"Spirit of American Youth"

"Spirit Of American Youth"

By Donald De Lue

At the First Infantry Division Museum at Cantigny Park
Wheaton, Illinois, Outside Chicago

Replica of the Original That Stands In the Normandy Beachhead in France,
Honoring Young Americans Who Gave Their Lives For Their Country

Obama-run General Motors Guilty of “Elasticizing the Reality of Things" about Repaying Its TARP Loan

A few weeks ago, the Obama-appointed CEO of General Motors, a man named Whitacre, in a Wall Street Journal piece and in a TV commercial proudly announced that now-federal-government-owned GM, under his leadership, had repaid in full its “TARP” “loan” from the federal government. The message: all you sticklers for the rule of law and proper procedure who have been boycotting GM vehicles because of the way Obama illegally stiffed bondholders and illegally rewarded Democrat auto unions in the government takeover can now relax and buy GM once again; don’t you see, Obama said it would all come out fine and now it has, and sooner than expected too.

Obama's own Treasury Dept. itself released a statement (link) claiming that GM had "fully repaid" its TARP loan (a contention the Department later rescinded, as the linked article discusses).

However, the shameless deceitfulness of this claim was immediately recognized and widely denounced (link), since GM had “repaid” the federal TARP loan with money from another federal government loan, and not at all from profits (assuming there are any in actual fact, as opposed to Obamaccounting fact). Aside: How dumb do the Obami think everyone is?

This lie apparently has been too much even for some other Obama appointees. Yesterday, the Detroit News reported (link) that former Obama “auto czar” Steve Rattner admitted that Whitacre and GM "may have slightly elasticized the reality of things."

In Obamaspeak, a lie is now simply “slightly elasticizing the reality of things," which brings to mind Churchill's quip about "terminological inexactitude."


John M Greco

Obama Administration Assures Radical Muslims of Constitutional Protections

Amid growing criticisms from radical Muslim groups about lengthening government delays in processing applications for U. S. citizenship, which would garner for them full constitutional rights and government-paid lawyers should they be arrested for acts of terrorism on American soil, today Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder sought to allay fears in a joint statement (link), published on the federal government’s web site and also broadcast in Arabic on targeted radio stations in the Near and Middle East. In that statement, they apologized for the backlog in application processing but assured Muslim groups that suspected terrorists will be afforded full American constitutional rights and government-paid lawyers if apprehended, whether or not they are American citizens and whether or not they are in this county legally.

[This is a parody, but not by much]

John M Greco

Bill Clinton & Elian Gonzalez

Former president Clinton has been lecturing America about the importance of civility in public political discourse and warning against incipient conservative and Republican-inspired violence. Imagine that, as if anyone thinks of conservatives when one thinks of activists rampaging through streets and creating mayhem, or of agitators disrupting conservative speeches, or of thugs committing assault and battery at political rallies of political opponents. I think of the actual groups that do such things, like Code Pink, SEIU purple-shirted union thugs, and agitated “youth” marching through streets, not peaceful, polite tea partiers. But Clinton must deflect from the real truth, and project the behavior of liberal extremists onto mainstream conservatives to try to fool the foolable. That’s apparently what Clinton thinks his role in American society should be as an ex-president of this great Republic.

And on the subject of Bill Clinton and violence, today is the 10th anniversary of his Administration’s violent and shocking home invasion by armed federal agents to seize an 11 year old boy from loving relatives in order to return him to a brutal, communist country his mother died trying to free him from. That’s a window to Bill Clinton’s soul.

John M Greco

Democrats’ Immoral and Destructive Game of Falsely Accusing Opponents of Violence, Racism, and Sedition

The tenor of American political discourse is getting ominous and deeply worrisome. Many Democrats seem to be a conscious part of a two-pronged strategy against Republicans and conservatives: first, real violence against their opponents, and second, public condemnations of those opponents based on knowingly-fabricated stories of violence and racism. All this Democrat ugliness is distressing to those who love this country, and sadly reveals the lengths, however corrosive to our Republic, that some Democrats are going to advance their partisan causes.

Actual and threatened politically-based violence has been largely a Democrat phenomenon for as far back as the eye can see. Michelle Malkin even wrote an entire book about Bush-era liberal violence titled “Unhinged.” But lately some Democrats have ratcheted it up a notch higher than I thought they would ever go.

This most recent cycle of destructive Democrat behavior I think has its genesis in the shockingly dramatic reversal in popularity and power of Obama in particular and Democrats in general as a result of what everyone has seen this past year of their true political beliefs, their arrogance, their disdain, and their hubris. The Democrats are stunned, panicked, angry, and desperate, and are lashing out.

Especially as a result of the long, revealing debate and eventual passage of the Democrat Party’s health care bill, Democrats have taken a severe hit in the polls. Their strategy after the bill’s passage has been to go on the offensive with false charges of racism and violence against those who oppose them. Whereas for Democrats rancorous political dissent, even fantasies of assassinating George W. Bush, were mainstream and asserted by them to be the highest form of patriotism during the Bush years, now, say those same Democrats, dissent of any kind against Democrat policies is dangerous, racist, and seditious. A Senate filibuster by the Democrat party minority was the last protection of virtue and democratic ideals when Bush was president, but now is an anti-democratic and racist tool when used by Republicans against the policies of Democrat party majority.

The intellectual vanguard of the Democrat party is not interested in consistency – only in results – in their efforts to discredit conservatives and Republicans among the many inattentive and easily foolable voters. Elected black Democrat leaders, within memory of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, now for political gain on issues of the day falsely charge their political opponents with racism with increasing fervor and frequency. Elected Democrat leaders, immediately after the passage of DemCare, announce they are the objects of unsubstantiated threats of violence, while Republicans like Eric Cantor and Sarah Palin reluctantly, because it is not in their characters to play the victim, come forward with countless tales of threats real and long-repeated. No one can honestly recall ever seeing or hearing about conservatives beating up opponents, but recently in New Orleans leftists targeted and severely assaulted (link) Republicans attending a party conference, and the Democrat media is silent. T-shirted SEIU union thugs beat conservative activists at a peaceful St Louis rally, and the liberal media avert their eyes. A finger of an elderly, peaceful tea party activist is bitten off at a political rally last year by an angry leftist. Then there’s harassment: an ultra-liberal student and son of a Democrat party official is about to go on trial for hacking into the email account of then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in an attempt to disrupt. And on and on it goes. Can such Democrats and leftists really love this country, to spread these lies and commit or condone such violence? To pour acid on the American ethic of civil discourse between people of different political beliefs for short-term political gain is despicable.

And now the other day former liberal Democrat President Clinton warns against non-existent Republican and conservative extremism on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, perpetrated 15 years ago by two anti-government types outraged over his own administration’s bungled murderous attack at Waco, Texas, two years to the day earlier, a horrific episode of Clinton incompetence. Clinton is not a talk show host or a blogger; he is a former President of the United States and a senior member of the Democrat Party. And yet Clinton seeks to spin the whole sordid episode as a warning against Republican Party extremism. Has he no sense of decency left? Apparently he thinks that a vicious and false offense is the best defense – accuse your opponents of exactly what your side has been doing, supported by your staunch left-wing allies in the media.

