“Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the leadership will press ahead without reworking the abortion provision, which opponents say falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage…

“The current plan is for the House to approve the Senate-passed bill from late last year… Both houses then would pass a second bill immediately, making changes in the first measure before both could take effect. The second bill would be debated under rules that bar a filibuster…

“That strategy would leave in place the Senate language on abortion. It would allow health plans receiving federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace to cover abortion, provided they pay for it only with money collected from policyholders…

“Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., has been pushing for the stricter House provisions, saying that he and a dozen or so abortion opponents would vote against the health care bill if the Senate language is retained.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

Related posts:

1. Michael Barone: Dems’ Health Strategy Doesn’t Add Up to a Win
2. Senate Moderates Voice Concern Over Public Option
3. My Way: Obama’s Health Prescription a Problem for Dems

Then again, federal officials also report that there were 34 deaths from people not having health insurance while you were reading the last sentence.

A sensationalistic crash that killed four occupants of a Lexus last year in San Diego resulted in nationwide media exposure regarding supposed Toyota design flaws.  Toyota investigated and found that the car’s floor mat had become stuck to the accelerator, preventing it from operating properly.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration backed up Toyota.  As outlined in its inspection report, “The right clip was installed into the grommet of the carpeting but not installed into the mat.  The left clip was… not clipped to either the carpet or the rubber mat…  [T]he bottom edge of the accelerator pedal had melted to the upper right corner of the mat…  [W]hile it was a Lexus brand mat, it was not the correct application for the vehicle.”

Nonetheless, the incident led to an accumulation of complaints about Toyota and high-profile recalls for problems ranging from Sudden Unintended Acceleration to brake problems to faulty steering.  The federal government butted in by holding hearings last month in which they grilled Toyota executives about alleged glitches in their vehicles’ electronic throttles; they also demanded to know when Japanese execs would commit hara-kiri to atone for their sins.

As the Times noted, virtually all of the accident-related deaths reported this year took place before 2010, some as far back as 20 years.  In other words, motorists have been jumping on the bandwagon, feeding horror stories to a ravenous media, and helping perpetuate an urban legend.  Or, as one agency spokeswoman diplomatically noted, “It is normal for NHTSA to receive an increase in consumer complaints after a recall is announced and the public learns of a safety defect.”

Toyota’s situation wasn’t helped by a high-profile SUA-type incident Monday on the California freeway (why does everything nutty happen in California?) with a Prius, a model included in the floor mat recall.

As Terence Corcoran of Canada’s National Post notes, these types of incidents and the dozens of investigations that have followed them over the years have never yielded any hard evidence revealing a design flaw leading to SUA.  To this day they remain a collection of tall tales.

Corcoran’s devastating, multipart, investigative analysis concludes, “All of the reports are anecdotal accounts of out-of-control vehicles for reasons that nobody can ever adequately explain…  Of the millions of cars on the road, only a few hundred anecdotal reports exist, making it far more likely that other things are happening, including driver mistakes and even fluke occurrences that no amount of corporate fixing can avoid…  Audi famously became victim of a[n] SUA craze a couple of decades ago, losing massive market share even though no problem was ever identified beyond driver error.”

Corcoran deconstructs a laughable graph printed in the Wall Street Journal showing that Toyota-related complaints steadily doubled from 2000 to 2008.  Corcoran notes that this chart, not surprisingly, precisely tracks the doubling of Toyota’s vehicle sales from 2000 to 2008, thus demonstrating that safety complaints by percentage of market share have not increased.

In fact, Edmunds.com reports that of the top 20 carmakers, Toyota is 17th in complaints-to-market share ratio, well below GM (#11), Ford (#10), and Chrysler (#7).

In order to slander Toyota, smarty-pants automotive technology professor Dave Gilbert of Southern Illinois University recently demonstrated to gullible ABC reporter Brian Ross how a supposed flaw in the Toyota Avalon’s wiring could trigger SUA.  Viewers watched Gilbert reroute deliberately exposed wiring in the front seat to make the car speed up at an alarming rate, while Ross sat incredulous and white-knuckled beside him trying to get the car to stop by stepping on the brakes.

As Toyota patiently explained in a subsequent press conference, electronics systems do not rewire themselves.

Popular Mechanics’ Mike Allen thoroughly debunked Gilbert’s demonstration in an article published Monday: “Here’s what Gilbert had to do to make his Avalon go rogue: He had to cut open three of the six wires that travel from the pedal assembly to the engine computer…  Next he had to insert a specific 200-ohm resistor between the two signal wires.  Finally, he had to generate a direct short between the 5-volt supply lines and the signal leads…  [T]he order of the modification is important.  Apply the 5-volt power lead to the wires before inserting the resistor and the computer would instead throw a fault code and go into limp mode.”

