That’s what happens when I take a Friday vacation day.

Democrats are in a struggle with Republicans to see who can repeal portions of ObamaCare first.  And now that Harry Reid has actually read the bill, he’s finally realized that this is going to hurt the hospitals in his state more than it’s going to help them.  As much as Democrats complained about the delays in getting the thing passed, you’d think they’d have read it by the time it did.

Put Obama in the Oval Office, and he’ll repair our standing with the world…or so went the campaign thought.  A poll of Arab public opinion, supposedly an area where Bush had destroyed our credibility, shows that little had changed.  In fact, some indicators are even worse than under the eeevil Bush.

A very interesting article suggesting that Evangelical Churches are the new "Mainline" Christian churches, and that the traditionally "mainline" denominations, as they have become more liberal, shrink and thus have less influence on society (spiritually speaking).  A very good interview of Rodney Stark, who’s been following this a long time.

I’ve been asked, regarding the Tea Partier’s wish to reduce government spending, why now?  Why not during Bush or Clinton or even Reagan.  I keep saying that the spending going on now is unprecedented, and Bruce McQuain explains some of the reasons and ramifications of this spend-fest.

How’s that stimulus stimulating the economy?  Not so well, actually.

The "classy" Left, taking its usual name-calling tact against the Tea Party.  And lest you dismiss this as some loner in a basement, it’s got huge funding partners.

And finally, a study in religious tolerance from Chuck Asay.  (Click for a larger image.)

Paul Krugman has often touted the wonders of the information coming out of the Congressional Budge Office (CBO).  This was especially true during the health care bill and stimulus debates.  James Taranto hits some of the highlights.

"The Congressional Budget Office has looked at the future of American health insurance, and it works. . . . Last week the budget office scored the full proposed legislation from the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). And the news–which got far less play in the media than the downbeat earlier analysis–was very, very good. Yes, we can reform health care."–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 6, 2009

"Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has concluded, the proposed legislation would reduce, not increase, the budget deficit. And by giving us a chance, finally, to rein in the ever-growing spending of Medicare, it would greatly improve our long-run fiscal prospects."–Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 4, 2009

"The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2050 the emissions limits in recent proposed legislation would reduce real G.D.P. by between 1 percent and 3.5 percent from what it would otherwise have been. If we split the difference, that says that emissions limits would slow the economy’s annual growth over the next 40 years by around one-twentieth of a percentage point–from 2.37 percent to 2.32 percent. That’s not much."–Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 7, 2009

"Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the roadmap [for cutting Medicare costs, offered by Rep. Paul Ryan], offers a translation: ‘Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.’ In short, there would be Medicare cuts."–Krugman, New York Times, Feb. 12, 2010

"And it gets better as we go further into the future: the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform [ObamaCare] will look better in its second decade than it did in its first."–Krugman, New York Times, March 12, 2010

"As Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, recently put it, ‘There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is high and many factories and offices are underused, and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.’ "–Krugman, New York Times, July 2, 2010

"That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus."–Krugman, New York Times, July 5, 2010

But as soon as a Republican starts to use CBO numbers to show how his plan for overhauling federal spending and taxes, well suddenly it is simplicity itself to game the system.

"What you need to realize is that the CBO is the servant of members of Congress, which means that if a Congressman asks it to analyze a plan under certain assumptions, it will do just that–no matter how unrealistic the assumptions may be."–Krugman, NYTimes.com, Aug. 6, 2010

This bit of information would have been good to give to his readers back in the day.  You know, those readers who take everything he says at face value.

I’ve been on vacation for about 10 days, so I have some catch-up to do here.  Here are some stories I noticed over the break.  Others will get their own post.

"Young Men’s Christian Association" to be renamed "Young".  This is ostensibly to remain more inclusive, but it’s not like folks have been staying away in droves or anything.  Just some more political correctness, removing even the hint of anything Christian in our culture, even if only ever referred to by its initial.

Handing out the Gospel of John is now "disturbing the peace" in Dearborn, Michigan.  Four kids from a group called Acts 17 Apologetics face jail time for handing out the text and talking to people at a Muslim festival.  The link on their name goes to their YouTube channel.  I’ve watched some of the videos, and I just don’t see "harassment" or "disturbing" going on.

Christian beliefs are now "unethical" when it comes to counseling, according to Augusta (GA) State University.  They want Jennifer Keeton to agree to a plan that includes "diversity sensitivity training" and changing her beliefs before they will allow her to graduate.  Read the article and, even if you disagree with her, tell me that this doesn’t sound like Soviet Russia.

The "JournoList" situation really blew up while I was out.  Oh, that liberal media.  Kenneth Anderson said it best, "To all you non-JournoLister reporters out there, please be aware that your credibility has just taken a big hit, because we, your faithful readers, don’t actually know who is or who isn’t.  You can thank JournoList for that, you can thank Ezra Klein, and you can thank the Washington Post, which has done its outstanding professionals absolutely no favors in any of this."

When even Democrats are poised to revolt over taxes (however temporary that might be), you know there’s a problem

And an appropriate cartoon from Chuck Asay:

Equal pay for equal work is something I think we can all get behind.  But feminism, at least on the liberal side of the equation, has come to mean that sexual equality is more important than nurturing as a mother.  Originally trying to get men to not think of women as sex objects, today’s liberal feminist is doing precisely that.

Lori Ziganto has the scoop: Empowerment: Women Now Choose Objectification Over ‘Creepy’ Breastfeeding.

When Sonia Sotomayor was questioned by the Senate before her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice, she sounded positively conservative.  As Don Surber notes:

A year ago, as senators were deciding whether to confirm her appoinment, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy asked: “Is It Safe To Say That You Accept The Supreme Court’s Decision As Establishing That The Second Amendment Right Is An Individual Right? Is That Correct?”

Then-Judge Sotomayor replied: “Yes, Sir.”

NewsBusters has the video.

However, she voted against individual gun rights a couple of days ago.

In her dissent against the finding that the city of Chicago’s ban on handguns is unconstitutional, Justice Sonia Sotomajor said: “I Can Find Nothing In The Second Amendment’s Text, History, Or Underlying Rationale That Could Warrant Characterizing It As ‘Fundamental’ Insofar As It Seeks To Protect The Keeping And Bearing Of Arms For Private Self-Defense Purposes.”

It does establish "an individual right" but doesn’t protect "private self-defense purposes".  Right.  I’m not a constitutional law scholar, but what tortured reasoning can you have in mind when you agree with the first statement, and then make the second statement?  Or is it just out and out lying? 

And now Elena Kagan is in front of the Senate, and Paul Mirengoff notes, "As with Sotomayor’s articulated vision, Kagan’s could have come from the lips of John Roberts."  Is this what we can expect from Obama nominees now and in the future; not just a resistance to being pigeon-holed, but being completely evasive to the point of mischaracterizing their own views? 

I hate to have to wind up with two justices that are not at all what they sold themselves to be in order to find out how true this may be, but this does point out how important elections are.  The enduring legacy of Obama, besides the enormous debt we’ll be saddled with, are Supreme Court justices that are entirely, 100% political, willing to say whatever it takes to get their job.

Remember that full-page ad that MoveOn.org took out to condemn General Petraeus (or as they called him, "General Betray Us")?  You may have forgotten, but MoveOn certainly does.  They kept that ad up on their website every since then.

Well, that is, until just the other day when it became clear that Petraeus would be replacing McChrystal.  Then all of a sudden >poof< the page itself, and one describing their rational for the ad, magically disappear from their site.  See, now that Obama has tapped him for a job, he’s not so bad after all.

Remember how the Soviets used to airbrush people out of pictures who had fallen out of favor with the Communist party?  You may have forgotten, but MoveOn certainly does. Inconvenient memory?  Scrub it away.

A typical reason couples live together before getting married is that, supposedly, this will allow them to find out if they are compatible and thus ensure their marriage lasts longer.  But a new study says, nope, they are less likely to stay married.

Read my lips; no new taxes on those making $250,000 or less.  Well, we may soon add to the many exceptions since that promise was made, "unless you own a home".