In a must-read post (link), Peter Wehner at Commentary Magazine Online’s Contentions blog addresses Clinton’s rank hypocrisy:

…. It’s also worth recalling that the Clinton administration organized, coordinated, and participated in some of the ugliest rhetoric we have seen in recent American politics…. And now Mr. Clinton is preaching to us about not demonizing our opponents and about the importance of not crossing rhetorical lines. Can a Clinton sermon on the importance of fidelity and the gift of celibacy be far behind?

…. The end game for many Tea Party critics … is to discredit the movement itself. It is to silence the overwhelming number of decent people who comprise the Tea Party movement by attaching them to the hip with haters and kooks. Liberals and the Democratic Party are losing virtually every substantive debate on the issues. It is blowing their circuits. And so they are left to resort to libel…

Attorney John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog notes (link) that “It is deeply ironic that Democrats are trying to sell the idea that Republicans are somehow violent and unAmerican, when in fact, every actual violent incident is perpetrated by liberals, usually union thugs, against Republicans.”

In a post titled “Democrats Hate that Tea Parties Are Peaceful” (link), columnist Mona Charen reminds us of recent history:

….Democrats are reduced to warning that certain attitudes can lead to violence because there hasn’t been any actual violence at the tea-party rallies. All have been remarkably orderly and even friendly. You can almost feel the Democrats’frustration at this. By contrast, many, many left-wing protests and demonstrations have sparked violence. Just last year, at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, rampaging protesters broke shop windows and scuffled with police, who used batons and tear gas to subdue them. A 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle was so badly disrupted by anti-globalization fanatics who smashed windows and shut down the center of the city that the governor had to declare a state of emergency and call out the National Guard. (President Clinton failed to assail those who criticize corporations as inspiring the violence.) In 2007, several hundred protesters who descended on Washington, D.C., during the International Monetary Fund meeting turned over trash cans, smashed windows, threw bricks, and pushed a police officer off her motorcycle…. In 2008 …anti-Republican protesters at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul “threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below.” The violence was only fleetingly covered in the press and went unmentioned by leading Democrats.

And finally, as for all the Democrat lies about tea-party racism, just the latest iteration of the standard liberal Democrat propaganda trope that conservatives and Republicans are selfish, racist, violence-prone haters, James Taranto asks and answers this question (link) in the Wall Street Journal, “Why the Left Needs Racism:”

If Republicans were able to attract black votes, the result would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party. Even in 2008, the Democrats' best presidential year since '64, if the black vote had been evenly split between the parties (and holding the nonblack vote constant), Barack Obama would have gotten about 48% of the vote and John McCain would be president. To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist.

And so it goes. The ultra-liberal gang we witness today has long ceased being “your father’s Democrat Party,” and is rapidly polarizing and angering regular Americans. They have overplayed their hand. These ultra-liberal Democrats are sowing the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind, but unfortunately for all of us not before they have destroyed some of the unique American heritage in their wake. Are there no Democrat Party American loyalists in their midst who will stand and say “enough and be gone”?

John M Greco

Big Obama Supporter Ed Koch Sours on His Man; Is Surprised Obama’s Anti-Israel

Fox News reports (link) that former Democrat New York Mayor and big-time Obama booster Ed Koch has soured on his man; he is shocked, shocked to find out that Obama is not the supporter of Israel Koch thought he would be:

Koch said he believes Obama "orchestrated" what happened in Israel [that is, Obama’s recent very harsh criticism of Israeli plans for a new housing development]. "What they did is they wanted to make Israel into a pariah," he said. "It's outrageous in my judgment…. I believe that the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please Muslim nations."

Obama not turning out who you thought he was, Ed? What was your first clue? An ultra-liberal hostile to Israel and friendly to Palestinians and their Islamic allies! What a surprise!

Koch campaigned vigorously for a former “community organizer” known to be dedicated to Saul Alinsky, a radical who preached the method of adopting a moderate, unthreatening mask to surreptitiously foment socialistic ends from the inside of institutions; he campaigned for a man with past mentors such as Frank Marshall Davis (a Communist Party member), William Ayers (a known radical domestic terrorist), and Jeremiah Wright (a preacher of anti-capitalist and anti-white black liberation theology), a man who is culturally a blend of Islam and black radical pseudo-Christianity whose past words and deeds focused on the sins of Western culture. And now Koch is surprised he’s hostile to Israel, the whipping boy of the anti-American and Muslim world.

Bringing Jews such as Alexrod and Emmanuel into his inner circle was a head fake. Obama sympathizes with the Muslim world in their manufactured grievances against the West in general and America and Israel in particular.

Obama is like the wizard behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, only in reverse. The soothing, reassuring moderate-sounding figure is up front in plain view for all the commoners to see, up there to fool the foolable, while the real Obama with his radical agenda lurks out of sight. Koch is now just waking up from his self-delusion; better late than never I suppose.

John M Greco

Liberal Bias Whopper at CNN – As Plain As the Eye Can See

The liberals in the media usually hide their bias a little better than this – CNN news announcer Fredericka Whitfield, while talking over a shot of a TV camera panning the crowd at a Nevada Tea Party rally that numbers at the very least well into the thousands, if not well over ten thousand, says this: "Hundreds of people, at least dozens of people - we haven't gotten a count of how many people turned out there.”

Repeat – while the TV camera pans a crowd of many, many thousands, at least, she describes the crowd as “hundreds of people, at least dozens of people.”

These little bloopers are always revealing. She forgets that she’s not writing an article for print, where the reader would rely on her representations. She forgets, because she apparently isn’t very bright, that she can’t lie on TV about a picture that we the viewers are also seeing.

Newsbusters has the video here, and Gateway Pundit also weighs in here.

NewsBusters also says that a reporter for the liberal web site Politico estimated the crowd at 20,000, although he then tarred speaker Sarah Palin with the standard liberal “inciting violence” smear; no report that he hurled the other standard liberal smear – that the Tea Partiers are all racists as well. Perhaps he’s saving that one for his next report.


John M Greco

Related Post:

Liberals Who Read Only Liberal Media Don’t Know the Half of What’s Really Going On – Case in Point: The Obama Team’s Bungled Freeman Nomination

Some Thoughts on the Passage of DemocratCare

* Democrats in the House passed the Senate version on DemocratCare by a vote of 219-212; they needed 216 to pass. Just three votes to spare. Congress has just passed, and Obama has just signed into law today, one of the most momentous bills in American history on a straight single party vote, with not a single Republican vote, by a remarkably slim margin in the House where even many Democrats voted against it. We’ll now find out if a hyper-partisan approach to health care reform can last.

* Democrats have long blamed all ills on George W Bush, but this time it’s my turn. Ronald Reagan left a third term for his legacy, but Bush left us not just Obama but Democrat super-majorities in both Houses of Congress. His mishmash of policies, often confused, inconsistent, and poorly managed, his embrace of the oxymoronic “big government conservatism” that got him and his Republican allies nowhere, his often poor choices in personnel, and most importantly his utter inability to defend his positions and persuade Americans of their merits all led to a devastating wipe out of Republicans over two elections. How different things would be now if there had been all last year only, say, 56 Democrat Senators instead of 60 and 10-15 fewer Democrats in the House; Democrats needed every one of their 60 votes to break a threatened Republican filibuster and bring the Senate health care bill to the floor for a vote, where they then easily got the 51 votes needed to pass. Bush in his second term was weak before his adversaries and left conservatives and independents enervated and angry, and now we live with the consequences.

