Girl of the Day - It's Turtleneck Weather!

It's turtleneck weather in Wisconsin.







































I'm just sayin'.

The Obamacare Train Wreck - Day 9

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air sums it up nicely:

I’ve worked on massive database projects in the private sector... There isn’t a private-sector firm in the world that would have tolerated a web-portal project taking 42 months and delivering this kind of train wreck.

But Obamacare was never about "delivering" a workable health insurance exchange system.   It was always about what government is always about:

Rent-seeking.

Power.

Money-grabbing.

Power.

Pay-offs to insiders.

Power.

Bureaucratic territorialism.

Power.

Aggrandizing the myth of Obama.

Power.

End of Civilization As We Know It, Part 1,739

The Obama press conference this afternoon featured zero, that's right, zero questions about either (a) the incompetent rollout of Obamacare or (b) the ham-handed tactics of the Administration in shutting down national monuments.   Hot Air has the story:

It ran for one hour and six minutes, with 12 different reporters being called on — although, notably, not Ed Henry of Fox News — and between them they couldn’t muster one question about the catastrophe that is Healthcare.gov or the spectacle of National Park Rangers locking senior-citizen tourists out of war memorials and/or inside their hotels. I admit that, near the end of it, when Twitter was already starting to buzz about the oh-fer on this week’s two unhappy topics, I started rooting for the press corps to ignore them, not unlike how you might root for an opposing pitcher when he’s throwing a perfect game against your team in the ninth. On the one hand, it’s a disaster for your interests; on the other hand, you’re seeing something historic in process. Today, we all witnessed a perfecto — no runs, no hits, not the barest insinuation in front of a national television audience that the federal government’s behavior towards the public this week has alternated between almost literally unbelievable incompetence and vindictiveness.

We no longer have a free press in this country.   We have court eunuchs, jostling each other for position so they can lick the boots of the King.

Disgraceful.   Embarassing.   Shameful.

So, as of today, the toughest, fairest questioning of the Obama Administration about Obamacare's rollout has come from.... drum roll... Jon Stewart!

Just When You Thought the Nastiness of the Obama Administration During the Shutdown Couldn't Get Worse

Hard to imagine seeing this story in the United States of America.   What on earth are the Obama Administration fools thinking?

Apparently, a priest was denied access to a military chapel this weekend. Father Ray Leonard serves at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia but because of the government shutdown, he wasn’t allowed to go to celebrate Mass this past weekend. He is contracted by the Defense department to meet the spiritual needs of Catholics but not now. The chapel doors were locked and the sign said, “Shutdown: No Catholic service till further notice.”

Father Leonard said the following: “This is our church, Catholics have an expectation and obligation to attend Mass and we were told, ‘no you can’t go to church this week…“My parishioners were upset. They were angry and dismayed. They couldn’t believe that in America they’d be denied access to Mass by the government.”

Unconstitutional?  Sure.   But that's sort of par for the course under King Barack, isn't it?

 

This Can't Happen - Gettysburg Closed!

This shit can't happen. 

The New Gestapo of Barack Obama

Here's just another story that gets out to the world almost instantaneously because of the Internet, that wouldn't have gotten out the last time there was a big government shutdown in 1995.   This is why this shutdown might be different:

Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures.

Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country.

Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.

“We’ve become a country of fear, guns and control,” said Vaillancourt, who grew up in Lawrence. “It was like they brought out the armed forces. Nobody was saying, ‘we’re sorry,’ it was all like — ” as she clenched her fist and banged it against her forearm....

The bus stopped along a road when a large herd of bison passed nearby, and seniors filed out to take photos. Almost immediately, an armed ranger came by and ordered them to get back in, saying they couldn’t “recreate.” The tour guide, who had paid a $300 fee the day before to bring the group into the park, argued that the seniors weren’t “recreating,” just taking photos.

“She responded and said, ‘Sir, you are recreating,’ and her tone became very aggressive,” Vaillancourt said.

The seniors quickly filed back onboard and the bus went to the Old Faithful Inn, the park’s premier lodge located adjacent to the park’s most famous site, Old Faithful geyser. That was as close as they could get to the famous site — barricades were erected around Old Faithful, and the seniors were locked inside the hotel, where armed rangers stayed at the door.

