And So It Is Done

Not surprisingly, the craven Congress has passed the health care bill, meaning that in just a few short years, your health care will be in the safe hands of the people who revolutionized airport security in the wake of 9/11.

Much has already been said, but a few comments stand out. Perhaps most astute are those of the always-reliable Mark Steyn of National Review Online. The ramifications of this bill are hard to overstate:

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Their bet is that it can't be undone, and that over time, as I've been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.

More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

One does not have to be a fan of America's recent military adventurism to recognize that Canada, England, and most of the western European welfare states have been depending on a strong America for their own defense for decades. (Anyone seen a French fighter jet buzzing around lately?) I don't regret the end of the free ride for America's ostensible allies, but I do regret that America will soon be among the simpering, helpless giants depending on some other nation to defend us. (And who will that be? China?)

It has also become clear that, incredibly enough, we have an entire political party in America--indeed, one currently holding the majority--that is almost completely devoted to the killing of unborn children. Lest anyone think this is a partisan statement, let me be quick to add that Republicans, on the main, have been mediocre at best in defending human life. But as the Stupak debacle shows us, the "pro-life Democrat" is now a purely mythical creature. The fact is, as a national entity, the Democratic Party loves it some baby-killin'. Infanticide has become the party's sine qua non. And so we should not be entirely surprised to find God's judgment falling upon us.

Other civilizations have similarly been toppled at comparable points in their histories, and a nation whose sexual proclivities have driven us to require a blood sacrifice to the tune of 50 million human lives can only ask what took so long. Repentance is the only way out, and it takes a mighty strong faith to imagine such a thing having gone this far down the road.

Such repentance will need to begin with the Christians, who frequently look just like the world when it comes to such matters as sexuality and being the recipients of stolen goods via government redistribution programs. The LORD was willing to spare Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found there. Only when Christians, who ought to know better, stop bowing the knee to Baal will the Lord relent from treating us like Baal-worshipers. What we're seeing is Romans 1 in action, and it was promised long ago.

Obamacare health care Bart Stupak abortion

Who Knew?

Fess Parker from "Daniel Boone" has died. To which I say, "Fess Parker was still alive?!?" No way anyone knew Fess Parker was still living.

Parker is so emblematic of the phenomenon captured in my oft-heralded "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive List" that I'm actually going to start calling it the Fess Parker Memorial "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive" list.

Sick About Health Care "Reform"

As the health care summit/charade opens today in Washington, a few thoughts come to mind. First is the recognition of what's really happening here when you boil it all down. Undoubtedly, all the incredible minutia is confusing (a fact that the statists use to their advantage), but when all is said and done, it still funnels out to a few basic principles. What kind of country are we going to be?

For much of America's history, liberty was its primary value. Our Constitution set out a cherished set of negative rights: things the government could not do to us. Now, those rights are being stripped away one by one in favor of the newer, progressive notion of "positive rights"--those things that the government must do for me (which, as it turns out, is pretty much everything). Barack Obama has been unvarnished in his view on this. He (now famously) said in a 2001 radio interview:

The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society...[T]he Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf....I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.

Well, he's found another way. In all the health care debate, know this: whatever else health care reform movement is about, it's about dramatically curtailing liberty.

The other day driving home from work, I was listening to a program on NPR ("where thousands work so that hundreds may listen"). I used to think the reason I arrived home cranky every day from my commute was because of the traffic and horrible South Florida drivers. Now I'm realizing it might be because of my "entertainment" choices. Anyway, this particular program (On Point with Tom Ashwood) was discussing health care, and as expected, they had a balanced panel: one proponent for universal health care from Princeton University, and one proponent for universal health care from the leftist Center for Media and Democracy.

Discussions like this happen all over the place every day, so it's not as if this were a sudden, isolated bolt of insight. I was just impressed by how clearly the matter was stated. It's bald Marxism ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his need")--and predictably on NPR, nobody flinched.

The guest was Uwe Reinhardt, who is a professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The snippet begins at 15:25 of the program:

REINHARDT: The problem is that health care in America is very expensive. It's twice as much as it costs in Canada, per capita.

HOST: Mmm hmm.

REINHARDT: And some people, this lady who just called, are simply too poor to be able to afford health care for their families out of their own income, and they need help from their fellow citizens who have more money or who are healthier. And that's really the debate. To what extent do I have to...or should I be...my brother's and sister's keeper with health care in America? All other nations have solved this. They have said, "If I'm healthy, I should subsidize the sick. If I'm rich, I should subsizize the poor." Americans have not agreed. When Senator McConnell says the American people don't want this bill, I am not so sure. Because that lady who just called definitely wants this bill. [Chuckles]

HOST: Yeah.

REINHARDT: There are richer people who need to be asked to the cashier's window, uh, myself included, by the way. Uh, some rich people may not want this bill because they don't want to pay any more.

HOST: But do you think that the plan that went so far in the Senate and then ground to a halt, and now is kind of back, and that's the president's plan...would that control the costs that you're talking about, enough that even if we're sharing...uh...the burden, it would work out?

