The claim that the current Administration and their supporters trend to ‘socialism’. My co-blogger at Stones Cry Out wonders if this is an appropriate phrase and as well if the term is being abused to the point of being meaningless. Freydrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom might be read as a clarion call not specifically warning against socialism itself but a more general tendency highlighted in Chapter 2 of Chantal Delsol’s  The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century essay which I’m in the process of blogging my way through. Many of the tendencies and hopes (for change?) that the movement which propelled Mr Obama to the White House are in fact identified by Ms Delsol in her essay (and Ms Delsol being first of all a French national, a philosopher, and writing an essay that pre-dates Mr Obama’s run to the Presidency should be noted). Utopian dreams and the totalitarian consequences is the real danger. It should also be noted that many themes in this chapter resonate well this week as the abortion ethical question returns to the surface propelled by the killing of Mr Tiller.

A recurring theme of Ms Delsol’s is that the crux of the unlearned lessons lie in the continued acceptence of the fatal flawed that lie as the basis of the 20th century utopian totalitarian projects which were so very costly in human life and dignity. While we reject specifics of those projects we accept very many of their premises and therefore lie likely (easy?) prey for finding new ways to explore life in a totalitarian dystopia.

Ms Delsol begins chapter two, which is entitled The insularity of the human species.

Totalitarianism, of whatever persuasion, emerges when we get caught up in the belief that “everything is possible.” It might be worth recalling just how difficult it was to have this idea accepted, or, for instance, to remember how reluctantly the thought of Hannah Arendt was received in France. To deny that “everything is possible,” to make the postulate of unlimited possibility the cornerstone of the errors of the twentieth century, was, it was said, to equate terror and utopia, or to liken the perversities of man’s annihilation to ideals about reshaping human nature. To do this was unthinkable as long as ideological dreams were still persuasive.

Several decades of perseverant reflection, however, finally made it possible to state openly that the idea of that “everything is possible” represents the birth of the twentieth century. This little phrase, which was to reveal itself to be so terrible, essentially means two things. “Everything is possible” is a way of determining who is human: one can then arbitrarily set a boundary here or there between humans and “subhumans” and declare a particular category to be nonhuman, which is what Nazism did. “Everything is possible” is also a way of determining what it is to be human: one can then arbitrarily decree that humans can or should live without authority, without personal secrets, without family, or without gods, which is what communism did. In fact, communism ended up adding the first consequence of “everything is possible” to the second and denied the humanity of those who made no effort to become other than they were.

The essential defense against “everything is possible” is the axiomatic ontological insistence on the irreducible dignity of the human being, which must be and remain a foundational certainty. Human dignity in this context implies two important things. First that man may not be treated as a thing. This contitutes a ontological distinction between man and the rest of nature. Second, that there is therefore an essential bond between all men.

The modern secular (and many liberal deist) thought continues the project of defining man by his attributes and denying his essential axiomatic dignity. Discoveries (and the rise of scientism … see the quote excerpted Sunday), have blurred the biological and neurological differences between man and the animal world. Medical and biological capabilities have expanded our understanding of man’s development and our ability to affect this.

The Kantian was hoped would deflect the necessity of ontological axiomatic dignity. Kant argued persuasively that man deserves respect by virtue of being endowed with moral autonomy. This results however in the tempting substitution replacing “It is not man who has dignity, but man insofar as he is autonomous. [emphasis mine]” One characteristic is not sufficient to defend man. Thus the newborn, the dying, the handicapped become less than human. As our abilities at genetic screening expand, the fine tuning of our exclusion from the ‘truly human’ can narrow.

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was felt that the rise of reason and our understanding of the physical world would do away with the need for religion. But, especially inasmuch as religion provides a framework in which to base the necessary axiomatic irreducible dignity of man the reverse is true. The necessity and place for religion, instead of being done away with, is ever more needed and required as a bastion holding a multitude of totalitarian dystopias at bay.

A final note which may connect to the currently vogue resurgence of the abortion question in the light of current events.

Prudential wisdom consists precisely in acting within shadowy areas, where bearings have a tendency to disappear. but prudence is not a form of pragmatism; it is a virtue. It may dispense with overly strict principles on the condition that its eyes remain fixed upon points of reference that lie above those principles: there is an immense difference between allowing someone to die and decreeing that all the dying who have reached a certain point are no longer persons.

