It’s a development that I wouldn’t wish on anybody, but one that the City of New London, Connecticut largely brought upon itself by pursuing and winning the Kelo v. New London case at the Supreme Court in June 2005.

Some “win.” In what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air calls “a fitting coda to a chapter of governmental abuse,” pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer is leaving the global research and development headquarters it built in New London just eight years ago.

The significance of the move should resonate nationally, because, as the Washington Examiner explains, Pfizer’s original decision to locate in New London was driven by the City’s promises to eliminate a nearby neighborhood — promises which led to the Kelo litigation once residents, including Susette Kelo (pictured above), pushed back:

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

The New London Day elaborates, while petulantly managing to avoid any mention of what has clearly become the local four-letter word — “Kelo” (bold is mine):

The Pfizer Research and Development complex in New London will be closed by the pharmaceutical giant and its jobs consolidated in Groton. Sale or lease of the property, which encompasses more than three-quarters of a million square feet, could be a lengthy process. Though it comes as a blow to New London, the closure will not result in any major loss of jobs as a result of the Groton consolidation.

Pfizer earlier this year said nearly 20,000 jobs would be cut as a result of its merger with the New Jersey-based Wyeth. The company said Monday that about 15 percent of its overall R&D work force would be cut as part of that downsizing.

The announced closing of the New London site came as a blow to a city that had counted on Pfizer to help revive its fortunes. Instead, Pfizer’s name became attached to a dispute over eminent domain that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that New London won on legal grounds even as it lost in the court of public opinion.

The loss of Pfizer as a keystone business in New London could put in further jeopardy the Fort Trumbull development that started in conjunction with Pfizer’s move into the city but has left little but flattened buildings and eminent-domain angst in its wake.

Michael Joplin, president of the New London Development Corp., said Pfizer’s withdrawal from the city will likely be a setback for a proposed hotel at Fort Trumbull. While the hotel would have attracted the general public as well as those visiting the proposed U.S. Coast Guard Museum at Fort Trumbull, Joplin said Pfizer had planned to make use of it as well.

“What we’ve lost here is an occupied property,” Joplin said. “But it would have been worse yet if Pfizer had picked up its whole operation.”

“All in all, I think we’re lucky,” said Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut. “The facility in New London was built with the best of intentions. If the industry can’t support facilities in (both) New London and Groton … hard decisions have to be made.”

The Day’s insistence on avoiding any mention of the word “Kelo” is a deplorable tradition that began almost immediately after final holdouts Susette Kelo and the Cristofaros settled with the City in mid-2006. The paper’s persistence looks especially petty and childish today.

The reality-denying statements of Joplin and Sheridan above are self-evident embarrassments.

The Hartford Courant, which appears to have been the first to report the story yesterday at 12:55 p.m., also didn’t mention “the dirty word.”

The strain to avoid saying “Kelo” borders on the hysterical in the three-minute Fox 61 video embedded at the Courant link. Reporter Laurie Perez first made this reference to the case (blown chances to mention Kelo are in bold):

(0:25) “It wasn’t that long ago that New London was wooing Pfizer to Fort Trumbull, and in a bitter and infamous eminent-domain battle, taking away private homes to make way for a business and technology park. Tonight, along with taking a look and the business and economic impact of Pfizer leaving there is as you might imagine, strong reaction from residents, wondering what exactly they lost their homes for.

After this build-up, Perez interviewed only one “resident,” Mike Cristofaro, who is of course now a former Fort Trumbull resident:

(2:10) Perez: Former Fort Trumull homeowner Michael Cristofaro bears no ill will towards the drug company, but he says the eminent domain battle with the city and developers combined with today’s news, is a bitter pill to swallow.

Cristofaro: There’s nothing here. It’s clear-cut. It’s a dust bowl. I mean, that’s what’s sad. That was a 10-year battle, and here it is, 12 years later, and we could still be here. And we would still be paying the taxes on it. What does the City have now? They have nothing.

The local press’s consistent refusal to utter Susette Kelo’s last name is journalistic malpractice.

As to the press outside of the Nutmeg State, as I have noted in several previous NewsBusters and BizzyBlog posts, the national media have been proactively disinterested in developments — or, more correctly stated, non-developments — in the Fort Trumbull area.

