Just a couple of things from the news this morning that got my attention. The first is Jenny Sanford's statement regarding her husband's infidelity. Most of you know that I was born without a heart so I was incredibly surprised to be moved by it. She seems like a truly lovely woman and I'm touched by her ability to handle this with dignity, grace, and understanding. Her remarkable ability to forgive her husband and simultaneously draw a firm line about what part of his behaviour she's willing to put up with is inspiring to me. This is a stark contrast to the bitterness and vindictiveness that marks most public (and private) break-ups. Truly Mark Stanford will deserve the public flogging he'll recieve in the next few weeks until he's driven from the news cycle. His true punishment will be to watch the destruction of every good thing he's done crumble around him as the foundations of his credibility are washed away in the flood nor should he recive the dignified demise of falling on his sword but instead take the public pilloring he's due. But at the end of it, I hope that Jenny is still there. Does she deserve better than him? Does he deserve a woman as good as her? Absolutely not. But that is beauty of grace and forgivness. You always get far better than you deserve. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_sc_governor_wife_s_statement
Secondly is Obamacare. His infomercial on ABC last night is simply horrifying to me. It sounds like America is Obama's Buger King. He's going to have it his way. A couple of really distressing things from last night are Obama's non-answer to a woman who asked if the elderly will still have the ability to pursue risky proceedures to extend their life if they so choose and Obama's presumtion that it's the insurance providers who need to be "kept honest."To elaborate, one question the President recieved a woman stood up and said that her 90 y/o grandmother had recieved a pacemaker and lived to be 103. Under his plan, would she still have that option. The President offered a long winded response that ultimately said those kinds of decisions would be made by a panel of "experts." This is anathma to me. I don't want my healthcare to be decided by any panel expert or otherwise. I may want that panel to tell me what their recommendations are and maybe what some prudent options are, but ultimately I want the best care I can pay for and based on my determination of what I want my quality of life to be. That determination should not rest with some politically appointed panel making decisons based on spreadsheets or flowcharts of data trying to predict what my quality of life will be or weather I'm too risky or too expensive to even bother with. The other think that really irked me was when Diane Sawyer turned to Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, and questioned him about Obama's assertion that it's the insurance companies that need to be kept honest. That the man actually responded with a polite response is a miracle in my eyes. It's a fallacious assumption by the President that insurance companies are the problem and it's disingenuous to lay whatever failings there may be in the health care system at their feet. And then to say the only way to make the game fair is to give the referee the ball (sorry, I know everyone else is using it. I can't think of a better analogy) is simply mind blowing to me. Why Mr. Williams didn't turn it right back around on the President and ask him who's going to keep the Federal Government honest I'll never know. The really sad thing is, we're going to get this "public-option" (nice way to play with words and direct the focus away from the real definition of state sponsored health care) weather we want it or not. Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security were just the camel getting his nose in the tent. This "public option" is the whole hump.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/Storyid=7919991&page=1
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090625043708.aspx
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Our Holy Father Obama and the Church of the Misconception
It is troubling the levels of sycophantic insanity to which the enthusiastic supporters of President Obama will sink. This week on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris “Tingly Legs” Matthews, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas likened Mr. Obama to God.
“Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama's had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he, he has a very different job from ... Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is - we are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something, I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above above the world, he's sort of God.”
This is the same Evan Thomas who was so awe-struck by the “creepy cult of personality” surrounding then President-elect Obama after his acceptance speech in Denver on the Charlie Rose Show. He is not just comparing Obama to some abstract concept of an omniscient deity, perhaps one of many in a kaleidoscopic pantheon that includes Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, and Jeff the God of Biscuits. He is likening him to the Big G. The one Rush Limbaugh evokes with a deep and reverent “Gawd-uh.” Charlie Rose and guests marveled in amazement at how Obama “watches us watching him.” What is most disturbing about this unholy obsession from those who usually scorn such reverent adulation in others is not the inability of the Obama faithful to view him objectively, but rather that Barack Obama’s most zealous disciple is himself.