Dying and fetus I’d offer might be exchanged in the above.

Back when Mr Bush was nominating people for President, I made what I felt was a strong argument that the Senate should have readily nominated his appointees. I stand by this argument now that the other party is now in the White House. I based this argument on Mr Hamilton’s Federalist Paper #76. Mr Hamilton notes:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

He also notes just prior, mentioning consequences of what might occur if the Senate took too active a role in vetting and selecting nominees.

Hence, in every exercise of the power of appointing to offices, by an assembly of men, we must expect to see a full display of all the private and party likings and dislikes, partialities and antipathies, attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who compose the assembly. The choice which may at any time happen to be made under such circumstances, will of course be the result either of a victory gained by one party over the other, or of a compromise between the parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often out of sight. In the first, the qualifications best adapted to uniting the suffrages of the party, will be more considered than those which fit the person for the station. […] And it will rarely happen that the advancement of the public service will be the primary object either of party victories or of party negotiations. [emphasis mine]

In view of the last two decades of despicable SCOTUS and other similar interviews, Mr Biden and his parties behavior during the Thomas hearings comes to mind, a rejoinder to Mr Hamilton might be, “D’ya think? They might put considerations of party before who might be fit for the station.”

Mr Hamilton suggests the Senatorial advise/consent be exercised to insure the nominee free from “unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.” If Ms Sotomayor is free from these issues, my view would be to approve her to the position.

Should a court be where "policy is made"?  I thought that’s what we had elected representatives for.  But Obama’s pick for the highest court in the land, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, seem to think so.  (Well, until she realizes she’s being recorded, and then she gives a wink and a nod to the audience.)  Another liberal judge who thinks it’s his or her job to form the law rather than interpret it.

And from this article about the pick comes this wonderful line:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

If she were a Republican, that would have been labeled "racist".  But she doesn’t stop there.

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

Her remarks came in the context of reflecting her own life experiences as a Hispanic female judge and on how the increasing diversity on the federal bench “will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.”

Blind justice will now be peeking, if Sotomayor is confirmed.  I continue to think that these kinds of judges still don’t recall that Brown v. Board of Education was decided by nine white guys.  Unanimously. 

And I’d like to note that my objections to this court pick have absolutely nothing to do with her gender or national origin.  It is the Left that is overly hung up on this, as I noted in this post during the confirmation of John Roberts.  And Sotomayor, in bringing this up, is not only overly emphasizing this irrelevant point, but setting up opponents to be tarred as "racists". 

The whole idea that one’s race or gender, in and of itself, should alter one’s view of the law in this day and age, is saddening, frankly.  The fact that we have an African-American President is not the beginning of racial reconciliation and equality, it is one of the culminating events of it.  It shows we have a majority in this country that doesn’t care much your color as long as they approve of your character.  That’s "The Dream".  No, we are have not been perfected in this, but we are not perfect in anything.  There are always problems.  There are always improvements to be made.  But as a nation, I think we can hold our heads up high on this matter. 

However, Judge Sotomayor thinks white guys, over half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, still can’t judge fairly.  Thanks for your vote of confidence.

Let them brand themselves.

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

No, no, no, no, no.  Let their actions speak for themselves, from purchasing interests in financial and auto companies, to ignoring bankruptcy law when dealing with those companies in order to pay off special interests, to spending billions (and taxing more) on universal health care, they can pretty much fill out the "Hello, my name is" badge themselves. 

I’m with Michael Steele on this.  All this will do is give the media and the Democrats a tool to hammer Republicans with.  "They’re comparing him to Hugo Chavez" or something like that.  While the truth is that they’re pulling us in that direction and not letting a crisis go to waste (as Mr. Emmanuel has declared), labeling them doesn’t change minds, or at least not for long.  Pointing out why their policies are flawed will.

I haven’t done this in a while, so I have some rather old examples in addition to the rather recent ones.

Signing statements:  Once the bane of the liberal blogosphere, and criticized by Obama himself, they seem to be coming back into vogue.  Perhaps not as much as under Bush, but when a spending bill’s signing statement says the President only considers some of the item "suggestions", that’s precisely what the Left used to decry.

Taxing health care benefits:  During the campaign, Senator Obama criticized McCain’s proposal, but now President Obama is open to the suggestion.

