The Fertile Writings from Flaky Minds of Tom Friedman and David Brooks

  

The Simpletons

David Brooks, Thomas L. Friedman, and the banal authoritarianism of do-something punditry

by Matt Welch    at reason.com

http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/22/the-simpletons

Marxism Predated Barack Hussein Obama as a Scourge in the New World

One of the greatest American stories of truth ever told as close to truth as can be,  has come from the writings of  William Bradford, Governor of  Plymouth Colony in the years of the 1620s.   Excerpts were read to me and our public high school  American History class a half century ago before the American Marxist movement began  to dictate what is to be programmed in American culture and its history   since the Viet Nam war. 

Its censorship department was known as Political Correctness.   Its conveyors became married to the establishment. 

Although the Obama Marxist government is the first of its kind from the White House, and  is not yet in full control of  its citizens’ lives, it is not the first Marxist “from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs” .    This Marxist dream of heaven was put into practice about 200 years before Karl Marx visited this Earth…….in the 1620s by the Mayflower people.

Read further.   Scott Johnson at  PowerLine has a quote or two about how that field experiment worked with the Pilgrim Christians.

America’s first socialist republic

by Scott Johnson  at   PowerLine:

“We provided the platform launching Professor Paul Rahe into the blogosphere. He is one of the country’s most distinguished scholars, but he has also proved to be a natural blogger as well. He now posts regularly at Big Government and at Ricochet.

In view of his classic study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Rahe is the academy’s foremost authority on the history of republics. Although his recent work on “soft despotism” is not far from these Thanksgiving reflections we first posted on Thanksgiving 2009, neither is his older work on republics:

On Thanksgiving, it is customary that Americans recall to mind the experience of the Pilgrim Fathers. This year, it is especially appropriate that we do so — as we pause, in the midst of an economic maelstrom, to count our remaining blessings and to reflect on the consequences of our election of a President and a Congress intent on “spread[ing] the wealth around.”

We have much to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what is now contemplated; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive.

William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” And “after much debate of things,” he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that “they should set corn every man for his own particular” and assign “to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.”

The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, “for it made all hands very industrious” and “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Even “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Moreover, he observes, “the experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years . . . amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing.” In practice, America’s first socialist experiment “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”

In practice, “the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”

Naturally enough, quarrels ensued. “If it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men,” Bradford notes, “yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And [it] would have been worse if they had been men of another condition” less given to the fear of God. “Let none object,” he concludes, that “this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”

The moral is perfectly clear. Self-interest cannot be expunged. Where there is private property and its possession and acquisition are protected and treated with respect, self-interest and jealousy can be deployed against laziness and the desire for that which is not one’s own, and there tends to be plenty as a consequence.

But where one takes from those who join talent with industry to provide for those lacking either or both, where the fruits of one man’s labor are appropriated to benefit another who is less productive, self-interest reinforces laziness, jealousy engenders covetousness, and these combine in a bitter stew to produce both conflict and dearth.”

 

 

 

America’s first socialist republic

We provided the platform launching Professor Paul Rahe into the blogosphere. He is one of the country’s most distinguished scholars, but he has also proved to be a natural blogger as well. He now posts regularly at Big Government and at Ricochet.

In view of his classic study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Rahe is the academy’s foremost authority on the history of republics. Although his recent work on “soft despotism” is not far from these Thanksgiving reflections we first posted on Thanksgiving 2009, neither is his older work on republics:

On Thanksgiving, it is customary that Americans recall to mind the experience of the Pilgrim Fathers. This year, it is especially appropriate that we do so — as we pause, in the midst of an economic maelstrom, to count our remaining blessings and to reflect on the consequences of our election of a President and a Congress intent on “spread[ing] the wealth around.”

We have much to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what is now contemplated; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive.

William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” And “after much debate of things,” he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that “they should set corn every man for his own particular” and assign “to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.”

The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, “for it made all hands very industrious” and “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Even “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Moreover, he observes, “the experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years . . . amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing.” In practice, America’s first socialist experiment “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”

In practice, “the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”

Naturally enough, quarrels ensued. “If it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men,” Bradford notes, “yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And [it] would have been worse if they had been men of another condition” less given to the fear of God. “Let none object,” he concludes, that “this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”

The moral is perfectly clear. Self-interest cannot be expunged. Where there is private property and its possession and acquisition are protected and treated with respect, self-interest and jealousy can be deployed against laziness and the desire for that which is not one’s own, and there tends to be plenty as a consequence.

