Girl of the Day - Emmy Rossum Redux

It's almost the weekend, so it's almost time for Downton Abbey on Sunday.  We always watch Downton Abbey live, and then DVR Shameless to watch later in the week.   But the Regular Wife said a funny thing this week when we watched Shameless.   As gross as it is, as vile as the characters are (especially the Dad, Frank Gallagher, played by William Macy), as offensive it is to the Regular Wife's delicate Catholic sensibilities -- think "Church Lady," or "Sexy Librarian" -- she noted that it was "much better written than Downton Abbey."   So it is.  

And, at the heart of the show is the character of Fiona Gallagher, played by Emmy Rossum, who holds her family together (sort of) while her own love life is largely falling apart.   It's a great role, and she's great in it.

 

I Don't Mind Being My Brother's Keeper, But I'm Not Too Keen on Being His Cell Phone Provider

Twenty years or so ago, I made some of my undergraduate students angry when I suggested that, because money is fungible, and because food stamps are essentially just another form of government currency, when the government gives someone food stamps, they are really just giving them money to buy whatever they want.   A dollar not spent on food, in other words, frees up a dollar to spend on something else.   My example was always cable television -- largely because I was always late with my own cable bill back in the bad old days of English instructor poverty, and always having to go over to the cable company office to pay my bill and get my cable turned back on, and always seemed to see a lot of somewhat sad sacks who looked like they might be on food stamps there (for all I know, they thought the same thing about me).  

I don't mind buying someone food if they're starving, I would say, but I sure don't want to buy them cable television.   But because money is fungible, and food stamps are money, to the degree that we give people food stamps we are also buying them cable television indirectly, if they then go out and buy it with their freed-up extra money.  

Needless to say, some of the more liberal undergraduates didn't like the food stamps = cable TV stamps argument.

Anyway, I've made the argument since to other people -- my wife would say ad nauseum.   Sometimes I use cable TV, but more often I use cell phones, which have become ubiquitous since then.   It's a much better analogy: there are something like 46 million Americans on food stamps now, but there aren't 46 million people who don't have a cell phone, and the usage of cell phones can be seen everywhere you look.   (Not to be a meanie, but something on the order of 90% of African-American children in America will at some point be the recipient of food stamps before their 20th birthdays, but at the same time 87% of African-Americans in 2009 had cell phones -- higher than the national average.   You do the math.)  

So, my argument would go, if you give someone food stamps, you're really giving them "cell phone stamps," since the extra marginal income doesn't allow them to by food (they'd buy that anyway if they had to do so not to starve), it allows them to buy something else, like, for instance, a cell phone.   Q.E.D.  

But, to me anyway, it was always just an argument.   It never occurred to me that the federal government actually did have cell phone stamps:

“Government’s programs, once launched, never disappear,” said Ronald Reagan in his 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech. “Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” And a finer example of the immortal nature of taxes and other government initiatives than the telephone tax you will never find. It was passed in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American war and stayed on the books in different forms until 2006, despite that conflict having ended in the same year it started. Added to this in 1996 was the Universal Service Fund fee, which was introduced in the Telecommunications Act of that year. And I bet you don’t know what it pays for.

Among the typically vague justifications for the levying of the Universal Service Fund fee — the best of which is to “promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates” — is that it pays for a program called “Lifeline,” which is not remotely as urgent or necessary as its name suggests. Bottom line: You are paying for millions of other people’s phone service with every call you make. 

There are currently 12.5 million wireless accounts registered under the scheme, which is administered by the FCC. Any American citizen who is on food stamps, Medicaid, or who earns up to 135 percent of the federal poverty line can apply. If an application is successful — and, given that the FCC actually advertises it by direct mail, who are we kidding here — the $1.6 billion program will pay for either a cell phone (up to the value of $30, of which there are many available) or a landline installation, and then pay your bill to the tune of $10 a month, which is roughly equivalent to about 250 minutes talk-time on an entry-level handset. To paraphrase Rick Santelli, Congratulations! You are now paying your neighbors’ phone bill.