* The story of how, in Illinois, three Democrats now represent historically Republican districts is instructive, and one I have posted on in the past (link). Big government, back-slapping, go along - get along Denny Hastert, former Republican Speaker, decides to retire mid-term, and a mentally-fogged Republican electorate nominates twice an astoundingly weak perennial candidate who proceeds to lose not one but two elections (a special and a regular biennial) in less than 12 months to a Democrat political newcomer (Foster). In another district, an old, doddering Republican congressman (Crane), the longest serving in Congress at the time, who had stayed around way too long, gets defeated by a smart, young Democrat newcomer (Bean) who runs, as so many of them do, as a fiscal conservative and social moderate – liberal?, hell no. In yet another district, the incumbent Republican congressman (Weller) unexpectedly announces his retirement to run off with his new Latin American bride, the daughter of a former dictator of Guatemala (a puzzling development), and then his hand-picked successor, the winner of the Republican primary to replace him, decides at the last minute not to run after all, leaving a mad dash to find a replacement candidate, a somewhat unskilled newcomer to politics, who loses the seat (to Halvorsen). All had been Republican districts, all now with supposedly “moderate” Democrats, all of whom voted for DemocratCare. That’s three votes just in one state that could’ve and should’ve been Republican but for Republican party ineptness.

* The Stupak fiasco was remarkable. The Michigan Democrat, elected explicitly as “pro-life”, insisted for weeks that he could never support the Senate bill because of its permissive language with regard to government funding of abortions. At the very end, after Speaker Pelosi held firm, he folded and sold out his principles (assuming he had them to begin with) and voted for the Senate bill, hiding behind a meaningless, infinitesimally small fig-leaf executive order Obama issued at the last minute to provide him some cover for his vote. Unfortunately for Stupak, everyone knows the order is meaningless and cannot ever contravene what’s in the Senate bill, and the Democrats laugh at how cheaply he was bought out. By first holding out but then selling out at the very last minute for nothing to a president who is not just pro-abortion but defended infanticide while in the Illinois Senate, Stupak looks like a big ass and now has Democrats who despise him and Republicans who hate him. A remarkable achievement. The 11th hour sell-out by Stupak and the small band of similar supposedly pro-life hold-out Democrats gave Pelosi the votes needed for victory.

* Pelosi’s public relations stunt before the vote, walking around outside with black congressmen while holding the big gavel used during the Congressional civil rights fight decades ago, is a transparent effort to bolster the despicable Democrat strategy to paint everyone opposed to DemocratCare as racist (and the black politicians were happy to allow themselves to be used as props). Moreover, some black congressmen played up the race card, alleging, without documentation or corroboration, they heard racial slurs from tea party demonstrators. Personally I doubt their stories; a very convenient time to shout racism at 30,000 anti-Obamacare protestors. I heard a number of angry liberals call in to conservative talk radio all lathered up and energized about these “facts”, which some conservatives foolishly played into by asserting that most tea partiers are not racist. Sheesh. Playing the race card works and smearing Republican and conservative opponents as racists has long been a basic play in the Democrat playbook, so no doubt we’ll hear many more such smears in the months to come.

* The new law contains an "individual mandate" ordering every American to buy health insurance, said by Democrats to be constitutional under the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce. Never before has the mere act of being alive been regarded as interstate commerce; never before has a law compelled an American to engage in interstate commerce through the purchase of a good or service (in this case, health insurance). If this law survives constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court, where it will inevitably end up, then any and all theories of Constitutional limitations on federal government power are gone, and the United States has truly crossed a threshold and entered the second phase of its existence, one of vastly diminished liberty and unrestrained central government control over our lives.

Repeal and Replace.

John M Greco

Another Hollywood Liberal, This Time Tom Hanks, Runs Off the Rails

Tom Hanks, in a recent Time Magazine interview (link) promoting his new miniseries about the fighting in the Pacific theater of WWII titled “The Pacific,” said the following:

Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?"

Amazing. Yet another example of the self-loathing mindset of some Western liberals, who see the glass of Western culture and history 1/5 empty rather than 4/5 full. Through Hanks we see the liberal dogma of the evil in Western culture and white guilt over past racism, real, exaggerated, or imagined.

Hanks is breathtakingly ignorant of history. He sees racism as a significant part of the American spirit during the war, but ignores how we fought beside and in defense of many East Asians, including, to name only a few, Chinese, Polynesians, Filipinos, and Burmese. How could it possibly be that our motivation to fight the Japanese was based on racism against East Asians? He also ignores or is grossly ignorant of our massive, expensive, and successful effort to rebuild Japan after the war. We rehabilitated the Japanese at great expense even though we wanted to “annihilate” them because they were “‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods”? This is astoundingly incoherent and without historical foundation.

Then, to compound his felony, he projects that same imagined racism on our current war against radical Islamists, implying Americans are fighting this war out of racism toward Muslims, showing more ignorance of many things, not the least of which we fought in the Balkans not long ago to protect Muslims against European Christians.

John Hinderaker of Powerline Blog asks “Does Hollywood Make You Stupid?” (link).

Historian Victor Davis Hanson, in a post at Pajamas Media titled “Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?” (link), writes:

… Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus. Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous….

Despite Hanks’ efforts at moral equivalence in making the U.S. and Japan kindred in their hatreds, America was attacked first, and its democratic system was both antithetical to the Japan of 1941, and capable of continual moral evolution in a way impossible under Gen. Tojo and his cadre. It is quite shameful to reduce that fundamental difference into a “they…us” 50/50 polarity. Indeed, the most disturbing phrase of all was Hanks’ suggestion that the Japanese wished to “kill” us, while we in turn wanted to “annihilate” them…. In short Hanks’s comments are as ahistorical as they are unhinged .…

The interview in Time is by liberal historian Douglas Brinkley and carries the astounding and risible title of “How Tom Hanks Became America's Historian in Chief.” The Hollywood liberals and their media jock-strap sniffers just won’t stop denigrating the United States.

John M Greco

Related Post:
“The Pacific” Premiers – In the First Hour, American Racism & Torture, and Moral Equivalency

“Scheme & Deem” and Other Democrat Health Care Offenses

We Americans are witnessing an extraordinary grand political passion play unfold before our eyes, beyond our imagination, as the senior leaders of the national Democrat party, supported by the majority of its Congressional delegation, are attempting to muster support for an unpopular health care bill through means ethically offensive, patently deceitful, and arguably unconstitutional.

It has long been clear to the sentient that by all of their actions but by only a few of their words, the intellectual vanguard of the Democrat party consists of committed believers in European-style socialism focused on the outward appearance of economic equality, a race- and gender-driven political spoils system (“social justice”), self-loathing over perceived past white wrongdoing (global “imperialism”), and the gradual replacement of the rule of law by the rule of unelected elites through the “legal” theory of the Living Constitution (in which liberals fool the hoi polloi by pretending to base their redistributive, “social justice” decisions on the actual rule of law). But I don’t think in my lifetime there has ever been such a public, naked display of contempt for our established rules of democratic government. The Democrat leaders are saying that their bill will be a good thing for Americans, and it doesn’t at all matter that a majority of Americans don’t want it, and if the rules of American government have to be subverted in order to achieve their end, so be it.

