Major tax increases in the Reid health care bill
Posted on November 18th, 2009 by kbh (K. Hennessey):
The following is from the Joint Tax Committee estimate of the revenue effects of the Reid bill. I have listed provisions with major revenue effects (+$20 B / 10 years) and a few others that have significant policy or political impacts. There are some smaller changes as well, which you can see for yourself in the 3-page document. All revenue figures are revenues raised over the ten-year period 2010-2019.
1.40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). Amounts are indexed for inflation by CPI-U + 1% – begins in 2013 – $149 B tax increase
2.Additional 0.5% Medicare (Hospital Insurance) tax on wages in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) – begins in 2013 – $54 B tax increase
3.Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs – begins in 2009 – $22 B tax increase
4.Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2009 – $19 B tax increase
5.Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of health insurance plans – begins in 2009 – $60 B tax increase
6.Cut in half (to $500K) the amount of an executive’s compensation that a health plan can deduct from its corporate income taxes – begins in 2013 – $600 million tax increase
7.Impose 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures – begins for surgery in 2010 – $6 B tax increase!
In total the bill would raise taxes by $370 B over ten years.
The original is must-reading if you want any appreciation of the gall of these people:
http://keithhennessey.com/2009/11/18/reid-tax-increases/
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Long but worthy read on the Obama-created...
diminishment of every aspect of American prestige and position in the world.
(via NRO): "That Same Old Carter Feeling Again" [Seth Leibsohn]
Yesterday, I detailed how little respect the Chinese authorities gave the Obama administration in its requests for media, "less respect than was given presidents Bush or Clinton" was how the New York Times put it yesterday. "A retreat," the NYT said. This morning the LAT has more, about less: "In China, Obama's Hosts Show No Signs of Budging" is the headline. The subheading: "President Obama is Leaving China Without Any Definable Concessions on Tougher Sanctions on Iran or Currency Exchanges."
The story continues:
When it came to China, President Obama's famous powers of persuasion failed to persuade.
He came bearing a long shopping list, including Chinese support for tougher sanctions on Iran and more flexibility by Beijing on currency exchange rates, but Obama was met with polite, yet stony, silences. . . . Not only is the U.S. president coming away without any definable concessions, but the Chinese appeared to be digging in their heels. . . . Perhaps most disappointing was China's failure to budge in its opposition to tougher sanctions on Iran. With their extensive oil interests influencing their policies toward Tehran, the Chinese are increasingly seen as an obstacle to reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions. . . .
Obama did not meet with Chinese journalists, lawyers, human rights advocates, environmentalists or any ordinary Chinese, and an expected meeting with Hu Shuli, who recently resigned as editor of China's leading business magazine, did not materialize.Obama's limited results in part reflect the profound shift in Sino-U.S. relations and global politics, with China's rapid rise and America's weakened position, especially in the wake of the financial crisis.
There's more. Helene Cooper of the NYT reports: "China held firm against most American demands. With China’s micro-management of Mr. Obama’s appearances in the country, the trip did more to showcase China’s ability to push back against outside pressure than it did to advance the main issues on Mr. Obama’s agenda, analysts said."
And now the Washington Post: "If there was any significant change during this trip, in fact, it was in the United States' newly conciliatory and sometimes laudatory tone. . . . Obama's trip stood in stark contrast to visits by his predecessors."
This gives me no pleasure to report. One might ask what the Asia trip was for? The two most important things happening in and about Asia are Afghanistan, where President Obama did not go, and China's support for our attempt at an Iran policy, which Obama did not get. No budging from China. The whole idea of negotiating with Iran was based on sanctions. And the whole idea around sanctions was that it would work if China cooperated. I never thought sanctions would work; I never thought negotiating with Iran would work. And, regardless, China is not playing ball with President Obama — in part because of our "weakened position."
This is reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter years — the last time the U.S. was seen as weak — unable to move and coax other countries, unable to reassure dependent allies, unable to have the respect of the world and, of course, unable to move the mullocracy of Iran.
As for our "weakened position," there are any number of ways to change that. Yes, our economy is the first problem and right now we have little leverage there. But our foreign policy has been one of retreat and capitulation as well. We capitulated to China on the Dalai Lama, we are capitulating to the Chinese client state of the Sudan, President Obama on Monday shook hands with the prime minister of repressive Myanmar (another China vassal state), of course he bowed to Japan, he took missile defenses out of Eastern Europe at the request of Russia, he has refused to say anything of strength about Iran, and has shown appeasement to Latin American dictators. Looking at this record: Why would a skeptical country like China think we are strong, deserving of respect?
This is not only sad, it is dangerous. A weak and disrespected America is bad for America, sends the wrong message to enemies (including terrorists), hurts dissident movements abroad, and — as a political matter, again — reminds us nothing so much as it does of the years of Jimmy Carter, which it took even more years to overcome.
Not a very good first year for America, or the world, under a new leadership that promised a new respect, a new start, and a new way of doing business. It's new alright — it just isn't any good.
— Seth Leibsohn is a fellow of the Claremont Institute.
(via NRO): "That Same Old Carter Feeling Again" [Seth Leibsohn]
Yesterday, I detailed how little respect the Chinese authorities gave the Obama administration in its requests for media, "less respect than was given presidents Bush or Clinton" was how the New York Times put it yesterday. "A retreat," the NYT said. This morning the LAT has more, about less: "In China, Obama's Hosts Show No Signs of Budging" is the headline. The subheading: "President Obama is Leaving China Without Any Definable Concessions on Tougher Sanctions on Iran or Currency Exchanges."
The story continues:
When it came to China, President Obama's famous powers of persuasion failed to persuade.
He came bearing a long shopping list, including Chinese support for tougher sanctions on Iran and more flexibility by Beijing on currency exchange rates, but Obama was met with polite, yet stony, silences. . . . Not only is the U.S. president coming away without any definable concessions, but the Chinese appeared to be digging in their heels. . . . Perhaps most disappointing was China's failure to budge in its opposition to tougher sanctions on Iran. With their extensive oil interests influencing their policies toward Tehran, the Chinese are increasingly seen as an obstacle to reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions. . . .
Obama did not meet with Chinese journalists, lawyers, human rights advocates, environmentalists or any ordinary Chinese, and an expected meeting with Hu Shuli, who recently resigned as editor of China's leading business magazine, did not materialize.Obama's limited results in part reflect the profound shift in Sino-U.S. relations and global politics, with China's rapid rise and America's weakened position, especially in the wake of the financial crisis.
There's more. Helene Cooper of the NYT reports: "China held firm against most American demands. With China’s micro-management of Mr. Obama’s appearances in the country, the trip did more to showcase China’s ability to push back against outside pressure than it did to advance the main issues on Mr. Obama’s agenda, analysts said."
And now the Washington Post: "If there was any significant change during this trip, in fact, it was in the United States' newly conciliatory and sometimes laudatory tone. . . . Obama's trip stood in stark contrast to visits by his predecessors."
This gives me no pleasure to report. One might ask what the Asia trip was for? The two most important things happening in and about Asia are Afghanistan, where President Obama did not go, and China's support for our attempt at an Iran policy, which Obama did not get. No budging from China. The whole idea of negotiating with Iran was based on sanctions. And the whole idea around sanctions was that it would work if China cooperated. I never thought sanctions would work; I never thought negotiating with Iran would work. And, regardless, China is not playing ball with President Obama — in part because of our "weakened position."
This is reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter years — the last time the U.S. was seen as weak — unable to move and coax other countries, unable to reassure dependent allies, unable to have the respect of the world and, of course, unable to move the mullocracy of Iran.
As for our "weakened position," there are any number of ways to change that. Yes, our economy is the first problem and right now we have little leverage there. But our foreign policy has been one of retreat and capitulation as well. We capitulated to China on the Dalai Lama, we are capitulating to the Chinese client state of the Sudan, President Obama on Monday shook hands with the prime minister of repressive Myanmar (another China vassal state), of course he bowed to Japan, he took missile defenses out of Eastern Europe at the request of Russia, he has refused to say anything of strength about Iran, and has shown appeasement to Latin American dictators. Looking at this record: Why would a skeptical country like China think we are strong, deserving of respect?
This is not only sad, it is dangerous. A weak and disrespected America is bad for America, sends the wrong message to enemies (including terrorists), hurts dissident movements abroad, and — as a political matter, again — reminds us nothing so much as it does of the years of Jimmy Carter, which it took even more years to overcome.
Not a very good first year for America, or the world, under a new leadership that promised a new respect, a new start, and a new way of doing business. It's new alright — it just isn't any good.
— Seth Leibsohn is a fellow of the Claremont Institute.
Dithering on Afghan...
Stand Up Notes From Flyover Country: Dithering on Afghanistan by Jeffrey Jena (via Big Government)
The situation in Afghanistan is like a poker game. There are only three options for action: raise, call or fold. The President seems to be unable to pick one that doesn’t have Americans on both sides of the debate pulling out their hair.
During his campaign for the White House President Obama said, “We have seen Afghanistan worsen, deteriorate. We need more troops there. We need more resources there… I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan.”
He promised to send another ten to fifteen thousand troops to help those already there. He also declared that the war in Afghanistan was the proper front in the war against terror. Now that he is Commander-in-Chief, his vision seems to be less clear.
The military commanders gave the President four troop deployment options earlier this week but he refused all four. Not for military reasons but because of some hooey about the corruption of the government in Kabul and their inability to run a fair election. Mr. President, if our support for governments was based on whether they are corrupt or not and could run a fair election, we would have pulled federal funding from Chicago years ago. The problem with pulling out of Afghanistan, or Chicago for that matter, is that they would fall into violent anarchy. We have already seen that happen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Current thinking on what to do in Afghanistan is based on two faulty assumptions:
The first is that wars are clear and concise events with specific outcomes and easy to find exit points. When John McCain told us the truth about how long we might be in Iraq, we didn’t want to hear it. We have been in Japan and Germany for over sixty years and in the Philippines for much longer. I wonder if back during the Spanish- American War leftist were telling the President that the Philippines were tribal islands and would never be able to be organized into a stable democratic government?
The second faulty assumption is that if we walk away from Afghanistan, simply pull all of our troops out, the war it then over. How long would it be before the Taliban was running things again and Al Qaeda was using it as a base of operations? We will be fighting the same people again in the future, perhaps armed with nuclear weapons from Iran or Pakistan. Our national attention span has shortened to Twitter-like dimensions while our enemies think in terms of centuries.
The real problem for President Obama is that is if he deploys more troops and commits to staying, Afghanistan is no longer Bush’s war but his. Not even a year into his term and he is already worried about his legacy rather than doing what is best for the country. He is worried that his presidency will get bogged down in the battle for liberty instead of being able to focus on strengthening ACORN and the SEIU.
The left doesn’t mind waging long, costly, and non-winnable wars, so long as they are they start them themselves. Look at the war on poverty and the war on drugs. Our cities are littered with the lives ruined by those wars. We have thrown enough money into those two rat holes to finance Iraq and Afghanistan for the next fifty years and toss in twenty years of free government health care to boot. Do we have an exit strategy from the Welfare State, Mr. President?
The situation in Afghanistan is like a poker game. There are only three options for action: raise, call or fold. The President seems to be unable to pick one that doesn’t have Americans on both sides of the debate pulling out their hair.
During his campaign for the White House President Obama said, “We have seen Afghanistan worsen, deteriorate. We need more troops there. We need more resources there… I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan.”
He promised to send another ten to fifteen thousand troops to help those already there. He also declared that the war in Afghanistan was the proper front in the war against terror. Now that he is Commander-in-Chief, his vision seems to be less clear.
The military commanders gave the President four troop deployment options earlier this week but he refused all four. Not for military reasons but because of some hooey about the corruption of the government in Kabul and their inability to run a fair election. Mr. President, if our support for governments was based on whether they are corrupt or not and could run a fair election, we would have pulled federal funding from Chicago years ago. The problem with pulling out of Afghanistan, or Chicago for that matter, is that they would fall into violent anarchy. We have already seen that happen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Current thinking on what to do in Afghanistan is based on two faulty assumptions:
The first is that wars are clear and concise events with specific outcomes and easy to find exit points. When John McCain told us the truth about how long we might be in Iraq, we didn’t want to hear it. We have been in Japan and Germany for over sixty years and in the Philippines for much longer. I wonder if back during the Spanish- American War leftist were telling the President that the Philippines were tribal islands and would never be able to be organized into a stable democratic government?
The second faulty assumption is that if we walk away from Afghanistan, simply pull all of our troops out, the war it then over. How long would it be before the Taliban was running things again and Al Qaeda was using it as a base of operations? We will be fighting the same people again in the future, perhaps armed with nuclear weapons from Iran or Pakistan. Our national attention span has shortened to Twitter-like dimensions while our enemies think in terms of centuries.
The real problem for President Obama is that is if he deploys more troops and commits to staying, Afghanistan is no longer Bush’s war but his. Not even a year into his term and he is already worried about his legacy rather than doing what is best for the country. He is worried that his presidency will get bogged down in the battle for liberty instead of being able to focus on strengthening ACORN and the SEIU.
The left doesn’t mind waging long, costly, and non-winnable wars, so long as they are they start them themselves. Look at the war on poverty and the war on drugs. Our cities are littered with the lives ruined by those wars. We have thrown enough money into those two rat holes to finance Iraq and Afghanistan for the next fifty years and toss in twenty years of free government health care to boot. Do we have an exit strategy from the Welfare State, Mr. President?
Obama polling via RCP
November 18th, 2009
Quinnipiac: Obama Under 50 For First Time
President Barack Obama's job approval rating is under 50% for the first time, according to a new national survey from Quinnipiac University. The survey, conducted November 9-16 among 2,518 registered voters, shows 48% approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, while 42% disapprove. That is a slight decline from Quinnipiac's last poll in early October, which showed 50% approval and 41% disapproval.
Support for Obama's handling of specific issues has also declined in the past month, most notably on Afghanistan:
Afghanistan
Approve 38 (-4 vs. last poll 10/8)
Disapprove 49 (+9)...
Read the rest:
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/11/18/quinnipiac-obama-under-50-for-first-time/
Quinnipiac: Obama Under 50 For First Time
President Barack Obama's job approval rating is under 50% for the first time, according to a new national survey from Quinnipiac University. The survey, conducted November 9-16 among 2,518 registered voters, shows 48% approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, while 42% disapprove. That is a slight decline from Quinnipiac's last poll in early October, which showed 50% approval and 41% disapproval.
Support for Obama's handling of specific issues has also declined in the past month, most notably on Afghanistan:
Afghanistan
Approve 38 (-4 vs. last poll 10/8)
Disapprove 49 (+9)...
Read the rest:
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/11/18/quinnipiac-obama-under-50-for-first-time/
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
This is Obama-nomics: fake tax cut, then bill
From Tax Prof blog:
TIGTA: Obama Tax Credit to Leave 15.4m Workers With Additional Tax Bill
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has released Millions of Taxpayers May Be Negatively Affected by the Reduced Withholding Associated With the Making Work Pay Credit (2010-41-002):
The Making Work Pay Credit, a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will apply to most taxpayers with earned income. The credit will be in effect for Tax Years 2009 and 2010. The Making Work Pay Credit was implemented using new income tax withholding tables issued by the IRS. Application of the tables could negatively affect a significant number of taxpayers. The overall objective of this review was to assess IRS efforts to implement the Making Work Pay Credit and to evaluate its impact on taxpayers. ...
Based on an analysis of Tax Year 2007 tax return data, TIGTA estimates that more than 15.4 million taxpayers could unexpectedly owe taxes for Tax Year 2009 as a result of the Making Work Pay Credit.
Associated Press, Millions Will Have to Repay Part of Obama Tax Credit
Bloomberg, Obama Tax Credit Leaves 15 Million Owing IRS: Report
L.A. Times, Millions May Have to Repay Part of Obama Tax Credit
Wall Street Journal, Millions to Owe IRS Due to Stimulus Credit -- Treasury
TIGTA: Obama Tax Credit to Leave 15.4m Workers With Additional Tax Bill
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has released Millions of Taxpayers May Be Negatively Affected by the Reduced Withholding Associated With the Making Work Pay Credit (2010-41-002):
The Making Work Pay Credit, a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will apply to most taxpayers with earned income. The credit will be in effect for Tax Years 2009 and 2010. The Making Work Pay Credit was implemented using new income tax withholding tables issued by the IRS. Application of the tables could negatively affect a significant number of taxpayers. The overall objective of this review was to assess IRS efforts to implement the Making Work Pay Credit and to evaluate its impact on taxpayers. ...
