Obama's Big Health Care Speech

Before I get a chance to listen to my favorite radio pundits on the matter, I wanted to jot down my thoughts on the president's big speech last night to a joint session of Congress. I watched it with my wife, who is an insurance actuary, then got to hear it two more times while I was driving to and from a meeting with an old friend (more on that in a minute).

Overall it was a well-delivered speech, but then we've come to expect that from him, haven't we. One thing I liked about it was that he really has gone out on a limb with this issue. He was very aggressive in his speech; very demanding that Congress get this reform accomplished this year. He was forceful to the point that I remember thinking that if Congress does not get something big done, Obama is going to look impotent. To me, that's leadership. I don't agree with most of what he is saying, but I have to give the guy credit for standing on his principles and fighting hard for them.

One thing I did not like was his partisan tone and outright dismissal of those who have argued against the proposals now being created in the House of Representatives. Over and over again, while trying to come off sounding bi-partisan, Obama claimed that opponents of "his" plan were liars and driven only by political expediency. He gave no credence at all to the points they have been making for months, now. He also pointed the finger at Republicans as the source of these supposedly "wild" arguments, not acknowledging that his real fight is with conservative "blue dog" Democrats, not the Republicans. This is something some in Congress have been trying to do, blame Republicans for their problems even though they have the votes to do whatever they want.

On three separate occasions, Obama took a shot at the Bush administration, which I also didn't like. Presidents are supposed to be above that. Reagan never whined about Carter's screw-ups, and Bush 43 never complained about the deep recession he inherited from Clinton (you never hear about that anymore, do you?). Presidents should take ownership of their office and not look back. Play the hand you are dealt. Instead, Obama and many in his administration are still taking potshots, 7 months after arriving in office, at the outgoing administration. Give it a rest.

A Little Overheated

The speech was not boring, at least not until Obama started doing a eulogy of Ted Kennedy. At one point he did something that Bush 43 rarely did: Stood up to his critics directly. He got to this point where he had laid out all his big improvements to the system, then he paused and started acknowledging that people were arguing about them. At least he's seeing what's been happening at town halls around the country, I suppose. Anyway he started listing several of the major arguments against his proposals, calling each one of them "a lie." That's very aggressive for a president. He also disparaged those who have been pushing these arguments. The first one he attacked was the idea of "death panels," first propagated by Sarah Palin. I found his attack to be unbecoming of a president because, while he didn't name her (everyone knew exactly who he meant), he disparaged her as a person and her motives, neither of which he has any place to be doing. He should have mentioned it, disagreed with it, and let it go.

His next attack as "false" was the idea that illegal immigrants would be covered under this plan. He was very dismissive of the very idea, and conservative pundits have pointed out that in H.R. 3200, illegals WOULD be covered; further, that they had asked that liberals put in a specific statement saying that they would NOT be covered and they were denied. So when Obama attacked Sarah Palin, conservatives started making noise, aware that they were being targeted. When he called this illegal immigrant claim "false" and dismissed it, one congressman actually yelled "that's a LIE!" from off to the president's left. Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and V.P. Biden all turned toward the shout. Pelosi looked as though she would have throttled the congressman with her bare hands; she was VERY angry. I thought she reacted childishly, like the bully she is. Obama, for his part, recovered quickly and continued on, which I thought was good and proper. This is the major leagues, and this is an important and emotional issue.

Something for Conservatives?

Later, the president appeared to throw a bone to conservatives when he acknowledged that they wanted litigation reform in the package. His wording, though, was murky and he never said he supported it. The democrats complain constantly about "special interests" but they only mean "Republican special interests," never Democrat special interests, one of the most prominent being trial lawyers. It doesn't seem credible that he or any other Democrat would get behind reducing malpractice lawsuits; but we'll see. Obama also, I think, stunned everyone when he said outright that no federal dollars would be used to pay for abortions, and all "conscience" laws would be upheld and respected. There was stunned silence for a couple of seconds, then applause, I assume from conservatives. No liberal, and few Democrats, would applaud such an idea. Again, let's see if he means it.