After the ruling itself, the establishment media largely ignored the bitter struggle that ensued:

• Almost no one knows that a new party, One New London, whose express purpose was to prevent the New London Development Corporation from carrying out its Supreme Court-sanctioned actions, came out of nowhere and won two seats on the seven-seat City Council, losing out on a third seat by 19 votes.
• Almost no one knows that City Council, with the One New London Party members strongly dissenting, voted in May 2006, formalized in June, to evict the remaining holdouts, while demanding “past-due real estate taxes, claims for use and occupancy and claims to collect rent from third parties” to the tune of (I’m not kidding) $946,000 and change.
• Almost no one knows that infuriated city residents mounted what from all appearances was a successful petition drive to put the question of the city property takeover of the Kelo and Cristofaro properties on the ballot in just three weeks. Absent the petition and looming referendum overhang, it seems likely that City Council would have brought on the bulldozers. Instead, it began negotiations with Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. Rell ultimately brokered a deal that, while constitutionally unacceptable, was probably the best anyone could have hoped for in the situation.

Going further back to the sordid history of the case itself, almost no one knows that the high-powered, politically-connected Italian Dramatic Club was allowed to remain in Fort Trumbull, while each and every home around it was leveled:

A notable exception to the NLDC’s plan to clear-cut the neighborhood is the Italian Dramatic Club, a politically connected “social club” of Connecticut’s political establishment, which is located in the very same neighborhood as all the homes targeted for destruction. Among the Italian Dramatic Club’s patrons was former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, who helped direct much of the State funding for the NLDC’s work in New London and who resigned in June 2004 amid an ethics scandal. The club was informed in September 2000 that it could remain in the neighborhood. The un-elected NLDC decision to preserve the politically powerful Italian Dramatic Club while demanding that New Londoners move out led Fort Trumbull homeowner Matt Dery to quip that the NLDC’s actions in his neighborhood have been both shameful and shameless.

As far as I can tell, establishment media coverage of Pfizer’s latest move and its real-world relevance to the Kelo ruling has thus far been non-existent. A Google News search on “Pfizer Kelo” (not in quotes) at 11:00 a.m. came back with a dozen items, none from major establishment media outlets. A search on “Pfizer eminent domain” (again not in quotes) came back with 13, adding only the Hartford Courant report noted above. The Associated Press’s coverage of the Pfizer-Wyeth facilities consolidations only says that “Groton, Conn. …. will add 1,500 workers from a nearby New London facility being closed.”

The idea that news consumers outside of Connecticut don’t have an interest in learning what has really happened at the site involved in the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo ruling is patently absurd. Perhaps this four-year near blackout has occurred because our journalistic gatekeepers would prefer that we not see a concrete demonstration of what can happen when a government gives in to its authoritarian impulses, and the courts fail in their duty to rein it in.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

As the Reason TV video (HT Instapundit) explains, the evils of communism are to a large extent not recorded in pictures. That’s why what Nikolai Getman did — from memory –is such a positive thing:

We cannot forget the objective evil that led to over 100 million deaths and subjugated hundreds of millions more to lives of abject misery, and which sadly still does so in Cuba, South Korea, and large parts of China today.

More on Nikolai Getman is here.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial today on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is excellent, as would be expected, and gives credit where credit is due:

In the debate over who deserves credit for causing the Berlin Wall to collapse on the night of November 9, 1989, many names come to mind, both great and small.

There was Günter Schabowski, the muddled East German politburo spokesman, who in a live press conference that evening accidentally announced that the country’s travel restrictions were to be lifted “immediately.” There was Mikhail Gorbachev, who made it clear that the Soviet Union would not violently suppress people power in its satellite states, as it had decades earlier in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. There were the heroes of Poland’s Solidarity movement, not least Pope John Paul II, who did so much to expose the moral bankruptcy of communism.

And there was Ronald Reagan, who believed the job of Western statesmanship was to muster the moral, political, economic and military wherewithal not simply to contain the Soviet bloc, but to bury it.