The Lifeline program has become increasingly popular in the last few years, and spending on it has more than doubled, from $772 million in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2011. It is now so popular, in fact, that many people have registered multiple times; an FCC audit conducted in 2011 showed that up to 269,000 wireless subscribers had free phones and cell service from at least two carriers. (And people who don’t qualify appear to like it, too.) These abuses have caught the attention of Democratic senator Claire McCaskill, who has called for an investigation.  

The FCC will be hard-pressed to do much about the abuse, however, as until it was investigated, it had not considered it necessary to build a database to keep track of its handouts. It has now rectified this and claims to have saved $33 million since the audit. Greater efficiency is always laudable; but nobody seems to have stopped and asked a basic question: Why is the federal government running a semi-secret program to equip 12.5 million Americans with phones and pay $10 of their bills each month?

 

 As Mark Steyn says, we're the brokest nation in history.   Why exactly are we spending $1.6 billion a year of our tax dollars to pay for people to have access to a technology that didn't exist a generation ago, i.e., something that Americans had managed to live without for, oh, about two hundred freakin' years of our history?!

Pass the Law Now

The House, with a Republican majority and a Republican Speaker (John Boehner, shown above), needs to pass a bill-- let's call it the Freedom of Conscience Act -- revising Obamacare to preclude the HHS from making any regulation requiring employers to provide insurance coverage including access to abortion, abortifacients, contraception or sterilization services, where those employers file a simple form stating that they have moral objections to providing such services.   (In other words, it's not just Catholics who might not like this requirement; I can imagine, for instance, that Southern Baptist charities or organizations wouldn't like it much either.   And, frankly, you don't have to be religious to conclude that life begins at conception; I came to that conclusion well before I married a Catholic.)

Then, the Republicans in the Senate need to demand that Harry Reid bring the bill to a vote in the Senate.   There are 23 Democratic Senators up for reelection this year.   I expect that many of them don't want to be on the wrong side of this issue, so you could get 60 votes necessary to bring the bill up.

Then it will be up to Obama to veto a bill in an election year that simply permits institutions like the Catholic Church's hospitals, charities, schools and universities to exercise their First Amendment rights.

Pass the Law Now!

Girl of the Day - Lana Turner

It's Lana Turner's birthday.   Born in 1920, Turner was one of the great names of Hollywood, so much so that you maybe have always thought she was a bigger star than she actually was.   In reality, she was nominated for one Academy Award (for Peyton Place) and didn't win.   Her best films were The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Bad and the Beautiful (with Kirk Douglas), and Imitation of Life, but looking at the list, none of them would qualify as "great" movies.   A beautiful gal, who had something of a tough life, including a spectacular scandal when her daughter murdered Turner's gangster lover, Johnny Stompanato, in 1957 in self-defense.

Can Santorum Do It?

Romney's campaign is at pains to stress that last night's stunning victories by Rick Santorum in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri don't mean much in the long-term because of Romney's superior "organization" and Romney's edge in "resources" (read:  money from big donors to fund his Super PAC).   But I wonder whether money and organization matter as much in the Internet age, where momentum goes viral in the blink of an eye and the touch of a touch screen.   The confluence of events is remarkable:   Santorum, who is known best as a Catholic politician, emerges as Romney's main challenger at the precise time when the Obama Administration chooses to affront Catholics all over America with its obnoxious decision to require Catholic institutions to offer birth control, abortifacients and sterilization procedures in their health insurance plans, making Santorum the most logical candidate to stand up for Catholics and Christians in general who are outraged by the intrusion by Big Government into matters of faith.

Can Santorum ride that wave through the end of the month and pick up another win in either Arizona or Michigan on February 28th?  If he were to beat Romney in Michigan, where Romney's father was governor and where Romney presumably has much greater name recognition, that would mean that Santorum's appeal really does play in the northern Midwest where Republicans must win to gain the Presidency.   Then the Big Enchilada comes on Super Tuesday on March 6th -- Ohio, where Santorum's Pennsylvania roots ought to play well.   If he were to win Michigan and Ohio, and fair well elsewhere, he might just pull this thing off, which would be one of the more remarkable comebacks in American political history.

