Along with being financially unsustainable (the CLASS Act) and unconstitutional (the individual mandate), Obamacare also contains provisions that are nothing more or less than an assault on religious mores. Among other things, Obamacare requires any health care facility in the United States to offer contraceptives. Not a big deal, you might say, but you might not be in the business of operating a Catholic hospital. 

Under the 2010 health care law colloquially known as “Obamacare,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human services is determinedly plowing forward with its so-called “contraceptive mandate”—all private health plans are to cover contraception and sterilization as “preventive services” for women, and the mandate includes individuals and groups with moral or religious objections. 

This is a policy so clumsily intrusive that even the University of Notre Dame is complaining about it; President Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, said the mandate places Notre Dame (and, of course, all Catholic colleges) in an “impossible position” of having to defy Church teaching. “[The mandate] would compel Notre Dame to either pay for contraception and sterilization in violation of the church’s moral teaching, or to discontinue our employee and student health care plans in violation of the church’s social teaching, 

The government’s position is that their notion of “women’s health” must trump moral or religious concerns. It seems that one of the most fundamental freedoms provided for by our Constitution and the Bill of Rights ends at the beginning of a double-X chromosome.

That's not the only example of the secular leftist state seeking to bring religious institutions to heel. In Illinois, Catholic Charities is going out of the business of placing children for adoption because a court has upheld the state's demand that all adoption services be willing to place kids with same-sex couples. And the Obama Administration just finished arguing in the Supreme Court that the government should have the final say in determining whether someone is "ministering" for a church, a case that arose, not surprisingly, from an employment dispute of the sort beloved by the Left. Russell Shaw, for one, sees this as de facto if not de jure persecution. 

The persecution of religion in America has begun, with the Catholic Church a prime target.

Don’t think I’m making the wild-eyed claim that this new persecution either is or ever is likely to become a bloody one resembling the purges of the French and Mexican revolutions or the communist war on religion—eruptions of violence in which thousands of clergy, religious, and lay faithful were killed. It won’t be a repetition of the Spanish Civil War, just 75 years ago, when death squads of the anticlerical left executed the incredible total of 12 bishops, 283 religious women, 4,184 priests, 2,365 religious men, and an unknown number of laity whose only crime was to be faithful Catholics.

No, the persecution of religion in the United States won’t be like that. It will be a tight-lipped campaign of secularist inspiration in which the coercive power of the state is brought to bear on church-related institutions to act against conscience or go out of business.

The hostility that Democrats hold against all religious persons should be obvious. Along with the daily insults against the "anti-science" theocrats on the Right, Democrats have attacked religious expression at every turn. Catholics are under particular assault, as the Church's teachings on abortion, pre-marital sex, and contraception are absolutely antithetical to the Left's more, uh, groovy approach to the issues. Yet, Catholics are, more often than not, Democrats. More important, the loudest proponents of Obamacare - I'm thinking Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy, especially - are showy in their Catholicism, going as far as to invoke the Church's charitable works in arguing for the government's taking control of the health care system. Even as they waved their rosary beads, though, they must have known that their carefully crafted legislation would hit Catholic charitable works where they live - at the intersection of faith and compassion. 


And what's the Church's response to this? Letters! Outraged letters! I'm not expecting bishops to be lying down in front of tanks or anything, but they should at least be willing to look at the world as it is and not how they wish it were. It is the the institutions of the Left, whether the ACLU, the Democrat Party, the Academy, Hollywood that have attacked the Church. Yes, the First Amendment can protect their religious freedom, but you actually have to use the First Amendment, not just let it sit there on the page. That means speaking out against those politicians who have shown themselves to be anti-Catholic in their legislating. It means suing to defend your rights. And, if needed, it means disobeying any law that would force the Church to give up its teachings in exchange for remaining in the government's good graces. 


Do that and you will find wide majorities support you, even if they are not Catholic. Do nothing, and they won't even know you are in trouble. 

Herman Cain appeared on Meet The Press this morning. This can be nerve-wracking for Republicans to watch, as "our" side is always walking into a buzz saw of hostile questioning seeking stuttering responses to  various gotcha questions and requests to name their favorite Supreme Court decisions. The expectation was that Cain - who has never held elective office and is thereby "unelectable" - would have at least one awkward moment, if not a candidacy-scuttling meltdown. 


