Archive for October, 2009
Health Care: Don’t Shut Us Out
Friday, October 23rd, 2009This has to be one of the best political ads I’ve seen:
I would submit that the problem with both Hilary Care and ObamaCare is that the American people wanted neither. They wanted gentle reforms to open up the system, not government control of the system.
Is Yelling The New Spanking? Yes.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Morally superior Gen X moms and dads seem entirely reasonable until they see the limits of “limits” like time-outs, banal blabbing and gentle cajoling. Kids regard their parents with utter contempt. Well, some do. Depends on the kid’s personality. And parents, once exasperated, go there. No, they might not spank their child. They’ll yell. Or arm yank. Or threaten. Or push. Or thump (thwack in the head with fingers). Or pinch. Something, anything, to reorder the disordered relationship–the one where the kid is running the show, and the parent feels drug around by the nose by a two and half foot troll.
The New York Time’s takes on the “overachieving” parents’ angst via Instapundit:
Parental yelling today may be partly a releasing of stress for multitasking, overachieving adults, parenting experts say.
“Yelling is done when parents feel irritable and anxious,” said Harold S. Koplewicz, the founder of the New York University Child Study Center. “It can be as simple as ‘I’m overwhelmed, I’m running late for work, I had a fight with my wife, I have a project due — and my son left his homework upstairs.’ ”
Numerous studies exist on the effect of corporal punishment on children. A new one came out just last month. Led by a researcher at Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy, the study concluded that spanking children when they are very young (1-year-old) can slow their intellectual development and lead to aggressive behavior as they grow older. But there is far less data on the more common habit of shouting and screaming in families.
Something jumps out at me: as the child of parents who viewed spanking as their Christian duty (spare the rod and all that), I can assure the researchers it is not like yelling is new. Yelling happened in the bad old days, too.
Re: parenting styles: Kids are resilient. An occasional “losing it” moment isn’t going to scar a child for life.
However, when a parent creates an environment where he or she is consistently out of control, where he chooses to respond to a child in anger, rather than reason, the child realizes the child is in control. Someone owns the buttons. Either, the parent is controlling the nuke button or the kid is. I would suggest that the kid will grow increasingly insecure when he can’t count on mom or dad to be in charge. He doesn’t want to be in charge. He wants to relax into well-known boundaries.
So, parents need to keep an eternal guard on their emotions. Some kids are very smart and manipulative and get a kick out of mom and dad being as easy as a wind-up toy. Teenage boys seem to especially enjoy spinning old mom like a top. The parent teaches disrespect for both himself and the child.
I hate to burst the bubble of New Agey parenting types who scream at their kids for not eating the lentils, you’re no better than the out-of-control spankers of yore. The key is who is in charge? Screaming just declares your impotence just as reckless spanking indicated a desire for immediate control without thought. In both cases, it’s the easy way.
Parenting is brutally difficult. It is a constant personal challenge. The big picture: What is right for the kid? is lost in a personal haze of fatigue, hormones, blood sugar, emotional misery or whatever. Every parent realizes his personal limitations almost immediately–a crying, inconsolable infant is often the first test of many.
So yellers need to knock it off and grow up. Someone has to be the parent. It should be the parent.
Palin & Romney: Heart & Head? More Like, Heart & Soul…less
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Matt Lewis wrote a thoughtful piece about the Republican party and what the two leaders mean for the future of the party:
The most often repeated template is for Republicans to select the person whose “turn” it is to run for president. That’s how the Grand Old Party opted for Richard Nixon, John McCain, Bob Dole — and even George H.W. Bush. The other, less frequently employed model, says: “If you’re going to send up a long shot candidate anyway –perhaps a ‘sacrificial lamb’ — why not go with your heart?” That’s how the GOP chose conservative firebrand Barry Goldwater as its standard-bearer in 1964, a decision that guaranteed a landslide victory for Democrats.
Today, the perfunctory, “next in line” theory suggests that the most likely GOP nominee will be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. While Romney dropped-out of the 2008 campaign earlier than Mike Huckabee, most conservatives concede that Romney finished in secondplace – and that is certainly the view held by the McCainiacs. So, by the logic that led to the nominations of McCain and Dole, it’s Romney’s turn. Even if rank-and-file conservatives find him less than perfect concede that he’s paid his dues.