REINHARDT: Not in the short run. I have said...I've put it in writing...in the short run, say in the next five years, even the Pope couldn't do it. It is very difficult to control costs, because...I always joke and say there's Alfred E. Newmann's equation: every dollar health spending is someone's health care income, including fraud, waste, and abuse. So when you're talking in the business community, when they're talking cost control, they're really talking about controlling the income of doctors and hospitals and pharma and device manufacturers, so you have tremendously powerful lobbyists protecting the income of these providers. It'll take at least a ten year wrestling match between Congress and these, uh, interest groups before you can ever have costs under control...

Read that last section again. In order to get "health care reform," you'll have to get costs "under control." And in order to do that, the federal government will have to begin controlling personal incomes of people in 1/6th of the American economy. Reinhardt later enthusiastically affirmed that the current health care bill is a good first step toward putting us on this road.

And they will get us down that road. Looking over the landscape in the last few days has brought to mind just how pitifully ineffectual the Republican Party has been in opposing the statist, socialistic agenda over the past, oh, 50 years. With Obama's health care reform plan seemingly going down in flames at the time of Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, Republican after Republican could be heard pathetically squeaking about how this was really about "getting a seat at the table" and "having our voices heard." They actually seem to consider it a victory when they can kick a field goal in the other guy's stadium, on the other guy's field, playing by the other guy's rules. By sitting down to "negotiate" the nuts and bolts of the health care bill, they've once again adopted the premise and are now simply sorting out the details.

In 1993 when Bill Clinton came to office, he floated a universal health care plan (Hillarycare) which got eaten alive. But liberals spent the next 16 years pushing the concept anyway. Now, Republicans are willing to have some give and take on it. In another 16 years, complete, universal, socialized health care in this country will be a fait accompli. The shills of the GOP long ago swallowed the statist hook. They've long since conceded the notion that government should be involved in most areas of American life. As a result, all that's left to argue about is how much it's going to cost.

The Democrats want massive government programs and entitlements to bankrupt us to the 13th generation; the Republican "opposition" only wants them to bankrupt us to the 10th. As always, we must reject the idolaters wherever we find them. Statists are idolaters, believing that the government is God and can provide for our every need. And that's true whether they have a D- or an R- next to their name.

health care reform NPR Tom Ashbrook Uwe Reinhardt Barack Obama

Haigiography

Chris Hitchens does today to Al Haig what he usually does to high profile dead folks. While there's much truth in Hitchens' gleeful torching of the corpse--Haig was a notorious schemer and maneuverer even by Washington's standards--it seems to me that Haig ends up yet again wrongly pilloried for his most celebrated incident.

Everyone remembers (or has heard about) the sweaty, bug-eyed, out-of-breath Haig taking to the White House podium in the wake of the shooting of Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, and uttering those now-infamous words:

Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President and in close touch with him.

The first problem with this, of course, is that it was factually incorrect. Haig, as Secretary of State, was actually fifth in line, constitutionally. After Vice President George H.W. Bush, constitutionally, there was the Speaker of the House (Tip O'Neill), President Pro Tempore of the Senate (Strom Thurmond), and then Haig.

Hitchens sums up the popular sentiment, hardened into history, about the episode:

...[T]his neurotic narcissist seized the microphone and made a clumsy attempt to seize power....nothing could equal that day's performance, which evinced all the sweaty, pasty-faced, trembling symptoms of a weak king or of a slobbering dauphin who could not wait to try on the crown.

Haig, without doubt, had his flaws, and power-hunger was among them. Still, I've always felt that he got a bad rap on this, and that--in context--he actually did the right thing.

What is almost always forgotten about the incident is what directly preceded it. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, there was a great deal of confusion. It was not even known that Reagan had been hit for at least half an hour. White House press secretary James Brady had been gravely wounded. That left assistant press secretary Larry Speakes, who was back at the White House, to address reporters in the White House press room.

Vice President Bush was aboard Air Force Two, which was en route back to Washington from Texas. Understandably, with Reagan wounded and the VP in the air, the press asked who was in charge of the country. Speakes, giving one of the most disastrous press briefings in history, answered "I cannot answer that question at this time."

According to the reports of those who were there, Secretary of State Al Haig, the man in the administration charged with keeping the closest eye on the Soviet Union at one the highest-tension periods in the Cold War, watching the disaster unfold on television as Speakes essentially tells the world that nobody seems to be in charge for the moment, shoots out of his chair and bolts down to the press room. I've asked myself, "What would I have done if I were in Al Haig's shoes that day, as the highest ranking person in the White House?" The answer I always come back to is: I would've run downstairs and assured the world that the United States was not rudderless and asleep at the switch. I would've wanted to send the message that someone is in charge here.

