Democrats are hoping that Senator Ted Kennedy’s death will help breathe new life into health care reform.

Some believe the loss of Kennedy will bring a new spirit of bipartisanship to the issue, and at the very least change the tone of the debate, which has become downright nasty. Already, one group against reform has suspended its advertising out of respect for Kennedy.

That’s from the blog of CNN’s Jack Cafferty, who poses this exit question: “Can Senator Kennedy’s death revive the spirit of bipartisanship when it comes to health care reform?”

My answer: Why should it?

In fact, even setting aside the bullshit notion of bipartisanship, this strikes me as an absurd question. I’m supposed to abandon my position, or at least give a lot away,  because someone on the other side died?  Heck, why not argue that Kennedy’s death should make me more willing to register as a Democrat?

Then again, given past Republican cave-ins, and the example Cafferty cites of the organization that has suspended advertising, he may be on to something.

It is an intriguing idea, though, in one sense. I’m not sure if the math works, but . . . if other democratic senators offered to kill themselves in exchange for some “bipartisan” give-and-take, we’d only need 20 Democratic volunteers from states with Republican governors to off themselves before the resulting Republican appointments created a filibuster-proof Republican minority that could repeal all the enactments mad in the “spirit of cooperation” following all those suicides.

Chris Matthews, adult adoption provider

Michelle Malkin has warned against the politicization of Kennedy’s death (Stacy McCain wasn’t listening), but, as Ed Morrissey points out at HotAir, that advice does not apply to Kennedy’s allies (even the media, who denies being an ally), and especially not to Chris Matthews who took it upon himself to make Barack Obama a part of the Kennedy family (metphorically) or,  Nancy Pelosi, who managed to hold out for several hours before issuing a middle-of-the night statement to reporters calling for passage of the health care bill in honor of Kennedy.

Expect a lot of what Michelle is calling “wretched excess” in the media coverage of Kennedy’s life. But what the hell, they said the same thing about us when Reagan died. Everyone’s entitled to be memorialized by those that love them best. (And if you say, “Yeah, but Reagan was a great man,” you’re proving my point.)

But memorializing is one thing. Using someone’s death to further a cause, as Matthews and Pelosi both did, is another. I don’t remember anyone saying, “In honor of the dearly departed President Reagan, we really need to dismantle the department of education.”

Kennedy’s dead and that’s that. The “Lion of the Senate” is entitled to be lionized by his . . . lionizers, I guess. And while I feel no need to politicize his death, I will sure politicize the politicization of it by The Left.

UPDATE: Professor Jacobsen is sympatico and reminds us that Rush was Right.

“The one thing that you all share is a moral conviction,” Obama said. “This debate over healthcare goes to the heart of who we are as American people… This is part of an ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another.”

***

“In the wealthiest nation on Earth, we are neglecting to live out that call,” the president said.

Everyone who invokes this “richest nation” argument is missing the point. There’s a reason we’re the richest nation in the world, and that reason is that we have not done all the things that lefties want us to do. I’m tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they have no idea they keep proposing ideas that will ensure we don’t remain the richest nation on earth, but for some of them, I’m sure that is exactly their intent.

I woke up in the middle of the night and realized the trick.

You see, evil doesn’t just show up.  It disguises itself as something nice; so you’ll let it in.  It tricks you.

From there, she’s off to the races against a government takeover of health care.

But, to the vampire comparison . . .

It’s been a long time since I read Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, but I seem to remember that one characteristic of the vampires in King’s novel was that they could not enter your home unless they were invited. You’d think that would keep you pretty safe, right? Well, not so much. You see, the vampires were just so charming — with lies and promises — that they could convince you to let them in even when you knew they were vampires. It took great force of will to resist them.

So it is with statists and the public. The vast majority of people seem so charmed by statist promises that they are prepared to invite the statist in even though they know the statist will rob them of liberty. It seems like so few people even recognize the evils or end results of statism well enough to have the force of will to refuse its charms.

UPDATE (7/12/09): Mike at Cold Fury features this image at the top of his sidebar and has kindly extended permission for me to use it here to better illustrate the statist vampire:

THE Pope has called for a new world financial order blaming the global crisis on the greed of financiers and investors.

Denouncing what he termed a profit-at-all-cost mentality, Pope Benedict XVI was also critical of governmental oversight and the absence of global regulation.

In the most socially rooted Vatican encyclical letter since 1967, the Pope wrote: “In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations organisation, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.”

***

The German-born Benedict, 82, stated: “There is urgent need [for] a true world political authority” to manage the global economy.

“The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly – not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centred,” Benedict wrote in the 144-page document.

Because centrally-managed economies always work out, right? Maybe he should have talked to his predecessor about life in Poland. Then he’d know that he’s proposing a formula for universal poverty. And does this mean conservatives can now object to this agenda on the ground that it is forcing state-sponsored religion on people?

