nationwide fast to protest "media violence" - specifically, "anti-immigrant hate speech, which employs flawed arguments to appeal to fears rather than facts." Their ire is currently aimed at Fox News and conservative talk-show giants. But how long before they target ordinary citizens who call in to complain about the government's systemic refusal to enforce federal sanctions against employers of illegal immigrants or the bloody consequences of lax deportation policies....

BREAK

...Open-borders groups have sought to marginalize, criminalize and demonize those of us who have raised our voices for years about lax immigration enforcement - and to impose an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine-style policy on amnesty opponents. During the presidential campaign, the National Council of La Raza launched a "We Can Stop the Hate" project to redefine tough policy criticism from the right as "hate." La Raza President Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration-enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech should not be tolerated, "even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights," according to Broadcasting and Cable News.

Now the gag-wielders have a friend in the White House - and they won't let him forget it. Their FCC petition calling for a crackdown on illegal-immigration critics cites Mr. Obama's own words in a fall 2008 speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Mr. Obama told his amnesty-supporting audience that he knew they were "counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves."

Unsurprisingly, far-left billionaire George Soros' money is backing the So We Might See/National Hispanic Media Coalition effort. And remember that the Soros-funded Center for American Progress has provided the Obama White House with its Fairness Doctrine-embracing "diversity czar," Mark Lloyd.

Last week, United Church of Christ officials met privately with FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps in advance of the So We Might See campaign. Mr. Copps then delivered a lecture at the UCC's Riverside Church in New York City, expressing solidarity with the liberal church leaders' goals and egging the congregants to take action on "media reform": "We are taking huge risks with our democracy. We need to change that, and we need to do it now. We need to get a grip on what's happening, and we need to fix it."

Jeffrey Lord, who happens to belong to the United Church of Christ, reported in the American Spectator that not long after that speech, the UCC sent out a mass e-mail to its millions of members urging them to join the nationwide fast and regulatory drive. The church-state alliance missive directed its followers: "As a participant, you will be asked to sign a petition to the Federal Communications Commission asking that it open a notice of inquiry into hate speech in the media"..Full article

Are they insane? House health care bill weighs in at 1,990 pages!

1,990 pages? A cost of almost $1 trillion? Surely, they cannot be serious.

Why so complicated? One can only imagine the inane rules, hidden gimmicks and taxes, and special interest giveaways that populate the remote recesses of this bill.

Not to mention the $1 trillion cost. Many Americans worry that current Medicare and Social Security commitments are going to bankrupt the country. Now we are going to add another trillion dollars in obligations to the system?

And the Democrats are going to try to ram a monumental change like this through with no opposition party support and with a majority of Americans opposed?

Are the Democratic leaders in Washington insane?

80% of Americans are happy with their health care/insurance situation. Why not protect what they have first and foremost? Then, and only then, address the problems. In other words, do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Above all, keep the government out of it.

Why do the Democrats feel that every problem we have must be solved by massive government intervention and spending?

And, who in their right mind would propose this bill now, when the nation teeters on the edge of insolvency?

(Pictured above: House Minority Leader, Rep. John Boehner (R) with the Democrats' proposed health care bill- AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

====================================================

Here is a sobering analysis from James Capretta at the Corner (National Review Online):

...To sum it up, the House bill is nothing but a massive, uncontrolled federal entitlement expansion — at a time when the central, looming threat to the nation’s long-term prosperity is the unaffordable health-care entitlements already on the federal books. To create the impression of fiscal responsibility, the bill is jury-rigged with budget gimmicks, implausible eligibility rules, and arbitrary, government-dictated price controls — that have been tried repeatedly without success — to make it look like it costs “only” $900 billion over a decade.

Let’s start with the much ballyhooed effort to bring the costs of the bill down from the $1.5 trillion budget-buster which was introduced by House leaders in July. There are two significant changes from that earlier version. First, the bill simply drops altogether the repeal of the so-called “sustainable growth rate,” or SGR, formula. The SGR, ironically, is a product of just the kind of central planning that is at the heart of Obamacare. It was designed by the Medicare bureaucracy to control costs, but all it has done is cut doctors’ fees while volume soars. The scheduled cut in 2010 is for more than 20 percent. Everyone knows it must be fixed, but the full, ten-year costs of repeal approaches $250 billion. The Democratic solution? Repeal it separately from Obamacare — and borrow more. Presto. The House bill now “costs less.” The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the Obama budget will push the nation’s debt to more than $17 trillion in 2019, up from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008. It’s only a matter of time before that level of borrowing precipitates a crisis. The last thing our country needs is more unfinanced Medicare spending.