Fairness

We hear a lot from Democrats about "fairness."   What they usually mean is that it's "fair" to practice the politics of envy and use government power to confiscate the income and savings of those who have earned more and saved more in order to fund (a) the work force of Big Government, and (b) the clientele of Big Government (constituencies who are dependent on government largesse and corporations who are dependent on government subsidies).  

Anyway, Stephen Moore has a great article up on the Wall Street Journal that consists of a series of "fairness" questions.    The Regular Guy's favorites are bolded:

President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?

Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?

Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?

Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?

Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?

Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?

Is it fair that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel and other leading Democrats who preach tax fairness underpaid their own taxes?

 

Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?

Is it fair that roughly 88% of political contributions from supposedly impartial network television reporters, producers and other employees in 2008 went to Democrats?

Is it fair that the three counties with America's highest median family income just happen to be located in the Washington, D.C., metro area?

Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is "subsidized"?

Is it fair that those who work full-time jobs (and sometimes more) to make ends meet have to pay taxes to support up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for those who don't work?

Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?

Is it fair that thousands of workers won't have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?

Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees on their investments in renewable energy projects that went bust?

Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?

Is it fair that soon almost half the federal budget will take income from young working people and redistribute it to old non-working people, even though those over age 65 are already among the wealthiest Americans?

Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?

Is it fair that nearly four out of 10 American households now pay no federal income tax at all—a number that has risen every year under Mr. Obama?

Is it fair that Boeing, a private company, was threatened by a federal agency when it sought to add jobs in a right-to-work state rather than in a forced-union state?

Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?

Greatest Four Words in the English Language

Pitchers and catchers report for the Cardinals on February 18th.   I.   Can't.   Wait.  

Particularly to see this guy:

Big Day for Santorum?

Byron York thinks that Rick Santorum could have a big day today, with potential wins in the non-binding Missouri primary (where Gingrich is not on the ballot to siphon off conservatives) and the Minnesota caucus, and perhaps a stronger-than-expected second place showing in Colorado's caucus.    We'll see.   I'd like to see what the national polls look like at the end of the week if that happens.... there's a lot of volatility in the Republican electorate right now, and at least some willingness still to coalesce around "not-Romney" as the candidate.   I also think that the publicity generated by the Obama administration's unconscionable anti-Catholic ruling on health insurance under Obamacare may help Santorum, since he is essentially the Catholic candidate.  

Girl of the Day - It's Still February and Gloomy...

... but the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is just around the corner.   This may mean more to the Regular Son than to The Regular (Old) Guy.   But still, a little Danielle Sarabyha goes a long way:

The White House Thinks You're Stupid

Here's Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary, responding today to a question about the shrinking of the U.S. labor force and its impact on the unemployment rate:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explained that the number of people dropping out of the work force, which artificially depresses the unemployment rate, can be regarded as an "economic positive."

"A large percentage of that is due to younger people getting more education, which in the end is an economic positive," Carney said. "This increase in the number of people leaving the work force has been a trend and a fact since 2000, because of an aging population, which is not to say this is wholly -- that's not to say that I would wholly disregard as an issue." Carney had been asked about the 19 million underemployed or unemployed Americans, and about people who had left the work force.

"I think some of those who, I suppose, don't wish us well politically have tried to make a point about this," he also said. "The facts are that in these most recent numbers, this is not an issue of people leaving the work force; the numbers are positive across the board."

 "This increase in the number of people leaving the work force has been a trend and a fact since 2000."
Well, that might be true.... except for the fact that it's not. The labor force graphs you can make at the federal government's own Bureau of Labor Statistics with the press of a button show the labor force growing steadily every year since they started collecting data in 1947, and only flattening out beginning in 2008, i.e., when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Blamed got the Democratic nomination and started to look like he might win the Presidency:

It literally took me 30 seconds to create this graph.   What do you think the odds are that anyone in the White House Press Corps bothers to do this modicum of fact-checking?

