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Obameconomy: Producer Prices Spike Up, Gen Y Loves Living With Parents

March 16, 2012 admin No comments

Yesterday, (NMP) Obama gave what was supposed to be an official POTUS speech on energy, and instead quickly morphed into a campaign speech where (NMP) Obama took shots at not only the GOP presidential candidates and elected Republicans, but at you and me, who reckon high gas prices are a Terrible Thought, even going so far as to call people who want to “drill now” are “flat earthers.” Of course, he also screwed up his Rutherford B. Hayes talking points. Meanwhile, Obama seems to be missing Reality Land (MSNBC) U.S. producer …

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Obameconomy: Producer Prices Spike Up, Gen Y Likes Living With Parents

3rd Party Stupid

February 24, 2012 admin No comments

Jon Huntsman, who started out the race for the Presidency as the moderate alternative to the other candidates and finished by trying to described himself as the “right conservative” in the race is making an equally schizophrenic pitch for the third party. Jon Huntsman called for the rise of a third party on Thursday as he argued the remaining GOP presidential candidates lack huge thoughts. The comments from the former Utah governor, who dropped out of the race in January after a disappointing showing in New Hampshire’s primary, were striking given his …

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3rd Party Stupid

David Waldman of Daily Kos: Know-Nothing Bigot

February 22, 2012 admin No comments

It’s time for Democratic politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are courting Catholic voters, or who – like Senator Bob Casey – profess the Catholic faith themselves, to distance themselves from Daily Kos over the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing bigotry of Contributing Editor David Waldman . Waldman, @KagroX on Twitter , is one of the leading figures at Daily Kos, the largest left-wing blog; a former Hotline staffer , he’s a contributing editor and front-page writer , runs the affiliated site Congress Matters , and his tweets are frequently quoted and retweeted by Markos Moulitsas. In an mad, profanity-laden tirade last night on Twitter over a flap between a local Virginia church and the Girl Scouts, Waldman unloaded his hatred of the Church, grasping for every anti-Catholic trope he could reach (examples: “Catholic Church: the ones we don’t rape, we’ll alienate by calling them communist b****es” or “Catholics are the next Shakers. No one under 35 will ever stay in this church” ) and complaining that there are too many Catholics on the Supreme Court ( “Oh that’s right. Six Catholics. Fantastic.” ) Waldman’s vicious rant would have been right at home with the anti-popery screeds of the Klan in its heyday, the Know-Nothings of the 1840s or the “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” trope that cost James G. Blaine the 1884 presidential election. Waldman’s full outburst, in reverse chronological order, is below the fold; warning, it includes language we do not ordinarily permit on this website): This Klan manifesto from 1923 – see Points 6-8 – seems positively restrained by comparison: Politics ain’t beanbag, and Twitter is often not a place for the most thought-out opinions. But by any stretch, this is far over the line to simple hatemongering. It may not surprise us, but it should still offend us. And it should offend and embarrass Democratic officials that this is a loud voice in their coalition. It may seem unfair to question public officials to anticipate that stoking the fires of anti-Catholicism will be seized upon by extremists like Waldman, but they can certainly denounce it – unless it’s precisely what they aim to accomplish. There is a long and dolorous history of anti-Catholicism in this country. The Know-Nothings’ anti-Catholicism and hatred of new Catholic immigrants were intertwined. Then House Speaker Blaine sponsored the anti-Catholic 1875 Blaine Amendment to the Constitution (defeated in the Senate but enacted in many states and still used as a sword by the public school teachers’ unions to this day) and lost the 1884 presidential election when he stood by as one of his surrogates branded the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”. The Klan was the leading voice against the Church in the 1920s, and as late as 1960, John F. Kennedy was forced to defend his faith against conspiratorial charges of papal control of the federal government. Catholicism has been the faith of many waves of immigrants to this country and strivers for upward social mobility – Irish and Italians and Poles, Filipinos and Hatians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. There have always been those who find our faith threatening and seek to control it. And the Catholic Church has been in the Democrats’ crosshairs in this election season, moreso than in any election since at least 1960. It’s not hard to see why. The four remaining GOP presidential candidates include Rick Santorum, an outspokenly traditional Catholic who has faced questioning on such uncontroversial Catholic beliefs as the existence of Satan , and Newt Gingrich, a late-in-life Catholic convert. Catholics are prominent and rising in GOP ranks, including John Boehner, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush (a convert), Bob McDonnell, Pat Toomey, Rudy Giuliani, Kelly Ayotte, Susan Collins, John Hoeven, Sam Brownback, Tom Corbett, Susanna Martinez, and Luis Fortuno. The six Catholics on the Supreme Court include all five Republican appointees: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito. (The sixth is the first Hispanic Justice, Sonia Sotomayor). The Obama Administration has played wedge-issue politics against the Church for reasons of both policy and politics, most recently with the rule, enacted by the Department of Health and Human Services, requiring Catholic institutions to provide health care plans including coverage of contraception, in violation of the Church’s own position – a rule condemned by all 180 Catholic Bishops and scores of Catholic institutions , but which Democrats gleefully predict will be an electoral asset against the GOP precisely because defending the Church’s religious freedom is a point of principle on which neither the GOP nor the Church can bend. In Washington State, Democrats are pressing even further, to require all health plans to cover abortions. These moves are all about taking away the Church’s freedom, in its capacity as an employer, to follow its own conscience, and thus eliminating one of the last major institutions in this country not beholden to government. And the DSCC is using the confrontation in fundraising emails: Will no one rid the Obama Administration of these meddlesome priests? The harder the Administration pushes the Church for political and financial gain and to achieve government dominance over social issues, the more the excitable followers of the Administration work themselves into lathers of Catholic-bashing. This is as excellent a time as any for Democrats to admit that this tactic has gone too far. (It’s a recurring issue – Evangelical Christians and Mormons have come in for the same treatment before and will again). Catholics are a majority in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and over 40% of the population of in Massachusetts; Catholics are the largest religious denomination in 33 states, and in particular the predominant faith of Latinos in this country. We deserve to know that our elected leaders, regardless of party, will not encourage Waldman’s sort of bigotry. Catholic politicians like Bob Casey, Joe Biden, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin – or politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are seeking the votes of Catholic voters – should reckon long and hard about associating themselves with Daily Kos as long as Waldman is part of it. But moreso, they have an obligation not to encourage the extremist bigots in their midsts.

