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  • Cher & Sonny's Daughter Now A Dude
    By Greg Hengler
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    Regardless of her feelings of disconnect and the subsequent surgical, psychological, and pharmaceutical procedures of transformation, her DNA will forever scream, female.

  • Not that hungry for change
    By Michael Medved
    Friday, March 12, 2010

     
    Not that hungry for change

    Washington has misread the public. People want problem-solving, not political whiplash.

    By Michael Medved

    According to the all-but-unchallenged conventional wisdom, the American people feel angry at the status quo and demand dramatic change.

    Why, then, do recent polls show public sentiment tilting toward the GOP — the very party that's stubbornly resisting change? And why should so many voters express increasing distrust, and even resentment, of the ruling Democrats who've tried to deliver just the sort of sweeping transformations they thought the people craved? Hope and change, it seems, morphed quickly into fear and retrenchment.

    This anomalous shift has less to do with the fickleness of public attitudes, or some sudden and unprecedented ideological awakening, than it does with chronic misinterpretation of popular dissatisfaction during periods of discomfort and depression. The fact that citizens feel worried about the future of the nation doesn't mean they've lost confidence in themselves. By 3 to 1, Americans believe that the nation is headed in the wrong direction, but similarly big majorities express satisfaction with their personal situations and optimism over their prospects.

    Private lives not that bad

    The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has surveyed 1,000 adults almost every day for more than two years, shows that even in the midst of high unemployment and bitter political turmoil, people are pleased with their private progress. From 2008 through 2009, participants' "life evaluations" of their current situation and future expectations rose by more than 5 percentage points. Without exception, every racial group, income level and age cohort showed brightening attitudes, with particularly big improvements among blacks, young adults (18-29) and people of modest means ($24,000 to $48,000 in annual income).

    In other words, the endlessly discussed desire for "change" always applied to Washington, or Wall Street, or other far-away forces, but rarely to the daily lives and intimate arrangements of ordinary Americans. We seek change for institutions or for others, but not necessarily for ourselves. We remain overwhelmingly pleased with our jobs, families and neighborhoods, and we expect the best for our children. Big majorities — more than 60% — predict that today's young people will enjoy even better lives than their parents.

    This contradiction in public attitudes — with private satisfaction persistently co-existing with grim assumptions about the nation at large — produced the core miscalculation by the White House. President Obama might have pleased the public by transforming some of the big-picture problems so frequently decried in the news media, such as the bitter polarization in Washington, or America's tarnished image in the international community. But he has made little visible progress in altering these distant realities while frightening much of the public about potential change of a far more intimate sort: involving the health care arrangements or tax-and-debt burdens on every American.

    The biggest obstacle to public acceptance of the Democrats' plans to uproot and restructure the health care system involved the fact that most people felt pleased with their own medical care and insurance plans. As many as 85% of insured Americans say they like and value their current policies. As long as "ObamaCare" amounted to altering reality for someone else — providing for the uninsured, for instance — it drew strong support. When, however, the public came to suspect that the promised reform would change their own insurance situation, likely raising costs and limiting available treatment, opinion turned decisively against the plan.

    Not a green light for the GOP

    Republicans may be the immediate beneficiaries of the Democrats' clumsy misinterpretation of the supposed mandate for change, but they run a very real risk of making similar mistakes. Polls show disillusionment and distrust regarding the Obama agenda, but that hardly signals an impassioned appetite for a conservative counterrevolution. If the GOP pledges massive, wrenching, systemic change — cutting back, for instance, on cherished, widely popular government programs on which millions of Americans depend — it will meet the same resistance and skepticism that confronts Obama and his liberal colleagues.

    In other words, the people would welcome a concerted effort to "clean up the mess in Washington," but they don't want Washington cleaning up the mess in their private lives because they don't consider their personal status a mess.

    Yes, the Democrats miscalculated by underestimating the deeply conservative nature of the American people, but the Republicans may yet miscalculate themselves by interpreting that conservatism as ideological rather than temperamental.

    The public wants pragmatic, commonsense, problem-solving leadership more than purist dogmatism of the right or the left. Voters don't yearn for stirring 10-point programs, or radical readjustments of governmental institutions, or definitive demonization and defeat of opponents.

    We're conservative in a deeper sense —liking the lives we've built for ourselves and wanting to conserve them from unwelcome interference by overreaching change agents or ideologues. The party that connects with these wholesome, optimistic, emphatically practical instincts most effectively (and respectfully) will not only make big gains in November, but also may soon begin to build the durable governing majority that has been missing in our politics for nearly 30 years.

    Syndicated talk radio host Michael Medved is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors and author of The 5 Big Lies About American Business.

    (Change candidate: Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigning for president in 2008./Alex Wong, Getty Images.)
  • Mark "American" On Your Census Forms
    By Jillian Bandes
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    That's the directive from Rush Limbaugh, who is making a valiant stand against race identification on the Census.

    Can't wait to see if this goes anywhere....
  • Suddenly, "Cool" Isn't So Cool
    By Carol Platt Liebau
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    Dee Dee Myers warns President Obama that he is losing his connection with "the people" -- and points out, rightly, that without it, it's difficult to enjoy their support and trust.   (As I argued last night, perhaps the most damaging toll the entire health debate has taken on the President is the diminution in popular trust that now confronts him.)