Military tribunals:  Senator Obama said during the campaign, "by any measure, our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure."  President Obama, however, is open to using that supposedly failed system.  While this would be change a bit, sometimes using federal courts and giving foreign enemies constitutional rights, this is not making us friends in the world (as if that should be the ultimate end of our foreign policy).  Germany’s "Der Spiegel" notes a number of German opinions that are critical of this move.  And Moe Lane, writing at RedState, notes a plausible outcome of all this change; the status quo.

Mind you, other people suggested that the President’s actions back then [announcing the closing of Gitmo] were possibly just an attempt to give him maneuvering room while he came up with a way to keep the status quo going. Which leads to an interesting scenario: let us say that the President decides to run military tribunals for Gitmo detainees. Let us also say that he (with a little help from Congress) steamrollers over current opposition to those tribunals. Once those tribunals are done, and the existing detainees are processed… what’s stopping the President from continuing to keep Gitmo operating? After all, did he not just ‘reform’ it? It’d certainly be cheaper to keep an existing facility going than to shut it down and create a new one. Fiscal responsibility is good, right?

And what would any critics plan to do about it, anyway?

Vote Republican?

Not likely, so what’s the downside for the President?

Health care and any overhauling thereof should not be done lightly.  It should not be rushed through Congress, like, say, the TARP bill was.  This is a big deal.

Well, apparently Obama thinks it’s too big to fail.

President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are poised to trample Republican opposition to his health care bill with a controversial legislative tactic known as reconciliation.

The fast-track process would protect Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system from a potential GOP filibuster and limit the Republicans’ ability to get concessions. It also would give Democrats far more control over the specifics of the health care legislation.

Under typical Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to advance a bill, but reconciliation would enable Democrats to enact the health care plan with just a simple majority and only 20 hours of debate.

Democrats hold 56 seats in the Senate, and two independents typically vote with the party. Republicans have 41 seats, and there is one vacancy.

Republicans have complained furiously about the prospect of health care reform passing under fast-track rules. But they’re not planning to go down without a fight.

And that’s not the only ill-considered option not being properly considered.

But Democrats aren’t stopping at health care. Obama’s plan to cut private banks and other lending institutions out of the market for student loans would also move on a filibuster-free path.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday that most House and Senate negotiators have resolved most of their differences over a congressional budget blueprint designed to advance Obama’s agenda through Congress. The measure will set the rules on how Congress considers Obama’s agenda for the rest of the year.

Lawmakers are rushing to agree on the budget framework in time to give Obama a victory within his first 100 days in office.

The negotiations have centered on the annual congressional budget resolution, which sets the parameters for the legislation that follows. Congressional votes next week would provide a symbolic victory for Obama’s sweeping agenda to enact a universal health care system, invest in education and clean energy and cut the exploding budget deficit to manageable levels.

Obama marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.

This is big government run amok.  All Republicans can do at this point is try to get in amendments to ameliorate the damage.  Some Congressman, and many constituents, including those at the recent Tea Parties, complain that far too many legislators didn’t actually read the bill or know what was in it.  And yet they’re going to do it again; make the same mistake twice, very deliberately.

A government big enough to make these sweeping changes in the blink of an eye is big enough to foul it up in a big way.  And there’s a better than even chance it will be fouled up the faster it’s done and the less debate there is.

Okay, today’s lesson is to test how well you’ve been paying attention. Listed below are gaffes uttered by a prominent politician. Your task is to choose whether the gaffe was committed by: a) George W. Bush, b) Sarah Palin, or c) Joe the Plumber (no, he’s not a politician, but he’s been in the political limelight).

Good luck.

Our person in question:

1. Made the claim that the 1908 Model T had better fuel efficiency than a typical 2008 SUV.
2. Repeatedly pronounced the word Orion as “OAR-ee-on”.
3. Referred to Great Britain as England.
4. Referred to the “Austrian” language.
5. Thought that the nation of Turkey is older than the U.S.

Well, how’d you do? Truth be told, this was a trick quiz. Each gaffe listed above was committed by our own President Barack Obama*. While no one is immune from making minor goofs, I have to wonder, how would the media have treated these slip-ups had they been committed by Bush?

