My favorite articles of the day …
On today’s closely-followed elections:
November 3, 2009 | USA Today
Don’t bury GOP yet: Prophecies of party’s demise this election are way overdone.
By Jonah GoldbergAfter Obama’s presidential election, a cottage industry of punditry sprang up to forge a new conventional wisdom. It goes something like this: The Republican Party has been discredited by the Bush presidency, congressional scandals and overspending. Worse, it is “out of touch” due to the stranglehold of knuckle-dragging, troglodytic, Bible-thumping, gun-nuts and greedy capitalists. Confronted with the divine light of Obama, these hissing conservatives must scurry to the shadows like vampires fearful of the burning rays of the sun. The only chance for Republican survival is to embrace moderation, compromise and, in some cases, what Barry Goldwater called “me-too Republicanism.” Whatever the merits of this advice, two things are now quite clear.
First, most conservatives and Republicans have next to no desire to follow it. And, second, it looks like they’re right not to.
The Virginia contest alone shows that much of this talk about “moderates” vs. “extremists” or “pragmatists” vs. “ideologues” within the GOP was nonsense.
McDonnell is socially and economically very conservative, but he has dominated the race by focusing on mainstream issues such as transportation, taxes and the economy. Meanwhile, Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been working overtime to recast the Democrats as big spenders more committed to an ideological agenda than setting the country right. As a result, independents — the same voters who delivered the election for Obama — are now flocking to the Republicans. McDonnell beats Democrat Creigh Deedsamong independents by 2-1.
The best illustration of the conservative comeback is the special election for the 23rd congressional district in New York (a district Obama carried in 2008). Before last Saturday, the race was being cast a “civil war” on the right because many conservatives were supporting not the Republican nominee, Dierdre Scozzafava, but Doug Hoffman, a Republican who switched to theConservative Party ticket when he failed to get the nomination. Scozzafava is a very liberal, pro-choice Republican, the sort of candidate the conventional wisdom says the right must embrace to stay relevant. Hoffman is a mainstream conservative. On Saturday, Scozzafava dropped out of the race because Hoffman was crushing her in the polls. Most tellingly, it was Hoffman’s support among independents that gave him the advantage.
There’s more than one way to read all of this. Independents might just want to be a counterweight to the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left. Corzine and Deeds might just be lousy candidates in a bad economy.
All of that’s true. But it’s also true that the GOP is not much interested in becoming a Democrat-lite party, and it seems voters don’t want it to, either.
On government-run health (s)care:
November 3, 2009 | Real Clear Politics
The “Costs” of Medical Care
By Thomas Sowell… There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor’s office and more in taxes—or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.
Costs are not reduced simply because you don’t pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past.
Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive—but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.
Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance—and fewer people who can afford it.
Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them.
If highly paid chief executives of insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies agreed to work free of charge, it would make very little difference in the cost of insurance or medications. If doctors’ incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the cost of producing doctors through years of expensive training in medical schools and hospitals, nor the overhead costs of running doctors’ offices.
What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are willing to take on the high costs of a medical education when the return on that investment is greatly reduced and the aggravations of dealing with government bureaucrats are added to the burdens of the work. …
Jewish World Review | Nov. 3, 2009
A Society that Venerates Lawyers More than Doctors
By Dennis Prager… Nothing better illustrates the reorientation — indeed, the transformation — of values that will take place if the Democrats’ health care legislation is passed. Thanks to trial lawyer/Democratic influence, for decades, we have been moving in the direction of litigation-based society. But with a Democratic health care bill, the movement will accelerate exponentially.
Much of our money, our innovation, our creativity and our ingenuity will gravitate from medicine to law. …
No rational person argues that society doesn’t need law or lawyers, or that all lawyers, even trial lawyers, do no good. That is certainly not what is being argued here.
But it does say something about a society when those who sue physicians and hospitals make as much or more money than those who heal disease. It says something about a society when it glorifies and rewards those who litigate while it demonizes and punishes those who produce the drugs and devices that keep its citizens alive and well.
This is part of the upside-down world the left is bequeathing to us and our children in the name of health care “reform.”
On the Leftocracy’s continued pile-up on Rush Limbaugh:
American Thinker | November 02, 2009
The Vilification of Rush
By Kenneth L. Hutcherson[NB: Ken “Hutch” Hutcherson is a former NFL player, a pastor, and an African-American. - ETR]
... The Minority Thought Pattern is aimed at destroying America, at rending the very fabric that makes America great. The Minority Thought Pattern denies the greatness, honor, bravery, courage, humility, and sacrifice that has brought us the power to be the greatest nation that has ever existed. The Minority Thought Pattern has a mission to undermine and redefine every characteristic of America, maintaining that it is a nation based on greed, cowardice, selfishness, and a lack of genuine humility. The Minority Thought Pattern is the reason for all the apologies to the rest of the world for how bad American is, coming even from our top leader. …
This is extremely personal to me. It’s about a friend. When I look at Rush, I don’t see a white man; I see a friend. I don’t see a talk show host (a very famous talk show host); I see a friend, and friendship overrides color and political stances. I don’t see a controversial figure, but a man whose heart and thoughts I know, and a man who is not a racist.