Did he argue incorrectly from the Constitution? Yes. Would it have been better if he hadn't? Of course. But if Haig's concern at that moment was that the world see there was someone at the helm (as he maintained ever-after), then he did about the only responsible thing one could do. Read it again, with the context in mind. This is not someone trying to pull off a coup d'etat:

As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course. [Emphasis added]

Haig's press conference can be viewed in the last few minutes of this and continues into the first few minutes of this. (The second bit is interesting in that it is followed immediately by a discussion between Bernard Shaw and Daniel Schorr on the nascent Cable News Network. Schorr, who was about 85 even then, has always been a left wing kook even among journalists. He immediately goes after Haig on the constitutional misunderstanding, saying that "the alacrity with which he fills vacuums has been well-noted." One wonders if this is where the harshly negative casting of the incident in the "conventional wisdom" began?)

Much of the criticism of Haig's life and legacy is deserved. But in his most infamous moment, he was actually doing the right thing where history has immortalized him as doing the wrong thing.

Organic Moralism

From Doug Wilson:

When it comes to food choices, I think catholic and eclectic is good -- live and let live, eat and let eat. What I can't abide is moralism about food. In the absence of any word from God on it, it would be wisdom on our part to keep quiet about what we see on the other fellow's fork. But we don't. We legislate for others, and make censorious faces at them. We launch crusades.

In short, a sexually guilty people have accepted as "normal" the most unnatural practices imaginable, and they have then demanded that their food be "all natural." Wisdom is vindicated by her children. This guilt-driven desire has resulted in an entire industry springing up that caters to the deep desire that a morally inferior people have to feel morally superior. That's hard to do, and so there's money to be made there if you pull it off. You have to pick something out at random, and then make people bad for deviating from the new arbitrary norm.

The "Told You So" Edition

A couple of events that transpired this week demonstrated the profound, prescient, and...I don't know--I'm looking for one more "p" word here...pusillanimous?--former nature of this blog, back when I actually used to write it.

First, baby-faced congenital liar John Edwards finally admitted this week to being the father of his former mistress's baby. That should have come as a surprise to absolutely no sentient human being (except perhaps Mrs. Edwards), and should particularly not have been a surprise to any regular Rabe Rambling's visitors. On the day Edwards finally admitted the affair in 2008 (after the National Enquirer got the goods on him while the mainstream media determinedly looked the other way), he was quick to assure us that the baby was not--could not have been--his. I helped you understand that of course it was his baby, and that he was a huge liar:

Elizabeth Edwards' cancer reoccurred in March 2007. Assuming normal gestation, this child would have been conceived in May 2007. If that child belongs to John Edwards, he's the world's biggest cad, and as a politician he knows this. It's over for him. So he claims that the affair ended in 2006....But does that claim withstand even a moment's scrutiny? If the affair ended in 2006 as he claims...[w]hy was he photographed in his former mistress's hotel room holding some other guy's baby?

I also noticed this week that the liberal radio network Air America finally gave up the ghost--just as I said it would, and for the reasons I said it would--on the very day of its launch back in 2004:

The spectacular flop that will be "the liberal talk network" (known officially as Air America Radio) launched moments ago, in case you hadn't heard....you'll want to tune in quickly (if, that is, you happen to live near one of the five enlightened radio stations carrying this insightful commentary). Something tells me it might not be around for long.

Frankly, it's amazing that it was able to limp along for nearly six years. It was non-entertaining, unfunny, and just bad radio. It started bouncing checks only weeks after its debut, and seemed to be in near-constant bankruptcy proceedings. Don't worry, though--it's only a matter of time before media chuckleheads begin claiming that AA failed not because it was terrible radio run by business incompetents, but rather because its target audience was just too darned smart to listen to talk radio anyway.

I also obliquely predicted the death of Artie Lange last year, and while he is still alive, he did try to kill himself a few weeks ago. So I get at least partial credit for that.

Let the lesson be learned: I know stuff. If you wish to know what future months and years hold, just go back and read the archives. And Harry Morgan--I've got quite a track record, so you'd better be looking over your shoulder.

Air America John Edwards Artie Lange

Happy New Year!

A few notes to start 2010 off on the right foot.

• It shall henceforth be pronounced "twenty-ten," NOT "two-thousand ten." We had a bit of confusion during the first decade of the new millennium because of those double-zeros. It would have sounded strange to say, for instance, "it's twenty-oh-seven." So we got a bye for the first decade. But that's it. Nobody walks around saying, "I was born in one thousand, nine-hundred and sixty-eight." If we continued along our current pronunciation path, we'd be encumbering future generations with an awful burden. So, henceforth, we are adopting "twenty." Hey, that's the way it was in all the futuristic predictions anyway (e.g. "Why, by the year twenty-thirty seven, people will no longer have saliva but will instead have their food digested for them by specially built androids!") So twenty-ten it is. Your immediate assent and cooperation is appreciated.

• Please, someone needs to stop Dick Clark. I liked the guy as much as anybody, but it has to stop. It's not getting better--it's getting worse. Retirement's not bad; he can spend the time counting his piles of money. I as much as anyone appreciate his apparent desire to refrain from inflicting the full measure of Ryan Seacrest on us for as long as possible, but things are getting embarrassing. Perhaps the only thing more embarrassing is that I was in front of the TV watching "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve" at midnight on December 31.