But what about the other model? Who is this year’s Goldwater – and, just maybe, our Reagan? Who is the person movement conservatives really want? It sure ain’t Mike Huckabee. And it might be Sarah Palin.
Further, he says this [and yes, I'm heavily quoting, go read the whole thing]:
With three years to go, predictions are a risky business. Palin may not even run. And perhaps someone such as Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will emerge as the conservatives’ darling. If recent elections are any guide, the Republicans’ heads will tell them to choose Mitt Romney. Their hearts whisper something else. Is “Sarah” the name of this siren song?
There is an implication in this analysis that nominating Romney would be a “smart” thing. I would suggest, that is false. Mitt Romney, it should be remembered, lost to John McCain. Anyone who lost to John McCain should be discounted, in my opinion. John McCain was a weak and flawed candidate and everyone knew it. The Republican primary voters felt that the other candidates were weaker and/or more flawed.
Voting for Mitt Romney in 2012 would not only be not using one’s head, it would be outright stupid. Sure, he’s got the economic turnaround thing going, but he has the look and feel of someone a person just can’t trust. He is, dare I say it, unelectable. And everyone, but the most devoted Romney-ites knows it.
As for Sarah Palin being the luring conservative temptress, bidding the GOP to crash into the shoals of death, pain and panic…now, that is wrong, too. While the verdict is still out on Sarah Palin, she could be a very good or a very bad choice. How can anyone know that yet?
Sarah Palin has to delineate herself from not only McCain’s policies, she has to define herself as a Republican. Or is she going really rogue and starting her own party? We’ll find out soon enough.
Right now, I don’t think Romney makes sense on any level. Really, I can’t think of one Republican candidate for president who would be a good choice. But it is early yet. Strange times can lead to stranger candidates. These are strange times.
Podcast: CA Governor Candidate Steve Poizner & Western CPAC Ralph Reed Speech
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
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When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Paul Krugman Reveals The Democrats Single-Payer Government Run Health Care Aims
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Why is Paul Krugman playing so coy this year, when he was so forthcoming during the campaign season? He’s not pushing for a certain outcome is he? According to audio Morgen Richmond of Big Government found, Krugman is actually quite clear about what he wants the Democrats to achieve [audio and much more at link]:
Just a couple of quick points on this. Since I already knew about this hidden agenda, what I found most striking was Krugman’s admission that even without a public option the system would largely look like a single payer system. Based on the subsidies for lower wage earners, and the fact that everyone else is paying for these with taxes on top of their insurance premiums. (And with the bills being discussed in Congress, subsidies are provided up to 300-400% of the federal poverty level).
Also, I should point out that a “Rube Goldberg device”, which Krugman used as a metaphor, is a term for an over-engineered solution to a simple problem. In this case, designed to obscure the solution they are actually looking for, i.e. single payer.
However, the critical point in all of this is the sheer scope of this deception on the part of the Administration – and the media. Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein have been two of the most prominent media advocates for healthcare reform throughout the debate this year. With numerous appearances on television and their blogs at the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively. And while they are both unabashedly partisan, this should not excuse them from direct and honest reporting. But of course they have not been fully candid, as they were last year, because in doing so they would reveal the dishonesty on the part of the President and his Administration. (Klein has recently added a whole new layer of deceit.)
Any foot in the door will be a way for government to control health care. That’s the goal here. Krugman put it forth last year. He should be as obvious now.
Obama’s Desire To Control Fox News, The Media & Everything–UPDATED
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Donald Sensing has a must-read piece about the Barack Obama strategy. I’ll quote one paragraph, but you must go read the whole thing:
And to think that George W. Bush was mocked for saying, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” The White House is laying a foundation of future media relations that does two things. First, they are identifying, and most importantly trying to get all the media to identify, good and bad media coverage, both terms defined by the White House. Second, they are nudging each reporter and news organization to move further toward the “good” side by trying to drive a wedge between them and Fox News.
What flashes to my mind is Scientology. Stay with me here. One of the very first precepts in their ideology is to take control–control everything. Another precept is to match tone. That is, if someone is combative, match the person’s tone.