I believe with all my heart that minorities, especially African-Americans, will never be free until they stop allowing people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to insist they adopt the mentality of victims. Likewise, they will not be free until they take the next bold step: start thanking God for America, and stop condemning the white male.
It is time for America to reject the Minority Thought Pattern and the hateful campaign against Rush Limbaugh.
On Obama’s dithering in Afghanistan and photo-op at Dover AFB:
American Thinker | November 01, 2009
O isn’t dithering on Afghanistan! It’s a Harvard Law Seminar!
By James Lewis… Why would Obama be any better informed than the rest of the Left? He’s swallowed the Party Line for decades. He never has an original thought when it comes to liberalism; he memorized it when he was a kid, and by gum, it’s still exactly the same as it was decades ago. So he must have gulped down the whole peacenik delusion wholesale. And now a Divine Providence with a highly developed sense of irony has made him Commander in Chief.
After all, what does a Chicago pol have to really know about national security? Nothing. Chicago pols don’t even know about school security on the South Side. If they did, the schools would be much more peaceful. In New York City, it took Rudy Giuliani to clean up crime because generations of liberal mayors couldn’t figure it out. If they can’t run safe schools, what can they know about keeping peace on a global scale? When Obama and Bill Ayers got together on that Chicago inner-city program for fixing schools and buying votes, the best he came up with was a “jazz curriculum.” That’s the Dixiecrat solution for African-American education. It is disrespectful to parents and children of any race. …
George W. Bush accepted six years of foaming rage from the yapping Left with good grace. I think he could shrug it off because he understood what was important and what was merely self-serving. The Bush family has a record of solid values. Dad still jumps out of airplanes at 85. George W. Bush used to visit privately with wounded soldiers and their families, and go to see the dead coming home. Real tears are private. Bill Clinton had Hollywood photo ops in Normandy. …
On the latest from the “Religion of Peace”:
November 02, 2009 | World Net Daily
‘Everyone hates Jews,’ declares Islamic cleric
By Aaron KleinJERUSALEM – Trees, animals and non-Jewish athletes despise Jews, declared an Egyptian cleric on his country’s television network.
“People hate (Jews). They don’t like them. We are not talking only about people. [The same goes] even for trees and animals,” stated Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari on a program two weeks ago that aired on Egypt’s Al-Rahma satellite network. …
“The proof is that the Prophet Muhammad said that when Judgment Day draws near, the final war between the Muslims and the Jews will take place. The Prophet said that the Muslims would kill the Jews. ‘Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,’“ declared Al-Ansari.
He added, citing from a hadith, a collection of the sayings of Muhammad: “The Muslims will kill the Jews. Be patient. All the trees and all the stones will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree.’ Only one kind of tree will not call [the Muslims]. It is the Gharqad tree.”
On man-made global warming climate change:
November 3, 2009 | U.K. Telegraph
Al Gore could become world's first carbon billionaire
Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world's first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.
On liberal media bias:
November 3, 2009 | NewsBusters
USA Today Defines Sycophantic Media in Front Page Homage to Obamas
By Brent Baker… USA Today’s Mimi Hall and Maria Puente gushed in a front page story on Tuesday marking a year since President Obama’s election, “With cultural ‘flair,’ Obamas updating first family’s image.” The two reporters began by describing Barack and Michelle Obama as just like any other hip couple:
He carries a smartphone on his hip, goes out for burgers and plays pickup hoops. She goes to their daughters’ soccer games, works in the garden and loves listening to her iPod. Together, they host poets, artists and musicians at their house and invite neighborhood kids to drop by.
The journalistic duo soon featured this glowing assessment: “‘The Obamas’ White House is the most open for cultural and intellectual activities since the Kennedy administration,’ says Douglas Brinkley, author and presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. ‘It’s not simply a matter of doing events of statecraft and cultural gravitas. They have a great flair for American pop culture.’”
November 02, 2009 | TimesWatch
‘The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.’
By Clay WatersThough he’s predicting Democrats will prevail in the end, former theatre critic turned over-dramatic liberal columnist Frank Rich sounded even more skittish than usual in his pre-election column in the Sunday Week in Review, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”
Barack Obama’s most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.
Have a blessed day!
I like the points which deliberate the point and give the clear signal of the Around the web in 80 minutes.I like the post as it gives explanation by narrating the different concepts.I agree with the point that Barack Obama’s most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army.
Posted by: vitamin a | Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 01:23 AM