But where one takes from those who join talent with industry to provide for those lacking either or both, where the fruits of one man’s labor are appropriated to benefit another who is less productive, self-interest reinforces laziness, jealousy engenders covetousness, and these combine in a bitter stew to produce both conflict and dearth.

At Planned Parenthood Marxist Language turns “Baby” into “Clump of Cells”…..for abortions at taxpayer expense

Planned Parenthood lies about itself

By: Catherine Anthony Adair 

 

 

In 1997, I began working at a Boston Planned Parenthood clinic as a young, idealistic college student who strongly believed in what I had been told about the organization, that I would be helping other young women access safe and affordable health care.But I quickly came to learn that the message Planned Parenthood advertised did not reflect reality. I was disillusioned by the betrayal that was perpetrated against patients and the public alike.

My time there was not spent providing prenatal care to pregnant women, providing counseling or basic health care services or educating women about reproductive health.

Instead, I spent my days urging women to terminate their pregnancies. My superiors constantly reminded me of our abortion-centered business model: abortions first, everything else came second.

I began to recognize their emphasis on performing abortions each time a woman would express concern or have second thoughts about having an abortion. When I notified management, though, they told me not to worry and encourage her decision to move ahead with the procedure.

Thankfully, the truth is being exposed. Sexual abuse of minor girls and exploitation of the poor and minorities is concealed or ignored, all in the name of more abortions.

Planned Parenthood has gone to great lengths to fool the public into thinking that abortions make up only “3 percent of services provided” in their clinics. In reality, according to its most recent report, abortion patients constitute 12 percent of all Planned Parenthood clients, or 332,000 of 3 million unduplicated clients.

They used my misunderstanding of what the organization stood for to encourage me to perform and assist in a practice that makes up 98 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services to pregnant women.

In fact, clinic workers would purposefully avoid providing information on fetal development, what the child looked like, the child’s anatomical development and the pain he or she could feel. I was continuously reminded that when referring to the baby, the appropriate terminology was “clump of cells” or “contents of the uterus.”

Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can. Those in charge know that can’t be accomplished if they refer to the child as a “baby.”

Then women would know what was really growing inside them: a little person with a beating heart, functioning nervous system, tiny hands and feet. The child is entirely disregarded. There is no counseling, no care, no waiting and no discussion. Once a pregnancy is confirmed, it is off to termination.

Planned Parenthood takes specific advantage of women who are too young or misinformed to know better than to trust them with their well-being. Those who know the truth have a duty to speak out.

Do not be fooled by their sound bites and statistical manipulations. Planned Parenthood is not “pro-women,” as it claims to be. It is pro-abortion. It does not stand for women. It stands for ending our pregnancies. Women are treated as commodities, not as human beings.

We must shed light on what Planned Parenthood actually does. It spends millions of dollars each year to ensure that the American taxpayer will continue subsidizing its abortion services.

Last year, Planned Parenthood’s efforts bought in a record $363 million in government funding. It generates so much by making false claims about how public funding reduces the number of abortions.

But the numbers tell a different story. From 2000 to 2009, Planned Parenthood saw an 80 percent increase in taxpayer funding and a 69 percent increase in the number of abortions it performed.

Women deserve better.

Article sent by Mark Waldeland.

What Does America’s Marxist Left Have on Newt Gingrich? Monica Lewinsky? Vanity Fair Explains

Big Baby

by  Todd S. Purdum     at Vanity Fair

 

 

“Newt Gingrich, now breathing down Mitt Romney’s neck in New Hampshire, sees himself as a “transformational figure”—the words are his own. Here are some words that no one who has worked with Gingrich has ever used: “plays well with others.”

Forget Newt Gingrich’s $1.6 to $1.8 million in consulting fees from Freddie Mac and his up-to-$500,000 line of credit at Tiffany & Co. Overlook the Greek cruise and the mass campaign-staff exodus. Pay no attention to his two messy divorces and his impeachment of a president over an extramarital affair while he was conducting an affair of his own.

But, please, don’t forget the pacifier.

I came across it in my desk drawer the other day—bright pink, with a patina of age. It is 16 years old, and it marks the moment in 1995 when Gingrich indulged in a public hissy fit because Bill Clinton relegated him to a rear cabin on Air Force One on the way home from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral in Israel. Gingrich confessed that he had loaded a stopgap-spending bill with restrictions that prompted Clinton’s veto and led to a government shutdown partly out of spite at what he considered his ill treatment.