And then what comes to mind is this: all cults have the same traits. Controlling the message, building a personality, stagecraft, etc. The Obama administration came to power by force of jingo. Now, tough decisions must be made, personnel choices committed to. The people watch and judge these decisions. The people don’t like what they see.
Since President Obama doesn’t want to bend his agenda or bring it to the center, his only choice is to control the medium, the filter through which the agenda is seen. Fox News is the only fly in the ointment. He figures the other members of the press are too stupid to question him.
The Obama administration is filled with Marxists, utopians, and workers with fluff resumés. It’s better if no one looks too closely. The president’s agenda is meeting with opposition from the American people. The only way to change that is to try to harm the messenger. Really, the only way to do that is to harm all messengers.
There is only one voice President Obama wants the American people to hear and it’s his own.
UPDATE:
The Politico has more:
All of the techniques are harnessed to a larger purpose: to marginalize not only the individual person or organization but also some of the most important policy and publicity allies of the national Republican Party.
Dunn said that in August, as the president’s aides planned for the fall, they made “a fundamental decision that we needed to be more aggressive in both protecting our position and in delineating our differences with those who were attacking us.”
“It was a time for us to look at the extraordinary success we’ve had in terms of legislation but also to look at where we needed to be more aggressive in defining what the choices are, and in protecting and pushing forward our agenda,” she said.
The campaign underscores how deeply political the Obama White House is in its daily operations — with a strong focus on redrawing the electoral map and discrediting the personalities and ideas that have powered the conservative movement over the past 20 years.
A former national security adviser said that Robert Gibbs now sits in briefings with the military. So even the war in Afghanistan and Iraq is now politicized.
The idea is to control every thought and message out there. And were it not for a few rare exceptions, they would.
More at The Underground Conservative.
About Swine Flu
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009This Swine Flu harms younger people far more disproportionately than the regular flu. Go check out the charts at this link [h/t Instapundit] By the time the vaccinations get fully prepared, Swine Flu will have swept the country. People will either be dead or immune.
In the Spring of the year, my kids and I got what looks like the Swine flu–cyclic fevers (fevers that turn on and off sometimes within an hour), respiratory distress, coughing, aches, etc. It hit me so hard that at the end of the first week (I was in bad shape for a week, weeks two and three were spent recovering), I could imagine how someone could die from the flu. It was awful.
The best thing to do for oneself is to stay rested, eat right, and manage stress. One distressing note is how pregnant women are disproportionately affected. This makes me wonder about long-term neurological diseases. Babies whose mothers had the flu in the first trimester are much more likely to be diagnosed with Schizophrenia. There has been some evidence that Autism can be triggered in the same way. So, this new flu might have more health implications down the road.
ACORN: Michelle Malkin More Light On The Nutty Organization
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Tonight, Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles, and James O’Keefe involved in the ACORN underage prostitute sting operation will be at the National Press Club to discuss the lawsuits they’re enduring at the hands of ACORN. There is a defense fund, more at the link below.
Michelle Malkin has the latest in the Anita Montcrief lawsuit. Anita is enduring being sued for having the temerity to be an ACORN whistle blower:
The sworn testimony, research, and blogging by former ACORN/Project Vote development associate Anita MonCrief has provided an invaluable amount of fodder for reporters (before their editors “cut bait,” that is) and congressional investigators trying to get to the bottom of ACORN’s tax law-undermining, campaign finance disclosure-evading ways. Most recently, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this week on how ACORN’s voter drives in Ohio were planned specifically to help Democrat congressional candidates.
The reward for MonCrief’s truth-telling? An intimidation lawsuit to shut her up.
Yesterday, MonCrief’s lawyers filed an answer to the ACORN/Project Vote lawsuit and counterclaims against the racket for its frivolous and bullying attempt to silence her. There is also a new website to help with her legal defense fund here.
Michelle has links to all the legal briefs and defense funds. Go read the whole thing.
Kathleen Sebelius Gives Voice To Democrat Aims: They Want Single Payer
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009The Democrats are always shy about their socialist intentions. Sometimes they have moments of candor:
New AD: Transparency Hypocrisy By Democrats
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Transparency is just a word to them:
