If you’ve been following the health care saga, you know that as of Friday afternoon and Friday night a Democratic triumphalist aura was spreading through the media zone (e.g., this New York Times story) that made passage seem likely and elicited signs of discouragement and resignation in conservative venues. You could hear conservatives across the land thinking, “Is it over, are they going to be able to do it after all?” In this entry are two stories published on Saturday that suggest yet another shift in the wind, and take the edge off the triumphalism.
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In an interview with Greta van Susteren on March 11, Rep. Mike Pence makes one key point over and over, that the Democrats do not have the votes yet, and therefore the people should keep pressuring their representatives to oppose the bill. His specific analyses of the Democrats’ problems don’t matter very much, and some of them have already been overtaken by events. For example, since March 11, the Democrats have given up on the Stupak language and are now simply pressuring the Stupak group to vote for the bill without the language; further, according to Stupak in an interview at NRO yesterday, two of his group members have already folded and consented to vote for the bill.
Gintas writes:
Good for Richard Spencer for allowing this article to be put up at Alternative Right: “The Problems of Neopaganism,” by Patrick Ford. But there are neo-pagans in the peanut gallery who take umbrage; for example, Greg Johnson, who is editor of The Occidental Quarterly Online, grinds an axe (he misconstrues Ford’s statement in the article): MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:54 PM
Lydia McGrew writes:
I thought you would be interested in this discussion of the Slaughter nonsense and the Constitution. Is it really possible that these people are going to pass a bill without actually passing the bill? This is insanity.LA replies:
But, as far as I understand, and I could be wrong, they no longer need the Slaughter Plan (the purpose of which I have not understood nor how it would work). Read this story in today’s NYT, “Pelosi Predicts a Health Bill Within 10 Days.” They seem to think they have the ability to pass the Senate bill in the House, then immediately pass the add-ons, then the president signs the Senate bill which the House has passed, then the Senate passes the add-ons by reconciliation.Are mainstream newspapers denouncing this coup-like event, this gangster-like forcing through of this huge expansion in the power of the federal government by means of such trickery and by only one party? No. The mainstream media’s repeated way of describing what’s happening is the neutral, content-free phrase, “the biggest overhaul in health care in decades.”
However, please remember that they do not have anything definite lined up. A story last night said that Pelosi is still seeking guarantees from the Senate that the Senate will pass the add-ons after the House has passed them. Without guarantees signed in blood, there is still no deal. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 06:46 PM
We know that the Democrats are pushing ahead to vote for the health care bill even if it costs them the control of Congress and in many cases their individual seats. But when we consider the actual degree of anti-Obamacare sentiment in some congressional districts, we have to wonder if the Democrats will go ahead and pull the trigger—on themselves. Unless ObamaPelosiReid have managed to suppress entirely the normal forces of political life, we must expect that these forces will play a some role in any House vote on the bill.
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Andrew McCarthy lays it into the establishment conservatives who close their eyes to the simple truth of the matter and look down at Geert Wilders because he speaks it.
I Guess She Doesn’t Watch Charles Krauthammer [Andy McCarthy]Jamie Paulin, a 31-year-old Irish woman, converted to Islam last spring. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports (in a story called, “For the Love of Islam”), she’s in custody for allegedly conspiring to murder a Swedish cartoonist who had poked fun at the prophet Mohammed. Must have been that bad Islamism again which, as we all know, has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. And yes, yes, I understand the Koran says stuff like, “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day” (Sura 9:29), but surely you’re not suggesting that anyone would interpret that to mean Muslims should, like, fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day.” Can you imagine whack-jobs like Geert Wilders saying such a thing? Obviously, Guantanamo Bay must be what drove Ms. Pauling to this—I mean, what else could it be?
03/12 09:25 PM
Jeffery R. writes:
I’m a frequent reader of your blog and enjoy your commentary very much. I thought you might like to be aware of the linked article, “Who’s Afraid of Geert Wilders,” by Michael Weiss at The New Criterion, if you were not already. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:09 PM
A friend couldn’t get over Speaker Pelosi’s amazing comment to Rachel Maddow:
Everybody has so much to gain from this, small businesses, as I said, seniors, young people, women, our economy. Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job.…We discussed how the reality would be the exact opposite of what Pelosi was saying, since under Obamacare a self-employed person would have to pay big bucks for his own medical insurance, and indeed would be required to buy medical insurance, and if he didn’t buy it he would be fined, and if he refused to pay the fine he could be sent to prison. I said that what Pelosi was really thinking of was not Obamacare but socialized medicine, where you don’t have to pay personally for health insurance but medical care is provided by the state. MORE…
A week ago I learned about, and immediately endorsed, Geert Wilders’s litmus test with regard to Israel. Here is the entire entry:
In his article today on Geert Wilders, Paul Belien writes:A lot of people at other sites, and a couple of VFR commenters, were put off by this, because they feel I’m making automatic support for everything Israel does a condition of conservatism. Of course by support I don’t mean automatic support for everything Israel does. I mean support for Israel’s existence, its right to exist and thus to defend itself—rights which much of the world at present denies.
Wilders regards support for Israel as the litmus test to decide with whom he is willing to cooperate.In the excellent Wilders manner, this is stated so simply and directly. It gets to the heart of the issue and comprehends other, unspoken issues within it.
Yesterday I wrote to Bjorn Larsen:
A lot of people got very annoyed with me for agreeing with Wilders’s litmus test, because they feel I’m trying to force them to support Israel. Do you think I made a mistake by doing that?Bjorn replied:
Of course this was not a mistake, in the context of Wilders’s warning the world about Islam.Islam’s continuous jihad against Israel, and our support for Western Civilization (in its roots based on Judaism’s idea of equality under God, and therefore equality under the law, and therefore freedom and civilization), must lead to our unconditional support of Israel in its fight to survive against Islam. This is what Wilders means when he says, “We are Israel.” Where Israel goes, so do we.
Support for Israel has nothing to do with being a conservative, neo, paleo or any other version, or a liberal. One’s political leanings on this existential question are as irrelevant as saying that freedom of speech is only a conservative issue, or, even more absurd, saying that we can only agree on the life-or-death issue of Islam if we also agree on social policy, taxation, and health care.
Support for Israel will be automatic for rational freedom-loving people—Israel’s survival is a universal and existential issue, as basic as freedom versus slavery. So let’s agree on the basic threat of Islamization and deal with specific policies when that problem has been solved.
Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:
I know America is going through a momentous time in her history. Canada has lost the battle, but there is no reason why America should.I thought you might be interested in an article I read in yesterday’s National Post, which is originally from the Washington Post: “As a Progressive, Obama hews to the Wilsonian Tradition.”
Here is the incredible quote, which Obama voiced to Katie Couric on February 7:
“I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to healthcare, and didn’t have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed. But that’s not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people.”
No tainting by mere human interference (and fingerprints) was Obama’s wish. This thing could have been ideologically pure. Now, weren’t you called an ideological purist recently? I don’t think this is what the commentator meant, though. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:14 PM
Rep. Stupak in a telephone interview tells Robert Costa of NRO that the House leaders have given up on including the Stupak language in the bill (as we heard yesterday), but that they are now pressuring the Stupak Twelve to vote for the bill without the Stupak language:
According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats—the “Stupak dozen”—has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.…There’s more than this. Stupak feels that pro-life Democrats are being forced out of the party. Where’s he been?” … At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve.…
” … I’m telling the others to hold firm, and we’ll meet next week, but I’m disappointed in my colleagues who said they’d be with us and now they’re not. It’s almost like some right-to-life members don’t want to be bothered. They just want this over.”
In reading Diana West’s column about the Saudi jihadist Prince Talal’s seven percent ownership of Fox News, I realize that I need to add another plank to my Islam program. A federal statute is needed that will say something such as follows:
- Foreign Muslims shall not be allowed to purchase or own significant shares in U.S. corporations or to make significant donations to U.S. educational and cultural institutions.
