ObamaCare to Cost 1.16 Trillion Over Next Decade

 Michael Barone has picked up the baton from Charles Blahous of George Mason University's Mercatus Center and is trying to call attention to the real cost of ObamaCare, not the smoke and mirrors, advertised cost.  Click here for the article on RealClearPolitics:  Michael Barone's article on ObamaCare's cost.

As Mr. Barone points out, Blahous' analysis is not getting any serious attention from the White House.  Like the Debt Commission, our President picks and chooses which critiques are to be dignified with a serious response, and in this election year nothing that fails to play to his political advantage is considered dignified enough.  Barone mentions the recent shoddy response to the Supreme Court's critique of ObamaCare as a prime example. 
My favorite quote from Mr. Barone about Mr. Obama:

"Someone needs to tell him that combining arrogant condescension with intellectual shoddiness is not a winning political tactic."

Left Lets Mask Slip

Helen Rosen, a prominent consultant to the Democratic National Committee, let her mask slip this week, presenting a gift to the Republican Party by saying that Ann Romney had "never worked a day in her life."  In one fell swoop, Rosen displayed what many on the right have been saying for years about left wing women:  They are snobs who look down their noses at stay-at-home moms, as if the only work that is to be esteemed is that for which people are paid a salary. 

The talk radio crowd had a field day with this all week long (he says, sounding like Yogi Berra).  Rush Limbaugh surely feels vindicated for one of his favorite labels of yore, the "Feminazi".

Of course, the White House quickly distanced itself from Rosen's statement and David Axelrod wasted no time in revving up his spin machine.  Jay Carney did his usual "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" routine by indicating that he wasn't sure who this Hilary Rosen was:  I don’t know how to assess her overall relationship with people here in the White House, but … I have not seen her here very frequently,” said an ABC blog.  He personally knew of three Hilary Rosens.  When all else fails, obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate, even in the face of reports that Rosen has visited the White House 35 times.

Axelrod, for his part, was much less evasive than Carney the Carnival Barker, saying most magnanimously, "We have an obligation to speak out, not just when people say things we think are inappropriate who are on the other side of the aisle, but when people are on our side of the aisle, when our friends speak out ...".  In other words, he let it be known that from the vantage point of Obama's campaign office, Rosen screwed up big time.

Taking her cue from Axelrod, Rosen said within 24 hours, "I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended,"  and  "Let's declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance."  In other words she apologized by saying her opponents misinterpreted her.

So she carefully lifted the fallen mask back up onto her face, but left a little of her true self visible.

Liberal Media Meltdown?

"MJ Rosenberg, the controversial critic of Israeli policies who drew fire for using the term 'Israel firsters,' is leaving the liberal media watchdog, Media Matters. In what he billed as his last column for the group on Friday, Rosenberg said he would now blog on his own website MJayRosenberg.com. 'The reason for this step is that it disturbed me greatly to see an organization to which I am devoted facing possible harm because of my critical writings about Israel,' he wrote. 'I have no doubt that the crowd that opposes any and all criticism of Israeli government policies will continue to turn its guns on Media Matters if I am associated with it,' he continued. 'I could not live with myself if that happened — not only because I care deeply about the organization and my colleagues, but also because Media Matters does such important work confronting the lies that emanate from the far right and especially Fox News.'

Now I am at a loss to understand why he is so fearful that lies might be told about Media Matters. Does he really think Fox will suddenly cease to tell lies merely because he is no longer there? My, isn't that rich!  Obviously, he is convinced it is all about him.

In the same day there were more stories about Keith Oberman'a legal woes  and CNN misconstruing the Trayvon Martin 911 call.  Are we having a liberal  meltdown? 

The problem with the liberal media is that they value their agenda more than they value the truth.

Good Friday

Good Friday.

So why is it called "good" if the greatest person who ever lived was put to death in an ignominious way?  The historical origin of this term is not clear.  In German it is called Karfreitag or Suffering Friday, which seems more descriptive of the event it commemorates.  Other places call it Holy Friday and perhaps "Good Friday" actually comes from "God Friday," just as "good bye" comes from "God be with you."

