It's more than five percent

Scott Johnson at Powerline - quoting liberally from Avik Roy at Forbes - explains why this dismissive characterization of those affected by the MEC's "keep-you-plan-and-doctor" lie as a tiny fraction of the national population is a lie itself.

The only kind of deal worth anything is one that decisively de-nukes Iran

Jonathan Tobin at Commentary says he doesn't know exactly what French foreign minister Laurent Fabius to so adamantly stand his ground against Secretary Global Test, but he says it has had an effect on any possible future installments of this round of patty cake:

whatever Fabius’s motives might have been, what he has done is to draw attention to the fact that Kerry and Co. were rushing to make a deal without nailing down the details about what the Iranians are expected to do.

Kerry has defended this process and pretended that what he was about to sign was a good deal. He believes that by taking halfway measures he is advancing the cause of stopping the Iranians. He thinks talking to the Iranians has a value in itself and worth the price of chipping away at sanctions. Those who support this process claim that those who call for a complete shutdown of the Iranian nuclear program are unrealistic. But the real lack of realism stems from those who ignore the Iranian history of cheating on the nuclear issue and who think this time will finally be different.

The point here is that contrary to Kerry’s rhetoric, this is not a labor negotiation in which both sides must be allowed to walk away with something and a solution always lies in splitting the difference between the two sides. Any Iranian deal that doesn’t definitively end their chance of building a weapon, whether via uranium or plutonium, is a scam, not a diplomatic triumph. Insistence on this point doesn’t make the deal’s critics warmongers. It makes them realists.

It can only be hoped that the pause between this weekend and the next P5+1 meeting will stiffen the spines of the Western negotiators rather than making them more eager to give away the store. For that opportunity, we should be grateful to Fabius.

It will be interesting to see if Global Test will now want to maneuver to the right of Fabius, now that the pass-it-to-know-what's-in-it approach as applied to Iran would lead to an incinerated Western city of some sort within the next few years.  Then again, he and his boss, the MEC, are both pretty ate up with decline and appeasement, to the point where it clouds there ability to sense real danger - danger even to their own delusional a--es.

Don't put any pro-freedom fingerprints on FHer-care

Rick Moran, who writes for PJ Media and The American Thinker, and who bugs me more than he impresses me, owing to his inclination toward centrism, nonetheless nails it today with a warning that Fred Upton's Keep You Plan Act and similar measures being kicked around in Congress make it harder for Pubs in 2014 to still speak of repeal of FHer-care.

Don't give the slightest appearance of owning anything about it, Pubs.  Let the country see it fail, and keep your repeal bona fides intact.

The nexus of all-about-me-ism and you're-just-cattle-belonging-to-the-state-ism

It can be found in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 that just passed the Senate.  Stella Morabito at the Federalist makes the connection for us:

Gender identity is an ambiguous term that relates to people’s perceptions and feelings. By adding it to the list of categories in anti-discrimination law, ENDA combines threat of punishment with vague language that is wide open to interpretation. This is a classic recipe for tyranny.

Consider first ENDA’s definition of “gender identity”:

The term ‘gender identity’ means the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

The issue of definition here is significant. Let’s look separately at the terms “gender” and “gender identity.” Gender identity does not simply refer to male or female. It’s all about perceptions and behaviors and feelings and one’s “internal, personal sense” of being male or female, or, in some cases, “other.” It’s also reactive against any social or cultural norms that assume people are either one sex or the other.

The trend toward getting inside one's fellow citizen's head to parse attitudes and  feelings got underway with the whole notion of hate crimes.  That development saddled our society with the absurdity of punishing someone already sentenced to lifelong incarceration a few additional years for having offed his fellow citizen for prejudicial reasons.

Now we're expected to have a respect bordering on reverence for our fellow citizens' feelings about being male or female, including, perhaps especially, feeling of resentment toward the type of genitals with which Nature and Nature's God imbued him or her when the chromosomal blueprint was set at the moment of conception.

But what if a person's feelings about all this are vague, or fleeting, or have a record of going back and forth?

And then there are people obsessed with their feeling about other traits besides genitals and hormones - age or race, for instance.  Morabito points out the absurdity of their not being accorded the respect of inclusion in ENDA:

One could easily argue that “age identity” is a far more widespread concern. Some 60-year-olds no doubt identify as 40, no matter their age “designated at birth.” They could follow the ENDA logic to claim they suffer age discrimination in the workplace. Why aren’t schools guilty of discrimination keeping some 12-year-olds who identify as 18, or perhaps as 8, wasting away in middle school classrooms?