If it is true, as I have stated for many years, that significant numbers of Muslims do not belong in any Western society, then it follows that Muslims should not be allowed to own significant portions of any Western society. If we are to end Islamic influence over the United States, we must prohibit Islamic ownership of U.S. businesses, Islamic donations to cultural and educational institutions (such as the Islamic studies programs at U.S. universities that have been created and expanded through Saudi donations), and Islamic contributions to U.S. political candidates and parties.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who is discussed in Diana West’s column today, is that same Saudi prince who outrageously offered $10 million to New York City after the 9/11 attack in exchange for New York pondering the root causes of the attack, and Mayor Giuliani, in one of his finer moments, told him to take a leap.
Talal, after making that obvious gesture designed to turn us into dhimmis and being rejected, proceeded to find less confrontational ways of gaining influence over us, by buying a seven percent interest in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns Fox News.
This is really, really, really bad.
Diana West writes:
It is a gruesome situation. If you read my earlier column (and post) on Talal’s interview with Charlie Rose, you will see that Talal made a sharp turn away from what I would call an open jihadism—money to Giuliani for political soapbox, support for Palestinian “martyrs,” support for CAIR—to this greatly effective “charm” offensive.Here is Diana’s column: MORE…
Here, from yesterday’s New York Post, is the tale of Colleen LaRose, a 46 year old white woman from Pennsylvania who converted to Islam and became a jihadist. In her Internet identity of JihadJane, and without the knowledge of her live-in boyfriend, she volunteered for a martyrdom operation, and was enlisted to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist who had insulted Muhammad.
BEHIND THE VEIL: Colleen La Rose, who lived in a suburban
house in Pennsburg, Pa., allegedly boasted that her blond hair and
unthreatening middle-aged appearance would allow her to “blend in
with many people” and “kill and die.” But the FBI was all over her,
especially as she posted pictures of herself in head-to-toe Islamic burqa
and praised Osama bin Laden on her Web site. The feds say her dream
was to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for caricaturing Mohammed
as a dog.
R. Janssen writes from the Netherlands:
Geert Wilders wants to withdraw Dutch troops from Uruzgan province of Afghanistan where they are stationed since he considers the mission in Afghanistan (and implicitly neoconservative policy in the Middle East) a complete failure. Could that be the reason why Wilders has fallen out of favour? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:11 PM
These are remarks given in the House of Represenatives yesterday by Rep. Ted Poe, Republican of Texas:
Mr. Speaker, freedom of speech continues to be shouted down by the politically correct police. In the Netherlands, it is against the law to say something that offends someone else’s religion. That is why Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is on trial for hurting people’s feelings.
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At 11 p.m. Wednesday night I posted a striking photograph of Sen. Reid in which his expression of utter grimness and final hopelessness combined with cold and ruthless determination suggested to me something out of Paradise Lost—a soul who has lost all hope of the good, and who says, like Milton’s Satan, “Evil, be thou my good.” I felt that the photograph captured the inner character of the Democrats in their relentless push on the health care bill, the Democrats who don’t care how much damage they cause and what outrages they commit, who want to force their will on us in defiance of all good, all sense, all limits.
On Thursday, Sen. Reid’s wife, Landra, and their daughter, Lana Barringer, were seriously injured with non-life threatening injures in a car accident in Washington, D.C. Just so there is no misunderstanding, my comment on the photograph was not directed at Reid personally and did not involve any ill wishes on my part toward Reid as a person. It was a commentary on the psychological or spiritual meaning that the photograph had for me, on what it conveys about the leftist forces with which we are coping. When I see Reid generally, I don’t think, “there goes the spawn of the devil” My thoughts were related to the meaning of that particular photograph.
I wish Landra Reid and Lana Barringer full and speedy recovery.
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If the government is paying for our health care costs, then the government will inevitably have the power to dictate, not only what types of health care we can receive, but what types of food we can eat and what types of exercise regime we must follow, since diet and exercise affect our health, and the government is paying for our health care. Which further means that the government will have the power to punish us for not following the diet and exercise regime it requires. Which further means that the government must spy on us in our homes to determine if we are following the required regime. The scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four in which a young woman on a two-way television screen in Winston Smith’s apartment is barking out orders telling Winston to do his push-ups harder is not just a fictional satire but a logical and inevitable result of government-provided health care.
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(Note: this entry had an error as originally posted relating to my characterization of Clinton’s legislation, and has now been fixed.)
Richard Lowry in his syndicated column informs Obama that he will be a much more successful president if, as happened to President Clinton after the 1994 congressional elections, he has a Republican instead of a Democratic Congress:
A Republican Congress would give him a handy foil and force him, right in time for his reelection campaign, into strategic bipartisanship. The Republican takeover in 1994 seemed the end for Bill Clinton. Long after Tom Foley had been forgotten, though, Clinton signed major bipartisan welfare-reform and deficit-reduction bills, while making incremental steps on health care that were popular and sustainable.Thus Lowry tells Obama how to be re-elected, how to use a conservative Republican Congress as his “foil,” and how to keep moving America toward nationalized health care step by step instead of in one gargantuan shot, while also pursuing some conservative-sounding measures like the Republican welfare reform bill that Clinton signed. But that welfare reform did nothing to discourage the number one cause of poverty and dysfunction in our society, illegitimacy. It encouraged it, by adding yet another layer of government bureaucracy that facilitates unmarried welfare mothers in finding and keeping work.
Lowry is the editor of the supposed flagship magazine of American conservatism, a magazine that was founded for the purpose of stopping the advance of leftism. But here his vocation seems to be that of a centrist political consultant advising a leftist president how to triangulate. Indeed, since Lowry is so eager to help Obama improve his political standing and win re-election like Clinton, maybe he should get a job in the Obama White House. I’ve heard that Dick Morris’s old office is still available.
Roger Simon’s take on Geert Wilders, quoted and discussed at Powerline, suggests to this reader that realism about Islam may be slowly spreading among conservatives due to Wilders’s influence. However, based on a further reading of Simon, it is only a beginning, as I discuss in an update in the same entry. Here’s what I wrote:
On the issue of interest to us here, Simon’s substantive view of Islam, the article shows the intellectual dilemma in which Simon now finds himself. On one hand, by agreeing with Paul Mirengoff that Islam, as set forth in the Koran, “commands Muslims to exercise jihad … to establish shariah law [and] … to impose Islam on the entire world,” he is opening himself to the truth about Islam, as I indicated before. On the other hand, he also says (a) that he fears that truth, (b) that he doesn’t want to face that truth because he would find the results too depressing, and (c) that if the truth about Islam is what he fears it is, then the only solution, other than something akin to a “global armageddon,” is an “Islamic reformation.” Thus, even as Simon agrees with Mirengoff that Islam commands Muslims to exercise jihad, establish shariah, and impose Islam on the entire world, he imagines that Islam can be “reformed,” meaning that it can turn itself into the opposite of itself and still be Islam.The thinking process of all Islam-aware mainstream conservatives without exception is limited to these two sterile options when it comes to what to do about Islam: destroy the Islamic world and kill hundreds of millions of Muslims, which of course is out of the question; or hope that the Muslims reform themselves, which can be no more than a hope, since we cannot make it happen, and in any case it’s inherently impossible. Nevertheless, since killing a fifth of humanity is out of the question, hoping that Islam reforms itself is the only acceptable option. But since Islam will not reform itself, and since Islam commands Muslims to impose Islam on the entire world, Simon’s seeing the truth about Islam leads him to the realization (unstated by him, but I think it’s why he’s depressed), that our destiny is to be taken over by Islam.
Such is the intellectual incoherence and practical helplessness vis a vis Islam that people remain in, so long as the possibility of rationally discriminating against Muslims and removing them from the West has not occurred to them. I lay out such a program here. See also the collection of my writings on What to do about Islam.
Reader N. writes:
I was going to email you with the latest from AmSpec but you have already commented on yet another in the increasingly bizarre plans of the radical Democrats to shove what you aptly refer to as “their Precious” through the Congress. So never mind on that.Let’s take a step back. Maybe several steps back. In ancient Athens, Hubris was considered to be a serious crime. It consisted of disgusting, prideful acts such as mutilation of the dead, deliberate humiliation of a defeated foe, some sexual perversions. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:43 PM
The House leaders have apparently abandoned their efforts to reach a compromise with Rep. Stupak, but think they can pick up enough votes from other members to pass the bill. Much of this longish AP article, posted tonight at RCP, is a rehash of the familiar and can be skipped over, but it does give an idea of the other measures—now that they’ve accepted defeat on the abortion plank—that the Democrats plan to add to the bill, and of the members they’re trying to win over. Here’s the beginning of the piece:
Dems look to health vote without abortion foesHouse Democratic leaders Thursday abandoned a long struggle to strike a compromise on abortion in their ranks, gambling that they can secure the support for President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care legislation with showdown votes looming as early as next week.
