Yes, I participated in the Obama-Google “smart-mob” vote. (Go to Google.) It asks you to vote on, or flag, other people’s answers. I shuffled through a few hundred before I tired of the exercise.
I found many, many suggestions to legalize and tax marijuana and online poker. One suggestion to remove Scientology from the tax rolls.
Not much to add to William McGurn’s piece on latest example of the moral abdication of Catholic universities and politicians, by now such an old story that it’s not really news to Catholics.
Not for the first time, the line between the New York Times and The Onion becomes a little blurrier.
Gary Saul Morson on what social constructionism means.
“Perhaps the most important lesson to come from the Stalin archives is that any ideology that does not admit the existence of human nature winds up destroying not only countless lives but also the human soul.”
I’ll have to wait to read this study to be published next Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
But for now, note the New York Times’ spin:
“ ‘To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,’ Dr. Prigerson said, ‘and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.’ Aggressive life-prolonging care comes at a cost, however, in terms of both dollars and human suffering. Medicare, the government’s health plan for the elderly, spends about one-third of its budget on people who are in the last year of life, and much of that on patients at the very end of life.
Aggressive end-of-life care can lead to a more painful process of dying, researchers have found, and greater shock and grief for the family members left behind.”
Where to begin?
I’ll have to see how the study defines “religious people.” Certainly the Catholic tradition does NOT require the use of any and all means to stay alive, and future studies of end-of-life treatments might do well to distinguish Catholic and Protestant believers.
What about “greater grief and shock”? Presumably these troublesome Christians whose pesky insistence on treatment are costing “you” (the secular reader) money, believe in heaven, so how can their “shock” be greater? Again, I’ll have to see the study, but the Times’ presentation here is slanted.
This subtle slanting is part of the Times’ support of the Obama/Daschle health care “reform” program, with its rationing of care and its demand that old people get out of the way. We can expect to see many more of these utilitarian and cost-based arguments that will attempt to further erode support for belief in the sacredness of life (attributed here to “those people,” presented as usual as an exotic tribe, instead of to “our kind”).
Paul Krugman, of all people, admits that perhaps the creation of the EU was a mistake:
“Does all this mean that Europe was wrong to let itself become so tightly integrated? Does it mean, in particular, that the creation of the euro was a mistake? Maybe.”
“It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama’s high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. ”
I’m calling it now: no second term.
This crisis is too good to leave unexploited, said Rahm Emmanuel. And Tom Friedman’s latest is in the same mode.See, says Friedman, it wasn’t corrupt bankers, overconfident Wall Street wizards, or oblivious politicians at all that is responsible for the crisis — it was Us! Middle-class Americans, with their consumerism and desire for prosperity. There’s some truth there, of course. Millions of Americans borrowed to buy houses they couldn’t afford and to buy things they didn’t need. It seems unlikley that we will return to our old level of consumer spending anytime soon.This would be progress. But read Friedman’s column carefully. This is a new version of the old leftist “We are all guilty,” argument, first trotted out in the Thirties by H.R. Laski in an attempt (unfortunately accepted by many at the time) to draw a moral equivalence between the Western democracies and Nazi Germany (in the interests of the Soviet Union).Now the moral equivalence is between irresponsible home-buyers and corrupt bankers on the one hand, and all the rest of us who weren’t irresponsible on the other. That distinction no longer matters to Friedman. Because, you see, it’s “our” lifestyles that are irresponsible. It doesn’t matter whether or not we lived within out means. It’s our civilization that isn’t living within its means!Thus the focus shifts from individual responsibility (Did I buy a house I couldn’t afford?) to collectivist solutions (i.e., cap-and-trade–already being abandoned by the Europeans–and other top-down climate control measures). I love this quote:“ ‘You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Rahm. ‘But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, “This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate …” Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.’Get it? It’s our desire to eat cheesburgers, drive cars, live in McMansions and shop at Wal-Mart that is the “real” Ponzi scheme! Thus Freidman attempts to harness our understandable anxiety about the economy to his climate-change agenda. In fact, American fear is probably the single most exploited natural resource right now, as Obama and Nancy Pelosi try to harness it to power all kinds of agendas that have little or nothing to do with the immediate cause 0f the crisis–the toxic assets in the banks.
Chris Smith, Republican House member from New Jersey, said on Friday that the Obama administration “still doesn’t get it” about the fact that embryonic stem cell research has been surpassed by recent breakthroughs in adult stem cell research. With all due respect for Chris Smith, they do get it. But their ideology trumps reality every time. Rahm Emanuel said it himself, “Never waste a crisis.” Translated this means, “Policy shouldn’t be driven by what is best for the country, but what is best for the leftist ideology of Obamatons.” It is becoming clearer that the direction the administration is going is not service to the country, but service to their paternalistic ideology. Christopher Smith, on the other hand, is driven by service to the country and especially to the most marginalized and arguably the poorest of the poor in our society: embryos, unborn children, victims of human trafficking.
Two relevant quotations from Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry:
Just substitute “pseudo-religious” for “religious” and “hell-fire” for “economy.”