The President is inviting Republican and Democrat leaders to talk about healthcare. This is supposed to show the President is now dedicated to being more bipartisan. But Politico reports the White House has invited television cameras in to show the country the give and take. The President and the GOP are miles apart on healthcare. The Republicans want the whole bill scrapped or significant changes and the President wants just about everything but what the GOP does. Is this meeting designed to foster true bipartisan discussion that may lead to a compromise bill? Or do the television cameras show us that this is really about the President trying to make Americans feel as though he is reaching across the aisle?

Many on the left are in full freak out mode because of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations (and unions) to spend any money they want on campaigns. It’s “judicial activism” according to Erwin Chemerinsky:

“...the conservative justices have demonstrated that decades of conservative criticism of judicial activism was nonsense. Conservative justices are happy to be activists when it serves their ideological agenda.”

This is actually a surprisingly well-reasoned decision. The Supreme Court says people (or entities) should be allowed to spend their money as they wish as long as they don’t coordinate with a political campaign. Sure there will be some who break this rule and they should be prosecuted. But isn’t the idea simply common sense? If I want to put a commercial on the air I should be able to do it. Just because the people who lead an organization want to do the same thing doesn’t make it wrong.

It would seem to be common sense that in the wake of Scott Brown’s stunning win in the Massachusetts Senate race that Obamacare is dead or will at least have to be radically altered. Will moderate to conservative Dems support a bill that single-handedly moved Ted Kennedy’s seat into Republican hands? Believe it or not, though, there are some who say the Dems should just plow ahead. Take this from the Washington Post:

“If there is a lesson in the Massachusetts vote, it is this: pass a bill. The nation needs reform. Democrats need an accomplishment. And Democratic activists and voters need a new cause: fixing reform, not abandoning it.”

Can you believe there are still some Democrats blind to the fact that this healthcare bill is a bad idea? The nation has rejected it and even in liberal Massachusetts they have chosen a Republican specifically because he would help kill this bill. The Dems would flip the switch on their own electric chair by cramming this bill through either before Brown takes his seat or through reconciliation once he’s in the chamber. While that might be fun for a conservative like me, I have to consider the good of the country. For that reason I hope the Democrat leadership gets the hint and drops this bill completely.

I was walking through the park on the way from my condo to the Green Line this afternoon to get to work. My hand was freezing, but there was no way I was putting on a glove. I can’t operate my Blackberry with the stupid glove on and I needed to refresh my internet browser over and over again until the Baseball Hall of Fame updated their website. It was 2 minutes to 1:00 and I wanted the news as soon as it was on the net. Refresh, refresh, refresh. My hand shaking and increasingly becoming numb. Then, just as I boarded a train, it happened. The headline flashed across the screen: BBWAA Elects “Hawk” To The Hall of Fame.” Finally!

You have to understand something about my obsession with Andre Dawson to get why this is such an exciting day for me. As a kid he was my hero. I mean, hero. I had just about everything that any vendor ever put Andre Dawson’s name or face on. I have the Andre Dawson cup from Taco Bell. There’s Andre Dawson candy. An RC Cola can with Andre’s face on it. I played little league with an Andre Dawson model Rawlings mitt. (His defensive prowess didn’t rub off on me.) I have it all, along with just about every Dawson baseball card ever printed. There are 4 trunks filled with Andre Dawson stuff in my basement. (Can you believe my wife won’t let me put it all up in our home?) I even skipped classes at Western Illinois University so I could be in Wrigley Field for his final game there (unfortunately it was as a Florida Marlin).

I understand Andre is just a man and is certainly flawed. We all are. As I’ve grown up I have realized that so much faith shouldn’t be put in any mortal man. Also, age has made the sacrifices my parents made for my siblings and me more apparent. They are my true heroes. But, could that man hit and throw a baseball!