• Since we were in front of the tube, though, I do appreciate ABC's consideration, as my kids got to see Jennifer Lopez in a see-through unitard (though I don't think that's actually why Dick Clark was drooling) and to hear the Black Eyed Peas tell us how bad they want us (ooh, ooh, ooh). Keep it classy, ABC.

• For Christmas, I received a DVD copy of Collision, the documentary film chronicling series of debates and discussions between vehement atheist Christopher Hitchens and devout Christian Doug Wilson. I highly recommend it. It's thought-provoking and instructive as two of the best champions for their viewpoint slug it out. As in the Christianity Today exchanges that launched the film project, Hitchens repeatedly (and necessarily) avoids answering the question of where he finds the stringent moral standard he urges upon all of us in his writing. As Wilson points out, in the atheistic worldview, there is (as John Lennon famously sang) "above us only sky." Which means, above Auschwitz, only sky. Above Buchenwald, only sky. The bare universe doesn't care whether you help old ladies across the street or run over them, but Hitchens cannot bring himself to write as if this were really true. I recommend the film, and as far as I can tell, Hitchens is pleased with it too (having appeared on numerous programs to promote it after it was completed). It's something most modern "debates" are not: thoughtful.

Should "Global Warming" Be "Warmer"?

According to an article in Der Spiegel (a name that always cracks me up, as does most of the German language in the post-war, Mel Brooks era), many climate scientists are "baffled" that the catastrophic global warming they've been hysterically predicting doesn't seem to be showing up in the actual...uh, how do we say?...temperatures.

Among the nuggets as stunned climatologists try to reconcile the data with their nonsense predictions:

The Earth's average temperatures have stopping climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Now, this is Der Spiegel's statement rather than that of one of the scientists, but read that statement over a couple of times. Surely there's a government entity involved here somewhere. Let me rephrase what that sentence appears to be saying: "Global warming stopped a long time ago. And this year, it looks like global warming might stop in its tracks!" I'll assume it's a problem in translating from the German.

Some more (entirely predictable) fun:

Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008, and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.

And:

Despite their current findings, scientists agree that temperatures will continue to rise in the long term. The big question is: When will it start getting warmer again?

Yes, that is the big question. Because it's empirical science, you see? It has to start getting catastrophically warmer. Didn't you see An Inconvenient Truth?

Around The Horn

Hey, 'dya forget about me? Sure you did. However, all is forgiven because it's November and that means it's time for another post! Some quick hits:

• I see that Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano (still single as of this writing) is on the lookout for any potential anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the Ft. Hood massacre:

  Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

  Here's kind of a crazy thought, but how about we start worrying about the frontlash? You know, where people are actually getting killed.
  
  Recent deaths from Muslim extremists in U.S.:
  
  --9/11: 3000 killed in hijacking attacks
  --John Alan Muhammed: 16 shooting deaths
  --Nidal Malik Hasan: 13 shooting deaths
  --One daughter run over in Arizona
  --Two daughters "honor-killed" in Texas
  --Three shot, one killed in Arkansas recruiting office
  
  Recent deaths from "anti-Muslim backlash":
  
  --Still zero
  
  Glad you're on the case, Janet.

• Great to see Brett Hull inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame last night. I covered the "Golden Brett" in St. Louis for a few years in the early '90's, and though he had a reputation for sometimes being a bit cantankerous, I never found him to be anything other than great fun. I once handed him my then-infant (now 17-year-old) son John for a photograph. John began instantly crying, and Brett held him like he was a pillow full of smallpox. (We still have the picture in one of our photo albums.) "Get used to it," I told him. "Your time is coming." Within four years, Hull had three of them. (Children, not smallpox pillows.) Always honest, always a great quote, the best hockey scorer I've ever seen, and a smile that kept you from being offended when he called you a "puke" (which he called everybody). The Blues should have never let him go.

• When I last posted, it seemed like the St. Louis Cardinals could be on their way to the World Series. I got a little busy...how'd that turn out, anyway?

• As insane as he usually drives me (which is documented here, here, and here, among other places), it is good, proper, and right for the Cardinals to bring Tony La Russa back for another year. Is he an excruciating over-manager? Without doubt. Is he loyal to a fault? If it were up to him, Chris Duncan would still be playing left field and Juan Encarnacion demonstrating taking one-eyed at-bats. But I know this: the Cardinals have been a contender almost every year since La Russa got there. Don't mess with success. It will also be interesting to have Mark McGwire around next year. This needs to happen. The steroids thing is over; good heavens, Andy Pettite and A-Rod were having statues carved of them during this post-season. Big Mac needs to come back, talk about it, put it behind him, and go to the Hall of Fame where he belongs. Even in the juiced era, the guy left everyone else in awe. Time to move forward.