* HT: (HotAir) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Today’s links started a short discussion on healthcare. The Liberal/Progressive left see universal health insurance (one insurance provider) as a way to ensure the “right” that they believe every American has to good healthcare. Now, I don’t think healthcare is a “right” but then again I’m admittedly quite shaky when it comes what the word “right” (with or without scare quotes) might mean and think that by and large think that we don’t have what is meant commonly by that word, especially for healthcare. But I digress, for the point of this essay is to establish a few “talking points” regarding healthcare from a policy standpoint.

I’ll begin with noting a few flaws with universal coverage.

• One of the primary problems with universal coverage/one provider for insurance is structural. Representational government, involving elected officials, is particularly poorly suited to handle actuarial matters. Politicians like to promise, and very often promise short term gains ignoring long term costs, e.g., flood insurance rates set by the State is traditionally far below what reasonable actuarial calculations will provide. The representitive banks on the “payback” or disaster which is being insured against will not occur in his/her lifetime.
• Good actuarial calculations demand an eye to the cost, to the bottom line. That future cost is the future of the company and cannot be overlooked, unlike it can in a politician’s rhetoric.
• Insurance-as-business has a short term interest in cutting costs, but a long term interest in them going up. That is to say, in the short term a medical insurance provider benefits from cutting health care costs. If a medical procedure costs less, it costs them less and they don’t have to pay as much to provide a given benefit. On the other hand in the long term, their rates and profit are based on a percentage of average costs … which if they go up, then aggregate profits go up as well. One might suspect that the cost/benefit analysis works differently for a government run agency, but this is not likely the case as power as well as profit goes into the government’s payback.

Now some thoughts on healthcare in general.

• Why is healthcare expensive today? The reason shirts, food, shoes, and toasters are cheap today is because of two factors. Mechanization allows for multiplication of human labor involved in their production and the availability of cheap power. If a skilled or unskilled laborer can produce 10,000 widgets a day with a machine where he can only make one per day by hand, then the price of the widget being sold can drop by orders of magnitude. Unless we increase greatly the number of health care workers and pay them slave wages the price of healthcare is going to stay prohibitively high. Humans, especially skilled humans, cost money (they need to get paid). Ultimately the only way to make healthcare available and cheap for everyone is to get the humans efforts multiplied by technological means. If a doctor today sees 40 patients a day, the only way to reduce health care costs by orders of magnitude is to increase the number of patients he can minister to in a day the same orders of magnitude. This is not as impossible as it sounds. The average village pediatrician sees childhood diseases in waves. When a flu sweeps through the town, he gets hit with hundreds of kids with identical symptoms. Does he need to give the same diagnostic care to all? Couldn’t some intelligent automation and cheap intelligent diagnostic tools multiply his effectiveness?
• Another reason is regulation. FDA regulation is very expensive, and largely useless from the point of view of the manufacturer. FDA approval does not indemnify a manufacturer from fault. After going through extensive and expensive tests a drug is approved. If later it is found harmful, the manufacturer is still liable even though they got certification. FDA approval is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has cost. That cost should be an option not a requirement and should indemnify the manufacturer from fault. If the FDA approves thalidomide for pre-natal maternal care then there should be no way to bring suit in case harmful effects are discovered later unless the manufacturer fudged or falsified the certification procedure. Requiring FDA approval is likely the single biggest roadblock to innovation in the healthcare industry in the US today. I’m not suggesting it be eliminated, in fact by indemnifying a manufacturer upon gaining FDA certification it is instead strengthened. The other side of that coin is that FDA approval for drugs and health care products should be optional.
• Univeral/single payer plans miss out on the goal. The goal for government policy should not be to bring equal health care to everyone but to provide a path to better, cheaper, and more effective future health care for all of us. Government driven policy and insurance is not the way to innovate.

Look at an example noted in Monday’s highlight’s comments:

A down to earth example might be the law student whose letter Andrew Sullivan published recently. He has asthma but no coverage since he is in school. He has to basically get his friends mom to swipe samples of the drug he needs. He was jogging on a treadmill and got a sudden pain in his foot. He stayed off of it for several months. In the meantime someone with good coverage will get regular checkups for a $20 co-pay and maybe spend $100 for an emergancy x-ray if they got that mysterious pain in their foot. This type of ‘rationing’ does not seem very efficient or fair.