He was on the Hall of Fame ballot nine times. It made me (and I’m sure him) wonder if it would ever happen. That may have been why I had such a sense of relief when I saw the news. My cell phone started ringing as friends who knew about my devotion to the Hawk called to congratulate me (as though I had done anything). When the calls were done I just sat there on the train taking it all in. I confess tears came to my eyes. It’s silly, but true. I held them back so the other commuters on the train wouldn’t think I was weird or ask what was wrong. (I can just hear the conversation, “Are you ok, sir?” “Yes, it’s just that Andre Dawson made the Hall of Fame today.”)

I’ve had some time now to process this and there is one thing I can say for sure. My wife, daughter, and I (and anyone else I can wrestle up) will be in Cooperstown on July 25. I can’t wait!

I’m sorry to admit I wasn’t all that outraged when President Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor. Actually I laughed because he looked a bit like a bobble-head doll as he bobbed up and down repeatedly. I just took it as another Obama moment in which he looked in over his head. Many Presidents are at the beginning. I didn’t give it a second thought and didn’t get angry about it. Then I talked to my grandfather.

He lost three brothers in WWII. To this day he can still barely talk about them. It’s just too painful. When I asked him about “the bow” yesterday he got loud. “Does he know how many people died on Iwo Jima?” His voice trembled as he expressed to me how it hurt to have come so far in this country. He remembers ticker tape parades welcoming home troops who served overseas. Then he saw Vietnam vets spit upon. Now he sees the President of the United States bowing to the Japanese emperor. In a few decades he’s seen the America he loves turn into a place he barely recognizes. During his historic campaign Obama knew symbolism mattered. Why is it that he seems to have forgotten it so quickly in the White House?

Nidal Hasan killed more than a dozen soldiers at Ft. Hood. They were unarmed and he knew it. Yet, his family has the gall to say he was the victim in all of this.

A few weeks ago Obama advisor David Axelrod met with Roger Ailes of Fox News. No one has said what was discussed at the meeting other than to say it was a cordial conversation over a cup of coffee. The conventional wisdom was the White House was mad because Fox’s entertainment network didn’t cover the President’s health care speech and Axelrod wanted to talk to Ailes about getting better coverage. In the wake of the war launched by the White House against Fox News in the days since that chat, I’m wondering if something more sinister was hatched.

Let’s run the timeline here: around September 23 Axelrod and Ailes meet for coffee. On October 11 Anita Dunn went on CNN’s Reliable Sources to denounce Fox as “an outlet for GOP propaganda.” The war began. Are we sure this “war” wasn’t discussed at that coffee?

We got few details of the Axelrod-Ailes meeting and the reason is becoming obvious. Was that meeting simply an attempt by the White House to get Fox to cover the President’s speeches? Or instead can we conclude that Axelrod (the astute political operative) and Ailes (the extremely successful news baron) struck up a deal. I can just hear the conversation, “Roger, we need some help firing up the left and you could always benefit from higher ratings. What do you say we go to war?” “David, your guy is giving us more fodder than we can handle. I love the idea!” And from there the details were hammered out.

The White House stooping to the level of attacking a single media outlet looks petty. That leaves me actually hoping this war is a hoax.

Dear Friends,

A week after my daughter was born I got the news that my father has pancreatic cancer. Anna and I have been in Tampa with him and my mom while doctors performed surgery. It was shortly after the surgery when we found out that the cancer had reached a lymph node and is terminal. The doctors are giving him 20 months. That’s the reason for the long absence from this blog. Thanks for bearing with me. Soon I’ll get back to it if for no other reason than it will be therapy.

Cisco

Dear Friends,

Please indulge me for a bit with some pictures of my new daughter, Gabriella Abree Cotto. I’ll be back to my rants in a few days after spending some time with mom and baby.

Members of the “old” media have been reporting that the number of people at the 9/12 rally in Washington DC wasn’t in the millions or even the hundred thousands. Some have said there were maybe 60,000 there. Click HERE for a panoramic photo showing just how many were there. I’m thinking a million people, at least.

