Just In Time for Christmas: Ben Nelson's Sell-Out, Budget-Busting Boondoggles & Other Democrat Antics

* Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill. “The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

* The federal ban on abortion funding that has been in effect under the Hyde Amendment since 1977 will be ended with Ben Nelson agreeing to the Senate bill. “The abortion language in this bill funds abortion for the first time since 1977,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “We are told this is a pro-life bill. It is not.”

* Democrat Senator Richard Burr was ticked off at Ben Nelson for working his hypocritical stance in order to get Nebraska a deal on Medicaid funds. “You have to compliment Ben Nelson for playing the price is right,” Burr said. “This isn’t the Louisiana Purchase. This is the Nebraska windfall.”

* Mark Steyn answered a Facebook friend who asked him, "Can we officially retire the phrases 'blue dog' democrats and 'pro life' democrats? Because there is no such thing:" Steyn said, "As I wrote back in the summer, 'Put not your trust in Blue Dog Democrats.' It was folly to bet the Republic on the likes of Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and other 'moderates' who are, by definition, trimmers and accommodationists."

* Yuval Levin writes in NRO, "The story of the day is certainly Sen. Ben Nelson’s shameless perfidy — giving up his pro-life principles in return for swindling taxpayers in the other 49 states into paying all of Nebraska’s future new Medicaid costs. The deal he struck would undermine both the logic underlying the Hyde Amendment and the logic underlying the Medicaid system. There is no conceivable policy argument for the way the new bill treats Nebraska, it’s simply a case of a senator’s vote being purchased with taxpayer dollars."

* Finally, you'll certainly want to check out the Wall Street Journal's editorial bemoaning the new politics of shame. An excerpt:

...Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce..

The Dangerous Joke That Was the Copenhagen Summit

As always, Gerald Warner is well worth reading. Here is the first part of his splendid evaluation of the Copenhagen summit. The entire column (and you'll want to read it, I guarantee) is right here.

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics...

What's Next?

2009: When "Globalism" Turned from a Catchword Into a Command

...2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)

Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word "global", as in "global economic crisis", meant: "It's not my fault". To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.

The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational "legally binding agreements", what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro‑bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run...

(Janet Daley, "There'll Be Nowhere to Run from the New World Government," Telegraph, December 19)

Ben Nelson Sold Out!

He got his moment in the press spotlight and then did just what we all feared (and some of us suspected), he caved-in completely. There's no way to spin this. He sold out to the radical leftists now running the Democrat Party and now is on board with the most extreme of abortion rights agitators.

Nebraskans must begin working right now to remove Ben Nelson from the Senate at the next opportunity.

Says Kathryn Jean Lopez,

This is no compromise. The abortion language is on page 38. It's not Stupak.States can opt out of covering abortions. But abortion in states that don't opt out will be covered by federal dollars (including by taxpayers who oppose abortion).

I'm reminded of the recent Manhattan Declaration this morning. It ends with: "Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s." This language raises some serious questions. I wonder if Bart Stupak has already been on the horn to the Speaker ... the showdown may be the House yet.

and...

Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray declare their support for the current faux compromise:

We said all along that we wanted to ensure there was a firewall between private and public funds - this compromise achieves that. We said we would not accept language that prohibited a woman from using her own private funds for her legal reproductive health care - this compromise meets that test.

And we said we would stop Stupak - which we did. Let's be clear - we were both much happier with the Capps language and the language in the underlying bill. But compromise was necessary to get a health care bill for the American people, and this compromise achieves that.

Jonah Goldberg writes, "Here's what I'm hearing. The deal for Ben Nelson includes additional Medicaid funding for Nebraska and carve outs for physician owned hospitals in Nebraska — and Nebraska only. Uncle Sam will take the hit for 100% of the Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, forever. Nebraska is the only state to get this deal. It profits a man nothing give his soul for the whole world, but for Medicaid funding carve outs..."

Today's Posts

An Indispensable Part of the Pro-Life Case? The Science of Embryology.

Sarah Smiles

Christmas Quiz --- Number Two

It's the Over-Spending, Stupid.