Smoke & Mirrors

Obama talked a good game defending "his" plan, but as even Democrats involved in the process (Kent Conrad, for one) have stated, the president has no plan. What he has is an idea, a concept, a framework in his head. The real plans are being hammered out in Congress. It's these congressional plans that conservatives have been attacking and critiquing. So it seems really easy for the president to defend "his" plan by saying it will do everything and cost little; because when he defends it in a speech, it IS whatever he SAYS it is. It seems intellectually dishonest to me, sort of a "bait and switch" tactic. Obama sells this nice, shiny plan that people go "ooh" and "ah" for, knowing that what's actually being built in the factory isn't nearly as pretty.

Several of the things conservatives have opined on, which Obama attacked, were things that, as he rightly pointed out, are not actually in the bills being proposed. But he didn't acknowledge that they were things that could conceivably, even likely, come to pass should this legislation become law. "Death panels" are one example, but another is the idea that it's fair for the government to run a competitive enterprise against private insurers because the government's company will be self-sustaining, based only on premiums, never drawing money from taxpayers. Yes, this is in the bill (I assume). However, it seems highly unlikely that the company he describes could possibly stay solvent. If it doesn't, then what? Will they just let it go bankrupt? Or will we hear the "too big to fail" bit again, just like with FNMA, and pull taxpayer money to prop it up? The answer seems obvious. And if we can reasonably expect such a thing to happen one day, why is it not fair or correct to argue about it now, before this thing gets passed into law? Maybe there's a good argument that it WON'T happen. So make that argument. Just don't sit there and say "it's not in the bill so we shouldn't be debating it."

Parting Shots

My wife is a career actuary. She doesn't like the demonization of insurance companies and she doesn't see how Obama's proposed system will work, financially. She wonders why no one is attacking doctors or hospitals, who create the charges in the first place. Why all the fuss at insurance companies?

My old friend who I had a meeting with last night at the local hotel where he's staying, it turns out, is a management consultant specializing in health care. We had a long conversation about the whole plan and I learned a few things. One concrete thing he left me with was, "I GUARANTEE you there will not be a single-payer" system in place, which is what many conservatives fear and what Obama has said he wants. Also, my friend disagreed with something I told him I thought Newt Gingrich made a good point with, which was that instead of going for one gigantic bill, why not do it in small steps each year? Jeff said that has been tried and doesn't do anything. He pointed to HIPPA, a piece of legislation I'd never heard of but that he said passed 15 years ago, putting all kinds of rules in place for healthcare providers, and yet today there still is little compliance and no real change.

My best friend got bitten by a monkey during a vacation in Indonesia, and had to start rabies shots this past week. He went to the E.R. to get the first one, and a) his insurance company said they won't pay for it; and b) the hospital hit him with a bill for almost $9,000 for a single injection! My friend immediately got online and declared that he wanted socialized medicine.

This is one of the most contentious debates I've ever seen, rivaled only by the illegal immigration / amnesty fight from a few years ago. George W. Bush eventually backed away from that fight, but Obama seems to be pressing forward with this one. It will be interesting, if nothing else, to see how it all plays out in the next few months.

New Evidence for Liberal Scuminess

Miss California 2009

I've never in my life paid any attention at all to beauty pageants. It just doesn't interest me. But in the Miss USA pageant a few weeks ago, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, made headlines by daring to say - in public - that she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman. Think about that. In 2009, this is ACTUALLY a controversial subject. Where has this country gone in the last generation?

What happened was that (video here) she was leading the competition and entered a phase where you have to answer a question on your feet while the whole world watches. Now, when I grew up this was a big joke because the stereotypical question was something like "What do you wish for in the world" and the answer was something along the lines of "world peace." This is a famously ridiculous Q & A.