Lots of people don’t appreciate being stuck in one type of racial identity or national origin identification either. If one “feels” or “identifies” as Native American or African American, regardless of genetic make-up, why shouldn’t that person get full protection of anti-discrimination law according to ENDA’s logic?

But this legislation (nor any standing law) would not protect any other sense of identity or self-perception. Protecting these other “perceptions” should immediately strike us irrational. So maybe we should consider the idea that self-identities are neither legitimately protected by default nor punished by law.

Morabito then examines the "strict and ever-changing requirements of linguistic gymnastics" that this law imposes on any interaction with one's fellow citizens  in a workplace setting.  It's the next stop on the slippery slope after speech codes and sensitivity training.

I like her examination of the bill's phrase "sex designated at birth," as if the doctor or midwife is the one making the call.  ("Looks like a woo-woo to me. What do you think, Nurse Ratchet?")

Then she points up the totalitarian nature of legal codification of the concept of "appearance and mannerism."  No private organization will have any recourse against its being reduced to a freak show:

No distinctions appear to be allowed. Anything goes, really. It’s disingenuous to believe that employers will have any final say in their office decorum or dress codes once ENDA goes into effect. There’s a section in the legislation stating that matters of “grooming” that are “reasonable” are still up to the employer to decide. But in reality this law leaves it up to judges, bureaucrats, and trial lawyers to decide what is and what isn’t appropriate for any given employer’s business. A mannerism that requires someone’s gender identity to repeatedly say (respectfully, of course) “Yeah, baby!” or wear any manner of distracting apparel? Protected!

It’s naive to believe — at this stage of modern history — that protecting such behavior is beyond the scope of ENDA. The collection of bizarre legal outcomes that one can see resulting from this legislation, all guided by an ever expanding state, all counter-intuitive and counter-productive, should be a matter of concern to all of us.

Objecting to ENDA is not a “socially conservative” position. It is an existential position. Those who sign on to this bill ought to understand that it stands for the un-defining of sex/gender for every American, not just those with different perceptions of their own gender.

The dangers in this kind of legislation are not widely understood. Yet here we are on the precipice. In fact, the enactment of gender identity laws has been happening under the radar for many years, even outpacing same sex marriage legislation. They’ve already passed in 16 states, the District of Columbia, and 143 municipalities throughout the nation. The media is saturated with testimonials of transgender beauty queens, toddlers, and military service members. We likely wouldn’t have heard much from Chastity Bono if she never decided to identify as male and take the name Chaz. Consider one woman-to-man transgender underwent a double mastectomy and took hormones but kept her reproductive organs intact so she could have children. Oprah Winfrey introduced this mother as “the first pregnant man.”

The Freedom-Hater enterprise has perfected its insidious twisting of time-honored words - and here, I'm not thinking so much of "male" and "female" as I am "freedom" - to debase them with a superficiality that in any previous period of human history would have been dismissed as frivolity unworthy of consideration.

But that internal realm of "feelings" and self-referentiality is the only kind of sovereignty we're going to have left in post-America.  You can post all day long about your celebrations of being "liberated" from the constraints of what's between your legs, the pitch of your voice, and your amount of facial hair.  And anyone who points out to your face that you're being ridiculous - or who, in an employment interview, sizes you up as ridiculous and takes a pass on hiring you - will be subject to the some of the sternest disciplinary measures the leviathan state can mete out.

Only certain citizens' internal worlds will past muster.  Fluid feelings about gender will be fine to express, but if your internal world is based on an understanding of Divine Law and the universal need of individual redemption, you will need to keep your disruptive, hurtful mouth shut.

You'll be free to infantilize yourself, but not to actively seek that which is dignified, noble and ennobling.

People with a normal view of all this will say "the hell with it" and close up their productive enterprises.  The state will be at the ready, and the cattle-like masses will be corralled into the pen of dependency.

You will be free as the breeze in ways that matter not at all, and enslaved in the only way that does matter.

Yes, we have a concrete alternative

New Heritage Foundation paper entitled "After Obamacare Repeal: Moving to Patient-Centered, Market-Based health Care."

Do you see the connection?

An executive-branch agency announces that it will launch a totalitarian intrusion into the personal and economic lives of Americans.  Sadly, that's nothing new anymore.

In this case, the FDA is moving toward banning trans fats in our nation's food.  As I say, it's the kind of thing that's done all the time by our overlords.

But why is it more frequent, and destined to keep getting more frequent?

FHer-care.

In any interpersonal dynamic where money is involved, the party paying for whatever is in question gets to call the shots.   It's true for employment, for loans, and it's true for socialized areas of our economy. If government is destined to be paying for upkeep of our bodies (and, it looks like, our minds as well), it will want a lot of bang for its buck.  The masses must not clog their arteries or otherwise fall below regime standards for healthiness, thereby becoming high-maintenance and possibly a subject for discussion at IPAB death-panel meetings.

