"Writing is a skill, not a talent, and thus one's ability as a writer can be improved by thoughtful effort. The problem with some people is that they graduate college as good writers, experience early success on account of that, and thus never devote themselves diligently to the relentless quest for improvement that could make them great writers."
The overwhelming majority of Missouri (and national) voters oppose Harry Reid’s senate fauxcare bill, yet McCaskill is eager to play the part of the rubber stamp and help pass it in the senate -- and even complains about having to do so on Christmas. This is what she wanted!
This is what happens when people in Congress view their job as representing Washington special interests, rather than representing their constituents.
Twenty-six. Think about that. If you're 18 and really serious about getting health-care coverage, here's a suggestion: Join the Marine Corps.
Not only will the Marines provide you with health care, but you also get free food, free housing, free clothing and free travel to exotic countries where you can actually get paid to kill foreigners.
How cool is that, dude? Not to mention, chicks dig that whole muscular-guy-in-a-uniform thing.
So turn off your gaming console, get your lazy butt off the sofa, go to your nearest Marine Corps recruiting station and sign up today. If the taxpayers are going to give you slackers free health-care, at least you should earn it the old-fashioned way: Killing foreigners.
Now the bad news: We're not at war with Canada. Yet. P.S.: Don't forget to vote for me in the 2009 Malkin Awards.
A shocking number of strong prescription meds were found on Brittany Murphy's bedroom nightstand before her sudden Dec. 20 death, according to notes from an investigator with the Los Angeles coroner's office. According to the notes (obtained by TMZ.com), the medications included Topamax (anti-seizure meds also to prevent migraines), Methylprednisolone (anti-inflammatory), Fluoxetine (depression med), Klonopin (anxiety med), Carbamazepine (treats Diabetic symptoms and is also a bipolar med), Ativan (anxiety med), Vicoprofen (pain reliever), Propranolol (hypertension, used to prevent heart attacks), Biaxin (antibiotic), Hydrocodone (pain med) and miscellaneous vitamins. . . . The notes state Murphy "had been complaining of shortness of breath and severe abdominal pain" for 7 to 10 days prior to her death. . . .
"Death by medicine" is not as rare as some would have you believe. A pill for this, a pill for that, pills to deal with side effects of other pills -- pretty soon, your system becomes so distorted by the chemical intake that it's hard to tell what's really wrong with you, if anything.
The question now is whether Brittany Murphy had any disease other than hypochondria.
Hundreds of British schoolgirls are facing the terrifying prospect of female genital mutilation (FGM) over the Christmas holidays as experts warn the practice continues to flourish across the country. Parents typically take their daughters back to their country of origin for FGM during school holidays, but The Independent on Sunday has been told that "cutters" are being flown to the UK to carry out the mutilation at "parties" involving up to 20 girls to save money. The police face growing criticism for failing to prosecute a single person for carrying out FGM in 25 years; new legislation from 2003 which prohibits taking a girl overseas for FGM has also failed to secure a conviction. . . .
"Cultural sensitivity" vs. the good kind of sensitivity? No need to tell you which side of that issue I'm on.
An estimated 70,000 women living in the UK have undergone FGM, and 20,000 girls remain at risk, according to Forward. The practice is common in 28 African countries, including Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria, as well as some Middle Eastern and Asian countries such as Malaysia and Yemen.
This is one of those situations whre "cultural sensitivity" becomes a synonym for racism.
Health reform was supposed to rein in the explosive costs of health care in this country, deliver better results and cover more people. It was always going to be difficult, but it wasn't impossible. Instead, under current plans, Americans are likely to get a bill that drives unsustainable costs even higher, does not completely solve the problem of the uninsured and does little to improve the quality of medicine. And it won't kick in until as late as 2014. But taxes, mainly on the wealthy, would go up pronto. This was supposed to be the moment for health care reform but, much as it pains us to say it, President Obama and Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- have badly missed the opportunity. They need to start over. . . . The problem is that this bill isn't even half a loaf. Not only is it insufficient, but it will almost certainly create a costly worse result. . . .
Once I heard a preacher talk about the "God of the Valleys." When we are on top of the mountain, it is easy to suppose that our achievements are the result of our own excellence. But it is in that dark valley -- where we feel doomed and hopeless -- that we learn the true meaning of faith.
After you've cried out for help in the darkness of that valley, make a vow that if you should ever get to that sunny mountaintop, you will remember the God of the valleys, who delivered you from destruction when all seemed lost.
Most people won't see the relevance of that sermon to this Whitehouse video, but some people will. Remember: "It is history that teaches us to hope."