In doing so, they are all but counting out a small but potentially decisive group whose views on abortion coverage have become the principal hang-up for Democrats fighting to achieve the biggest change in American health care in generations. Congressional leaders are hoping they can find enough support from other wavering Democrats to pass legislation that only cleared the House by five votes in an earlier incarnation.
I’m not sure if the plan described here is a new one, or one of the plans previously described. And I can’t say I understand it at all. But since the information comes from Rep. Ryan, I’m passing it on. The piece is from the American Spectator:
Ryan: Dems Ramming “Shell” HC Bill Through Committee Monday
By Philip Klein on 3.11.10 @ 4:43PMRep. Paul Ryan says that Democrats are ready to ram a “shell” health care bill through the Budget Committee, on which he serves as ranking Republican member, to use as a vehicle to impose national health care. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 06:33 PM
For Obama and his allies, writes Michael Graham at the Boston Herald, Eric Massa-mania couldn’t be hitting at a worse time:
The problem isn’t Massa’s ridiculous claim that he was forced out of Congress because he opposes the health care bill. What hurts is that the Massa mess highlights the Obama administration’s desperation and incompetence on health care.MORE…Candidate Obama pledged that health care reform would be bipartisan. “We are not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy,” he promised. A year ago Obamacare seemed inevitable. The GOP was declared DOA. And Eric Massa was an obscure New York congressman.
Today, Obamacare is barely clinging to life, and the administration is so desperate for votes that Rahm Emanuel is chasing reluctant Democrats naked through the curtainless showers of Capitol Hill.
According to Roll Call, the Senate parliamentarian has ruled today that the president “must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package.” This kills the Democrats’ plans in one shot. Their idea has been that the House would pass the Senate bill, in conjunction with the “side-cars” such as the Stupak language, and that this changed bill would then be passed by the Senate via reconciliation. But if the president must sign the bill into law before there can even be reconciliation, then the House must pass the original, pristine Senate bill, all by itself. This means that the Stupak group and the other hold-outs would have to vote for a bill which will be signed by the president and become the law of the land without the changes on which they absolutely insist, and they would have to vote for it based on nothing but the hope or promise that after the bill has become law, the Senate will then pass the further changes to the law that the hold-outs require. But why should Obama and the Senate Democratic leaders revisit the issue, once they have their Precious in hand? And even if they tried in good faith to amend the law, the effort might fail. So this seems to scotch any possible Stupakite vote for the health care bill.
If the parliamentarian’s statement stands (though I’ve heard that the vice president can overrule him), then it’s hard to see that Obamacare has any pulse left. [Update, 9:15 p.m.: That was a premature comment by me, based on my forgetting momentarily that the Democrats will keep pursuing every possible and impossible path until they win or the clock runs out. According to an AP story posted at RCP tonight, the Democrats have given up on getting the Stupak group aboard, but still think they can pass the bill by picking up the needed votes from other congressmen, and making such changes in the bill as can be passed by reconciliation, which was not the case with the Stupak abortion language.]
But why, oh, why didn’t the parliamentarian say this back in January? It would have spared the country from having to endure for these last two months the Demoncrats’ fevered twistings.
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It needed a prominent, appealing individual to embody and speak the truth about Islam, and this has made it possible for mainstream conservatives to start to speak it as well, if still very tentatively.
From Powerline:
Is Wilders wrong? Roger Simon’s take
March 11, 2010 Posted by Paul at 11:49 AMOur friend Roger Simon examines the criticism leveled against Geert Wilders by Glenn Beck and Charles Krauthammer, which I addressed here and here. Roger agrees with my pro-Wilders take. He believes that Wilders makes us uncomfortable because “if Wilders is correct, and the line between Islam and Islamism is as blurred as the Dutchman posits, then we in the West are in very deep trouble indeed.” MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:04 PM
Rick U. writes:
SusanAnne Hiller at Big Government this morning says that Pelosi doesn’t have the votes. If Pelosi had the votes she would have the bill on the floor, and she wouldn’t need the Slaughter solution. Hiller goes further and points to the unconstitutionality of the Slaughter solution. The absolute desperation and depravity of the House Democratic leadership is nothing short of historic. In their rabid drive to pass health care, the Democrats now move beyond sweetheart deals, and ignore the Constitution itself. Truly, as you said earlier, Lawrence, this is evil.
Jay Cost has a fascinating but defeatist article at Real Clear Politics, “Bart Stupak has problems,” which, fortunately, misses the biggest point. Cost thinks that once the Senate bill plus the “fixer” with the Stupak language is passed by the House and sent to the Senate, the Senate Republicans will find themselves in a hopeless dilemma. They cannot stop the main bill, because the main bill can go through by reconciliation. They can only stop the Stupak fixer to the main bill. But, Cost continues, they won’t stop the Stupak fixer, because it bars federal funding for abortion, something the Republicans like. Therefore, concludes Cost,
… Senate Republicans will face the following choice: health care reform with the Stupak language or health care reform without the Stupak language.Cost’s despairing picture (which he presents in the form of two decision trees) is incorrect, because he assumes that the Republicans cannot oppose the Stupak language. But of course they can oppose it, and indeed they must oppose it if they want to stop the health care bill of which it is a part. If the Senate Republicans make a serious threat (and it has to be serious) to kill the Stupak fixer, which they have the ability to do because it needs a 60 vote supermajority, Stupak will never sign on to the bill in the House, as he will know that by doing so he will have helped pass into law a health care bill that allows federal funding for abortion. As with nuclear deterrence, the Senate Republicans will never actually have to vote against the Stupak anti-abortion language. They just have to make absolutely clear that they will vote against if it came before them.
My argument here is similar to what I said last week, in the entry, “House passage is everything—or is it?” My point then and now is that the ultimately decisive point in this process is not the House, but the Senate, since the Senate Republicans have the ability to deter undedecided House Democrats from signing on to any deal and sending it to the Senate.
Finally, I would say to Jay Cost: who cares if Bart Stupak has problems? Stupak wants to pass nationalized medicine. We want Stupak to lose. Our side is so caught up with the drama of Stupak holding out for the anti-abortion language and thus blocking the health care bill that we tend to forget that he’s on the other side. See my entry from Tuesday, “Put not thy hope in Stupak.”
I’ve read several articles now on the “Slaughter Solution,” which a reader discussed last night: Daniel Foster’s two items at NRO (here and here); an article (in pdf) he linked at National Journal; an article in the Washington Examiner; and an entry at Powerline. These pieces suggests various explanations of what the purpose of the Slaughter Rule is, but none of them nails it down. The possibilities include: (1) It’s a way of combining the two bills into one; (2) it’s a way for members to avoid taking responsibility for voting for the Senate bill; (3) it’s a way to pass the additional changes without passing the Senate bill, thus obviating the possibility that the president could sign into law the passed Senate bill without the changes; (4) it’s a way for the House to avoid voting for the Senate bill altogether, because they can’t pass it.
The story, from NBC Los Angeles, tells the race of the perpetrators, not of the victim. We have more on that below.
As you read the article, notice the language, both dainty and nonjudgmental, that NBC uses to describe what is pure savagery:
a drama that turned more lively than the one on the screen…In fact, the language is not merely nonjudgmental and understated (a man stabs a stranger in the neck because he “didn’t take kindly” to something he said?); it is approving. To describe a savage, unprovoked, violent assault on a human being as a “drama that turned more lively than the one on the screen” is to suggest something positive and entertaining about the event. And to say that the woman “didn’t take kindly to being ‘shushed’” implies that it was wrong to shush her. You don’t shush black people, don’t you know that? You gotta show respect!The woman … didn’t take kindly to being “shushed”. Or at least her boyfriend didn’t.
This article should be seen, not as proper journalism, but as an extension of the attack in the movie theater. It is underscoring the attacker’s message: don’t mess with black people.
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This is the human face of the health care bill.