Is It Ideology? Is It Ego? Why Doesn't Obama Get It?

Photo Shop vs Truth in Advertising

“Don’t Think We’re Not Keeping Score, Brother.”

An Indispensable Part of the Pro-Life Case? The Science of Embryology.

Here is a most compelling interview in which writer Sue Ellin Browder asks Maureen Condic, associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah School of Medicine and a senior fellow at The Westchester Institute for Ethics & the Human Person, about the cold, hard facts revealed by the ever-advancing science of embryology.

I recommend you not only read it but probably print it off and save it for future reference. After all, there's nothing better to "spice up" your letters to editors, politicians, etc. than some indisputable science.

(Hat tip: Hyscience)

Sarah Smiles

...Palin feels at ease with Middle America, and in a strange way is the antithesis to Barack Obama. Both are young, and charismatic, and appeal to populist constituencies. But whereas Obama came out of a Honolulu prep school and elite Ivy League hot-house, and had to acquire, quite artificially, his street credentials at the foot of Rev. Wright and in the Chicago scratch-back world of Valerie Jarrett and Mayor Daley, Palin was a true product of the working class and took on rather than swam into the status quo political structure.

That fact was sadly lost in 2008, but it is starting to ring true as her popularity rises and Obama’s declines. Remember, though, these are mostly perceptions still, and Palin will have to give long interviews, do debates, lecture, write, and show a public grasp of the issues in the way that earlier charismatic, non-career politicians like Eisenhower and Reagan could—in contrast to flash in the pans like a Wesley Clark. For 2008 and much of 2009 the left and the media successfully caricatured her as a creationist, white-supremacist, Christianist nut, but that demonization is wearing off. Quite simply, the more the public sees her, the more it likes her—and that’s not true of most politicians like a Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid—or Barack Obama...

(This is Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, in an excerpt from a superbly informative interview of him about Sarah Palin by FrontPage Magazine's Jamie Glazov. Check out the rest right here.)

Christmas Quiz --- Number Two

Again, from the pages of our "Making the Most of Christmas" packet, here's the second Christmas quiz. (Others will be posted in the next few days and over here is the first.)

1) Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in: A) 1776 B) 1895 C) 1914 D) 1933

2) The boar's head was a favorite dish in the traditional English Christmas feast. According to legend, the choice of this dish dates back to the Middle Ages when a particularly rowdy boar was killed by: A) St. Nicholas B) St. George C) King Wenceslas D) Choking to death on a book of Greek philosophy

3) Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, and Father Christmas are all names referring to what genuine Christian hero? A) Alexander the Great B) Saint Nicholas C) Joseph of Arimathea D) Old King Cole

4) What plant is called the "Flower of the Holy Night" in Mexico? A) Winter's Rose B) Navidad de Valencia C) Poinsettia D) Picolino

5) Most countries commemorate the visit of the Magi on what day? A) December 8 B) December 14 C) December 25 D) January 6

6) What traditional Christmas dish has a name that means "to swell or raise"? A) Egg nog B) Plum pudding C) Divinity D) Marzipan

7) On Christmas Eve in 1944, a terrible tragedy occurred but accurate news of the event was unavailable for a long time afterwards. What was it? A) The sinking of the S.S. Leopoldville B) The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria C) The Boxer Rebellion in China D) Amelia Earhart's airplane crashed in the South Pacific

8) The famous defense of Santa Claus' existence written by the New York Sun in 1897 was written in response to a letter written by a little girl named: A) Belinda B) Mary C) Brooke D) Virginia

9) The first film version of Babes in Toyland starred what comedy team? A) Marx Brothers B) Laurel and Hardy C) Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland D) Martin & Lewis E) Lucy & Desi

10) When Santa is in Finland, he chooses a different form of transportation than the sleigh he uses in the USA. What is it? A) A magic carpet B) A horse C) A goat named Ukko D) A white elk named Grizel

11) The details we have about the Advent of Jesus come from what New Testament books? A) All four gospels B) Matthew & Luke C) The gospel of John D) The epistles of Peter

12) In both Idaho and Indiana there is a town named: A) Christmas City B) Yuletide C) Tiny Tim D) Santa Claus