    Myers' prescription is for Obama to become more like Bill Clinton -- warm, needy of the public embrace, empathetic, engaged, interested.  Sounds good.

    But the problem is that's not who the President is.  The Democrats are now finding that the "cool" temperament -- lauded in the campaign as evidence of his god-like superiority -- is a knife that cuts both ways.  But telling the President to solve his problems by changing his personality is, well, like having advised Bill Clinton to solve his problems by keeping himself to himself when it comes to the ladies, and exercising discipline in all facets of his life.  In theory, the advice is absolutely correct, but in practice, it's impossible for the particular individual.

    Certainly, Bill Clinton has a real feel for the "common touch" in large part because that's just who he is.  But, in addition, he actually dealt with real people -- retail politics -- in his numerous campaigns for Arkansas governor (and had the chastening experience of losing, early in his career, when he lost touch with his constituents and went too far left).

    In contrast, Obama has never had to seek election on anything but the friendliest political terrain.  Either he was running in liberal enclaves -- or in a year when the gravitational pull of events went as strongly in the Democrats' direction as one could possibly imagine. 

    He hasn't had to develop empathy with normal, moderate/independent/conservative voters, ever in his career.  He's been raised, from at least law school on, to believe that he is bright, beautiful and an asset to the world.  That's how he sees himself. 

    And the rest of us are paying the price.
  • Pelosi: Before Reconciliation, House Must Pass Senate Bill & President Must Sign
    By Greg Hengler
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    HT: Ed Morrissey



    Pelosi: "It Won't Be Long Before We'll Be Making A Real Difference In The Lives Of American People"



    Pelosi: It's Not Called A Public Option But "We Have The Purpose Of A P.O. Served"

  • Are Tea Parties Socially Conservative?
    By Jillian Bandes
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    This is a meme I've been following for a while: the libertarian nature of the tea parties. Today, Ben Smith has a smart piece out on social conservatives feeling left out. He cites a plethora of sources, including the Sam Adams Alliance, who suggests that tea party leaders are consciously avoiding religious issues. Brendan Steinhauser, the director of federal and state campaigns at FreedomWorks, claims that the Tax Day Tea Party did not emphasize social issues.
    People didn’t come out into the streets to protest gay marriage or abortion.
    I would agree. Regardless of the individual beliefs of tea partiers, the main push has been on fiscal issues. That's not saying other issues aren't important, but that taxes, spending, and the deficit are the focus.
  • Let's Just Use Reconciliation For Everything!
    By Jillian Bandes
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    A proposal that's up for grabs in the Senate would prohibit the private sector from making any education loans whatsoever, removing this area of the market from private control. But sixty votes are  needed in the Senate to allow this proposal to pass, and Harry Reid doesn't have them.

    So Reid and Obama are considering using reconciliation to pass the education bill as well as the health care bill.

    There's something of a case to be made financially for the government take-over of private educational loans, if you use the warped parameters set by Democratic accounting standards. Since the student loan industry is so highly regulated by Uncle Sam -- to the point that the government suffers a loss if a student defaults on a private loan -- having the government take over the loan actually might save the government money.

    The free-market solution to this might be to remove all the regulations on private student loans, and let the market make the decisions. But Democrats prefer to have the government take over the entire industry. This will ostensibly help the government save money, help students because they will have easier access to loans, and help society fund higher education.

    But the ramifications of artificial subsidies for higher education never enter the discussion. What if the higher education bubble bursts? What if a student would be better off not going to college? What about the U.S. taxpayer, who is being forced against his will to pay for the education of his neighbor?

    The bill passed the House last year, in a move that the New York Times characterized as a victory over "an intense lobbying effort by the for-profit lenders." The NYT says the insurmountable 60-vote threshold in the Senate was because of "the industry's allies in the Senate." While it's true that legislators from states where student loan companies are located are fighting this bill, there's a bigger principle at stake: propping up an industry that, like all other industries, is better left in the hands of the market.
  • Democrats' Rules Trickery Might Still Be Allowed
    By Kevin Glass
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    Via Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) comes this report that the ruling made by the Senate Parliamentarian yesterday doesn't necessarily mean that the health care bill has to go through the entire legislative process before it can be changed:

    The parliamentarian, however, later reportedly clarified his position to Senate aides, saying that the reconciliation bill could be written in a way that would not require Obama to sign the Senate bill into law before the reconciliation bill is voted on.
    This is very inside-baseball stuff, but it gives the Democrats a small shortcut in their quest to pass this unpopular health care bill. Whereas it was reported yesterday that the Senate health care bill, which passed the Senate back in December, had to be passed by the House unamended and then signed by President Obama before any changes could be made, it now might seem that the bill could be changed without first going through Obama.

    All this information seems to change hourly so this will likely not be the last you hear on this. On the other hand, raise your hand if you're tired of the whole debate and are annoyed that the boondoggle that is the Democrats' health care program has descended into discussions over rules trickery.
 
 
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