But this time, for some reason, the process went differently. Somehow, this gay activist, Perez Hilton (why name yourself after an amateur porno star? Doesn't that just make you look like a loser to start with?) got to be a judge, and was drawn to ask Miss Prejean her question, and it was, roughly, since Vermont is the 4th state to legalize gay marriage, do you think all the other states should follow suit? Without missing a beat (I've done this kind of Q&A before as an exercise, and I usually stall a few seconds at least), Miss Prejean answered that she was happy to live in such a wonderful country where we can actually HAVE such a choice and, no offense to anyone else, the way she was raised she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

That was about it. Tough question, very impressive answer. Whether you agree with her position or not is (should be) irrelevant. What is important here is that she gave a substantive answer to a difficult question and she did so quickly and thoughtfully, and was pretty articulate, too. She deserved high marks for her answer.

Wrong Answer

Of course, this was not how it went for her. She went on to get second place in the competition overall. Before even leaving the building, Hilton posted a video on YouTube where he ranted about her answer and basically what a low-life idiot she was. He called her "a dumb bitch" and said she deserved to lose because of her answer. Days later, he reportedly filed another video wherein he referred to her as a "c--t."

A few more days later, Keith Olbermann "interviewed" another gay columnist (video here) by the name of Musto on his nationally televised MSNBC show. The two of them played off of one another, going back and forth to see who could toss out the meanest insult at Miss Prejean. They sounded like two junior-high kids. Olbermann made several crude remarks about Miss Prejean's breasts, and then Musto said things like this: "This is the kind of girl who sits on the TV and watches the sofa. She thinks 'innuendo' is an Italian suppository." This banter went on, and on, and on. Again, on national television. It was absolutely disgusting.

The left went on a crusade, as they often do, to destroy this poor woman publicly. Another of the pageant judges said that she would have ranked Miss Prejean 51st specifically because of the answer she gave to that question. Leftists got on talk shows and mouthed off similarly about how vile she was. Someone posted some risque pictures she had taken several years ago and the Miss California pageant announced they would be investigating and may strip her of her title.

The Left Now Does This Regularly

These tactics are familiar to those who remember, during last year's presidential campaign, the similarly brutal attacks on Sarah Palin (and her family), and against Joe "the Plumber." These people stood up and said what their values were, and because they weren't leftist values, they were publicly humiliated by Leftist wingnuts and their compliant mass media. Governor Palin was ridiculed by reporters and anchorpeople as being stupid, and hordes of operatives were sent to Alaska to try and dig up personal dirt on her. Pictures of her in a swimsuit, during a long-ago beauty pageant, were circulated and made fun of. Her daughter was called "a tramp" and the maternity of her newborn son was questioned. As though any of those things was anyone's business or had a shred of relevance to her campaign.

Joe the Plumber was investigated and the fact that he owed some back taxes, and that he was not properly licensed as a plumber, were put out on the air. They tried to ruin the man's life, and he had never run for a single thing. He just happened to be at the wrong place (in his front yard) at the wrong time (when Obama came into the neighborhood for a visit) and asked Obama a challenging question, to which Obama gave a truthful answer supporting socialism. For this the left tried hard to destroy him.

The Prejean Saga Continues

During all this time, interviews with Miss Prejean showed her to be the kind of upstanding young person we dream about being raised in this country: Beautiful; devout Christian; server of the poor and downtrodden; polite; hard working; focused. She never wished ill to any of her critics, just expressed that she shouldn't have lost or been persecuted for expressing her opinion. Which is absolutely correct. She took the high road, despite being mercilessly bashed in the media for weeks.

Ultimately the pageant, led by Donald Trump, announced that "the pictures are fine" and that she would keep her title. Miss Prejean choked up a bit when defiantly - and rightly - pointing out that, in this free country, she ought to have the ability to speak her mind without fear of public persecution or of losing a beauty contest.