Camille Paglia observes in her article on Salon.com this month that Obama “projected himself as a floating spectator of other people's beliefs” and wonders how he can deliver a major statement on religion and remain so detached from it. However, she does not make the connection that the President see himself as detached from everything including the consequences of his own policies. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should have been manna from heaven as America wandered in the wilderness in the wake of the devastating plagues wrought by George W Bush. Despite the promise of a stimulus package of porcine proportions, the economy refuses to be converted. Unemployment has risen to 9.4%, the highest rate in 27 years. In May the economy shed an additional 345, 000 jobs and 2.7 million in 2009. For his next miracle, President Obama will transform these losses into gains by creating 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days. Obama’s powers are not just limited to creating jobs from ether. He can also turn the hearts of our enemies and convince them to beat their nukes into plowshares. He need only to complete an act of contrition of biblical proportions by bowing and scraping his way across Europe and the Middle East in recent months, begging forgiveness for the sins of American exceptionalism and success and consecrate it with sacrifice Israeli national security. An American official in Israel offered this in eulogy. “We are going to change the world. Please don’t interfere.” He did everything but sweat blood. How do our enemies’ respond? North Korea threatens to wage merciless nuclear war and the Taliban killed 9 and wounded 60 in a truck bomb attack against a luxury hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.
President Obama is a man who sees America as a place of failure, inequality, cruelty, and intolerance. The only true emotional fervor that the President seems to espouse is for his own political ideology, which I suspect, is his true religion. To him, America is a land of social "sins" in need of repentance and salvation. He is the Messiah above it all, equally common man and wholly devoid of the ignorance that condemns us. He is the one sent to absolve us of our sins and will usher in a New America made in his image. Pray this doesn’t happen.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/06/05/newsweek_editor_evan_thomas_obama_is_sort_of_god.html
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2008/11/06/newsweek-s-thomas-slightly-creepy-cult-personality-around-obama
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/06/10/waterloo/
“Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama's had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he, he has a very different job from ... Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is - we are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something, I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above above the world, he's sort of God.”
This is the same Evan Thomas who was so awe-struck by the “creepy cult of personality” surrounding then President-elect Obama after his acceptance speech in Denver on the Charlie Rose Show. He is not just comparing Obama to some abstract concept of an omniscient deity, perhaps one of many in a kaleidoscopic pantheon that includes Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, and Jeff the God of Biscuits. He is likening him to the Big G. The one Rush Limbaugh evokes with a deep and reverent “Gawd-uh.” Charlie Rose and guests marveled in amazement at how Obama “watches us watching him.” What is most disturbing about this unholy obsession from those who usually scorn such reverent adulation in others is not the inability of the Obama faithful to view him objectively, but rather that Barack Obama’s most zealous disciple is himself.
Camille Paglia observes in her article on Salon.com this month that Obama “projected himself as a floating spectator of other people's beliefs” and wonders how he can deliver a major statement on religion and remain so detached from it. However, she does not make the connection that the President see himself as detached from everything including the consequences of his own policies. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should have been manna from heaven as America wandered in the wilderness in the wake of the devastating plagues wrought by George W Bush. Despite the promise of a stimulus package of porcine proportions, the economy refuses to be converted. Unemployment has risen to 9.4%, the highest rate in 27 years. In May the economy shed an additional 345, 000 jobs and 2.7 million in 2009. For his next miracle, President Obama will transform these losses into gains by creating 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days. Obama’s powers are not just limited to creating jobs from ether. He can also turn the hearts of our enemies and convince them to beat their nukes into plowshares. He need only to complete an act of contrition of biblical proportions by bowing and scraping his way across Europe and the Middle East in recent months, begging forgiveness for the sins of American exceptionalism and success and consecrate it with sacrifice Israeli national security. An American official in Israel offered this in eulogy. “We are going to change the world. Please don’t interfere.” He did everything but sweat blood. How do our enemies’ respond? North Korea threatens to wage merciless nuclear war and the Taliban killed 9 and wounded 60 in a truck bomb attack against a luxury hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.
President Obama is a man who sees America as a place of failure, inequality, cruelty, and intolerance. The only true emotional fervor that the President seems to espouse is for his own political ideology, which I suspect, is his true religion. To him, America is a land of social "sins" in need of repentance and salvation. He is the Messiah above it all, equally common man and wholly devoid of the ignorance that condemns us. He is the one sent to absolve us of our sins and will usher in a New America made in his image. Pray this doesn’t happen.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/06/05/newsweek_editor_evan_thomas_obama_is_sort_of_god.html
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2008/11/06/newsweek-s-thomas-slightly-creepy-cult-personality-around-obama
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/06/10/waterloo/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)