Columnist.
The New York Times brings us the "next frontier in fertility treatment." It's about dissolving the prejudice against transgender people having children. "Andy Inkster, a transgender man, had always wanted biological children. So when he embarked on the transition from female to male at age 18 -- changing his name, taking testosterone and eventually undergoing surgery to remove his breasts -- he left his female reproductive organs intact. In his mid-20s, he decided it was time. He stopped taking testosterone and started trying to get pregnant."
John F. Kennedy broke some sort of record for stating the obvious when he noted that "life isn't fair." More evidence for the unfairness of the nation's evaluations of presidents emerged in a recent Washington Post poll showing that, five years after he returned to Texas, George W. Bush is still blamed by 50 percent of Americans for the current state of the economy. Only 38 percent hold President Barack Obama responsible. The lesson for future presidents appears to be: You may be one of the greatest humanitarians in the history of the world (as Herbert Hoover arguably was, and as was Bush in some ways), but if you're in office when a financial crisis hits, the public will blame you forever.
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has found what he thinks is a bright spot amid the gloomy Obamacare news. When you hear what he's enthusiastic about, you'll perhaps understand why I wonder if there is any common ground at all between liberals and conservatives. Klein reports that Obamacare's "biggest success" is that 4 million new enrollees signed up for Medicaid as of November and the number should be even higher when December's statistics are tallied. "If the point of health care reform is covering people who need health insurance, the expansion of Medicaid should be a huge win."
"We will restore science to its rightful place ... " So intoned a "dismissive and derisive" President Barack Obama in his first inaugural. It's been oft quoted in the five years since (frequently by me, I'll confess) for its arrogance and condescension, which has continuing relevance, but before turning to the left's latest departure from scientific rigor, I cannot resist a fuller quotation. The second part of this sentence from Obama's first inaugural reads " ... and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost." Hmm.
2013 will be remembered as the year President Barack Obama's halo went askew. It deserves to be remembered for some other things. It was the year Democrats killed the United States Senate. If you missed the story, it's not surprising. When Sen. Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster, it was billed as the Democrats' last-ditch response to Republican "obstructionism." We were invited to play *tu quoque* because Republicans had threatened to invoke the "nuclear option" themselves in 2005. Largely ignored was Reid's relentless assault on Senate traditions.
The wheels began to come off Obamacare in 2011 when the administration announced that the "CLASS Act," a provision to provide long-term disability care, was, in the words of Kathleen Sebelius, "totally unsustainable," and would be discontinued. What was the problem? The White House website had boasted: "No taxpayer funds will be used to pay benefits under this provision ... Safeguards will be put in place to ensure its premiums are enough to cover its costs." "Safeguards." Sounds quaint now, doesn't it? A bit like "If you like your plan ... "
I wouldn't volunteer to be Phil Robertson's speechwriter. He chooses his words too carelessly. But with Christmas arriving, it's worth pausing a moment to consider two other faces of Christianity today. Many who are hostile to religion are eager to portray the "Duck Dynasty" star's comments about homosexuality as the essence of Christianity. Because the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin akin to adultery, the argument goes, the Bible is clearly bigoted, and those who quote the relevant verses are morally objectionable as well.
Columnist Ross Douthat has stirred up a hornet's nest by commenting on a new study suggesting that being the parent of a girl may nudge people toward the Republican Party. Douthat speculated that watching daughters cope with a "social landscape in which sex has been decoupled from marriage" and in which young men cruise through the sexual marketplace, leaving broken hearts in their wake, may cause mothers and fathers to embrace more conservative mores regarding love and sex.
The Black Guerilla Family prison gang controlled the Baltimore City jail. According to a federal indictment, 27 correctional officers, along with 17 others, "were in bed with BGF inmates." That would be literally and figuratively. Gang leader Tavon White impregnated no fewer than four female guards. One had "Tavon" tattooed on her wrist. Guards smuggled in cellphones, drugs and other contraband. Inmates who were not gang members were forced to pay protection money to the BGF, or get family members to do so.
"Our house is as quiet as a tomb." So said a friend who's at the same stage of life -- that is, a mother of three with only one child still living at home. Her youngest, unlike mine, is an introvert, but like my Ben, he is exceedingly busy in his last years of high school, thus leaving the house echoing with emptiness. As a college sophomore, I visited my academic adviser with a problem. "I don't know what I'm going to do after graduation," I confessed. He cocked his head sideways. "Most people don't come to me with this until senior year." I've always liked to get a head start on fretting.