UPDATE: By way of exegesis, I worked for hours yesterday transcribing excerpts of Whitehouse's remarks and Jon Kyl's rebuttal. A congressional source had gotten me a rush transcript written in ALL CAPS, which meant that, in order to provide the text, I had to retype it all myself.
Tough work, but somebody's got to do it. Then I caught an hour's nap, so that I could file an 850-word column for the American Spectator immediately after the 1 a.m. cloture vote. Then I put up a post in the Hot Air Greenroom and a post here, linking both the Spectator column and the Greenroom post. All the while, I relentlessly promoted my work via Twitter and e-mail.
So you can imagine what a crushing embarrassment it was to discover that Ed Morrissey didn't even bother to link me in his 10:12 a.m. post at Hot Air. All that work, for nothing, you see? Add this terrible personal humilation -- "Why does Ed Morrissey hate me?" -- to the depressing reality of the 60-40 cloture vote, and I was feeling lower than a snake's belly.
Not only that, but a paycheck I'd expected in the mail didn't show up today, and the tip-jar contributions have slowed to zero the past two days, putting the Pasadena trip in jeopardy -- to say nothing of the fact that I can't even afford to buy my wife a Christmas gift.
Total and complete failure.
And then I saw Kerry's video, a hopeful omen at a moment of utter despair. "Angels unawares."
To Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse, "the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety" means ramming through a 2,000-page health-care bill before Christmas, by any means necessary, so that President Obama will have a major accomplishment to celebrate in his State of the Union Address next month. That is perfectly rational, according to Sen. Whitehouse and the Democrats, and therefore it is crazy to oppose them. . . .
Even before the Senate voted on cloture, the Democrats' health-care legislation was already delivering benefits in the form of a free mental-health screening delivered by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: If you oppose this bill, you're a dangerous nut. Such was the essence of Sunday's floor speech in which the junior senator from Rhode Island quoted at length from Richard Hofstadter's 1965 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and offered it as a diagnosis of the health bill's opponents. Whitehouse paraphrased Hofstadter's thesis, warning of "the dangers of an aggrieved right-wing minority with the power to create what [Hofstadter] called a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible." . . .
Read the whole thing. I'm not exactly sure why those old lyrics from "The Time Warp" popped into my head in the wee hours. Probably because Sheldon Whitehouse is right: I'm crazy.
But you already knew that, didn't you? It's a pre-existing condition! We're all going to get free health care! And if you believe that, you're crazier than me . . .
You know, it takes one hell of a lot of nerve to ram deeply-unpopular spending down our throats . . . then engage in character assasination when we finally speak-up about it.
I approached Senator Whitehouse following his speech on the floor, and his responses to my questions were puzzling, to say the say the least. Mr. Whitehouse said he stood by his speech, but would not admit that he was accusing anyone who was against the health care bill as racist. He did reiterate that birthers are part of the group that is against the bill and are attacking president.
"Far from appealing to the better angels of our nature, too many colleagues are embarked on a desperate no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, obstruction and fear. History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner waving secret lists. . . . "We see it in Christmases and holidays ruined by the Republicans for our loyal and professional Senate employees. It’s fine for me. It’s fine for the president. We signed up for the his job, but why ruin it for all the employees condemned by the Republicans to be here?” (Emphasis added.)
Update: (Smitty) (h/t Dana Loesch) Great business opportunity for someone to produce an all-joker deck of cards once the Senatorial sodomy subsides. Claire McCaskill makes a demented start:
"Tumbrels have rolled through taunting crowds. Broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from southern trees."
In other words, opponents of this bill are Jacobins, brownshirts and Klansmen. Some Republican Senator should make a point of order about this kind of rhetoric. It's one thing to throw around inflammatory metaphors on a blog or cable TV, but another thing entirely to bring it onto the floor of the Senate.
UPDATE 3:25 p.m.: If somebody's got video or a text of Whitehouse's speech, please let me know. That was one of the most villainous speeches I've ever heard by any Senator, and I hope to God that some of my friends who are Senate staffers will provide a Republican with a solid rebuttal to vile Adorno/Hofstadter psychoanalytic crap, which is no more valid today than when Buckley critiqued it in Up From Liberalism nearly 50 years ago.
UPDATE 3:03 p.m.: Sheldon Whitehouse is the Keith Olbermann of the Senate, and I mean that in the worst possible sense of "Keith Olbermann." The only good part of his speech? "Mr. President, I yield the floor." And not a moment too soon! UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: For crying out loud, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) reads Richard Hofstadter on the Senate floor. In other words, if you oppose this bill, you're a neurotic suffering from status anxiety. There can be no rational opposition. Is Julian Sanchez ghost-writing speeches for Democrats now?
UPDATE 2:33 p.m.: Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) just said he's got relatives in Nebraska who are "embarrassed and ashamed" by Ben Nelson's "Cash for Cloture" sellout -- click that link, because The Boss is still fighting. She weighs less than 100 pounds, but it's all fight.
This idea was central to Vladimir Lenin's revolutionary vision: The worse real-life conditions became -- the more oppressive the czarist regime, the greater Russia's military disasters in World War I -- the greater likelihood of the kind of political upheaval in which the Bolsheviks could seize power.
Given its source and original meaning, Lenin's worse-is-better strategy is obviously not something any conservative would endorse. However, as MacLeod makes clear, that isn't the way he means it. What he is arguing is that a short-term "win" by the Democrats should not be viewed by their opponents as a demoralizing defeat, but rather as a springboard for future conservative victories. His is a message of hope, not despair:
This is a moment for sober judgment, and for confidence in one's own beliefs and analysis, whichever best keeps you in the fight. It's a moment to decide whether our message to the Obamaist progressives is going to be: "You win -- we give up" or "We're coming after you, and getting rid of your laughable, embarrassing, and repugnant health care bill (presuming you ever get around to passing it) will just be the beginning."
Indeed, and you should read the whole thing. Speaking of radical rhetoric, I notice that King HerodHarry Reid plans to kill the babies by Christmas. Humor Update: (Smitty) 3:13PM Whereas I read MacLeod's piece and thought of Coleridge, by way of the Monty Python. This legislation could prove both an albatross and a career opportunity for Dingy Harry, as seen in the clip:As a bonus, Graham Chapman's humorless Colonel prefigures the tender, loving care that government health care will embody.
The gross, atrocious irresponsibility of this bill in all aspects will be a boon to Americans. Harry Reid gives us ammunition. We will return it to him with, bonus kinetic energy.
There are statesmen, there are politicians, and then there are cheap whores who would sell out their country for a vote.
Ask Senate sellout Ben Nelson about that. Anyway, Monique Stuart concurred with VodkaPundit's sentiments and put "cheap whore" in the headline of her blog post, so that now when you Google "cheap whore" you get her post as the 10th result.
Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), the final Democratic holdout on health care, was prepared to announce to his caucus Saturday morning that he would support the Senate reform bill, clearing the way for final passage by Christmas. "We're there," said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), as he headed into a special meeting to announce the deal. . . .
Nelson announces support at press conference. Says he is satisfied by abortion language. He reads a perfunctory statement praising Reid and White House, then says with the most passion in his voice: "I reserve the right to vote against the next cloture vote if there are material changes" made in conference.
Nelson compared the bill to the creation of Social Security and Medicare. "I truly believe this legislation will stand the test of time," he said. "The lives of millions of Americans will be improved."
Those "millions"? Bureaucrats. Tell your kids to forget about a business career. Bureaucracy is the future!
Next month, the House and Senate will reconcile their bills, which will then have to pass both chambers again before President Obama can sign it, which he hopes to do before his State of the Union address. At this point, the smart money would have to be on Democrats getting it done, but there are still obstacles to reaching a final agreement.
"Obstacles," indeed. Ben Nelson could realize how badly he has dishonored himself and commit seppuku. Unlikely, of course, but theoretically possible.
UPDATE IV: Readers who think I'm actually advocating that Nelson engage in ritual disembowelment are mistaken. Seppuku is an expression of the shogun's honorable acknowledgement of his own dishonor. Nelson obviously has no sense of honor. He's a Democrat.
I've been involved with the political blogosphere since 2002 or so, and the next time I see the left side of its leadership stand up to entrenched Democratic party interests over something important will be the first. . . . [I]f they swallowed heavily and accepted being betrayed on FISA/rendition/same-sex marriage, they’ll accept whatever monstrosity that the current ruling party comes up with with regard to health care rationing.
UPDATE VI: (Smitty) That's Right considers a new line of ballot suppositories. Sorry, Russ: Hugo Chavez just declared the evil of capitalism over in Copenhagen.
Sobriety and sanity are vastly over-rated with the 111th Congress. The news that Senator Nelson has proven as craven, dishonorable, and un-Constitutional as my brace of buffoons, Webb and Warner, comes as scant surprise. The Weekly Standard indicates that this is tantamount to abortion approval in 13 States. Just as long as you don't waterboard the unborn after you slaughter them, it's OK.
One is momentarily tempted, this holiday season,
just to say "forget the dumb stuff" and crawl into a bottle.For those wishing a weather report/update on what the proceedings looked like, Congress happens to be right there in my back yard, over in the corner.
A closeup shot of the Capitol Dome, as Heaven continues to comment on global warming.
Cracking the lid on the composterCapitol, we see the politicians busy doing what they do best: turning ideas into castings. If the weather is warm, and I, disguised as a lobbyist, roll the politicians a few times, they form a spaghetti-like bundle.
One hopes that these sorry invertebrates understand the raw fury that will meet them during the next campaign.
Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "There are no liberals left to get" in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats. . . . The comments may not endear the powerful White House chief of staff to liberal activists, furious that Senate Democratic leaders, at Emanuel's urging, cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman to drop a federally run insurance policy option, then eliminate a Medicare buy-in proposal. "I don’t think the White House recognizes how much trouble they're in," said one former Democratic official this morning. "I think they're miscalaculating what's happening with progressives and the left. They feel like they're being taken for granted."
"One former Democratic official" (wild guess: Robert Reich) is on the money here. The online Left hates Joe Lieberman like God hates sin, and any deal that brings Lieberman aboard is automatically a poison pill for the DKos/Firedoglake crowd.
Allahpundit says he has "no reference point for what we're seeing on the left right now." Oh, but we do: The Left's mood now very much resembles the way conservatives felt when John McCain tried to shove amnesty down our throats. Firedoglake headline:
The Left is pissed off that Democratic leaders are playing the same phony P.R. game we saw Republicans play when they were in the majority: "Pass something -- anything -- just so we can say we've passed 'reform.'"
We're on a one-way train to Crazyville, and there's no telling what happens next. Meanwhile, enjoy this MSNBC shout-fest between Dylan Rattigan and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
He presents AARP vice president Nancy Leamond with an invoice for generational theft and takes on the powerful senior lobby’s rank hypocrisy when it comes to pre-existing conditions (AARP’s main policy, Medigap, actually imposes long waiting periods on seniors who have pre-existing conditions, even though AARP reps, like liberals in general, decry the discrimination of folks with pre-existing conditions). Jason also confronts AARP on how ObamaCare will fatten their own wallets. Medigap, their $400 million cash cow, is left untouched by ObamaCare, while all other insurance providers are subjected to tighter regulation.
Nelson can vote "yes" on the motion to proceed to a vote (which requires a 60-vote supermajority). and then vote "no" on final passage, where only 51 "yes" votes are needed. Because of the overwhelming Democratic majority in the Senate, there is no question on the final passage if it gets that far; therefore, the only way Nelson (or any other Democrat) affects the outcome is if he votes "no" on the motion to proceed. So unless and until Nelson says he'll join the filibuster, his statement of opposition is meaningless.
Senator Webb has taken a number of tough votes in the last month-- always voting his conscience and without bowing to party politics. . . . During this debate, he has broken with his party six times, including four votes to prevent cuts in Medicare. At the same time, he appreciates that the need for health care reform is great. The status quo of our health care system burdens families and undermines the competitive position of American business."
In other words: Count Webb as a Democratic "yes" vote on cloture for ObamaCare, although his vote on final passage of the bill is purely a function of whether Harry Reid needs him to get to 51 (which is unlikely). Either way, if challenged about his votes in 2012, his votes on various amendments provide him with a chance to play it both ways.
Webb has shrewedly amassed a facing-both-ways record that can be used to fend off either a "progressive" primary challenger or a conservative Republican in the general election. The Conscience of a Centrist!
Things are getting crazy, with lots of Left-on-Left action. Via Ace of Spades, Obama's apologists are excoriated by . . . wait for it . . . Glenn Greenwald:
We've long heard -- from the most blindly loyal cheerleaders and from Emanuel himself -- that progressives should place their trust in the Obama White House to get this done the right way, that he's playing 11-dimensional chess when everyone else is playing checkers, that Obama is the Long Game Master who will always win. Then, when a bad bill is produced, the exact opposite claim is hauled out: it's not his fault because he's totally powerless, has nothing to do with this, and couldn't possibly have altered the outcome. From his defenders, he's instantaneously transformed from 11-dimensional chess Master to impotent, victimized bystander.
Barack Obama has indisputably performed his first true miracle. A year ago, Rush Limbaugh was the only guy talking like that. Charles Johnson to accuse Glenn Greenwald of raaaaacism in 3, 2, 1 . . .
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