Theologians say that this particular Friday is called "good" because of the goodness of the result, the outcome of Christ's suffering, namely, the eternal life that Jesus purchased with his self sacrificing death. 

An event such as the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross can be looked at from at least two different perspectives, that of the perpetrators and that of the one who suffered.  From the perspective of the ones who perpetrated, the deed was anything but good.  It was the most heinous crime ever committed.  To put to death the Author of Life is monstrous beyond all assessment.  Jesus in the Gospel indeed tells us that the Son of Man must go the way that was foretold of him, but woe to him by whom it comes about, referring in particular to Judas Iscariot.

But from the point of view of the sufferer Jesus, there was human suffering beyond all imagining precisely because of the love that the sufferer had for us.  The loss of a loved one is always a very difficult thing to suffer and the more loved the lost one is the more painful.  Jesus, in suffering his own death, must have felt incredible pain because of his incredible love for us.  When you love somebody and want to give them something beautiful, it hurts incredibly when they are unable or unwilling to receive it.

In an absolute sense, Jesus did not have to die.  If the people had accepted him and his reign over them the world would be made anew and heaven would have come on earth.  But we were not willing and able to accept him and thus he was compelled to die.  He wanted to give himself to us, his life, his truth and yet in the end the only thing he was able to give of himself to us was his life through his very own death.

And yet he made that death the vehicle of his life.  We did not realize it at the time, but his death was opening up a way for us by which death itself would be overcome.  We can therefore say with the  onlooking Roman centurion,  "Truly this man was the Son of God."

And yet there is a third perspective -- ours!  With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, we see with the eyes of faith that Good Friday can indeed be called good because of the Easter that it won.   And Easter is not good because of the joy that it brings.  Easter is joyous because of the good it brings.  And part of that good is joyous promise of eternal life.

Good Friday is good because it is the worst event in history that wonderfully and mysteriously leads to greatest event in history, all in the span of three days.

Judicial Activism

Judicial activism occurs when courts try to legislate from the bench by adding things that are not in the constitution.  Striking down laws that add things is not activism. It is the courts doing their job.

Right Reason

In my Mission Statement, I appealed to the use of right reason.   Subjective relativists would naturally object to this appeal to "right reason" as being somehow based on an absolute and dogmatic notion of rightness with regards to reason.  But I say there are certain laws of reasoning that are indeed absolute and have borne much fruit over the millennia as so much evidence in their favor.  One great big pile of such fruit is, of course, that of natural science and mathematics.  People who seriously doubt the validity of the whole enterprise of rational science are themselves not to be taken seriously and are, I hope, quite in the minority anyhow.  Certainly, even among scientists there are those who are overly influenced by the corrupting influences of fame, fortune and power, and that situation is quite deplorable.  But on the whole, over the course of centuries, science has acquitted itself quite well as a successful enterprise.

And as chief tools in the tool shed of science I would list logic and mathematics, the latter being to a great degree reducible to the former.    Logic, of course, has both its deductive and inductive sides, the former being more compelling and universally conceived and assented to than the latter.  Among the laws of deductive logic are rules of inference such as modus ponens which states, schematically at least, that if the proposition P is held to be true and the compound statement that P implies Q is also held to be true, then it must follow that Q is true.   I.e., if P implies Q and P is true, then Q must be true.  Humans have almost universally concurred with that rule of inference.

With inductive logic things can get a little messier and agreement about how to calculate truth values is also less than universal, but we can rest assured with the simple example of modus ponens that there is indeed a clear example of right reason in the case of deductive logic.

It is also the job of right reason to point out where right reason is not present, that is to say, to point out where fallacious pseudo-reasoning rears its ugly head.  For that purpose we have a very large catalog of fallacies that has been amassed by the human race over the millennia.

Thus, to amplify on my mission statement, I will try to bring both positive deductive thinking to play in this blog and to point out fallacies when I see them in the political and social discourse of the day.

Inaugural Post

Mission Statement:  To inject some sanity into political and social discourse by appealing to right reason, exposing fallacies and slipshod thinking that seem to be ubiquitous in the national conversation.