In the editorial’s second-last paragraph, the Journal reminds us of an alleged journalist who was so blinded by his partisan disdain for any Republican in power that he refused to acknowledge what had become clear years earlier, and of the risk-averse weenies who tried to talk him out of delivering the signature line of what is probably his most famous speech (bold is mine):

Yet it bears recalling that even these obvious political facts were obscure to many people who lived in freedom and should have known better. “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy,” said CBS’s Dan Rather just two years before the Wall fell. And when Reagan delivered his historic speech in Berlin calling on Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” he did so after being warned by some of his senior advisers that the language was “unpresidential,” and after thousands of protesters had marched through West Berlin in opposition.

The only substance to former CBS Evening News anchor Rather’s contention was that 70 years of statist conditioning and state-sponsored terror would make such a transition difficult — as it has been, and with much recent dangerous backsliding. That doesn’t change the fact that as our Founders stated, freedom is a God-given right to which every person is entitled, or that those who have come here from the old Soviet Union almost universally sing America’s praises (often more recently with somber warnings about the direction we have taken in the past year or so).

Sadly, there are even some on the right who subscribe to the untenable assertion that the Soviet Union imploded on its own because it was unsustainable — in other words, it would have fallen anyway, with or without Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul, or Reagan. Those who hold to this belief on both sides of the aisle need to ask themselves how that self-implosion theory is working out in Cuba and South Korea, both of which are in arguably worse shape than the Soviet Union ever was.

In a probable comment engine-starter, it also should not go unnoticed that the only vote against the resolution in the House recognizing the significance of the Wall’s fall came from Ron Paul. I could not find an explanation for Paul’s vote on his congressional web site or elsewhere. If he thinks it’s because the resolution could have been stronger, I’d be inclined to agree with him, but for heaven’s sake, not to the point of voting against it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Isn’t that Paul Krugman clever? The title of his latest op-ed (“Paranoia Strikes Deep”) quotes a line, presumably deliberately, from a 1960s protest song many consider one of the opening shots in that decade’s protest movement.

Before he got cute with his title, Krugman should have gone to the song’s full lyrics, as they only serve to prove that what he describes as paranoia is, based on what is in HB 3962 (or was, if excised at the last minute), really very justifiable concern and fear. Or maybe he read the lyrics and was too dense to appreciate their meaning in the current circumstances.

The song that apparently inspired Krugman’s column title is “For What It’s Worth,” a 1966-1967 mini-hit by Buffalo Springfield. The album containing the song peaked at #80 on the hit charts; my recall is that the single made it to the mid-30s.

That band featured Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Jim Messina, and Dewey Martin. A YouTube of their lip-synching Smothers Brothers appearance is here.

Here are a few paragraphs, otherwise known as insults to our intelligence, from Krugman, commenting on the crowd that gathered last Thursday to protest the House’s statist health care bill. I’ll follow it with the song’s final lyrical lament that destroys Krugman’s diatribe:

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?

But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.

This comes from a guy whose publication and others on the left were constantly worrying about “stifling of dissent” that occurred at the behest of George W. Bush only in their vivid, authentically paranoid imaginations.

The final verse of “For What It’s Worth,” with text added by me frpm what’s really in HB 3962 (unless excised in the final hours, but which could reappear at any time if that’s case), reads as follows:

Paranoia strikes deep.

Into your life it will creep.

It starts when you’re always afraid.

You step out of line ….

the man come ….

and take you away:

Thanks for proving our point, Paul. It’s not paranoia if it’s really there, or if “the man” (actually in this case Nancy Pelosi and her party) is really contemplating putting people in jail merely for not buying health insurance.

I think that a better theme song describing the Tea Party and other sensibly conservative, Constitution-based protests would be the Who’s “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It may be too late for Krugman, who seems totally fooled by the current bunch in the White House, more and more resembling one of Lenin’s useful idiots.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Presence:

• In response to what is probably the worst attack on American soldiers on American soil since the end of the 19th century (Hawaii was not yet a state when Pearl Harbor was attacked), our president …. made a statement that came off as perfunctory, and stayed in Washington for three days. He will finally visit Fort Hood on Tuesday.
• In response to what is probably the worst attack on American soldiers on American soil since the end of the 19th century, our previous president …. visited the wounded (HT Neptunus Lex) and “thanked Fort Hood’s military leaders and hospital staff for the ‘amazing care they are providing.’”