The second major change is a massive expansion of Medicaid, raising the upper income cutoff from 133 percent of the federal poverty line in the July bill to 150 percent in today’s version. According to CBO’s estimate of the plan released today, the total, ten-year cost of the higher Medicaid enrollment will be $425 billion. By 2019, some 50 million Americans will be enrolled in the program (and its companion program for children’s coverage), compared to 35 million under current law. Even before this massive expansion, CBO projected that the combined costs for Medicare and Medicaid would increase from 5.3 percent of GDP in 2009 to 9.7 percent in 2035. Adding more enrollment to Medicaid will only make matters much worse. Indeed, CBO acknowledges that the additional spending on Medicaid in the House bill is likely to increase at an annual rate of about 8 percent indefinitely. That’s not surprising. Medicaid spending has been escalating rapidly for nearly half a century, and the House bill does nothing to change the trajectory. It is true that Medicaid expansions appear to cost less than private insurance coverage, but that’s only because Medicaid shifts costs to private payers by underpaying doctors and hospitals.

Still, CBO’s cost estimate shows neutrality, at least on paper. How? There’s a new, nearly $500 billion income-tax increase, aimed at high-income households. Of course, many of these households own businesses, and so the Democrats are planning a heavy new tax on just the individuals who may be in a position to do some hiring in a recession.

Then there are the payment-rate reductions in Medicare and Medicaid, totaling more than $400 billion over a decade. The president and many other Democrats have claimed for months that they were going to make health-care delivery more efficient, thus painlessly finding new money to pay for more coverage. Nothing of the kind is in the House bill. Instead, there are scores of provisions that are essentially more of the same price-setting payment regulations that have failed so miserably in the past. They get scored by CBO, but that doesn’t mean they will happen. In fact, they have been tried countless times over the past quarter century, and have never worked to permanently slow the pace of rising costs. All they ever really do is shift more costs onto middle-class enrollees in private insurance.

There’s much else in this bill that would do great damage to the health sector and the American economy. Heavy payroll taxes that will reduce low-wage employment. Mandates on employers that will drive up costs and reduce wages. Intrusive federal bureaucracies that will come between patients and doctors. They can do a lot of damage in nearly 2,000 pages.

Fortunately, there remains one very powerful opponent to what House and Senate Democrats are considering — the public. Most Americans want no part of this massive liberal overreach. And there’s still time to put a halt to the madness. But the window is closing.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan: Anti-catholicism is alive and well

In his new blog, Archbishop Dolan writes that anti-Catholicism is alive and well in the United States. And he cites the New York Times as a repeat offender.

From his post:

...It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:

• On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.

• On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

• Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

• Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory...Full article

Father Robert Barron analyzes the contemporary vampire craze

Fr. Robert Barron of the Archdiocese of Chicago:



H/T Inside Catholic

For more commentary by Fr. Barron's (both written & video), visit his website, Word on Fire.

Afghanistan and Pakistan Burn; President Obama Fiddles

Two months have passed since General Stanley McCrystal requested the additional troops necessary to implement the new Afghanistan strategy announced (with great fanfare) by President Obama in March.

Still no response from the President.

The delay is embarrassing. Violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan is escalating, US troops are suffering increasing casualties, and the Commander-in-Chief is AWOL.

President Obama is entering his 10th month in office. Whole wars have been planned AND executed in 10 months.

To not have settled on a strategy for Afghanistan by now is unconscionable.

Coach Weiss and Coach Belichick sing backup to Bon Jovi

Is that Coach Belichick smiling and having a good time?

They might want to keep their day jobs!



H/T Irish Band of Brothers

Cardinal Francis George: Current health care reform bills are "unacceptable"

From the Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama may inspire near-worship among his fans, but he's struggling to win converts to ObamaCare. On Thursday, Cardinal Francis George, the Catholic archbishop of Mr. Obama's Chicago hometown, told us every one of the health-care reform bills passed by congressional committees allow for taxpayer funding of abortion -- and therefore are "unacceptable" to Catholics.

Cardinal George also serves as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, so his voice carries great weight in Catholic policy discussions.