• Speaking of the aforementioned John Allen Muhammed, he is scheduled to be executed tonight in Virginia. No word yet as to whether Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, or Danny Glover have chained themselves to the jailhouse yet. The events in Ft. Hood brought back to mind the coverage of the night that Muhammed was caught after his weeks-long terror spree in the D.C. area. The entire evening, the networks tried to avoid using his adopted (and legal) name "Muhammed" and instead kept calling him "John Allen Williams." And they scrambled to cite his Gulf War I experience, abuse as a child, and hatred for a spouse as possible motives for the shootings. CBS's Vince Gonzalez reported the next day, "About the same time he joined the army Muhammad converted to Islam, but authorities say religion was not a motive." Subsequent evidence proved definitively that the shootings were carried out as an act of jihad. Surprise! Keep that in mind as you watch the media's Ft. Hood coverage.

And that, ladies and gents, is how we play "Around the Horn." After my last post, I jokingly added, "Have a nice autumn." And here I am in November. So considering the way these postings are actually going, I'll refrain from saying, "Have a happy new year."

Janet Napolitano Nidal Malik Hasan Ft. Hood Radical Islam Brett Hull St. Louis Cardinals Tony La Russa Mark McGwire John Allen Muhammed

September Already?

Hey, it's been a while. What're ya gonna do? Life gets busy sometimes. In the meantime, here are some interesting things I've been looking at today:

• Salon.com has a fascinating, three-part profile of the early radio career of Glenn Beck. It's clear that the author is no fan (whereas I generally like Beck, though I preferred the Glenn-Beck-on-the-radio version of about three years ago to the Howard-Beale-Prophet-of-Doom that I see on Fox News). About the early, pre-Mormon Beck, virtually all seem agreed: he was not a good guy. For a radio geek like me, a story like this is like catnip.

• Even the liberals over at Slate are starting to get a whiff of the unpleasant stench of nannystatism that is descending upon the land. They take a look at a draconian paper in the New England Journal of Medicine advocating taxes even on diet soda--because it may cause you more in your heart to want real sweets. After all, since we're going to put health care under state control, the state now has a direct interest in your eating habits. Slate notes:

  If you're trying to sink health care reform, this is a good way to do it: Show everyone how subsidized health insurance will entitle other people to regulate your eating habits.

• Like the previous article, TIME's Joel Stein points out that liberals have just as tenuous relationship with science as they're always claiming conservatives do. Talking about the resistance to getting vaccinated for swine flu among his circle of friends, he says:

  while the far right gets a lot of crap about not believing in science, the left isn't crazy about it either. Only instead of rejecting facts that conflict with the Bible, it ignores anything that conflicts with hippie myths about the perfection of nature. That's why my neighborhood is full of places you can go to detoxify with colonics, get healed with crystals and magnets and buy non--genetically engineered food.

  Unfortunately, however, Stein's answer to the problem leaves him in no better a spot:

  When presented with doubts, I don't search for detailed information from my side. I go with the consensus of mainstream media, academia and the government. Not because they're always right but because they're right far more often than not, and I have a TiVo to watch.

  And just when he was so close to making sense.

• On Bruce Springsteen's 60th birthday (a fact that just makes me want to crawl into a hole somewhere), here's a cool piece about the birth of Born to Run.

• And here's a note about an, ahem, awesome television program that will be making its way to the airwaves next year.

Hey, great seeing you. Have a nice autumn.

The Lyin' Of The Senate

There is a natural and proper tendency, following someone's death, to speak words of grace and admiration. Even if the deceased was an opponent, death tends to evoke a natural bonhomie that calls for at least muted words of praise.

For the past day, we've been inundated with tributes to the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Perhaps more than anything, it has been noted how grief-stricken his senatorial colleagues across the aisle are at his passing, since Kennedy was of the old school where "you could fight like dogs by day and then at 5 o'clock go have a drink together." In the clubby atmosphere of the Senate, conviviality is prized above all other attributes, and by all accounts, Ted Kennedy had that in spades.

I've tried to join in the eulogizing. After all, a man has just died. But after a day and a half of trying, I must finally admit: I just cannot do it.

Ted Kennedy was deeply harmful to the country. He espoused policies that have been damaging in so many ways that a full-length book could only begin to scratch the surface.

"But that's the 'before 5pm' stuff! You're supposed to let that go, Rabe."

Okay, let's do that for a moment. The problem is, Ted Kennedy was a terrible person after 5pm too. I do not doubt that he was fun to be around and friendly to his colleagues. But as old-fashioned as it may be, I have a sticking point: I just can't seem to get beyond that dead girl in the car.

"Oh, good grief. Chappaquiddick? Are you still on that? That was 40 years ago. Can't you just let it go?"