Remembrance:

• To recall the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, our president …. won’t go to remember it. Meanwhile, Newsweek told readers that “Five American presidents delivered addresses at the Berlin Wall,” and includes Obama in a montage with with the four who did (Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush). Only when you get to Obama’s page do you learn that Obama a) wasn’t president, and b) didn’t make any speech at the site of the Wall last year when he campaigned for the U.S. presidency in Europe.
• In remembrance on the 8th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, our president …. sent Joe Biden to Ground Zero in New York City.

Deliberate ignorance:

• The British press was out front (HT Hot Air) in telling the world that the perpetrator of the Fort Hood attack “worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.” That the attack was jihad-inspired is not open to real dispute.
• Meanwhile, the PC-addled American press does all it can to minimize the enormity (HT Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters) of what occurred at Fort Hood and makes excuses for the perpetrator, even to the point of claiming that he might (even though he never experienced combat) have caught that heretofore non-communicable mental condition known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from some of his combat-expericence patients.

While this type of thing breaks my heart (b/c it goes on all the time), I am grateful for the truth.

(HT: Emailer)…

Dear friends,

Please take 5 minutes to read this…then read it again. A friend and I were just talking about the “major” Right to Life organizations being focused NOT on ending abortion on demand, rather “regulating” abortions and as such remaining plausible, “fight-the-good-fight” entities (to whom billions of dollars are given each year). Too many of them have taken our money, bought a political seat at the table and then pimped out our votes to one or both political parties…all for self-preservation (Mt. 23:13-39).

We must continue to seek out alternative sources of information and prayerfully ask the Lord to continue revealing the wolves in sheep clothing and realize that anyone who claims to be “pro-life” should be unabashedly eager to lose their “title,” “seat at the DC table,” and [in some cases] their private jet if it means that their mission was a success.

Let me know if I can assist you in further research.

“My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” ~Hosea 4:6

What followed in the email from AIP continues to enrage me to the point of no words…

Nov. 8, 2009
I have my pro-life credentials. I’ve fought in the trenches, so shut-up.

Too many times while in the trenches, Right-to-Life national leaders have been there wiping out our side, handing victory to the pro-aborts.

Today, I lament and pray for and with Rep. John Shaddegg (AZ) who knew that if he could have received just a little bit of Right-to-Life’s cooperation, Pelosi’s health care bill would have gone down. Instead, Shaddegg got a Right-to-Life knife in the back.

The battle lost in the House over the government health care takeover rests in large part on the shoulders of the national Right-to-Life leaders. They are pinheads and they must resign now.

As the political dynamics tightened around the health care vote, liberal pro-aborts had to concede to a vote on the pro-life amendment in order to shave off enough pro-life democrats for victory. A bitter political pill for their side, but they saw the bigger victory and could spin the pro-life amendment as “just acknowledgement of existing law contained in the long-standing Hyde Amendment.” (Hyde Amendment = No federal funds for abortions)

Well, Shaddegg had a plan to throw sand in the gears and likely ruin the political machinery grinding out a victory for the government takeover of health care. He was rounding up the votes to kill the pro-life amendment (by voting “present”) and thereby killing the whole bill and quite possibly the entire effort. This would have caused such a train wreck, it is doubtful the liberals could have recovered, i.e., Waterloo.

But, NO … as this plan was quietly being put together, Right-to-Life issues a noontime letter on the day of the vote stating a “present” vote will be scored as a NO vote, elevating it as the “most important vote” since the 1997 vote on the Hyde Amendment.

KABOOM! Right-to-Life once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Good for Shaddegg being the lone “present” vote on the amendment.

This screw-up is so historic and monumental that the Right-to-Life leadership must take the honorable actions and resign, immediately.

Shaddegg has a 100% rating from Right-to-Life. He is not a mystery or a double-dealer. After all the work he has done on their behalf, a little help would have gone a long way.

Instead, it is clear … Right-to-Life is more concerned about fundraising by “getting the win” on the pro-life amendment. How long do you think that amendment will hold as the bill makes its way through Congress?

