It’s here.

Sub-headline:

Despite his recent attempted reputation rehab, Zeke always ends up at the same place: not treating the somehow unworthy or letting them die.

It will go up at BizzyBlog on Monday morning (link won’t work until then) under my originally submitted title (“Zeke the Bleak Tries a Sneak”) after the blackout expires.

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The column’s early paragraphs remind readers of the three central incurable moral problems with ObamaCare, first mentioned in my “ObamaCare as a Moral Clunker” column a couple of weeks ago, and how they are still quite present:

…. there are three insurmountable moral objections to the president’s and Democrats’ versions of mislabeled “health care reform”:

1. They are all designed and destined to ration care. This will lead, as it has in state-run systems virtually everywhere, to long waits for even critical services. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard professor and chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers Martin Feldstein confirmed this obvious and inconvenient truth, writing that “rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama’s health plan.”
2. Under the idea of “Comparative Effectiveness Research” (CER), which has already been funded to the tune of over $1 billion, the inevitable and unavoidable rationing just described would more than likely be carried out under a regime of care denial driven by age-based and “quality of life” criteria. This will, formally or informally, lead to a system similar to that found in the UK, where its National Health Service, under the concept of “Quality-Adjusted Life Years” (QALY), won’t pay for medical procedures that “cost” more than $50,000 for each year of additional life expected to be gained (“cost” is in quotes because I believe that such “costs” are often overloaded with fixed overhead that largely should not be relevant to such decisions).
3. The people who would be in charge of implementing a state-controlled system, which remains the objective of President Obama and Congress as long as they seek any kind of “public option” or government-managed “co-operative” set-up, have viewpoints that are ethically questionable at best and morally abhorrent at worst.

Ezekiel Emanuel is, of course, primarily a Point 3 problem, because his track record indicates no qualms about the presence of Points 1 and 2. There are many others who hang with President Obama who hold to similar beliefs. The president’s indifference to infanticide, and his suggestion at the ABC infomercial in June that the mother of the woman who had a pacemaker installed at age 99 would have been better off taking a pill instead, are both strong indicators that he is a kindred spirit with Zeke et al.

Zeke, as I refer to him, is attempting to rehabilitate his reputation based on an alleged conversion during the last “five to seven years.” He now wants us to believe that statist health care can be managed without rationing. The column shows that positions he has taken on health matters in just the past few years render that claim an epic fail.

Read the rest at PJM.

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UPDATE: There’s a great comment at PJM from “jerryofva” (after correcting typos) –

This is fundamentally a story about ethics. The question one has to ask is how did a Jew like Ezekiel Emanuel become a proponent of a medical care regime that Henrich Himmler would applaud. The entire idea of “QALY” based system smacks of disposing of the “lives unworthy of living” criteria established by Nazi Germany.” Is there a Rabbi in America who will step up and condemn Dr. Emanuel to the Jewish community?

That transitions into a reminder to anyone who believes otherwise that the regime that attempted to exterminate the Jews was socialist and left-wing. Here are 10 reasons. More discussion is here. A good related vid is here.

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UPDATE 2, August 23: The Washington Post editorially attempted to defend Emanuel yestereday, ginning up as much “we’re outrage” language as it could in a few paragraphs.

But the WaPo unwittingly ended up proving opponents’ point by citing the Lancet study I mentioned in the column –

Critics also point to a January 2009 piece in the Lancet in which Dr. Emanuel and co-authors discuss how to determine which patients should obtain scarce resources such as organs for transplant. The authors consider various possibilities — lotteries; first-come, first-served; sickest first — and propose a combined “complete lives” approach that would consider age, prognosis and maximizing lives saved. Importantly, this would not apply to all health care — only “when genuine scarcity makes saving everyone impossible.” Ms. Palin misleadingly describes this as a “rationing system” that “would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential.”

First of all, compare the full range of considerations Emanuel said he would include at Lancet — “youngest-first, prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value” — to what WaPo listed above (“age, prognosis and maximizing lives saved”). Conveniently editing, don’t you think?

Then go back to Point 1 at the very beginning of this post — “They (state-controlled health care systems) are all designed and destined to ration care. This will lead, as it has in state-run systems virtually everywhere, to long waits for even critical services.”

State-run care inevitably creates the conditions for what WaPo itself described as “genuine scarcity that makes saving everyone impossible.” It imposes those conditions on a nation as a permanent part of the landscape, causing a top-down care-decision process that the likes of Zeke Emanuel would manage, a la NICE in the UK, to inevitably kick in. NICE currently and routinely does what Sarah Palin describes and decries, i.e., it “refuse(s) to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential.”

Q.E.D.

Thanks, WaPo.

(Scroll for Updates: Make That “Snoops” — Four More Nearly Invisible Wrist Slaps; Official Gov. Statement on Jones-Kelley; Curious Story Timing)

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I could not find Mary Taylor’s statement at any related URLs, though I think she would be perfectly justified in expressing her opinion at her State Auditor web site (that’s what auditors do).