Just a couple of data points: January 2001 labor force = 143,800,000; January 2005 labor force = 148,029,000; January 2009 labor force = 154,236,000; January 2012 labor force = 154,395,000. So contrary to Carney's spin (which is the standard, Bush did it too and worse spiel), the labor force grew by more than 10 million during the eight years of the Bush administration, while it has grown by only 159,000 in the three years of the Obama administration. The "trend" has actually changed, Jay!

They must think we're stupid, or something.

Girl of the Day - Mamie Van Doren

It's Mamie Van Doren's birthday.   She was the poor man's Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s, but I suppose there's a perspective in which she's had the last laugh.... she turns 81 today and has been married to a dentist for the past 30+ years.  

Super Bowl Prediction Update

I had the Giants, 27-24, over the Patriots.  The actual score was 21-17 Giants.    The Las Vegas line was Patriots +3, with the over/under at 53.   So if you'd listened to the Regular Guy and bet the house, you'd have made out like bandits.  

Birthday Today - Ronald Reagan

It's the Gipper's birthday today.   He was born in 1911.   I recently saw an article which said that, among living people in a survey, he was voted the greatest President, but liberal college professor-historians did not rank him among the top 10 Presidents ever.   My own ranking:

1.  George Washington.   Getting the great experiment off the ground was the hard part, and Washington was the only man who could have done it.
2.  Abraham Lincoln.   The miracle of America, that a man from nowhere became the savior of his country.
3.  Thomas Jefferson and John Adama (tie).   Again, getting the miracle of America off the ground was the hard part, and Adams and Jefferson were the intellectual giants of the Revolutionary Era who also, by chance, were both political enemies and personal friends.   The uniqueness of political enemies being personal friends and respectful debaters was matched only by the uniqueness of Adams ceding power to Jefferson peacefully after the bitter 1800 election.   They died the same day, July 4, 1826, fifty days to the day after the Declaration of Independence (just in case you don't think America had some divine intervention at its birth).  
5. James Madison.   Co-author of The Federalist Papers, key framer of the Constitution.   Again, the design of America was the hard part... a miracle of invention that only fools (read: contemporary liberals) believe can be bettered.  (I note with chagrin that Ruth Bader Ginzburg apparently recently told an audience that Egypt should not look to the American Constitution in setting up its new regime.   Bad advice.)
6. Ronald Reagan.   The average American writ large.   He was not an intellectual, but he was very smart, as his now published writings demonstrate, and he was simply right on all the major issues of his time:  social policy (pro-Life), economic policy (pro-free markets and low taxes), foreign policy (anti-communist).  
7. Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt (tie).   Great men, great leaders, especially FDR, whose steady hand saw America through the Great Depression and World War II.   Both men's legacies, to me anyway, marred by their belief in statist solutions to every problem, and their distrust (because of their own lack of experience in business, no doubt) of the free market and capitalism.
9. Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower (tie).   Great men, great leaders in our greatest wars, whose eight year presidencies were less successful (especially Grant's).

In the next group might be James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, and George W. Bush.   Might be, I say, because in thinking about this list it occurs to me that there really aren't that many great or even good Presidents.   I certainly wouldn't put some of the liberal lions on my list -- Woodrow Wilson, JFK, LBJ, Clinton.  They all did more harm than good.  

Super Bowl Prediction

Just like last year, a team with a relatively poor record, the Giants, have gotten hot at the right time.   Tom Brady had his worst game of the year last week against a tough Baltimore Ravens defense that put pressure on him.   The Giants bring even more pressure.   And Eli Manning secretly wants to be the alpha dog in his family by winning his second Super Bowl.

New York Giants, 27 - New England Patriots, 24.