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Did Fred Hiatt Change the Mission and Just Not Tell Anyone?

February 19, 2012 admin No comments

Conservatives have come to expect liberal organizations to hire purported “conservatives” to cover the conservative movement in a way that self-affirms liberal notions of conservative neanderthal-ism. But there is a problem in Jennifer Rubin covering conservatives at the Washington Post . According to the Post’s ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt hired Rubin “to be an opinion blogger who would appeal to conservatives and people who want to follow conservative politics. She does.” It is the “appeal to conservatives” that is problematic when coupled with the affirmation that “she does.” For the past year, Rubin has done more to hinder the Washington Post in the eyes of conservatives as a place willing to treat conservative views honestly than even hiring Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent, both activist leftists who can, at least, place aside partisanship to occasionally engage in excellent reporting. We can presume that Fred Hiatt has changed the mission from “appeal to conservatives” to “appeal to liberal notions about conservatives.” Today, Jennifer Rubin discovers that Rick Santorum is a devout Catholic and, through leaps of logic that would defy Cirque Du Soleil, arrives at a laughable conclusion not in evidence that puts a huge spotlight on her understanding of devout Catholics — a core constituency in the modern conservative movement, particularly inside the beltway no less. In her latest escapade, Rubin discovers that Santorum, a pro-life Catholic, believes that doctors who commit abortion should be prosecuted for killing a child. 1 In learning this and trying to overcome her shock, Rubin first ignores that Santorum and most ardent social conservatives have lllooooonnnnnnngggggggggg held this view — and then she does something that not just proves her ignorance on this issue, but also her pro-Romney agenda driven hostility to Santorum’s conservative convictions. She writes: As for his comments on prosecuting abortion doctors, this would, I assume, concern the death penalty in states that impose capital punishment for murder. After all, it would be contrary to his views (that unborn children are people under the Constitution) to choose for criminal law purposes that an unborn child is any less a person, and deserving of less protection, than any other person. As Jennifer Rubin is clearly not aware, devout Catholics are opposed to both abortion and the death penalty. Yes, dear reader, you may be shocked to learn, but devout Catholics are the most pro-life of all pro-lifers. Where Presbyterians like me are quite comfortable opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty based on our reading of Romans 13, devout Catholics and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church are opposed to both abortion and the death penalty. On Santorum more particularly, he has maintained support for the death penalty as it exists , but while in the Senate was opposed to its expansion for other crimes, voted to limit its use, and in 2005 told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “I felt very troubled about cases where someone may have been convicted wrongly. DNA evidence certainly should be used when possible. I agree with the pope that in the civilized world … the application of the death penalty should be limited. I would certainly agree with that. I would certainly suggest there probably should be some further limits on what we use it for. In fact, of all the Republican Presidential candidates, Rick Santorum has offered only the weakest support for the death penalty and has repeatedly sought to curtail it, never to expand it. In other words, Jenn Rubin extrapolates from Rick Santorum’s devout Catholic views on abortion that he would advocate criminalizing abortion and somehow fails to both know that Rick Santorum is not a staunch death penalty advocate and further extrapolates that, despite his devout Catholicism and his record on the issue that Santorum would champion expanding the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions — something that does not stand up to either Santorum’s record as a public official or how he publicly reconciles his faith with positions. It may be hard for Jenn Rubin to comprehend, but devout Catholics are so intense on the right to life issue, they really aren’t willing to hold on to the life issue at birth and give up on it at the end. What’s excellent for the child in utero is excellent for everyone else. It is, in fact, the most consistent pro-life approach, even though I disagree with it. Had she studied Santorum’s record on the issue, she’d see that those times the death penalty has come up in his career he has not exactly championed it, but has instead accepted it as (1) constitutional, (2) let it remain as part of the law, and (3) tried to curtail its use and application. At this point, I don’t reckon even my friend Quin Hillyer can maintain that Jenn Rubin might support Rick Santorum . More troubling, the Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt believes Rubin is supposed to not just cover conservatives for the typical left-wing reader of the Post , but also expand the pool of the Post’s readership to conservatives. When a majority of conservatives have rejected Mitt Romney and the Post’s in-house conservative blogger not only routinely assails all the Republican candidates but Romney (with the caveat that she will praise non-Romney candidates whose actions benefit Romney) and does so while showing no understanding, no matter how nuanced, of basic conservative positions like abortion and life issues, the Washington Post needs to rethink its strategy. I should also point out that in Jennifer Rubin’s apparent shock today that Rick Santorum believes abortion should be made illegal and doctors punished for aborting children, Rubin seems completely aghast at what has been a very long held position among pro-lifers and, in general, the greater social conservative section of the conservative movement. This goes back to, at least, Ronald Reagan’s campaign putting a pro-life plank in the GOP Platform in 1980. Surely someone chosen to cover the conservative movement should have a sense of history about that movement. ↩

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Did Fred Hiatt Change the Mission and Just Not Tell Anyone?