Go away Right-to-Life leadership. Your actions are pitiful.

Posted 2009-11-08 8:35 AM (#27667) By: Editor

And we wonder why Roe still exists? Clearly Congress isn’t the only entity that needs a “do-over.” Hard not to tag both under “scams.”

Of course the president and Congress are after money, but they really want control over your life.

_________________________________________________

Note: This item originally appeared at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Saturday.

_________________________________________________

The House’s latest iteration of ObamaCare now weighs in at 1,990 pages. That’s hundreds of pages longer than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s summer rendition. At the rate these people are churning out thousand-plus pagers (stimulus, cap and trade, health care, etc.), they’re going to have to build a separate wing of the Library of Congress just to hold this year’s production.

After sifting through the bill’s deliberately obfuscatory, favor-laden language, it is clear that the Democratic leadership wants to pretend that last August’s town hall meetings, Congressional budgetwatchers’ most recent cost estimates of up to $1.2 trillion (not “only” $894 billion), and Tuesday’s key gubernatorial race results never happened. The elections of Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia were as much a rejection of establishment politics as usual and the specific policies and proposals of President Barack Obama and Congress as they were affirmations of the positive qualities of the victors. The establishment newspapers that obsessed over defeating Christie and McDonnell also extended the cycle of rejection they continue to experience in the form of reduced circulation. The Internet is certainly not the primary reason why the Washington Post’s and New Jersey Star-Ledger’s circulations are down 6% and 23%, respectively, in the past year.

As to the House bill, everything the populace has been loudly and longly rejecting remains firmly in place.

Abortion? It’s still there; Planned Parenthood has in essence admitted it. Provisions Sarah Palin courageously and accurately characterized as de facto “death panels”? You betcha. Rules that force the termination of any private plan if it tries to change even minor provisions, effectively spelling what Investors Business Daily has called “the end of the private medical insurance market” a few months ago? Yes, according to Betsy McCaughey on Sean Hannity’s radio show last week.

Beyond that, as I have previously shown, ObamaCare is still a moral clunker. As has happened in statist health care systems elsewhere, it will inevitably lead to rationed care. That rationing will inevitably favor the currently healthy with longer lives ahead of them over the aged and seriously infirm. Finally, ObamaCare’s operations will be managed and/or heavily influenced by people who, as I said in August, “have frighteningly ghoulish outlooks on life and humanity.” To name just one example of many, there’s Zeke the Bleak Emanuel, who believes that “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” That’s not “obvious” to me or to the vast majority of others, pal.

Of course, the latest House bill has the requisite tax increases on “the rich,” which really means “high income-earners” (politicians and the press either really don’t seem to understand the difference). Employing what I consider to be the correct language of taxation, the bill, in combination with other increases that will occur next year unless proactively stopped, will increase the amount of federal income taxes paid by the highest income-earners by as much as 30% – 50%. In a worst-case scenario, it will reduce the effective take-home pay of some by as much as 30%-35%.

Taking a cue from the Massachusetts state-run disaster known as RomneyCare, the bill imposes penalties on individuals and families who don’t purchase mandated health insurance. As the Associated Press reports, these penalties “are described as taxes in the legislation.” That these penalties make mincemeat of Obama’s core 2008 campaign promise not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year seems not to matter. Thus, there is plenty of what Barack Obama in his more honest moments likes to call “redistributive change.”

But ObamaCare is not simply or even primarily about the redistribution of wealth. It’s about the redistribution of health.

That is why the “public option” remains in the House bill. That polls supposedly tell us that this “public option” remains popular is a testament only to the utter failure of ObamaCare’s opponents to describe and explain its true nature.

The “public option” is not about “competition.” It is about elimination. That “the uninsured” receive “coverage” is only incidental.

The newly conceived entity will more than likely not have to pay federal, state, or local income taxes, and may not have to pay a myriad of other taxes private companies must pay unless they wish to go out of business. This entity will often be in a position to use existing government-owned facilities instead of having to pay for its own. Some of its employees, overhead, and outside services may be charged to other sectors of the government. It may, because of sovereign immunity, be exempt from crippling lawsuits and related legal costs. This stack of playing field de-levelers constitutes what the bill’s sponsors call “competition.” It’s really a sick (pun intended) joke.