How might this end up in a “mechanized” health care environment? Today we have many categories of “prescription” drugs and over the counter drug and as well we have protected and generic drugs. My suggestions would severely limit the first category opening up the number of drugs available over the counter, which would almost certainly include asthma inhalants. And as well to the “protected” and “generic” classifications of drugs, other approval schemes would be available besides FDA approved medications. Other independent certifications (or no certification at all) would be available to drug manufacturers. That would leave a larger array of price points for the albuterol this young student needs. In the second case, the student could go to a semi-automated (think Kinko’s) medical diagnostic clinic, rent some scan time with a automated scanner (x-ray or ultra-sound likely) and have the pain in his foot examined. He could have an automated result from an expert system tell him what therapeutic options would be best in his case and the an estimate of accuracy of diagnoses which he could use to decide if he needed his pictures to be examined by a human expert. The clinic would be making money by providing this machine for likely less than that $20 co-pay. Note that in my “plan” anti-plan no insurance is needed. In fact, the existence of insurance would mean that the things needed to give control back to the patient and provide for more health care “product” to be consumed by the population would not be occuring. Single payer or universal health care is exactly the wrong way to get to where we need to go. It is moving to a more covered, more controlled and less effective health care industry, which gets it exactly backwards.

Consider 400 years ago, I’d bet that over 60% of the population farmed. Consider food as analogous to health care. Single payer is a plan to provide “fairer distribution” (an arguable point) and redistribute and control what food is produced. That sounds like a move to the collective farming of peasants who stay with non-mechanized labor for production. But history has shown, a more effective way to provide inexpensive food is to bring in harvesters, trucks, fertilizer, refrigeration, super-markets, and other (farmers, ethnic, health) markets into the equation. Single payer supporters are the ones fighting for staying with the horse drawn solutions on collectivized farms at the same time as a better solution. Today a small fraction of the population farms … and obesity because, in part, of cheap available food is the problem.

So essentially the single-payer supporter is campaigning for the five-year plans of the Soviet era and the failed farm collectivization projects of Lenin and Stalin which caused mass starvation and shortages. So when looked at from a practical standpoint, single-payer healthcare might have pretty poetic stories and market jingles to push its agenda forward. But to put it bluntly, one might ask the supporters single payer, “So which is it are you stupid or evil?” ‘Cause it seems like those are only the two alternatives that remain.

Lost in the midst of the weekend news coverage of President Barack Obama hamming it up with his new best friend Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is this little promise tucked into this weekend’s Presidential Radio/Internet Address:

“In the coming weeks, I will be announcing the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective,” he said. “In this effort, there will be no sacred cows and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it’s time their government did the same.”

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the same President Obama who pushed through a $787 billion pork-filled spending bill and a proposed $3.6 trillion budget. He also promised during the campaign to go through the budget line-by-line and eliminate waste. Yet such scrutiny seems to have been absent during these initial spending initiatives.

Anyone really think he’s going to follow through on this one?

I wouldn’t count on it.

From President Obama’s speech today, regarding the economy:

Now we’ve got a lot of work to do. There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men.  The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was soon destroyed when the storm hit.  But the second is known as the wise man, for when "…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house…it fell not:  for it was founded upon a rock." It was founded upon a rock.

We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand.  We must build our house upon a rock.  We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad. 

(Hat tip: Erick Erickson)  So just as Christ is the rock to build our house on, Obama creates an analogy with his economic policies.  This is not a case of appealing to our religious beliefs or our consciences; many a President has done that.  Foreign, domestic and even economic policy, may be justified by a President because of our moral values. 

This, however, is different.  This is drawing a parallel between the sureness of what we build on Christ with the artificial sureness of what we build on government.  He’s not saying that these policies are right by appealing to religion.  He’s saying that they are a rock to hold firm to.  They are not.

(And what irony that he talks about moving away from borrow and spend right after setting world records in that field.)

Y’know, maybe all those folks have a Messiah complex about Barack Obama because he had one first.

Although the majority of evangelical Chrisians voted for John McCain in 2008, Christian leaders I’ve talked to said that it was the Obama campaign that did a far better job courting the evangelical community.  Obama seemed to better understand and relate to evangelicals, and indeed, far more voted for the Democratic ticket than in previous presidential elections. Now, writes evangelical ethicist David Gushee of Mercer Univeristy, Obama’s action on life issues has disappointed the evangelicals who supported him.