Yesterday Fox News interviewed Barack Obama, and among other things he was dismissive of concern about the process being discussed that the Democrats might use to claim passage of their health care bill, saying “I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate.” This has to be one of the most astounding statements in the history of our Republic. The President of the United States expresses unconcern about the validity, the constitutionality, of the process by which his signature plan, Obamacare, might be enacted.

Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, in a post today (link) expressed so well the horror any lover of the rule of law should feel at Obama’s remarkable statement:

As if procedure is a frivolous sidetrack that only trivial or devious people care about. Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. Much of constitutional law is about procedural rights and structural safeguards that check power. Justice Felix Frankfurter famously wrote: "The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure." Law professors are seriously engaging with the constitutionality of the "deem and pass," and our erstwhile law professor Barack Obama would imperiously wave procedure aside as a distraction not worthy of his time. Let's concentrate on the end and pay no attention to the means. When the most powerful man in the world says that, we should feel revulsion and alarm.

And so I have documented the crazy, alarming process the Democrats are about to begin for my own personal later reference, since years from now, long after Americans have thrown all these dangerous bums out of office, I think I might scarcely believe it all. It is frightening, and profoundly embarrassing, to me to recognize that what follows might happen for real in America and not in some piece of fiction.

1. Senate Democrats have already passed their version of health care (HC) “reform” – the “Senate” bill. Democrats won a vote to bring the bill to a floor vote 60-39, with all 58 Dems and the two independents (de facto Democrats) voting for cloture; the bill itself passed by majority vote. No Republicans voted either to end debate on the bill or for the bill itself.

2. House Democrats have already passed their version of HC “reform” – the “House” bill. It passed 220-215, with one lone Republican vote, Chao of LA (who now says he will vote against the Senate bill if and when it comes to a House vote).

3. The two bills differ significantly in certain particulars. For example: the House bill exempts unions from higher taxes on “Cadillac” health care benefit plans (which many union members have), a feature lacking in the Senate bill; the Senate bill has all the ugly special “bribes” that were needed to secure specific votes, such as the “Cornhusker Kickback”, the “Louisiana Purchase”, and “Gator Aid” (which exempts Florida, where the Medicare Advantage plan is popular, from the general gutting of Medicare Advantage in the Senate bill); and significantly, the Senate bill has language that is seen as potentially permitting federal funding for abortions, whereas the House bill contains the “Stupak Amendment” (insisted upon for their needed votes by a group of anti-abortion Democrats), which explicitly bans federal funding for abortions, consistent with current law and practice.

4. It is generally believed that the House bill could not pass the Senate, and vice versa. Since it is harder getting a bill through the Senate because of the risk of filibuster, getting the Senate bill through the House is the less difficult approach.

5. The House Democrats cannot secure enough votes to pass the Senate bill straight up as it stands, in significant part because many Democrat representatives do not want to go on record as voting for such extremely unpopular parts of the Senate bill such as the Cornhusker Kickback and Gator Aid. Also, Speaker Pelosi’s assurance to House Democrats that if they voted to pass the Senate bill the House would immediately pass a companion bill that would remove, or fix, the unpopular provisions of the Senate bill has been unpersuasive to many House Democrats for this reason: they fear that these “fixes” would never come to pass because the Senate would be unable to pass some or all of them, even if the Senate Democrats tried to pass such House “fixes” via the risky and uncertain “reconciliation” process. Also, some House Democrats fear (undoubtedly with very good reason) that as soon as they passed the Senate bill, Obama would sign it into law, and thus once some version of Democrat health care reform was law, the political will to ram through certain fixes in the Senate via reconciliation will peter out, and the fixes will never happen.

6. Therefore, the House Dem leadership has concocted a convoluted grand scheme that would have the House Democrats pass the Senate bill without an explicit vote on it and would give House Democrats political cover by allowing them to remove the unpopular parts of the Senate bill at the same time.

7. The House Democrat leadership’s plan, endorsed by Rules Committee Chairwoman Rep Slaughter, is to pass in the House a new “Slaughter Rule” bill that would have two parts: Part 1 would “deem” the Senate bill to have passed the House, and Part 2 would change, or fix, the Senate bill to remove the significant parts that House Democrats find objectionable. This scheme would allow the House Democrats to “pass” the unpopular Senate bill without having to go on record as explicitly voting for it, thus allowing members to assert that they voted for a different bill that removed the unattractive elements of the Senate bill. But, in effect, by voting for the House Slaughter “combo” bill (my terminology), they would be voting for and against the Senate bill at the same time.

8. It seems to me that this Democrat grand “scheme and deem” is predicated in part upon the belief that, once the House combo bill passes, Obama could not sign the Senate bill version of HC reform into law because the House combo bill and the Senate bill would not be the same thing. It has been thought to be settled law that the exact same bill must pass both houses of Congress before the president can sign it into law, but this construct may be about to be challenged. Passing a “Slaughter Rule” combination bill seems to address the fear among some House Democrats that if the House passed the Senate bill as is with only a promise of a future fix, Obama would sign the bill into law and the fix would never happen, either because of political resistance in the Senate or loss of interest by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, who, among other things, all like the weak anti-abortion language of the original Senate bill and would be delighted to declare victory with the Senate bill and move on.

9. If the Slaughter Rule bill were to pass the House, then, as I understand the theory, the Senate would need only to pass the Part 2 (the “fix”) of the House bill, called by some the “reconciliation” bill. Since the election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts to fill the vacant seat created by the death of Edward Kennedy, the Democrat caucus only has 59 votes, and it needs 60 votes to break a filibuster and bring the House fix, or reconciliation, bill to the floor for a vote. Thus the talk among Senate Democrats of passing the House fix bill via the controversial tactic of “reconciliation,” which requires only 51 votes to pass and avoids the possibility of filibuster (hence the term “reconciliation” bill).

10. The problem with the grand scheme at this point is that there is no guarantee that the Senate rules would allow all of the “fixes” in the House “combo” bill to be passed via the reconciliation process (the abortion language is regarded as a good example), and if the House fix bill could not pass the Senate in its entirety, then there would be no Democrat HC bill that Obama could sign into law, which would leave the House Democrats hanging with a vote on this cockamamie scheme that ultimately failed in the Senate.

11. For the Democrats, this grand scheme is further complicated by the fact that the Senate rule appears to be that the reconciliation process can only be used to modify an existing law, not simply a previously passed Senate bill. If this interpretation were to hold up, then the Democrat scheme fails, for the House would have needed to have passed the original Senate bill as is and Obama would have had to have signed the Senate bill into law before the “fix” bill, desired by many House Democrats, could be passed in the Senate via the reconciliation process.