The cardinal, in a visit with the Journal's editorial board, described his top priority for health-care reform: "Nobody should be deliberately killed." He added that his understanding is that President Obama has promised federal funding will not go to any health plans that cover abortion. "The President has made promises and the Democrats should keep them," said the cardinal...

It is fascinating that many of the leading Democrats say abortion will not be covered or funded by the health care reform bills, yet they have blocked all attempts to add an amendment to the bills that would specifically ban such coverage.

I smell a rat!

Congratulations, Jimmy Clausen!

The Sporting News has released its mid-season college football All-America team.

Jimmy Clausen of Notre Dame is the quarterback.

Congratulations, Jimmy!

(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Trace Atkins and the West Point Glee Club perform "Til The Last Shot's Fired"

Trace Atkins and the West Point Glee Club at the Country Music Awards this past April:



Source: GreatAmericans.com

NOTE: One of the things I love about Country Music is its heartfelt celebration of traditional American values - Family, Faith, and Patriotism.

Vatican announces mechanism for disaffected Anglicans to enter Catholic Church "en masse"

Fascinating news out of the Vatican today.

Damian Thompson of the Telegraph reports:

The Vatican has announced that Pope Benedict is setting up special provision for Anglicans, including married clergy, who want to convert to Rome together, preserving aspects of Anglican liturgy. They will be given their own pastoral supervision, according to this press release from the Vatican:

“In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.”

More on this very important story later. But this is clearly a historic gesture by Pope Benedict which will encourage thousands of disaffected Anglicans to become Roman Catholics.

Later in the day Thompson added the following commentary:

This is astonishing news. Pope Benedict XVI has created an entirely new Church structure for disaffected Anglicans that will allow them to worship together – using elements of Anglican liturgy – under the pastoral supervision of their own specially appointed bishop or senior priest.

The Pope is now offering Anglicans worldwide “corporate reunion” on terms that will delight Anglo-Catholics. In theory, they can have their own married priests, parishes and bishops – and they will be free of liturgical interference by liberal Catholic bishops who are unsympathetic to their conservative stance.

There is even the possibility that married Anglican laymen could be accepted for ordination on a case-by-case basis – a remarkable concession....Continued

For those interested in learning more, American Papist and the Anchoress have additional information and extensive links.

Majority of Americans oppose President Obama's "European" policies

Apparently many Americans are like I am and prefer our way of doing things to that of the Europeans.

From Michael Barone:

...Barack Obama's European tendencies aren't in doubt. His policies on government spending, taxation, health care and carbon emissions would all tend to bring America in line with European norms, to a far greater degree than any other president of the last 40 years and probably any president ever.

And what of America's special place in the world? "I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama said on one of his trips to Europe, "just as I suspect that Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Americans Like America

In other words, not at all. One cannot imagine Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Eisenhower or Reagan uttering such sentiments.

Obama told European Union parliamentarians in Strasbourg that he hailed "your dynamic union." But most Americans seem to have some vestigial knowledge that over the last 60 years, America has been more dynamic — economically, culturally, politically, militarily — than our friends across the Atlantic. And when presented with public policies that would make us more like Europe, Americans have tended to recoil.

Examples abound. Despite the recession, by about 50% to 40% Americans continue to prefer smaller government with fewer services to larger government with more services (June ABC-Washington Post and CBS-New York Times polls). Some 80% want the government to sell its interest in General Motors (July Rasmussen poll).

A 58%-35% majority says keep the budget deficit down even if it takes longer for the economy to recover (NBC-WSJ June). A 53%-33% majority opposes more government regulation of the finance sector (Rasmussen October).

As Europeanizing policies receive more attention, they become less popular. June's 50%-45% approval of Democratic health care proposals morphs to a similar margin of disapproval in October (Rasmussen). And satisfaction with one's own health care arrangements rises from 29% in 2008 and 35% in May 2009 to 48% in August (Rasmussen again).

European elites support gun control and curbs on carbon emissions almost unanimously. Americans don't — and are moving in the other direction.

Support for a handgun ban has fallen from 60% in 1960 and 43% in the early 1990s to 29% in May 2009 (Gallup). By 48%-34%, Americans believe global warming is caused by long-term planetary trends rather than human activity (Rasmussen April); in 2008 it was almost exactly the other way around.

European leaders agree with Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo detention facility. Americans disagree by 52%-39% (NBC-WSJ June). Europeans accept a large role for unions. American approval for labor unions fell from 59% in 2008 to 48% in spring 2009, by far the lowest figure since Gallup began asking the question in 1936.