So Taylor appears to be relying on the press (good luck with that), her supporters, and others to get this word out. I am happy to assist with that.

Here’s her press release from today on the slap on wrist (i.e., the one month suspension) given to Helen Jones Kelley for her Joe the Plumber shenanigans:

Statement from Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor
November 21, 2008

Ohio Auditor of State Mary Taylor issued the following statement regarding the one-month suspension of Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones Kelley:

“Ohio citizens should have the highest confidence that the private information that state and local government have access to is protected and will not be used for political or other inappropriate purposes. According to the report released today by the Inspector General, this basic and fundamental trust was broken by Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley.

We need to restore accountability and transparency in government and send a message to Ohioans that the misuse and abuse of personal information will not be tolerated. Government leaders need to be responsible for the actions of their employees so I urge Governor Strickland,who campaigned on the promise of running an ethical administration, to ask for the resignation or terminate Ms. Jones-Kelley immediately.”

Ted Strickland’s oh-well, no-big-deal response to all of this has been pathetic.

And where is the action, if any, on the other Joe the Plumber data divers?

The message is that Ohioans can feel confident that their personal and private information are secure with state agencies — only as long as they don’t make disagreeable, disruptive waves that offend the powers that be.

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“Friday News Dump UPDATE,” 7:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 22: More wrist-slaps, covered in an AP story that went up at about 8 PM last night –

4 more punished over ‘Joe the Plumber’ searches

….. Fred Williams, the Department of Job and Family Services’ assistant director, will be placed on two weeks unpaid suspension beginning Monday, spokeswoman Scarlett Bouder said in a statement. Doug Thompson, the department’s deputy director of child support, is facing a four-week unpaid suspension, also starting on Monday, (AP ended this sentence with a comma; there is no break in text — Ed.)

Two other agency employees are facing disciplinary action based on conclusions reached Thursday by Ohio’s government watchdog, she said.

The department’s director, Helen Jones-Kelley, improperly ordered staff to look up records on Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, the Toledo-area man who became a household name in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Ohio Inspector General Thomas Charles said in a report.

Gov. Ted Strickland immediately ordered Jones-Kelley be placed on a one-month unpaid suspension after reviewing the report’s findings.

Charles’ report also outlines roles played by Williams and Thompson in the searches, as well as Paul Fraunholtz, the deputy director of family stability, and Judi Cicatiello, the deputy director of unemployment compensation.

Totally. Unacceptable.

Not that we’ll ever find out, but does anyone want to bet against some form of “compensation for valuable campaign services rendered” making its way from “somewhere” to the five people involved?
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UPDATE 2, Nov. 22, 8 a.m.: Here is Ted Strickland’s official statement announcing Jones-Kelley’s suspension –

Columbus, Ohio – Governor Ted Strickland issued the following statement today:

“Helen Jones-Kelley has dedicated her life to helping the most vulnerable among us. She is recognized nationally as an expert in the field of foster care and she has worked commendably for many years as an advocate for children, families and workers in her native Montgomery County and the state of Ohio. I value her contributions to the state and her local community.”

However, I accept the Inspector General’s judgment that there was not an adequate business purpose for the searches in question. I also accept his determination that her personal Blackberry was inappropriately synchronized, resulting in emails she perceived to be personal being transmitted through governmental email resources. Therefore, today I have issued a one-month unpaid suspension for Director Helen Jones-Kelley. Additionally, I am issuing a management directive – applicable to all state agencies, boards and commissions – regarding the proper use of state databases to help ensure that a situation such as this never happens again.”

The full text of the governor’s management directive is pasted below …..

There is currently no statement in the press release section of the Governor’s web site on the “punishments” handed out to the other four individuals the AP mentioned earlier.

An enterprising Ohio journalist would look into whether the governor’s “management directive” is a cut-and-paste of something very similar that might have been put into place during the state’s “Datagate” in 2007, during previous gubernatorial administrations, or at the agencies themselves. Because if similar relevant guidance already exists — and there is good reason to believe that it does, or did — the “management directive” is nothing more than rear end-covering window-dressing.

Assuming Ohio journalists stay in snooze mode, anyone who can point to a previous directive, law, or policy should e-mail me.

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UPDATE 3, Nov. 22, 8:20 a.m.: A Google News search on “Joe the Plumber” Ohio (typed as indicated) shows that the earliest relevant story about the additional four employees disciplined (*) appeared in the Columbus Dispatch at about 5 p.m. on Friday (“15 hours ago,” per Google News, though the story now carries a 7:33 p.m. time stamp).

How convenient.

The Dispatch story does not mention of Mary Taylor’s statement, or for that matter the post-decision reaction of any Republican.

(*) – Italicized words added on November 23 for clarification.

The Associated Press apparently isn’t satisfied going after Sarah Palin full throttle.