In other words, the only way a Toyota automobile could experience electronically induced SUA is if an automotive technology professor was sitting in the front seat doing it by hand.

Allen notes two other inconvenient facts: (1) SUA can be induced via Gilbert’s manipulations in any other make, not just a Toyota, and (2) not one case of SUA in Toyota’s history has ever been ascribed to faulty wiring.

So the recent outrage over the supposedly crumbling record of the mass-market car company with the best safety record in the world is due to factors that have nothing to do with Toyota: floor mats not manufactured by the automaker or improperly installed; media sensationalism causing a spike in reported incidents; driver error; and people’s confusion over electronic gadgets they don’t understand.

There’s a political angle to all of this, too.  The hysteria is no doubt being driven by protectionism and suspicion of products made by foreign companies, perhaps fueled by demonstrable defects in Chinese products in recent years, but unfairly aimed at first-world technological powerhouse Japan.

I also assume there is scant support in Democratic Washington for propping up Toyota, a non-unionized company that has doubled its market share over the past decade.  There’s also probably little desire in the administration to help a competitor car company the President hasn’t partially taken over, like GM or Chrysler.

If I were the CEO of Ford, I’d be double-checking my cars’ airbag systems right about now.

Related posts:

1. Terence Corcoran: More Evidence of Media Thuggery Against Toyota
2. Lott’s Numbers: Obama’s Top 2 Most Outrageous Health Care Myths
3. Rush Limbaugh: The Race Card, Football and Me

“Damon portrays Sgt. Ray Miller… chosen to find WMDs in the first days of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. When his first assignment comes up empty, Miller is instantly skeptical—like a reader of The Nation…

“Miller’s a phantom figure with neither personal background nor political motivation. He’s simply correct; the kind of protagonist that could only arise from the Left’s Bush-era sense of resentment and self-righteousness…

“Stuck in Bush-era cynicism, Greengrass and Damon ignore the success of the military surge but question the legitimacy of WMD claims…

“Miller appeals to those hung up on WMDs yet complacent about Saddam Hussein’s treachery and willfully naive about American political interests. The big problem Green Zone… represents is that these filmmakers, like the makers of The Hurt Locker, no longer know how to characterize heroism. The Hurt Locker’s psychotic G.I. now proves his moral superiority in Green Zone by becoming a traitorous/valorous spy.”

http://www.nypress.com/article-20994-bourne-a-spy.html

Related posts:

1. Armond White – Wake Up and Smell the Oscars: They Stink!
2. A War Movie for People Who Know or Care Nothing About War
3. Town Hall Meeting with U.S. Congressman Brian Baird

“One of these controversial measures rewrites the Higher Education Act to ban private companies from offering federally guaranteed student loans as of this July…

“The Democratic plan is to make this public option the only option mere days before colleges send out their financial aid packages to incoming students…

“Both the House-passed bill and the President’s budget increase Pell Grants and also create automatic future increases, so individual grants will grow faster than inflation every year. Colleges will pocket the money by raising tuition, so we have yet another federal program ensuring that higher education costs continue to rise even faster than health-care spending…

“‘Various changes that the President proposes to the Pell Grant program would add another $0.2 trillion to the deficit between 2011 and 2020,’ CBO said Friday. That could turn out to be a very optimistic estimate if unemployment remains high and more people seize the educational opportunity to which they have just become entitled.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101663745849200.html

Related posts:

1. Michael Barone: Damn the Deficit – Full Speed Ahead on Health Care
2. Obama Unveils 2011 Budget With $3.83T in Spending
3. Science: Previous Sea Level Rise Prediction Off by 100%

“Rep. Massa describes a confrontation with Emanuel in a shower: ‘I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me.’”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/03/08/massa_rahm_emanuel_would_sell_his_own_mother_for_votes.html

Related posts:

1. Healthcare-Reform Opponent Says Bit-Off Finger Could Not Be Re-Attached
2. WSJ: Why Palin Quit – Death by a Thousand FOIAs
3. What They’re Saying About the Budget

“Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.