Turns out we didn't have to worry. Cain "nailed" MTP, (in the estimation of Althouse) and managed to make David Gregory look foolish and even ignorant about fundamental questions about taxation and federalism. Just look what Cain does with Gregory's attempts to discredit 9-9-9 by bringing up the effect Cain's plan would have once state taxes are factored in:          

MR. GREGORY:  The other defect in the plan comes from fellow conservatives who say, "You've got some problems here." This is what The Wall Street Journal said about it this past week.  "The real political defect," the Journal writes, "of the Cain plan is that it imposes a new national sales tax while maintaining the income tax.  Mr. Cain's rates are seductively low, but the current income tax was introduced in 1913 with a top rate of 7 percent amid promises that it would never exceed 10 percent.  By 1918 the top rate was 77 percent.  The politics of a national sales tax is bad enough on its own.  A 9 percent rate when combined with state and local levies would mean a tax on goods of 17 percent or more in many places.  The cries for exemptions would be great."

MR. CAIN:  Don't combine it with state taxes.  This doesn't address state taxes.  If you add them together, yes, you'll get that number.  This is a replacement structure.  These are replacement taxes.  They're not on top of anything.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. CAIN:  We replace capital gains tax.  We replace the payroll tax.  We replace corporate income tax, replace personal income tax, and replace the death tax.  It is a replacement tax structure.

MR. GREGORY:  But where do state taxes go?  You're saying they're going to be repealed?

MR. CAIN:  If you--with the current structure, you have state taxes, right? So with this new structure, you're still going to have taxes--state taxes. That is muddying the water.

MR. GREGORY:  How so?

MR. CAIN:  Because today, under the current tax code, state taxes are there if they have it.  If they don't have a state taxes, they don't have it.  It has nothing to do with this replacement structure for the federal tax code.

MR. GREGORY:  But that doesn't make any sense to me.  If I'm already paying state taxes, and I have a new Cain administration national sales tax, I've got more state taxes

MR. CAIN:  No you don't.

MR. GREGORY:  How so?

MR. CAIN:  David, David

MR. GREGORY:  You're not saying they're going away.

MR. CAIN:  Your state taxes are the same.  Your federal taxes, in most cases, are going to go down.  That's muddying the water.

MR. GREGORY:  The Wall Street Journal says you have one on top of the other. There's a combined levy.

MR. CAIN:  That is not correct, David.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MR. CAIN:  Let's try this one more time.  State taxes are there today.  The current tax code is a 10 million word mess.  You have probably 100--you have thousands of loopholes and tricks and what I call "sneak attaxes" in the current code.  State taxes today, whatever they are, zero or some number, has nothing to do with replacing the tax code.  Nothing.

Geez, David! Mr. Cain is speaking very slowly and clearly (and, no doubt, politely restraining himself from using too many $5 words), and you just can't seem to grasp that (1) states collect their own sales and income taxes now (2) they will continue to collect their own sales and income taxes in the future and, most important (3) there's nothing an American president can do to change that. Quite the opposite. 


(actually, it just occurred to me that, were the federal tax bite be reduced, Blue States would probably raise their income tax rates. Right now, even tax-happy places like NY and CA don't dare raise their income tax rates much beyond 10%, given the sizable bite the feds take. With a reduced 9% federal rate, don't you want to bet CA would be much more willing to raise its income tax to 35 - 40%?)


Herman Cain may not be a professional politician. He might be unelectable. But, unlike a lot of the pros in the Republican ranks, Cain was able to enter one of the MSM's lions dens and use common sense and the facts to turn David Gregory's talking-points based questions upside down. Why can't all of our guys do this?

Drudge is headlining this as "Obamacare Unraveling," and that certainly is true. The Obama Administration has announced that it is canceling the section of Obamacare called the CLASS Act for being so unsustainable as to even horrify liberals.     

The Obama administration's signature health overhaul law, under relentless assault by Republicans, has suffered its first major casualty - a long-term care insurance plan.

The program, expected to launch in 2012, had been dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.

Proponents, including many groups that fought to pass the health care law, have vowed a vigorous effort to rescue the program, insisting that Congress gave the administration broad authority to make changes. Long-term care includes not only nursing homes, but such services as home health aides for disabled people.
...
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a long-standing priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. The money could go for services at home or to help with nursing home bills.

But a central design flaw dogged CLASS. Unless large numbers of healthy people willingly sign up during their working years, soaring premiums driven by the needs of disabled beneficiaries would destabilize it, eventually requiring a taxpayer bailout.

The CLASS Act was supposed to accomplish three things:  provide "free" long-term care for the elderly, burnish the Dems' reputation for compassion, and (most important) provide a crucial bit of accounting legerdemain to allow the CBO to score the overall health care law as being a budget reducer. The part about CLASS being a budget reduction program was especially ludicrous, almost silly, but its consequences were deadly serious for us all 

 In deep-sixing the CLASS Act, the Administration just forfeited $86 billion in savings on the Affordable Care Act. That’s because the CLASS Act was a net revenue positive in the ten-year window of the legislation, because it collected more in premiums that it paid out in the early years, according to CBO scoring.