The New York Daily News ran a front-page cartoon of Gingrich in diapers with the headline cry baby, and some Democratic group or another—I can’t remember just which—promptly passed around a palm-size reproduction of the drawing on glossy card stock, complete with a pacifier tucked into a slot. When our young daughter stumbled upon it a few years ago, she immediately recognized the pacifier for what it was, but was puzzled that an ordinary seat on the world’s most prestigious airplane could have made a grown man cry.

In fact, as some of the weary Clinton White House veterans who worked with Gingrich in those days, when he was Speaker of the House, reminded me, the pacifier is a perfect symbol of his sometimes shocking instability as he contends for an office—the presidency—in which steadiness is all.

“That era’s Republican leadership would tell you that they held their breath every time he went into negotiations with Clinton because they never knew what he was going to do,” recalled Doug Sosnik, a former top Clinton aide. “I don’t think he’s really built for governing. I don’t think he has anywhere near the kind of temperament for that job.”

Gingrich has always been a bubbling font of so many—and such varied—ideas that several small European countries could be run on his weekly exhaust. He has, at various times, backed an individual insurance mandate for health care (poison to the conservative base), embraced secular humanism (anathema to the religious right), and un-self-consciously referred to himself as a “transformational figure.” Indeed, he led the charge that helped Republicans recapture the House for the first time in 40 years, but eventually his own colleagues so tired of the drama that always seemed to surround him that they pushed him out after just four years.

“Newt’s great strength, really, was when he was the leader of a revolution against a long-entrenched Democratic Congress,” Sosnik said. “He does have considerable skills and can communicate. As someone on the outside throwing bricks, I think he’s quite effective and he can create the intellectual theory of the case. But he’s not disciplined and he’s not focused, and the Republican caucus tends to distrust him.”

Gingrich’s own description of the service he provided for Freddie Mac—that he gave the government-backed mortgage giant the chance to talk with someone really smart and important (a.k.a. himself)—is par for the course. But in the 2008 campaign, Gingrich went so far as to suggest that Barack Obama should return the campaign contributions he received from executives of Freddie and its sister organization, Fannie Mae. No one likes a hypocrite.

So Gingrich may not last through the primary season, but he’ll doubtless provide some excitement in the weeks to come. After all, although he ultimately lost his epic battle with Bill Clinton, it was that first government shutdown in 1995, which reduced the White House staff to essential employees and unpaid interns, that put a young woman named Monica Lewinsky in proximity to the president. A transformative figure indeed.

Comment:  Well, now you have it……at least the beginning of ‘it’, that is the smear stuff from the Obama Marxist Left.   

No one from the Vanity Fair Left, or any other American Left,  would mention anthing negative connecting a Democrat to  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,  not even a hint of inpropietyabout anthing  Fannie Mae and  Freddie Mac, the volcanic corruption that led to the collapse of the housing finance industry and America’s present economic woes.

If they did, Barney Frank would be in jail.

They do know, however, that conservatives are better eduated on this matter.    These Leftists are banking on conservatives dousing the Gingrich presidential candle before it even gets started.

If arrogance is the Leftist standard for crime, their Barack Hussein would, indeed, be in jail.    If sleazy financing would be a crime for politicians, Mr. Obama would also be at the head of the  mile long line of the guilty.   Just the other day, his buddy, Tony Reszco went off  on vacation behind bars….remember, he’s the guy Barry bought his property in Chicago then valued at $1,000,000 for $300,000, the then adjusted price among ‘friends’. 

It is true that Newt’s married life has had some issues…….but, I don’t think Newt has ever been a  22 year member of a racist religious cult led by someone similar to  , Jeremiah “Godddamn America” Wright, whom Barry claimed as his father figure.

Nor is it likely that one of Newt’s wives would often  claim she has never been proud as American, but shut up on the matter when her husband became the nation’s president.

Then, too, would anyone besides a Marxist ever  hire Barry Hussein as a business consultant?    Besides General Electric, anyway?

American Leftists pick and choose their morality depending on the political circumstances.    Their Marxist goal is to gain power to be able to run the country according to its religion, atheism and forced equality over whom Marxists rule.

America’s enemy is Marxism.   Its leader is Barack Hussein Obama, an isolate  Marxist-trained lawyer from Columbia and Harvard and other points Left.   

 

More absurdities from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times

Are We Getting Nicer?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF     at the New York Times

“….Let me be contrary and offer a reason to be grateful this Thanksgiving. Despite the gloomy mood, the historical backdrop is stunning progress in human decency over recent centuries.