Based on an analysis of Tax Year 2007 tax return data, TIGTA estimates that more than 15.4 million taxpayers could unexpectedly owe taxes for Tax Year 2009 as a result of the Making Work Pay Credit.
Associated Press, Millions Will Have to Repay Part of Obama Tax Credit
Bloomberg, Obama Tax Credit Leaves 15 Million Owing IRS: Report
L.A. Times, Millions May Have to Repay Part of Obama Tax Credit
Wall Street Journal, Millions to Owe IRS Due to Stimulus Credit -- Treasury
Obama's 2012 defeat will be due to KSM move
DP: Upon hearing of the trial being moved to NYC, I predicted it would still be in various states of delay, motions, maneuvers, etc in 2012, giving any Republican that emerges from a (hopefully Republican-only) primary, who has the necessary go-for-the jugular political skills...the biggest, fattest campaign issue a candidate could have. ONE. TERM. PRESIDENCY.
(via World Net Daily) "Is America at war, or not?" by Pat Buchanan
Are we at war – or not?
For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?
Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies – that he may not be guilty.
And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.
When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.
Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.
We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?
Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed nearly as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.
When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.
Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.
When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?
When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Fort McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?...
(Read the rest for a glimpse of what could very well go wrong, base on what normally happens in criminal trials):
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116268
(via World Net Daily) "Is America at war, or not?" by Pat Buchanan
Are we at war – or not?
For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?
Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies – that he may not be guilty.
And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.
When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.
Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.
We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?
Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed nearly as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.
When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.
Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.
When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?
When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Fort McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?...
(Read the rest for a glimpse of what could very well go wrong, base on what normally happens in criminal trials):
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116268
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Remember--much of health care results not...
...due to supposed lack-of-insurance:
(via Powerline) The Washington Post reports that "the U.S. [is] losing ground on preventable deaths." Although the U.S. is the international leader in the detection and treatment of most cancers, the death rate from diseases that need not cause a high rate of mortality among people under the age of 70 -- diabetes, for example -- is high here. Ten years ago, the U.S. ranked 15th out of 19 industrialized countries in the "preventable death" category. Now it ranks 19th out of 19th. Meanwhile, per capita medical spending in this country continues to outstrip such spending in the rest of the industrialized world.
The Post tries to tie our high "preventable death" rate to the fact that many Americans are uninsured, but its case isn't particularly persuasive. For example, the Post suggests that a lack of regular check-ups among people without medical coverage is a significant contributor to the high death rate from diseases that shouldn't kill. But early detection is also crucial to surviving diseases that are likely to kill, and the Post acknowledges that the U.S. is a leader in detecting and preventing deaths from such diseases.
To understand why so many Americans are dying before their time from diseases like diabetes, it might be instructive to walk down a typical street in most American cities or towns and eyeball the population. Compared to other industrialized counties I've visited, or population doesn't appear to be taking good care of itself. It may not be our medical system and its providers that are letting us down; we may be the ones who are letting us down.
Recall too in this connection that there are an estimated 4.5 million Americans who are eligible for Medicaid or S-CHIP but have not enrolled. It's tough to save people who lack the initiative to take advantage of free health care.
It used to be fashionable for leftists to condemn America for having a high infant mortality rate. But was America to blame for the habits and behavior pattens of pregnant girls who recklessly endangered the babies they were carrying?
Fortunately, most Americans don't seem to be buying the left's indictment of our health care system. They have more confidence in their own eyes than in the misleading statistics being fed to them by the liberal MSM, and thank God for that.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/10/024653.php
(via Powerline) The Washington Post reports that "the U.S. [is] losing ground on preventable deaths." Although the U.S. is the international leader in the detection and treatment of most cancers, the death rate from diseases that need not cause a high rate of mortality among people under the age of 70 -- diabetes, for example -- is high here. Ten years ago, the U.S. ranked 15th out of 19 industrialized countries in the "preventable death" category. Now it ranks 19th out of 19th. Meanwhile, per capita medical spending in this country continues to outstrip such spending in the rest of the industrialized world.
The Post tries to tie our high "preventable death" rate to the fact that many Americans are uninsured, but its case isn't particularly persuasive. For example, the Post suggests that a lack of regular check-ups among people without medical coverage is a significant contributor to the high death rate from diseases that shouldn't kill. But early detection is also crucial to surviving diseases that are likely to kill, and the Post acknowledges that the U.S. is a leader in detecting and preventing deaths from such diseases.
To understand why so many Americans are dying before their time from diseases like diabetes, it might be instructive to walk down a typical street in most American cities or towns and eyeball the population. Compared to other industrialized counties I've visited, or population doesn't appear to be taking good care of itself. It may not be our medical system and its providers that are letting us down; we may be the ones who are letting us down.
Recall too in this connection that there are an estimated 4.5 million Americans who are eligible for Medicaid or S-CHIP but have not enrolled. It's tough to save people who lack the initiative to take advantage of free health care.
It used to be fashionable for leftists to condemn America for having a high infant mortality rate. But was America to blame for the habits and behavior pattens of pregnant girls who recklessly endangered the babies they were carrying?
Fortunately, most Americans don't seem to be buying the left's indictment of our health care system. They have more confidence in their own eyes than in the misleading statistics being fed to them by the liberal MSM, and thank God for that.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/10/024653.php
Mucho money for not-so-mucho coverage
"In A Sane World, This Report Would Kill Obamacare"
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt
The chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services --a non-partisan oversight agency of the federal government-- has analyzed the Obamacare bill passed by the House. The Hill links to the full report and you should wade through it.
Key takeaways from the auditor's report:
"*After 10 years under the new regime, 23 million Americans would still be without insurance;
"*The bill cuts $570 billion from Medicare; and
"*The bill does not stop the exploding cost of health care."
In a nutshell, Obamacare uses massive new tax hikes and massive cuts to Medicare to give health benefits to some of the currently uninsured, but does nothing to contain health costs. The Democrats spin on this devastating report cannot conceal that Obamacare fails every test of genuine "reform." It is being pushed solely for political reasons, primarily to expand the size and reach of government and with it the public sector employee unions that power so much of the Democratic Party machinery.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/b63b2ea9-44af-4efc-b799-6fbc3794d2a2
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt
The chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services --a non-partisan oversight agency of the federal government-- has analyzed the Obamacare bill passed by the House. The Hill links to the full report and you should wade through it.
Key takeaways from the auditor's report:
"*After 10 years under the new regime, 23 million Americans would still be without insurance;
"*The bill cuts $570 billion from Medicare; and
"*The bill does not stop the exploding cost of health care."
In a nutshell, Obamacare uses massive new tax hikes and massive cuts to Medicare to give health benefits to some of the currently uninsured, but does nothing to contain health costs. The Democrats spin on this devastating report cannot conceal that Obamacare fails every test of genuine "reform." It is being pushed solely for political reasons, primarily to expand the size and reach of government and with it the public sector employee unions that power so much of the Democratic Party machinery.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/b63b2ea9-44af-4efc-b799-6fbc3794d2a2
We know cost will rise--they insist otherwise
"'Reform' at your expense "
Health premiums to skyrocket By SALLY PIPES:
The health-reform bill that the Senate will soon debate may differ markedly from the one written by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that passed the House -- but both would raise the cost of health care for ordinary Americans.
Health premiums to skyrocket By SALLY PIPES:
The health-reform bill that the Senate will soon debate may differ markedly from the one written by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that passed the House -- but both would raise the cost of health care for ordinary Americans.
Such an approach is at odds with the chief goal of reform -- to increase access to care by reducing the cost.
The Empire State is ill-equipped to deal with higher health costs. New York's health system is already one of the most expensive in the country, with total private and public health-care spending of more than $6,500 a person a year. Only two other states and the District of Columbia spend more. Meanwhile, 13.6 percent of New York residents are uninsured.
But Congress seems hell-bent on making life harder for ordinary New Yorkers. Several recent reports confirm this. A recent analysis done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the large insurer Wellpoint and consulting firm Oliver Wyman (using WellPoint's membership data) showed that an average New York family with two children covered by a basic individual-market policy would see its premiums rise 82 percent under Sen. Harry Reid's version of the bill, which includes new excise taxes on insurers, drug companies and medical-device firms, which would all be passed on to consumers.
(It'd be even worse in other states: A 25-year-old man in Kentucky, for instance, would see his monthly premium rise from $61 to $181 -- nearly a threefold jump.)
New York's small businesses would fare somewhat better. Premiums for a New York City-based firm with eight employees would rise 6 percent if the reform plan takes root.
A big part of that 6 percent hike would come from the Senate's plan to tax so-called "Cadillac" high-cost insurance plans. Because insurance in New York is already so expensive, the tax would hit many workers' policies. By 2014, New Yorkers would be forking over $33 million to the federal government in "Cadillac" taxes alone.
Democrats claim that government subsidies would help families adjust to the higher cost of insurance. But those subsidies won't offset many people's hikes. For example, premiums for a two-child family with annual income of $66,150 would still go up 24 percent under the Senate's plan -- afterthe subsidy is taken into account. That's an extra $80 a month.
It's easy to understand how "reform" will raise health costs -- by imposing onerous new regulations on insurance. For instance, reforms passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate would mandate that all policies cover such benefits as pediatric dental services and maternity coverage -- even if you don't want such coverage. The reform package's new minimum-benefit requirements alone would add $245 a month to the average New York family's premium.
What should lawmakers be doing instead? First, prune needless regulations and mandates. Such action would allow insurers to offer a variety of plans that meet individual consumers' needs and budgets. It would also lower costs, as benefit mandates add from 20 to 50 percent to the cost of a basic insurance policy.
When Congress set out to reform the US health-care system, its primary goals were to lower health costs and improve access to insurance. The leading House and Senate health-reform proposals would do the opposite -- and make average Americans worse off in the process.
Sally Pipes is president & CEO of the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/reform_at_your_expense_Cv3TM1Cqlwc4oMQf4tXBOO#ixzz0X8u5sXFx
Another delusion/lie down: Chi-coms doubt...
...that the health care scheme (why is it that only Republican proposals are derided with the scare-word "scheme"?) and accompanying debt are fiscally sustainable.
"China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform" by James Pethokoukis:
Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.
Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.
Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.
For instance, a new study from the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds that the healthcare reform bill recently passed in the House of Representatives would increase healthcare spending to 21.3 percent of GDP by 2019 compared with 20.8 percent under current law. That’s bending the curve the wrong way. The study also questions the “long-term viability” of the $500 billion in Medicare cuts meant to help pay for expanded insurance coverage.
In addition, the CMS study gives a clearer cost estimate than the one provided by the Congressional Budget Office. According to the CBO, the 10-year cost of PelosiCare is $894 billion. But that analysis includes early years with little government spending, According to the CMS, the House approach would cost $1 trillion from 2013-2019, or some $140 billion a year when fully put into effect.
Few realists in Washington think any of the current reform plans make a significant dent in the long-term healthcare cost to government. ...
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/reform_at_your_expense_Cv3TM1Cqlwc4oMQf4tXBOO
"China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform" by James Pethokoukis:
Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.
Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.
Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.
For instance, a new study from the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds that the healthcare reform bill recently passed in the House of Representatives would increase healthcare spending to 21.3 percent of GDP by 2019 compared with 20.8 percent under current law. That’s bending the curve the wrong way. The study also questions the “long-term viability” of the $500 billion in Medicare cuts meant to help pay for expanded insurance coverage.
In addition, the CMS study gives a clearer cost estimate than the one provided by the Congressional Budget Office. According to the CBO, the 10-year cost of PelosiCare is $894 billion. But that analysis includes early years with little government spending, According to the CMS, the House approach would cost $1 trillion from 2013-2019, or some $140 billion a year when fully put into effect.
Few realists in Washington think any of the current reform plans make a significant dent in the long-term healthcare cost to government. ...
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/reform_at_your_expense_Cv3TM1Cqlwc4oMQf4tXBOO
"No cuts for seniors" lie disproved by Post
More Great Headlines for Obamacare [Rich Lowry] (via NRO):
From Washington Post:
"Report: Bill would reduce senior care
"A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.
"The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.
"Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade."
From Washington Post:
"Report: Bill would reduce senior care
"A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.
"The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.
"Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade."
More, hardly the first, phony numbers on jobs
(via Instapundit) THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Recovery.gov shows money flowing to nonexistent Congressional districts. “Recovery.gov also shows 2,893.9 jobs created with $194,537,372 in stimulus funding in New Hampshire’s 00 congressional district. But, there is no such thing. The site also shows $1,471,518 going to New Hampshire’s 6th congressional district, $1,033,809 to the 4th congressional district and $124,774 to the 27th congressional district. In fact, New Hampshire only has two congressional districts; inviting confusion about where the money listed for the 00, 4th, 6th and 27th districts is going.”
Reader David Kirkham emails: “Must be in one of those 57 states somewhere…”
Posted at 12:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/back-story/2009/nov/17/recoverygov-shows-money-flowing-to-nonexistent-di/
Reader David Kirkham emails: “Must be in one of those 57 states somewhere…”
Posted at 12:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/back-story/2009/nov/17/recoverygov-shows-money-flowing-to-nonexistent-di/
Monday, November 16, 2009
So, how's that reset w/Muslim world going?
From Col. Ralph Peters: "Bam's Muslim-world muddle"
Half a year ago in Cairo, President Obama addressed the Muslim world. Global leftists lauded the speech as heralding instant change in the Middle East.
The Obama-adoring pundits were right. Change came. But it's all bad.
Instead of listening to the extravagant claims of our leftward-plunging media about how profoundly that speech affected Muslims, let's look at what's actually happened since Obama praised Islam and trashed America:
DP: Use link to read how from Pakistan to Yemen, there's been only one direction--downhill.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bam_muslim_world_muddle_3UJGct0Q4622YP4G47QhRK#ixzz0X2yBI2PT
Half a year ago in Cairo, President Obama addressed the Muslim world. Global leftists lauded the speech as heralding instant change in the Middle East.
The Obama-adoring pundits were right. Change came. But it's all bad.
Instead of listening to the extravagant claims of our leftward-plunging media about how profoundly that speech affected Muslims, let's look at what's actually happened since Obama praised Islam and trashed America:
DP: Use link to read how from Pakistan to Yemen, there's been only one direction--downhill.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bam_muslim_world_muddle_3UJGct0Q4622YP4G47QhRK#ixzz0X2yBI2PT
Things some of the anti-warriors really believe
As stated in Monday's column, here are some profound and incisive observations from the folks that talked to me on Saturday, October 31, at their weekly "Peace Vigil" in front of the do-nut shop at Oak and Main:
The signs were rather stock-in-trade for anti-warriors: "Bring them back home," "Bring them back alive," " Vet for peace," "War kills the future," and "Health care not warfare."
The question on whether American military deaths were ever for a good cause prompted one gentleman to offer that they have always been for the purpose of "perpetuating empire on earth" starting with the war against Indians, or Native Americans, if you will.
President Obama came in for some critical remarks with admonishments to "Show some leadership" and to not be "wishy washy on his agenda." A comment was made to the effect that "war is not the purpose" of his presidency, I guess.
On woman who would not talk to me contended that I twisted the responses of the anti-war folks 4 years ago when I conducted a previous poll. I insisted I had not in any way misrepresented the answers given to me in the questions I posed at that time. I still have the raw poll question sheet with their answers, as well as the column from Nov. 21, 2005, and offered it to the woman to point out how exactly I did what she alleged. As I expected, she had no interest in backing up her accusation with actual evidence or analysis of what I wrote. That means her assertion was nothing more than a bit of hyperbolic, anecdotal and unsupportable opining and aspersion without merit.
Do spend some time if you are here at Polecat News and Views to peruse the posts which I think you will find to be, as I state, some of the best commentary I can find from around the web, on the most burning issues of current controversy. Very little of it will you find emanating from the mainstream media (MSM), whose job of digging for the truth, no matter who is made uncomfortable and transparently disingenuous, has been blatantly surrendered on the altar of their new role as transcribers and public relations arms for the Obama/Democrat ruling elite.
The signs were rather stock-in-trade for anti-warriors: "Bring them back home," "Bring them back alive," " Vet for peace," "War kills the future," and "Health care not warfare."
The question on whether American military deaths were ever for a good cause prompted one gentleman to offer that they have always been for the purpose of "perpetuating empire on earth" starting with the war against Indians, or Native Americans, if you will.
President Obama came in for some critical remarks with admonishments to "Show some leadership" and to not be "wishy washy on his agenda." A comment was made to the effect that "war is not the purpose" of his presidency, I guess.