This is the face of a man who has given up all hope of the good,
a man who has said, “Evil, be thou my good.”
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
—Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 6:12-13.
Conservative commentators are floating stunningly different and contradictory theories about what the Democrats are up to. In this entry I present two of them.
A reader writes:
At National Review Online is a report about an approach the Democrats are considering to get health-care reform passed. It would work like this:1—The House would prepare a bill that lists the changes that Bart Stupak and other House Democrats want to the Senate bill.
2—The said bill of changes would include a provision to the effect that the Senate bill is deemed to have been passed
3—The House would pass this combination bill and then send it to the Senate, where the changes the House members want would be worked into the Senate bill via reconciliation (which, as we know, requires only 51 votes, not 60) MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 10:55 PM
I repeat something I’ve said before. If you read VFR regularly, I recommend that you use Firefox 3 (I have Firefox 3.5, but I think any “3” version would be the same), as the site looks infinitely better in Firefox 3 than in Internet Explorer or in Firefox 2. It’s like night and day.
Correction, March 13: The good view in Firefox 3 that I was talking about is not the default view of Firefox 3 but the default view enlarged by pressing Ctrl+(+) four times. I had not realized that this was the enlarged view, because it remains that way, by itself, so it had appeared to be the default view. In Firefox 2, each time I load a new page (unless by directly clicking on a link), the zoom of the new page returns to the default zoom and I have to press Ctrl+(+) twice to get back the zoom I like. But in Firefox 3, the enlarged zoom that the user selects remains the default zoom no matter how many new pages are loaded. So it’s not a superior default view that makes Firefox 3 better than Firefox 2, but the fact that the user-selected zoom becomes the default zoom and doesn’t have to be chosen over and over.
A New York Post reader comments on the latest revelations about ex-congressman Eric Massa:
I am running for his seat in 2010. My campaign slogan is: 11 year Navy veteran, small governmemt, zero tickle fights.
Browsing at Real Clear Politics, I saw that someone named Brent Budowsky had a column at The Hill entitled “No Doom for Dems.” Curious to hear a view so provocatively different from what everyone seems to think right now, I clicked on it. Budowsky writes that the conventional wisdom is wrong and that the Democrats will maintain their majorities in the Congress this year. The main reasons are that the jobs situation will be greatly improving by November and that a health care bill will have been passed, putting that divisive issue behind us. Since I think of The Hill, not to mention RCP, as a more or less non-ideological publication spanning center-right and center-left, I was impressed by the fact that it was publishing these views.
But then I noticed, among Budowsky’s reasons that the Republicans would not do as well as expected in November, this:
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… and he picks apart Krauthammer’s criticism of Wilders for the sin of not distinguishing between Islam and the neocons’ chimerical “Islamism.” Also, just as he did a few days ago, Paul indicates agreement with Wilders’s position on stopping Muslim immigration, and does so in somewhat more explicit terms than before. While he seems to be thinking of these policies in terms of the Netherlands rather than of our country, the mere fact of an establishment neoconserrvative addressing these issues with reasonable cogency is remarkable. Most impressive is his statement that while Wilders’s position is indeed “radical” and “extreme” by today’s mainstream standards, that does not mean that it is wrong.
May one venture the hope that Paul is not far from the kingdom of (true) conservatism?
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A. Zarkov writes:
It’s no secret that liberals have long dominated the mainstream media, Hollywood, academia and public school education. Pretty much the only way conservatives could get heard were in limited-circulation specialty magazines such as National Review, The Public Interest, and the American Spectator, and in a few newspapers such as the Washington Times, Investors Business Daily, and to a very limited extent the Wall Street Journal. Starting in the 1990s everything changed. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:43 PM
How many times has it been said—by conservatives—that the problems caused by some immigrant groups, whether Mexican, Hmong, or Mohammedan, are the result of multiculturalism? Not of the immigrants themselves, of their customs, qualities, and beliefs that they bring here with them, but of OUR society’s belief in multiculturalism which has unhappily turned these otherwise perfectly assimilable non-Westerners, who are really just like us, into problems for us?
Here is a typical expression of that belief, a comment posted at Lucianne.com two days after the July 2005 London terrorist bombings.
Here is a lengthy treatment by me from the mid 1990s of this particular conservative avoidance of reality.
On March 7, I posted a brief exchange between Kristor and myself concerning a huge March 3 thread at Dennis Mangan’s blog that was all about me. Namely it was attacking me for my censure of Richard Spencer’s new website, Alternative Right, over its anti-American content which morally equates America with Muslim terrorists. I had briefly glanced at Mangan’s anti-Auster thread, which has 116 comments and is 24,600 words long, but had not read it. In the responding March 7 VFR thread, which consists of a grand total of six comments and 538 words, James P. wrote:
Incidentally, a big theme in the comments to that Mangans thread is that you are an untrustworthy Marrano working relentlessly in the Jewish interest and for the benefit of Israel.…Last night Mangan posted an entry, “Auster’s Austracism,” saying that James P.’s characterization of the March 3 Mangan’s thread is wrong:
I see nothing that can be construed as calling Auster “an untrustworthy Marrano”, much less that calling him so is “a big theme.”Having defended himself and his commenters from the charge that they had called me an “untrustworthy Marrano,” Mangan then proceeds to say:
Lawrence Auster has made it clear that he values Israel at least as much as he does his own country…Whoa! Isn’t that a Marrano-like profile he’s attributing to me? That is, just as a Marrano pretends to be a Christian, but is really a Jew, I pretend to be a loyal American, but in reality I am equally loyal—or even more loyal—to Israel than to America?
Thus, immediately after denying the charge that his site accused me of being a Marrano, Mangan accuses me of being a Marrano. Whether or not James’s charge was correct originally, it’s certainly correct now.
As I’ve pointed out before, Mangan is so bent out of shape on the subject of yours truly that he can’t keep his statements about that subject straight from one moment to the next. And that’s the most charitable interpretation.
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In an entry posted yesterday morning, I noted that according to AP, Obama had announced a deadline of March 18 for House passage of the health care bill, but that according to the New York Times, Obama was trying to push the legislation through in the “next several weeks.” So I asked, “Which is it?”
Well, according to Politico, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that he never heard of, and certainly was not on board with, any March 18 deadline:
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Obama is to political leadership what anti-matter is to matter; the more strongly he argues for a position, the more the public’s support for it is destroyed. An AP poll taken since he began aggressively pushing the health care bill again shows that 27 percent of the public support his goal of having the Democrats ram through the bill without any Republican backing, and 68 percent of the public want a bipartisan bill—which, of course, they’re not going to get. Meanwhile, 24 percent of Democrats are “very enthusiastic” about voting in November, as compared with 42 percent of Republicans. Allahpundit, who is blown away by the 68 to 27 differential, discusses the poll in depth.
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In the entry earlier this evening, “Put not thy hope in Stupak,” I pessimistically concluded from Rep. Stupak’s interview at the Weekly Standard that Stupak wants the bill to pass; that it could very well pass; and that if the will exists among the Democrats to make it pass, there’s no human force to stop them.
Here a reader takes the diametrically opposite view of Stupak’s comments and of the bill’s prospects. He says that it’s over. Period.
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It’s a wild world out there, folks—with tragedy and history and comedy and historical tragedy and tragical-comical farce and everything in between all going on at once. Even as America is facing the imminent threat of being taken over by a socialist state and being changed forever from a free to an unfree country, we’re diverted with just-resigned congressman Eric Massa telling us about his nude encounter with White House consiglieri Rahm Emanuel in the House of Representatives locker room while the goofy self-taught political philosopher Glenn Beck looks on sagely and expresses his doubts.
Sam Stein at The Huffington Post provides a vivid account of the bizarre interview (there is a video link below article):
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(Note: in a later entry, a reader takes the opposite point of view from mine in this entry.)