The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee’s visit to New York City apparently went so well that an ABC pictorial series is called “Sarah Palin Takes News York” — though the last slide takes a shot at the McCain campaign for setting boundaries on access to Palin during her meetings with foreign leaders. ABC claims that the media threatened to boycott covering her (yeah, right).

Both the New York Times and the AP chose to address Palin’s observation that her parents had involvement in the recovery effort in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. In a surprisingly pleasant development, the Times’s story covered that angle reasonably well. But the AP’s story (as carried at the Times web site), was incomplete, nasty (“rat-killers”), and condescending.

Here’s how the Times’s coverage started:

Palin’s Parents Aided in Sept. 11 Cleanup

Gov. Sarah Palin visited ground zero on Thursday and said her parents had come to New York after 9/11 to help with the recovery effort.

Her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, worked at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island in January and February 2002 as part of a federal Department of Agriculture program.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Mr. Heath said he and his wife had worked to keep sea gulls and rats from scavenging remains in the debris. Mr. Heath, 70, a retired science teacher, and Mrs. Heath, 68, a retired secretary, have worked for the Agriculture Department for 15 years. They travel around the world dealing with “nuisance” animals like rats and bears.

All in all, not bad.

The same can’t be said for how AP handled it:

Palin’s parents: Retirees, part – time rat killers

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — More than six years before Sarah Palin visited ground zero as the Republican vice presidential nominee, her parents were there as part of the response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — trapping rats.

Chuck and Sally Heath have been part-time U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife specialists for the past 15 years, traveling throughout Alaska trapping or killing animals. They’ve eradicated rat infestations, shooed geese from runways and killed foxes that were keeping threatened Canada geese from nesting.

In January 2002, they went to New York City for a two-week assignment that fit their specialty. Their job was to make sure birds and rats did not disturb the debris from the collapsed World Trade Center towers that was being searched by forensic teams for human remains in Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill.

My take:

• The AP’s headline and first paragraph were deliberately incomplete, negative, and designed to make Palin’s parents come off looking like a couple of sadists. That’s especially obvious when you see from the Times article that “trapping rats” isn’t all the Heaths did. In fact, the Times piece mentions rats after seagulls.
• More on the headline — Since Palin was visiting Gotham and made the comment about her parents, the story was what the Heaths did in connection with 9/11. The AP article’s eighth paragraph noted that the rats at Fresh Kill were “dispersed,” and apparently not killed. So why is “rat-killers” in the headline? The Heaths’ involvement in rat eradication, which AP decided to call “killing,” actually took place on an unrelated assignment thousands of miles away.
• The AP, in unexcerpted text, mentioned that Mr. Heath was a retired teacher, but despite their article running twice as long as the Old Gray Lady’s, never mentioned what Mrs. Heath did for retirement (she was a secretary).

I learned by going to this AP-Google link that the pitiful headline was the same, and that the story’s author was Matt Volz.

Volz has been exhibiting ever more serious symptoms of Palin Derangement. NewsBusters’ Jason Aslinger observed earlier this week that:

Volz has been a busy bee covering the Troopergate anti-scandal over the last two weeks. Not surprisingly, he continues to write story after story without citing to the obvious bias underlying the entire investigation.

By extending the vitriol to her parents, Volz is demonstrating that his strain of PDS is particularly virulent. I fear for the AP reporter’s stability if Palin takes up residence where Dick Cheney currently lives.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

OK, here’s the lineup of those taken over or otherwise “assisted” by the US government and/or the Federal Reserve:
- Freddie Mac (known around here as Fredron).
- Fannie Mae (known around here as Fanron).
- AIG

Here are others who are being absorbed, apparently at fire-sale prices:
- Merrill Lynch (by Bank of America)
- Countrywide (by Bank of America; seems like ancient history, doesn’t it?)
- Bear Stearns (by Chase)

By the way, I can’t wait for the next politician who throws brickbats at the banking and financial-services industries for overconcentration, given the fact that the politician-patronized Fredron and Fanron, aka Barney’s Rubble, created the conditions for it to happen. I predict it won’t be long.

Here are those who went belly-up after pleas for assistance or for an 11th-hour buyer were waved off:
- Lehman Brothers

(If I’m missing any biggies, let me know in the comments; please don’t e-mail, as I’m still digging through those after the 10-day computer fiasco and more recent power and Internet outages.)

Now, here’s the list of those who are going to want assistance, and apparently pretty soon:
- Ford
- General Motors
- Chrysler

Apparently, John McCain’s overexposure to Mitt Romney since the primaries caused the Arizona senator to very, very wrongly change his tune on assistance to the “domestic” industry — as if Honda, Toyota, Nissan and other plants aren’t “domestic” enough (Obama has apparently favored it all along). I predicted several weeks ago that a President McCain will be an infuriating, high-maintenance project. I believe that remains true, even with Sarah Palin on board to provide outside-the-beltway sanity.

Sticking to the auto biz for a moment: How outrageous is it that Ford, which made a politically-correct but stuck-on-stupid decision for two years to ignore a boycott that cost it almost a billion dollars (under a set of very conservative assumptions), appears to be on the verge of asking the entire country for a handout?

Finally, here’s the list of business who may come to Uncle Sam for assistance if their business heads south:
- Any business that can make a case that it’s too big to fail.
- Any business that can make a case that its failure will harm the near-term electoral prospects of any candidate for president, senator, Congress, governor, or dog-catcher.

In other words, there’s potentially no end to this, which is why it must stop, preferably before the Detroit automakers get their bailout.

The most troubling member in the lists above is AIG, because no one is making what I believe is a pretty obvious connection.

I can’t help but think that if the now-disgraced Eliot Spitzer hadn’t forced out Hank Greenburg in March 2005, the insurance giant would have been able to navigate the troubled waters that arrived not very much later. Instead, the guys at the helm who replaced Greenberg appears to have been way out of their league. Nobody knew AIG inside and out like Greenberg.

Here’s a reminder of what Spitzer did, and how he did it, from the March 11 Wall Street Journal (related BizzyBlog post is here if WSJ link doesn’t work):

….. Mr. Spitzer’s recklessness with the state’s highest elected office, though, is of a piece with his consistent excesses as Attorney General from 1999 to 2006.

He routinely used the extraordinary threat of indicting entire firms, a financial death sentence, to force the dismissal of executives, such as AIG’s Maurice “Hank” Greenberg. He routinely leaked to the press emails obtained with subpoena power to build public animosity against companies and executives. In the case of Mr. Greenberg, he went on national television to accuse the AIG founder of “illegal” behavior. Within the confines of the law itself, though, he never indicted Mr. Greenberg. Nor did he apologize.

In perhaps the incident most suggestive of Mr. Spitzer’s lack of self-restraint, the then-Attorney General personally threatened John Whitehead after the former Goldman Sachs chief published an article on this page defending Mr. Greenberg. “I will be coming after you,” Mr. Spitzer said, according to Mr. Whitehead’s account. “You will pay the price. This is only the beginning, and you will pay dearly for what you have done.”

Left unsaid, but obvious, is that Greenberg wasn’t indicted because he would have kicked Spitzer’s butt in court — which is why Spitzer avoided the inside of courtrooms like a plague. In the one case I’m aware of where someone stood up to Spitzer all the way through a jury verdict, the New York Attorney General was trounced.

My quick research indicates that Greenberg had at least three successors in the past 3-1/2 years (Frank Zarb (a caretaker), Martin Sullivan, and now-deposed Robert Willumstad.

Now there’s Edward Liddy. If he could get past the bitterness, and if regulators could admit that Spitzer’s publicity-driven ouster of him was wrong, Greenberg, even in his 80s, might have been a better choice.

Who’s at the top matters. So does drift at the top, even for a few months, especially at such a large and complex entity.

Note from taxpayers to Spitzer: Thanks for nothing.

Exit question: How unfair is it to blame Spitzer, his AG imitators in other states, and his fellow travelers in Washington who treated Fredron and Fanron as their personal piggy banks, for the financial system’s mess?

Exit answer: Very, very fair.

Parting thought: It appears that if the left can’t nationalize the economy the traditional way (through brute force), they’ll accept it on a piecemeal basis, as their regulations, systemic corruption, and legal harassment take companies and industries down.

Note: This column appeared at Pajamas Media on Wednesday under the title “Big Brother Doesn’t Want You Eating Burgers in LA.”

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In a proposal that is stunning in both its ignorance and arrogance, a South-Central Los Angeles politician wants to place a moratorium on the construction of new fast-food restaurants in her area.

What is unfortunately not nearly as surprising is how Washington Post reporter Karl Vick let some huge, uh, whoppers go by without challenge when he covered this development.

Here how Vick’s story, as carried at Boston.com, begins (HT Hot Air Headlines; bolds are mine):

Citing alarming rates of childhood obesity and a poverty of healthful eating choices, a city councilor is pushing for a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South-Central Los Angeles.

“Some people will say, ‘Well, people just don’t have to eat it,’ ” said Jan Perry, the Democrat who represents the city’s overwhelmingly African-American and Latino District 9. “But the fact of the matter is, what if you have no other choices?”

The proposed ordinance, which is awaiting a committee hearing, takes a page from boutique communities that turn up their noses at franchises.

It is supported by nutritionists, frustrated residents, and community activists who call restrictive zoning an appropriate response to “food apartheid.”

You would think that there are no grocery stores in South-Central offering all manner of nutritional options that often cost less per meal than fast food. Quite the contrary: Web searches on two chains I’m aware of in the area reveal that there are ten Ralph’s or Food4less stores within four miles of the address of the advocacy group whose Executive Director is quoted in the article, and at least three Vons within a reasonable distance of its zip code. When did eating store-bought food at home become a nonviable option?

Here are some relevant points to chew on:
(more…)

It’s here at Pajamas Media.

Here’s my tease (appetizer, if you will) for the column:

In a proposal that is stunning in both its ignorance and arrogance, a South-Central Los Angeles politician wants to place a moratorium on the construction of new fast-food restaurants in her area.

What is unfortunately not nearly as surprising is how Washington Post reporter Karl Vick let some huge, uh, whoppers go by without challenge when he covered this development.

It will go up at BizzyBlog on Friday morning (link won’t work until then) under the title “Oh (Big) Brother: LA Pol Wants New Fast-Food Outlet Halt; WaPo Reporter Eats It Up.”

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UPDATE: Mary Katharine Ham was on this on Monday at the Examiner. Well, so was I, except there was editing and review time from above. :–>

Not only that, the ignorance in on display is in what appears to be an official campaign video (HT Real Clear Politics):

(Excerpted comments begin at about 7:10 into the vid)

While you, most of you here have Social Security tax on every dime you’ve ever earned, you’ve got billionaires and millionaires who are paying on only a tiny ….. fraction of their income.

I’ve got a friend in Omaha, you may have heard of him, named Warren Buffett. He’s worth $56 billion. Y’know, if he’s only paying the first $100,000, that is .000001% of his income as he’s paying Social Security. I may have lost a couple of zeros in there.

The point is, it’s negligible to him, it’s not even noticeable. I think that’s why the best way forward is to first look to adjust the cap on the payroll tax, so that people like me, because I’m earning a bit more than $102,000, pay a little bit more and people in need are protected.

Folks, I cleaned up what Obama said as much as I could. Somebody ought to call Joe Biden and see if he wants to take back his comment about how articulate this guy is, instead of apologizing for having said it.

Anyway, here’s a translation of the bolded paragraph above I can (sort of) work with:

I’ve got a friend in Omaha, you may have heard of him, named Warren Buffett. He’s worth $56 billion. Y’know, if he’s only paying Social Security tax on the first $100,000, that is .000001% of his income on which he’s paying Social Security tax. I may have lost a couple of zeros in there.

You lost more than a couple of zeros, pal. You wanted your audience to mentally divide $100,000 by $56 billion (if you’re keeping score, that’s 0.00018%) — as if Warren Buffett’s income, which Obama never disclosed and probably isn’t known in total, is the same as his net worth. O,M,G.

Someone ought to tell Obama that:

• Income is what you earn.
• Net worth is what you have (after subtracting what you owe).
• Warren Buffett probably earns most of his income, which he said was more than $46 million in calendar 2006, from capital gains and dividends, against which there is no Social Security tax (yet).
• People pay Social Security tax on their income from work or self-employment, not on their net worth (yet).
• If Warren Buffett currently has earnings from work of $5.6 million (my recollection is that it’s probably lower than that), Obama was “only” off by a factor of 10,000 ($56 bil divided by $5.6 mil) in that element of his attempted “calculation.” Also, the current taxable earnings limit of $102,000 would be 1.8% of Buffett’s earnings from work, not “.000001%.”
• Under Obama’s proposal for Social Security, if Buffett’s earnings from work really is $5.6 million, he will pay over $663,000 more into the system —

  

• Warren Buffett, whose net worth is $56 billion, might indeed see this tax increase as “negligible to him …. not even noticeable.” I would suggest that someone with little previous net worth earning $5.6 million for the first time might more accurately see being forced to cough up an additional $663K as theft by government.
• Pile the 12.4% marginal tax just shown on top of the top federal income tax rate of 39.6% that would return if the current tax law isn’t extended, the 2.9% Medicare tax on all earned income, and at least 5% for state and local income taxes, and you’re at a marginal tax rate of just under 60%. That’s ridiculous.

Whether Barack Obama actually understands any of this is questionable.

This is the same guy who says that his earnings of roughly $4 million in 2007 (including book royalties, which are subject to Social Security taxation up to the current limit) is “a bit more” than $102,000. Some “bit.”

This guy is one election win away from being in charge of a $3 trillion-plus budget and responsibility for steering US economic policy.

O. M. G.

I don’t want to claim any special insight into things like this, but the claims about the product Enzyte always seemed bogus to me. The fact that so many people were clearly willing to spend money on the stuff bordered on astonishing. Now the company’s president has been found guilty “of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.” It could not have happened soon enough.

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If I were from New Orleans or the Gulf Coast and had gone through the devastation of the 2005 hurricane that struck there, I’d be insulted by those characterizing the subprime lending and foreclosure problems in Northeastern Ohio as “Cleveland’s Katrina.” For cryin’ out loud, 1,836 people died in the real Katrina.

Oh, NEO’s problems are partially George Bush’s fault too. Zheesh.

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On Hillary’s sinking campaign:

• If you have to deny that your campaign is in trouble, it probably is.
• The superdelegate bleed continues. On Friday the 15th, Hillary was ahead of the candidate I often refer to as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) 242-156. Tuesday the 19th (first item at link), it was 239-168. Now a February 23 AP story puts things at 241-181. Obama has picked up 25, and she has lost 1, in just eight days. At that rate, her “superdel” lead will be will be gone within about three weeks.
• Speaking of bleeding, the campaign has bled green, as in money, ever since it began. January was no exception.
• This poll, showing Obama up 57-43 in Texas, would appear to mean that the Lone Star State is lost to her. I believe that an Ohio poll with Obama on top, but by a smaller margin, will appear shortly.
• Terrier Ted Strickland, according to Robert Novak, has his doubts about whether she can win Ohio.
• The final insult — The print edition of the Sunday New York Times had the picture at the top of this story covering at least half of the territory above the fold. Ouch.

Update: Going after this, which even troubles hard-core Democrats, is — correction, WAS — Hillary’s Hail Mary pass. Problem: “Clinton’s husband pardoned more than a dozen convicted violent radicals, including a member of the same group mentioned in the Obama stories.”

Mrs. Clinton could still conceivably risk the hypocrisy charge and bring Obama’s cozy ties with 1960s radicals up at the debate in Ohio this week. I don’t think she will do it, because the spotlight might be turned back to her own radical past. Can you say “Black Panthers“?

Update 2: Her recent mocking of Obama is clever (HT Darke County GOP), but probably not enough to matter. She needed to hammer this for about three weeks for it to have significant impact, and, again, bring it up herself in a debate.

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Obama does have seem to have a certain glow about him. But its source may be nuclear in origin. Given the bogus charges thrown at Jean Schmidt in October 2006 in Ohio’s Second District, the Obama-Exelon situation needs to filed away for future reference, especially if Victoria Wells Wulsin Whatever gets too close to the Obama glow.

It has once again been too long since my last comprehensive cruise through what I believe is the largest single-state blog alliance in the nation. So let’s get started on what will only be a surface scratch at a rich treasure trove of content.

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Trakas v. Kucinich in OH-10. Trakas will announce on Saturday, noted at Big World Blog.

Related: Mark Naymik of the Cleveland Plain Dealer says, oh-so-objectively, “The Cuyahoga County Republican Party has found its sacrificial lamb in the 10th Congressional District.” Really? If Trakas plays the prolife betrayal card on Kucinich in what I believe is still a heavily Catholic district, I wouldn’t be too sure, Mark.

And somebody in Northeast Ohio has to start answering for how lousy its economy has been. It can’t be Bob Taft’s fault; Metro Columbus is getting along very well, and Metro Cincy is doing OK, if not great.

Kucinich may not be directly responsible, but what if anything has he done to stop the bleeding? It’s more likely that he’s voted against legislation — lots of it — that would have helped, and for legislation that has been or would have been harmful.

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Bearing Drift jumped on yesterday’s Sharpton-FBI-IRS story.

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Read Wizblog’s “An Accident and a Murder,” about the disparate news treatment two French crime death stories received. Don’t miss his related follow-up items.

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Maggie Thurber, on Ohio’s lack of competitiveness:

Ohio ranked 47th out of 50 states in terms of our overall ranking (1 was the best) and 49th in the Economic Performance Ranking, which was based on the state’s performance (equal-weighted average) in the three important performance variables highly influenced by state policy: personal income per capita (47th), absolute domestic migration (45th), and non-farm payroll employment (48th).

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s index to all 50 state reports (all PDFs) is here.

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Smoke If You Got ‘Em weighed in on Taxman Blog’s critique of yours truly and Nix over payday lending. Taxman responded.

My take is that there is something wrong with a business whose only reason for existing is to prey on the ignorant. At a minimum, payday lenders should be forced to treat their “fees” as interest, and be subject to Truth in Lending disclosures. The fact that they aren’t only aids and abets their predations.

Capping rates and fees, even if there is adequate disclosure, is probably necessary too. Sorry — I don’t think we can stand by and watch ignorant people get taken. And I definitely don’t want to be represented by someone who has made his career in a business whose only reason for existing, again, is to prey on the ignorant.

Taxman’s point about state lotteries is a good one, and I think that on balance we’d be better off without them. But on the mistaken public policy scale of 1-10, I think payday-lending laissez faire (which is essentially the situation in Ohio) is a 10, while the lotteries are a 3.

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Justin at Right on the Right covers yet another Hillary time warp.

A related blast from past from Snopes: “Claim (by Mrs. Clinton): I was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. False.”

A more comprehensive look at Mrs. Clinton’s history of estrangement from the truth is at Liberally Conservative.

Porkopolis wonders when Mrs. Clinton’s apology for calling General Petraeus a liar (“willing suspension of disbelief) is going to arrive.

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King’s Right Site has a story about Montel Williams that got less attention than it deserved. Mr. Williams would appear to need a halo adjustment.

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Nix is the only Guy I’m aware of noting that John and Elizabeth Edwards homeschool their two children. Given Edwards’s party’s beholdenness to the NEA, that may not be a minor matter.

Related, sort of: Return of the Conservatives notes that Heisman winner Tim Tebow, positively covered here yesterday, was homeschooled.

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Nasty, Brutish and Short has choice words on the “green shopping” movement.

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One Oar is paddling furiously against against the government education syndicate. As should we all.

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Pro Ecclesia caught Pennsylvania’s supposedly prolife, profamily senator Casey getting praise from the state’s Planned Parenthood chapter for his voting record — And thereby betraying his brave father’s legacy.

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As usual, the top three items at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism are strong doses of reality that should rattle the complacent.

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“Video: abortionist tells med students he lies to patients” — at Brain Shavings. Read it. View it.

Update: A link is also at Life News, and here’s some visual reinforcement:

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Boring Made Dull shows that Ohio Governor Strickland knows when not to cross the line (even when he’d personally like to). Barbara Sykes has no such political sense.

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And finally, Conservative UAW Guy just did something I wish I had gotten around to — chronicling the “almost too much information” debunking globaloney and those who promote it. He barely scratched the surface of what I have.

They said if George Bush was re-elected president that powerful people would dig into your past to see what you were doing in the third grade, or even kindergarten — and they were right.

And this is really dumb:

New polling shows Hillary Clinton may have dropped to second in Iowa behind Barack Obama, so now the pro-abortion New York senator has decided to go on the attack. She’s blasting her Illinois colleague on the issue of abortion and claming she’s done more to advance the pro-abortion cause.

In an Iowa stop on Monday, Clinton sought to portray Obama as someone who talks a tough game on promoting abortion but hasn’t advocated it to the same extent as her.

I realize the link is to Life News and that it’s not a quote, but it’s nonetheless clear that Mrs. Clinton has embarked on an “I’m more pro-abort than you” strategy. Even the most ardent pro-aborts have to be uncomfortable with that, as it easily conjures up a vision of who can stack bodies up the highest. What ever happened to the “safe, but rare” formulation?

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Chavez lost his grab for permanent power by a 51-49 margin. If it weren’t for fear, he would have lost by more.

The New York Times failed to note that point, even as it quoted one such fearful person near the end of its “analysis”:

For Mr. Chávez’s followers, meanwhile, the outcome of the referendum has forced some to take stock, uncomfortably, of their own loyalties.

Pedro Luis Urbina, a 33-year-old bus driver from the gritty district of El Valle who described himself as a loyal “Chavista,” said he had voted in favor of the proposals, despite disagreeing with them. The reason, Mr. Urbina said, was that he feared losing a government loan he had received to start his own small public transportation business.

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This IBD editorial is the anti-CAIR:

In 2006, a whopping 66% of religiously motivated attacks were on Jews, while just 11% targeted Muslims, even though the Jewish and Muslim populations are similar in size. Catholics and Protestants, who together account for 9% of victims, are subject to almost as much abuse as Muslims in this country.

Last year’s anti-Islamic hate crimes totaled 156. While just one hate crime is one too many, that’s a 68% drop from 2001.

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Ford broke a string of 12 consecutive months of reduced unit sales, and eked out a 0.6% increase in November vs. a year ago. The company, which was number 2 in the US just a year ago, saw ts 183,000 in unit sales trail Toyota’s by over 14,000. Still, give the folks in Dearborn a little credit, as both GM and Chrysler were down.

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Apple’s newest operating system, Leopard, is described in less-than-glowing terms by PC Magazine’s Oliver Rist. Considerably less than glowing:

Leopard is the new Vista. All the way.

Ouch.

Rist comes up with five pretty convincing reasons why. Informal conversations with several people who have upgraded give me the impression that Apple has a real problem on its hands. I for one am not upgrading for a while.

Note: This post has been moved to the top because of the importance of the topic.

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I received this e-mail from several people this morning:

I am jaw-drop stunned that an allegedly Republican governor has allowed what’s in the red box above to become law in this country’s birthplace of freedom.

And what’s this about $50 co-pays for abortions? Really?

Really (pic is from the Commonwealth Care [i.e., RomneyCare] web site; original PDF document is here):

As stated previously, I believe that Romney and his supporters, whom Gregg Jackson has taken to calling Romniacs, aren’t attempting to rebut Jackson’s detailed criticisms (here and here) of the former Massachusetts governor, because they can’t.

And now (I can’t believe I’m typing this) — Not only do the Romniacs cluelessly wonder why National Right to Life didn’t endorse their guy, they have the further gall to “speculate” that the guy NRTL did endorse paid them off (HT Life News):

Paul M. Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation, said the endorsement “makes no sense,” and speculated that it had been motivated by money.

“I think in all probability the Thompson people were engaged with the National Right to Life people in financial dealing,” said Mr. Weyrich, who has endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination.