The revolving door between the MSM and the Democratic Party.  Oh, that liberal media.

If the Gulf oil spill had happened on Bush’s watch, do you really think the environmental groups would be as virtually silent as they are now?  (Me neither.)

Remember how the UN climate change panel was supposed to be the result of boatloads of scientists in agreement?  Turns out the boat was a dingy.

And from the "Beware of Governments Bearing Gifts" department:

Churches and other faith-based organizations that receive government funds, beware. In an agreement that will be enforced by a federal court, government agencies in New York have agreed to monitor the Salvation Army to ensure that it doesn’t impose religion on the people its serves through its tax-funded social services.

The agreement just effects the Salvation Army’s social work in New York, but it’s more than a cautionary tale for religious groups in this era of government-backed faith-based initiatives. "With this settlement, government is watching out," co-counsel Deborah Karpatkin of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. "It will not fund religious organizations to proselytize to recipients of government-funded social services."

The Salvation Army’s social services are intended to be an expression of faith in God and love for fellow man, but if they are prevented from doing the former while performing the latter, they’re being hobbled.  My suggestion has always been to avoid government money at all costs.

It turns out that how well you know your basic economics principles correlates pretty closely with your spot on the political spectrum.

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

They describe the specific questions as well as their methodology, which breaks things down by incorrect answers, and where "not sure" doesn’t count against you.  I can see one of the questions that I might disagree with what they considered the correct answer, but you had to be positively wrong (so to speak), not just unsure, to get marked off.  The results?

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Ronald Reagan said, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so."  This shows how remarkably true that is. 

That’s the good news, for all of us.  Crime is down pretty much across the nation, in all sorts of environment.  But Richard Cohen notes that this has some ramifications for an enduring liberal assertion.

This is a good news, bad news column. The good news is that crime is again down across the nation — in big cities, small cities, flourishing cities and cities that are not for the timid. Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty — my view at one time — have some strenuous rethinking to do. It could be, as conservatives have insisted all along, that crime is committed by criminals. For liberals, this is bad news indeed.

I have always wondered how this assertion has endured when there was a very clear, very stark historical example contradicting it.  If it was true, crime should have exploded during the Great Depression with so many folks reduced to poverty who weren’t there before. 

Cohen asks the question:

What’s going on? A number of things, say the experts. As is always the case, the police credited the police for magnificent police work, while others cited the decline in crack cocaine usage. Those answers, though, are only partially satisfying because, believe you me, if and when crime begins its almost inevitable ascent, the very same police authorities will blame economic or social conditions beyond their control — not to mention the inevitable manpower shortage.

Whatever the reasons, it now seems fairly clear that something akin to culture and not economics is the root cause of crime. By and large everyday people do not go into a life of crime because they have been laid off or their home is worth less than their mortgage. They do something else, but whatever it is, it does not generally entail packing heat. Once this becomes an accepted truth, criminals will lose what status they still retain as victims.

Seems this economic explanation is more often a convenience used by liberals to create victims (and potential voters) of those they insist they care about.  Cohen wraps up, after a "West Side Story" reference you’ll need to Read The Whole Thing to see, with a conclusion that may be news to some, but shouldn’t be at all.

Common sense tells you that the environment has to play a role and the truly desperate will sometimes break the law — like Victor Hugo’s impoverished Jean Valjean, who stole bread for his sister’s children. But the latest crime statistics strongly suggest that bad times do not necessarily make bad people. Bad character does.

The good news is, crime is down.  The … good news is, it’s possibly another counter example that could (hopefully) soon fully discredit this liberal article of faith.

Penn Jillette, magician, liberal, and critic of religion in general, has a program on Showtime where, among other things, he pokes fun and mocks all sorts of religions.  In an interview with George Lopez, he confessed that American Christians are "the most tolerant people worldwide", and admitted that he was shocked by that discovery.  (And this even when his attacks on said religion are riddled with falsehoods.)

Now why would that be?  Why would the perception of Christians be so far from the reality?  How would the word get out that Christians are such intolerant folks, if they’re not the ones doing it?

Oh, that liberal media!