You can read the Weekly Standard’s interview of Rep. Bart Stupak today in two ways, which are not mutually exclusive: that he’s absolutely firm that he (along with his eleven Stupak amendment colleagues) will not vote for the health care bill if it doesn’t contain the Stupak amendment language; and that he is very desirous of voting for the bill it if does contain the language. He acknowledges that there are significant procedural challenges yet to be overcome in “tie-barring” his and the other House hold-outs’ demanded changes to the Senate bill so that the whole thing, the Senate bill and all the fixes, goes through as one package, yet he expresses his optimism: “The majority party can get it done. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Given Stupak’s desire to support the bill, I think it would be foolish to expect the Stupak Twelve to remain the biggest obstacle to passage, which has been the main story line in recent days. I therefore think we should assume the worst—assume that the anti-abortion language will get included somehow (though it’s hard to see how), and that the Stupak group will vote yes. But if that is so, by what scenario could passage still be stopped? According to Democratic congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Missouri today, the bill currently has 201 supporters. Adding the Stupak Twelve makes it 213, only three or four short of the number needed for passage. Stupak in his interviews strikes me as man of integrity. It remains the case that this man of integrity wants to pass this horrible bill, just so long as it doesn’t fund abortion, and subject us to a nightmarish government takeover of society unprecedented in American history. I repeat again—it is not the desire of Stupak to stop the bill; it is his desire to pass it. His uprightness is a wall against government funding of abortions, not against a socialized America.
We cannot put our hope in princes—or in representatives. On the human level, the outcome of this struggle is completely in the hands of the Democrats, our adversaries. At this point, only God can save us from the monstrous thing the Democrats want to do to us, that same God who delivered the Israelites from Pharoah’s army at the Red Sea … and who gave us the Massachusetts Miracle.
Here is the Bart Stupak interview that is discussed in the next entry. Notice the contradiction between the title and the first sentence of the article.
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He is too ignorant to recognize his liberalism.
— Ron L., VFR, March 9, 2010
As many observers including me have suggested over the last couple of days, there may have been more going on with Rep. Massa than a single salty language incident. According to Politico, there was:
The House ethics committee has received allegations that former Rep. Eric Massa groped at least three male staffers and conducted himself improperly with interns as well as full-time aides, a source familiar with the matter tells POLITICO.
As I said yesterday, Rep. Eric Massa’s statements and behavior are erratic. As John McCormack writing at the Washington Examiner points out, Massa’s admitted behavior (posted at VFR yesterday) went well beyond salty language:
Reliable sources on Capitol Hill say the House ethics report on Eric Massa will be damning. Obamacare opponents, like Glenn Beck, might want to think twice before indulging Massa and letting this Democratic creep become the posterboy of Obamacare opposition. It was already self-evident that Eric Massa’s story didn’t add up. As Jonah Goldberg notes, it doesn’t pass the smell test: If Massa admits he “tousled” the hair of a male staffer and told the staffer he ought to be “fracking” him, the whole story is probably much, much worse. And as Michelle Malkin says, “Don’t trust Democrat Rep. Eric Massa any further than you can throw him.” MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 04:39 PM
Daniel Pipes writes today at the Corner:
Iraq’s Cosmetic Election [Daniel Pipes]“It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq’s national elections.” So writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board today. I’m no cynic, but my mood about Iraq could variously be described as depressed, despairing, despondent, dejected, pessimistic, melancholic, and gloomy.
That’s because the Iraqi regime (along with those of Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority) is a kept institution that cannot survive without constant American support. As long as Washington pumps money and sacrifices lives to maintain the Baghdad government, the latter can hobble along. Remove those props and Iranian-backed Islamists soon take over. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:11 PM
And if all moderate Democrats fail to resist Obama, we will lose our freedom.
Jay Cost is a knowledgeable, thoughtful, moderately conservative political analyst who writes regularly at Real Clear Politics. In his column today, he addresses the moderate Democrats on the health care bill. He says that Obama’s condescending contempt for the views of the people in this debate goes against the spirit of the Democratic Party (which, after all, is supposed to represent the people), and that if the moderate Democrats fail to stand up to him, the party will be changed into something narrow and sectarian:
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Jeffrey Anderson writes at NRO:
As the Associated Press reports, President Obama is now running a full-court press to try to get House Democrats to pass the Senate version of Obamacare within the next ten days. The president is leaving for Indonesia and Australia on March 18, and he wants the House to pass his proposed $2.5 trillion, 2,700-page overhaul of our nation’s health-care system in time for him to sign it into law before he boards the plane. [LA replies: But according to today’s New York Times, Obama is trying “to push the legislation through a final series of votes in Congress in the next several weeks”—not the next ten days. So which is it?]The president is also imploring Americans to “Make your voice heard.” Never has he given such sound advice. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:13 AM
Geoffrey Dickens at Newsbusters quotes Dan Rather on Chris Matthews’s show this past weekend (and also links the audio):
DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. “Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.” And a version of, “Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate,” this is what’s been used against him, “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”It’s funny not because it’s “racist”—Obama obviously has nothing to do with Old South stereotypes (except insofar as he puts on a transparently fake black Southern accent from time to time)—but because it’s true. The man is an incredible turn-off. Like a robot turned permanently to “Haranguing Dictator mode,” he keeps repeating, day after day, month after month, “Now is the time to act, “We must move forward now,” “We’ve waited long enough,” “The time to debate is over,” “It’s time to stop talking and starting acting,” “It’s time to make a decision.” Long after we, the American people, justifiably repelled and frightened by what he wants to do to us, have rejected his health care scheme by which we all become the slaves of a monstrous bureaucracy that will impoverish us individually and bankrupt the country, he keeps yammering into our ears that we must enact it, now. The more we reject him, the more he keeps going after us.
So, yes, this guy couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic. He makes normal people want to run from him.
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The blog Weasel Zippers links a YouTube of Glenn Beck’s learned discourse on the “fascist far right” of Europe and on Geert Wilders as a representative thereof, and adds as introduction:
Glenn Beck Losing Me:The entry has many lively comments.
Insinuates Geert Wilders is a Fascist …In Beck’s defense, the title on this YouTube video [“Glenn Beck calls Geert Wilders a fascist”] is misleading, Beck doesn’t explicitly call Wilders a fascist. He does (after labeling Wilders “far-right”) claim in Europe, all of the far-right is fascist. Still, Beck is talking out his a**, how many so-called “fascists” like Wilders have unwavering support for the Jewish state? What is Beck thinking? Have some knowledge of what you’re talking about before making an ass of yourself in front of millions of informed people …
Sure, just as they enrich us with their diversity and energize us with their vitality and firm up our moral tone with their family values and increase our spirituality with their religiosity and improve the safety of our roads with their good driving values and enhance our intellectual life with their love of education…
… and, last but not least, just as they strengthen American nationhood by conditioning their support for U.S. politicians and their moral approval of the United States itself on the unlimited admission of legal and illegal Hispanic immigrants.
Lydia McGrew writes:
I haven’t seen a mention at VFR of the debate over whether Hispanic crime rates are actually lower than white crimes rates. My blog colleague Steve Burton has been doing a lot of work responding to Ron Unz’s article in The American Conservative on this. Summary of the state of the debate is here.MORE…
The discussion launched by Karen from England’s all out attack on the soundness and viability of the United States, which began on March 5 under the title, “Is Europe healthier (conservatively speaking) than the U.S.?”, has filled its original entry to maximum size and continues in this entry.
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Karl D. writes:
Have you seen the Glenn Beck show today? He pretty much threw Geert Wilders and any “Right wing” European parties under the bus by saying they are leading to Fascism! He even asked his viewers to “Tweet” him about these parties. He has fallen into the same familiar trap that anything resembling serious Conservatism or Nationalism in Europe is going to lead to another Hitler. I am sick. I always had mixed feelings about Beck. He had some very good things to say. But his misreading of Europe is astounding. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:44 PM
Gintas writes:
Karen in the thread, “Is Europe healthier (conservatively speaking) than the U.S.?”, says:LA replies:
What I meant is that there is a tendency in “conservative” blogs and writers to imagine that a reversal of some leftist ideologies will miraculously return them to a previous imagined golden era.Imagined? There was a comment in the Mangan thread, critical of you:
I think the key to understanding Auster is that he wants to go back to the America of 1950—blacks as second-class citizens, homos in the closet, women in the home, public respect for Christianity, a certain formality of manners and dress, no public porn or trash culture, strong national defense, and meager non-white immigration.His language was pejorative, but I answered: “Sounds great, sign me up.” Several others joined in my endorsement of this dream.
