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On the Issues of War, Economy and Transgendered Appointments, Which is Obama "Johnny-on-the-Spot" With?

Mark Noonan

Geesh:

President Obama recently named Amanda Simpson to be a Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department.

In a statement, Simpson, a member of the National Center for Transgender Equality’s board of directors, said that “as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others.”

While Simpson is clearly one of the first transgender presidential appointees, Democratic officials say they’re unsure if she is the very first one.

The White House had no comment on her appointment.

I don’t think any of us particularly care if a person feels that it requires major surgery for them to “be themselves”, but why do we have to know this? Once the plumbing is re-wired then previous condition becomes irrelevant for all practical purposes – so what is the reason to make an announcement?

Well, because it allows Obama, on the cheap, to pay off a constituency which gave him lots of votes and lots of cash (remember, it isn’t just “gay” anymore: its Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgendered, so this appointment covers a lot of political chits). By not putting it out as an official, White House press release, Obama avoids major news coverage of the issue and thus no bad effect on those other groups likely to be less than enthused about this (ie, blue collar and black Democrats), but by getting a group to put it out, the payment is made known to the group required. And the group will buy it – hook, line and sinker because it is always easy to get liberal groups to back you. Just throw them a crumb, and they’re yours for life. That you’re also robbing them blind and betraying everything you said matters not in the least.

Just politics, folks – but hardly anything the government should be concerning itself with. And thus its natural that Obama’s government made the effort. As an aside, this person was tagged as a “woman on the move” by the YWCA in 2004 – presumptively, all required surgeries were complete by that date. And as YWCA stands for Young Women’s Christian Association, I think we can see just how far they’ve strayed from their original purpose.

UPDATE: by Matt Margolis: It’s a he, not a she. Actually, it is a mentally disturbed he.

Majority Opposed to Abortion Funding in ObamaCare

Mark Noonan

This is interesting:

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll confirms a majority of Americans want a ban on abortion funding in any health care bill Congress may approve. When the House and Senate return from their Christmas break they will have to merge two different bills when it comes to forcing taxpayers to fund abortions.

Released today, the new Rasmussen survey indicates 53 percent of Americans favor a ban on abortion coverage in any health insurance plan that receives federal subsidies.

The poll finds just 40 percent of respondents are opposed to such a ban in the proposed health care legislation now before Congress.

Americans have long been opposed to the idea of paying for abortions via tax dollars. Coupled with an unwillingness to ban the practice has been an equal unwillingness to pay for it. Its a matter of not just the morality of abortion, but the very American expectation that everyone will carry their own weight.

Why, then, are the Democrats so determined to put abortion funding in to ObamaCare? Two reasons:

1. The feminist left insists upon it.

2. Abortion groups will profit off it and then turn around and make fat donations to the Democrat party.

So, because of the wishes of a tiny, hate-filled and out-of-touch minority coupled with the Democrats’ desire for ever more and more campaign funds, we’ve got various provisions in ObamaCare which will, in the by and by, ensure that all of us pay for abortions, should this become law. There is, of course, an electoral danger here – but for people like Senator Ben “Buy Me” Nelson (D-NE), the thinking is that by election day everyone will have forgotten about it and, meanwhile, the increased campaign cash will allow for more complete obfuscation of the record/smear of GOP opponent.

I think, though, that our Democrats have miscalculated. They balance everything very well in their political scales but what they haven’t taken in to consideration is that even pro-choice people are not pleased that people like Nelson were bribed to pass ObamaCare. They seem unaware of just how angry everyone is.

I think that November will be quite a revealing experience for them.

Phrase of the Day?

Mark Noonan

My favorite quote about doing well for others:

HAMLET

‘Tis well: I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon.

Good my lord, will you see the players well

bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for

they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the

time: after your death you were better have a bad

epitaph than their ill report while you live.

LORD POLONIUS

My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET

God’s bodykins, man, much better: use every man

after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?

Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less

they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

Take them in. Hamlet, Act II

And who among us, indeed, is not worthy of a whipping? Think about it. And then be patient when someone errs around you.

Democrats Shoot the Messenger

Mark Noonan

This is enormously funny:

Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.

On progressive-oriented websites, anti-Rasmussen sentiment is an article of faith. “Rasmussen Caught With Their Thumb on the Scale,” blared the Daily Kos this summer. “Rasmussen Reports, You Decide,” the blog Swing State Project recently headlined in a play on the Fox News motto.

“I don’t think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. “His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC…

And except for the fact of Rasmussen’s amazing accuracy, there’s really nothing good about his polls, ya know? Democrats: if you are afraid to hear the worst, then let the worst unheralded fall upon your heads.