When abortion doctor George Tiller was killed back in May in his Wichita church the Obama administration responded swiftly and with force. Attorney General Eric Holder dispatched US Marshals to abortion clinics around the country. He denounced Tiller’s murder as “an abhorrent act of violence.” The fear was that Tiller’s murder was just the beginning of a larger movement to take out abortion doctors. This has been the narrative for a long time: people who claim to be pro-life will resort to murder in order to protect unborn children. When one does it America better watch out because more shootings could be on the way.

Contrast that with the administration’s response to the murder of pro-life activist Jim Pouillon near Flint, Michigan. No US Marshals have been sent to protect pro-life protestors. No strongly worded statement from the Attorney General. Instead, a Justice Department spokeswoman said the department is “saddened” by the death and is “monitoring the situation.”

Unchecked anger and faulty reasoning can lead anyone to commit an act of violence. It doesn’t matter whether you spend your days rallying to protect life or working to end it. In the end the vigilante is wrong for taking justice into his own hands simply because he feels the situation warrants it. The government is just as wrong by expressing outrage and expending tax payer funded resources in response to an injustice done on only one side of the debate, especially when that side happens to be a major contributor to their political party.

What’s it like to lose a loved one in battle? It’s a question you can only answer if you’ve experienced it. My grandfather lost three brothers in WWII. It’s still painful for him to talk about all these years later and he doesn’t get into much detail. When it happened those many years ago there was a respect for the family and the dead that kept media outlets from showing photos of the slain troops. We know what it means when we see a news report that a young man is dead in battle. We don’t need to see the pictures to understand. The Associated Press took the unprecedented step last week of releasing a photo taken of Lance Cpl Joshua Bernard in the moments after a grenade had taken his legs in Afghanistan. It would also take his life.

Bernard’s family and Defense Secretary Robert Gates pleaded with the AP not to release the picture. In the end, the AP editors decided the photo told a story of “sacrifice” and “bravery.” They felt it was a story that people “needed to see and be aware of.” Is this really about Americans feeling blessed to have men and women who are willing to make this kind of sacrifice to serve us? Is it really about making sure their bravery is understood? Or is it about media guilt because they feel complicit in an American war effort that many believe should be over? Surely there have been countless more photos taken by journalists throughout the Afghan and Iraqi wars that editors have chosen to ignore. Why this photo at this time? Could it be because of recent polls that show Americans increasingly getting antsy about our involvement in Afghanistan? Even George Will says it’s time to get the military off the ground there. To be frank, it has become easier for journalists to be daring in reporting and printing something that may reinforce why Americans think we should get out of Afghanistan. If the public was solidly behind the Afghan war effort there might be a backlash if a picture like this was released. This is unlikely to happen now.

Would the media be so daring in releasing other photos that document violence and the toll it takes on lives around the country? Why doesn’t the AP release photos of children killed in gang crossfire? You should go a step further and ask why the AP doesn’t print the photos of aborted babies that are so abhorred by even many on the pro-life side. Either death is a taboo thing to print or open the floodgates and release it all.

I understand funerals are emotional events. Families grieve. Friends spend time trying to console them. Inevitably when people are remembering a dead loved one they are going to focus on things that truly represent what that person was all about. Perhaps memories of a favorite moment fishing on the lake will come to mind. The help they provided while you learned to ride your bike. The advice provided to you at just the right moment. Many of these memories will be replayed for the audience at the funeral. For Ted Kennedy, though, something much more despicable was put on display. When his grandson, Max Allen, came to the lectern to offer a prayer, he didn’t share one of these fond memories or talk about how much his grandfather will be missed. Instead, the 13 year old took this moment to offer an emotional appeal for Obamacare. Whoever wrote this didn’t even make it seem like it came from the pen of a junior-high school student. It read like a Senate staffer copied and pasted it from one of Ted’s press releases. I understand people’s passion about healthcare. I want reform too (just not government control). But using a child in a moment of grief when you know the eyes of the nation are watching is disgusting.