12. For the Democrats, even ignoring the problems with trying to pass the House “fix” bill in the Senate via reconciliation, their hope for the grand scheme is also significantly challenged by the fact that many people think that the scheme is unconstitutional, for the Senate and the House would not have passed the same piece of legislation, as they would bring to Obama’s desk the original Senate bill, the House Combo bill, and the Senate fix, or reconciliation, bill (assuming that the Senate passes the fix part of the House bill exactly as it is worded in the House bill). Obama would need to sign all three, but not one of the three would have passed both houses of Congress. If the Senate Democrats revised the original Senate bill to incorporate the House “fixes,” even if there were the votes for this, then still such a revised Senate bill would not be the same piece of legislation that the House combo bill would be, thus again the constitutional problem of Obama trying to sign into law a House bill and a Senate bill that are not the exact same piece of legislation.

Of course, Democrat leaders may twist just enough arms and extend just enough bribes to get a majority of House Democrats to pass the Senate bill straight up as is, without the “scheme and deem,” which Obama could then sign into law. But if they were able to pass it this way up till now, they would have already done it this way, the normal, straightforward, constitutional way.

The hallmark of liberalism in America used to be the defense of legal procedure and the rule of law as the surest way to protect liberty. The contemporary leaders of the Democrat party are turning that notion on its head as their pursuit of power now trumps historic procedural safeguards. It’s not much more of a step for a political party one day to just dispense with all this procedural rigmarole and declare their bill the law of the land and call out the troops. It’s happened before, just not here.


John M Greco

An American Story: Blindness in Preemies, Oxygen Therapy, and Helen Keller -- Dr Arnall Patz

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains an obituary (link) of a remarkable man, Dr Arnall Patz, and a remarkable anecdote about that remarkable man.

It is a long-standing pearl among medical students that pure oxygen therapy for breathing difficulty in premature infants puts them at risk for blindness caused by retrolental fibroplasia. The man who discovered that connection, Dr Arnall Patz, died last week.

Stephen Miller reports in the WSJ:

Arnall Patz helped solve the riddle of how 10,000 babies went blind. Dr. Patz, who died [on March 21st] at age 89, was the … ophthalmologist who in 1954 showed that treating premature babies with pure oxygen had the unexpected result of destroying eyesight in some. By the simple expedient of regulating oxygen levels inside incubators, the epidemic was quelled. "Never in the history of ophthalmology has a blinding condition become so quickly widespread and equally rapidly been abolished," wrote Sir Stewart Duke-Elder, a Scottish ophthalmologist, in the 1970s.

A epidemic of retrolental fibroplasia (RLF) seemed to have grown up just as treatments for preemies had improved. By the time of Dr. Patz's investigations in the early 1950s, an estimated 10,000 children had been blinded in the U.S. and abroad…. Ophthalmologists were searching for a cause in the way preemies were treated—possible culprits included vitamins and hormones. Dr. Patz, a resident at Washington's Gallinger Municipal Hospital, nearly didn't manage to bring his study off, because it involved experimenting on babies, and because the idea that oxygen could cause harm was so counterintuitive. The gas provided obvious benefits for preemies, often turning them to a healthy pink from blue in the incubator. "It had become standard practice to put babies in incubators and crank up the oxygen," he said in a 2004 interview with the Baltimore Sun.

Having failed to obtain a grant, Dr. Patz borrowed funds from his family and demonstrated that oxygen could cause blindness in opossums, rats and kittens. The gas did this by causing blood vessels in the eye to became overdeveloped, damaging the retina. The scientific community was skeptical. "These guys are going to kill a lot of babies by anoxia to test a wild idea," warned grant referees for the National Institutes of Health.

By turning down the oxygen on half the infants in his study, Dr. Patz was able to demonstrate that oxygen therapy had caused the epidemic. A wider study confirmed his results and was announced in 1954.

One man is challenged by a problem, thinks through a solution on his own (and his family’s) dime, and dramatically improves the lives of thousands. A great American story, a great human story.

Soon after his discovery, Dr Patz met Helen Keller:

Just two years after the RLF results were announced, in 1956, Dr. Patz and another researcher, Everett Kinsey, who performed the wider study, were given the Lasker Award for clinical research. Also honored was Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine.

Helen Keller presented Dr. Patz's award in a ceremony in Atlantic City, N.J. Ms. Keller seemed nervous, Dr. Patz later told his son, Jonathan Patz. She kept feeling the inscribed nameplate on the statuette. After she handed it to Dr. Patz, he realized why: Someone had given her Dr. Salk's statuette instead of Dr. Patz's.

Dr Arnall Patz, a great American, RIP.

Richard Balsamo

“The Pacific” Premiers – In the First Hour, American Racism & Torture, and Moral Equivalency

The first episode of the Hanks/Spielberg Miniseries “The Pacific” aired last night. Oh boy.

Responsible for two pre-9/11 extremely well-done war stories set in the European Theater of WWII – “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers,” the duo returns with an ambitious drama about a group of Marines in the Pacific Theater.

After the obligatory home front background vignettes, the action starts at Guadalcanal, with the story centered on a thoughtful new Marine who wants to be a writer and who had a very cold send off from his father. We hear many racist references to the Japanese uttered by a number of different guys. We see the Americans isolate a Japanese soldier in a shallow stream and torture him with non-fatal rifle shots until the Thoughtful Marine compassionately shoots him dead, thereby establishing him as the Moral One (in contrast to many of his fellow Marines). We see this Thoughtful, Moral Marine find and reflect over some possessions in a dead Japanese soldier’s bag -- a picture of that soldier and a young woman, a small figure (? a religious object) – which establishes the humanness of the enemy and suggests the moral equivalence of the combatants.

Hanks has created a stir with his recent comments emphasizing the racism of Americans toward the Japanese in WWII, because, says Hanks, the Japanese were so different in appearance and in culture. To many commentators, Hanks has magnified such feelings way out of proportion to historical reality, while ignoring, either from ignorance or design borne of ideology, the fact that Americans fought closely along side many other East Asian ethnicities (e.g., Filipinos, Chinese, Burmese), the tremendous cruelty of the Japanese (e.g., the “Rape of Nanking” and the Bataan Death March), the fact that America was viciously attacked without warning, and the tremendous kindness and effort with which Americans rebuilt Japan after the war. Furthermore, Hanks analogized the views of the American Marines toward the Japanese in WWII to what he feels are current racism-tinged wars in the Middle East today.

In what are probably less than the first 30 minutes of combat sequences in this miniseries, we see the particularly-post-9/11 liberal view that American servicemen, just regular, typical Americans, are often racists and torturers, and are morally equivalent with the enemy. Was every single Marine in WWII the paragon of virtue? Perhaps not, but by all accounts almost every one did his duty in a decent way under tremendous pressure, and yet Hanks and Spielberg chose to portray racism and torture in just the first episode. It’s very hard to understand where their minds have gone off to, and why.


John M Greco

The Legitimate Fury Over Obama’s Dept of Justice Gitmo Lawyers

There’s a significant controversy (link; link; link) raging about Obama’s Attorney General Holder’s resistance to releasing the names of lawyers he has hired to work in the Obama Justice Dept. who previously represented Gitmo detainees. By now, some names have been released. Defenders of the Holder and Obama have asserted that all “defendants” are entitled to representation and as such questions about past legal work of Obama/Holder Justice Dept. attorneys are inappropriate. But this response is a “straw man”, since no one critical of Holder has argued that “defendants” are not entitled to representation.