13) The day after Christmas, December 26, is known as Boxing Day in England and elsewhere. It is also the holy day associated with what saint? A) St. Stephen B) St. Nicholas C) St. Boniface D) St. Jerome

14) This traditional Christmas item was popularized by St. Francis of Assisi in 13th Century Italy. A) Crèche (nativity scene) B) Advent calendar C) Mistletoe D) Holly wreathes E) Lighted Christmas trees

15) In Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," which spirit leads Ebenezer Scrooge to a cemetery? A) Christmas Past B) Christmas Present C) Christmas Future D) None of the spirits took Scrooge to a cemetery. It was Tiny Tim.



Answers: 1) B -- American inventor, Ralph E. Morris is credited with the first use of electric Christmas lights. His purpose was to find something safer than candles which started more house fires than one could count. 2) D -- Yes, the story suggests a student saved himself from a charging boar by throwing a book of Aristotle's writings at it. The boar greedily gulped down the book, choked itself, and thus became a meal for the student and his colleagues. 3) B 4) C -- The Poinsettia is named after an American ambassador to Mexico who "discovered" the pretty flower in the 1820's. 5) D (January 6 is Epiphany) 6) B – There are no plums in traditional plum pudding! 7) A 8) D 9) B 10) C – Ukko is supposedly made of straw. 11) B 12) D 13) A 14) A 15) C

It's the Over-Spending, Stupid.

The Cato Institute and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation have teamed up to produce some excellent videos explaining...well, let's call it Economics 101.

Here's their latest, a 5-minute clip hosted by Dan Mitchell showing how deficits are not the biggest financial problem we have -- out of control spending is.

Is It Ideology? Is It Ego? Why Doesn't Obama Get It?

Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Post, has Barack Obama's number.

Of all the surprises of President Obama's first year, the biggest is his continuing tin ear for the mood of the country. He often appears clueless about what Americans want. Almost from the moment he stepped into the Oval Office, the man who smashed the Clinton machine and won an electoral landslide over John McCain seemed to lose his touch with the people who put him there.

Some days, many days, he doesn't look like he cares that big chunks of the country, left, right and center, are giving up on him.

Voters by a large margin have said for months they don't want the health-care overhaul he's pushing, so he pushes harder. They want less spending and debt, so he doubles down on pork, bailouts, handouts and taxes. They thought he would deliver bipartisanship, and he gives his hard-left allies the keys to the kingdom. They worry about terrorism, so he wants to close Gitmo and move the worst of the worst to the homeland. With Ground Zero still a mess, he gives the 9/11 plotters civilian trials in New York.

His approval ratings are speeding downhill and some 60 percent say the country is on the wrong track. He responds by giving himself a "good solid B-plus" for his first year. And he says Wall Street bankers "don't get it."

It comes as no surprise, of course, that our young president has a very, very high opinion of himself. But it is nonetheless shocking he remains so brazenly self-righteous in the face of growing public discontent.

A damn-the-torpedoes style of leadership would be welcome if he were an optimist brandishing an inclusive, sunny-side up vision. He's not. He's too often testy, churlish and downright whiny. His vision is little more than a string of gauzy utopian platitudes glued together with fear, as when he told fellow Dems yesterday that the flawed health-bill represented "the last chance" for reform. The last chance? Forever?

His charge that bankers have an obligation "to help rebuild the economy" by making more and presumably riskier loans boggles the mind. Low standards are the hair of the dog that led to liar loans and other housing disasters. By all means, let's do it again.

When something goes wrong, it's not his fault. "Fat-cat bankers," "greedy" insurance companies, doctors who do amputations just for the money, special interests, the media -- the media! -- have all taken their turns being blamed for what he hasn't fixed. The buck doesn't stop on his desk!

If all other scapegoats fail, there's always George W. Bush. Pressed during last Sunday's "60 Minutes" interview on his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Obama shared his pain and slandered Bush -- all to distinguish his troop surge from his predecessor's. "One of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war," Obama said. "There was a tendency to say, 'We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.' When, in fact, this is a tough business."