For the record, I have never said that I want blacks to be “second-class citizens,” or homosexuals to be “in the closet,” or women to be “in the home.” What I have said is that the white majority culture of this country must again become the dominant culture; that society should not normalize or approve homosexual conduct; and that women should not occupy high level positions of political leadership.
Nik S. writes:
Do you have any comments on the Oscars?—not that the ceremony even matters any more. But seriously, the winner of Best Director (a woman, no less) saying, “Support our troops!” Under the regime of George Bush, this would have been unimaginable. The times, they are-a-changing.Nick S. continues:
Funny.… with all the recent talk about James Cameron’s Avatar, it seems ironic that his ex-wife (does he have just one?—I can’t keep track) is the person whom has just won awards for Best Director and Best Picture.… for making a movie about war. Is Hollywood trying to upgrade the status of women in movie-making?.… or is Hollywood totally nuts at this point? Or is Hollywood actually, kinda, waking up to reality?And like, dude, should we even care? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:59 PM
Blogger Keith Hennessey sums up the current situation. While he doesn’t say much that is new, he provides useful perspective. He puts the chances of passage at 40 percent. At the time of Scott Brown’s election he put it at under 10 percent. He admits he has been surprised by the Obamapelosiharrycrats’ persistence.
A forty percent chance of an inconceivable calamity that will permanently change our country in a horrible way and it’s not within our power to do anything to stop it, since it’s all up to the Democrats. We need help from a higher source. I repeat the quotation by Mary Baker Eddy that a reader sent a few weeks ago:
Unconstitutional and unjust coercive legislation and laws, infringing individual rights, must be of few days and full of trouble. The vox populi, through the providence of God, promotes and impels all true reform, and at the best time, will redress wrongs and rectify injustice. Tyranny can thrive but feebly under our Government. God reigns, and will “turn and overturn” until right is found supreme.
Gintas writes:
I think Massa is contradictory and hysterical because he can’t get over the horse’s head (or is it a donkey’s head, since it’s the Democrat Party?) he found in his bed. After all, he does oppose The Bill.
This story about Massa’s radio program yesterday, posted early this morning by Roll Call, clearly states that Massa himself said on the program that he was considering rescinding his resignation. That contradicts the statement by Massa’s chief of staff today that Massa is not rescinding the resignaton and that it was not Massa who spoke of rescinding the resignation, but callers who were urging him to do it. The Roll Call piece contains other inconsistent and erratic statements by Massa.
Massa Hints He Could Rescind Resignation
March 8, 2010, 7:14 A.M.Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) suggested on a New York radio station Sunday that he could rescind his resignation—scheduled to take effect at 5 p.m. Monday—after asserting that an ethics investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed one of his aides may have been orchestrated by Democratic leaders to get him out of office before the health care vote. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:58 PM
The story comes from Fox News. It’s based on a radio interview in his district that Massa gave yesterday.
Massa Details ‘Salty’ Comment That Led to Resignation, Slams Dem LeadersA “salty” comment made in the company of drunken staff members at a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve was all the Democratic “forces that be” needed to push him out of the House of Representatives and prevent him from possibly casting the vote that would kill health care reform, says outgoing New York Rep. Eric Massa. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:45 PM
At his press conference Rep. Massa said (I’m passing this on from a friend who heard Rush Limbaugh play it), that “they’re pushing the bill through no matter what, and they don’t care who they have to smear to do it. This will break apart the country and it will take a generation to get over it.” Massa also indicated something about a “buck naked” confrontation he had with Rahm Emanuel in the House showers (does Emanuel as a former congressman have House privileges?), where Emanuel insulted him in some way and Massa fired back.
UPDATE, 12:32 p.m.: A reader has just told me that “Massa will likely be on the Glenn Beck TV show at 5pm, Fox News, with accusations of corruption in the Obama administration. He may also be retracting his resignation.”
UPDATE, 2:30 p.m. Massa will be resigning after all, effective 5 p.m. today. According to his chief of staff, Massa is in his home district now and is not planning to return to Washington. He says that the “rescind resignation” story was generated from comments make by callers to to Massa on a radio program he had appeared on. However, a story in Roll Call today (I’ll post it soon) clearly states that Massa himself on the radio program spoke of the possibility of rescinding his resignation. There is a disturbingly erratic quality in Massa’s statements and conduct. To start with, since he has now told the world that the House leadership forced him out in order to remove an obstacle to the health care will, why didn’t he say that in his Friday resignation statement? And why did he indicate (repeatedly) the fact that he was “guilty” without specifying what he was guilty of, which only made him look more guilty, while simultaneously saying that all he did was some bad language at a drunken wedding (which is subject of the next post). It will take a while for the truth in this story to come out.
(Update 12:17 p.m., Massa has already given the press conference and Rush Limbaugh is playing excerpts of it now. Massa is going after the Democratic leadership.)
Last week Eric Massa, a freshman Democratic congressman from New York State’s Finger Lakes region and a 24 year Navy veteran, told reporters that he had decided not to run for re-election because of a recurrence of cancer. Then on Friday he announced that he was resigning his seat effective today, because of a complaint that he had sad something to a male staffer that had made him feel uncomfortable. Massa’s resignation statement was exceedingly strange, since he both declared his guilt, repeatedly, and suggested that he had done nothing more than use salty language in his congressional office. Representatives now resign from Congress for using salty language to their male assistants?
Given that Massa is one of only two liberal Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November for the reason that the bill did not go far enough (the other was Dennis Kucinich), the thought naturally occurred that perhaps that Massa had been forced out by the House leadership, thus reducing by one the number of votes they would need to pass the bill.
I’ve just been told that Massa has announced he will hold a press conference today explaining his resignation. Evidently the news was in the broadcast media, not yet on the Web, because it’s not turning up in a search. I don’t know when the press conference will take place or whether it will be broadcast live.
Also Massa’s thoughtful and principled (from a liberal point of view) statement in November explaining why he was voting no on the bill, which I read over the weekend, is very interesting and I’ve been planning to discuss it.
Fox News reports this morning. ” ‘Trust’ gap between House, Senate Dems Hurting Health Care Push.” Indeed, while some say that the House is the thing, others increasingly realize—as shown in the Fox story—that what prevents the House from being the thing is that the Senate is really the thing. I made the same point last week in the entry, “House passage is everything—or is it?”
And this is why some House holdouts are insisting that Obama’s famous “final” push must begin in the Senate, not the House. Let the Senate show that they are capable of passing by reconciliation the additions to the bill that the House members require, by actually passing them. THEN the House will vote on that changed bill. That makes infinitely more sense than the House passing the Senate bill which Obama could then sign into law without the changes that the House holdouts require.
The Democratic leadership will likely resist the demand that the Senate act first. Why? Because they will see that some of the additions required by the House holdouts cannot be passed by reconciliation. In which case Obamacare will fail. But we don’t know this to be true. And this is where imponderables about reconciliation come into focus which apparently no human being at present, including not just you and me but even Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, knows for sure. In any event we non-Democrats have no influence over what is decided among the House and Senate Democratic members. They could override all rules to the contrary and pass the bill tomorrow, and change America in an instant into a hideously controlled, unfree society, the unchanging dream of the left. That could happen. And that is why we need to appeal to help beyond the human. If we haven’t already done do, those of us who believe in God, in the Providence that numerous times in our history has rescued America from disaster, need to start praying.
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(March 8, 12:46 p.m.: More commenters have responded strongly to Karen’s denunciations of the U.S., and Karen has come back even stronger than before.)
Karen from England says that white Americans, unlike the various European peoples, are too diverse to be a people, and therefore lack the ability to join together and save their country from the destructive forces of liberalism. Richard P. from America energetically disagrees.
See the excellent discussion at The Thinking Housewife, beginning with an essay by Kristor, and continuing with replies by Laura Wood and others.