The invaluable Andy McCarthy at National Review Online explains that the concern is that these attorneys, while almost certainly not agreeing with the terrorists’ use of violence, may broadly agree with the terrorists’ view about the evils of Western culture, rooted as it is in such principles as individual liberty, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech. These principles are in conflict with the fundamentals of Islam, in which Islamic law is the organizing principle of society, devoid of such Western concepts as separation of church and state and freedom of speech.

The deep concern is that attorneys who have been an active part of what David Horowitz has called the “Unholy Alliance” between radical Islam and the American left are now in senior positions in the Obama Justice Department. Andy McCarthy writes (link):

…[J]ihadist terrorists, and Islamist ideology in general, hold that the United States is the root of all evil in the world, that it is the beating heart of capitalist exploitation of society’s have-nots, and that it needs fundamental, transformative change. This … is why Islam and the Left collaborate so seamlessly. They don’t agree on all the ends and means….. But before they can impose their utopias, Islamists and the Left have a common enemy they need to take down: the American constitutional tradition of a society based on individual liberty, in which government is our servant, not our master. It is perfectly obvious that many progressive lawyers are drawn to the jihadist cause because of common views about the need to condemn American policies and radically alter the United States.

That doesn’t make any lawyer unfit to serve. It does, however, show us the fault line in the defining debate of our lifetime, the debate about what type of society we shall have. And that political context makes everyone’s record fair game. If lawyers choose to volunteer their services to the enemy in wartime, they are on the wrong side of that fault line, and no one should feel reluctant to say so.

Americans have a right to know and should want to know about the past activities and current beliefs of attorneys who are now in senior positions in the Obama Justice Department.

John M Greco

Illinois Wins a Silver Medal in Fiscal Irresponsibility, Narrowly Missing a Gold, But Beats Out New Yorkers

Cynical fans of Illinois politics, a popular spectator sport, will feel chagrined at hearing that their home state just missed out to California for a gold medal in fiscal irresponsibility.

Thomas Donlan, in an editorial comment (link) on the woeful state of state finances in today’s Barron’s Magazine, offers, from a Pew Center report, comparative state data on an interesting metric of state insolvency: compared to the state’s amount of “spending necessary to continue all services and give expected salary and benefit increases,” what is that state’s projected revenue shortfall [for I presume this fiscal year]? California takes the gold medal at a 49% shortfall, but the hardy Illinoisans, led by the big spending pols from the Second City, grabbed the Silver medal in a close second place finish with 47%. Arizona, surprisingly at least to me, placed with 41%, and those big-shot easterners from New York and New Jersey were relative pikers at 32% and 29% respectively. It isn’t easy designing a spending plan twice the size of your income, but Illinois pols managed to do it and outshine New York in the process. Kudos.

And just the other day we received more data on just how much government workers cost us taxpayers. For years it was an accepted truth that government workers were paid less than their private sector counterparts in return for less threat of job loss from layoffs and a solid, if not better, retirement package. And we now know that this is no longer true, and hasn’t been for a while. USA Today just released a report (link), based on its own detailed analysis of federal data, on how much more federal workers make relative to the private sector: they make more in wages, more in benefits, and have a much better retirement deal, all with practically no threat of workforce downsizing. Anyone surprised? State and local workers also have higher total benefit packages than private workers in comparable jobs.

In response to my post (link) the other day on the wreak that is the Illinois state balance sheet, friend and reader The Good Doctor, a political independent, comments:

Mr. Greco and I agree. [T]here [sh]ould be no support for any politician who is not working to cut spending, including cutting the "off limits" existing pension programs for current employees. Yes, of course they will say it is impossible because you have to change laws, but what kind of government says to citizens that we are going to tax you more for [excessive] incomes for [retirees]? [T]he greater-than-private-sector salaries and benefits have not resulted in more efficiency or productivity [in state government], so what do we have for [the gold-plated state benefit packages]? My belief is, and one could probably argue from data, that productivity is hurt by such a give away.

I agree that these politicians (of all stripes) have ruined government finances to the detriment of all except those who receive the largess and who get the votes. In other words, not the citizens of the state.

John M Greco

Obama’s a Hypocrite When It Comes To His Own Health Care

Like most statist, big-government elites, Obama apparently feels he is above the rules promulgated by fellow intellectual-vanguardists and by which the rest of us must live.

As part of his recent physical check-up, Obama chose as the screening test for colon cancer a “virtual” colonoscopy, which is essentially a CT scan of the colon, rather than an actual colonoscopy, the standard, recommended test which consists of a direct visualization of the lining of the colon by a doctor using a flexible tube with fiber optics.

Why? Presumably because it’s easier on the patient. The problem: The test is not recommended by the US Preventive Task Force, whose recommendations drive coverage in government programs and greatly influence coverage in private plans. Obama’s test is not covered by Medicare. Furthermore, most plans won’t cover such colon cancer screening tests for normal-risk individuals under age 50; Obama is 48 years old, and there’s no information I have seen to suggest he has a family history of colon cancer that places him at above-average risk.

This episode reinforces what we all know – that government elites know that whatever health care rules come to exist under socialized medicine won’t apply to them. Note the recent story of a Canadian provincial premier who chose to have necessary cardiac surgery in the United States, with his own money, rather than rely on the quality and efficiency of his own country’s system of medical care; Mark Steyn commented (link) on the Premier's statement that "it's my health, it's my choice": "the Canadian state does not accept that proposition, which is why, if a Canadian such as Mr Williams wishes to exercise his choice he is obliged to leave the country."

David Whelan wrote at Forbes Magazine online (link):

President Obama talks a lot about how Americans should hold the line on health costs by following evidence-based medicine and not rushing to embrace every new high-tech medical device. But when it comes to his own body, it turns out that he won't drink his own medicine…. Last year Medicare made the controversial decision to skip paying for these [“virtual colonoscopy” CT] scans, saying the evidence was too thin…. The decision showed how comparative effectiveness research, which the President funded in last year's stimulus bill and continues to champion, might lead to tough decisions to block certain kinds of expensive tests and treatments.

Dr. Mark E. Klein commented in the Wall Street Journal (link):

In 2008, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services, issued a report that found that there was not enough evidence to determine whether Medicare should cover virtual colonoscopies. Medicare based its decision not to cover the virtual exam on the task force's findings.

I applaud the president. He and his physicians correctly recognized virtual colonoscopy as an excellent alternative to screen for colon cancer. Why undergo a traditional colonoscopy—a procedure that carries a risk of serious complication and requires sedation—when a safer screening method is available?

Of course, the problem is that Americans over the age of 65 do not currently enjoy the same option. They cannot have a virtual colonoscopy unless they are willing to pay out of their own pockets for it. You can imagine their surprise to learn that the president had personally chosen a procedure that his own administration had decided did not warrant Medicare coverage.

This is one reason why Americans fear a government-backed health plan. They have been told that such a plan would not affect the availability of high-tech diagnostic tests and treatment, but their eyes tell them otherwise.