The thing about Rasmussen – the thing which gives the poll great importance – is the amount of polling done. Its a very large number of poll respondents done continually. Even if Rasmussen’s models were wrong, they’d still pick up trends, and that is the best thing any pollster can do. We don’t need to know, really, what particular percentage of votes will be GOP or Democrat come this November, but it is good to know how the populace is viewing issues in a general sense. And, so, Ramussen’s polling of Obama’s strong approve/strong disapprove number is useful – it doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfectly right (though I think its accurate), the fact that the trend has been all downwards for months is both important and incontrovertible…as has, now, been picked up by all other polling agencies.

But the enormously funny thing is that these lefty attacks on Rasmussen just make Rasmussen’s polls more known to the public and thus more likely to be used by not just center/right outfits, but even by the regular MSM. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson after their pointless and self-defeating attacks on Rush, O’Reilly and Fox news…nothing quite a dumb as a liberal, I guess.

HAT TIP: Black and Right

Americans Abandoning the Democrat Party

Mark Noonan

Very interesting in an election year:

In December, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports.

Currently, 35.5% of American adults view themselves as Democrats. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Prior to December, the lowest total ever recorded for Democrats was 35.9%, a figure that was reached twice in 2005.

The people dis-affiliating with the Democrats are not going to the GOP, but seem to be showing up in the Independent number. What this means is that they are up for grabs, with the GOP having the advantage because it hasn’t so recently disillusioned these people. If the GOP can craft a good message for the campaign season and stick to its guns then there is a chance for a major, long-term shift in American politics.

To take advantage of this will require the GOP to go a bit revolutionary for 2010. The people are, by and large, tired of business-as-usual politics. The reason Obama won back in 2008 was because he presented himself as the antidote for our sick politics. The facts about him where then with held from the American people by a combination of MSM devotion to Obama crossed with McCain’s unwillingness to really engage on that level. This, though, has worked out in the long run very badly for Obama and the Democrats – by deceiving their way to victory in 2008, they’ve now shown the American people that they’ve been had. And the people don’t like that. A bit of honesty in 2008 and Obama still might have won, although by a much narrower margin…but now the fat is in the fire for Obama and his Democrats.

Can we do this? Can we Republicans and conservatives take advantage of what is being offered to us? Only time will tell.

Obama Housing Policies Have Made Things Worse

Mark Noonan

And this if from the New York Times! When they take exception to an Obama policy, you gotta know it stinks:

The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.

Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.

As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

All of which, in one form or another, has been said by the critics of the program since day one. Long term readers know that my plan has been (and remains) to “cram down” mortgage balances in line with current market values. Our particular situation was a new departure. We’d had housing bubbles before, but none quite so widespread, so overheated and with such a rapid and deep decline in home prices. Once it happened, there was no way out of it save by just allowing the system to completely collapse or to essentially put the American housing and home mortgage markets through a bankruptcy reorganization. Rather than take either of these courses, the Obama Administration opted for a program which, in effect, had us standing about, hoping that something would turn up to relieve us of the need to pay a price for our profligacy. Continue reading →

Health Care to Play a Role in Massachusetts Senate Contest?

Mark Noonan

Interesting:

…The special election will take place on January 19. It’s accepted political wisdom now that, despite the rush to vote before Christmas in the Senate, the conference and reconciliation between the House and Senate versions of the national plan cannot occur in time to allow a vote on the reconciled bill prior to February. That means that a referendum in Massachusetts on the subject could have an interesting effect on wavering votes in both the House and the Senate. There is no margin for error in the Senate, where the health care bill got exactly the sixty votes needed to pass, and a slim one in the House.

If a Republican running against ObamaCare managed to pick up the seat of Ted Kennedy, or even come close to doing so, it would be a political earthquake of Richter 8+. What would that say about the popularity of the bill if it wasn’t even a winning issue in the state that had the most first-hand experience with it, not to mention in the election to replace the senator who had been a leading proponent of it?…

A GOP victory would be an absolute game-changer in American politics – but if the GOP even comes close, its going to be a major warning shot across the bow, as it were. Massachusetts is very blue and Democrats pretty much run the whole show. If public anger over ObamaCare can propel a GOPer to victory – or even close to it – in a State like Massachusetts, then only a complete reversal of course by the Democrats will spare them a drubbing in November.

Here is Scott Brown’s website. Donate if you can. If you live in the area, volunteer. Lets see if we can bury ObamaCare in Ted Kennedy’s back yard.

Weekly Recap (2010-01-02)

Matt Margolis