Cartoons Capture the Zeitgeist

Michael Ramirez, one of our favorites, captures the hateful liberal creed:

And here Leo Cullum captures the absurdity of the latest unemployment data:

A Weird Statistic

I don't want to be too picayune about the latest unemployment figures,which showed an improved 8.3% unemployment rate for January.   Nor do I want to be overly dramatic.   But there's something weird about the numbers.   The unemployment rate for white Americans dropped from 7.5% to 7.4%.   The unemployment rate for Asian Americans dropped from 6.8% to 6.7%.   But the unemployment rate for black Americans dropped from 15.8% to 13.6%, a 2.2% drop.   In one month.  That can't happen in the real world.  

I'm not necessarily saying that the administration is jiggering the numbers.   I'm just saying that there's some statistical noise in the calculation that bears consideration.  

The Grey and ANWR

The Regular Son and I saw the movie The Grey with Liam Neeson, which turns out to be, not so much a horror movie/thriller/disaster movie/escape from danger film, and instead ultimately a very dark meditation on the randomness of death in a harsh and unforgiving universe.   A very interesting, very well-made, beautiful, but ultimately somewhat strange movie.... why was it made?   What was the obsession of the writer or director that led them to this vision rather than something else?   (Not to give it away, but I've never seen a movie where, post-disaster, everyone is trying to escape and, for the most part, act heroically.... but no one survives!)

Anyway, both of us, walking out of the movie, commented that remote Northern Alaska -- the setting for the movie -- is extraordinarily forbidding and desolate.   In other words -- and the idea hit both of us simultaneously -- it's the perfect place for oil drilling!   Sheesh, what could possibly be the reason we wouldn't want to drill there, in a place where, not only none of us will ever go, but a place where, if we did end up there, we'd likely die of exposure (or be eaten by wolves) within a couple of days?  You'd have to be a pasty-faced lib whose idea of the outdoors is a day-hike in the county park to think that the type of "nature" in northernmost Alaska should be used as anything other than a wealth-creating resource.   Go in, get the oil, and get the hell out.

Just sayin'.

Mark Steyn Nails It... Again... and Again

Here's Mark Steyn on the Obama Administration's decision that Catholic institutions (other than churches) must provide health insurance including payment for abortifacients, contraception and sterilization, all contrary to their long-held, widely-known beliefs:

Modern “liberalism” is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to “celebrate diversity” coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity. Thus, the Obama administration’s insistence that Catholic institutions must be compelled to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients.  This has less to do with any utilitarian benefit a condomless janitor at a Catholic school might derive from Obamacare, and more to do with the liberal muscle of Big Tolerance enforcing one-size-fits-all diversity.

And here's Steyn on the rapid walk-back of the Komen Foundation's decision to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood:

In America today, few activities are as profitable as a “non-profit.” Planned Parenthood receives almost half a billion dollars — or about 50 percent of its revenues — in taxpayer funding.

A billion dollars seems a lot, even for 322,000 abortions a year. But it enables Planned Parenthood to function as a political heavyweight. Ms. Richards’s business is an upscale progressives’ ideological protection racket, for whom the “poor women”’s abortion mill is a mere pretext. The Komen Foundation will not be the last to learn that you can “race for the cure,” but you can’t hide. Celebrate conformity — or else.

All the good political writing is on the right these days, because to believe in modern liberalism is like believing in 1950s vintage Soviet communism -- after you digest the conformist "truth" of Pravda, there's not much room left for real thought, real diversity, real dissent.    

Komen Caves

In the 1960s, Tom Wolfe wrote a semi-famous essay called "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers."   The piece was essentially an extended observation of a peculiarly modern phenomenon of radical black activists shaking down liberal bureaucrats in government and business for money, with the implicit threat that they will make their lives hell if they don't pony up.   The "profession" of "community organizer" is simply the shakedown routine of the radicals Wolfe observed writ large.   Certain groups arrogate to themselves the right to informally tax the rest of us with the threat that they'll make our lives hell if we don't comply with their demands -- essentially, they are political protection rackets.   The affirmative action and diversity industry is the most prominent, but the abortion industry is a close second. 