John M Greco

Illinois’ Unnecessary Budget Crisis & Irresponsible Solutions

Illinois is said by all to have one of the most serious budget crises of all the states, with a balance sheet deficit between $11.5 and $13 billion relative to an annual budget (read spending plan) of about $28 million (WSJ; WSJ; Dennis Byrne; Dennis Byrne). The politicians’ technique is simple. First, recklessly spend borrowed money you’re not sure you can ever pay back on Democrat special interest groups (i.e., unionized government and education employees, with their way-beyond-private-sector salaries and pension plans, and the poor on Medicaid). Then, when revenue and budget trickery fail, declare a crisis. Then, while making superficial and largely symbolic spending cuts that don’t touch the major spending categories linked to those interest groups, declare any cuts to those special groups “off limits” and enact symbolic spending cuts to highly visible functions like state park hours. Then, in ponderous tones echoed by the liberal media, declare that a tax hike is the only answer to fix the Illinois budget.

We’ve seen this kabuki theater routine when the state income tax was first passed and then when the rate was raised from 2.5% to 3%. Each time politicians assured Illinois taxpayers that the extra revenue would fix things for good. Of course, all that extra tax revenue did was reset the cycle – spend, spend, borrow, and tax; repeat cycle in perpetuity.

Here are just a few astounding facts about Illinois’ finances I’ve gathered from my clippings:

* From 1998 through 2008, despite revenue that has gone up by many billions, spending has skyrocketed: per capita state expenditures after inflation have climbed almost 47% while the state population has grown only 4%.
* Medicaid is almost 30% of the current spending plan. Note, however, that since 2000 the state's Medicaid rolls have gone up 59% while the state’s population has grown only about 4% (link).
* Illinois has the most underfunded public pension plan of all the states, with a deficit that some say is now approaching $50 billion. Note, however: According to a recent Cato Institute report, state and local employees in the U.S. earn $1.45 for every dollar private workers earn; state workers get $2.18 in health benefits for every one dollar private-sector counterparts receive; public-sector workers receive $6.95 in defined-benefit pension benefits for ever dollar given to private-sector workers. And, to add insult to injury, “some states allow workers to retire early, begin to collect a pension, and then go back to work for the state at their old job, earning a salary as well as a pension” (link). This is now unaffordable and unconscionable.

Of course, it is widely reported that Illinois already has a requirement to balance its budget each year. But each year the politicians dissemble and through budget trickery of dubious ethicality spend way more than available revenues in violation of the law but yet are never held accountable. This must change. Carefully thought-out proposals have been advanced (Illinois Policy Institute; Illinois Policy Institute; Chicago Tribune) without the tax increases touted by Democrats.

From my view, there should be no increases in taxes or other fees, which would just reset the pernicious cycle perpetrated for a generation by Democrats aided and abetted by some Republicans. There should be serious cuts in the spending plan to reverse a decade of unwarranted and irresponsible increases, with no area of spending off-limits. Illinois spendaholic politicians have ruined this state’s finances to buy crass political power through what amounts to bribery of segments of the electorate, and giving them more taxes to misspend won’t do the state's productive taxpayers any good.

John M Greco

Related Post:

Illinois' New Governor Proposes a 50% Tax Hike To Close Budget Gap Caused By Years of Reckless Overspending

University of Chicago Football Punts To Bears and Cardinals

A few days ago on the web I came across a photograph of the University of Chicago 1901 football team. The provider of the image remarked something along the lines of “Notice they’re wearing the Chicago Bears C-logo.” Well, where to start.


The University’s first football practice was led by new coach Amos Alonzo Stagg in nearby Washington Park on the new University’s first day of classes, October 1, 1892.

Chicago was a charter member of the Big Ten Conference, and had much success in football and other sports. The old trophy room at Bartlett Gymnasium, where I learned squash and handball and played in many a pick-up basketball game, was a sight to behold. Indeed, the first Heisman Trophy was awarded to Chicago running back Jay Berwanger in 1935. [Quick time-out for a trivia question: What school has the winningest record against Notre Dame in football, 4-0, outscoring them 83-11, and is the only school ND has played more than once but hasn’t beaten (with the exception of two recent bowl game losses to Oregon State); you only get one guess (okay, all the wins were in the 19th Century, but still). Answer: link.]

Chicago left the Big Ten in 1946 (football in 1939) because then-President Charles Maynard Hutchins, a young progressive educator, found the academic compromises attached to the increasing necessity of awarding football scholarships to be inconsistent with the University’s nature. Legend also has it that Hutchins was not athletically inclined, reportedly saying that "whenever I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down till it passes.” This story may be apocryphal, but, as the old saw goes, it’s too good to check out.

As for those Bears, they didn't come into existence until around 1920. Their young coach, George Halas, a Chicago native and former University of Illinois football player, eventually adopted U of C’s football-shaped “C” logo for his Bears as well, and soon enough Chicago’s “Monsters of the Midway” sobriquet was being applied to his team to boot. And now many think they originated with the Bears. Stravinsky’s old quip comes to mind – bad artists borrow, great artists steal.

And incidentally, the Bears weren't the only professional football team to take something from U of C. When the Chicago Racine Avenue west side football team went looking for new uniforms, it settled on a used set from the U of C Maroons, and, as the story goes, upon observing the faded color, adopted the name Cardinals and has worn red ever since. The team has gone on to become the oldest one in the National Football League, with the Bears second right behind them. So, of the two oldest NFL football teams, one wears the U of C’s faded colors and the other bears its “C” emblem and nickname. Not a bad legacy.

The "C-Bench" (c1976) outside Cobb Hall on the main quadrangles of the University of Chicago, originally intended for the exclusive use of athletic lettermen. Jay Pridmore writes in his Campus Guide that "the bench constitutes something of a parabolic chamber that amplifies whispers in unexpected ways." Only at U. of C.

Richard Balsamo

Partisan Senator Bayh Now Decries Partisanship in Politics; and the Myth of a “Moderate” Democrat

Democratic Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana is shocked, shocked to find bitter partisanship in American national politics, and is now fed up with it. He apparently hadn’t seen much of it before. At least that’s what he’s saying now, as he announced his decision not to seek a third term in this fall’s elections.

But partisanship has always been there, it’s just that he’s accustomed to being on the delivering end. This is the Bayh whose Democrat party’s once-nominee for president, Al Gore, with whom Bayh had hoped to run as the VP candidate, shouted in a frenzy to a whipped-up audience that George Bush had “betrayed this country.” This is the same Senator Bayh who voted against George Bush’s two respected and distinguished supreme court nominees, Roberts and Alito, because they were too “extreme,” while Republicans a few years earlier almost unanimously voted to confirm President Clinton’s two ultra-liberal nominees, Breyer and Ginsburg, out of the tradition of bipartisan deference to the president’s choice. Bayh even voted against the confirmation of his former Senate colleague John Ashcroft as Attorney General. And writes Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online (link): “Bayh gave a speech at the ’08 Democratic National Convention that was obnoxious in its partisanship — even given that it was a convention speech.” This is the Senator Bayh, a media-proclaimed “fiscal conservative,” who voted for ObamaCare and the reckless, wasteful, and ultimately unsuccessful Democrat spending plan they called the “stimulus.”