I wrote to Kristor a day or two ago:
Guess who has a huge thread about yours truly. Mangan. Again. A reader told me about it tonight. It’s all about my criticism of the anti-American and nihilistic content of Richard Spencer’s new site. I just glanced at it briefly. Don’t feel like reading it. Much of it seems like the usual, “Auster’s so mean, such a terrible person.” Haven’t these babies noticed that I have taken the same positions forever, and that if a writer, say, morally equates America with Islamic terrorists, I’m going to condemn him sternly? No, they can’t understand that. It’s all about how mean I am. Babies. I have no respect for them.Kristor replies:
I just skimmed the thread. It’s rather droll, really, in a depressing way. They begin by castigating you for condemning doctrines you find damnable. Then they proceed to castigating each other relentlessly over disagreements on several different substantive matters. It’s a shouting match. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 04:55 PM
A week or two ago the former anti-anti-Semitic blogger, and now anti-Semitic blogger, Cesar Tort (a.k.a. Chechar), who during his brief anti-anti-Semite phase treated me as his authority and quoted me extensively, copied a huge 2007 post by his new mentor, the anti-Semite Tanstaafl, under the title, “Tanstaafl on Auster.” It concerns the discovery by Tanstaafl, who had previously (so he said) thought highly of me, that I am a liar and a hypocrite and an agent of the Zionist takeover of America, because I do not apply Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society to the Jews.
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A reader thinks that at present the Democrats are not pursuing reconciliation, but are simply trying to get enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill in its present form and have the president (it still feels strange and inappropriate to refer to that enemy alien by that title) sign it into law.
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What we see in this photo is the self-evident absurdity of a female political leadership class.
In a normal, man-centric political world, an occasional woman who is operating more or less within the standards of that world, such as Margaret Thatcher, can be a leader and function well. But once the political world become predominantly female, then it changes to something fundamentally different and inappropriate to politics.
Similarly, in private life, when a woman is relating to men, she is capable of relating to them intelligently. But once you have a group of women talking together, as in this picture, then it automatically switches over to the female thing, which—sorry, folks!—is a whole different thing from the male thing, is not oriented toward intellectual seriousness about large issues, and is incompatible with political leadership.
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In a column at the Washington Post, Sen. Conrad says that reconciliation could be used for “fixer” measures that reduce the deficit—not for comprehensive changes. But, he continues, that’s ok, since the Senate bill is good, and a few fixer measures would be better.
Thus Conrad makes it clear that he wants the bill, and he would like some changes added by reconciliation, but that all the changes that various House members want cannot happen.
However, aren’t there reconciliation measures that various House holdouts insist on that are not deficit reductions measures—say, abortion?
Thus, while Conrad wants nationalized health care and is not on our side substantively, his procedural position may back up what I said in the previous entry. Which is that in the absence of absolute certainty that the Senate will add the promised measures to the bill after the House passes it, the House holdouts will not agree to vote for it. And since (as I’m guessing) not all the measures they want can be done by reconciliation, at least some of the House holdouts won’t sign on.
Jeffrey Anderson writes at March 4 at Critical Condition, the health care bill blog at NRO:
Don’t Leave the House Unattended [Jeffrey H. Anderson]All of the talk about “reconciliation” seems to have distracted people—like a red herring—from a simple but crucial fact: If the House goes first, as now appears to be the plan, and passes the Senate health-care overhaul, the president would then have a bill in hand that had passed both houses of Congress, and—whether reconciliation subsequently succeeded or failed in the Senate—we would have Obamacare. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:03 PM
It is not just that Britain’s top weather experts at the Met Office, which does “weather and climate change forecasts for the UK and worldwide,” cannot predict weather trends over centuries or decades. It’s that they can’t predict them for a single year, or even a season.
Predicting the weather a week in advance, they can handle. Predicting it a day in advance, they’re pretty darned good at.
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Bjorn writes:
One comment should be made re Geert Wilders’s visit to England and the House of Lords yesterday.I attended a portion of the press conference after the showing of Fitna, and even though Wilders was asked many of the standard questions, many were also framed in a different level of semi-respect, in the sense of “If you were prime minister…”, “If you were in the government…”, “If you won in the next election, what would you do about…”, kinds of words and tones.
It was almost as if they were beginning to believe—and acknowledge—that Wilders will actually be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. And I further wonder if this part of the press conference (the questions themselves) was one of the reasons why the TV head office declined to run most of the material—maybe the questioners were too respectful for the censors. After all, the answers from Wilders contained little new material.
Maybe Paul Mirengoff of Powerline is beginning to feel safer in coming out agreeing with Wilders. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:33 PM
I wrote to correspondents:
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline says that he likes Geert Wilders and agrees with his main positions, including: “halting Islamic immigration” and “deporting immigrants who … call for … the imposition of Islamic law.”Powerline is basically a neocon site. It was formed for the purpose of defending Bush from the left and supporting the utopian Muslim Democratization policy of Bush and Norman Podhoretz. It opposed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2007, but that was mainly about legalizing illegals. For a writer at Powerline to favor the ending of the immigration of all Muslims and the deportation of sharia believers, to support Wilders’s policy of stopping the Islamization of the West instead of the neocon policy of democratizing Muslims, is remarkable. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:31 PM
I don’t mean to be meanspirited when I say this, really I don’t. But is it not fair to say that David Paterson is to governing New York State what Otis Mathis is to leading the Detroit public schools?
(If the above linked video doesn’t work, try this one.)
March 6
Jim C. writes:
“That nameless, unmapped realm beyond incompetence.”You sound like Rod Serling writing for the Affirmative Action Zone.
A major force driving the cultural dissolution of the Anglo-American world has been the belief in free trade, which places the abstract economic good of the whole world ahead of the concrete economic good of one’s own country. Up to this point, the belief in free trade has been as unquestionable in the economic realm as the belief in non-discrimination and mass diverse immigration has been in the cultural realm—and almost as dangerous to challenge. In his new book, Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why, Ian Fletcher addresses the issue on a profound level. In lively language directed at both economists and the general reader, he examines the free trade orthodoxy step by step and shows how free trade hollows out the country that practices it. While the book is not aimed at advancing a conservative or nationalist agenda per se, it should be much welcomed by cultural conservatives.
Here are reviews at Amazon.
(Note, March 8, 12:46 p.m.: the debate has continued today, with several commenters responding strongly to Karen’s denunciations of the U.S., and Karen coming back even stronger than before.)
(Note, March 6: the discussion continues, with Karen expanding on the hopeless inadequacy—conservatively speaking—of everything American, and James P. replies.)
(Note: James P. takes strong exception to Karen’s view that Britain—with its Royal Family, its aristocracy, its established Church, its military regimental structure, and its national system of law—has a conservative strength that the United States lacks.)
Karen writes from England
Regarding your entry, “Against the burka,” I have always thought your pessimism about Europe was misplaced and your optimism about the USA overexuberant. [LA replies: I don’t think it’s correct to say that I have expressed optimism about the U.S. Rather, I’ve said that the U.S. is relatively better off than Europe, that it has more life in it than Europe, that it is not as far advanced in leftism as Europe, and that it has significant conservative elements in its mainstream politics, while Europe seems to have none.] Europe still has its original ethnic identities and traditions. These may have been assaulted by the multiculturalists and politicians, but scratch under the surface and they are still very much there. The electoral wins of Geert Wilders demonstrate that the liberal and tolerant Dutch are not quite as liberal as people had assumed they were and they are leading the way in electing an anti Islamic and anti immigration politician with a back bone. Where is the Geert Wilders of the USA? Where is the Dewinter? Where is the Nationalist party of the USA? There is nothing. The “Conservative” movement in the USA is a collection of liberals with a single “conservative” issue and a veneer of superficial Christianity in which God is a simple cosmic cuddly toy, moulded into whatever form is required to make them feel good. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:47 PM
Tom P. writes:
It’s back.LA replies:
Obama looking to give new life to immigration reformIs he really going to try to push this before the mid term elections?In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation.
He and the Democratic leadership have to try, or at least go through motions of trying, in order to keep their base. But how are they actually going to pass comprehensive immigration reform? Via budget reconciliation? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:22 PM
The Queens imam who was supposed to be telling the FBI about Najibullah Zazi’s subway bomb plot but instead told Zazi that the FBI were onto him, pled quilty yesterday:
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But for the good fortune that Scotland Yard last year intercepted an e-mail from a senior al-Qaeda member in Pakistan to 24 year old U.S. immigrant Najibullah Zazi giving him instructions on how to carry out a suicide attack, Zazi would have set off a backpack bomb on a New York City subway during rush hour last September consigning scores of people to a horrible death. Notwithstanding the many news stories on Zazi’s arrest and trial since last September, there has been a routine, almost affectless quality about them. No strong public opinion was aroused by the near mass murder, just as there had been no strong reaction to a similar narrowly averted mass murder in the New York City subways in 1996. The story was presented in such a way that it had no meaning beyond itself, did not point to anything beyond the bare recitation of the facts of the case. And what is that “beyond”? It is the reality that we have allowed people who are religiously commanded to kill us, and to give their moral and financial support to people who kill us, to enter our country and become our fellow citizens; and they now walk about among us, a regular and familiar part of our society.