White House Leftist Piles On

This horrible saga should be over by now; it's been 3 weeks. But just when you thought it would be, none other than Barack Obama's right-hand man, David Axelrod, who ran his successful presidential campaign, referred to Miss Prejean as a dog during a quiz show on National Public Radio (audio here). Talking about helping pick the new dog that the Obama family just acquired at the White House, Axelrod joked that he'd been consulted on "the final three. And one was Miss California." This is the guy who got Obama elected, one of the president's closest confidants. How sick is this country that we are taking seriously and electing people like this to high office?

Axelrod's rude comment comes, of course, on the heels of an absolutely despicable performance at last week's annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, an event that the president himself attends and where he is typically made fun of - in a good-natured way - by the correspondents or by people they invite. The group this year invited an obscure black comedienne named Wanda Sykes to do a few minutes of standup at the lectern, mere feet away from the president. During her performance she somehow never got around to making fun of the Messiah, the president, but dished it out hard on his critics. Discussing Rush Limbaugh, Sykes mis-interpreted something Limbaugh famously said about hoping Obama fails, using it to liken Limbaugh to Osama bin Laden and then to say that she believed Rush was the 20th hijacker but had missed his flight because he was strung out on painkillers. She went on to say she hoped his kidneys failed (i.e. "I hope you die"). Throughout all this mess, President Obama sat there and laughed at every joke. Our president, laughing at a 9/11 joke and at wishing one of his toughest critics - an honorable man - dead.

And the media, by the way, reported nothing about the disgusting routine until word of it leaked out from the British press and conservative bloggers and talk show hosts began talking about it. We used to make fun of the old Soviet newspaper, "Pravda" and how they only reported what the government wanted people to hear. How is this situation with our American media much different? As Obama himself said in his speech at the dinner, "Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me." God forbid they ask him a tough question at a press conference, or make fun of him in any way, even at a dinner that is known particularly for such things.

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This is the world we live in. How we got here in such a short time I have no idea, but the left, which has hypocritically complained about partisan politics and about the country's divisions, is by far the worst offender in this regard. With the left, you either agree with them or they try to ruin your life. They hate you; despise you; might like to kill you. It is not enough to even tolerate their views as Carrie Prejean stated she did. You must accept them outright or you will be destroyed personally.

The only thing I wonder at this point is whether there will be any kind of backlash against these people. What has happened to the good and decent country I grew up in and love so much? How do such hateful people get to be in such lofty positions, put there by my fellow citizens?? When will I wake up from this nightmare?

Anti-Smoking Zealots Not Thinking Straight

I read a front-page article yesterday in my local paper by Wendy Leung about how anti-smoking laws are becoming more prevalent everywhere (not exactly news) and what new laws are on their way. The article interviewed a number of people, mostly anti-smoking zealots, who didn't even bother to try to make the case for why smoking in places like parks or beaches is bad. These folks just bypassed that whole conversation and went straight to how they were going to get these laws passed and how they eventually would completely shut down the tobacco industry.

I have watched this debate for years, now, and have always been astounded at the lack of pushback from smokers and the tobacco industry. It would seem that they could get plenty of backing from Libertarians, for starters, and they should get it from the Republicans, as well. Hell, the Libertarians have backed de-criminalization of marijuana (and other drugs) for years, now. Why doesn't the Cato Institute publish pieces about the tyranny of the anti-smoking lobby?

Besides being seemingly unconstitutional, the laws these people manage to get onto the books are just blatantly stupid. I'm convinced they're based on virtually no science, and can be chalked up to people simply not liking smokers or smoking, and deciding that they will get rid of this annoyance by making laws against them. This is akin to not liking skateboarders and pushing through laws that outlaw skateboarding. Or seat belt laws. "I am annoyed by 'X' and I want the government to make it illegal." It really is as simple as that.

When I entered the workforce in 1988, people could smoke in the office. And did. A lot. I didn't like it, but I didn't much complain about it. Was I exposed to some risk? Probably. I had 3 chain smokers smoking almost all day within 20 feet of me. At my next job smokers were relegated to outdoors, and while this made the office nicer, it also ticked off non-smokers who didn't like that smokers got all these extra breaks throughout each day. Then my next job, my direct boss smoked a pipe all day long in his office. I actually liked the smell of that. In the end, I think indoor smoking should have been left to each business to decide on. If you don't like that the company allows smoking, then don't work for them. Very simple.

But this is California, which is controlled by leftists, and I emphasize the word "controlled." Leftist legislators feel the need to write a law about pretty much everything, including where you can and cannot smoke. So they passed all these laws outlawing smoking inside buildings throughout the state. Restaurants; bars; office buildings. Only private residences have been spared, as far as I can tell. Not sure why. It started with government buildings, but the Left quickly realized they could reach way beyond that and so they outlawed it in all buildings.

They also jacked up the tax on cigarette packs by a couple hundred percent. Again, how do they get away with something like this? How is that even constitutional? Tobacco is not an illegal substance. How can a government impose an obviously confiscatory or punitive tax on a legal product? Not only that, but the California Dept of Health has run, for years, ads that blatantly and un-repentantly paint the tobacco companies as truly evil and out to kill smokers and others. Again, how is this legal?? You have a legitimate industry that has been around since literally the birth of our country, and government now imposes gigantic taxation and runs defamatory advertising against it? Why hasn't anyone sued the state to stop this insanity?

It doesn't end there. At first I thought this was a joke, but it's not. In California they are banning smoking outdoors. They have banned smoking on BEACHES, and are doing it in parks and other places as we speak. In this article I referred to earlier, we read that, "The council is interested in prohibiting smoking in outdoor dining areas and lines to movie theaters and ATMs. It also wants to establish designated smoking areas at Victoria Gardens and transit stops." Seriously?? ATM lines??? Is secondhand smoke breathed while standing in line for an ATM a serious problem? Are you really THAT stupid?

Apparently Rancho Cucamonga mayor Don Kurth is. Kurth is quoted in the article as believing that some day, there will be no tobacco. Well, Hallelujah, Don! What a great day that will be. Let's shut down an entire industry. Why not. Because you don't like it. Because it annoys you. That makes a ton of sense. That's what makes America great!

Kurth continues, and sounds more moronic with each quote. "Every year, the government pays a larger portion of health care. With Medicare & Medi-Cal...the government is responsible for these bills, and the government is going to have a say in how people lead their lives." Thank you for making the conservative point against Obamacare, by the way. Kurth inadvertently points out what the Left is really after: Control over our lives. "And as cigarette smoking decreases...at some point it will become too expensive for cigarette manufacturers to produce cigarettes for such a small group purchasing them." Hence the death of the industry. The icing on the cake for these quotes is Kurth's assertion that he is "a Republican with a Libertarian bent," and that he has said he believes in small government.

Kurth fails to note that smokers, on average, die younger than non-smokers, so they wind up costing Medicare LESS money. If you want to be honest about it, you should encourage everyone to smoke, to decrease Medicare's total liabilities. Maybe we could save that doomed system then.

He goes on to state what most people who advocate these bizarre and stupid laws state. "I see it more as protection. I think residents want their children to be protected from second-hand smoke. How are kids going to protect themselves?" Yes, friends and neighbors, "it's for the children." Isn't everything, at the end of the day? Certainly every liberal proposition ever made is "for the children." Haven't we used up that old canard by now?

Once again, we are all (especially children) idiots, in dire need of government's protection. We cannot decide not to go to a particular restaurant or store because we don't like their policy on smoking. We must wait for government to dictate to these businesses that they shall not allow such heinous activity on their premises.

The article unquestioningly mentions that Stanford measured "air pollution levels" at outdoor places like parks and found that secondhand smoke exposure levels there were the same as indoors. Now this is a truly bizarre statement to anyone who owns a functioning brain. You're telling me that smoke floating around an outdoor park is the same as it is in some smoker's house? Really? With a straight face you can say that?

Then we hear from another government bureaucrat, Michele Jacknik, from the San Bernardino County Dept of Public Health, who likes the bans not just because they reduce secondhand smoke (which probably doesn't actually exist at a single park or ATM line in the state anyway), but because, "these bans reduce the modeling for children to see smoking everywhere. It makes it less normal to think that everybody smokes." Yes, because smoking is akin to what, murder, rape, or theft? It's something that kids objectively should not be exposed to? Again, because none of us can think for ourselves. We need government bureaucrats to decide what we should and should not see. The all-knowing, all-seeing government. Big Brother.

Thankfully, Leung, the author, relieves the reader temporarily from the burn of all these fascistic non-smoking bureaucrats by interviewing some opponents, one of whom in particular, a Denver Post columnist, capsulizes my point succinctly:

"If I own a restaurant and I want to allow smoking in it, what business is it of some city council member? It is a voluntary choice between the owner and the person who steps inside. But now that a precedent of ignoring these basic rights has been set, what does that mean for our future? These people are so proud of themselves but what they're doing is killing freedom in bits and pieces." {emphasis added}

One scary aspect of this is that I'm not convinced it's just a "right vs left" issue. I serve on the pastoral council of my local Catholic parish, and a few months ago the topic of eliminating the small "smoking allowed" area - a corner of our large outdoor courtyard - came up. Our council and pastor makes up about 13 people, and I was the only person to say I thought this was a bad idea. "You're treating these people like lepers or something, just because you don't like smoking." I had said. Although every person in the room was a devout Catholic (meaning they should be conservatives), I got leftist arguments in return. A couple people offhandedly remarked that "you must be a smoker," following the standard liberal method of argument: attack your opponent personally, rather than address his argument. No one put forth a credible argument beyond that one and the "hey, second-hand smoke!" canard. It was very disappointing to hear. I basically got pig-piled and dropped it. I said my peace, the majority spoke.

For what it's worth, I am not a smoker and never will be. I have felt this way for years because I am a conservative and believe in individual liberty, which founded this great country. In recent years I think we've seen a lot of people who claim to support liberty impose greater and greater control and restrictions over how we each live our lives, and I think we're seeing creeping totalitarianism.

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I became an occasional cigar smoker recently. After smoking a cigar every couple years with friends at social occasions, I decided I liked it and bought a little humidor and proudly own about a dozen cigars, which will probably take me all summer to smoke. Not that it should matter, but cigar-smoking is entirely different from cigarette-smoking. With cigars, you don't inhale, for starters. So there's no risk of lung cancer at all. You smoke for the taste, not for the buzz or whatever it is that drives cigarette smokers. There's also no addiction with cigars. I can smoke a cigar, or not smoke one, any time. No nicotine = no addiction. Just smoke - sorry, "pollution."

I bring this up because the last quote in Leung's article is from Rex Gutierrez, a councilman in Rancho Cucamonga, who maybe is feeling some pangs of conscience and liberty when he pushes back ever so slightly against the tide of meddlesome regulations on this subject there. His last comment is that, "I do feel we need to be realistic and understand that smokers who have not yet kicked the habit, they have rights also." Right on, Rex! But here's a brain-twister for you: Many cigarette smokers have no interest in kicking the habit. Many guys (mostly men) like me actually like smoking cigars and plan to increase, not decrease, our smoking. Some guys I've met really like pipe smoking (very similar to cigar smoking). So when you make these restrictive laws you're affecting them, too, not these poor people who apparently are too weak (your opinion, not mine) to "kick the habit" and join the rest of upstanding society in not smoking.

I don't agree with anti-smoking laws in private buildings, but I'll admit you can make a secondhand-smoke case for them. However, parks and beaches? ATM and movie lines? You'll never convince me that there is a credible secondhand smoke threat in these places. And yet, anti-smoking zealots amazingly aren't even stopping there. Lance Armstrong, a guy I personally admire for other reasons, is on a crusade to eliminate smoking from entire states. Imagine that: Smoking illegal in your state. Everywhere. Why? Because some folks don't like it. What's American about that?