So even when he reaches the same conclusion as Bush, pursues the same enemy, relies on the same commanders and the same Defense secretary, it's different.

Why? Because he says so.

Photo Shop vs Truth in Advertising

At least in England the air brush forces are being rebuffed -- by an act of Parliament, no less. But the tipping point wasn't about news "photographs" manipulated to promote a particular bias regarding the Iraqi war or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; rather it is a reaction against a beauty company's distorting reality in order to sell cold cream.

It was Olay's retouching photographs of Twiggy last summer that brought the issue to British lawmakers. At 59, the former super model still looks fantastic but skeptics nevertheless concluded that her photos in the Definity eye cream ads were just a bit too free of crow's feet, wrinkles and under-eye bags to be real.

They were right. The pics had been doctored. And now they've actually been banned by the U.K's Advertising Standards Authority.

Commercials being required to tell the truth? I'm all for it. Now if we could only move that into politics, lawyer-speak and news coverage.

“Don’t Think We’re Not Keeping Score, Brother.”

Hope. Change. Inclusiveness. And strong arm tactics that would do Al Capone proud.

This too is the power of O.

Here's one story of how Team Obama is trampling the rights and consciences of individual Congressmen, thereby destroying the Constitutional balance of powers.

Today's Posts

Vital Signs Could Use Your Vote for the Pro-Life Blogs Awards

Planned Parenthood: Golly, These Guys Are Sick

Senator Ben Nelson Is Under Pressure to Cave-In. Help Him Hold the Line Against this Disastrous "Health Care" Bill.

On Appreciating Ballet

Modern Day Scrooges Want to "Reduce the Surplus Population."

Dictator Chavez Brings Down the House at Copenhagen

The Democrats Are Trying to Pull a Fast One. Tell 'Em No!

Vital Signs Could Use Your Vote for the Pro-Life Blogs Awards

As we mentioned earlier this week, Vital Signs was honored by being nominated for one of the 2010 Pro-Life Blog Awards. In particular, we have been nominated in the Pro-Life Unity category. The awards are decided by popular vote so if you're so inclined, you can cast a vote for Vital Signs right here.

You only have a few days to vote. The deadline is Monday, December 21.

Thank you.

Planned Parenthood: Golly, These Guys Are Sick

Killing babies for profit.

Pushing (and enabling) promiscuity with all of its attendant damages.

Holding firm to the racism and elitism of its eugenics founders.

Profane. Obscene. Cruel. Secretive. Lying. Demonic.

And all the while getting a ton of money (including yours via local, state and federal taxes) as a charitable institution!

Jill Stanek has a story on one of PP's latest outrages, the return of their blasphemous "Choice on Earth" holiday cards.

Senator Ben Nelson Is Under Pressure to Cave-In. Help Him Hold the Line Against this Disastrous "Health Care" Bill.

As you may know, there is a plan afoot to have Pennsylvania's sell-out Senator Bob Casey come up with "pro-life" language for an amendment to the Senate's "health care" bill that Ben Nelson could live with.

It's just more smoke and mirrors from a Democrat leadership that has proven a radical bias towards abortion.

Says Nebraska Right to Life's Executive Director, Julie Schmit-Albin, of this latest trick, "We have not seen the actual Casey language addressing abortion. We only know what has been imparted to us verbally by Senator Nelson's staff late this afternoon.

"From what we know, without seeing the actual language, it in no way resembles the Stupak language and still allows federal subsidies for plans that cover abortion on demand, which is entirely unacceptable for Nebraska Right to Life and thousands of Nebraskans who oppose public funding of elective abortion.

The proposed opt-out clause is particularly offensive -- the federal government would treat abortion on demand as if it was really health care, and then allow people to apply for status as conscientious objectors? Give me a break."

I followed up Julie's press release with a phone call to Ben Nelson's office.

It took awhile to get through, but when I did I politely explained to the aide who answered who I was and why I was calling. I reminded them that Vital Signs Ministries (and all the pro-life, pro-family organizations in the state) had good reasons not to trust Bob Casey's pro-life conscience and certainly could not trust how the Democratic leadership might alter any abortion-related amendment that might be accepted.