On woman who would not talk to me contended that I twisted the responses of the anti-war folks 4 years ago when I conducted a previous poll. I insisted I had not in any way misrepresented the answers given to me in the questions I posed at that time. I still have the raw poll question sheet with their answers, as well as the column from Nov. 21, 2005, and offered it to the woman to point out how exactly I did what she alleged. As I expected, she had no interest in backing up her accusation with actual evidence or analysis of what I wrote. That means her assertion was nothing more than a bit of hyperbolic, anecdotal and unsupportable opining and aspersion without merit.
Do spend some time if you are here at Polecat News and Views to peruse the posts which I think you will find to be, as I state, some of the best commentary I can find from around the web, on the most burning issues of current controversy. Very little of it will you find emanating from the mainstream media (MSM), whose job of digging for the truth, no matter who is made uncomfortable and transparently disingenuous, has been blatantly surrendered on the altar of their new role as transcribers and public relations arms for the Obama/Democrat ruling elite.
Why does Obama emulate the worst of Carter
"Why Does He Hate Us?"
John Hinderacker: Don't miss Paul's Sunday column in the Examiner on the roots of President Obama's anti-Americanism. It must be an odd thing to be President of a country that you think has an evil history.
"In the area of foreign and national security policy, however, Obama can operate largely unchecked. And a weak, guilt-ridden policy toward our foreign adversaries is almost certain to produce grave consequences.
"To some extent, we have seen this act before. The damage of just four years of Jimmy Carter's America-effacing presidency included Soviet expansion, communist inroads in Latin America, the replacement of a friendly government with a virulently anti-American theocracy in Iran, and a prolonged hostage crisis that came to symbolize the new American impotence.
"But although Carter was ambivalent about America, his efforts to promote democracy abroad showed that he thought we had something to offer t[he] world. Obama will not grant America even that.
"Emulating Carter the ex-president, rather than President Carter, Obama has shown essentially no interest in human rights or democracy promotion. His belated support of the Iranian protesters following this summer's election could hardly have been more lukewarm.
"It seems that, in Obama's view, all we have to offer the world is our non-interference in its affairs, except perhaps when it comes to bullying our allies..."
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024957.php
John Hinderacker: Don't miss Paul's Sunday column in the Examiner on the roots of President Obama's anti-Americanism. It must be an odd thing to be President of a country that you think has an evil history.
"In the area of foreign and national security policy, however, Obama can operate largely unchecked. And a weak, guilt-ridden policy toward our foreign adversaries is almost certain to produce grave consequences.
"To some extent, we have seen this act before. The damage of just four years of Jimmy Carter's America-effacing presidency included Soviet expansion, communist inroads in Latin America, the replacement of a friendly government with a virulently anti-American theocracy in Iran, and a prolonged hostage crisis that came to symbolize the new American impotence.
"But although Carter was ambivalent about America, his efforts to promote democracy abroad showed that he thought we had something to offer t[he] world. Obama will not grant America even that.
"Emulating Carter the ex-president, rather than President Carter, Obama has shown essentially no interest in human rights or democracy promotion. His belated support of the Iranian protesters following this summer's election could hardly have been more lukewarm.
"It seems that, in Obama's view, all we have to offer the world is our non-interference in its affairs, except perhaps when it comes to bullying our allies..."
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024957.php
Is there anything Obama can be honest about?
(via Ed Driscoll): John J. Pitney Jr. does the job that AP used to do, before they transferred all of their staff over to research Sarah Palin’s book, and fact checks a slightly hyperbolic claim by the president:
“As America’s first Pacific president,” said President Obama in Tokyo, “I promise you that this Pacific nation will strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”
It is true that the president was born in Hawaii (sorry, birthers), lived from ages six to ten in Indonesia, and attended a Honolulu prep school. But he is not our first Pacific president. Richard Nixon was born in California in 1913, and spent much more of his life in the Pacific region than the current president has. Moreover, while Barack Obama made his career in Chicago and Springfield, Ronald Reagan made his in Los Angeles and Sacramento.
And the incumbent is hardly the first chief executive to have lived in another Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft was governor-general of the Philippines. Dwight Eisenhower had military postings in the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Herbert Hoover worked as a mining engineer in Australia and China; he even learned to speak Mandarin. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 all served in the Pacific during the Second World War. What they did as adults was perhaps more consequential than what Obama did as a child.
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/11/14/americas-first-pacific-president/
“As America’s first Pacific president,” said President Obama in Tokyo, “I promise you that this Pacific nation will strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”
It is true that the president was born in Hawaii (sorry, birthers), lived from ages six to ten in Indonesia, and attended a Honolulu prep school. But he is not our first Pacific president. Richard Nixon was born in California in 1913, and spent much more of his life in the Pacific region than the current president has. Moreover, while Barack Obama made his career in Chicago and Springfield, Ronald Reagan made his in Los Angeles and Sacramento.
And the incumbent is hardly the first chief executive to have lived in another Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft was governor-general of the Philippines. Dwight Eisenhower had military postings in the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Herbert Hoover worked as a mining engineer in Australia and China; he even learned to speak Mandarin. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 all served in the Pacific during the Second World War. What they did as adults was perhaps more consequential than what Obama did as a child.
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/11/14/americas-first-pacific-president/
Sunday, November 15, 2009
AP's factually deficient fact-checking of Palin
DP: I read the shortened version in the Redding Record-Searchlight and found not one actual disproval of the supposedly fact-challenged Palin assertions. I was hardly alone as you can read below:
"Rogue's Eleven" [Mark Steyn]:
If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:
"AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report."
Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment? Stand well back:
"PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
"THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard)..."
That looks like AP paid 1.8333333 fact-checkers to agree with Mrs Palin: She says she didn't "often" go for "high-end" hotels; they say she "usually opted for less-pricey hotels". That's gonna make one must-see edition of "Point/Counterpoint".
Or is AP arguing "four nights" counts as "often"? Is that the point? AP assigned 11 reporters to demonstrate that four is a large number?
Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker and his vast team of researchers (17 Minneapolis-area Somali jihadists, 29 Acorn-accredited child-sex slaves, and 43 unemployed Columbia School of Journalism graduates) fact-check AP's fact-checkers.
Coming next:
PALIN: How many AP fact-checkers does it take to change a lightbulb?
FACT: Palin has gone seriously "rogue" in her facts here. AP fact-checkers are prevented per union regulations from changing lightbulbs.
AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this joke. We'll be here all week.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTE2YmEyMDZkM2Y3NjAzYWZjOTRmYjExZDg4MGE0NzE=
John Hinderacker takes up further analysis:
"Fact-Check This":
The Associated Press got an advance copy of Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, and assigned eleven reporters, apparently, to try to find errors in it. The eleven collaborated on an article titled "FACT CHECK: Palin's book goes rogue on some facts." In fact, though, the AP's catalogue of alleged errors--six in total--is thin at best.
The AP starts with this one:
"PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
"THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women's leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000."
This is frankly pathetic. Palin says she didn't "often" stay at high-end hotels, and the AP counters by saying she did, once. Yes, that's why she said "not often" rather than "never." What is indisputable is that Palin sold the Governor's private jet and flew commercial, thereby saving the taxpayers a large amount of money and qualifying her as a frugal traveler.
The rest are about as lame. Here is another:
"PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."
"THE FACTS: Palin is blurring Obama's stimulus plan--a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts--and the federal bailout that President George W. Bush signed.
"Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as John McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said "taxpayers cannot be looked to" to bail out Wall Street.
"The next month, she praised McCain for being "instrumental in bringing folks together" to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said "it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in." "
The AP doesn't quote Palin, so it's hard to say whether she "blurs" the bailouts or not. But by the AP's own account, Palin has consistently opposed bailouts, except that during the Presidential campaign, she loyally supported McCain's position on the initial TARP program. That's what a Vice-Presidential candidate is supposed to do, and this is not a "fact-check."
This one, I simply don't believe:
"PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people."
"THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Palin said then she was "extremely disappointed" and it was "tragic" so many fishermen and families put their lives on hold waiting for the decision."
Again, the AP doesn't quote Palin but rather asks us to take their word for the fact that Palin "welcomes" the Supreme Court's Exxon Valdez decision in her book as a "ruling [that] went 'in favor of the people.'" I would bet that the AP is mischaracterizing what Palin says in her book. She criticized the Supreme Court's decision at the time, as did most Alaskans, and cited it as a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed in the Katie Couric interview. I seriously doubt that she contradicts that position in her book, although I wouldn't doubt that she called the verdict against Exxon (which was slashed by the Supreme Court) as a decision "in favor of the people."
It appears to be a tribute to the factual accuracy of Palin's book that eleven hostile AP reporters can't come up with anything better than this.
DP: Posted above is a genuine "fact check" of Obama's ludicrous claim to be the "first Pacific President." Obviously, not by AP. Go to the Powerline link below for the rest of the piece I just excerpted, that provides some "fact checking" of John Kerry. Also, not from AP:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024946.php
"Rogue's Eleven" [Mark Steyn]:
If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:
"AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report."
Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment? Stand well back:
"PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
"THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard)..."
That looks like AP paid 1.8333333 fact-checkers to agree with Mrs Palin: She says she didn't "often" go for "high-end" hotels; they say she "usually opted for less-pricey hotels". That's gonna make one must-see edition of "Point/Counterpoint".
Or is AP arguing "four nights" counts as "often"? Is that the point? AP assigned 11 reporters to demonstrate that four is a large number?
Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker and his vast team of researchers (17 Minneapolis-area Somali jihadists, 29 Acorn-accredited child-sex slaves, and 43 unemployed Columbia School of Journalism graduates) fact-check AP's fact-checkers.
Coming next:
PALIN: How many AP fact-checkers does it take to change a lightbulb?
FACT: Palin has gone seriously "rogue" in her facts here. AP fact-checkers are prevented per union regulations from changing lightbulbs.
AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this joke. We'll be here all week.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTE2YmEyMDZkM2Y3NjAzYWZjOTRmYjExZDg4MGE0NzE=
John Hinderacker takes up further analysis:
"Fact-Check This":
The Associated Press got an advance copy of Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, and assigned eleven reporters, apparently, to try to find errors in it. The eleven collaborated on an article titled "FACT CHECK: Palin's book goes rogue on some facts." In fact, though, the AP's catalogue of alleged errors--six in total--is thin at best.
The AP starts with this one:
"PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.
"THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women's leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000."
This is frankly pathetic. Palin says she didn't "often" stay at high-end hotels, and the AP counters by saying she did, once. Yes, that's why she said "not often" rather than "never." What is indisputable is that Palin sold the Governor's private jet and flew commercial, thereby saving the taxpayers a large amount of money and qualifying her as a frugal traveler.
The rest are about as lame. Here is another:
"PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."
"THE FACTS: Palin is blurring Obama's stimulus plan--a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts--and the federal bailout that President George W. Bush signed.
"Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as John McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said "taxpayers cannot be looked to" to bail out Wall Street.
"The next month, she praised McCain for being "instrumental in bringing folks together" to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said "it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in." "
The AP doesn't quote Palin, so it's hard to say whether she "blurs" the bailouts or not. But by the AP's own account, Palin has consistently opposed bailouts, except that during the Presidential campaign, she loyally supported McCain's position on the initial TARP program. That's what a Vice-Presidential candidate is supposed to do, and this is not a "fact-check."
This one, I simply don't believe:
"PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people."
"THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Palin said then she was "extremely disappointed" and it was "tragic" so many fishermen and families put their lives on hold waiting for the decision."
Again, the AP doesn't quote Palin but rather asks us to take their word for the fact that Palin "welcomes" the Supreme Court's Exxon Valdez decision in her book as a "ruling [that] went 'in favor of the people.'" I would bet that the AP is mischaracterizing what Palin says in her book. She criticized the Supreme Court's decision at the time, as did most Alaskans, and cited it as a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed in the Katie Couric interview. I seriously doubt that she contradicts that position in her book, although I wouldn't doubt that she called the verdict against Exxon (which was slashed by the Supreme Court) as a decision "in favor of the people."
It appears to be a tribute to the factual accuracy of Palin's book that eleven hostile AP reporters can't come up with anything better than this.
DP: Posted above is a genuine "fact check" of Obama's ludicrous claim to be the "first Pacific President." Obviously, not by AP. Go to the Powerline link below for the rest of the piece I just excerpted, that provides some "fact checking" of John Kerry. Also, not from AP:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024946.php
Don't hold breath for acceptance of Bush deeds
"What Bush Inherited, and What He Left Left Behind" [Victor Davis Hanson]:
George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).
In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.
At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India...
George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).
In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.
At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India...
KSM to civilian trial fits anti-American agenda
From Andrew C. McCarthy (a little long but devastatingly revealing of the Obama/Holder/leftist not-so-hidden agenda):
"Holder's Hidden Agenda, cont'd" . . . [Andy McCarthy]:
This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department's obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the "reckoning" that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring "torture" and "war crimes" indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama's base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.
Today's announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.
Let's take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs' execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today.
Moreover, KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.
So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.
"Holder's Hidden Agenda, cont'd" . . . [Andy McCarthy]:
This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department's obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the "reckoning" that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring "torture" and "war crimes" indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama's base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.
Today's announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.
Let's take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs' execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today.
Moreover, KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.
So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.
Obama's self-created Afghan decision-quagmire
Krauthammer's Take [NRO Staff]:
From last night's Fox News All-Stars.
On the administration’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan:
"He [Obama] has to sell it, and I think the delay has made his task a lot harder. The delay has put our allies in some doubt.
"That's not just the NATO allies, Canadians and others who are talking about withdrawing in a couple of years. It is the Afghans who have chosen our side and have to wonder — in the end, will the United States withdraw and leave them hanging?
"And the other uncertainty is about Obama's commitment himself. The issue is: If he takes this long, and if he gives all these excuses — which you talked about just a moment ago, about how we may not have a partner in Afghanistan, we may not have a partner in Pakistan — you're expressing doubts about our allies in the region, and you're implying that somehow this is a kind of social work, that the reason that we’re at war is to bolster these allies.
"It's protection of the American homeland. It's what Petraeus had talked about — keeping out al-Qaeda and preventing the regrouping of al-Qaeda and their allies. It's our war, and it's in the name of our security.
"If the president expresses all of this uncertainty and takes this long in agonizing, you got to wonder, is his heart in it? He has to make a speech after his decision to demonstrate that he really is committed to success in this, because all of this delay and these excuses about Afghan/Pakistani partners gives the impression of an administration that will be looking for an excuse of a certain point of withdrawing or pulling back..."
And more on the decision-quagmire from Rich Lowry:
For a 'Dumb' Afghanistan Strategy [Rich Lowry]:
"At this point, Obama needs to settle for a "dumb" Afghan strategy. He's clearly trying to be too cute and clever, and micro-managing aspects of the military campaign that are beneath his pay-grade. If he believes success in Afghanistan is important and a counter-insurgency campaign is the best way to achieve it, he should give McChrystal the troops he says he needs (actually, he should probably give him more if possible, to reduce the risk of failure). This business of examining the troop numbers province-by-province, and devising various "off ramps," and parsing out what troop commitment will best pressure Karzai is a foolish attempt at an impossible exactitude. No plan so finely tuned from on high is going to survive its first contact with reality. Obama needs a "dumb" approach — figure out the basic strategy, resource it, and leave it at that. If it's a successful strategy, most of the other things will probably follow — the off ramps, the welcome effect on Karzai, etc. This is not to say the implementation of the strategy shouldn't be savvy and adaptive. But that's for his generals. Obama just needs to make the simple — if not easy — decision and provide the political leadership to back it up. The world is waiting."
And, finally, yet more perceptive, incisive analysis from Jonah Goldberg:
"He Now Owns the Pink Slip, the Blue Prints, and the Patent" [Jonah Goldberg]:
"It's become a cliché to say that Obama "owns" the war in Afghanistan now. There have been lots of "Obama's war" thumbsuckers in the papers for at least a month now.
"Well, now that Obama has reportedly rejected all of the plans from all of the experts in order to craft something more befitting his Olympian intellect, he couldn't possibly own the war more. Now if things go (more) south he can't even say, "I relied on the best guidance and advice of my generals.""
From last night's Fox News All-Stars.
On the administration’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan:
"He [Obama] has to sell it, and I think the delay has made his task a lot harder. The delay has put our allies in some doubt.
"That's not just the NATO allies, Canadians and others who are talking about withdrawing in a couple of years. It is the Afghans who have chosen our side and have to wonder — in the end, will the United States withdraw and leave them hanging?