George Weigel On Notre Dame & Obama

The University of Notre Dame invited President {cringe} Obama to deliver the commencement speech this year, setting off a firestorm of debate among Catholics around the country. Why? Because, as I pointed out during last year's campaign, Obama is easily the most far-left pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of the president, much less gain it.

In a published couple of short essays taking the pro- and con-invite positions, Pepperdine professor Doug Kmiec and orthodoxy champion/author George Weigel each wrote their thoughts on the invitation. I found Kmiec's to be surprisingly shallow considering his status. His main points were that it's not right to bring politics into commencement speeches (ridiculous since the objections are on moral, not explicitly political, grounds), and that Obama was just being "pragmatic," since not everyone agrees with the Catholic positions on such matters (apparently the fact of Notre Dame being a Catholic institution did not weigh on Kmiec's mind).

Weigel's piece was eloquent, as expected, and right to the point. To the question of "what's all the fuss?" Weigel lays it out plainly in a single paragraph:

Since Inauguration Day, Obama has made several judgment calls that render Notre Dame's invitation little short of incomprehensible. The president has put the taxpayers of the United States back into the business of paying for abortions abroad. He has expanded federal funding for embryo-destructive stem-cell research and defended that position in a speech that was a parody of intellectually serious moral reasoning. The Obama administration threatens to reverse federal regulations that protect the conscience rights of Catholic and other pro-life health-care professionals. And the administration has not lifted a finger to keep its congressional and teachers' union allies from snatching tuition vouchers out of the hands of poor inner-city children who want to attend Catholic schools in the nation's capital. How any of this, much less the sum total of it, constitutes a set of decisions Notre Dame believes worth emulating is not, to put it gently, easy to understand.

The pieces are short enough to read both. The fact that there's a public controversy at all, frankly, makes me very happy. I recall Notre Dame and several other nominally Catholic universities hosting "The Vagina Monologues," a disgusting one-woman show with sexually explicit monologues and sinful themes, and nary a word was spoken in outcry, except by the Cardinal Newman Society.

Where was everyone besides the Newman Society last month when Georgetown University (another nominally Catholic institution of higher learning) hosted "Sex Week"? One of Georgetown's guests was a porn director speaking on "Relationships Beyond Monogamy." This director had also authored a book entitled, "True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion." Is this the current state of Catholic universities? If so, is it any surprise Notre Dame would invite Obama, who has already - in under two months in office - taken concrete steps to significantly increase the number of abortions in the world?

The debate is long overdue. The leftists and their disgusting and evil ideals need to be confronted and booted out of America's Catholic colleges. That they've made it this far is remarkable and sad.

Dems Lure AIG Into Contract, Then Bash Them With It

Before the election everyone said the liberals would over-reach, like they always do when they get into power, and I guess I believed it but couldn't really fathom how fast or how far they would do so. Well it turns out we didn't have to wait very long to find out, did we?

This AIG bonus scandal, not a huge deal in my eyes, though annoying, has highlighted for me just how incompetent the lawmakers in Washington are. I should have figured this out when Bush was still in office late last year, as he led the charge to rapidly approve $700 billion in TARP funds ("Troubled Asset Recovery...") so the feds could forcefully back-up all the bad mortgage assets that so many investors had on their books. A decent idea on its face, considering the financial crisis's causes. However, in about one month's time, the TARP fund became the Slush fund, with lawmakers tapping it to bail out other corporate entities like the car companies (NOT a decent idea by any stretch) and others.

Not satisfied with that idiocy, President Obama got inaugurated and promptly started working hard to make Bush look like a fiscal conservative, leading the Democrat congress to approve all kinds of borrow-and-spend measures that raise the annual federal deficit (not the debt, the deficit) to something like $1.75 trillion. They approved this 1000-page bill about 12 hours after having received it, so obviously no one had actually read it. How we will ever pay for this without quintupling the inflation rate, I have no idea.