Gushee writes in USA Today:

What has occurred are a series of disappointingly typical Democratic abortion-related moves:

 First, the new president followed precedent by overturning the so-called Mexico City policy, which basically had withheld U.S. Agency for International Development funding from any organization that discusses, advocates or provides abortion as a method of family planning. Republicans withhold the money; Democrats provide it. Not great, but predictable. I stayed quiet on this one.

 Next, Obama revoked the “provider refusal” rule that President Bush promulgated by executive order very late in his presidency. The stated aim of this rule was to protect medical professionals from being forced as a condition of employment to provide health care services or information about services, such as abortion or contraception, that violated their consciences. Provider-conscience exceptions related to abortion are not new; the concern from the pro-choice side was that Bush’s version of that rule had become too broad. Concluding that the basic idea of conscience exceptions was probably safe, I stayed quiet again.

Then the president nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be head of the massive Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination of Sebelius, a Catholic whose bishop has condemned her stance on abortion, has gotten entangled in both national and Catholic abortion politics. Her opponents argue that she is a pro-choice extremist; her allies say she is a conscientious Catholic who has reduced abortion by 10% in Kansas. I signed on to a statement that was viewed as offering uncritical support for Sebelius. What I meant to say was that given the inevitability that Obama would choose a pro-choice HHS secretary, it seemed positive he would pick one with an abortion-reduction track record. I wish I had stayed out of this one, too.

 Finally, last week Obama signed his long-promised reversal of Bush policies on embryonic stem cell research. Again, this was not a surprise, either politically or, sadly, morally. A country that is willing to permit the destruction of a fetus at five months, when that destroyed fetus can provide no conceivable utilitarian benefit to society, is certainly going to permit the destruction of a leftover frozen embryo on the promise that it can contribute to medical breakthroughs someday.

He adds:

My understanding of the majestic God-given sacredness of human life tells me that a society that legally permits abortion on demand is deeply corrupt. It pays for adult sexual liberties with the lives of defenseless developing children. That practice, in turn, desensitizes society to the implications of paying for prospective medical cures with defenseless frozen embryos, which themselves are available because our society pays for medically assisted reproductive technology by producing hundreds of thousands of these embryos as spares. And yes, that same commitment to life’s sacredness has grounded my opposition to paying for national security with torture, or paying for today’s affluence with tomorrow’s environmental destruction.

Gushee is a thoughtful and principled evangelical centrist who is profoundly disappointed in a politician who appealed on the possiblilities of compromise producing some movement on life issues, but has not only failed to deliver on promises, but advanced policies that are totally contrary to the protection of life. 

Hope unfulfilled. 

Is this a worrisome slip? Via a “Podium Pundit” a ex and current political speechwriters blog, a Mr Walsh offers “congratulatory” remarks regarding Mr Obama’s “deft” handling f the AIG bonus kerfuffle. Mr Obama had said:

Listen, I’ll take responsibility. I’m the president. So — we didn’t draft these contracts. And we’ve got a lot on our plate. But it is appropriate when you’re in charge to make sure that stuff doesn’t happen like this. So we’re going to do everything we can to fix it. So for everybody in Washington who’s busy scrambling trying to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me. Because it’s my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don’t make them.

Now this Mr Walsh offers his take (which I freely and almost fully excerpt):

This is perfect on two levels. First, Americans love that kind of bravado from their leaders. “The buck stops here,” someone once said. Don’t go fussing with deciding who to blame; just blame me and let’s move on. Grrrr.

Second, the president manages to accept responsibility while making it clear he didn’t actually have anything to do with the issue. “Didn’t draft these contracts.” “Fix these messes, even if I don’t create them.”

In other words, “I would like you to credit me for taking responsibility for this issue, without actually blaming me for being responsible.” Masterful.

This isn’t anything at all like the buck stops here. The “buck stops here” is a phrase intended to give two messages (and that someone was popularized by “Give ’em ‘ell ‘arry” Truman). First and foremost that phrase means that “I’m the man in charge and therefore anything that goes wrong is my fault.” As Mr Walsh notes, Mr Obama is specifically not doing that here and is specifically and clearly pointing out that this is not his fault. That is exactly the opposite of the “buck stops here” meaning. And the Administration didn’t “draft” these contracts as it is being pointed out clearly and pointedly protected them with loopholes in the carefully read and considered stimulus bill. But … it wasn’t the Administration’s fault. Yeah right.