Gallup reports that 39% of Americans this year say their views have grown more conservative, while only 18% say they have become more liberal...Full story

Another Radical in the White House?

Apparently Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director, is a big fan of Mao Zedong.

I guess I have been naive and thought the whole Communism thing had died out a long time ago. I guess the Obama Administration didn't get the memo.

Some insightful commentary appears below.

Roger Kimball at PajamasMedia:

Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not “progressives.” They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it.

Thanks to Glenn Beck, the American public has now been introduced to yet another radical member of Obama’s inner circle: Anita Dunn, Interim White House Communications Director, former top advisor to Obama’s political campaign, and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer.

In a speech before high school students last June, Dunn spoke passionately about her two favorite political philosophers, “the two people I turn to most” for answers to important questions like “how to do things that have never been done before.” Who are these paragons? One was Mother Teresa. Dunn didn’t have much to say about her. Most of her enthusiasm was lavished upon her other favorite fount of political wisdom: Mao Tse-Tung.

Mao Tse-Tung. That would be the deviant monster who, quite apart from his disgusting personal life, engineered the mass murder of anywhere from 50 to over 100 million people. Estimates vary so widely because murder on that wholesale scale is difficult to tabulate, especially in a country as backwards as China was under Mao’s long reign. But there is little doubt that Mao has the grisly distinction of being the greatest mass murderer in history.

Yet this is the man that one of Obama’s closest advisors commends to an audience with warmth and enthusiasm. In 1947, she tells her audience, Chiang Kai-Shek seemed to hold all the cards: he had the army, the airforce, and yet Mao went on to victory, telling people, as Anita Dunn told her listeners, “You fight your war and I’ll fight mine.”...

Victor Davis Hanson at the Corner:

I am not a big fan of saying that officials should resign for stupid remarks. But interim White House communications director Anita Dunn's praise of Mao Zedong as a "political philosopher" is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto.

Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag. Dunn's praise of a genocidal monster was no inadvertent slip: She was reading from a written text and went into great detail to give the full context of the remark. Moreover, her comments were not some student outburst from 30 years ago; they were delivered on June 5, 2009. Her praise of Mao's insight and courage in defeating the Nationalists was offered long after the full extent of Mao's mass-murdering had been well documented. Mao killed more people than any other single mass killer in the history of civilization.

So where do all these people, so intimate with our president (Dunn is the wife of his personal lawyer), come from? A right-wing attack machine could not make up such statements as those tossed off by a Dunn or a Van Jones. There seems to be neither a moral compass nor even a casual knowledge of history in this administration. And now we have the avatars of the "new politics" claiming it's okay to praise Mao's political and philosophical insight and his supposed determination ("You fight your war, and I'll fight mine") because Lee Atwater supposedly once evoked Mao too.

Ms. Dunn should simply duck out of her D.C. suburb and ask any Tibetan or Chinese immigrant in his 70s and 80s what life was really like in Mao's China.

In case you have not seen it, here is the video of Anita Dunn praising Mao Tse-tung followed by commentary by Glen Beck:

White House attempts to organize national news networks to shun Fox News

So much for free speech and a free press.

Is it me or is this administration attempting to stamp out dissent? First, they wanted Americans to spy on each other and report their fellow citizens to the White House if they had "fishy" views. Now, they want Americans to shun news organizations that do not toe the White House's party line.

This is the United States of America not Stalinist Russia. Or, Mao's China. But, I guess it kinda makes sense, given the fact that the White House Communications Director is a huge fan of Mao Zedong.

Next thing the radical leftists in the administration will attempt to put in place national speech codes like they have done on college campuses all over the country, where conservative views and thoughts are essentially banned.

The story:

The White House escalated its offensive against Fox News on Sunday by urging other news organizations to stop "following Fox" and instead join the administration's attempt to marginalize the channel.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox."

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization."

"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."

By urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama aides officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month, when White House communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news."

On Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace retorted: "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else."

The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."

"She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."

"Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong."

Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues."

Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House's decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: "I don't always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree."

David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: "I totally agree with Donna Brazile." Gergen added that White House officials have "gotten themselves into a fight they don't necessarily want to be in. I don't think it's in their best interest."

