Bitter Pill

Yet another reason for Republicans to push for a total repeal of ObamaCare. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON — Fifty years after the pill, another birth control revolution may be on the horizon: free contraception for women in the U.S., thanks to the new health care law.

That could start a shift toward more reliable — and expensive — forms of birth control that are gaining acceptance in other developed countries.

But first, look for a fight over social mores.

A panel of experts advising the government meets in November to begin considering what kind of preventive care for women should be covered at no cost to the patient, as required under President Barack Obama's overhaul.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., author of the women's health amendment, says the clear intent was to include family planning.

... But U.S. Catholic bishops say pregnancy is a healthy condition, not an illness. In comments filed with the Department of Health and Human Services, the bishops say they oppose any requirement to cover contraceptives or sterilization as preventive care.

"We don't consider it to be health care, but a lifestyle choice," said John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, a Philadelphia think tank whose work reflects church teachings. "We think there are other ways to avoid having children than by ingesting chemicals paid for by health insurance."

The Left's Downward Spiral

From Tariq Ali, writing in the Telegraph:

As the midterms rapidly approach, the beleaguered US President’s ratings are in steep decline, putting him on the defensive with little to offer his supporters except fine words. Those supporters have been voicing their discontent on the television networks but, much more seriously, are likely to punish Obama by staying at home and ignoring the ballot box on Tuesday.

Indeed, this has been a humiliating time for the once seemingly messianic President. This week’s decision for Obama to appear on the US satirical current affairs TV programme The Daily Show – which is largely watched by liberal voters – was a disaster. The audience openly laughed at him; the presenter, Jon Stewart, gave Obama the honour of being the first President to be called ''Dude’’ to his face on national television; and, worst of all, Obama was forced to recant on the most effective marketing slogan of his generation. ''Yes we can,” Obama admitted, had become ''Yes we can, but...’’ Not exactly a rallying cry.

Like most people across the pond, Ali simply doesn't get the Tea Party movement, but he does offer a decent take on Obama's stunning decline.

Revisiting Citizens United

Here's an excellent article by Daniel Henninger, appearing in The Wall Street Journal Online, that looks back at the Supreme Court's stellar ruling (thanks to the conservative block) in the Citizens United case, and the significant ramifications that flow from that ruling for next week's election.

The Audacity of the Desperate

Democrats are sensing their impeding political doom and hence they resort to antics like this.

From Politico:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) is asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether tea party groups are intimidating black and Hispanic voters in her district.

Jackson Lee has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to send poll monitors to her district on Nov. 2 to make sure the King Street Patriots, a local conservative voter turnout and tea party group, aren’t stopping people from voting.

“Many of these incidents of voter intimidation have been occurring in predominately minority neighborhoods and have been directed at African-Americans and Latinos,” she said in the letter. “It is unconscionable to think that anyone would deliberately employ the use of such forceful and intimidating tactics in 2010 to undermine the fundamental, constitutional right to vote.”

Jackson Lee is incorrigible. I have followed her periodically ever since Ken Starr's testimony before Congress during the Clinton impeachment saga. And now this? Anyone ever hear of the Black Panther voter intimidation in '08?

Signs of the Times

From CNN:

London, England (CNN) -- Hit the road, Jack.

Last year's most popular name for baby boys in England has been knocked off -- by Mohammed.

That's not immediately obvious from data put out this week by the Office of National Statistics, which declared Wednesday that Oliver was the single most popular name for boys born in 2009.

But a CNN analysis of the top 4,500 boys names shows that, when different spellings of the name are lumped together, Mohammed is No. 1.

Leadership Awakening

Republican leaders have finally arrived. This is what conservatives have been looking for, and it represents a definitive pivot away from the George W. Bush era of Republicanism. (Look where that got us, after all.)

From Politico:

The GOP agenda for the next two years appears to be the same as the last two: block Barack Obama at all costs.

Republican leaders, emboldened by the prospect of a landslide election win next week, are telling everyone who will listen that their added numbers will increase their ability to stymie Democrats — compromise be damned.

“This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said on Sean Hannity’s radio program Wednesday.

Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, said of Obama’s agenda: “We're going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Another Dem. Runs from Leadership

You know things are bad for a congressional democrat when his campaign ad begins with, "I'm not Nancy Pelosi. I'm not Barack Obama." Earl, you're done.

"Dark Clouds"

The storm that will bear down on the Democrats in one week is picking up more momentum by the day. This will be huge.

From the Associated Press:

Dark clouds for Dems as Obama embarks on last push

WOONSOCKET, R.I. – President Barack Obama plunged into a final week of midterm election campaigning Monday, his party's prognosis darkened by a feeble economy and his itinerary stitched together to minimize losses to resurgent Republicans.

Nor was his greeting totally friendly in Rhode Island where Obama has pointedly declined to endorse his party's candidate for governor.

Obama can "take his endorsement and shove it," declared Democrat Frank Caprio, battling Republican-turned-independent Lincoln Chafee in a gubernatorial race rated tight in the polls. Chafee endorsed Obama during the 2008 campaign for the White House.

Why the Volte-face?

Michael Barone explains to Brits why Americans have soured on Obama and his allies in Congress. Here's an excerpt from the piece, appearing in the Telegraph:

We are making history, the Obama Democrats proclaimed as they passed their health care bill, over the objections of a majority of the US electorate, expressed through polls and the unlikely medium of the voters of Massachusetts (who chose Republican Scott Brown for what had been Edward Kennedy's Senate seat in January this year). What they had in mind was the New Deal historians' version of history. But that was not a fully accurate picture of the 1930s, and America today is a nation even less eager to have government "spread the wealth around", as Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber in Toledo, Ohio, in October 2008.

College Conservatives Take Aim

Not a bad clip here:

Early Signs of Things to Come...

unless Republicans "man up" in the months ahead. Stay tuned.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – The new health care law wasn't supposed to undercut employer plans that have provided most people in the U.S. with coverage for generations.

But last week a leading manufacturer told workers their costs will jump partly because of the law. Also, a Democratic governor laid out a scheme for employers to get out of health care by shifting workers into taxpayer-subsidized insurance markets that open in 2014.

While it's too early to proclaim the demise of job-based coverage, corporate number crunchers are looking at options that could lead to major changes.

"The economics of dropping existing coverage is about to become very attractive to many employers, both public and private," said Gov. Phil Bredesen, D-Tenn.

Is ANYONE really surprised? Despite the pre-sale talking points in favor of the healthcare law, this is exactly what the other side planned all along.

Obama: America's Psychiatrist in Chief

Charles Krauthammer, writing for National Review Online, has discovered President Obama's new role.

Opening a whole new branch of cognitive science — liberal psychology — Obama has discovered a new principle: The fearful brain is hard-wired to act befuddled, i.e., to vote Republican.

But of course. Here Obama has spent two years bestowing upon the peasantry the “New Foundation” of a more regulated and socially engineered, and therefore more humane, society, and they repay him with recalcitrance and outright opposition. Here he gave them Obamacare, the stimulus, financial regulation, and a shot at cap-and-trade — and the electorate remains not just unmoved but ungrateful.

Faced with this truly puzzling conundrum, Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the “facts and science” undergirding Obamacare and the other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high.

Giotto's Surprise

From the Guardian:

For a young art conservator with a love of Italian painting there could be no bigger thrill than the chance to work on a genuine Florentine masterpiece. But to be allowed to spend every day for more than five years repairing one of Italy's greatest neglected cultural treasures is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Anna-Marie Hilling, 33, from Cumbria, has not only fulfilled this dream by becoming one of the handful of restorers trusted to handle the repair of a wooden cross painted in the 1300s; she has now also helped to prove to the world that the cross, the Ognissanti Crucifix, is the work of the early Italian master Giotto.

Early next month the fully restored, five-metre-high cross will leave the laboratory in Florence, where Hilling and her team have laboured for so long, to take up its rightful position in the city's Ognissanti church.

A "Vice" No More

Intriguing news from across the pond, more evidence of political correctness run amok. From the Telegraph:

Scotland Yard's famous Vice Squad, which deals with prostitution and other aspects of London's underworld, has changed its title to the rather less dynamic "Serious Crime Directorate 9: Human Exploitation and Organised Crime Command", or SCD9 for short.