So the effective nullification of the CLASS Act costs $86 billion. But it’s unlikely that $86 billion will be made up in any other way. If Congress repealed the CLASS Act, they might have to find offsets. But since the White House just isn’t going to implement the program, the savings won’t be realized but nobody has to worry about paygo or anything. It just blows a hole in the medium-term budget.

Forget everything else, you know there is something wrong with the system when an unsustainable entitlement program can be scored as, not just budget neutral, but as reducing the budget. This is a prime example of the cynic's phrase "the real scandal is what's legal." A lot of folks on the right have mused aloud that, were a CEO to offer the same number of outrageous lies used to pass Obamacare, he would be in Club Fed for life. Not so if you are a member of Congress or the President! Not only do they have legislative and executive immunity for their official acts, but they seem to have a near-bulletproof electoral immunity as well. 


Not that this matters to the Left. People are already pitching a bitch over the Obama Administration's "cave." Cave to what? Math? Human nature? Not everything bad in the world happens because of racist Reupblicans, you know. 


(Btw, according to this report, Judd Gregg was the one who managed to insert the requirement that CLASS be certified as sustainable over 75 years, which is what ultimately lead HHS to conclude the program couldn't be implemented as drafted. Sometimes those moderate NE Republicans can teach the rest of us a thing or two).


Every Republican in Congress voted against Obamacare. Conservatives rallied nationwide to protest its passage. Joe Wilson correctly, if rudely, yelled out "You Lie!" at some of Obama's most egregious whoppers (spoken at a joint session of Congress). And, most memorably, tens of thousands of people trooped to DC on the weekend of Obamacare's passage, surrounded the Capitol Building, and vigorously  protested the impending cram down. For this we were called racist and worse. No, we were worried that a group of people who have no grasp of economic or common sense had seized the treasury and were re-writing some of the most basic economic relationships in our society. Sorry if you are offended when it turns out we were right. 


On the other hand, every liberal in the land will no doubt defend Obamacare with all the usual well-thought out arguments about dog food, dead babies, and wearing your sister's dentures. It will simply never occur to them that their crazy anecdotes are not representative of the overall health care system, nor will it occur to them that market-based reforms - such as simply allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines the same way you sell freakin' toilet paper - will do a lot more good than their Brobdingnagian schemes.

Mitt Romney famously has trouble convincing the GOP base that he is a reliable candidate for president. Mostly this arises from the undeniable fact that he is a NE Republican and former governor of Massachusetts (for heaven's sake!) who repeatedly embraces left-wing causes such as health care reform, cap & trade, and China bashing a little too quickly and comfortably. It is a legitimate question whether the man who helped pass a larval version of Obamacare in MA is really the person to lead the repeal of the Democrats' hard won health care reform bill. It's no wonder that, while Mitt has been maintaining about 20-25% support in polls, he has not been able to convince the 75-80% of GOP primary voters who have been actively seeking out the "Not Romney" candidate.

Chris Christie has decided that "now is not the time" to run for President. Sarah Palin has apparently made a similar decision. But, never mind. Have you seen what Herman Cain has been saying to the Occupy Wall Street folks? 

HH: All right, now Mr. Cain, I would like you to begin by addressing directly the Occupy Wall Street crowd. What do you want to say to them? If we play them a tape of Herman Cain over a loudspeaker down on Wall Street, what do you want this crowd to hear?

HC: I would want this crowd to hear first, your success is not dependent upon wishing that someone else is not successful. Blaming Wall Street and blaming big banks, and blaming those that have succeeded in America under our free market system is never going to make you happy, and it’s never going to make you rich. Secondly, if you really want to do something to create jobs in this country, why don’t you go and picket the White House. That’s why where we have failed economic policies. That’s where we have policies that have kept unemployment up over 9%. You’re picketing the wrong source. It’s not those that have produced in this country. It’s the failed policies of this administration. If you look in the mirror, you will realize that the only person that you can blame for what you don’t have is the person you’re looking at in the mirror.

That there is the voice of the Daddy Party. It is also the sound of the first GOP presidential candidate who has directly addressed the leftists who have done, and are doing, so much damage to this country, whether while strolling through the corridors of power, or yelling incoherently at the latest of their endless mob actions. Hope Cain survives his "vetting" because right now he's saying the same things I'm saying when I yell at the TV.

After another rocky debate performance, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the White House, said in a Friday speech that Republicans should not necessarily back "the smoothest debater" for president.

"As conservatives we know that values and vision matter. It’s not who is the slickest candidate or the smoothest debater that we need to elect. We need to elect the candidate with the best record and the best vision for this country," he said at a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida. "The current occupant of the White House can sure talk a good game, but he doesn’t deliver."