War is declining, and humanity is becoming less violent, less racist and less sexist — and this moral progress has accelerated in recent decades. To put it bluntly, we humans seem to be getting nicer.

That’s the central theme of an astonishingly good book just published by Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard. It’s called “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” and it’s my bet to win the next Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

“Today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence,” Pinker writes, and he describes this decline in violence as possibly “the most important thing that has ever happened in human history.”

He acknowledges: “In a century that began with 9/11, Iraq, and Darfur, the claim that we are living in an unusually peaceful time may strike you as somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene.”

Still, even in a 20th century notorious for world war and genocide, only around 3 percent of humans died from such man-made catastrophes. In contrast, a study of Native-American skeletons from hunter-gather societies found that some 13 percent had died of trauma. And in the 17th century, the Thirty Years’ War reduced Germany’s population by as much as one-third.

Wars make headlines, but there are fewer conflicts today, and they typically don’t kill as many people. Many scholars have made that point, most notably Joshua S. Goldstein in his recent book “Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.” Goldstein also argues that it’s a myth that civilians are more likely to die in modern wars.

Look also at homicide rates, which are now far lower than in previous centuries. The murder rate in Britain seems to have fallen by more than 90 percent since the 14th century.

Then there are the myriad forms of violence that were once the banal backdrop of daily life. One game in feudal Europe involved men competing to head-butt to death a cat that had been nailed alive to a post. One reason this was considered so entertaining: the possibility that it would claw out a competitor’s eye.

Think of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. One academic study found that modern children’s television programs have 4.8 violent scenes per hour, compared with nursery rhymes with 52.2.

The decline in brutality is true of other cultures as well. When I learned Chinese, I was startled to encounter ideographs like the one of a knife next to a nose: pronounced “yi,” it means “cutting off a nose as punishment.” That’s one Chinese character that students no longer study.

Pinker’s book rang true to me partly because I often report on genocide and human rights abuses. I was aghast that Darfur didn’t prompt more of an international response from Western governments, but I was awed by the way American university students protested on behalf of a people who lived half a world away.

That reflects a larger truth: There is global consensus today that slaughtering civilians is an outrage. Governments may still engage in mass atrocities, but now they hire lobbyists and public relations firms to sanitize the mess.

In contrast, until modern times, genocide was simply a way of waging war. The Bible repeatedly describes God as masterminding genocide (“thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth” — Deuteronomy 20:16), and European-Americans saw nothing offensive about exterminating Native Americans. One of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, later a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was unapologetic: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely in the case of the tenth.”

The pace of moral progress has accelerated in the last few decades. Pinker notes that on issues such as civil rights, the role of women, equality for gays, beating of children and treatment of animals, “the attitudes of conservatives have followed the trajectory of liberals, with the result that today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals.”

The reasons for these advances are complex but may have to do with the rise of education, the decline of chauvinism and a growing willingness to put ourselves in the shoes (increasingly, even hooves) of others.

Granted, the world still faces brutality and cruelty. That’s what I write about the rest of the year! But let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge remarkable progress and give thanks for the human capacity for compassion and moral growth.”

Comment:   I happened to watch one of the CSpan’s presentation of  Steven Pinker lecturing about this ‘book’ to the usual cozy collections of Lefties gathering to exhibit their brilliance on being Lefties.      It lasted nearly two hours.    So did I.

Mr. Pinker was a charmer.   His text was a  collection of statistics which clumped all violence together, allegedly world wide, and showed numbers that because of the Lefty’s Liberalization of the world, his statistics showed we were a better place in which to live.

No one in his audience challenged Pinker’s  assumptions.    They all, per usual, occupied the microphone after the Pinker speech to demonstrate their ‘intellectuality’.  

Is your city a better “more Christian” place in which to live in 2011 compared to 1991?  1971?  1951?  1931?  1911?   Is your community?  What about your university?  

War statistics of violence skew any data collections of killed and maimed.    At present there are no World Wars, Stalinist massacres, Mao massacres,  or National Socialist Workers’ Party death camps.  

Mr. Kristof is a grand example of an isolate lefty simpleton when he claims bigotry scores are down.    The bigotry against Christianity in this country is vast.    Bigotry among lefties  against conservatives, especially any who dare to be from an American minority, is vast.

Our present president,  Barack Hussein Obama,  spent 22 years ‘worshipping’ at  preacher Jeremiah “Goddamn America” Wright’s cathedral of racism in Chicago.    Mr. Obama hailed “Goddamn America” Wright as his father figure.