“They looked like Hulk Hogans, armed. They told us you can’t go outside,” she said. “Some of the Asians who were on the tour said, ‘Oh my God, are we under arrest?’ They felt like they were criminals.”

This is not the Republicans in Congress doing this.   This is all Executive Branch stuff.   And the Executive Branch is headed by the President.   So when the article goes on to describe the Park Service's actions as "Gestapo tactics," that's on Barack Obama.

King Barack of Bullshitiana

Charles Cooke has a great piece up at NRO about the lies Obama used to sell Obamacare.   They include:

• “I will sign a universal health-care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”
• “If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums.”
• “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
• “For people with insurance, the only impact of the health-care law is that their insurance is stronger, better, and more secure than it was before. Full stop. That’s it. They don’t have to worry about anything else.”

Lies.   Baldfaced lies.   Here's the money paragraph:

Looking back, it is amazing that Obama wasn’t laughed off the stage at the outset. His central claim — that premiums would drop for the typical family by $2,500 — could literally have been taken from the back of an envelope. As the New York Times explained back in 2008, the $2,500 number came from economist David Cutler, who predicted that Obamacare would reduce all health-care spending by $200 billion a year. Candidate Obama, looking for a good sound bite, simply divided this number by the number of families in the United States; then, calculating inexplicably that total health-care spending and family health-insurance premiums were exactly the same thing, he concluded that all money saved would be returned to the people. That Obama considered this a reasonable way of selling a plan that reorganized one-sixth of the economy betrays either a fundamental economic illiteracy or a deeply troubling readiness to mislead.

TFG almost got us into a war in Syria because of his off-the-cuff bullshit about a "red line" on chemical weapons.   Now it turns out that he got us into an epic, country-killing fiasco on Obamacare because of still more off-the-cuff bullshit.

The Emperor Has No Clothes.   The grown-ups in Washington realize this.  Putin realizes this.   Assad realizes this.   Rouhani realizes this.   Now we're reaping the whirlwind of our folly.

Girl of the Day - Rita Hayworth

I happened to flip on the TV this morning while I was getting dressed right as AMC was showing the Astaire movie You Never Were Lovelier, and right at the moment when Astaire dances the "Shorty George" with Rita Hayworth.   I'm not sure there has ever been a more beautiful actress in Hollywood.





I mean.... Wow!

Maryland as Microcosm

Posit that the problem of the "uninsured" was the motivation for Obamacare.

Maryland, one of 14 states running their own insurance exchanges under Obamacare, has roughly 600,000 uninsured.

After the first week of Obamacare, the state reports that a grand total of 326 people had successfully signed up.

Hmmm... let's do the math.   At that rate, it will be roughly thirty-five years until the uninsured will all be signed up! 

Unfortunately, I don't think the country will survive that long.

Sheesh!   What a clusterf***!

Illegal Aliens, Yes. WWII Veterans, No.

In case you were wondering whose side the Obama Adminstration is on:

A planned immigration reform rally will take place on the National Mall on Tuesday even though the site is closed due to the government shutdown.

Organizers for the "Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform" were spotted Monday setting up a stage and equipment on the National Mall for the rally which will take place on Tuesday....

The event is hosted by several immigration activist groups, together with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO.

The Miracle of Parenthood

Sometimes your children do things that just astonish you.   Here's the Regular Son's latest:

Three Years?

Three years.   Billions of dollars.   The future of American healthcare, the American economy, and possible America itself riding on the implementation of Obamacare.   And this is what they came up with?

What should clearly be an enterprise quality, highly scalable software application, felt like it wouldn’t pass a basic code review. It appears the people who built the site don’t know what they’re doing, never used it, and didn’t test it.

I actually experienced many more problems than the screenshots I captured. Had I known I was performing a Quality Assurance assignment, I would have kept better documentation of typos, unclear directions, bad grammar, poorly designed screens, and other crashes. My bad!