Well, no. From the time that Sen. Kennedy careened off the bridge on that fateful night in 1969 to the moment he arrived back at his cottage, 40 minutes elapsed. Kennedy reported the accident the next morning--after the car had already been fished out and the license plate identified. Authorities believe that Mary Jo may have lived for two hours in the car after it plunged into the water. In other words, to put a finer point on it, while Senator Kennedy was back in his cabin making calls to his advisers and plotting his next move, Mary Jo Kopechne was still possibly fighting for her life inside that sunken car, watching it gradually fill with the murky water that would finally drown her.

Through the rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, we discovered that Ted Kennedy had not become any better a person in the 22 years following Chappaquiddick, either. The indelible image presented at the trial of the then-59-year-old senator heading out to Au Bar with his son and nephew, followed by his infamous pants-less appearance before the ladies in his living room later that evening, conclusively demonstrated that Kennedy's lifelong dissipation continued.

Expelled from Harvard for cheating; culpable in the death of a 28-year old girl; parading around in front of women without pants on; notoriously drunken womanizer...sorry to be so out of touch with the zeitgeist, but this was not a good man. The fact is, he got 40 extra years of life that he didn't allow Mary Jo Kopechne, so I have no mournful feeling that somehow his time was cut too short.

It's not simply political or ideological. I could find complimentary things to say about lots of people whose policies I abhor: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and hundreds of others. In Ted Kennedy's case, I've tried to join the national mourning. But when I dig down for something complimentary to say about this guy, I'm afraid I find there's just nothing there.

Ted Kennedy Mary Jo Kopechne William Kennedy Smith

Wilsonian Wisdom

Doug Wilson ably dissects the liberal jokers who justify abortion by claiming the body's freedom from government interference on the one hand while supporting state-run health care on the other:

This is just like that other popular saying on the Left -- keep the government out of bedrooms. Okay, I'm for that. Currently the government tells us how far apart the sheetrock screws have to be, how big the windows have to be for egress in case of fire, how far apart the electric outlets have to be, what kind of chemicals can be in the paint, and whether or not we can cut that tag off the mattress without getting the FBI involved. Sure, let's get government out of our bedrooms. Oh, you didn't mean that? You just meant you wanted them to be mute where God actually revealed something to us (as in, no, you can't marry your sister), and having begun the disobedience there, to legislate endlessly and like crazy about everything else, dictating the most minute details about your bedroom?

For nanny-staters, "freedom" is merely a slogan used to gain control. (Remember the "Employee Free Choice Act" that would've stripped workers of the secret ballot regarding unionization, and instead expose them to threats and intimidation? That's "freedom" to a liberal.) When liberals start talking about "freedom," always rest assured that they are getting ready to rob you of a heaping dollop of it.

You'd Have To Be A Rock Not To See It

I came across an interesting story earlier today. A 9-year-old Florida boy at summer camp discovered an unusual rock on July 31st. He took it to a camp leader, who then took it to an amateur archaeologist friend, who then took it to some experts. According to the story, archaeologists at St. Leo University:

confirmed that the small piece of worked rock was a [6000 year old] Newnan spear point. It dates to the middle Archaic period when humans, who had been previously nomadic, started to settle in larger groups in various regional areas of Florida.

All of this raises an interesting question. The artifact was found on a wilderness trail among many other rocks. What made this boy think this particular rock was different from the others? And what makes archeologists believe, as one of them said, that “[p]eople took a lot of time to make these”? The answer is obvious: it shows all the marks of having been designed. Indeed, recognition of design and purpose is at the center of sciences like archaeology and forensics.

It’s also intuitive. This young boy isn't a scientist; he simply recognized that this rock bore the evidence of having been acted upon by an intelligent force where the other rocks did not. When we come home to an empty house, we know that note on the kitchen counter is not the product of blind chance and the continuous laws of nature. We know--and are held legally accountable for knowing--that a stop sign is not a random product of nature, but something designed to convey a message.

However, when it comes to biology, we're expected to ignore clear evidence of design. In fact, militant atheistic evolutionists have argued against Intelligent Design theory (ID) on the grounds that it is "unscientific" because it infers a designer from the appearance of design and fails to rely purely on naturalistic, undirected processes for explaining biological complexity. This was exactly the argument they made in the infamous Dover case, which a federal judge endorsed. Yet Richard Dawkins, strident atheist and author of The God Delusion, defines biology as “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” That's a very telling definition. Dawkins insists, however, that such things must not have been designed, trying his hardest to make the evidence fit his preconceived conclusion.By defining "science" as "explaining things in purely naturalistic terms with no recourse to design or purpose," they try to rule ID out by defintion rather than on the evidence.

Though clear evidence of design is an obvious scientific principle in archaeology and forensics, when it comes to biology the design inference is suddenly and inexplicably considered to be “unscientific.” Despite the existence of a universe that is almost inconceivably fine-tuned to support human life, the properties of language and information found in the tiniest cells, and the irreducible complexity of numerous biological structures, all life, the militant atheistic scientists say, must be the accidental product of blind, purposeless forces.

For them, every rock is just a rock--including those meticulously cut into the shape of arrowheads.

John Hughes, R.I.P.

[I never do this, but with the passing of John Hughes yesterday, it seemed appropriate to re-post some thoughts I had on him back in 2006. I had always hoped he'd make a comeback, but in the words of Del Griffith, one of Hughes' more endearing creations, "I guess that's not gonna happen. Not now, anyway." If you were, as I was, a teenager in the mid '80's there's a pretty good chance that this guy was your Shakespeare.]

I've lately been pondering the career of John Hughes. (And yes, I'm aware of how sad that is.)

My recollections were occasioned by a CNN.com/Entertainment Weekly review of a new DVD version of "Ferris Bueller" that's coming out.

I don't know that there's ever been a bigger seven or eight year streak in the history of movies. From 1983 to 1990, he either wrote or directed (and in some cases both) the following films:

Mr. Mom (1983)
Vacation (1983)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Weird Science (1985)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)
She's Having a Baby (1988)
Uncle Buck (1989)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Home Alone (1990)

I haven't even included some others during that period that stunk, like "European Vacation" and "The Great Outdoors."

Isolate only at the ones he directed. In one six year period as a writer/director, he cranked out:

Sixteen Candles
The Breakfast Club
Weird Science
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
She's Having a Baby
Uncle Buck

I think that's virtually unprecedented. These films might not be to everyone's taste (and with the exception of “Ferris” and “Uncle Buck,” none of them pushed the $80 million box office mark), but for people of my generation, these are seminal pictures. There's not a clunker in the bunch (though I know some might quibble with one here or there). There's not one on there I don't stop to watch when I pass by it flipping through channels.

Who has ever put a list together like that in that amount of time? Granted, he wasn't doing gritty, edgy stuff like Scorsese or something, but this guy was the Frank Capra of his time. "Home Alone" is the highest-grossing live-action comedy of all time, for goodness sakes.

And yet the guy hasn't directed a movie since "Curly Sue" in 1991--15 years ago. It's Jim Brown. It's Barry Sanders. It's Jordan, if he had stayed retired the first time. How do you put together that career in six years and then disappear? Where is he? At IMDB (which is where I got all this info), he appears to only be cranking out lousy, straight-to-video sequels of "Home Alone" and "Beethoven" as a writer anymore. Under a pseudonym, no less.

Related Tags: John Hughes, movies, Brat Pack, Ferris Bueller, directors, 80's

A Real Clunker

Well, it turns out the the "Cash for Clunkers" program is a huge hit, and why shouldn't it be? People know a sucker when they see one, and you'll never have trouble drawing a crowd to line up for free money.

The problem, of course, is that, as the old saying goes, there is no such thing as a "free lunch." Somebody is always paying for it. That's also true of inflated payouts for junkmobiles: someone is paying for it. When Joe takes in his '89 Reliant station wagon (book value: $135) into the dealer and gets a check for $4500, that money is coming from somewhere; in this case, that "somewhere" is all the people who are not gulping out of the public trough.

They rifled through the first $1 billion allotted for the "Cash for Clunkers" in only a couple of days, but lo and behold, it turns out there are a lot more people in the country with cars worth less than $4500 who would like to get wildly-above-market prices for them. History has proved that the best way to get a wildly-above-market price on something is to have the government buy it, and this proves to be no exception.

But tough times call for tough measures, right? We need to stimulate the economy, so now is no time to be worrying about where the money is coming from. Can't we worry about all that later?

Well, not exactly. The major rationale for the "Cash for Clunkers" program is that it will supposedly stimulate the economy. Will it? Well, it will certainly stimulate one part of it: the moribund auto industry. But what benefit will that be to the economy overall?

Normally-sane, sensible people frequently seem to forget one fact: every dollar the government spends is a dollar it has taken from someone else, by force. (This is true even when the government turns on the magic printing press, thus devaluing the dollars everyone else is holding.) When the government gives a billion dollars to people who were still clinging to their Dodge Darts, it's a billion dollars that has been taken from other people, by force. And in addition to the simple moral wrong of stealing from one to satisfy the covetousness of another, we often overlook the fact that that's a billion dollars that won't be spent somewhere else.

All the government has done in such a scenario is take a bucket of water from one end of the pool and pour it into the other end of the pool, triumphantly declaring the water level to have been raised. What is unseen are all the things that money will not now be spent on. We see the benefit to the car owner and the car dealer, but what about people and companies to whom that money really belonged? They will now not be spending any of that billion dollars on opening a new branch, raising worker salaries, paying for medical insurance, building a house, or taking a vacation. They will not be investing it in mutual funds (which sends the money to companies which use the money to do things) or putting it in the bank (where it will be lent to people starting businesses or needing new capital). One sector of the economy benefits from the car deal, but it's at the cost of an untold number of other sectors that are hurt by it.

I see Congress is now scrambling to pump more money into the "Cash for Clunkers" program, since--surprise!--it's proving to be wildly popular. As I've heard the inimitable Walter Williams say, "Politicians love a visible beneficiary and an invisible victim."