Thanks to these self-evident advantages and the restrictions the bill imposes on private plans, the “public option” will inevitably corral tens of millions of American individuals and families into its one-size-fits-all plan design, which will be the standard against which all surviving plans are judged. If a private plan is too generous, ObamaCare will either tax and penalize it until its sponsors bring it down to the same level, or kill it. If a private plan is too restrictive, regulations and penalties will force it up to the “public option” level, or terminate it. Terminations will be rampant. If you dare try to step outside the box yourself and privately arrange for superior medical care for yourself or your family, even with your own resources or funds from charity, you can expect the full force of the “public option” and its friends at the IRS to come after you, your medical providers, and perhaps even those who provided financial kindness.

This is “redistributive health care justice.” Nobody will be able to get health care that is better than anyone else’s. Some of us may somehow still have a bit more money and wealth, but, with the exception of the elite, who always figure out a way around the peons’ restrictions, we’ll all be subject to one health care system.

That’s the openly stated goal. When rationing and other more serious side-effects inevitably intrude, we will see that ObamaCare’s “fairness” will be in how it makes us all equally miserable.

At Catholic News Agency:

Nov 8, 2009 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- From its humble beginnings in the church of St. Francis Xavier in Phoenix, Rosary Sunday has grown into an annual event that draws more than 5,000 people in devotion to Mary. Last month, Catholics in the diocese marked the 34th year the faithful throughout the state gathered for adoration, confession, benediction and the recitation of the rosary.

Under her title, “Immaculate Heart of Mary,” and in honor of the Year for Priests, families and individuals entered the Phoenix Convention Center representing a multitude of ethnic communities and organizations.

Rudy and Barbara Martinez drove 240 miles one-way from Cameron, Ariz. to participate in the public prayer honoring the Blessed Mother.

“We come because we want to show her our love and gratitude,” Barbara said. This is the fifth year the couple has made the journey from the Navajo Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona. “It’s important for us to be here together in honor of Our Lady.”

The strong devotion to the mother of Jesus gave impetus to the Phoenix Diocese embracing an event that has attracted national attention.

Dorothy Westfall, the event’s coordinator and a Legion of Mary member, fields calls from other dioceses around the country each year on how to develop advisory committees in hopes of starting a Rosary Sunday.

“People come because they see this as an opportunity for grace,” Westfall said. “Not only for themselves, but for their family, the country and the world.”

The spirit, beauty and reverence of the afternoon was not lost on the keynote speaker.

“I am very impressed. We need one of these in the Rockford Diocese,” said Fr. James Parker. “When we pray those beads, we touch the heart of the Mother of God and simultaneously touch the heart of God.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

…for showing your true colors.

Your vote for this unprecedented takeover of private industry, shows what a weak-minded, socialist sock-puppet you really are; making next year’s OH-01 race a no-brainer (and by extension, less expensive and less emotional for any opposition).

So I was wondering, how does it feel to be man-handled by an old, ugly glob of Botox? Tough to be an owned man isn’t it…

The fact that you will be forced into the quagmire you just passed (after we kick your arse out next year) offers no solace. If it were just you, maybe, but I don’t wish the shoddy care or TRILLIONS in debt on anyone’s children.

Everywhere you go in your district, people are thinking the same thing…

Steve fricking Driehaus, the man who helped destroy America and he only served one term.

Wow, that’s some legacy.

Here’s the roll call.

I didn’t live-blog the vote because my instincts told me it would work out similarly to cap and trade, where Nancy Pelosi’s biggest decision was who to allow to vote “no” in the interest of protecting her party’s electoral majority.

In terms of Ohio, she must think that Steve Driehaus, Zack Space, and Charlie Wilson are safe, as they voted “yes.” She must be worried about John Boccieri, who voted “no.” She had to figure that Dennis Kucinich would vote “no,” because it’s not strong enough. More than likely, nothing short of immediate single-payer will satisfy Kucinich.

The alleged anti-abortion “concession” embodied in Stupak/Pitts shouldn’t fool anyone who is really pro-life, but it obviously has. Many in Congress who pretend to be pro-life will use it as their fig leaf. Informed pro-life voters should not let them get away with it.