Over the past three days, we've seen the well-respected Susan G. Komen Foundation, which has become the most prominent charity supporting breast cancer prevention services (mammograms, etc.), be raked over the coals for having the temerity to withhold a "grant" (read:  payoff) to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, with over 300,000 abortions a year.   Komen's rationale was that Planned Parenthood is under Congressional investigation (flowing from the Lila Rose sting last year), and, well, because it doesn't provide mammograms at all, but only "refers" women to mammographers.   Not really the best use of your charitable dollar if what you're trying to subsidize is mammograms.   But Planned Parenthood went nuclear on Komen, essentially saying to them what the mob says to a barkeep in a bad neighborhood:  "Nice little place you've got here.... shame if anything happened to it."

So, inevitably, the Komen Foundation caved today, and gave Planned Parenthood its tribute payment back.   Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House for the Democrats, hailed the decision as a "big victory" for "women's health."   Well, I guess not for the 150,000 or so girls who are killed by Planned Parenthood abortionists every year.   But Pelosi obviously defines "victory" differently than I do.  

What this also demonstrates is the extraordinarily narrow set of interests that American liberals and the Democratic Party now stands for.   Let's summarize the liberal creed.   What are they really for?  What really gets them energized and angry?  Abortion, above all.   Then:  public employee union benefits.   Taxing the rich.   Affirmative action forever.  

And, of course, the converse:  who do they hate?   The successful businessman.   Christians, especially Catholics.   Israel.  

Narrow, narrow, little minds these people have.

The Unemployment Rate and the Labor Force

You will hear people talking about how the unemployment rate this month has dipped to 8.3% and that this means that the economy has turned around.   That would be good news for Obama's re-election, and you can count on the mainstream media hawking that storyline going forward.   But it's hard to square with certain other facts readily available at the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that puts out the monthly unemployment figures.   For instance, there is the growth in the American labor force in the first three years of each administration since 1980.   The only time the growth in that figure -- which ought to always be positive just to keep up with population growth, including immigration -- has slipped below 3% (or a growth rate of 1% per year for three years) was in the first three years of the first George W. Bush administration, when it dropped to 2.1%.   But that was after the Internet bubble burst, a recession, and 9/11.   In boom times, by contrast, like the second Reagan administration (1985-88), or the second Clinton administration (1997-2000), the growth rate in the labor force was over 5% in the administration's first three years.

So when you learn from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the growth rate for the American labor force during the first 36 months of the Obama Administration has been a measly 0.1%, that means that, with population growth, we have substantially fewer people working today than we did in January 2009.

Here's another item that ought to jump out at people.   On average, the number of people not in the labor force ought to grow relatively slowly, with population growth.   For instance, from December 2009 through December 2011, the average growth in the population of people not in the labor force was only 119,000 per month.   But, weirdly, in January 2012 -- the same month when the unemployment rate supposedly dipped -- the number of people in the category of not in the labor force went up by nearly 1.2 million!   Here's a handy chart, and it looks as weird as it sounds:

So don't buy the one statistic the Obama administration will tout.   The background numbers don't look nearly so rosy.

Girl of the Day - Bridget Hanley

OK, so maybe I'm the only one who remembers the late 1960s TV show, Here Come the Brides.   Anyway, Bridget Hanley was the female star who was, somewhat bizarrely, in love with the character played by Bobby Sherman.   She always seemed too old for him, but maybe that was because he was the favorite pin-up for a whole generation of pre-teen girls (at least until David Cassidy came along a couple of years later).  

Her hair, much like Jimi Hendrix' guitar playing, is hard to explain unless you were alive in 1967-69. 

Anyway, Bridget Hanley turns 71 today.  

February 3, 1967

Forty five years ago, Jimi Hendrix recorded "Purple Haze."   In retrospect, a high point of a low point for American culture:





The Sixties generation has a lot to atone for.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Just because.