"And the other uncertainty is about Obama's commitment himself. The issue is: If he takes this long, and if he gives all these excuses — which you talked about just a moment ago, about how we may not have a partner in Afghanistan, we may not have a partner in Pakistan — you're expressing doubts about our allies in the region, and you're implying that somehow this is a kind of social work, that the reason that we’re at war is to bolster these allies.
"It's protection of the American homeland. It's what Petraeus had talked about — keeping out al-Qaeda and preventing the regrouping of al-Qaeda and their allies. It's our war, and it's in the name of our security.
"If the president expresses all of this uncertainty and takes this long in agonizing, you got to wonder, is his heart in it? He has to make a speech after his decision to demonstrate that he really is committed to success in this, because all of this delay and these excuses about Afghan/Pakistani partners gives the impression of an administration that will be looking for an excuse of a certain point of withdrawing or pulling back..."
And more on the decision-quagmire from Rich Lowry:
For a 'Dumb' Afghanistan Strategy [Rich Lowry]:
"At this point, Obama needs to settle for a "dumb" Afghan strategy. He's clearly trying to be too cute and clever, and micro-managing aspects of the military campaign that are beneath his pay-grade. If he believes success in Afghanistan is important and a counter-insurgency campaign is the best way to achieve it, he should give McChrystal the troops he says he needs (actually, he should probably give him more if possible, to reduce the risk of failure). This business of examining the troop numbers province-by-province, and devising various "off ramps," and parsing out what troop commitment will best pressure Karzai is a foolish attempt at an impossible exactitude. No plan so finely tuned from on high is going to survive its first contact with reality. Obama needs a "dumb" approach — figure out the basic strategy, resource it, and leave it at that. If it's a successful strategy, most of the other things will probably follow — the off ramps, the welcome effect on Karzai, etc. This is not to say the implementation of the strategy shouldn't be savvy and adaptive. But that's for his generals. Obama just needs to make the simple — if not easy — decision and provide the political leadership to back it up. The world is waiting."
And, finally, yet more perceptive, incisive analysis from Jonah Goldberg:
"He Now Owns the Pink Slip, the Blue Prints, and the Patent" [Jonah Goldberg]:
"It's become a cliché to say that Obama "owns" the war in Afghanistan now. There have been lots of "Obama's war" thumbsuckers in the papers for at least a month now.
"Well, now that Obama has reportedly rejected all of the plans from all of the experts in order to craft something more befitting his Olympian intellect, he couldn't possibly own the war more. Now if things go (more) south he can't even say, "I relied on the best guidance and advice of my generals.""
Saturday, November 14, 2009
More liberal stereotypes than Josiah Bartlett
Amid devastating observations on the transition of 9/11 terrorist KSM to "suspect" from Just One Minute:
(via JustOneMinute) OH, MAN: The Baseball Crank tells us what he really thinks in an epic tirade; a flavor:
It's impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn't run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don't buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another - Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it - and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it - nothing to show for anything he's done in foreign affairs.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/11/so-now-khalid-sheikh-mohammad-is-a-911-suspect.html
(via JustOneMinute) OH, MAN: The Baseball Crank tells us what he really thinks in an epic tirade; a flavor:
It's impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn't run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don't buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another - Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it - and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it - nothing to show for anything he's done in foreign affairs.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/11/so-now-khalid-sheikh-mohammad-is-a-911-suspect.html
Fewer support gov't care as it gets possible
(From InstapunditGALLUP: Majority Say Health Care Not Government Responsibility. “More Americans now say it is not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question, and a significant shift from as recently as three years ago, when two-thirds said ensuring healthcare coverage was the government’s responsibility.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124253/Say-Health-Coverage-Not-Gov-Responsibility.aspx
Americans seem to be becoming steadily more libertarian. Thank you, Barack!
Posted at 10:26 am by Glenn Reynolds
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124253/Say-Health-Coverage-Not-Gov-Responsibility.aspx
Americans seem to be becoming steadily more libertarian. Thank you, Barack!
Posted at 10:26 am by Glenn Reynolds
Add desparation to shell game/denial re: jobs
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Sinking Dem polls force Stimulus 2.0. (via Instapundit)
JP: "Get ready for Stimulus 2.0 — Extreme Jobs Edition. Yes, the U.S. labor market is slowly healing. The declining number of monthly job losses and weekly initial unemployment claims show that. Yet President Obama still felt the need to announce a ‘jobs summit’ at the White House next month.
"That’s compelling evidence that the White House doesn’t believe the job market is mending nearly fast enough to keep unemployment from trending higher — or Democratic electoral prospects in 2010 from trending lower.
"The summit is likely a table setter for Obama to announce Stimulus 2.0 (though he surely won’t use the word ’stimulus’) at his State of the Union address in January. Indeed, Harry Reid is already cooking up a plan in the Senate."
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/11/13/sinking-dem-polls-force-stimulus-20/
GR: A payroll-tax holiday would do more good, but I suppose it doesn’t offer sufficient opportunities for graft.
Posted at 8:45 am by Glenn Reynolds
JP: "Get ready for Stimulus 2.0 — Extreme Jobs Edition. Yes, the U.S. labor market is slowly healing. The declining number of monthly job losses and weekly initial unemployment claims show that. Yet President Obama still felt the need to announce a ‘jobs summit’ at the White House next month.
"That’s compelling evidence that the White House doesn’t believe the job market is mending nearly fast enough to keep unemployment from trending higher — or Democratic electoral prospects in 2010 from trending lower.
"The summit is likely a table setter for Obama to announce Stimulus 2.0 (though he surely won’t use the word ’stimulus’) at his State of the Union address in January. Indeed, Harry Reid is already cooking up a plan in the Senate."
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/11/13/sinking-dem-polls-force-stimulus-20/
GR: A payroll-tax holiday would do more good, but I suppose it doesn’t offer sufficient opportunities for graft.
Posted at 8:45 am by Glenn Reynolds
Friday, November 13, 2009
Not too soon to look at huge Brown hypocrisy
"The hypocrisy of Jerry Brown, California's top cop" by Ron Nehring:
The Communications Director for California Attorney General Jerry Brown resigned last week after admitting he regularly taped telephone conversations with reporters without their permission. Under California state law, the recording of private telephone conversations without consent is illegal. Although the Attorney General’s Office worked to shut down the story by calling it an internal personnel matter, the potentially illegal behavior of a senior staff member to California’s top cop raises some serious questions
Here’s one: How can one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in America not know his communications director routinely engaged in activities that may have been unlawful?
Or, how is it that only this senior member of the staff knew this was occurring as they currently claim?
Since we know the conversations on the tapes were transcribed, who provided those transcriptions? Was it an internal staff member? If it was an outside service, who approved the payments for such service?
Any logical line of questioning (especially from an office full of state attorneys) would seem to lead to two possible conclusions: either procedures in one of the highest profile law offices in the nation are woefully inadequate and ineffective; or, other members of staff knew what was going on and are now concealing their earlier knowledge.
Either conclusion is a disaster for a man who frequently brags of the benefits of four decades of political experience.
The irony here is that while Jerry Brown has chosen not to investigate the matter further, his office is currently pursuing the makers of the recent videos that exposed ACORN’s corrupt practices based on the same legal grounds. Apparently California’s Attorney General thinks that he and his cohorts can sidestep the very laws that they are using as justification for their investigations of ACORN filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.
Unfortunately, it appears Brown may manage to casually sweep this scandal under the rug while breezing into the Democratic Party’s 2010 gubernatorial nomination. With the sudden departure San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom from the race last week, Brown currently has no other opposition in the race to win the nomination of the party that likes to lecture everyone else about diversity.
The bottom line is that Brown displayed serious management deficiencies that allowed a senior member of his staff to go rogue under that neglected leadership. His double standard policy for the investigation of possible crimes under the law conveniently keeps his political pals out of the fray while aggressively going after those who exposed the problems at ACORN.
At least we know who that group will be campaigning for in 2010.
Original from Big Government: http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/12/the-hypocrisy-of-jerry-brown-californias-top-cop/
The Communications Director for California Attorney General Jerry Brown resigned last week after admitting he regularly taped telephone conversations with reporters without their permission. Under California state law, the recording of private telephone conversations without consent is illegal. Although the Attorney General’s Office worked to shut down the story by calling it an internal personnel matter, the potentially illegal behavior of a senior staff member to California’s top cop raises some serious questions
Here’s one: How can one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in America not know his communications director routinely engaged in activities that may have been unlawful?
Or, how is it that only this senior member of the staff knew this was occurring as they currently claim?
Since we know the conversations on the tapes were transcribed, who provided those transcriptions? Was it an internal staff member? If it was an outside service, who approved the payments for such service?
Any logical line of questioning (especially from an office full of state attorneys) would seem to lead to two possible conclusions: either procedures in one of the highest profile law offices in the nation are woefully inadequate and ineffective; or, other members of staff knew what was going on and are now concealing their earlier knowledge.
Either conclusion is a disaster for a man who frequently brags of the benefits of four decades of political experience.
The irony here is that while Jerry Brown has chosen not to investigate the matter further, his office is currently pursuing the makers of the recent videos that exposed ACORN’s corrupt practices based on the same legal grounds. Apparently California’s Attorney General thinks that he and his cohorts can sidestep the very laws that they are using as justification for their investigations of ACORN filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.
Unfortunately, it appears Brown may manage to casually sweep this scandal under the rug while breezing into the Democratic Party’s 2010 gubernatorial nomination. With the sudden departure San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom from the race last week, Brown currently has no other opposition in the race to win the nomination of the party that likes to lecture everyone else about diversity.
The bottom line is that Brown displayed serious management deficiencies that allowed a senior member of his staff to go rogue under that neglected leadership. His double standard policy for the investigation of possible crimes under the law conveniently keeps his political pals out of the fray while aggressively going after those who exposed the problems at ACORN.
At least we know who that group will be campaigning for in 2010.
Original from Big Government: http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/12/the-hypocrisy-of-jerry-brown-californias-top-cop/
Ditherer-and-fine-tuner-in-chief, or can you say "paralysis by analysis"?
"Advance To The Rear!" by Jules Crittenden
It’s not quite a strategic retreat, more of a retreat into strategizing as Obama dithers about the dithering, informs his national security team it’s back to Square One. Scratch everything, back to the drawing board. He wants to stop thinking about the war until he can figure out the peace part. OK, that may not be exactly how senior administration officials put it, but at this point, inaction speaks louder than words. via MSNBC:
"WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.
In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai."
(JC) AP fails to note that Eikenberry commands no troops in Afghanistan. AP also fails to note that the United States just got finished congratulating Hamid Karzai on his big election win.
"But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s thinking."
(JC) Never mind whether he’s going to commit more troops. He isn’t ready to commit to whether he’ll commit to commiting more troops. This part is fun:
"Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely."
(JC) Ha ha, his resolve to keep dithering has been stiffened! Good one. AP scribbler with a keen sense of irony or AP scribbler without a clue?...
Read the rest:
http://www.julescrittenden.com/2009/11/12/advance-to-the-rear/
It’s not quite a strategic retreat, more of a retreat into strategizing as Obama dithers about the dithering, informs his national security team it’s back to Square One. Scratch everything, back to the drawing board. He wants to stop thinking about the war until he can figure out the peace part. OK, that may not be exactly how senior administration officials put it, but at this point, inaction speaks louder than words. via MSNBC:
"WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.
In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai."
(JC) AP fails to note that Eikenberry commands no troops in Afghanistan. AP also fails to note that the United States just got finished congratulating Hamid Karzai on his big election win.
"But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s thinking."
(JC) Never mind whether he’s going to commit more troops. He isn’t ready to commit to whether he’ll commit to commiting more troops. This part is fun:
"Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely."
(JC) Ha ha, his resolve to keep dithering has been stiffened! Good one. AP scribbler with a keen sense of irony or AP scribbler without a clue?...
Read the rest:
http://www.julescrittenden.com/2009/11/12/advance-to-the-rear/
How bad the jobs scene? Bad and not improving
DP: This from Club for Growth on the utter lack of cause for optimism in the jobs-as-canary-in-cave-of-growth situation. If you want to understand why nothing is likely to improve, read whole article linked at bottom:
"More Stimulus Equals More Unemployment" By Louis Woodhill
"Stimulus" is in the process of turning a nasty recession into a genuine depression. The evidence is in the "Employment Situation" report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on November 6th. The "headline" unemployment rate shot up to 10.2%, the highest in more than 26 years. But the report was much worse than most people realize.
The "household survey data" showed that 589,000 jobs vanished during October. This is bad enough, but the three-month moving average of changes in total employment (current month and prior two months) shows that job losses are actually accelerating.
The three-month moving average (TMMA) of changes in total employment began a serious decline in February 2007. It went into negative territory two months later. This indicator has now been negative for the past 21 months. During this time, total employment has declined by more than 8 million jobs.
As the financial crisis gathered momentum in late 2008, the TMMA fell continuously, reaching a bottom of 853,000 jobs lost per month in January 2009. Then this indicator began improving. By June 2009, when stories about "green shoots" were common in the financial press, the TMMA was "only" 230,000. However, it then began falling again. The October BLS numbers pushed the TMMA down to 589,000 jobs lost per month.
Economic growth is supposed to create jobs. However, the U.S. economy shed twice as many jobs (1,332,000) in the third quarter of 2009, when GDP grew at a robust 3.5% annual rate, than it did in the second quarter (691,000), when the economy contracted at a 0.7% rate.
How can this be? To paraphrase the 1992 Clinton campaign, "It's the bonds, stupid!"
The massive sales of U.S. Treasury bonds to finance "stimulus", bailouts, and other government spending is sucking capital out of the private sector and destroying jobs. Once again, the October 6th BLS report tells the tale.
The BLS "household survey" showed job losses of 589,000, while their "establishment survey" showed a reduction of payrolls of only 190,000. This shows that most of the damage is being done in small business, "under the radar screen" of the BLS.
Small businesses-especially new small businesses-account for essentially all net job growth. However, business creation and expansion requires capital, and more and more of the nation's capital is being commandeered by the U.S. Treasury in the name of "stimulus".
The FY2009 Federal deficit was $1.4 trillion. This was almost a trillion dollars higher than FY2008. The capital to buy this additional debt had to come from somewhere, and much of it was squeezed out of business. Here are some indicators, both statistical and anecdotal:
• During FY2009, "Gross Domestic Private Investment" fell by 25% (almost $500 billion/year). It would have needed to grow by 5% to keep the unemployment rate from rising from an already-too-high 6.2%. ...
• Many venture capital firms are informing entrepreneurs that there is no money available for new startups. The firms say that they must husband their capital to meet the needs of their existing portfolio companies...
If so, this means that selling the bonds required to fund one temporary "stimulus" job will take enough capital out of the private sector to destroy four "real" jobs. This explains why, as the "stimulus" spending has ramped up, job losses have accelerated...
Read the rest:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/11/more_stimulus_equals_more_unemployment_97503.html
"More Stimulus Equals More Unemployment" By Louis Woodhill
"Stimulus" is in the process of turning a nasty recession into a genuine depression. The evidence is in the "Employment Situation" report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on November 6th. The "headline" unemployment rate shot up to 10.2%, the highest in more than 26 years. But the report was much worse than most people realize.
The "household survey data" showed that 589,000 jobs vanished during October. This is bad enough, but the three-month moving average of changes in total employment (current month and prior two months) shows that job losses are actually accelerating.
The three-month moving average (TMMA) of changes in total employment began a serious decline in February 2007. It went into negative territory two months later. This indicator has now been negative for the past 21 months. During this time, total employment has declined by more than 8 million jobs.
As the financial crisis gathered momentum in late 2008, the TMMA fell continuously, reaching a bottom of 853,000 jobs lost per month in January 2009. Then this indicator began improving. By June 2009, when stories about "green shoots" were common in the financial press, the TMMA was "only" 230,000. However, it then began falling again. The October BLS numbers pushed the TMMA down to 589,000 jobs lost per month.
Economic growth is supposed to create jobs. However, the U.S. economy shed twice as many jobs (1,332,000) in the third quarter of 2009, when GDP grew at a robust 3.5% annual rate, than it did in the second quarter (691,000), when the economy contracted at a 0.7% rate.
How can this be? To paraphrase the 1992 Clinton campaign, "It's the bonds, stupid!"
The massive sales of U.S. Treasury bonds to finance "stimulus", bailouts, and other government spending is sucking capital out of the private sector and destroying jobs. Once again, the October 6th BLS report tells the tale.
The BLS "household survey" showed job losses of 589,000, while their "establishment survey" showed a reduction of payrolls of only 190,000. This shows that most of the damage is being done in small business, "under the radar screen" of the BLS.