Like Zazi himself. Here he is, just your average, normal Mideastern immigrant in this land of immigrants, a strapping young fellow in a plaid shirt, striding through the Colorado sunshine … on his way to speak to FBI agents in Denver last September.
The very model of a modern Moslem terrorist
In her TownHall column this week on the growing resistance to the Muslim head cover in Netherlands, Belgium, and France, Diana West expands on the discriminatation that must be made between Islam and the West if the West is to recover and survive:
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It’s not been a good week for New York State’s leading African-American office-holders. The hapless governor, David Paterson, is close to resigning over his grossly improper personal interference in a police matter to protect his closest aide, David Johnson, who had been charged with beating his girlfriend, Sherr-Una Booker; for telling multiple lies about it; and also for telling multiple lies under oath about his receipt of $6,000 worth of World Series tickets. And the state’s most senior member of Congress, Rep. Charles Rangel (my congressman), has just stepped aside as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which handles tax matters, over his numerous tax violations including his ownership of many residential properties for which he has never paid taxes, and will probably not seek re-election. Recent photos of the normally affable and on-top-of-the-world Rangel show a shockingly deflated, broken-looking man.
Meanwhile our nation’s African-American chief executive, in the single grossest act of political influence peddling I can remember, named to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the brother of a Democratic congressman who is undecided on the health care bill, on the same day that he had that congressman come to the White House to discuss the bill.
When I saw the headline of Mark Cunningham’s column in yesterday’s New York Post, “Dems at risk of decades in desert,” my first thought was: how can anyone claim to have the ability to predict electoral trends decades into the future? However, if you leave aside the “decades” part, Cunningham is making a striking and original argument which takes us beyond the usual terms of today’s political debate. He says that if the Democrats push Obamacare into law, not only will they lose a massive number of seats in both Houses, and not only will they lose the majority in both Houses, and not only will the Republicans gain enough seats (by 2012) to repeal Obamacare; but
Passing health-care “reform” runs a huge risk of handing Republicans more power in Washington than they’ve had since the 1920s. And if they have the votes to repeal ObamaCare, they’ll go after scores of things that vastly benefit core [components] of the modern Democratic Party, from community-organizing grants to prevailing-wage laws to the federal budget process.In short, the Democrats’ reach for revolutionary power could result in a counterrevolution against important elements of the modern liberal state. MORE…In other words, if Democrats go for broke to pass “health-care reform,” the party really might wind up losing everything.
An amusing and hopeful thought from Donald Hank (Don H. at VFR) at his blog, Laigle’s Forum (I’m curious to find out what that title means). Here he comments on the meaning of recent events in the Netherlands:
Wilders’s persecution boosts Freedom PartyHere is the site’s lively About page.Wilders’s Freedom Party gaining ground in Holland
There is only one group strong enough and rich enough to destroy the Left and that is the Left itself. And they do it every time, because unlike normal people, lefties believe in their own immortality and the historical inevitability of their hare-brained utopian agendas.
So, believing that all reasonable people everywhere agree with them, they inevitably get careless and start stripping people of their God-given rights, such as the right to speak one’s mind. Censorship is a sure-fire way to ultimately lose and give all the power to your opponent! …
Keep censoring, Lefties. You have found the enemy (psst: he is YOU. Yeah).
c
A. Zarkov writes:
Appearing before the British Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee, disgraced climate scientist Phil Jones squirms as he’s questioned by Lord Lawson of Blaby (Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequor during the 1980s). Watch him sweat here. When questioned why he refused to give his data and codes to a requester, he said, “…because we had a lot of work and resources invested in it.” I take this weird answer as an admission that his work was flawed and he didn’t want anyone to find out. When asked again why refused to furnish the raw station data, Jones could said he was only willing to provide the “finished product.” Let me take a moment to explain what the “finished product” means.. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:42 PM
Peter B. writes:
As you point out, the warmists claim that less snow in a given year at a given place is proof of warming and that more snow in a given place in a given year is also proof of warming. With these arguments the warmists hope to push into drastic action to avert climate change. Leaving aside the correctness or otherwise of this point of view [LA notes: on this point the warmists appear to have a reasonable argument], how will we know if we’ve succeeded in averting climate change? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:31 PM
Rick Darby has complicated thoughts on the new right-wing website.
In his article today on Geert Wilders, Paul Belien writes:
Wilders regards support for Israel as the litmus test to decide with whom he is willing to cooperate.In the excellent Wilders manner, this is stated so simply and directly. It gets to the heart of the issue and comprehends other, unspoken issues within it.
Today at The Brussels Journal Paul Belien writes about “The Wilders Momentum”:
Yesterday’s local elections in the Netherlands resulted in a victory for the Freedom Party (PVV) of opposition leader Geert Wilders. On June 9th the Dutch will again be called to the voting booths for the general elections. Yesterday’s outcome reinforces the PVV’s momentum, which may result in a political landslide next June with repercussions all over Europe. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:00 PM
The Freedom Party is also first in polls for the June parliamentary elections, and Reuters says it will be difficult for the Christian Democrats to form a strong coalition without Wilders.
Dutch Anti-Islam Leader Wilders Is Major Winner In PollsAMSTERDAM/THE HAGUE (Reuters)—Dutch anti-Islamist leader Geert Wilders scored major gains in local authority polls on Thursday, making him a serious challenger for power in a June national election, preliminary results showed.
In the first test of public opinion since the collapse of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s coalition government last month, Wilders’s Freedom Party (PVV) led in the city of Almere and was second in The Hague. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:30 AM
(Note: This item was drafted yesterday, March 3, before the returns came in of the Freedom Party’s big victories.)
Today, March 3, there are municipal elections throughout the Netherlands. In two cities, Almere and the Hague, Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party is running a full slate of candidates. A few days ago Wilders, speaking in Almere, gave an idea of the changes that would occur in those cities if the Freedom party wins the elections:
I still have other good news for you. I heard from our party leaders in Almere and the Hague [where the Freedom Party is also contesting], Raymond de Roon and Sietse Fritsma, what the main effort will be for the [coalition] negotiations in Almere and the Hague after March 3: That will be a ban on headscarves in municipal bodies and all other institutions, foundations, or associations, if they receive even one penny of subsidy from the municipality. Thus an immediate ban on headscarves, get rid of that woman-humiliating Islamic symbol. And for all clarity: this is not however meant for crosses or yarmulkes, because those are symbols of religions that belong to our own culture and are not—as is the case with headscarves—a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:11 AM
Here is an e-mail I’ve sent to Dan Gerstein, who writes a weekly column for Forbes.
Dear Mr. Gerstein:In your article, “Deaf To America: Why Democrats have lost the public’s trust,” you argue that the public does not oppose the federal takeover of the health care industry because they think it’s a bad idea in itself, but only because it goes against their temporary mood of this year, traumatized as they’ve been by the stimulus and other big spending and by the bad economy. You say that the Democrats are foolish to push against this public mood. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:09 AM
Up to this point, John Albert Gardner, charged in the murder and attempted rape of Chelsea King, has been repeatedly described in the media as a “registered sex offender.” What that means, and what it meant in practice, we were not told. There was a reference to “lude and lascivious behavior” with a child but no specifics. In this March 3 AP story we finally learn the facts of Gardner’s background. In 2000 he was convicted of luring a 13 year old girl from his neighborhood into his house to watch a TV program and assaulting her. The girl escaped, running from his house with her pants down. Despite a psychiatrist’s report that Gardner was completely unrepentant and the psychiatrist’s urgent recommendation that Gardner be sentenced to the full term of 11 years for the crime (though the story fails to identify what crime he was charged with), he was sentenced to six years and released after five. He completed three years of probation in 2008.
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