In the midst of all this, including more federal bailouts of large companies that somehow got "too big to fail" status, the feds bought over 80% of American International Group, AIG, with bailout "white knight" -type funding of over $182 billion. Put aside the fact that it is a horrible idea to have the federal government owning stakes in private companies. This is a controlling stake of a teetering-on-the-edge company that does business all over the world in many industries. And they are doing similar things with many other companies like this. Does the word "communism" mean anything to you?

As they were lavishing dollars on AIG, they put together a contract, negotiated and signed by the feds and by AIG executives, that provided the conditions for the company getting the money. During negotiations, AIG agreed to accept limits on executive compensation that the feds wanted. However, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, inserted a paragraph that stated that these limits would not apply to any compensation (including bonuses) that had been contractually agreed-on before February 11th (Dodd, by the way, turns out to be the most heavily-paid senator by AIG during campaign season). Well AIG had agreed to pay its executives $165 million in bonuses some time ago. And after they got the bailout money, they made good on that promise.

Well once the public got wind of these bonuses, paid out by a company on the federal welfare wagon to a handful of executives whose big success had been to drive the company they'd been running into the ground, they were rightly very angry. They began to ask, "how did they think they could do such a thing?" and reporters quickly found the loophole that Dodd had put in there. Of course, it didn't have his name on it, and so when reporters started questioning him about it, he denied knowing anything about it (making him a liar). Eventually he 'fessed up and claimed that, "the administration" made him do it. What a bonehead!

At this point the congress and the White House went into full-fledged panic/defense mode. First they had denied knowing anything about it, then they admitted they'd known about it but pointed fingers at others. Finally, after having been backed into a corner, they responded with, "the taxpayers want justice, and we're here to give it to them." So they did what they could, working out a bill that levies a 90% excise tax on a very specific group of people - executives at companies that have received bailout money - on income they make over $250,000. Rather than be apalled and embarrassed at this ridiculous and evil piece of legislation that specifically targets a certain class of private citizens, taking away almost all of the money they earn, Rep Barney Frank, co-contributor to the financial crisis meltdown, said he expected the states and local governments to take care of the remaining 10%. He was proud of this disgusting legislation!!

Look, when the American federal government starts taxing people at a 90% rate, it is time to step back and say, "Whoa!! Hold on a minute; what are we doing, here?" It goes against everything we, as a capitalist nation, should stand for.


Secondly, the only reason they're doing this at all is because they were so incompetent the first time around, agreeing to allow the bonuses to begin with. Had they done their jobs right the first time, they wouldn't have to be meeting, discussing how to get it back. Dodd never would have written that loophole into the bill in the first place, and/or others would have had time (more than 12 hours) to actually read the bill before voting "yes" on it, would have noticed this provision and excised it.

Obama's head of the Council on Economic Development, a lifelong academic (big surprise) said on Fox News Sunday that this never would have happened had we had "a judge" in place that could have nixed the bonuses so we didn't have to come up with this punitive retroactive confiscation - sorry, tax - that was her solution. Along with a whole host of other idiotic things she said on the program, this one statement is an obvious cover for Senator Dodd. What she should have said was that, had they known they were going to get caught specifically allowing these bonuses, and that the public would be really upset about them, they never would have allowed Dodd to add that paragraph into the agreement in the first place. So they miscalculated politically, assuming no one would notice or care, but wound up getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Disgusting.

Remember "disgusting" every time you see a Democrat on a news show rambling on about how offended he/she is by the whole AIG scandal, demonizing their management and advocating such bills as this unconstitutional 90% tax. These idiots wrote it into the agreement, got caught after the money went out, and now are on this completely bogus crusade on behalf of the taxpayers to get it back any way they can. Disgusting.