Santorum on Obamacare

From a terrific interview with Hugh Hewitt, who is a long-time Romney supporter, but who has been very positive about Santorum during the campaign (suggesting, to me anyway, that a Romney-Santorum ticket is a real possibility):

I look at the American health care system, and I have always said one of the reasons I decided to run for president was because of Obamacare, and because of the government taking over health care. And I have stories from Canada and from Europe of children like my daughter, who simply are refused care because they just don’t see them as a life worth living, not a good use of government dollars, because she won’t be able to give back anything economically to the country. And that’s a tragedy. It’s a devaluing of human life. And I see that in our current health care system....

HH: Rick Santorum, what do you advise Catholic hospitals, Catholic colleges, Catholic…the centers of poverty assistance, the adoption agencies? What do you advise them to do in the face of, as Archbishop Olmstead said, we cannot comply with this unjust law?

RS: Civil disobedience. This will not stand. There’s no way they can make this stand. The Supreme Court, eventually, this thing’s going to get to the Supreme Court just like the ministerial hiring issue that was just decided by the Supreme Court the other day. And it was a 9-0 decision that said the Obama administration can’t roll over people of faith when it comes to hiring. Yet in the face of that decision, this radical, secular government of Barack Obama continues to have faith be the least important of the 1^st Amendment. And I just think they fight. They fight in the courts, and they fight by civil disobedience, and go to war with the federal government over this one.

****

Update:   Here is Hugh Hewitt on the issue, echoing something I said a couple of days ago about the effect on Obama's reelection chances in the upper-Midwest:

To a certain extent, it won't matter even if the president beats a hasty retreat.  Every Catholic in America must know what a second term would hold: A mandate from HHS that insurance providers cover outright abortion, and not just contraception, sterilization and the "morning after pill." 

The mask dropped last week, and even if most of the president's blockers in the MSM didn't notice, Catholics did.  He cannot unring that bell.  Especially not in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, where his economic policies are killing jobs even as his social policy assaults the Church.

A Cogent Response to Obama's Anti-Catholicism

The Regular Guy's outrage at the Obama administration's decision to require Catholic schools, universities, hospitals and charities to offer health plans that include abortifacients, contraception and sterilization services knows no bounds.   As Ezra Pound said a century ago, "The age demanded an image/Of its accelerated grimace."   So here goes:

Update:   From the liberal National Journal, an article entitled "Catholic Backlash Against Obama Grows":  

The American Catholic backlash against the administration’s treatment of contraceptive services in the new health care law continues to grow, threatening President Obama’s support among a key group of swing voters that was critical to his victory in 2008.

In the 11 days since the Health and Human Services Department announced its new policy, the administration has been condemned even by progressive Catholic leaders and, remarkably, denounced from the pulpit in thousands of Catholic churches across the country and by bishops representing more than 100 dioceses. At issue are the regulations released Jan. 20 that require women’s contraceptive services to be covered by insurance policies under the president’s Affordable Care Act. The church had sought a broad exemption for the many Catholic institutions in the country to recognize its canonical opposition to artificial birth control. Instead, HHS excluded only “religious employers” that primarily employ members of their own faith communities. This narrow exception protects those who work directly for Catholic churches, but not the many Catholic universities, hospitals, or social-service agencies such as Catholic Charities.

The explosion of anger from American church leaders was immediate. On Sunday, bishops in at least 125 of the 195 dioceses in the country had letters of protest read from the pulpit at all Masses. Four bishops – in Phoenix; Cincinnati; Green Bay, Wis.; and Lubbock, Texas – warned of civil disobedience. “We cannot – we will not comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix.



Girl of the Day - Want to Feel Old? Version (Christie Brinkley)

Christie Brinkley turns 57 today.

A Santorum Comeback?

Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard comes to the same conclusion I have:

3. Rick Santorum: There's lots of speculation as to Gingrich's chances to mount a comeback against Romney, the clear frontrunner. But what if Newt's campaign collapses? What if he's simply jumped the shark with the "Holocaust survivors" robocall? (The call charged that the former Massachusetts governor once "vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes--Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher.")