"The faster they can get this behind them, the more they can treat Fox like one other organization, the easier they can get back to governing, and then put some people out on Fox," Gergen said on CNN. "I mean, for goodness sakes -- you know, you engage in the debate.

What Americans want is a robust competition of ideas, and they ought to be willing to go out there and mix it up with some strong conservatives on Fox, just as there are strong conservatives on CNN like Bill Bennett."

Bennett expressed outrage that Dunn told an audience of high school students this year that Mao Tse-tung, the founder of communist China, was one of "my favorite political philosophers."

"Having the spokesman do this, attack Fox, who says that Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in her life, was not…a small thing; it's a big thing," Bennett said on CNN. "When she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, that -- I mean, that is crazy." ... Continued

Fr. Jenkins reelected to 2nd term by Notre Dame Board of Trustees

Needless to say, I disagree with this decision.

From the Notre Dame news release:

The University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees elected Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., on Friday (Oct. 16) to a second five-year term as president of the University, effective at the conclusion of his first term June 30, 2010, Chairman Richard C. Notebaert announced on behalf of the Board of Trustees.

“The vision and leadership that Father Jenkins has demonstrated in his first four years in office have been inspiring and innovative,” Notebaert said. “Building upon the foundation set by his Holy Cross predecessors, he is making the aspirations of this University a reality. The Fellows and Trustees look forward to continuing our work with him in service to Our Lady’s University.”...Continued

Notre Dame vs. USC

Let's get it on!!

Photo Matt Cashore/US Presswire

Weekend Humor

A funny one from over at Patrick Madrid:

While walking down the street one day, tragically, a US Senator is struck and killed instantly by a bus.

The senator's soul arrives at the entrance to heaven, where he is met by St. Peter.

“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “But before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we’re not sure what to do with you.”

“No problem, just let me in,” says the man.

“Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we’ll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.”

“Really, I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,” says the senator.

“I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.

Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people. They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne.

Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises…

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St Peter is waiting for him.

“Now it’s time to visit heaven.”... Continued

Cartoon: Afghanistan

Thought-provoking:

Source

Breaking News: "Notre Dame Pays Student Expenses to D.C. March for Gay ‘Marriage’"

From the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) website:

The University of Notre Dame gave financial assistance to five students to participate in Sunday’s national gay rights demonstration, which was organized in part to advocate homosexual “marriage,” a campus newspaper has reported.

The “National Equality March” on Sunday, October 11, in Washington, D.C., was sponsored by Equality Across America, which aims to build a national grassroots network asserting homosexual couples’ “right to marry” as well as other demands. The Catholic Church believes that marriage is possible only between a man and a woman.

“Faithful Catholics will ask whether Notre Dame has learned its lesson from the scandalous commencement ceremony last spring,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “What university seeking to reassure families of its Catholic identity would pay for students to attack the family and oppose Catholic teachings on marriage?”

Students from Notre Dame’s Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) petitioned the Student Activities Office and were granted funding to travel to and participate in the demonstration. The Notre Dame students marched two miles across D.C. and then joined gay rights activists for a Capitol Hill rally.

The president of the Progressive Students Alliance told The Observer, “The fact that we were University-approved was surprising but it was a wonderful surprise. The University hasn't always been entirely receptive in the past.”

Read The Observer’s article here.

H/T American Papist

BBC Reports that Global Warming Ended in 1998; Now Predicts 10-20 Years of Cooling

BBC News is reporting that global warming ceased in 1998, and that we are now entering a 10-20 year period of global cooling.

Take special note of the items I have highlighted in red:

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?...

BREAK IN TEXT

...What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years...Full Article

My Commentary:

My local weatherman (Tom Skilling at WGN, who really knows his stuff) has difficulty predicting temperatures in the Chicago area 7 days from now. So, why should I have any confidence in assertions by climate modelers that warming will resume in 10-20 years? Especially given the fact that they admit that their models did not predict this current period of cooling.

Columbus Day

American Catholic has a nice tribute to Columbus, a man of Catholic devotion, here.

As does the National Catholic Register, here (subscription only).

Notable Film: "The 13th Day"

The 13th Day, a new dramatic film about Fatima, premieres tomorrow on the 92nd anniversary of the final apparition.

Information about this fascinating new film can be found here.

Steven Greydanus recently reviewed the film for the National Catholic Register:

The 13th Day is the best movie ever made about Fátima — the most beautiful and effective, as well as one of the most historically accurate... Continued here (subscription only).

The trailer: