Month: March 2010

"What if 15 Republicans had agreed to support this bill, if tort reforms and reforms of medical incentives were included? Could a better package have been created??

The blame for a weak bill rests not on the Democrats for confronting this issue, but on the Republican caucus, which forfeited a golden opportunity to guide this policy to a more effective conclusion, choosing instead to gamble on Obama's total failure. I support health reforms that Republicans favor, and am disgusted that they wasted such a real opportunity to get something out of this, which would have made the whole reform package better. When one party has to carry the other around like dead weight, don't expect legislative miracles. Step up and compromise Republicans.

Small government doesn't mean absence of governing," – commenter Nathan Brown at the NYT.

Netanyahu channeler Jackson Diehl blames Obama for everything.

Russell King provides some:

You can't demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don't.

You can't whine that it's unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party's former leader admits you've been doing it for decades.

You can't portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.

You can't complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you've routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain – threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented — and admitted it.  Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is

filled with your own ideas.

You can't question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn't object when your own Republican president appointed them.

You can't preach and try to legislate "Family Values" when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer's wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife's mother;

Hyderabad, India, 8.04 am

GOP Senators and officials are starting to back away from the repeal mantra. Ezra Klein sums up the change:

[In] about 12 hours, the GOP's position has gone from "repeal this socialist monstrosity that will destroy our final freedoms" to "there are some things we don't like about this legislation and would like to repeal, and there are some things we support and would like to keep."

"We always said there are things that we can all agree on in the bill," said Rep. Brett Guthrie.

At this rate, they'll be running on expanding the bill come November.

Jeffrey Anderson is still preaching repeal, but he nods to Ezra's point. Douthat goes after National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn (R-Tex.) for proposing "a reform of the reform that keeps the goodies and takes away the spending cuts and tax increases that pay for them."

The FNC pundit is nearing a deal for her reality show, of which she requested $1.2 million an episode. Mudflats imagines her narrating:

Look! It’s a polar bear. I sued the federal government to keep that guy and his ilk from getting an endangered species listing.

Check it out! It’s a moose. Chili anyone?

Wow! It’s a beluga whale! I sued the feds over that one too. There’s only 300 left, but they look like the other kind, so what’s the big deall?

All I care about is that she doesn't get to run for president again, and that Levi gets to tell his tale without real intimidation.

Bob Wright explains this semantic but critical distinction:

Policies that would be truly good for Israel (e.g., no more settlements) would be good for America. In that sense, there’s good news for Gary Bauer and Max Boot and Abe Foxman: one of their common refrains — that Israel’s and America’s interests are essentially aligned — is true, if for reasons they don’t appreciate. Sadly, the Bauer-Boot-Foxman definition of “pro-Israel” — supporting Israel’s increasingly hard-line and self-destructive policies — is the official definition. All major American newspapers, so far as I can see, use the term this way. AIPAC is described as “pro-Israel,” but the left-of-AIPAC J Street isn’t, even though its members, like AIPAC’s, favor policies they consider good for

Israel.

No doubt this twisted use of “pro-Israel,” and the implied definition of “anti-Israel,” keeps many critics of Israeli policies from speaking out — Jewish critics for fear of seeming disloyal, and non-Jewish critics for fear of seeming anti-Semitic.

So, if I’m right, and more speaking out — more criticism of Israel’s current policies — would actually be good for Israel, then the newspapers and other media outlets that sustain the prevailing usage of “pro-Israel” are, in fact, anti-Israel. I won’t mention any names.

Here's the impression I get. Obama just faced down a loud bully, the GOP base, in crafting a needed and moderate settlement on a deep domestic issue. Don't the odds of his facing down Netanyahu thereby get a little bit better? Linkage, dear reader, linkage.

"ELEGANT ACTIVIST: Joe Solmonese. The president of the Human Rights Campaign favors designers Ann Demeulemeester, Billy Reid, and Dolce and Gabbana," – Washington Life Magazine's 2010 Fashion Awards.

The NYT zooms in on Ukraine, where the Vatican permits Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests to marry. Money quote from Father Yuriy Volovetskiy:

“Having a family gives a priest a deeper understanding of how to relate to other people and help other people. It is more natural, it makes more sense, for a priest to have a wife and children.”

Dreher figures that ending celibacy in the West will only help the Church:

I don't think there's any serious ground for believing that the Catholic sex abuse crisis was caused by celibacy (after all, married men can be child sex abusers too). But the older discipline of allowing married priests is a healthy one, it seems to me. I have learned so much about married life and family life from having been a husband and a father that I find it hard to imagine a priest who hasn't lived through these experiences being able to fully relate to them in counseling. […] It would bring a lot more young men into the priesthood, I'm betting.

Reacting to news of a prominent priest in Portland resigning this week because of celibacy, Charles Mudede notes a 60% drop in Americans joining the priesthood since the '60s.