President Obama's message to progressives who are dissatisfied with the Senate health care bill is two fold: First: Don't forget about the uninsured. Second: Don't forget what failure to pass this bill would do to the party and my presidency...

...Obama reminded the assembled Democrats that doing nothing would be politically disastrous. "To maintain a strong presidency we need to pass this bill," the President said, according to Grijalva.

The true measure of how far Obama has fallen, though, is how Democrats regard him. Few seem to be asking him to campaign for them, and his approval ratings aren’t at record lows, but they are likely nowhere near where Obama thought he would be at this point in his presidency.

Of course, Obama has no one but himself to blame for this. He campaigned as a moderate who could bring the country together, but lurched toward hard liberalism almost as soon as he took office, and is now urging Democrats to embrace the very ideology that crushed his approval rating. Obama underestimated how angry voters who believed his campaign rhetoric would get once they realized he was lying to them.

Obama’s approval ratings fell because Americans don’t like being lied to, and for that reason, those ratings are unlikely to improve until the president shows a willingness to respond to popular opinion. Frankly, given how Obama has governed to this point, I am not optimistic. I hope the American people deliver a firm rebuke in November, but more importantly I hope Obama gets the message. If he doesn't, then it may be time to start worrying about his ability to acknowledge political reality.

Cross-posted at The Greenroom

This is why.

It's a beautiful reminder that depression is not a death sentence, and life is precious.

This evening, Sweden and Great Britain faced off in curling. The epic match was covered on MSNBC, and preempted much of their prime time schedule. The half-dozen Olbermann fans out there were outraged by this programming decision, chief among them totally objective media reporter Howard Kurtz, who wrote the following on Twitter:

Keith Olbermann has been preempted by...curling? Don't they realize there's a health care summit tomorrow??

Don't feel bad for Kurtz, though. The curling match ended with a Swedish win, and the restoration of outrageous outrage to the airwaves:

Olbermann back in action. Curling ran long on MSNBC. Whoever made this programming decision should be Worst Person in the World.

Howard Kurtz, this long-distance request and dedication is for you, pal. Was the Special Comment good for you? I hope so, because your pining for Olbermann shows your...

Earlier, I wrote this. My attempt at an Obama speech.

I'm on Team Hayek.

Wow.

In many ways, Barack Obama has lived up to his promise. He has created a thoughtful, pragmatic administration marked by a culture of honest and vigorous debate. When Obama makes a decision, you can be sure that he has heard and accounted for every opposing argument. If he senses an important viewpoint is not represented at a meeting, he will stop the proceedings and demand that it gets included.

If the evidence leads him in directions he finds uncomfortable, he will still follow the evidence. He is beholden to no ideological camp, and there is no group in his political base that he has not angered at some point in his first year.

Three days after taking office, Obama's response to Republicans who disagreed with the economic stimulus plan was "I won." Obama had been president less than a month when in February he openly mocked Republicans during a speech to the Democratic caucus.

In April, he told a group of bankers that he was the "only thing between you and the pitchforks."

In May, Obama threatened to sic the White House press corps on Chrysler bondholders who disagreed with his plan to bail out GM.

In August, Obama said he did not want "the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking," preferring them to "just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess."

In September, John Boehner revealed that Obama had not invited GOP leaders to the White House for meetings on healthcare reform since April.

In October, the White House declared war on Fox News and tried to encourage other news organizations to alienate them.

Earlier this month, after both houses of Congress passed different healthcare bills, Obama agreed to a plan that would allow Democratic leaders to sidestep conference committee to once again shut the GOP out of the process. This, despite his oft-repeated promise on the campaign trail to make the debate open and on C-SPAN.

Yesterday, Politico reported that Obama plans to take a "combative" turn to fight for healthcare if Scott Brown wins today's election in Massachusetts.

I'm sure there are other examples, but these stories do not paint a picture of a president interested in "honest and vigorous" debate, and the arguments of those who may disagree with him. His actions on healthcare alone suggest not one who puts evidence-based pragmatism ahead of ideology. It's time for Brooks to bury his Fantasy Obama and face reality - he was suckered.

Cross-posted at The Greenroom

Someone really needs to point Proverbs 21:23 to Pat:

Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

If you want to help the victims of this tragedy:

Samaritan's Purse
American Red Cross
World Vision

ABC News has a good roundup of ways you can help victims of the earthquake.

To meet current and projected shortages, nursing education programs need to increase their capacity by approximately 90 percent. However, these programs are faced with a severe shortage of faculty, making it difficult to expand; and the already small pool of qualified faculty is rapidly shrinking—almost a third are over the age of 55 and there is a dearth of baccalaureate-level nurses eligible to enter graduate programs. This has caused a sixfold increase in the number of applicants denied admission to nursing schools since 2002.

In short, we don't have enough nurses in this country to meet our healthcare needs, and those needs are only going to grow as the baby boom generation ages and requires more acute medical care. So what does this have to do with Obamacare? To answer that question, one only needs to look north, where the nursing shortage is reaching near-epidemic levels. Because Canada's healthcare is "free," there is high demand for those services and the available resources are consumed all-too-quickly, leading to shortages. How has that affected nursing care? I'll let the Canadian government explain:

As budgets have been cut in healthcare settings, nurses have been caught in the middle of a speed-up. Simply put, there are fewer nurses to do more nursing, and nurses are simultaneously expected to pick up non-nursing tasks that were not previously the routine responsibility of nursing staff. Nurses are educated to care for patients, but the shortage of support staff has meant that nurses must attend to ancillary needs while patient care is neglected. Unfortunately those other tasks cannot be ignored - patients need meals delivered, they need to get to operating rooms and they need supplies and equipment - and nurses are doing them.

One guess.

President Obama and the Democrats may denigrate the American healthcare system in order to pass their version of "reform," but it would be interesting to see them explain why, if our healthcare system is so terrible, nurses flock to our shores for the chance to work in it. There is a major difference between our nursing shortage and Canada's. Here, we lack the capacity to train enough nurses to meet our needs. In Canada, they lack the funds to pay enough nurses to sustain the system. True healthcare reform would seek a solution to the problem of supply in the interests of improving care. Obamacare, on the other hand, puts political correctness first.

Under the Democrats' plans, if a medical school wants to receive contracts and grants from the federal government, it must operate under a quota system and be able to prove it. On Page 909, the House bill states: "In awarding grants or contracts under this section, the (HHS) secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: . . . training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds."

The Carnegie study is not the first to show the extent of the nursing shortage, but Democrats in Congress should fully understand the effects of their reform on that shortage as they 'debate' the bill behind closed doors.

Cross posted at The Greenroom

Like ace says, you helped pay for it by working and paying taxes, so you might as well click the link and enjoy it. And hey, they said "teabag" which makes it edgy, or something.

Personally, I'm not really all that excited about helping to fund propaganda that is both crude and insulting, so I fired up the word processor and wrote a letter to each member of my congressional delegation, something I rarely do. The letters go out in the mail tomorrow. When they open the letters, this is what they'll read:

BANGOR, Maine — The Coffee Pot — an institution to sandwich lovers all over the globe who have been lucky enough to enjoy one — is closing effective Jan. 1, according to owner Skip Rist on Wednesday.

Rumors that the famous State Street sandwich shop, which daily has lines extending out onto the sidewalk, was closing have been circulating for weeks, and Rist had downplayed them.

This video from a local tv station gives a good idea of what the place was like, and how popular it is around here.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Luke 2:1-21 (English Standard Version)

Because nothing says 'transparent and open government' like voting on a bill that no one has read at 1 a.m during the holiday season.