Look, if you’re a Romniac, you can disagree with NRTL’s decision and point out reasons why, especially if you believe that a Human Life Amendment (HLA), which Thompson opposes, is the way to go (Fred wants Roe v. Wade overturned, and the states to decide individually at that point; I think the HLA should be tried, but only after Roe v. Wade goes away). It may very well be that its Thompson endorsement is not the smartest move NRTL has ever made. But raising the possibility of a payoff without a shred of evidence is a breathtakingly irresponsible move by people who should and do know better. If Weyrich et al have some kind of evidence, they’d better come out with it, right freaking now.

Meanwhile, Gregg Jackson’s, and others’, solid points about Romney’s campaign positions and performance as governor, backed by real evidence, stand unrefuted. We’re still waiting for something other than character assassination in response.

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UPDATE: Sally Pipes has more in a read-the-whole thing column on what’s really happening on the ground in the Bay State –

It’s one thing to pass a law, hold a press conference, and boldly declare to have solved an intractable public policy problem, such as the lack of universal health insurance. It’s quite another to actually have the so-called solution deliver as promised.

….. It’s now crunch time in Massachusetts. The estimated 500,000 residents who still haven’t purchased health insurance must sign up by November 15th or risk being fined $219 when tax time rolls around in April. Compared to the premiums, the many may elect the fines. But they all won’t do so quietly.

….. The plan doesn’t contain any meaningful cost-control mechanisms. The bureaucrats managing the new health care agency are expressing concern about cost trends. People purchasing the insurance are older and sicker than projected, resulting in losses to the insurance carriers. Outside of the plan, Massachusetts health insurers have projected increased health premiums of 8 to 12 percent. The plans for which the taxpayers are subsidizing will likely require similar increases in cash.

At this point, it seems smart for Mitt Romney to run from his plan and distance himself from its design even as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats embrace it.

Say what? I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to elect someone who has to run away from what he at the time considered his centerpiece accomplishment as little as a year ago. What happens if the centerpiece accomplishment of a President Romney doesn’t work out? Does he then run to Mexico?

Here’s a SmartMoney.com article on something I’ve been meaning to bring up for quite a while (bold is mine):

Buying a home is already a complex endeavor. Add in the sometimes unfathomable machinations of a homeowners association (HOA) and you enter a realm filled with the potential for misunderstandings that may have legal and financial consequences.

Often, home buyers don’t fully realize the tradeoff they’re making when they move into communities that involve becoming association members, experts say. More than 57 million people live in associations governing everything from large and small condominium developments to subdivisions of single-family homes, according to the Community Associations Institute, a trade group in Alexandria, Va.

“Many people have trouble accepting the fact that decisions will be made by others,” said Mark Pearlstein, a partner with Levenfeld Pearlstein LLC, a Chicago-based law firm that represents associations.

….. Associations provide a number of important benefits including, for instance, landscape maintenance and access to fitness facilities, and their rules often help protect property values. But it’s the horror stories that make the news: Full-blown fights over a homeowner flying a flag, stringing a clothesline or owning a large dog. And in some states associations are within their rights to foreclose on homeowners who respond to disagreements by refusing to pay their dues.

Two common homeowner complaints: Unexpected increases in dues and unwelcome rule changes.

Homeowners are often “surprised about the ability of an association to change the rules,” Pearlstein said.

For instance, recently, to forestall declines in property values, more associations are prohibiting homeowners from renting out their units. “Courts in most states have held that an association can change the rules by a vote of the ownership to restrict or eliminate leasing,” Pearlstein said.

Now, there’s the rub.

I’ll admit to not having sorted all of this out, but some freedom-advocating reactions to the arbitrary nature of HOAs, especially severe after-the-fact restrictions, would include these:

• HOAs are functioning as governments, and quite unaccountable ones at that.
• If they’re going to do that, HOA board members have to run for election — and not the internally-administered kind. I mean the normal government-administered election process at the polls.
• Major changes to HOA rules should also be subject to a formal electoral approval process.
• HOA members not on the HOA boards should have the right to bring forth ballot initiatives.
• Residents not satisfied with the resolution of a dispute need a legally-recognized right to appeal those rulings through the court system instead of being subject to binding arbitration.

I’m sure there’s a lot I’ve missed. I’m not impressed with the argument that “You agreed to it when you bought your house, now you have to live with it.” My view: You agreed to be “governed” by reasonable people, not the petty tyrants and busybodies who have all too often gravitated towards HOA positions.

Since the large majority of new homes and condos are governed (there’s that word again) by the rules (which are for all practical purposes, laws) of HOAs, their actions and somewhat extra-legal nature deserve more scrutiny than they are receiving.

I believe HOAs function as unnacountable de facto governments that need to be reined in. Though I haven’t researched it, I would be not surprised to learn that their “trade group” is into big-league lobbying at the state and federal levels to protect their arbitrary interests. I would also suspect that their power to influence any potential legislation is growing. HOAs not happy with assuming the responsibilities commensurate with their power do have a choice: They can vote to disband. Many of them wouldn’t be missed.

I don’t necessarily see this as a left-right issue, but perhaps others see it differently.

Cross-posted at Wide Open.