It makes me wonder if this is the first paid application created by these developers. How much did the contractor receive for creating this awful solution? Was it awarded to the lowest price bidder? As a taxpayer, I hope we didn’t didn’t pay a premium for this because it needs to be rebuilt. And fixing, testing, and redeploying a live application like this is non-trivial. The managers who approved this system before it went live should be held accountable, along with the people who selected them.

Our Professional Solutions Group has created many mission-critical, custom software applications where scalability, reliability and quality are paramount. For instance, we built the Logistics Support System for International Humanitarian Relief for the United Nations where lives are dependent on accurate, timely data on a global scale. I know what’s involved in creating great software, and this ain’t it. Healthcare.gov is simply an insurance quote system. As a software developer, I’m embarrassed for my profession. If FMS ever delivered such crap, I’d be personally inconsolable. This couldn’t pass an introductory computer science class. 

This is going to be a huge public relations mess that could doom the whole initiative.

I always thought that Obamacare would be a fiasco in the end, because the incentives built into the concept were so skewed toward moral hazard, adverse selection, etc.   But it never occurred to me that they could screw up the most basic aspect of it... creating a website to sign people up.  

President Putt-Putt, the world's smartest man, really doesn't know how to do anything but bullshit, does he?

Girl of the Day - Morena Baccarin

Fast becoming the only reason to watch the increasingly unwatchable Homeland:

By the way, the ridiculousness of the plots are being matched this season by the grossness of the focus on the teenage sexuality of the daughter of the erstwhile Congressman/terrorist Nicholas Brody.   The actress who plays Dana Brody, Morgan Saylor, turned 18 last fall while Season Two was on air, i.e., after it was in the can.   So, legally, they can now use her in nude scenes, etc.   But she still looks like a kid, and she's playing a kid, so it's... gross.  

As a father of two girls who are 12 and 14, the whole thing makes me very uncomfortable... beyond being something of a distraction from whatever the hell the story is anymore.

This could have been a really interesting show if they had stuck with the cat-and-mouse spy stuff of the first season.   Maybe.   The real problem is that the premise would have only worked with a finite ending... either a terrorist attack by Brody, or the attack foiled by Carrie Mathison... and it might have made sense to do it over three seasons, or maybe over just one.   But trying to stretch out the premise over  multiple seasons has been a massive fail.  

Are Republicans Winning?

A few days ago, James Taranto in the WSJ posed the question of whether Republicans could win the shutdown:

One reason this column was wary of congressional Republicans' government-shutdown strategy against ObamaCare is that it seemed unlikely to succeed. ObamaCare is unpopular, but so are government shutdowns, and both the president (for structural reasons) and the Democrats (for ideological ones) would appear to have a natural advantage in such a confrontation. Hence the Democrats' "victory" in the last two shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996.

It may still turn out that way, but we've been surprised this week at the Democrats' tactical maladroitness. As Josh Jordan quipped yesterday on Twitter: "Since the shutdown began, Obama and Reid have taken tough stands against the two most villainous groups: WWII veterans and kids with cancer."

The reference, of course, is to the closing of the WWII Memorial in D.C., and Harry Reid's infamous (and stupid) response to a question from a reporter about saving kids with cancer by keeping funding for the National Institutes of Health by saying, "Why would we want to do that?"

Well, I'm not sure there's such a thing as "winning" when you see a superpower in decline going through massive governmental dysfunctionality like this.   But, at least in the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, things aren't looking so good for the Democrats' strategy:

Polls like this are volatile, so you have to take them with a grain of salt.   But Obama sure looks to have taken a big hit in the first week of the government shutdown... a drop of 8 points in "strong approval/strong disapproval."   (It should also be noted that this is the first week of the Obamacare fiasco, which is certainly injuring the Obama brand every time someone is frustrated with the healthcare.gov website.)

Government Shutdown - Day 6 - Filed Under "You Can't Make This Shit Up"

You can't make this shit up.   Cones on a pull-off viewing area to keep people from stopping to take pictures of Mount Rushmore.   Because theatrical vindictiveness is more fun than leadership or prioritizing. 
 

Meanwhile, the Andrews Air Force Base golf course remains open for business.