Kristof states, “humanity is becoming less violent, less racist and less sexist”.     Has he visited any American college campuses lately?    The vast majority offer deparments including graduate ‘studies’  in Hate American Studies if the American is white, male, and not gay or lesbian.   Has anyone reviewed  the Latino and Latina  bigotries against Americans  emanating from the Latino and Latina racists in  the Tucson, Arizona public schools lately?    

Has this perpetually  foolish man reviewed the cultural practices and creations in the American urban scenes?    Narrowly, he did.   He wrote about his visit to Occupy Wall Street.    He was proud of its democratic show……but he never mentioned other aspects of American culture in his writing.

Marxist Berwick Resigns as Head of Obamacare Monstrosity

Berwick Resigns as Medicare Chief Ahead of End to Recess

at Fox News

“Medicare chief Don Berwick, the point man for carrying out President Obama’s health care law, announced Wednesday that he will step down on Dec. 2 in anticipation of not getting confirmation in the Senate to extend his term beyond a recess appointment.

Berwick, a Harvard professor who aggravated many Republicans for his praise of Britain’s government-run health care program, was appointed as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services by President Obama on July 7, 2010. 

Knowing that Berwick would not be confirmed to take a more permanent post, the recess appointment was temporary. It runs out at the end of this year. 

Forty-two GOP senators — more than enough to derail Berwick’s confirmation — had announced their opposition to his nomination months ago. 

“Not only did he not win Republicans over he didn’t win Democrats in the Senate over and Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, never even scheduled a hearing on the nomination,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a physician told Fox News Radio on Wednesday.

A pediatrician before becoming an educator, Berwick had sought a public-based system that he said would provide a better overall experience for individual patients, improve the health of groups of people such as seniors and African-Americans and lower costs through efficiency. 

But many of his prior statements dogged him in Washington, especially over the question of rationing. His praise for the British model also sent up flags.

“You could have been spending 17 percent of your GDP to make healthcare unaffordable as a human right, instead of spending 9 percent and guaranteeing it as a human right,” he said in a 2008 speech delivered in the United Kingdom. 

“You could have had a monstrous insurance industry of claims and rules and paper pushing instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance,” he added. “Any healthcare funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain you chose well.”

During hearings on the Hill, Berwick distinguished U.S. needs from the British model, saying “the American system needs its own solution.” He also denied supporting rationing.

“I abhor rationing. My entire life has been spent fighting rationing. There’s no substance whatsoever to the substance of that,” Berwick told the House Ways and Means Committee in February 2011.

He also told a Biotechnology Healthcare, an industry publication, that some health care is “so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.” 

“We make those decisions all the time. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care … the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly,” he is quoted saying.

Defenders say Berwick’s only problem was that he was a surrogate for the health care law

“The reason why they decided not to go forward with Berwick was because Republicans were really determined to tear–Republicans were politically determined to tear him down and to tear down the law,” said Igor Volsky, the health care policy editor for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.

To be sure, Berwick had become too controversial to win any converts. 

“As government continues to struggle to find a way to add 30 million people to the taxpayer-funded health care rolls thanks to Obamacare in the midst of a sovereign debt crisis, Senate Republicans are to be praised for blocking the confirmation of Berwick,” Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson said Wednesday. 

Berwick’s “doctrines were pure Marxism,” Wilson added, warning that Senate Republicans “must be vigilant that whosoever Obama selects to replace Berwick is not just another radical extremist.”

Obama on Wednesday announced that he intends to nominate Berwick’s principal deputy, Marilyn Tavenner, Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources from 2006-2010, to be his replacement.

Former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, for whom Tavenner served, said the nominee played “an instrumental role” in the state on several items, most notably by helping reduce “Medicaid costs in smart ways through program improvements, focus on preventive care and creative use of technology.”

For Republicans, they want to hear more. 

“I’m glad the White House opted against another end run around the Senate and instead has put forward a CMS nominee that the Senate must thoroughly examine. Republicans on the Finance Committee look forward to examining her record and gaining an understanding of her views of Medicare, Medicaid and the President’s health law,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, ranking Republican member of the finance panel.

For his part, Berwick, who turned 65 this year — making him the first Medicare chief eligible to be enrolled in the program — told The Associated Press that he was putting in his application, but that he intends to keep working to improve the nation’s health care system.