Never mind the fact that, when this was America, we used to set our own priorities, and even reserved the right to readjust them at will, as in the decision to eat some trans-fat onion rings precisely because they were bursting with that crunchy, greasy pub-food allure.  Alas, that was long ago, when we were each the sovereign masters of our own lives.

Just wow

Who woulda thunk it would be France that would have brought the let-Iran-have-nukes nonsense currently underway in Geneva to a screaming halt?

Another of the Most Equal Comrade's lies that will directly affect your well-being

He said that al-Qaeda was on the run - in fact, decimated.  He was blowing you more of his disingenuous smoke.

Al-Qaeda is anything but:

The State Department has conceded AQIM “played a role” in the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Last summer, U.S. Africa Command noted that AQIM was inviting Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab to come train and join forces in a chunk of terrorist-controlled territory the size of Texas. The French pushed al-Qaeda out of some of its Mali territory, but the strength of the allied groups remains. At a December hearing about this unholy alliance, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs Chairman Chris Coons (D-Del.) noted that U.S. policy in the region might not be “forward-leaning enough.”

In late May, members of Congress received the State Department’s country-by-country annual report on international terrorism with warnings about AQIM’s plunge into Mali, Boko Haram’s continued attacks in Nigeria, and Al-Shabaab’s “asymmetric tactics.” That came on the heels of a strategy speech by President Obama that largely advocated a return to pre-9/11 threat thinking, describing the new peril as “more diffuse.”

“While we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based,” the president added.

In September, at least 67 were killed when Al-Shabaab launched a brazen, gruesome attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, a location popular with foreigners as well as Kenyans. The mass murder and hostage crisis, captured in chilling detail by Reuters and New York Times combat photographers who lived near the mall, hit home as those in the West realized the horrific scene was possible on any number of similar targets — a world away or in their backyard.

Ros-Lehtinen referenced the recently revealed Al-Shabaab plot against the United Nations compound in Mogadishu and further threats against Kenya — and beyond, as the ambitious terror organization broadens its recruitment and financing sources.

“To fight these attacks the Obama administration has to take its head out of the sand and address the real and growing threat and attack it head on,” she said. “If we don’t admit that there’s a problem and ignore it, we’ll see U.S. interests under attack.”

The congresswoman said the al-Qaeda affiliates’ ability to roam freely through such a large part of Northern Africa — “mostly a lawless region” — allows the groups to set up safe havens and raise funds through kidnapping and arms trafficking.

“This is a largely underemphasized threat to U.S. national security interests,” Ros-Lehtinen said, adding that Washington only seems to pay attention “when a horrific terrorist attack breaks loose.”

And the “very weak governments” in the region “don’t have the will and capacity to confront these extremist groups.”

“The administration needs to come to the realization that we’re a long, long way from defeating al-Qaeda.”

These declinist clowns are not securing our nation, let alone caring for our health, educating us or any of the extra-Constitutional functions it has told us government could  handle.

That is the great unaddressed question of the declinist, West-hating worldview: Okay, so you aren't into free markets, the salvation that Christian faith offers the human soul, or basic technological advancement.  Fine.  Maybe some kind of unicorns-and-rainbows society can be crafted in the absence of these things.  But how do you propose to prevent our being murdered in our beds?

And they were the bunch that was used to sell the damn thing

Per new Gallup poll, 78 percent of uninsured Americans aren't interested in signing up for Freedom-Hater-care.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Labor force participation continues to set records - for low numbers.  It's now at 62.8 percent, the lowest level since 1978 - and we all know what era we were living through then.

The latest round of patty-cake began in June

When the MEC heard that Rouhani had been elected president of Iran, he ordered the rate of designation of various Iranian banks and business organizations as sanction violators to drastically slow - even as Iran was setting up new front organizations to get around sanctions anyway.  The MEC regime also visibly opposed new sanctions.

But the mullahs have the MEC's number:

By [Foundation for the Defense of Democracies executive director Mark] Dubowitz’s estimates, Iran is now selling between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil per day on the black market, meaning that Iran has profited from the illicit sale of over 35 million barrels of oil since Rouhani took office, with little additional measures taken by the United States to counter it.                                                            

“Sounds like Obama decided to enter the Persian nuclear bazaar to haggle with the masters of negotiation and has had his head handed to him,” Dubowitz said.

And Global Test is on his way to Geneva right now.  Any bets on whether he signs this dog-vomit agreement?