TNoTFG.

Why Obamacare Can't Work... Episode 503

Jay Cost tweeted this today:

Yes, the glitches do increase the death spiral potential. As many have noted, Obamacare only works if young health people who don't really need much health insurance sign up for overpriced insurance to subsidize "affordable" insurance for sick older people. But here's a few things you might have observed about young people nowadays:

• Laziness.
• Clothes on the floor.
• Dishes in the sink.
• Bed unmade.
• No job.
• Video game obsessions.
• Credit cards maxed.
• Lots of drinking, lots of pot smoking.
• Horny.
• Spend a lot of time on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Do you really think people like that are going to want to take their time and spend hours working through a complex web enrollment form that seems to be constantly breaking down and dumping them out?   These are kids who get mad if their Internet streaming is too slow.

Digusting - "We've Been Told to Make Life as Difficult as We Can."

This is how low the Obama Administration has sunk:

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.

“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Our government thinks that the people are the enemy. 

Why This Isn't the 1995 Shutdown

Here's my list of reasons, with the biggest one last:

• Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton.
• Ted Cruz is not New Gingrich.
• The economy in 2013 (stagnant) is not the economy in 1995 (booming).
• The national debt in 2013 ($16 million and growing/98% of GDP) is not the national debt in 1995 ($5 billion/65% of GDP).
• The image of America in 2013 (weak) is not the image of America in 1995 (a Colossus astride the post-Cold War world).
• The readership of the New York Times in 2013 (shrinking) is not the readership of the NYT in 1995.
• The readership of the Washington Post in 2013 (shrinking) is not the readership of the WaPo in 1995.
• Newsweek no longer exists; Time is moribund.
• ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS have dwindling viewership.
• FoxNews has growing viewership.
• Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity.

And the biggest reason why this isn't 1995:

Prezidizzle Obizzle can't get away with his my-way-or-the-highway crap in 2013.

Girl of the Day - Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon turns 67 today.  OK, so she's a big lefty.   But, hey, I dated lefties in grad school:

Yep.   Pretty much like that.  

New Word for Today - "Obama-ganda" (or, Propaganda Plus)

We need a new word for what's happening in the past few days in the government "shutdown."   The level of lies has reached beyond Orwellian.

• Closing national monuments that require no federal funds to stay open (the open-air WWII Memorial), and that cost more to close.
• Cancelling service academy football games that, again, require no federal funds.
• Planting stories in the national media about an Obamacare sign-up "success" story by an Obama-supporting, Organizing for America activist.*
• Hiring protesters to pretend to be furloughed government workers.  

Propaganda just won't do.   This is beyond propaganda.  We're into something akin to virtual reality.

Let's call it "Obama-ganda."




*UPDATE:  This fellow about whom the national media had orgasms this week is more than just a Democratic activist... he's apparently a liar according to HIS OWN FATHER.   It was all a scam.

Amazing Job by Cardinals Front Office and GM John Mozeliak

Here's something amazing... if you look back at just two years ago when the Cardinals won the World Series, there are only six players (five position players and one pitcher) who will be on the 25 man roster for this year's opening round:

Matt Holliday
Jon Jay
David Freese
Daniel Descalso
Yadier Molina
Lance Lynn

Meanwhile, of the other nineteen players on the current playoff roster:

• Seven position players came up through the Cardinals farm system:  Robinson, Chambers, Kozma, Wong, Adams, Cruz, Matt Carpenter.
• One position player was signed as a free agent:  Carlos Beltran.
• Two pitchers were acquired via trades that gave up only minor leaguers who weren't doing anything for us and haven't done much since:  John Axford (Michael Blazek) and Edward Mujica (Zach Cox).
• One pitcher was signed as a free agent:  Randy Choate.
• One pitcher was on the DL in 2011:  Adam Wainwright.
• Seven pitchers came up through the Cardinals farm system: Miller, Kelly, Wacha, Rosenthal, Maness, Siegrist, Martinez.