Small businesses-especially new small businesses-account for essentially all net job growth. However, business creation and expansion requires capital, and more and more of the nation's capital is being commandeered by the U.S. Treasury in the name of "stimulus".
The FY2009 Federal deficit was $1.4 trillion. This was almost a trillion dollars higher than FY2008. The capital to buy this additional debt had to come from somewhere, and much of it was squeezed out of business. Here are some indicators, both statistical and anecdotal:
• During FY2009, "Gross Domestic Private Investment" fell by 25% (almost $500 billion/year). It would have needed to grow by 5% to keep the unemployment rate from rising from an already-too-high 6.2%. ...
• Many venture capital firms are informing entrepreneurs that there is no money available for new startups. The firms say that they must husband their capital to meet the needs of their existing portfolio companies...
If so, this means that selling the bonds required to fund one temporary "stimulus" job will take enough capital out of the private sector to destroy four "real" jobs. This explains why, as the "stimulus" spending has ramped up, job losses have accelerated...
Read the rest:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/11/more_stimulus_equals_more_unemployment_97503.html
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Why it's "dithering," not "getting it right"
Jamie M. Fly(via NRO):
Even if the president eventually sends a significant number of additional troops and allows General McChrystal to implement a counterinsurgency strategy, this painfully drawn out process has had negative consequences and does not bode well for the future U.S. commitment in Afghanistan. As a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant emailed to me after reading one of my Corner posts:
Our service members are dying and the president is dithering. I have been in the military while a president dithered or failed to make a tough decision, it is eviscerating, and a rot settles in. “Commander in Chief” is not just a fancy title. The president is the ultimate officer and like any poor officer his failure to make tough decisions is seen as a weakness by his NCOs and men. Morale, that most fragile base of any good military unit suffers immediately. When our officers are fearful and indecisive, we become fearful and indecisive.
NCOs find reasons not to patrol or to avoid high-risk areas, Convoys are diverted to avoid possible confrontation, our allies desert us and the advantage is ceded to the enemy.
And this happen quickly, weeks are all that’s left to keep the advantage in Afghanistan. After a certain point in time “mission weariness” begins to settle in and the edge is lost on our weapon and almost impossible to regain. Quite frankly I fear that the time to make a difference is quickly slipping away and even if he eventually approves the fully levy of Gen McChrystal’s request the momentum may have been permanently lost.
— Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Even if the president eventually sends a significant number of additional troops and allows General McChrystal to implement a counterinsurgency strategy, this painfully drawn out process has had negative consequences and does not bode well for the future U.S. commitment in Afghanistan. As a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant emailed to me after reading one of my Corner posts:
Our service members are dying and the president is dithering. I have been in the military while a president dithered or failed to make a tough decision, it is eviscerating, and a rot settles in. “Commander in Chief” is not just a fancy title. The president is the ultimate officer and like any poor officer his failure to make tough decisions is seen as a weakness by his NCOs and men. Morale, that most fragile base of any good military unit suffers immediately. When our officers are fearful and indecisive, we become fearful and indecisive.
NCOs find reasons not to patrol or to avoid high-risk areas, Convoys are diverted to avoid possible confrontation, our allies desert us and the advantage is ceded to the enemy.
And this happen quickly, weeks are all that’s left to keep the advantage in Afghanistan. After a certain point in time “mission weariness” begins to settle in and the edge is lost on our weapon and almost impossible to regain. Quite frankly I fear that the time to make a difference is quickly slipping away and even if he eventually approves the fully levy of Gen McChrystal’s request the momentum may have been permanently lost.
— Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Yet another non-fact used to prop up O-reform
"More Health-Care Misinformation" [Ramesh Ponnuru] (via NRO):
A claim making the rounds recently is that 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. The statistic is garbage. A recent study concludes, "It is not possible to draw firm causal inferences from the results of observational analyses, but there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States."
I favor reforms that would make it easier for people to get affordable insurance coverage, mainly so that they would have more financial security. But we don't need to pass a deeply flawed bill to keep thousands of Americans from dying.
READ THESE LINKS TO DRILL DOWN TO THE TRUTH:
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/does-lack-of-insurance-cause-premature-death-probably-not/
http://www.hsr.org/hsr/abstract.jsp?aid=4470695438
A claim making the rounds recently is that 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. The statistic is garbage. A recent study concludes, "It is not possible to draw firm causal inferences from the results of observational analyses, but there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States."
I favor reforms that would make it easier for people to get affordable insurance coverage, mainly so that they would have more financial security. But we don't need to pass a deeply flawed bill to keep thousands of Americans from dying.
READ THESE LINKS TO DRILL DOWN TO THE TRUTH:
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/does-lack-of-insurance-cause-premature-death-probably-not/
http://www.hsr.org/hsr/abstract.jsp?aid=4470695438
No factual fact is left undisputed by O-libs...
...masquerading as journalists seeking to supposedly "prove" that O/Pelosi-care opponents are misrepresenting, well, the facts: (via NRO)
"Ruth Marcus Checks Facts, Loses Perspective" [Ramesh Ponnuru]
"Marcus found herself cheering for the passage of the House health-care bill "because of the appalling amount of misinformation being peddled by its opponents." She offers seven examples of misinformation. I found them underwhelming.
"Michigan Republican Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."
"Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted — just like others who cheat on their taxes."
(RP) "In other words. . . Americans could find themselves in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands.
"I take it as a given that in a highly charged debate about a complex issue, there will be false claims made on each side. But it remains the case that nobody has done more to inject untruths into this debate than President Obama. If that's how Marcus determines which side she favors, she ought to be rooting for the bill to die."
"Ruth Marcus Checks Facts, Loses Perspective" [Ramesh Ponnuru]
"Marcus found herself cheering for the passage of the House health-care bill "because of the appalling amount of misinformation being peddled by its opponents." She offers seven examples of misinformation. I found them underwhelming.
"Michigan Republican Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."
"Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted — just like others who cheat on their taxes."
(RP) "In other words. . . Americans could find themselves in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands.
"I take it as a given that in a highly charged debate about a complex issue, there will be false claims made on each side. But it remains the case that nobody has done more to inject untruths into this debate than President Obama. If that's how Marcus determines which side she favors, she ought to be rooting for the bill to die."
Surprised there'll be no reductions? No koolaid..
...for you. And you should have been paying more attention to these people and their broken promises, failed goals, misleading blather and flatout lies for the last year and a half. Conservatives did and have never, for one minute, believed any, ANY of the pie-in-the-sky from Obama and his hacks. From Politico:
"Health savings? No one knows"
"Barack Obama ran for president on a promise of saving the typical family $2,500 a year in lower health care premiums.
"But that was then.
"No one in the White House is making such a pledge now.
"It’s one of the most basic, kitchen-table questions of the entire reform debate: Would the sweeping $900 billion overhaul actually lower spiraling insurance premiums for everyone?
"No one really knows.
"And in fact, for all the ink spilled on the effects of health care reform, no independent group has taken a comprehensive look at how the legislation would impact premiums for the 170 million Americans who receive insurance through their employers – a population that would receive little direct financial assistance under the various congressional proposals...
"Obama was the one who raised expectations of lower premiums. From one city to the next, and during the presidential debates, Obama made the pledge almost as often as he vowed to remove troops from Iraq: “We estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.”
"He has barely uttered it since taking office. The last recorded mention by Obama was in May, when he announced that six health industry groups agreed to lower the growth rate in health care spending by $2 trillion over 10 years, resulting in a savings of $2,500 per family “in the coming years.”
"“Far and away, what happens to premiums is dependent on whether you can bend the cost curve,” Cutler said.
"And there are questions as to whether the bills even meet that goal.
"Gruber, the favorite economist of the White House, said the bill “really doesn’t bend the cost curve.”
“But I think this bill starts us down the road to the point where we can do that,” Gruber said. “The alternative is doing nothing. Relative to doing nothing, I think we are a lot closer to bending the curve.”
"Reminded that Obama demanded a bill that lowers health care spending, Gruber said: “That is what he would like to do. But he’s not doing it.”
"In the health reform debate, Democrats face a public-relations challenge similar to the $787 billion economic stimulus package. In the face of rising unemployment, Obama has defended the stimulus as preventing even worse job losses than the country is now experiencing.
"Similarly, progressive health policy experts say it will be so hard to reduce the cost of health insurance, they’d be thrilled if they could simply slow down the rapid rise in premiums.
"If premiums are the benchmark by which reform is judged, “we are setting ourselves up to fail,” Gruber said. “Premiums will still go up, but they will go up less than they would” without the overhaul...."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29421_Page2.html
DP: And if you belive any of this will cost less and give more choices--have another cup of koolaid.
"Health savings? No one knows"
"Barack Obama ran for president on a promise of saving the typical family $2,500 a year in lower health care premiums.
"But that was then.
"No one in the White House is making such a pledge now.
"It’s one of the most basic, kitchen-table questions of the entire reform debate: Would the sweeping $900 billion overhaul actually lower spiraling insurance premiums for everyone?
"No one really knows.
"And in fact, for all the ink spilled on the effects of health care reform, no independent group has taken a comprehensive look at how the legislation would impact premiums for the 170 million Americans who receive insurance through their employers – a population that would receive little direct financial assistance under the various congressional proposals...
"Obama was the one who raised expectations of lower premiums. From one city to the next, and during the presidential debates, Obama made the pledge almost as often as he vowed to remove troops from Iraq: “We estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.”
"He has barely uttered it since taking office. The last recorded mention by Obama was in May, when he announced that six health industry groups agreed to lower the growth rate in health care spending by $2 trillion over 10 years, resulting in a savings of $2,500 per family “in the coming years.”
"“Far and away, what happens to premiums is dependent on whether you can bend the cost curve,” Cutler said.
"And there are questions as to whether the bills even meet that goal.
"Gruber, the favorite economist of the White House, said the bill “really doesn’t bend the cost curve.”
“But I think this bill starts us down the road to the point where we can do that,” Gruber said. “The alternative is doing nothing. Relative to doing nothing, I think we are a lot closer to bending the curve.”
"Reminded that Obama demanded a bill that lowers health care spending, Gruber said: “That is what he would like to do. But he’s not doing it.”
"In the health reform debate, Democrats face a public-relations challenge similar to the $787 billion economic stimulus package. In the face of rising unemployment, Obama has defended the stimulus as preventing even worse job losses than the country is now experiencing.
"Similarly, progressive health policy experts say it will be so hard to reduce the cost of health insurance, they’d be thrilled if they could simply slow down the rapid rise in premiums.
"If premiums are the benchmark by which reform is judged, “we are setting ourselves up to fail,” Gruber said. “Premiums will still go up, but they will go up less than they would” without the overhaul...."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29421_Page2.html
DP: And if you belive any of this will cost less and give more choices--have another cup of koolaid.
Reform results predictable as Obama's leftism
Some of the clear and easily predictable results of the current bills (as predictable as Obama's ultra-leftist governing ideological was to us on the right who were paying attention last year), as explained by Dr. Gratzer:
"Your Health Care May Change: Please Stand By" David Gratzer
On Nov. 7, in the dead of night, the House of Representatives voted 220-215 to pass the ObamaCare health bill. It's a staggering 1,994 pages long--almost twice the size of versions tabled this summer. Buried in this encyclopedia is everything from a "Office of Indian Men's Health" to a new, voluntary government insurance plan for assisted living. If passed by the Senate, it will change everything about American health care.
Or will it?
Here's what it will change. First, there will be an immediate surge in employment (in Washington). In the bill, the secretary of health can spend billions right away to staff the new public insurance, to fund the National Health Corps and to pay for new committees, agencies and studies--a list that's actually too long to fit onto a newspaper page.
Second, there will be an immediate shift in medical power. Federal agencies and legislators will have undisputed authority over health care decisions once made by doctors or state legislatures. A committee, for example, will decide which preventative care treatments must be covered in every insurance policy--an added cost for you, yes, and potentially without benefit. States and health innovators will likely defer new initiatives while they wait in limbo for Washington to resolve regulatory questions unanswered in the bill.
Finally, your premiums should rise. That's right--rise. Most Americans' first experiences of ObamaCare will be higher premiums, just as RomneyCare in Massachusetts led to higher costs. That's because new federal regulations will change how insurance is priced and sold.
Thirty-four states, for instance, do not force insurers to cover orthotic (think shoe inserts) or prosthetic equipment--partly because it's not worthwhile for most people to have this extra coverage. But this bill makes it a requirement nationwide, adding to insurance costs in all of those thirty-four states....
It gets worse. Remember the national health exchange that will increase insurance market competition? If Congress had simply let you buy insurance from the same exchange federal employees use, you'd see that competition tomorrow. But the president's plan calls for a new exchange, a new bureaucracy and new rules to micromanage every sale. So, once again, you'll have to wait years for the promise of more choice and competition (unless you already have the good fortunate to work in Washington).
The federal budget will change forever too. Spending on new bureaucracy, Medicaid increases, grants and seed money for new insurance plans comes immediately. Financing this trillion-dollar binge depends on literally hundreds of billions worth of unspecified Medicare and Medicaid "savings." Congress habitually reversed previous cuts to Medicare once they were specified. So it's no great leap to expect the federal deficit--and the net cost of reform--to grow quickly once the bill becomes law...
More at: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/11/health-care-reform-bill-opinions-contributors-david-gratzer.html
"Your Health Care May Change: Please Stand By" David Gratzer
On Nov. 7, in the dead of night, the House of Representatives voted 220-215 to pass the ObamaCare health bill. It's a staggering 1,994 pages long--almost twice the size of versions tabled this summer. Buried in this encyclopedia is everything from a "Office of Indian Men's Health" to a new, voluntary government insurance plan for assisted living. If passed by the Senate, it will change everything about American health care.
Or will it?
Here's what it will change. First, there will be an immediate surge in employment (in Washington). In the bill, the secretary of health can spend billions right away to staff the new public insurance, to fund the National Health Corps and to pay for new committees, agencies and studies--a list that's actually too long to fit onto a newspaper page.
Second, there will be an immediate shift in medical power. Federal agencies and legislators will have undisputed authority over health care decisions once made by doctors or state legislatures. A committee, for example, will decide which preventative care treatments must be covered in every insurance policy--an added cost for you, yes, and potentially without benefit. States and health innovators will likely defer new initiatives while they wait in limbo for Washington to resolve regulatory questions unanswered in the bill.
Finally, your premiums should rise. That's right--rise. Most Americans' first experiences of ObamaCare will be higher premiums, just as RomneyCare in Massachusetts led to higher costs. That's because new federal regulations will change how insurance is priced and sold.
Thirty-four states, for instance, do not force insurers to cover orthotic (think shoe inserts) or prosthetic equipment--partly because it's not worthwhile for most people to have this extra coverage. But this bill makes it a requirement nationwide, adding to insurance costs in all of those thirty-four states....
It gets worse. Remember the national health exchange that will increase insurance market competition? If Congress had simply let you buy insurance from the same exchange federal employees use, you'd see that competition tomorrow. But the president's plan calls for a new exchange, a new bureaucracy and new rules to micromanage every sale. So, once again, you'll have to wait years for the promise of more choice and competition (unless you already have the good fortunate to work in Washington).
The federal budget will change forever too. Spending on new bureaucracy, Medicaid increases, grants and seed money for new insurance plans comes immediately. Financing this trillion-dollar binge depends on literally hundreds of billions worth of unspecified Medicare and Medicaid "savings." Congress habitually reversed previous cuts to Medicare once they were specified. So it's no great leap to expect the federal deficit--and the net cost of reform--to grow quickly once the bill becomes law...
More at: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/11/health-care-reform-bill-opinions-contributors-david-gratzer.html
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Too many in the wagon--not enough pulling
"Free Market — What Free Market?" [Veronique de Rugy] (via NRO):
One of the biggest myths of this financial crisis is not that the government is the solution to all of our problems, or that deregulation or free-markets caused the financial crisis. It's that there is still such a thing as the free market.
For instance, I have mentioned the huge amount of spending on regulatory agencies (the direct cost on our economy of producing and enforcing regulations). In particular, I have mentioned the dramatic increase in regulatory spending on the financial and banking industry in the last 20 years. And we know that the housing and financial industries are two of the most regulated industries in our country.
But here is more evidence of the fact that government has taken over large parts of our economy. According to Yahoo Finance:
"Economist Gary Shilling has calculated that 58 percent of the population is dependent on the government for "major parts of their income," including teachers, soldiers, bureaucrats, and other government employees; welfare and Social Security recipients; government pensioners; public housing beneficiaries; and people who work for government contractors. By 2018, Shilling estimates, an astounding 67 percent of Americans could be dependent on the government for their livelihood."