Cash for Clunkers

Christians On The Dole

Doug Wilson has a little something here to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Tough but necessary words:

...Christians who live in subsidized housing are part of the problem. Christians who use federal money to get their free education are part of the problem. Christians who get on Medicare so they can ding the taxpayers if anything goes wrong with their hobby of homebirthing are part of the problem. Christians on food stamps are part of the problem. Christians who use tax money to fund their mercy ministries are part of the problem. Christians who think that their health care would be more affordable for them if I paid for it are part of the problem.

Read the whole thing here. And read the follow ups here and here.

An Upside Down Society

I just want to make sure I have this straight.

NFL player Michael Vick, who was convicted of organizing dog fights, was released today after serving 23 months in prison.

NFL player Donte Stallworth, who was convicted of a drunk driving accident in which he killed a man, was released earlier this month after serving a 24-day jail term.

Applying my admittedly rudimentary math skills, my calculations indicate that Stallworth served about one day in prison for each month that Vick served. Vick was involved in dog fighting; Stallworth killed a guy.

Huh.

Michael Vick Donte Stallworth

Stop The Insanity!

I'm not generally one to complain about media attention for dead celebrities. In fact, I've frequently been know to even defend it on occasion.

So for me, the problem has not really been the amount of Michael Jackson coverage (though I have to admit being surprised--I would have expected this magnitude if he'd died perhaps 15 years ago, but not now, so far removed from his hit-making days and with so many years of freakishness and lurid allegations under his frilly cloth belt). As I said the day after his death, I was a fan of Jackson as an entertainer. It's the tone of some of the coverage that is getting really, really carried away.

Today puts the capper on it. This comes from Professor Cornel West (via John Kass in the Chicago Tribune), who desperately needs to have a drink and lie down for awhile:

It's almost like a crucifixion, in terms of the cross you have to bear...We reap the fruits of the resurrection, in terms of the power that emanates from [Jackson's] sacrifice. He sacrificed his childhood because he loved us so. He didn't just entertain us, he sustained us.

Yes, Joe Jackson so loved the world, that he sent his five begotten sons....

The rhetoric of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Michael Eric Dyson, and the usual collection of hucksters has been little less hyperbolic than West's. And all of this raises a few questions. For instance, when did Michael Jackson, who spent the last 20 years of his life trying to erase any vestige of his blackness, including (according to some reports) having "his" children conceived from the donated issue of another man so they wouldn't be black, suddenly become an African-American messiah?

Let's make something clear. Michael Jackson was not sacrificed by anybody, nor did he sacrifice anything for anybody. America did not "fail to appreciate him" as his brother Jermaine has laughably claimed over the past couple of weeks. Jackson made in the ballpark of $500-$700 million in his lifetime because people liked his records, videos, and concerts. He was on the cover of every major magazine dozens of times. Even now, he's receiving day-and-night coverage, 13 days after his death. America gave him all the attention he deserved and hundreds of times more. He was an extremely talented but very, very weird guy who made some horrible (and possibly criminal) lifestyle choices, and also made more than the GNP of some small countries off of a fawning American public. He made no "sacrifices," nor was he in any sense a savior of anything or anybody.

Okay, he had a tough childhood. So do about a billion Third World kids--and they don't get to spend the rest of their lives spending millions on choo-choo trains to recapture what they thought they should've had. The fact is, all things considered, America gave Michael Jackson a shot at an exceptionally good life, and he got to create for himself an idyllic childhood that lasted about 30 years longer than a real one would've.

So Cornel West, Al Sharpton, Jermaine Jackson, and a bunch of their media enablers need to relax for a few days before they say something embarrassing.

As if these guys were capable of being embarrassed.

Michael Jackson Cornel West John Kass Al Sharpton Jermaine Jackson Michael Eric Dyson

Did He Leave Home Without It?

Despite the recent spate of celebrity deaths, the remaining members of my old "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive" list have been hanging on tenaciously since my last update after the death of Joey Bishop in October '07.

Until today, that is. Farewell, Karl Malden. Hey, you can't say the guy got cheated--he was 97!

Here's the updated list:

• Doris Day

• Harry Morgan

• James Arness

• Conrad Bain

• Jack LaLanne

• John Forsythe

• Rose Marie

• Al Molinaro

• Barbara Billingsley

• Karl Malden

• Larry Storch

[**Since I haven't explained it in ages, it may be helpful to point out what this list actually is. It's not a traditional dead pool. It's entirely composed of people who have, for the most part, dropped out of the public eye. It's literally people who, when they die, you say, "I had no idea he/she was still alive!" That's why people who would otherwise be good candidates like, say, Larry King or Artie Lange, don't make the list. Even though I really can't believe either of those guys is still alive.]

The Chicken Or The Egg?

CNN.com's current headline is, "Pop Star's Family Wants Answers, Says Jesse Jackson." For a minute, I thought, "Huh? What in the world does Jesse Jackson have to do with this? What possible connection does he even have to the Jackson family?" And then I suddenly remembered: ahh, the TV cameras.