Evan Bayh is the poster child of the fake moderate, who talks a good, conservative game back home with the folks and then votes in a hyper-partisan liberal way in Washington, knowing that most back-home voters aren’t paying attention to specific votes and that the liberal media will cover for him, all the while raking in campaign contributions from liberal interest groups. Here’s the Chicago Tribune editorial board, today (link): “Bayh was too centrist — and not concerned enough about placating interest groups — to make him a comfortable fit in Washington.” Is the Tribune that clueless or that deceitful? Evidence offered by the Tribune of Bayh’s “moderation” in the Senate: zip. The reality: it’s not that Bayh is too “centrist” for Indiana voters, you at the Tribune editorial board, it’s that he’s too partisanly liberal, and enough voters, in Indiana and elsewhere, have woken up to that fact.

But the radicalism of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi has unmasked these so-called Democrat “moderates” and has exposed them to the suddenly alert, attentive, and wised-up public (link). So now Bayh’s in trouble in the polls, at risk of losing his seat later this year, and so has decided to quit and take his multi-million dollar campaign fund home with him. There’s nothing wrong with being partisan and liberal in American politics, but it’s hard to respect a man who says one thing when home but votes another way in Washington, who is one thing but pretends to be another.

John M Greco

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

One of the gems of the University of Chicago, The Oriental Institute (link) houses a museum, an auditorium, a beautiful library, classrooms, and scholars’ offices. The museum, open to the public, contains countless artifacts gathered during excavations in the Near East over many years by University faculty, students, and staff. Among the striking treasures displayed: an Assyrian Lamassu, or human-headed winged bull (link); a Striding Lion of Babylon (link); a statute of King Tutankhamun from Egypt; and a colossal Persian bull’s head from Persepolis.

The Institute's beautiful building was dedicated in 1931. From Jay Pridmore’s architectural guide to the University: “Designed by the same [architectural] studio [responsible for Rockefeller Chapel], the architects certainly intended for the Institute to harmonize with if not resemble [the nearby] modern Gothic chapel. But for reasons of fashion and a few characteristic design features, [the Institute] is commonly tagged ‘Art Deco.’ The building’s simplified Gothic exterior is indeed notable for planes and masses similar to those of Art Deco or Art Moderne commercial buildings of the period, such as Chicago’s Board of Trade [building]…. [Nevertheless,] despite its exotic and modern touches, the Oriental Institute remains an integrated part of the Gothic revival campus…. its gables and gray stone, as well as its bays and buttresses show that the Gothic revival was still regnant in the early 1930s.”

American Egyptologist – Breasted & The Oriental Institute

A "colossal" statute of Tutankhamun (c. 1334 B.C.), “one of the most famous pharaohs of ancient Egypt” says the note in the museum. Excavated in modern Luxor, it is one of a pair, the other of which stands in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Richard Balsamo

Related Previous Posts:
Ancient Assyria & the Transience of Economic Strength
The Oriental Institute's "Striding Lion" of Babylon
American Egyptologist – Breasted & The OrientalInstitute

Observations on the 2010 Illinois Primary Results

Ballots in hand have now been tallied from yesterday’s Illinois primary elections.

* Although overall turnout was low by primary standards, the percentage of Republican ballots requested was relatively high. I read that sometimes the Republican percentage can be as low as about 33%, but yesterday, using tallied votes in the governor’s race with 98% of precincts reported, the Republican percentage was about 46%. Yes, still fewer ballots than those voted by Democrats, but a considerable improvement. This result bodes well for the fall election.

* The Republican nominee for the Obama/Burris Senate seat is five-term Rep. Mark Kirk, 50, from Chicago’s tony North Shore suburban 10th Congressional District. A reserve Naval intelligence officer with a very good reputation in Washington, he bills himself as a fiscal conservative and social moderate, and is strong on national defense. Despite some waffling (for example, he voted for the “cap and trade” carbon tax bill that eventually went nowhere and whose reason for existence is now discredited), he looks strong against the young (33 yo), inexperienced one-term state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat primary winner with 39% of the vote who’s under fire for some in-office performance issues as well as for his earlier activities as a senior executive of his family’s politically-connected but failing Chicago bank.

* In the 6-man Republican primary for governor, State Senators Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard are in a race still too close to call – Brady leads by about 400 votes, at 20.3%, with all votes in-hand counted but with, according to WGN TV News, over 10,000 absentee votes still outstanding, about 8,000 of which are from Cook County. Most of the Cook County ballots should be Democrat, and most of the rest are likely Republican. Assuming the 10,000+ number is roughly accurate, assume 3,500 Republican absentee ballots are outstanding and that 2,000 will be received. With a 400 vote margin, Brady's lead looks hard to overcome unless Dillard has a significantly disproportionate showing. Such ballots need to have been postmarked by Feb. 1 and need to be received soon, meaning we won’t have a winner declared for a few weeks; a recount could delay the final determination even further.

Brady is a fiscally-conservative downstate businessman who’s already being attacked by the liberal media as holding “extreme views”, as two different TV commentators phrased it yesterday, for his anti-abortion and pro-gun rights (conceal and carry) positions. Dillard is from west suburban DuPage County, strong Republican territory, whose history on fiscal conservatism is questioned by some, and he notoriously participated in a 2008 Democrat primary campaign commercial for his state Senate pal Barack Obama, widely seen as a de facto endorsement, which has hurt him much among Republicans. Conservatives looking for a fresh face split their vote in the crowded 6 man race between Adam Andrzejewski and Dan Proft; combined the two carried over 22% of the votes, enough to win. Third place finisher Andy McKenna, Chicago businessman and former state party chairman, is about 8,000 votes behind Brady and almost certainly can’t catch up through the absentee ballots. Whoever wins the nomination will be in a tough race with the very erudite, bright, and affable Democrat incumbent governor Pat Quinn, who himself just barely survived a rancorous primary challenge.

* In the Chicago collar counties there are three traditionally Republican Congressional seats held by Democrats. In the far southwest suburban 11th District, Republican Reserve Air Force Captain Adam Kinzinger looks solid against first-term Democrat Debbie Halvorsen. In the far western suburban 14th District, Republican State Senator Randall Hultgren beat back a challenge from political rookie Ethan Hastert, son of former Speaker Denny Hastert, who had held the seat for a long time; he will face Democrat Bill Foster, who in 2008 won both the special election to replace Hastert (after his mid-term retirement) and the regular election against the same weak Republican opponent. Hultgren looks much stronger in a Republican year. Finally, in the northwest suburban 8th District, Republican political newcomer Joe Walsh won the nomination to challenge three-term Democrat Melissa Bean, who has positioned herself as a centrist; this race will be tough. I think the Republicans have a very good chance to pick up two of the three seats.

* In the north suburban 10th Congressional District, political newcomer Robert Dold won the Republican primary to face Democrat Dan Seals in the fall election to replace Mark Kirk. This race could go either way.

For the Illinois federal races, if I had to bet now, I think in the fall Kirk wins the Senate seat and Republicans have a net gain of two Congressional seats (which would raise their share from 7 to 9 of the 19 Illinois seats).


Related Posts:

Illinois Republicans: Slip, Slidin’ Away


John M Greco