“They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

“The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours…

“Sources say they are investigating the possibility of a corporate manslaughter charge against St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London…

“His mother added: ‘When I went back to the hospital I was told that all the nurses had been offered counselling as they were so traumatised, but nothing was offered to me…’

“The tragedy emerged a week after a report into hundreds of deaths at Stafford Hospital revealed the appalling quality of care given by many of the nurses.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255858/Neglected-lazy-nurses-Kane-Gorny-22-dying-thirst-rang-police-beg-water.html

Related posts:

1. Prisoners Have a Better Diet Than Health Service Hospital Patients, Scientists Warn
2. Stafford Hospital Caused ‘Unimaginable Suffering’
3. HuffPo: Cambridge Police Union President Stephen Killion “Disgraced” That Obama “Is Our Commander-In-Chief”

“The only thing escalating here is the media’s anti-Toyota bias, with Congress and transport officials ready to provide the cover…

“[C]omplaints against Toyota [rose] from about 1,200 a year in 1999 to 3,500 in 2008 and then to 4,900 in 2009. But such numbers are useless in themselves if they are not paired with Toyota’s rising sales and its growing share of the market…

“Out of 20 auto makers, Toyota ranked among the lowest –17th, in fact–in complaints as a percentage of market share…  Toyota is easily the best among the mass-market auto firms against which it competes and well ahead of the North American makers (Government Motors #11, Ford #10 and Chrysler #7).

“My bet is that as more and more facts emerge on the Toyota story, the more Toyota may emerge as a victim. And if that proves to be true, Toyota will emerge stronger than ever in the minds of U.S. consumers. And that would mean tougher times for Government Motors and Chrysler.”

http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/12/toyota-more-evidence-of-media-thuggery.aspx

Related posts:

1. Railroading Toyota
2. NYT: In Poll, Obama Is Seen as Ineffective on the Economy
3. Bloomberg: Obama Snares Palin, Media in Wide Blame-Game Net

“These findings are unchanged from June 2008 just before the Supreme Court overturned a Washington, D.C. law banning handguns in that city. That decision also prompted an increase in the high court’s favorability ratings. Sizable majorities of Americans across virtually all demographic lines, including age, income, gender, race and political affiliation, share the belief that cities do not have the right to ban handgun ownership.

“In part, that’s because 70% of all adults believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun.”

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/gun_control/69_say_cities_don_t_have_right_to_ban_handguns

Related posts:

1. Supremely Representative: Should the Nation’s Highest Court Look Like America?
2. AP: Firefighter Says Sotomayor’s Ruling Divides People
3. UK Telegraph: US Cities May Have to be Bulldozed in Order to Survive

“Old-time cynics used to say that the Oscars were simply Hollywood’s way of congratulating itself, using the awards to gain box-office attention for the industry’s product. Now, no media pundit would dare admit that promoting Oscars proves how journalism has capitulated to the film industry…

“[Kathryn Bigelow] now receives retroactive esteem for The Hurt Locker, the Iraq War action film that critic Gregory Solman nailed as ‘totally unexceptional.’ It is worst than inexact when critics call it ‘One of the best war films ever made.’ Any appreciation of Bigelow’s artistic ambitions and psychosexual, gender-bending sensibility forces one to understand that The Hurt Locker is not a war film but another of her explorations into the masculine thrill complex. It is disingenuous to use The Hurt Locker as an opportunity to comment upon the Iraq War—hijacking its dubious treatment on combat as a mental dysfunction (‘War is a Drug’) beyond Bigelow’s deliberately noncommittal stance.”

http://www.nypress.com/article-20967-wake-up-and-smell-the-oscars-they-stink_.html

Related posts:

1. A War Movie for People Who Know or Care Nothing About War
2. Armond White’s Review of Green Zone
3. Women and the GOP: No Problem

“Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press…

“U.S. intelligence asserts that 20 percent of suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison have returned to the fight and the number has been steadily increasing.

“Qayyum’s key aide in plotting attacks on Afghan and international forces is another former Guantanamo prisoner, said the Afghan intelligence officials as well as a former Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akundzada. Abdul Rauf, who told his U.S. interrogators he had only loose connections to the Taliban, spent time in an Afghan jail before being freed last year.

“He rejoined the Taliban, they said. Akundzada said he warned authorities against releasing both him and Qayyum.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100304/ap_on_re_as/as_from_gitmo_to_battle;_ylt=Arv2oYUCogiHyowjx19z8pZ0fNdF

Related posts:

1. More Than Responsible: President Obama Must Press Home Intelligence Reforms
2. Obama Adviser Jones Shifted Afghanistan Views — A Lot: In Civilian Post, Jones Worries About Taliban
3. Obama: Al-Qaida Link to Christmas Terror Suspect