Fox News’ Jim Angle and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/23/berwick-resigns-as-head-medicare-ahead-end-to-recess-appointment/#ixzz1egyXgaOd

The Obama Marxist Entertainment Season Highlights for 2012

(Almost) Nothing Is Sacred

 by L. Brent Bozell III at dennisprager.com

 ”In advance of Tinseltown’s parade of Christmas insensitivities — they’ve already unloaded the marijuana movie “A Very Harold and Kumar 3-D Christmas” — let us stipulate that it’s not just seasonal. The manufacturers of pop culture thrive on offending every traditional value.

Start with Pamela Anderson, the ridiculously surgically enhanced former Playboy Playmate, home-movie porn specialist and “Baywatch” star. She’s been cast to play — are you ready? — the Virgin Mary in a TV “Christmas” special in Canada.

It’s called “A Russell Peters Christmas,” and Peters will play Mary’s husband Joseph in the sketch “comedy.” Peters was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic school until eighth grade. It didn’t take, to say the least. The show will air as a holiday “centerpiece” in Canada on CTV and the Canadian Comedy Network, which also runs U.S. shows such as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”

Publicists are already touting the show with the usual lingo. It’s “an irreverent twist on the Christmas special making it unlike anything viewers have seen before,” and will be “tastier and more dangerous than a cup of spiked eggnog.” Pamela Anderson does have reverence for one cause: Her Facebook page profile picture is an anti-fur symbol. Mock Jesus, but love animals.

Another very serious (if not sacred, surely profound) day on the American calendar is Sept. 11. That means 9/11 is just begging for satire, if you’re Fox and Seth MacFarlane, at least. Two years after 9/11, college reporter Matt Chayes interviewed MacFarlane and said he “claims he would never do a 9/11 gag.” That pledge has been violated repeatedly. Now he’s devoted the entire plot of the Nov. 13 episode of “Family Guy” to mocking 9/11.

Stewie, the super-smart baby, invents a time machine. Pal, Brian, the talking dog, and he travel back in time to retrieve an old tennis ball. In the process, current Brian warns past Brian about 9/11, and, as a result, it’s avoided. But when they return to the present, they find out that George W. Bush lost the 2004 election because he had no 9/11 with which to scare the public.

This historical twist results in Bush creating a second Confederacy – naturally — which starts another Civil War with nuclear strikes that kill 17 million people and turn the U.S. into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, of course. So the duo goes back to fix the past, and after they succeed, the baby declares, “We did it Brian! We made 9/11 happen! High five!”

Time magazine declared, “It sounds custom-made for a ‘too soon’ label, and it probably is. (Probably?) But avid ‘Family Guy’ viewers live for ‘too soon’ moments, no matter how sensitive the material.”

This was proven over at their sister publication, Entertainment Weekly. EW couldn’t be that judgmental. They took a poll and found only 19.5 percent in their web universe said, “Yes, it was incredibly insensitive,” while the other 80.5 percent state “No, this was standard ‘Family Guy’ fare.”

This is a terrible set of poll questions. One can agree almost weekly that “Family Guy” is “incredibly insensitive” (SET ITAL) and (END ITAL) it’s “standard” behavior for them.

Speaking of messing up the time machine, Hollywood is really going back in time to smear J. Edgar Hoover. They’ve never forgiven him for being a staunch anti-communist or for mucking around in the personal lives of their heroes, from the Kennedy’s to Martin Luther King. When Time asked actor Leonardo DiCaprio how true the movie was to life he replied, “Historically, it’s incredibly accurate.”

That’s quite a clash with the quote from his cast mate Armie Hammer, who plays Clyde Tolson, the close Hoover aide alleged to be his lover. “What really brings the film to life are the scenes that no one can prove happened.”

The movie’s climactic scene arrives when Hoover tells Tolson he’s getting married. Tolson and Hoover wrestle, and Tolson kisses Hoover, only to have Hoover reject him. As Tolson storms out, Hoover begs Tolson not to leave and even says, “I love you.” There’s also a creepy scene when Hoover’s mother dies. Hoover descends into a crying mess as he puts on a dress and a necklace.

The accusation that Hoover cross-dressed came from a convicted perjurer with mob ties; Soviet disinformation agents circulated rumors that Hoover was gay. But Hollywood doesn’t care about sources or evidence when it makes “historical” movies. What they cared about was using ersatz history to promote the gay agenda.

Now that agenda is the closest thing to a unanimously sacred cause in Hollywood. Movie director Brett Ratner was just unceremoniously canned as director of the 2012 Academy Awards broadcast. He crossed the line by saying “Rehearsals are for (gay F-bombs).” That will get you fired. Mocking an FBI director, 9/11 or the Virgin Mary? That is apparently “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”