What if Santorum does as well or better than Gingrich in the Nevada caucuses Saturday, or in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses next Tuesday? What if Santorum is competitive with Romney in the Missouri beauty contest primary next Tuesday, where Gingrich isn't on the ballot? Couldn't non-Romney voters begin to move nationally from Gingrich to Santorum? Couldn't populist and Tea Party leaders like Sarah Palin do so as well?

In the Gallup tracking poll today, Gingrich is at 28 percent, Romney at 27, and Santorum at 17. Romney will surely move up several points over the next few days--but couldn't Gingrich fall enough and Santorum rise enough that Santorum's number approaches or passes Gingrich? Couldn't Santorum move into second place?

In sum: Could we be heading towards a Romney-Santorum contest on February 28 in Michigan and Arizona, and then in March and beyond? Romney would certainly be a strong favorite in such a contest, given his lead in votes, delegates, money and organization. But wouldn't Santorum ultimately have a better chance than Gingrich to upset Romney, even if it's still a slim one?

Two things: (1) Sharron Angle, the Tea Party Republican Senate candidate who lost to Harry Reid in 2010, endorsed Santorum today; and (2) Gingrich isn't on the ballot in Missouri.   Santorum could do better than expected in both states.   If that happens, the mainstream media will start touting him, because they want to keep the story of the GOP primaries going (it's good for business).  

The Obamacare Abomination (cont.)

Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles has an article in First Things that deserves reading, because it crystallizes just how much of an affront the Obama Administration's rulings demanding that Catholic institutions provide health insurance to employees that would include services to which the Church is morally opposed:

Last Thursday in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a remarkable address to a group of visiting American bishops. He praised America’s founders for their commitment to religious liberty and their belief that Judeo-Christian moral teachings are essential to shaping citizens and democratic institutions. The Holy Father warned that our heritage of religious freedom faces “grave threats” from the “radical secularism” of political and cultural opinion leaders who are “increasingly hostile to Christianity.”

Last Friday, the day after the Pope’s address, our federal government issued a ruling that confirmed his worst fears about our country’s anti-religious and anti-Christian drift. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a final decision to mandate that every U.S. employer must provide health insurance coverage that makes birth control, sterilization, and even abortion-causing drugs available to its employees free of charge.

The government rejected the U.S. bishops’ efforts to negotiate an exemption for faith-based employers—including Catholic hospitals, charities and colleges—that are morally opposed to abortion and contraception. Instead, the government is giving us until August 2013 to obey or suffer the consequences—fines so large they could drive some Catholic employers out of business. It is hard not to see this new mandate as a direct attack on Catholic consciences and the freedom of our Catholic institutions....

The Health Department justifies denying exemptions to Catholic charities, hospitals, and colleges because it says they are not really “religious” institutions. This may be the most troubling part of this new mandate. In effect, the government is presuming it has the competence and authority to define what religious faith is and how believers should express their faith commitments and relationship to God in society. These are powers our government has never before assumed itself to have.

As they say, read the whole thing.   The Regular Guy plans to focus on this issue, as it represents the clearest possible example of how liberal elites are simple bigots in their treatment of American Catholics.

Girls of the Day - Weird Chick Edition

Today is the birthday of two actresses who were in some of the weirdest TV and film offerings I can remember, Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, Sherilynn Fenn and Laura Dern.   All I can really remember about either is that they were creepy -- not much of a takeaway if what the auteur, David Lynch, was going for.   But they were awfully cute as youngsters (Fenn is now 46, Dern 44).

The Key Point

Ace makes the key point here:

There is something to be said just for driving President The Constitution Acted Stupidly out of office, and giving the People's House back to the people. The real people, not Obama's coalitions of red diaper babies, crytposocialists, black-bandannaed anarchists, academic parasites, union goons, and welfare state clients.

You may not like Romney.   You may not like Gingrich.    You may not like Santorum or Paul.    You may hope for a reincarnation of Reagan with the rhetorical skills of Chris Christie, the number-crumching ability of Paul Ryan, and the ethnic flair of Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal.   But, seriously... wouldn't nearly any adult Republican be better than Obama?