That's a big jump from the 1950s, when 29 percent of the population depended on government for a majority of their income. The obvious problem with this level of dependence is that these people have a strong incentive to see the government grow or at the very least stay the same. And they have a majority of the votes.
There is one piece of good news, though. During the 1970s, this number peaked at 61 percent. What’s more, as the need for a huge military decreased at the end of the Cold War, as states cut their budget (ever so modestly) and some welfare reforms were adopted, this number decreased to 54 percent. That is not enough, obviously, but it shows that it can be done.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjdhYzFjNjU4MzgxODQyNTJlMjRlNjNiZjNkYjUzZTE=
One of the biggest myths of this financial crisis is not that the government is the solution to all of our problems, or that deregulation or free-markets caused the financial crisis. It's that there is still such a thing as the free market.
For instance, I have mentioned the huge amount of spending on regulatory agencies (the direct cost on our economy of producing and enforcing regulations). In particular, I have mentioned the dramatic increase in regulatory spending on the financial and banking industry in the last 20 years. And we know that the housing and financial industries are two of the most regulated industries in our country.
But here is more evidence of the fact that government has taken over large parts of our economy. According to Yahoo Finance:
"Economist Gary Shilling has calculated that 58 percent of the population is dependent on the government for "major parts of their income," including teachers, soldiers, bureaucrats, and other government employees; welfare and Social Security recipients; government pensioners; public housing beneficiaries; and people who work for government contractors. By 2018, Shilling estimates, an astounding 67 percent of Americans could be dependent on the government for their livelihood."
That's a big jump from the 1950s, when 29 percent of the population depended on government for a majority of their income. The obvious problem with this level of dependence is that these people have a strong incentive to see the government grow or at the very least stay the same. And they have a majority of the votes.
There is one piece of good news, though. During the 1970s, this number peaked at 61 percent. What’s more, as the need for a huge military decreased at the end of the Cold War, as states cut their budget (ever so modestly) and some welfare reforms were adopted, this number decreased to 54 percent. That is not enough, obviously, but it shows that it can be done.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjdhYzFjNjU4MzgxODQyNTJlMjRlNjNiZjNkYjUzZTE=
Again, no gov't insurance--you go to jail, really!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
JAIL FOR NO INSURANCE UNDER PELOSI BILL
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation reported that the House version of the healthcare bill specifies that those who don't buy health insurance and do not pay the fine of about 2.5 percent of their income for failing to do so can face a penalty of up to five years in prison!
The bill describes the penalties as follows:
* Section 7203 — Misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
* Section 7201 — Felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years." [page 3]
That anyone should face prison for not buying health insurance is simply incredible.
And how much will the stay-out-of-jail insurance cost? The joint committee noted that "according to a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest-cost family non-group plan under HR 3862 (the Pelosi bill) would cost $15,000 by 2016."
Obama's bill provides only subsidies to help pay this enormous sum after families making about $45,000 have paid 8 percent of their income for insurance and after those earning a household income of about $65,000 have kicked in 12 percent.
The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that, although the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill did not include criminal penalties, "The House Democrats' bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail."
Remember that simply buying catastrophic insurance, which may be all the young uninsured family needs, does not constitute having adequate insurance under the Obama bill. It has to be total, all inclusive insurance for one to avoid the penalties in the legislation. That is because Obama wants to use these premiums from the currently uninsured to subsidize his program.
So Pelosi is requiring Americans to pay these steep premiums, or a fine of 2.5 percent of their income for not doing so, or, potentially, go to prison!
Anyone who is familiar with the U.S. prison system can attest to the large number of people incarcerated for similar white collar offenses. That the House bill would treat failure to carry health insurance or pay the fine as tax evasion or willful nonpayment is amazing!
And where is the constitutional basis for requiring everyone to buy insurance? It is OK for a state to make drivers pay for automobile insurance. Driving is not a right, it is a privilege, and the state may regulate it by demanding insurance. Banks can require homeowners to buy insurance as a condition of their lending. But how does the federal government get the right to require a family to buy health insurance or face a civil penalty and, failing that, to face either a criminal fine or jail?
The tough penalties in the House bill are designed to keep insurance companies from opposing the bill. It was the relaxation of these penalties in the Senate Finance Committee version of the legislation that led the companies to reverse field and come out in opposition to the legislation.
JAIL FOR NO INSURANCE UNDER PELOSI BILL
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation reported that the House version of the healthcare bill specifies that those who don't buy health insurance and do not pay the fine of about 2.5 percent of their income for failing to do so can face a penalty of up to five years in prison!
The bill describes the penalties as follows:
* Section 7203 — Misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
* Section 7201 — Felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years." [page 3]
That anyone should face prison for not buying health insurance is simply incredible.
And how much will the stay-out-of-jail insurance cost? The joint committee noted that "according to a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest-cost family non-group plan under HR 3862 (the Pelosi bill) would cost $15,000 by 2016."
Obama's bill provides only subsidies to help pay this enormous sum after families making about $45,000 have paid 8 percent of their income for insurance and after those earning a household income of about $65,000 have kicked in 12 percent.
The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that, although the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill did not include criminal penalties, "The House Democrats' bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail."
Remember that simply buying catastrophic insurance, which may be all the young uninsured family needs, does not constitute having adequate insurance under the Obama bill. It has to be total, all inclusive insurance for one to avoid the penalties in the legislation. That is because Obama wants to use these premiums from the currently uninsured to subsidize his program.
So Pelosi is requiring Americans to pay these steep premiums, or a fine of 2.5 percent of their income for not doing so, or, potentially, go to prison!
Anyone who is familiar with the U.S. prison system can attest to the large number of people incarcerated for similar white collar offenses. That the House bill would treat failure to carry health insurance or pay the fine as tax evasion or willful nonpayment is amazing!
And where is the constitutional basis for requiring everyone to buy insurance? It is OK for a state to make drivers pay for automobile insurance. Driving is not a right, it is a privilege, and the state may regulate it by demanding insurance. Banks can require homeowners to buy insurance as a condition of their lending. But how does the federal government get the right to require a family to buy health insurance or face a civil penalty and, failing that, to face either a criminal fine or jail?
The tough penalties in the House bill are designed to keep insurance companies from opposing the bill. It was the relaxation of these penalties in the Senate Finance Committee version of the legislation that led the companies to reverse field and come out in opposition to the legislation.
Classless Obama's wisdom to clueless O-Dems
(via NRO):
Two Profiles in Class [Rory Cooper]
This past weekend, Americans were treated to two completely different profiles in class. First there was former president George W. Bush. On Friday night, George and Laura Bush traveled by car to Fort Hood to meet with the devastated families of last week’s tragedy. They specifically asked the base commander not to alert the press, and spent hours simply doing what they could to comfort the grief-stricken families.
The story was eventually uncovered, as these moments tend to be, but clearly President Bush did not see this as a personal opportunity, nor did he want to upstage the current president. The former president saw his interactions with wounded soldiers and their families as private moments.
Twenty-four hours later, President Obama was not at Fort Hood, but rather on Capitol Hill lobbying a private meeting of Democrats, who must not have known his position on health care. Obama told the lawmakers, according to Democratic congressman Earl Blumenauer in the New York Times: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”
Let’s dissect that statement. First, President Obama incorrectly states that conservatives are “anti-government,” which simply is untrue. Conservatives are in favor of the government’s performing its duties efficiently and effectively. Conservatives are not in favor of the government’s running a new national health-care entitlement that will surely fail. (The House passed a bill that costs $2.4 trillion, raises taxes by $700 billion, and massively expands a bankrupt Medicaid program — all while the nation’s unemployment rate stands above 10 percent.)
More disturbing is President Obama’s labeling his opposition as “extremists” and falling just short of using the profane “teabag” epithet that is popular among dismissive liberals. This is simply beneath the office he holds. When tens of thousands of multigenerational families descended onto Capitol Hill last week, they were protesting runaway federal spending and government control. They understood that while reform of our health-care system is necessary, the answer is not to compound the problem while ignoring uninsured Americans. These are not extreme views.
President Obama won a short-lived victory this weekend on health care, but he clearly misread the tea leaves if he believes that conservative Democrats will get more support in their home districts for supporting this disastrous plan. These electoral matters are not helped by the president’s demonization of a respectful and vigilant opposition to this government intrusion into their lives.
While President Bush was at Fort Hood consoling the victims of real radical extremism, President Obama was in Washington calling American families who don’t support his health-care plan “extremists.” A more enlightening profile of the two men could not be found.
— Rory Cooper is director of strategic communications at the Heritage Foundation.
Two Profiles in Class [Rory Cooper]
This past weekend, Americans were treated to two completely different profiles in class. First there was former president George W. Bush. On Friday night, George and Laura Bush traveled by car to Fort Hood to meet with the devastated families of last week’s tragedy. They specifically asked the base commander not to alert the press, and spent hours simply doing what they could to comfort the grief-stricken families.
The story was eventually uncovered, as these moments tend to be, but clearly President Bush did not see this as a personal opportunity, nor did he want to upstage the current president. The former president saw his interactions with wounded soldiers and their families as private moments.
Twenty-four hours later, President Obama was not at Fort Hood, but rather on Capitol Hill lobbying a private meeting of Democrats, who must not have known his position on health care. Obama told the lawmakers, according to Democratic congressman Earl Blumenauer in the New York Times: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”
Let’s dissect that statement. First, President Obama incorrectly states that conservatives are “anti-government,” which simply is untrue. Conservatives are in favor of the government’s performing its duties efficiently and effectively. Conservatives are not in favor of the government’s running a new national health-care entitlement that will surely fail. (The House passed a bill that costs $2.4 trillion, raises taxes by $700 billion, and massively expands a bankrupt Medicaid program — all while the nation’s unemployment rate stands above 10 percent.)
More disturbing is President Obama’s labeling his opposition as “extremists” and falling just short of using the profane “teabag” epithet that is popular among dismissive liberals. This is simply beneath the office he holds. When tens of thousands of multigenerational families descended onto Capitol Hill last week, they were protesting runaway federal spending and government control. They understood that while reform of our health-care system is necessary, the answer is not to compound the problem while ignoring uninsured Americans. These are not extreme views.
President Obama won a short-lived victory this weekend on health care, but he clearly misread the tea leaves if he believes that conservative Democrats will get more support in their home districts for supporting this disastrous plan. These electoral matters are not helped by the president’s demonization of a respectful and vigilant opposition to this government intrusion into their lives.
While President Bush was at Fort Hood consoling the victims of real radical extremism, President Obama was in Washington calling American families who don’t support his health-care plan “extremists.” A more enlightening profile of the two men could not be found.
— Rory Cooper is director of strategic communications at the Heritage Foundation.
O doesn't--do you have courage to face truth?
"Still Willfully Blind" [Andy McCarthy] (via NRO):
President Obama at Fort Hood today: "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor."
Really?
At his blog today, Andrew Bostom, a scholar of jihadism, cites the following passage from "Reliance of the Traveler," a widely distributed manual of Islamic law produced by al-Azhar University in Egypt, the most authoritative interpreters of theology and sharia jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, the dominant tradition among the world's Muslims:
Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and, is etymologically derived from the word, mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion [of Islam]…The scriptural basis for jihad is such Koranic verses as “Fighting is prescribed for you” (Koran 2:216); “Slay them wherever you find them” (Koran 4:89); “Fight the idolators utterly” (Koran 9:36); and such hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] as the one related by (Sahih) Bukhari and (Sahih) Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And the final reckoning is with Allah”; and the hadith by (Sahih) Muslim, “To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.”
As Dr. Bostom points out, the first hadith referred to in the passage — the one in which Mohammed explains that Allah has commanded the Muslims to fight non-Muslims — was cited by Nidal Hasan in slide 43 of the June 7, 2007 presentation that Jonah discusses in his excellent column today.
Not to beat a dead horse on this, but in 2001, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an al-Azhar graduated doctor of Islamic jurisprudence who is the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and the most influential Sunni cleric in the world, issued a fatwa approving suicide bombings against Israel. In 2003, with the male jihadists being caught too often before they could strike, Qaradawi expanded the fatwa to approve suicide bombings by women. In 2004, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq, and later expanded this authorization to include the killing of American civilian support personnel. (As Qaradawi put it: "All of the Americans in Iraq are combatants, there is no difference between civilians and soldiers, and one should fight them, since the American civilians came to Iraq in order to serve the occupation. The abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] obligation so as to cause them to leave Iraq immediately.")
In 2005, the State Department's director of public diplomacy in the region, Alberto Fernandez, pronounced that Qaradawi was an "intelligent and thoughtful voice from the region, . . . an important figure that deserves our attention." (Fernandez was speaking in an interview on Islam Online, Qaradawi's venture for spreading his interpretation of Islam via the Internet — a venture that enables him to reach millions of Muslims, beyond the millions who watch his weekly al-Jezeera televison program about sharia.)
In national security, we are supposed to put in charge adults who are capable of getting outside their own biases and childish fantasies. It doesn't matter what President Obama thinks about faith; his obligation is to acknowledge and act on what others understand their faith to compel — even if the president finds that horrifying to contemplate.
After the carnage we've seen for two decades, and the high religious authorities that have endorsed it, it is simply astounding that an American president — at a solemn memorial service for soldiers killed just days ago by a jihadist acting on his rational, broadly accepted understanding of his religious duty — could claim that "no faith justifies" sneak-attack murders, and that no religion teaches that "God looks upon them with favor." In fact, a widely held interpretation of Islam holds exactly these principles. No one is saying that all Muslims follow Hasan's construction of Islam, but hundreds of millions do and they have scriptures to back up their beliefs — scriptures we could all read if we'd just pull our heads out of the sand.
To deny that is to deny reality. A country can't be protected by people who lack the will to face reality.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWE4YTM3MmZlODFjYjUxYzg3MzNlZWIzMjE0MmIwMWU=
President Obama at Fort Hood today: "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor."
Really?
At his blog today, Andrew Bostom, a scholar of jihadism, cites the following passage from "Reliance of the Traveler," a widely distributed manual of Islamic law produced by al-Azhar University in Egypt, the most authoritative interpreters of theology and sharia jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, the dominant tradition among the world's Muslims:
Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and, is etymologically derived from the word, mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion [of Islam]…The scriptural basis for jihad is such Koranic verses as “Fighting is prescribed for you” (Koran 2:216); “Slay them wherever you find them” (Koran 4:89); “Fight the idolators utterly” (Koran 9:36); and such hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] as the one related by (Sahih) Bukhari and (Sahih) Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And the final reckoning is with Allah”; and the hadith by (Sahih) Muslim, “To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.”
As Dr. Bostom points out, the first hadith referred to in the passage — the one in which Mohammed explains that Allah has commanded the Muslims to fight non-Muslims — was cited by Nidal Hasan in slide 43 of the June 7, 2007 presentation that Jonah discusses in his excellent column today.
Not to beat a dead horse on this, but in 2001, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an al-Azhar graduated doctor of Islamic jurisprudence who is the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and the most influential Sunni cleric in the world, issued a fatwa approving suicide bombings against Israel. In 2003, with the male jihadists being caught too often before they could strike, Qaradawi expanded the fatwa to approve suicide bombings by women. In 2004, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq, and later expanded this authorization to include the killing of American civilian support personnel. (As Qaradawi put it: "All of the Americans in Iraq are combatants, there is no difference between civilians and soldiers, and one should fight them, since the American civilians came to Iraq in order to serve the occupation. The abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] obligation so as to cause them to leave Iraq immediately.")
In 2005, the State Department's director of public diplomacy in the region, Alberto Fernandez, pronounced that Qaradawi was an "intelligent and thoughtful voice from the region, . . . an important figure that deserves our attention." (Fernandez was speaking in an interview on Islam Online, Qaradawi's venture for spreading his interpretation of Islam via the Internet — a venture that enables him to reach millions of Muslims, beyond the millions who watch his weekly al-Jezeera televison program about sharia.)
In national security, we are supposed to put in charge adults who are capable of getting outside their own biases and childish fantasies. It doesn't matter what President Obama thinks about faith; his obligation is to acknowledge and act on what others understand their faith to compel — even if the president finds that horrifying to contemplate.
After the carnage we've seen for two decades, and the high religious authorities that have endorsed it, it is simply astounding that an American president — at a solemn memorial service for soldiers killed just days ago by a jihadist acting on his rational, broadly accepted understanding of his religious duty — could claim that "no faith justifies" sneak-attack murders, and that no religion teaches that "God looks upon them with favor." In fact, a widely held interpretation of Islam holds exactly these principles. No one is saying that all Muslims follow Hasan's construction of Islam, but hundreds of millions do and they have scriptures to back up their beliefs — scriptures we could all read if we'd just pull our heads out of the sand.