I have a lot of respect for Pope Benedict. But just because he took a vow of poverty doesn’t mean he should promote poverty for everyone else.

H/T:  Pat Dollard.

UPDATE (7/8/09): Hat tip goes specifically to Erik Wong, writing at Pat Dollard. Check out comments from “vincenzo4″ at Wong’s post here and here for an opinion on how Benedict’s statement relates to biblical prophecy. I’ll leave that to others.

With several blogs devoted to Palin, she really doesn’t need me to stick up for her. But two recent articles at The American Thinker caught my eye for their analyses of two classes of Palin detractors.

First up is writer/singer Lloyd Marcus, who starts by comparing Sarah Palin to Gary Cooper in High Noon, and then writes:

Why are Obama and his gang so committed and desperate to destroy Palin? Could it be they recognize her destiny, like that of Moses, to set her people free? And why is she so despised by them? Obama’s gang hate Palin for all the reasons we love her. Sheriff Palin is a good, decent and strong character driven conservative leader. Palin also believes in God. Such humility and virtues are as repulsive to liberals as showing Dracula the cross.

Something that sticks in the craw of many liberal women is that in their youth, they brought into the feminist rhetoric that women’s liberation means no husband and family. Tragically, they find themselves aging and alone. Meanwhile, this conservative woman has it all: great career, fine family and a husband who loves and respects her. Adding insult in injury, Sheriff Palin looks mighty fine in her jeans.

She is seen as a threat and she’s not allowed to be happy because she’s not a feminist. OK, that’s about right. Stuart Schwartz explores that feminist angle in depth, specifically in contrast to the cultural movement surrounding Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues:

The Washington Post, which has devoted much of the past decade celebrating the Ensler culture, nastily declared that her “greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”  Those were among the kinder words written by one of its showcased writers on faith, a University of Chicago divinity school professor who also derisively noted that someone who “has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!)” does not a woman make.

So what does make a woman…politically, that is? Hate and cultural conformity, to judge by the venom spilling from the nation’s elite.  Ensler promotes this, exhorting women to “vote with your vaginas” and put Democrats in office. She has urged them “to get our vaginas to the polls”, in this last election warning that a vote for Palin is the equivalent of a vote for rape…the bad kind. Women — and those non-traditional men who have escaped gender stereotypes to embrace a walk down the “vagina trail” — should ask themselves: what would your vagina do?

Conservatives knew all this already, but I’m hoping that this kind of thing is being noticed beyond the grassroots.

Responding to a Vanity Fair writer who asked her last December who she might like to see nominated for the Supreme Court, Hill named a few names and closed her note with this admission that she sees the Supreme Court as a Supreme Legislature (emphasis mine):

I’d also like for him to go outside the Northeast corridor and Ivy League Schools for someone who has been on a state supreme court deciding significant social/economic issues.

They don’t even try to hide it anymore.

 Then again, as Robert L. from Neo-Libertarian at Large noted in a comment on my post about filibustering radical judicial nominees:

I think part of the dilemma is that there is a game of chicken going on over who is going to be the first to admit that SCOTUS has turned into just another legislative/political body.

Both parties, the Republicans very belatedly, are increasingly maneuvering based on this assumption but the messenger on this issue will definitely be shot.

I think we can forget about the court ever settling just legal disputes instead of moral/social/economic ones. That horse left the barn a long time ago. While I think certain conservative judges may claim in good faith that their job is to avoid deciding social issues, these matters are thrust upon them.

Perhaps conservatives and/or Republicans could, as Robert L. suggests, be more honest about the reality of the Supreme Court.  That, of course, would draw howls from the left along the lines of “Hypocrites!  For years, you’ve railed against using the court to advance a social agenda, and now you’re trying to do the same thing!”

But what choice do we have?  If we refuse to acknowledge the court’s function, then it becomes worse than a mechanism for social change. It becomes a mechanism for one way social change. Maybe it’s about time we just give up and play by the rules liberals have established.

Wait. Scratch that. The Caymans are worse. Must be. Whereas The Left decried sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq, I don’t think they’re gong to make much noise — unless it’s celebratory — over this:

Tax havens that refuse to share information with other countries will face “sanctions” under an agreement being thrashed out at the G20 summit on Thursday, a British finance minister said.

“I am expecting there to be sanctions against countries that don’t sign up,” Stephen Timms, financial secretary to the Treasury, told reporters on the sidelines of the summit in London.

“In due course there will be a list produced of countries that don’t sign up… what’s being discussed today is the timing, he said, promising: “The era of banking secrecy is over.”

Liechtenstein and Switzerland caved even before the G20 summit. Maybe they could have avoided sanctions if they kept banking secrecy laws but also started supporting terrorists and murdering their own citizens.

H/T: Ace.