Wow.   Fourteen minor leaguers graduating to form nearly 60% of a team with the best record in baseball.  And remember, last year we were 1 game away from the World Series too.   Of those, nine are officially rookies -- Kozma, Wong, Adams, Miller, Wacha, Rosenthal, Maness, Siegrist, and Martinez.

If Mozeliak doesn't win the Executive of the Year, something's crazy.

Obamacare Rollout - No Way to Run a Railroad...

... or any other real business.   Sheesh, imagine if you had borrowed money from a bank based on a half-assed business plan, and your rollout was this fouled up:

“It’s day two of health care reform, and we have yet to have someone successfully register on the marketplace,” said Matt Hadzick, manager of a Highmark retail insurance store in Allentown, Pa., where people could go to register for the online insurance marketplace. “The registration process is very slow, and at one point it just shuts down.”

Your lenders would be very concerned about the ability of your enterprise to succeed.

Lucky, then, that the federal government can just print its own money, huh?

Girl of the Day - Lena Headey

Lena Headey, the arch villainness from Game of Thrones, turns 40 today.

Methinks she looks better in civvies.

Government Shutdown - Day 3 - More Gratuitous Meanness from the Obama Administration

There's a story like this every day apparently:

Tourists travelling to Omaha Beach to pay their respects to the 9,387 military dead at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial will find it closed, a victim of the U.S. government’s partial shutdown.

The site overlooking the D-Day invasion beaches is one of 24 U.S. military cemeteries overseas that have closed to visitors since Monday.

Why?   The only explanation is just the gratuitous meanness of the Obama Administration.   War memorials and monuments were all kept open by the Clinton Administration during the 1995 shutdown.   Hmmmm... what did Bill Clinton know about politics that Barry Obama doesn't?   Or is it just that Obama likes being a douchebag?

Obamacare Update - This Was All Predictable

Ahem.   Here's a report on a Gallup poll on Obamacare:

The poll, released on September 30, noted that two in three of those surveyed said they "planned" to get insurance rather than pay the small fine at the end of the year. The poll further found that under half intend to take advantage of the state or federal insurance exchanges when they are finally up and running.

It should be noted that that this result was based on what people say they intend to do, not what they have actually done or are even in the process of doing.

Statistics worsened in the important 18 to 29 age bracket. Sixty-nine percent of the youth demographic were unaware they were required to get health insurance by January 1, 2014. This is the age group that Obama is hoping will foot the bill for the rest of America.

In other bad news for Obamacare, 62 percent said they were "not too familiar" or "not at all familiar" with the Obamacare exchanges being set up by the federal and state governments.

Such unfamiliarity grew among those currently uninsured today. Among the uninsured 72 percent said that are not familiar with the exchanges Obama is setting up.

All of this was very predictable.   The numbers of people who will decide not to sign up for Obamacare is going to grow as this clusterfark becomes more and more obvious.

Government Shutdown Update - This is Bad

Two stories are starting to get a lot of play.   One is the story of how the Obama Administration shut down the World War II Memorial, only to have Honor Flight vets break down the barricades.   The shutdown of the Memorial was completely gratuitous -- the Regular Son and I went there a couple of years ago; you walk right up to it just like you're walking down the street; there are no gates, no tickets, no guards.   In short, no reason to have to "close" it because of any budget issue... there's nothing to pay for there.   The closing was purely for political drama, but I don't think it's going to dramatize what Obama thinks it will.   I think it will dramatize what an asshole Obama is.   Deny an aged vet the ability to see his memorial?   Are you nuts?   Who thought that was a good idea?

The second story is maybe even worse:

Navy football fans, alumni and boosters packed a banquet room at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on Tuesday afternoon for a luncheon preview of Saturday’s showdown against service academy rival Air Force.

They listened to head coach Ken Niumatalolo answer questions about the sold-out, nationally televised game in Annapolis.

But the celebratory atmosphere was abruptly interrupted when Naval Academy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk rose to address the audience. He had just received word the Department of Defense was suspending all intercollegiate athletic events at the three service academies.

The Air Force-Navy game may be canceled due to the government shutdown.

“The emotional toll it would take would be incalculable,” Gladchuk said. “The financial toll it would take would be incalculable.”