To deny that is to deny reality. A country can't be protected by people who lack the will to face reality.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWE4YTM3MmZlODFjYjUxYzg3MzNlZWIzMjE0MmIwMWU=
One bloggers salute to troops and mission
Happy Marine Corps Birthday by: Hugh Hewitt
"Happy USMC Birthday to the members of the Corps. Here's a guest post from Ronny, who served six years as a Marine Corps officer, including two tours in Iraq:
"Hope is not security"
“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the thing which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
(HH) This morning I read Patrick Henry’s words and was struck with their appropriateness for today. We have been involved in a Global War on Terror since September 11, 2001. Yet, we still look to negotiate with rogue nations that fund our enemies, we debate whether or not supporting our General’s needs is appropriate, and we fail to recognize and deal with radical ideology displayed before us until it kills.
How long will we choose to not see the truth before us? There is a radical ideology at work in the world that seeks to destroy the innocent. Over the years it has seeped into our neighborhoods, our military, and it will not stop until we fight it at ever opportunity. Radical jihad must be stopped, and the tone must be set by our Commander in Chief. Where is the clear strategy he promised while campaigning?
If we do not confront our enemies in our current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan we will surely reap the consequences here on our own soil. The tragedy at Fort Hood will pale in comparison to an attack on a mall or elementary school, and that is the desire of our enemies. Indulgence in hope will not make our nation safe or secure...
http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/ebcf33fc-1746-4dda-9f5d-ded84e7a672b
"Happy USMC Birthday to the members of the Corps. Here's a guest post from Ronny, who served six years as a Marine Corps officer, including two tours in Iraq:
"Hope is not security"
“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the thing which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
(HH) This morning I read Patrick Henry’s words and was struck with their appropriateness for today. We have been involved in a Global War on Terror since September 11, 2001. Yet, we still look to negotiate with rogue nations that fund our enemies, we debate whether or not supporting our General’s needs is appropriate, and we fail to recognize and deal with radical ideology displayed before us until it kills.
How long will we choose to not see the truth before us? There is a radical ideology at work in the world that seeks to destroy the innocent. Over the years it has seeped into our neighborhoods, our military, and it will not stop until we fight it at ever opportunity. Radical jihad must be stopped, and the tone must be set by our Commander in Chief. Where is the clear strategy he promised while campaigning?
If we do not confront our enemies in our current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan we will surely reap the consequences here on our own soil. The tragedy at Fort Hood will pale in comparison to an attack on a mall or elementary school, and that is the desire of our enemies. Indulgence in hope will not make our nation safe or secure...
http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/ebcf33fc-1746-4dda-9f5d-ded84e7a672b
On related note, Iran says choose Iran or Israel
"Israel says photos prove weapons ship came from Iran"
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel released documents and pictures on Wednesday which it said provided proof that a massive arms shipment seized at sea last week came from Iran.
Israeli commandos intercepted the Antigua-flagged "Francop" near the coast of Cyprus, claiming it was taking the weapons to Syria en route to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
Israel immediately accused arch-foe Iran of sending the cargo, but on Wednesday offered for the first time evidence to back up the charges and detailed the extent of the cache.
"Hidden among the dozens of other containers on board, and disguised as civilian goods, the ship contained a consignment of 36 shipping containers with 500 tones of arms en route via Syria to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanon," the army and foreign ministry said in a statement.
"A total of about 9,000 mortar bombs of different types were seized, along with about 3,000 Katyusha artillery rockets, 3,000 recoilless gun shells, 20,000 grenades and over half a million rounds of small arms ammunition," the statement said.
It was accompanied by photos showing the ship's manifest, containers bearing the logo of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines and cargo with Iranian armed forces customs labels.
Among the weapons seized were 2,124 Iranian-made 107mm artillery rockets and thousands of AZ111-A2 fuses manufactured only in Iran, the statement said.
Pictures also showed boxes of rockets labelled as "parts of bulldozers," a suggestion of attempts to disguise the shipment.
Iran and Hezbollah have both denied any link to the ship...
Original AFP/Yahoo article: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091111/world/mideast_conflict_israel_iran_weapons_2_
'Obama must choose - Israel or Iran'
By JPOST.COM STAFF
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media..."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1257770037656&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel released documents and pictures on Wednesday which it said provided proof that a massive arms shipment seized at sea last week came from Iran.
Israeli commandos intercepted the Antigua-flagged "Francop" near the coast of Cyprus, claiming it was taking the weapons to Syria en route to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
Israel immediately accused arch-foe Iran of sending the cargo, but on Wednesday offered for the first time evidence to back up the charges and detailed the extent of the cache.
"Hidden among the dozens of other containers on board, and disguised as civilian goods, the ship contained a consignment of 36 shipping containers with 500 tones of arms en route via Syria to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanon," the army and foreign ministry said in a statement.
"A total of about 9,000 mortar bombs of different types were seized, along with about 3,000 Katyusha artillery rockets, 3,000 recoilless gun shells, 20,000 grenades and over half a million rounds of small arms ammunition," the statement said.
It was accompanied by photos showing the ship's manifest, containers bearing the logo of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines and cargo with Iranian armed forces customs labels.
Among the weapons seized were 2,124 Iranian-made 107mm artillery rockets and thousands of AZ111-A2 fuses manufactured only in Iran, the statement said.
Pictures also showed boxes of rockets labelled as "parts of bulldozers," a suggestion of attempts to disguise the shipment.
Iran and Hezbollah have both denied any link to the ship...
Original AFP/Yahoo article: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091111/world/mideast_conflict_israel_iran_weapons_2_
'Obama must choose - Israel or Iran'
By JPOST.COM STAFF
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media..."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1257770037656&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Gallup, GALLUP, shows voter pref'c for Reps
Focus also on the fact that this poll is conducted of "registered voters" rather than "likely voters" and the actual vote usually trend even more toward the Republicans:
"Republicans Edge Ahead of Democrats in 2010 Vote--Registered voters prefer Republicans for the House, 48% to 44%" by Jeffrey M. Jones
PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48% to 44% among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup's generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections, after trailing by six points in July and two points last month.
"Over the course of the year, independents' preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown.
"The Nov. 5-8 update comes just after Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, which saw Republicans replace Democrats as governors of those states.
"As was the case in last Tuesday's gubernatorial elections, independents are helping the Republicans' cause. In the latest poll, independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52% to 30%. Both parties maintain similar loyalty from their bases, with 91% of Democratic registered voters preferring the Democratic candidate and 93% of Republican voters preferring the Republican.
"Over the course of the year, independents' preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown, from a 1-point advantage in July to the current 22-point gap.
"The overall results would predict a likely strong Republican showing if the House elections were held today. Though the registered-voter results reported here speak to the preferences of all eligible voters, voter turnout is crucial in determining the final outcome of midterm elections. Gallup will not begin to model likely turnout until much closer to the 2010 elections, but given that Republicans usually have a turnout advantage, if normal turnout patterns prevail in the coming election, prospects for a good Democratic showing appear slim. Of course, the elections are still nearly 12 months away and conditions could shift back in the Democrats' favor over this time.
"Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters' preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats..."
Use link to see the charts and rest of article:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124226/Republicans-Edge-Ahead-Democrats-2010-Vote.aspx
"Republicans Edge Ahead of Democrats in 2010 Vote--Registered voters prefer Republicans for the House, 48% to 44%" by Jeffrey M. Jones
PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48% to 44% among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup's generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections, after trailing by six points in July and two points last month.
"Over the course of the year, independents' preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown.
"The Nov. 5-8 update comes just after Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, which saw Republicans replace Democrats as governors of those states.
"As was the case in last Tuesday's gubernatorial elections, independents are helping the Republicans' cause. In the latest poll, independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52% to 30%. Both parties maintain similar loyalty from their bases, with 91% of Democratic registered voters preferring the Democratic candidate and 93% of Republican voters preferring the Republican.
"Over the course of the year, independents' preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown, from a 1-point advantage in July to the current 22-point gap.
"The overall results would predict a likely strong Republican showing if the House elections were held today. Though the registered-voter results reported here speak to the preferences of all eligible voters, voter turnout is crucial in determining the final outcome of midterm elections. Gallup will not begin to model likely turnout until much closer to the 2010 elections, but given that Republicans usually have a turnout advantage, if normal turnout patterns prevail in the coming election, prospects for a good Democratic showing appear slim. Of course, the elections are still nearly 12 months away and conditions could shift back in the Democrats' favor over this time.
"Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters' preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats..."
Use link to see the charts and rest of article:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124226/Republicans-Edge-Ahead-Democrats-2010-Vote.aspx
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
9/11 on army base...will media/O/Army admit it
"Fort Hood's 9/11" by Ralph Peters via NY Post
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting "Allahu Akbar!" committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.
What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.
This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.
When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."
But the president won’t. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.
And the Army won’t. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America-haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism."
And the media won’t. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops — despite their crocodile tears. ...
For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.
Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that "he’s a good American." In their world, maybe he is.
But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?
A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she’s becoming too Westernized.
Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we’re assured that "Islam’s a religion of peace."
I guarantee you that the Obama administration’s non-response to the Ft. Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.
Ralph Peters’ latest novel is "The War After Armageddon."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ#ixzz0WVKvhWSV
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting "Allahu Akbar!" committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.
What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.
This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.
When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."
But the president won’t. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.
And the Army won’t. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America-haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism."
And the media won’t. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops — despite their crocodile tears. ...
For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.
Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that "he’s a good American." In their world, maybe he is.
But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?
A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she’s becoming too Westernized.
Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we’re assured that "Islam’s a religion of peace."
I guarantee you that the Obama administration’s non-response to the Ft. Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.
Ralph Peters’ latest novel is "The War After Armageddon."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ#ixzz0WVKvhWSV
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ
About the phony line they are not-religious kills
Chris Matthews: We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hoodposted at 8:34 pm on November 6, 2009 by Allahpundit (from Hot Air):
Well … yes, that’s true, if you think anything short of Hasan sitting up in his hospital bed and declaring “why, indeed, religion was a factor at Fort Hood” amounts to irresponsible speculation. But here’s what we’ve got so far, according to eyewitnesses, colleagues, and friends. He considered the war on terror a “war on Islam” and himself a Muslim first and an American second; he thought Muslims had the right to stand up to the “aggressor” in the Middle East and is suspected of posting things online about the selfless heroism of jihadist suicide bombers; he was placed on probation for proselytizing about Islam to patients and colleagues and was sufficiently devout that he refused to have his picture taken with women; he once used a lecture at a medical conference as an opportunity to discuss how the Koran orders decapitation for infidels; and, oh yes, he yelled “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire.
Now, per the media’s favored Narrative, could a guy with that background have somehow compartmentalized that in his mind and been driven to kill entirely by pre-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD by proxy or whatever? I guess. Anything’s possible. But would the same benefit of the doubt be given to a nut trending towards fanaticism of a different ideological hue? Like I said yesterday on Twitter: You’ll know it’s okay to start speculating about Hasan’s motives when cops find a Glenn Beck book on his bookshelf. In fact, if the same “PTSD by proxy” elements had been present in Hasan’s bio but it turned out he’d attended a tea party or two, we’d already be well into hour 30 of a full-on media speculation orgy. The nutroots needed less time than that to pronounce conservatism collectively guilty of murder in the case of that hanged census worker, even though, as it turns out, he probably wasn’t murdered. But then, we’ve been over this ground before. For now, let’s simply look forward to this Sunday’s New York Times op-ed page, as Krugman and Rich and the rest of the gang who see murderers in every angry conservative face warn us how vicious it is to assume the worst about people because of one bad apple.
Go to original from link to access all the sources for each point: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/06/chris-matthews-we-may-never-know-if-religion-was-a-factor-at-fort-hood/
Well … yes, that’s true, if you think anything short of Hasan sitting up in his hospital bed and declaring “why, indeed, religion was a factor at Fort Hood” amounts to irresponsible speculation. But here’s what we’ve got so far, according to eyewitnesses, colleagues, and friends. He considered the war on terror a “war on Islam” and himself a Muslim first and an American second; he thought Muslims had the right to stand up to the “aggressor” in the Middle East and is suspected of posting things online about the selfless heroism of jihadist suicide bombers; he was placed on probation for proselytizing about Islam to patients and colleagues and was sufficiently devout that he refused to have his picture taken with women; he once used a lecture at a medical conference as an opportunity to discuss how the Koran orders decapitation for infidels; and, oh yes, he yelled “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire.
Now, per the media’s favored Narrative, could a guy with that background have somehow compartmentalized that in his mind and been driven to kill entirely by pre-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD by proxy or whatever? I guess. Anything’s possible. But would the same benefit of the doubt be given to a nut trending towards fanaticism of a different ideological hue? Like I said yesterday on Twitter: You’ll know it’s okay to start speculating about Hasan’s motives when cops find a Glenn Beck book on his bookshelf. In fact, if the same “PTSD by proxy” elements had been present in Hasan’s bio but it turned out he’d attended a tea party or two, we’d already be well into hour 30 of a full-on media speculation orgy. The nutroots needed less time than that to pronounce conservatism collectively guilty of murder in the case of that hanged census worker, even though, as it turns out, he probably wasn’t murdered. But then, we’ve been over this ground before. For now, let’s simply look forward to this Sunday’s New York Times op-ed page, as Krugman and Rich and the rest of the gang who see murderers in every angry conservative face warn us how vicious it is to assume the worst about people because of one bad apple.
Go to original from link to access all the sources for each point: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/06/chris-matthews-we-may-never-know-if-religion-was-a-factor-at-fort-hood/
O: "answer all questions" on Hasan--so, really?
Bill Bennet: Last week the battlefield showed itself in one of the most unimaginable places: Ft. Hood, Texas. We don’t need to wring our hands and our brains to try and figure out the motive of the terrorist, when someone fires on Americans, killing as many as he possibly can, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” that is all I need to know. The question of motive need not be asked, especially not when you have further evidence of devout religiosity, and vocal criticism of our military missions in our other battlefields, like Iraq and Afghanistan: all of which was true of Nidal Hasan.
But there are questions to be asked and I suspect many of the answers will be unsatisfying — I also suspect we will see memos or some kind of paperwork on Nidal Hasan that will prove embarrassing to officials in the FBI, our intelligence services, or the military. There are many stories to relay relating to Hasan — here’s just one, reported by the AP: “Fellow students of Hasan in a military training course complained to the faculty about Hasan’s ‘anti-American propaganda,’ but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.”
Maybe so. But given the long chain of other stories about Hasan, there had to be paperwork. There had to be knowledge. And if nothing else, nothing else, questions as to why a formal investigation was not opened up on him after the FBI tracked Internet postings about suicide bombings by someone with his name remain. Questions as to why he would cite his nationality as Palestinian when he was born in Virginia remain. Questions as to why colleagues stated they were uncomfortable referring patients to him remain. Questions as to how you can have a member of the U.S. military’s fellow doctors recount that they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a “Muslim first and American second” remain. Questions as to how a member of the U.S. military can speak of infidels deserving to have their throats cut and have boiling oil poured down their throats and can stay in the military remain.
Questions as to why all this can at once remain true and he can be quoted as saying he wanted a discharge from the military and nothing was done remain.
I just offer this, the Code of Military Conduct:
"I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause .... I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America."
Final thought: If we can discharge officers and enlisted personnel for being gay, we can separate them and discharge them for being Muslim radicals, can we not? Or has, indeed, political correctness so infected our institutions that the U.S. military is now affected, too?
— William J. Bennett is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Bill Bennett's Morning in America, and the Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
But there are questions to be asked and I suspect many of the answers will be unsatisfying — I also suspect we will see memos or some kind of paperwork on Nidal Hasan that will prove embarrassing to officials in the FBI, our intelligence services, or the military. There are many stories to relay relating to Hasan — here’s just one, reported by the AP: “Fellow students of Hasan in a military training course complained to the faculty about Hasan’s ‘anti-American propaganda,’ but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.”
Maybe so. But given the long chain of other stories about Hasan, there had to be paperwork. There had to be knowledge. And if nothing else, nothing else, questions as to why a formal investigation was not opened up on him after the FBI tracked Internet postings about suicide bombings by someone with his name remain. Questions as to why he would cite his nationality as Palestinian when he was born in Virginia remain. Questions as to why colleagues stated they were uncomfortable referring patients to him remain. Questions as to how you can have a member of the U.S. military’s fellow doctors recount that they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a “Muslim first and American second” remain. Questions as to how a member of the U.S. military can speak of infidels deserving to have their throats cut and have boiling oil poured down their throats and can stay in the military remain.