Smart governors don't expand crappy programs

Great NRO editorial on the MEC's attempt to exhort Texans to exhort Gov. Perry to expand Medicaid. Definitely a dog that won't hunt.

Bibi gains access to Secretary Global Test's ear for a moment before GT leaves for Geneva

. . . and gives him an earful.  Tells him not to sign the agreement about nuclear development with Iran in its current form.  Says it's "a bad deal, a very, very bad deal."

Robert Zarate at the Foreign Policy Initiative explains just why it's so bad.

Secretary GT, don't consign the world to an even greater level of danger, one that would probably usher in a period on human history of irreversible ugliness.

For a little context, consider that GT had just come from a meeting with Israeli officials in which he did nothing to repair the ill will between Israel and the US calling the "settlements" (known to normal people as subdivisions) in the "territories" (that would be Judea and Samaria) "illegtimate".  It ended badly:

The Israeli-Palestinian “peace talks” have reportedly hit a rough patch. The talks on Tuesday were said to have “ended in a row, with raised voices and the exchange of verbal insults.”

It started last week when Israel released the second batch of Palestinian security prisoners, all of whom were serving time for murder or attempted murder. They were welcomed as heroes in Ramallah. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas shook each freed prisoner’s hand, and they were awarded generous cash grants on top of the stipends they already receive.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to allay outrage particularly on the more right-leaning side of his coalition, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the building of 3500 housing units for Israelis—all of them either in East Jerusalem or West Bank (Judea and Samaria) settlement blocs. Several Israeli officials claimed the Palestinian side had already consented to such construction as a quid pro quo for the prisoner releases.

Tuesday’s dustup in the talks was said to have erupted over that issue. The Palestinian negotiators claimed their side had never agreed to such a quid pro quo and slammed the construction itself. Many reports said the talks on the whole were on the verge of collapse. 

Planned decline at home, planned decline on the world stage.  That's our Freedom-Hater overlords.

Requiem for a moribund culture

Great Charlotte Hays column at Townhall on how the funeral selfie is emblematic of the advanced stage of rot that characterizes our culture.

She cites some pretty ridiculous examples of funeral selfies and then explores how all-about-me-ism came to ascend to its prominent place in our society:

We live in a society in which children are taught vanity in school—of course, we call it self-esteem, but that is just a euphemism for vanity, one of the classic vices. 

Her ruminations lead her to a consideration of how even Christianity has succumbed to the need to be "relevant" and thereby abnegate their role as transmitters of tradition and civilization:

Churches and synagogues afforded an informal education about our history. If you belonged to a traditional church, you probably learned who Charlemagne was, and you could identify the figures in Renaissance art. That’s no longer the case. Camille Paglia, an atheist art historian who nevertheless has an appreciation for the beauty engendered by “organized religion,” has taught students who can’t quite place Adam and Eve or Moses. “If you are an artist and don’t recognize the name of Moses,” Paglia told Emily Esfahani Smith, “then the West is dead. It’s over. It has committed suicide.”

Are we to celebrate this suicide? Too much of our culture, self-absorbed as they are, seem willing to disregard the civilization that has laid the groundwork for their all-too frivolous existence. The irony is that the first victims of culture vacuum sucking the soul from the Western world will be those who celebrate its demise. 

By the way, I think I'd like to read her new book, When Did White Trash Become the New Normal: A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question.

And just what kind of "love" holds a couple like this together?

How do such people define the term "family?"  Do they consider the two of them family?

A Texas married couple turns up preggers and gets all indignant because it's difficult for them to exterminate their kid:

The Chicks on the Right parse the levels on which this just blows the mind:

1. Marni and John say that the part of the Texas law that insists doctors have hospital admitting privileges to perform abortions violates their rights.  Except that it doesn't, because there are places they can go IN THEIR OWN FREAKING CITY.  Texas hasn't changed anything about a woman's ability to obtain an abortion at 6 weeks.  All Texas did was require that clinics that perform abortions have a certain level of safety standards in place. The Planned Parenthood that Marni wanted to go to didn't have doctors on staff who had bothered to get admitting privileges at any of the hospitals.  That's not Texas' fault, nor is it an infringement on Marni's "rights" to kill her unborn kid.

 

2.  Every last argument that this couple made about justifying their "choice" was so self-serving and so completely without regard to the fact that there was another human life at stake.  They were all, "Abortion has such a stigma" as if that's a BAD THING.  People shouldn't be looking at abortion as some sort of insignificant act.  It's brutal and life-ending.  And these two people are acting as though they've been violated in some way.  Please.