The explanation is one that would draw a robust response from DCI Hunt, the old-school detective from BBC One's Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.

Metropolitan Police sources said the switch had been ordered in part because the word "vice" was thought to have negative "connotations".

It reflects a growing trend by law enforcement agencies to treat prostitutes as victims rather than as offenders.

Americans Are Stupid

That is, according to our own president. Does his disgusting arrogance have no limits? From Tony Harnden, writing for the Telegraph:

So what is the closing argument of Barack Obama's Democrats before next Tuesday's midterm elections? The President is no longer the self-proclaimed "hope-monger" of 2008, who vaingloriously declared that his vanquishing Hillary Clinton marked "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal".

He has stopped patting voters on the back for choosing, by voting for him, to listen not to their doubts or fears but to their "greatest hopes and highest aspirations". Instead, he is berating Americans (most of whom now do not believe he deserves a second term) for not being able to "think clearly" because they're "scared".

...Boiled down, the new Obama message to Americans is: you're too stupid to overcome your fears. To be fair, it's not entirely new. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was caught on tape at a San Francisco fund-raiser saying it was not surprising that voters facing economic hardship "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them".

At a fund-raiser in Massachusetts this month, Obama spoke of Democrats having "facts and science and argument" on their side. As opposed, presumably, to the lies, superstition and prejudice that Republicans rely on.

Marriage, Unhinged

Just when you thought the debate about the definition of marriage couldn't get any more detached from reality, we have this, from the Telegraph:

Taiwanese woman to marry herself

A Taiwanese woman has decided to marry herself in an elaborate ceremony due to a lack of potential suitors.

Chen Wei-yih has posed for a set of photos in a flowing white dress, enlisted a wedding planner and rented a banquet hall for a marriage celebration with 30 friends.

Uninspired by the men she's met but facing social pressure to get married, the 30-year-old office worker from Taipei will hold the reception next month.

America Facing Europe

Writing for National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg comments on where we're heading, and where Europe finds itself.

The contrast with Europe is stunning. The streets there are clogging with protestors who desperately want to keep perks and pensions that are driving their countries into insolvency, while responsible leaders do everything they can to impose fiscal sanity before everything comes crashing down. In America, protestors (a.k.a the Tea Parties) have taken to the streets to keep our irresponsible leaders from going in the same direction. In response, Obama says America’s irrational fear has made voters stupid.

But what’s irrational about saying that we shouldn’t be rushing into a condemned building everyone else in the developed world is rushing out of?

Governors Riding the Wave

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans appear headed for big gains in governors' races on November 2, dealing President Barack Obama and Democrats a blow that could dramatically reshape the political landscape for a decade.

With governorships at stake in 37 of the 50 states, broad Republican victories would give the party an edge in next year's redrawing of congressional district boundaries and in the 2012 presidential race.

Democrats hope to limit their losses and capture Republican-held governorships in big battlegrounds like California, Florida and perhaps even Texas.

"Governors races are the main event this year," said Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors' Association. "What happens in these races will have a long-term impact on national politics through congressional redistricting and the next presidential election."

Republicans, who now hold 23 governors' offices, are expected to pick up at least six or seven more to go along with big congressional gains that could give them a majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate.

The GOP and Tea Party America

Here's an excerpt from an excellent article by Peggy Noonan, appearing in The Wall Street Journal Online. It is probably one of the best pieces I have read on the elections, the Republican party and the tea party movement.

The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration's spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: "We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!" They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.

A Perfect Storm

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – All signs point to huge Republican victories in two weeks, with the GOP now leading Democrats on virtually every measure in an Associated Press-GfK poll of people likely to vote in the first major elections of Barack Obama's presidency.

In the final survey before Election Day, likely voters say the GOP would do a better job than Democrats on handling the economy, creating jobs and running the government.

Most also think the country's headed in the wrong direction. More than half disapprove of Obama's job performance. And even more don't like the Democratic-controlled Congress.