The potential revenue loss to the Naval Academy Athletic Association would likely exceed $4 million, he said. That money comes from ticket sales, sponsorship, parking and concession revenue. The largest revenue stream is the payout NAAA receives from CBS Sports Television.

A record crowd in excess of 38,000 is expected to pack the stadium for Saturday’s 11:30 a.m. kickoff. Flights and hotels have been booked. About 200 football recruits and their families made plans to come to the game.

Roger Staubach and other members of Navy’s 1963 storied team are also scheduled.

The Department of Defense did not issue an official statement about the suspension of service academy sports and did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment.

However, the Naval Academy Superintendent’s Office received the order on Tuesday morning and Scott Strasemeier, associate athletic director for sports information, announced Tuesday night’s men’s soccer game between Navy and Howard had been postponed indefinitely.

“We are also hopeful for a last-minute reprieve,” Gladchuk said. “Right now, we are taking things a half day at a time and holding our breath that the government can bring this thing (the shutdown) to a resolution.”

The Naval Academy Athletic Association is a private organization not funded by the government. Gladchuk said the Air Force-Navy game could be held without any “appropriated funding.” Air Force recently created a similar athletic association that operates using private funds, donations and revenue from intercollegiate contests.

“We could run our entire athletics program and conduct events as we always do without any government funds,” Gladchuk said. “In talking to the Air Force athletic director, their football team could execute the trip without government funding.”

Asked why the Department of Defense was suspending intercollegiate athletic contests if government funds are not required, Gladchuk said he was told it was about “optics.”

Wow.   Why on earth would they do this?   Again, it's completely gratuitous.   As the story explains, no government funds are required to play these games.   I'm surprised someone doesn't make the argument that this is, in fact, an illegal order by the Commander-in-Chief, because he's denying a liberty interest belonging to the students and athletes of the academies without any reasonable government purpose.   Regardless, this makes Obama looks petty and mean and, frankly, evil -- if you define, as I do, evil as the propensity to look at other persons as means to your ends and not ends-in-themselves.   (Contrast with the statements of Pope Francis in the interview I discussed earlier today... wow.... it's like a moral giant standing beside a pygmy.)

This is why I think the shutdown this time will be different.   In 1995 the GOP was up against a master politician in Bill Clinton.   This time they are up against the Tin Ear Gang, led by Nasty Pete.

Government Shutdown Day #2

Frankly, I couldn't give a damn.   The government shutdown does not affect me in the least.   It's like a TV show that I don't really like gets cancelled.   I might find an article about the cancellation mildly interesting if it appeared in the Entertainment section of my local newspaper, but I mostly have better things to do wth my time.

David Freddoso has an interesting article about it, though, in which he notes that the feds sure seem to want to shut down things that will produce the most pain and the most publicity, like keeping WW II vets from visiting the memorials on the Mall:

When bureaucrats are threatened with irrelevance or face appearing unneeded, they respond by inflicting as much pain as possible, in hopes that they can prove they’re necessary and get their budgets increased. And even worse, an administration trying to make a political point — as Obama’s is — has every incentive to make a shutdown felt as acutely as possible. So obviously, we need to cancel the Navy-Air Force game as quickly as possible, even if the event is a voluntary activity by students requiring no expenditure of taxpayer funds. 

The barricading of the World War II Memorial has now become the most visible incident in this case — and to be clear, it’s not a “closing” because there’s no such thing as “closing” an open-air stone memorial in the middle of a large field like the National Mall. People walk past and through this memorial unaccompanied at all hours of the day and night. (And really, if they’re going to close that, why aren’t they closing the entire National Mall?)  

To my knowledge, no one has been arrested yet for walking through Sherman Circle (in a completely residential section of D.C.), but technically, that’s an NPS park, too. (And they’ve always done a lousy job keeping the grass mowed, so I doubt the shutdown will even be noticed there.) If NPS wants to be consistent, they should rope it off. But they won’t do that, because nobody from out of town visits Sherman Circle. The entire point here is to harass people only in the higher-profile parts of town that NPS controls.