 

3.  The couple is seemingly oblivious to the fact that abortion isn't the only solution to avoid having to raise a child.  It's as if they've never even HEARD THE WORD "adoption."  The reasons they list for not having a kid have nothing to do the pregnancy itself.  Did you notice that?  It was all about the "health of their relationship" and "do they have enough of a foundation built up" and money and whatnot. 

Planned Parenthood is spouting off this nonsense about the TX law:

“This restriction clearly violates Texas women’s constitutional rights by drastically reducing access to safe and legal abortion statewide. We will take every step we can to protect the health of Texas women in the wake of this ruling.”

Except that THEY AREN'T.  Abortions are still accessible.  Doctors can go get some freaking admitting privileges to hospitals if they want.  And if they don't want to, shouldn't that be a red flag anyway?  HELLO.  Why are liberals so hell-bent on having women get abortions in strip mall-like places? How can they even begin to suggest they're looking out for women's safety, when they're busying themselves with campaigns called the Stigma Relief Fund?

They don't care about women's health and safety.  They care only about accessibility and providing as many baby-killing procedures as possible, and about making women who kill their babies feel awesome about it.  This is what they care about.

When Leviathan has convinced us by hook or crook to give up that last shred of our humanity, there will probably be a series of posh and clever cocktail parties across post-America to celebrate.

Not your father's afternoon at the stadium

Two recent news items from the sports world make for telling glimpses into the impact larger cultural changes have had on that realm.

On ESPN's Around the Horn show, commentator Kevin Blackistone  said that singing of the national anthem prior to football games should be given the 86:

Whether it’s the singing of a war anthem to open every game. Whether it’s going to get a hotdog and being able to sign up for the Army at the same time. Whether it’s the NFL's embrace of the mythology of the Pat Tillman story. It has been going on in sports since the first national anthem was played in the World Series back in 1917. And it’s time for people to back away.

Then there's this bullying / harassment situation between Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin of the Miami Dolphins.  Leon H. Wolf at Red State examines the implications:

I am not here to talk about “football culture,” either to attack or defend it. I’ve never played organized football, at any level, so I can’t comment on that. Nor am I here to defend what Incognito said or say it makes sense within the context of some sort of “tough love” program to mold Martin. Having read the transcripts of the voicemail and texts, I’d have never said those things even in jest. Nor am I here to defend some sort of macho ideal of what a football player should be.

The issue, which Phillips and so many media yakking heads continually gloss over, is whether Martin’s reaction, however genuine, was appropriate to the stimulus that prompted it, given what we as a society expect from adults of Martin’s age. Phillips and others cannot see to this point – to this class of person (which tends to be liberal), there is no such thing as how a person ought to feel, there is only how they do feel. And if how they feel is genuine, however irrational, then it needs to be “honored” and coddled.

A society cannot long survive in the complete absence of expectations about behavior in response to stimuli. If no one can ever say, “Hey man, you need to throttle it back, as a grown adult you should be able to handle this,” without themselves being the bad guy in the situation, we may as well all pack it up and go home. We had a nice run, America, time to let someone else have a try.

And it’s perfectly appropriate to say, as New York Giants offensive lineman Antrel Rolle did, that Incognito’s actions were deplorable, while at the same time recognizing that as an adult, people are always going to try to push your boundaries, and your reaction to that can’t always be to capitulate and surrender. And in fact, when we see someone’s reaction that seems so out of bounds in terms of proportion to the stimuli that caused it, it’s definitely probative as to whether we believe the genuineness of the reaction, especially when contradictory evidence continues to surface indicating that Martin may not have been as upset about the text messages as he is now claiming at the time he received him, and given that Martin’s play on the field was roundly criticized before this incident ever occurred.

And yes, we should all be glad that if Martin was in the middle of a breakdown, he went to the hospital rather than getting a gun and shooting up the Dolphins’ locker room, as some have suggested. But does that mean that we can under no circumstances say, “Great, Jonathan, but maybe next time let’s work on some coping skills so you don’t have to go to the hospital next time you get a mean text message?” While we are busy burying the Dolphins’ organization for failure of oversight (over what two fully grown adults were doing over the privacy of a cell phone connection), can we at least ask whether Martin’s family, college, and high school coaches ought to have better prepared him to handle himself when someone upset him?

Then there's the NBA's "Green Initiative."   It's clear that the sports, a realm of human activity the focus of which is supposed to be refinement of certain abilities that enable one to win a particular game at ever-higher levels of competitiveness, has become, like music, like even much science education, fetile ground for the encroachment of the FHer agenda.  The personal is definitely now political.  Nothing is off limits in the realization of the overlords' vision of a completely leveled - and docile - society.