Bachmann said last night on Greta that a woman came up to her after the debate, crying, and said that her daughter had been given the Garadsil vaccination and as a result had suffered mental retardation. Bachmann says that Perry shouldn’t just be given a mulligan on this because there are significant consequences to the decision he made to mandate Gardasil.

The first thing you need to know about Rick Perry is that he is (or has been) a flagrant adulterer. The second thing you need to know is that Perry is a man who constantly uses religion and Christian Bible talk for his own political advancement, while living a double life.

Nor does Perry understand or appreciate free market capitalism and the importance of low taxes for all; Perry is a crony capitalist and he likes to spend and borrow lots of money. Perry does not respect parental rights (HPV mandate).Rick Perry, a 25 year career politician, is for the endless, costly undeclared wars; he is for an unaccountable Federal Reserve banking cartel making multi-trillion dollar interventions in a free market; he is for the Patriot Act and its assault on your privacy.

The same man who used a presidential prayer rally (8/6/11) for his personal ambitions and who often spouts Christian buzzwords and Bible talk to advance his political career is a flagrant adulterer, having sex with women who are the approximate age of his daughter Sydney, age 24.



I know this because I am a patron of Austin strip clubs. My friends and excellent contacts in the Austin strip club community tell me that Rick Perry, a la Bill Clinton, has an enabling entourage who gets him “young hotties” to have sex with – both here in Austin and especially when he is on the road. I learned about this before the 2010 Texas primary. I had an attractive stripper tell me about her direct dealings with Rick Perry. She said that she was attempting a Monica Lewinsky-type act upon Gov. Rick Perry (oral sex) but that in her words Perry was “too coked up” to perform sexually! When it came time for the stripper to leave, Perry gave her an outrageous amount of money, so large in fact that it probably means that Perry is taking cash bribes or illegal gifts to fund his extracurricular activities. Perry is not a rich man and I doubt he is spending that much of his own money on the women. (Actually sweetheart real estate deals have made the man unusual money.)

Another young woman, who has had direct dealings with Perry’s enabling entourage, told me that Perry is especially flagrantly adulterous when he goes on the road. She said that Perry has sex with the “young hotties” and that Perry and his entourage are literally having orgies in his hotel room. They are either calling escort services or picking up “young hotties” impressed by an arrogant, entitled governor of Texas .

Recently a local Austin reporter was telling me that they had heard about Rick Perry and the strippers in 2006, but they never could nail it down. Well, consider it confirmed. Additionally, there are many people in Austin who are convinced that the man is a homosexual or has had gay affairs in the past. I have never met a man who has had sex with Rick Perry, but I have met women who have had direct dealings with Adulterer Rick Perry and his enabling entourage. Perry has most definitely been living a double life.

That brings up another disqualifying characteristic of Perry: he is arrogant. Rick Perry knows his adultery rap sheet and liability more than anyone else. Perry is fully aware of the tremendous amount of risk this brings to the Republican party, his political career, his personal life and reputation. Yet, Rick Perry, drunk with arrogance and entitlement, presents himself as a legitimate presidential candidate when he is anything but that. Adulterer Rick Perry is sitting on a keg of slut-fueled nitroglycerine that if it ever exploded, would make Anthony Weiner look like a mere pimple popping.

The House postponed a Thursday night vote on Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the federal borrowing limit after he failed to stem a revolt by conservative GOP members. The delay leaves the credit status of the U.S. government in jeopardy with five days remaining before it begins running out of money to pay all its bills

The development came after a two-hour debate on the bill was abruptly ended earlier in the evening. Mr. Boehner, knowing that a rejection could undermine his speakership, then joined other House GOP leaders in trying to pressure party members to reconsider their opposition.

Those efforts fell short and it wasn't clear if the vote would be rescheduled. But the development appeared to hand the initiative for the moment to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who is pushing an alternative version of the debt bill.

House Republicans and Senate Democrats planned to meet Friday morning at 10 a.m. to plan strategy. Republicans will figure out whether, and how, they can move forward.

What has me worried is the idea that the Democrats ACTUALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE END OF THE ROAD. What if they actually aren’t capable of recognizing when they’ve lost? Or when we’ve run out of other people’s money? None of these people work for a living. Their concept of where money comes from and how wealth is created (and destroyed) is completely divorced from reality because they live in a government bubble. And the very small minority among them that do understand this from previous jobs and experience are okay with Progressive policies aimed at leveling/equalizing/delivering-economic-justice because they just assume that the economy can handle some siphoning. And usually it can. But not at this volume or for this time scale.