The Pope's Famous Interview

Pope Francis recently gave an interview to America magazine, which other news outlets have picked up as signalling some sea-change on the issues closest to the frantically-beating liberal heart:   abortion, contraception, gay marriage, women in the clergy, etc.   What's sad to me is that, on the most basic level, the writers in important news outlets in the U.S. seem almost incapable of understanding the nature of religious life, Catholicism, the papacy, much less the complexity of an adult man and priest of vast experience and deep learning like Pope Francis (or Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul II, for that matter).   They reduce everything to the political, to the sound bite.   They also assume that, if the Church disapproves of certain behavior, the members of that Church "hate" the individual person who does that behavior.   But Pope Francis is obviously talking about something much different and higher than politics.    And Pope Francis is talking about love, not hate.
Here's the whole interview, but consider just this part, which the media seized upon:

“We need to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner,” the pope says, “preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound. In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.*   

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.   Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.

This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace. The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.  

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

I say this also thinking about the preaching and content of our preaching. A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing. The homily is the touchstone to measure the pastor’s proximity and ability to meet his people, because those who preach must recognize the heart of their community and must be able to see where the desire for God is lively and ardent. The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”

I don't know how you read this and think that Pope Francis is somehow saying that the Church's moral teachings on homosexuality or abortion or marriage no longer are true or no longer apply.   What he's saying is plainly that the first and most necessary step is to bring people to Christ.   If the message is heard of Christ's love for all persons, of the dignity of all people in God's eyes and the Church's eyes, then the moral consequences of Catholicism follow, because a belief in the saving love of Christ and the dignity of each individual person necessarily implies a love of Life and an understanding of God's plan for Man.

 

* Note: this is, of course, precisely what the catechism says about homosexuality:  "The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided."   Does anyone who writes about the Church for mainstream publications ever bother to actually read the catechism.   It's right there online.  

Girl of the Day - Laura Fraser of Breaking Bad

I may (or may not) write something about the finale of Breaking Bad, but, for GotD purposes, I thought I'd just give a last shout-out to Laura Fraser, who played Lydia, the scheming, anal-retentive businesswoman who was the marketing whiz for Walt's crystal blue in the Czech Republic.   (For non-aficionados, it would take too long to explain all that.)

Anyway, we'll miss you, Lydia... Walt ended up poisoning her with ricin in her Stevia.

Hints for Follow Up Stories on Obamacare

If you've lost Saturday Night Live, you've probably lost the country, at least if you're a liberal.   When last Saturday's cold open on SNL lampooned the confusion of the Obamacare rollout, my immediate thought was... finally, it's OK to make fun of Obama and his idiotic policies.

One of the most telling jokes in the bit was when a plump young lady came to the podium with Obama and happily exclaimed how "psyched" she was for "free healthcare."   I think why this joke was funny is that there are millions of people out there who actually think that healthcare is going to be free under Obamacare.   Obviously, it's not... in fact, the individual mandate will impose substantial new costs on the previously uninsured, primarily young people who may rationally have chosen otherwise to do without health insurance on the grounds that the risk of major illness or injury (relatively miniscule) is not worth the cost in terms of sacrificed spending on other types of good or services.*

But people do think it will be free.   So, you reporters out there, let me give you a hint at an interesting story line for, say, March or April of 2014.   Go out and ask insurance companies who are part of the exchanges (a) how many of the new policyholders failed to make their first payment?   And (b) how many of the new policyholders, after making the first payment, defaulted in the first six months and thus lost coverage again.  

I think the answer will be... A LOT.

*As I said to my wife, a 25 year-old with student loans and a job as a salesman at the AT&T kiosk in the Mall who is also trying to start a real estate/home improvement business on the side, renovating and flipping old houses (I actually met this guy when I was buying my new phone last week) is not going to sacrifice buying a new iPhone in order to buy health insurance that, 999 times out of a thousand, is a bad bet for him.   Think of the new T-Mobile ads and all the pressure on young people to stay cool by getting the next new phone.   Do you really think young people are going to keep their 2009 Blackberry an extra year or two just so they can get health insurance?  Not a chance.