All you need to see through the subterfuge is to look at the bolded portions of my excerpt from Planned Parenthood’s statement opposing Stupak/Pitts:

“Planned Parenthood condemns the adoption of the Stupak/Pitts amendment in HR 3962 this evening. This amendment is an unacceptable addition to the health care reform bill that, if enacted, would result in women losing health benefits they have today. Simply put, the Stupak/Pitts amendment would restrict women’s access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market, undermining the ability of women to purchase private health plans that cover abortion, even if they pay for most of the premiums with their own money. This amendment reaches much further than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited public funding of abortion in most instances since 1977.”

“The Stupak/Pitts amendment violates the spirit of health care reform, which is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health care coverage for all. In fact, this amendment would create a two-tiered system that would punish women, particularly those with low and middle incomes, the very people this bill is intended to assist. The majority of private health insurance plans currently offer abortion coverage, and the Stupak/Pitts amendment would result in the elimination of private abortion coverage in the ‘exchange,’ the new insurance market created under health care reform, as well as in the public option, if one is created.

PP’s posted objection is as insincere as Greenpeace’s posted opposition to cap and trade just before that vote.

PP is upset only because H.B. 3962 defers their gravy train, which will still arrive at the station, just a few years later than they had hoped.

The problem pro-lifers didn’t think through is that the presence of the competitively advantaged “public option” (which will be created, despite PP’s “if” language), along with restrictions that will lead to a de facto end of the private health insurance market, along with provisions that heavily penalize employer and other plans with higher-quality coverage, will force a large plurality and perhaps a majority of individuals and families to flee into the “public option” in a few short years if legislation looking like H.B. 3962 becomes law.

Once that occurs, abortion proponents will contend that the lack of abortion coverage in the bill violates Roe v. Wade. They will argue that:

• Health care is now a mandatory consumer purchase.
• Reproductive health care is part of health care.
• Abortion is part of reproductive health care.
• Once individuals and families are covered by the “government option,” they can’t leave it.
• The “government option,” by not paying for abortions for a large, permanently captive audience, prevents women who MUST buy insurance from equal access to a health care service that the courts have long since decided is a fundamental right of women.
• The Hyde Amendment was only intended to prevent government funding from specific programs from going towards abortion. It was never intended to permanently close off abortion funding, and thus equal access to abortion, from millions of women now forced into buying insurance from the government because no other option is available.

I don’t see how that argument loses in the courts, such as they are. Its success depends on the existence of the “government option” and its operation as the roach motel of health “coverage” (once you check in, you can’t check out). It only fails if you convince the courts that abortion really isn’t a fundamental right of women, and that Roe v. Wade was erroneously decided. Good luck with that.

Thus, long-term, the Stupak/Pitts amendment will accomplish nothing. Pro-lifers who bought into this subterfuge, including many who really should know better, have been tragically deceived.

They allowed themselves to be deceived because they didn’t appreciate, as explained previously, that statist health care is fundamentally and irretrievably anti-life at its core.

From Victoria, Australia:

November 08, 2009 12:44pm

VICTORIAN teenager Lachlan Edwards has been praised after he swam to the rescue of two people caught in a rip at Point Impossible Surf Beach in the state’s southwest.

Lachlan, 15, had already rescued a man from about 70 metres offshore at about 7pm (AEDT) yesterday when two policemen on patrol noticed him struggling to support a woman in the water.

One of the policeman, Leading Senior Constable Justin Joseph, stripped to his underpants, ran into the water and swam out to Lachlan and the woman.

He approached the pair where he was told by Lachlan that he had already rescued one man and had then attempted to rescue the woman, but he was exhausted and was having difficulty getting back to shore.

The policeman reassured the youth and between them they managed to get the woman back to dry land. ….

…. in one secretive statist health care bill (click here or on pic to open full-size pic in a separate window, and brace yourself):

The area in the yellow box in the top center was the chart as it existed several months and hundreds of pages ago.

I can’t wait for the “How to Keep Your Doctor” update.

We really ought to seriously consider taking all computers and other forms of word processing away from the people who create these bills and force them to write everything out using only pen and paper.