President Barack Obama spoke about income inequality in a recent address but failed to mention one of the most significant contributors to rising inequality in America: the marriage gap. Jobs are changing, international competition has driven down wages, top executives are pulling down enormous salaries, but it is cultural patterns -- specifically personal decisions about cohabitation and marriage -- that are most responsible for deepening the divide between haves and have-nots in America. The contrast between the highly educated and the rest of the nation has become so pronounced that some are now calling marriage a "luxury good." If it becomes that -- if the collapse of marriage as a norm continues among the poor and the broad middle class -- much more than income inequality will result. We will institutionalize a productivity deficit, a healthy community deficit, a schooling deficit and a happiness deficit.
If President Barack Obama has entertained an economic insight that wasn't fashionable in 1933, I haven't heard about it. It's doubtless he's for recycling glass and plastic, but he's even more wedded to recycling ideas that were fresh and interesting during the New Deal era but have since been discredited. All of this was clear when he became the Democratic Party's pinup in 2008 (just by way of example, I wrote then that while Obama was "shiny, bright and new," his ideas were "suffering from senility"). What's dumbfounding now is Obama's detachment from his own presidency. He continues to campaign (well, speak, but it always sounds like a stump speech) as if someone else were sitting in the Oval Office, as if someone else's policies were responsible for the state of things and as if someone else should shoulder the blame.
We conservatives are always on about the "unintended consequences" of government programs, but we didn't expect the Obama administration and congressional Democrats to provide such a vivid object lesson. If the tipsy, teetering debut of Obamacare invites a new skepticism about the capacity of government to run things, it will be the most welcome unintended consequence since Alexander Fleming left his staphylococci samples on a workbench over summer vacation. Government programs, after all, fail frequently but are almost never held to account, far less held up to ridicule.
Ninety percent of the American opinion elite will fall for the old "historic breakthrough" conceit every time. The appeal of getting enemies in a room together, where they will shed their animosity and "reason together," is so profound that nothing as tiresome as experience can diminish its allure. Don't talk to Secretary of State John Kerry or President Barack Obama of the League of Nations (which enjoyed such success ensuring world peace) or the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the 1928 treaty that outlawed war as an instrument of national policy. Fifty-four countries, including all the major belligerents of World War II, signed the pact.
Remember President Barack Obama's mother? Though the airwaves currently echo with his vow "If you like your plan ..." I keep remembering Obama's account of his mother being denied coverage by her insurance company as she lay dying of cancer. The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a "pre-existing condition" and refused to pay for her treatment.
The talking heads love presidential analogies. Is Obamacare's rollout Obama's Hurricane Katrina or his Iraq? Is Obama's false promise that you could keep your health care plan like George H. W. Bush's "read my lips" pledge, or is it like Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"? Iran-Contra anyone? These comparisons don't take you far. The president's troubles are unique to his particular vanities and blind spots.
The World Economic Forum has issued its annual report on the gender gap worldwide, and it has received respectful notice from the usual places (PBS, CNN, The Washington Post). But any report that places the United States below Cuba, the Philippines and South Africa deserves a little skepticism. In fact, the WEF places the U.S. 23rd in the world, below the Scandinavian countries, and those just named, but also below Lesotho.
The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's murder is being marked, not primarily by retrospectives on his life and accomplishments, and not by reflections on the myth versus the reality of his presidency, but instead by one of the features of our media age that is poisonous to our cultural health -- a macabre focus on the details of his murder. National Geographic aired a film with the title "Killing Kennedy" (based on a book by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard). Trailers featured images of the first couple in the open limousine and close ups of the actor who played Lee Harvey Oswald raising a rifle to his face and closing one eye. The movie "Parkland" likewise features a re-enactment of the fatal day Kennedy was shot, complete with descriptions of the president's "shattered head" when he reached the hospital.
The most alarming message for Democrats from Tuesday's elections was the near obliteration of Terry McAuliffe's lead over Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia. An October poll, conducted a week after the government reopened, had placed him 11 points ahead. On Election Day, Cuccinelli lost by only 2.5 points. McAuliffe's precipitous tumble was caused entirely by Obamacare. There was bad news for Republicans, as well. The government shutdown damaged Cuccinelli, possibly costing him the race. But there were other factors; the money gap (he was outspent 3 to 1), outgoing Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell's ethics troubles and Cuccinelli's dour mien all made it possible for a gasbag Democratic moneyman who admitted that he didn't read legislation and would hire someone to handle such trivia to take Thomas Jefferson's seat in Richmond.
The question many on the left are asking as they witness the Obama administration flail in response to HealthCare.gov's debut disaster is: How could this happen? Obama is so brilliant, so capable and so wise. How could he bungle his signature initiative? He isn't, but even if he were, it wouldn't make a particle of difference. One of the central delusions of progressives is that government is efficient and effective and that complex human societies are amenable to centralized control and direction.