I told her to please pass on to Senator Nelson that because of actions of this Democrat-controlled Senate (i.e., abortions being paid for in the District of Columbia with federal tax funds, conscience clauses eliminated, abortion advocacy overseas being paid for with federal tax funds, and other deplorable matters) the majority leadership was selling out the sanctity of life ethic that most Americans embrace. Therefore, we don't trust anything that they do or say about abortion "compromises."

I told her to tell Senator Nelson we were so far very pleased at his stand but he must stay stronger than ever right now and vote No on what has clearly become a boondoggle bill on several fronts. It's a budget-buster that Americans obviously don't want forced upon them by secretive, power-mad bureaucrats. So please tell Senator Nelson not to cave-in to Democrat pressure as he has at other times and just say No to this terrible bill. By so doing, he will win the applause and gratitude of not just the people of Nebraska...but most of the rest of America too.

We then followed up with e-mails to the Senator's office. Here's what Claire had to say:

Dear Senator Nelson,

Thank you for standing firm so far on the abortion issue. But now it's crunch time so please don't cave-in. I want to urge you to vote NO on the health care bill. It is a horribly expensive bill that does not solve the needed health care problems. Indeed, it will make us (and our economy) sicker than ever before! As you well know, the majority of Americans do NOT want this bill. So please go down in history as voting NO on this disastrous bill.

Please add your voices to ours -- right now! As Julie said in her note, "Things are changing by the hour back there and we don't have the luxury of mulling this over."

On Appreciating Ballet

A e-mail to National Review's Jay Nordlinger shares an amusing cultural observation from an 4-year old boy:

Dear Jay,

You talk about The Nutcracker in your column today. Well, I recorded the Bolshoi Ballet’s version this year to watch with my kids. My eleven-year-old daughter has always loved it, and I was excited for my four-year-old son to share in the fun. After a few minutes, he was already fidgeting. Sensing that I was losing the battle, I told him of the fight between the Nutcracker and the Rat King and fast-forwarded to the scene. He watched for about a minute, turned to me, and said, “That’s not fighting, that’s dancing,” and walked out. I guess I don’t have a future Baryshnikov.

That reminded me of my first visit to ballet -- and I wasn't 4 but well into my 40s. I was in Minsk and was invited by friends there to go see a performance of the Belorussian Bolshoi. I wanted to get out of it in the worst way but my American friend (who I was teaching with at a Bible college there, Ruben Dyck, then 82) said yes for the both of us.

I ended up liking it very much and have since attended several ballet performances when in Minsk.

But here in the States, I've never got round to seeing a ballet. I wonder why.

Perhaps I need the more exotic atmosphere of a cold Belarussian night. Perhaps I need the presence of kind-hearted friends enjoying a luxurious evening in a grand old theater with an outstanding orchestra. Perhaps I love the experience of treating my students to what is often an experience of a lifetime as we dress up and go out together.

And just possibly the regular surroundings of home break the spell, making me realize that, just like this perceptive 4-year old boy, I understand that ballet is "just dancing."

Modern Day Scrooges Want to "Reduce the Surplus Population."

Calls for forced population control as a means to conquer global warming are in the news this week. We knew the Copenhagen climate conference would keep drawing out the cranks...

Those who support population control are not enlightened thinkers, though they hold themselves to be. Quite often, "progressive" population control proponents have been racists who would use eugenics to ensure that "deficient" humans don't dilute the gene pool.

Other population control supporters simply harbor a misanthropic bitterness, obvious to those who don't share their worldview, toward their fellow man. They might have friends and maybe even families. But within them is a deep-seated loathing for their own kind because they see man as just another of Earth's many animal species. Human life, for these people, is cheap.

(Investor's Business Daily editorial)

Dictator Chavez Brings Down the House at Copenhagen

If you didn't realize by now that the Copenhagen climate summit isn't about climate but is instead about the rising tyranny of socialist powers over individual freedom, economic growth, capitalism, democratic governments and national sovereignty, then see how the august assembly responded to the inane rantings of Argentinian dictator, Hugo Chavez.

As Andrew Bolt writes, "These maniacs in Copenhagen are voting on your future."