What Mr Walsh calls “masterful” sounds more to me like more of the same ducking and weaving. Just more of the same beltway operatives piling it higher and deeper on the rest of us. And it’s beginning to look like a continuing regular pattern of deceit. Many (and not just on the right, e.g., Mr Greenwald) have noted that for example on torture, just as in this case, Mr Obama’s rhetoric feints in one direction while moving in another. Torture is denounced, yet provisions for its continuation remain. Or here, I’m responsible but it’s wasn’t my fault. Or with any other of issues one could make similar accusations in which one thing is said and another is done. Rhetoric used as smokescreen to deceive.

By "they" I meant American Democrats.  Not the establishment; the rank and file.  And by "President", I meant George W. Bush.

In a poll (PDF file) conducted in August of 2006, one of the questions was this:

10.  Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?

Hat tip: Patterico, who notes that we were in the thick of a war whose outcome was uncertain.  When Democrats try to take the moral or patriotic high ground regarding what one man, Rush Limbaugh, said, just remind them what a majority of all of them said just 2 1/2 years ago.

David Brooks is shocked — SHOCKED — that Barack Obama tuned out to be liberal! 

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

And the real kicker:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Emphasis mine.  Well, actually, emphasis of this was made by Republicans long before election day.  One only had to look at his record, such as it was, to know this.  And yet these "Brooks Moderates" were so caught up in the words and the history of it all that they apparently turned off those parts of their brains responsible for critical thinking.

Looks like the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune did the same thing.

Whoa!

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate are blowing the lid off of spending restraint. But they’re finally meeting some resistance within their own party.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), in an essay published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, ripped a spending bill passed by the House last week as "a sprawling $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largesse."

He said he will vote against it, and he urged President Barack Obama to veto it if it passes the Senate. We second that motion.

(Hat tip: Don Surber)  The Tribune endorsed Obama, and now they’re thinking they can pull back the reigns.  They sound like they’re saying, "Obama’s a big spender?  Who knew?"

I will heartily agree that Republicans spent very irresponsibly during their tenure with control of the Legislative and Executive branches.  But Democrats, true to their ever-constant form (a form that moderates like Brooks should have look to history, even recent history, to confirm), have outspent Republicans by a huge, huge margin.  "Tax and spend" wasn’t a catchphrase made up by Ronald Reagan; it’s a description of their MO.

The Democrats who "rediscovered" fiscal responsibility during the Dubya years have shown that outrage to be mere window dressing than principle.  There are indeed Republicans who had the same problem during the Clinton years and while Democrats held Congress.  But there is simply no real equivalence here. 

While it is still true that Republicans will overspend less than Democrats, it pains me to have to put it that way.  Nonetheless, if you value fiscal responsibility, convincing Republicans to slow down on spending seems to me to have a far better chance of success than convincing Democrats of that.  Mr. Brooks, please take note.

Much ink, likely some of still non-virtual, has been spilled over the Democrats framing Mr Limbaugh as a leader of the GOP and Conservative movement. As to this topic I’d like to frame a question, which will take a bit of setup.

Obama and the liberal media punditry are framing and identifying Mr Limbaugh as the leading light of the Conservative/GOP. If we examine, what effect does this have and who, besides Mr Limbaugh, benefits then a problem arises. Clearly there is a partisan benefit. Democrats will glean a tactical advantage via this identification. However, looking at the slightly wider picture,  the real question is is how does that benefit the nation at large to identify Mr Limbaugh as a leading speaker for the loyal opposition? It seems to me quite clear that the nation is not aided by this identification.

It seems clear that a strong principled loyal opposition is a clear benefit to the nation. Given that, the best thing for the President to do is to identify the best people within his party and the opposition and ensure the people who are framing the debate(s) over policies are principled and well spoken. The best of us on either side of the aisle. That ensures lively and healthy discussion and ultimately is the best for the nation.

Mr Obama as a point man who is doing exactly not what is clearly in the best interest of the nation. Isolating and focusing on Limbaugh (arguably not the best and brightest of the loyal opposition) is clearly running counter to this idea. So if this is right, he then faces the “stupid or evil” accusation with respect to this matter. Either he is not intelligent enough to realize the implications of what he is doing or he is evil, i.e., working to further partisan/personal factions over and above a clear national interest.