Questions as to why all this can at once remain true and he can be quoted as saying he wanted a discharge from the military and nothing was done remain.
I just offer this, the Code of Military Conduct:
"I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause .... I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America."
Final thought: If we can discharge officers and enlisted personnel for being gay, we can separate them and discharge them for being Muslim radicals, can we not? Or has, indeed, political correctness so infected our institutions that the U.S. military is now affected, too?
— William J. Bennett is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Bill Bennett's Morning in America, and the Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
O/Pelosi/Reid overhaul staggeringly massive experiment, irresponsible ideological pipedream
"Reviewing the Health Overhaul Bidding " (via Hugh Hewitt)
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.
Let’s review the bidding now that Obama/Pelosicare has passed the House.
As reported here two weeks ago, according to one of the nation’s leading experts on the federal budget, former OBM deputy director and Hoover Institution economist John Cogan, by mid century without the president’s agenda, the federal spending including Medicare and Medicaid are on track to consume 34 percent of national income. [# More #]
With the president’s program, that number will jump to 60 percent. Cogan noted that the peak year for U.S. government spending as a percent of GDP was in World War II, when it hit 40 percent for one year. We are, as he said, entering uncharted economic and fiscal territory.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are inexpensive, more effective health reform alternatives on the table.
The president points (correctly) to the need for greater competition among health insurance providers? But lack of competition is a result not of market failures but state government mandates. The answer isn’t a fabulously expensive public option. It is to legislate that an insurance plan that is approved in one state will be salable in all. Instantly you would solve the one-state-few-competitors issue. And you would introduce competition between the states. National competition would force states to determine which of their mandates is truly necessary and which is a payoff to special interests. Do the people of Massachusetts really need every health policy to include in vitro fertilization? No wonder they have among the nation’s highest insurance prices.
The president points (again correctly) to the pace of health care inflation generally. But as economist from Milton Friedman on have noted, health care inflation in the U.S. is a result of breaking the link between the payer of services and the receiver of services—and this, too, is a result of government policies, in this case tax policies. U.S. tax law heavily discriminates against those who buy health insurance or health care services on their own. The tax breaks for buying through your employer make other options prohibitively expensive. So level the playing field. Give individuals the same breaks that their places of work receive. The result would be instant pressure on all providers to increase productivity – and stagnating productivity is the central problem in our health system.
But the House has passed a bill that does nothing to reduce mandates (just the opposite, they’ll add a federal layer), nothing to create a national market for health insurance, and nothing to give individuals control over their own health plans. It does however mandate personal spending that can rise as high as 20 percent of income (see here: http://tinyurl.com/yggstf ).
Here is where it comes down. The House bill is built on the same social democratic model as Medicare. When that program was passed in 1966, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that by 1990 it would cost $12 billion. The actual number was $107 billion (see here: http://tinyurl.com/yac7tg9 ). Before the current administration took office, among Washington’s great worries was that the program’s unfunded liability (now running over $74 trillion, multiple times larger than our deficit) would bankrupt the nation. So in what the president’s budget back in February termed “A New Era of Responsibility,” the House of Representatives proposes to layer on top of that program a new and vastly more expensive program.
We all have our favorite explanation for what has made the Democrats in Washington go mad. Power crazed ideology?
Original, longer article:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/4a299a8b-4564-4f87-aae6-dcff1cddc99e
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.
Let’s review the bidding now that Obama/Pelosicare has passed the House.
As reported here two weeks ago, according to one of the nation’s leading experts on the federal budget, former OBM deputy director and Hoover Institution economist John Cogan, by mid century without the president’s agenda, the federal spending including Medicare and Medicaid are on track to consume 34 percent of national income. [# More #]
With the president’s program, that number will jump to 60 percent. Cogan noted that the peak year for U.S. government spending as a percent of GDP was in World War II, when it hit 40 percent for one year. We are, as he said, entering uncharted economic and fiscal territory.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are inexpensive, more effective health reform alternatives on the table.
The president points (correctly) to the need for greater competition among health insurance providers? But lack of competition is a result not of market failures but state government mandates. The answer isn’t a fabulously expensive public option. It is to legislate that an insurance plan that is approved in one state will be salable in all. Instantly you would solve the one-state-few-competitors issue. And you would introduce competition between the states. National competition would force states to determine which of their mandates is truly necessary and which is a payoff to special interests. Do the people of Massachusetts really need every health policy to include in vitro fertilization? No wonder they have among the nation’s highest insurance prices.
The president points (again correctly) to the pace of health care inflation generally. But as economist from Milton Friedman on have noted, health care inflation in the U.S. is a result of breaking the link between the payer of services and the receiver of services—and this, too, is a result of government policies, in this case tax policies. U.S. tax law heavily discriminates against those who buy health insurance or health care services on their own. The tax breaks for buying through your employer make other options prohibitively expensive. So level the playing field. Give individuals the same breaks that their places of work receive. The result would be instant pressure on all providers to increase productivity – and stagnating productivity is the central problem in our health system.
But the House has passed a bill that does nothing to reduce mandates (just the opposite, they’ll add a federal layer), nothing to create a national market for health insurance, and nothing to give individuals control over their own health plans. It does however mandate personal spending that can rise as high as 20 percent of income (see here: http://tinyurl.com/yggstf ).
Here is where it comes down. The House bill is built on the same social democratic model as Medicare. When that program was passed in 1966, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that by 1990 it would cost $12 billion. The actual number was $107 billion (see here: http://tinyurl.com/yac7tg9 ). Before the current administration took office, among Washington’s great worries was that the program’s unfunded liability (now running over $74 trillion, multiple times larger than our deficit) would bankrupt the nation. So in what the president’s budget back in February termed “A New Era of Responsibility,” the House of Representatives proposes to layer on top of that program a new and vastly more expensive program.
We all have our favorite explanation for what has made the Democrats in Washington go mad. Power crazed ideology?
Original, longer article:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/4a299a8b-4564-4f87-aae6-dcff1cddc99e
Monday, November 9, 2009
Irony, sarcasm or reasonable conjecture on O
"Secret Copy of Obama Speech [Mona Charen] (NRO):
"President Obama elected not to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, but my sources have smuggled out to me part of the speech he would have delivered had he been there.
"Twenty years ago today, thanks to the leadership of General Secretary Gorbachev, the mutual suspicion between East and West Germany came to an end. The Cold War was a bitter time for many, particularly in my country, when paranoia and unfounded animosity toward other systems of government impeded peace and progress. Due to unfounded fear and misplaced priorities, my country sometimes supported regimes that did not deserve support. At the same time, the Eastern bloc nations also made mistakes. They were sometimes too quick to assume the worst about us without giving us the benefit of the doubt. After all, while decision makers in Washington DC may have made many dreadful decisions, I was only in grade school at the time.
"Thankfully, that time is past. Now, we can move forward together to create a world in which distinctions between command and free economies are gradually erased, and in which nuclear swords will be beaten into solar plowshares."
"President Obama elected not to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, but my sources have smuggled out to me part of the speech he would have delivered had he been there.
"Twenty years ago today, thanks to the leadership of General Secretary Gorbachev, the mutual suspicion between East and West Germany came to an end. The Cold War was a bitter time for many, particularly in my country, when paranoia and unfounded animosity toward other systems of government impeded peace and progress. Due to unfounded fear and misplaced priorities, my country sometimes supported regimes that did not deserve support. At the same time, the Eastern bloc nations also made mistakes. They were sometimes too quick to assume the worst about us without giving us the benefit of the doubt. After all, while decision makers in Washington DC may have made many dreadful decisions, I was only in grade school at the time.
"Thankfully, that time is past. Now, we can move forward together to create a world in which distinctions between command and free economies are gradually erased, and in which nuclear swords will be beaten into solar plowshares."
The ideological sickness of pc obsession
"It Can't Be?" [Victor Davis Hanson] (via NRO):
"Is the following AP story made up, a parody, or a terrible error?
"Homeland chief warns against anti-Muslim backlash
(AP) – 21 hours ago
"ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.
"Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded."
VDH: "One wonders whether Major Hasan — temporarily on sick leave — will return to his old quasi-official advisory role about our nation's security as a panelist for the Presidential Transition Task Force. Would now removing him from such future responsibilities be considered Islamaphobic?"
"Is the following AP story made up, a parody, or a terrible error?
"Homeland chief warns against anti-Muslim backlash
(AP) – 21 hours ago
"ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.
"Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded."
VDH: "One wonders whether Major Hasan — temporarily on sick leave — will return to his old quasi-official advisory role about our nation's security as a panelist for the Presidential Transition Task Force. Would now removing him from such future responsibilities be considered Islamaphobic?"
The traitorous, treasonous muslim terrorist
A Traitor Not A Victim [Mark Steyn] (via NRO):
"Jules Crittenden on the killer within:
"[Major Hasan] probably deserves desertion, treason and terrorism charges if, as all indicators seem to very strongly suggest, he was engaged in jihad, from his violence-inciting, hateful rants about the Koran, his denunciation of the United States as “the aggressor” in arguments with fellow soldiers, to his shouts of “Allahu Akhbar,” to what they believe were his Internet defenses of suicide bombings, to his choice of targets, the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood. If al-Qaeda is an amorphous enemy, an idea made situationally manifest by the will of its adherents, and he was in fact an adherent of its violent agenda, then he is the enemy, his actions were acts of war, and they bled and died under enemy fire.
"Is any of the above very likely to be offically recognized? No.
MS: "No" is something of an understatement. Meanwhile, as our handwringing media plumb new deaths, I appreciated this comment:
"Incredible, especially when you consider that the only Muslims killed in the USA on 9/11 and in Britain on 7/7 were killed by Muslims.
"Muslims may have as much to fear from radical Muslims as any other American, Briton or Canadian... I'm rather sick of the MSM interrupting our grieving to tell us that, to add Muslims' insults to a Muslim's murderous injury, they suspect us of wanting to attack their mosques now, even though we didn't the last ten times a Muslim killed innocent people in the name of Islam. What are they scared of? Grafitti?
MS: "That first sentence is worth bearing in mind when mendacious lobby groups such as CAIR trot out their "fears" for Muslim safety. Muslims died in the World Trade Center, the London Underground, the Bali nightclub attacks, the Istanbul bank bombings, in Iraqi shopping markets targeted by insurgents. The death toll of Muslims killed by Muslims in any one year is staggering. Jihadists are very indifferent to murdering their coreligionists and have been since the Grand Mufti staged his uprising in Mandatory Palestine and wound up slaughtering more Muslims than Jews or Britons.
"After my comparative body count in my "fear for Muslims" post last night — non-Muslims 13, Muslims 0 — a snotty liberal wrote to wonder sneeringly how I knew the dead at Fort Hood were all non-Muslims. He thinks he's refuting my point but in fact he's making it for me: The soi-disant "moderate Muslim" has far more to fear from a coreligionist boarding the subway train yelling "Allahu akbar!" than he does from the allegedly "Islamophobic" Americans forever on the brink of "backlash." That our media cannot see what the commenter above sees is, even in a relativist age, a very advanced stage of decadence."
"Jules Crittenden on the killer within:
"[Major Hasan] probably deserves desertion, treason and terrorism charges if, as all indicators seem to very strongly suggest, he was engaged in jihad, from his violence-inciting, hateful rants about the Koran, his denunciation of the United States as “the aggressor” in arguments with fellow soldiers, to his shouts of “Allahu Akhbar,” to what they believe were his Internet defenses of suicide bombings, to his choice of targets, the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood. If al-Qaeda is an amorphous enemy, an idea made situationally manifest by the will of its adherents, and he was in fact an adherent of its violent agenda, then he is the enemy, his actions were acts of war, and they bled and died under enemy fire.
"Is any of the above very likely to be offically recognized? No.
MS: "No" is something of an understatement. Meanwhile, as our handwringing media plumb new deaths, I appreciated this comment:
"Incredible, especially when you consider that the only Muslims killed in the USA on 9/11 and in Britain on 7/7 were killed by Muslims.
"Muslims may have as much to fear from radical Muslims as any other American, Briton or Canadian... I'm rather sick of the MSM interrupting our grieving to tell us that, to add Muslims' insults to a Muslim's murderous injury, they suspect us of wanting to attack their mosques now, even though we didn't the last ten times a Muslim killed innocent people in the name of Islam. What are they scared of? Grafitti?
MS: "That first sentence is worth bearing in mind when mendacious lobby groups such as CAIR trot out their "fears" for Muslim safety. Muslims died in the World Trade Center, the London Underground, the Bali nightclub attacks, the Istanbul bank bombings, in Iraqi shopping markets targeted by insurgents. The death toll of Muslims killed by Muslims in any one year is staggering. Jihadists are very indifferent to murdering their coreligionists and have been since the Grand Mufti staged his uprising in Mandatory Palestine and wound up slaughtering more Muslims than Jews or Britons.
"After my comparative body count in my "fear for Muslims" post last night — non-Muslims 13, Muslims 0 — a snotty liberal wrote to wonder sneeringly how I knew the dead at Fort Hood were all non-Muslims. He thinks he's refuting my point but in fact he's making it for me: The soi-disant "moderate Muslim" has far more to fear from a coreligionist boarding the subway train yelling "Allahu akbar!" than he does from the allegedly "Islamophobic" Americans forever on the brink of "backlash." That our media cannot see what the commenter above sees is, even in a relativist age, a very advanced stage of decadence."
"Other ways to reform health care"...
"A Few Good Democrats" [Kathryn Jean Lopez] (via NRO)
"And some arguments that might encourage them may be in our editorial this morning. This is the summation:
"There are other ways to reform health care. There are more sensible, market-based, moderate approaches — and, more important, there is no need to pack every reform into one sweeping bill, larded up with special favors and irresponsible spending, that will radically remake the American economy and health-care system. Radicalism may be in fashion in Nancy Pelosi’s district and in the salons in which Barack Obama was educated, but it may be less so in south Texas, rural Ohio, northeastern Pennsylvania, western Colorado, and other places where Democrats will have to face the voters again soon enough. Let us hope that enough of them are willing to show some restraint — and to put the national interest over President Obama’s ambitions — that they are able to put the brakes on this mess before we go any farther down this road.
"Read the whole thing. Maybe send it to a friend and member of Congress, too."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGM0ZTFiMmViY2MzNDZmYjUxZmVkM2QyMDYwOTdkYjU==
"And some arguments that might encourage them may be in our editorial this morning. This is the summation:
"There are other ways to reform health care. There are more sensible, market-based, moderate approaches — and, more important, there is no need to pack every reform into one sweeping bill, larded up with special favors and irresponsible spending, that will radically remake the American economy and health-care system. Radicalism may be in fashion in Nancy Pelosi’s district and in the salons in which Barack Obama was educated, but it may be less so in south Texas, rural Ohio, northeastern Pennsylvania, western Colorado, and other places where Democrats will have to face the voters again soon enough. Let us hope that enough of them are willing to show some restraint — and to put the national interest over President Obama’s ambitions — that they are able to put the brakes on this mess before we go any farther down this road.
"Read the whole thing. Maybe send it to a friend and member of Congress, too."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGM0ZTFiMmViY2MzNDZmYjUxZmVkM2QyMDYwOTdkYjU==
Sunday, November 8, 2009
CAN WE BE EXACTLY CLEAR ABOUT...
...THE MUSLUM/EXTREMIST ANGLE:
On the first reports, I told my wife, flat out, that I would bet $100 that it was (please check post below) a muslum extremist, in or out of the military, with or without help, motivated by religion/policy. I was right! For comparison, when I heard of office shootings in FL., I immediately thought: it could be anything. Now, it is undeniable that what I thought on first report was the case...
Well, here is some MSM reporting:
Alleged Ft. Hood gunman may have 9/11 mosque link
FORT HOOD, Texas – A key U.S. senator said Sunday he would begin an investigation into whether the Army missed signs that the man accused of opening fire at Fort Hood had embraced an increasingly extremist view of Islamic ideology.
Sen. Joe Lieberman's call for the investigation came as word surfaced that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan apparently attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there. Whether Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, associated with the hijackers is something the FBI will probably look into, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master's program at a military college complained repeatedly to superiors about what they considered Hasan's anti-American views. Dr. Val Finnell said Hasan gave a presentation at the Uniformed Services University that justified suicide bombing and told classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091109/ap_on_re_us/us_fort_hood_shooting
On the first reports, I told my wife, flat out, that I would bet $100 that it was (please check post below) a muslum extremist, in or out of the military, with or without help, motivated by religion/policy. I was right! For comparison, when I heard of office shootings in FL., I immediately thought: it could be anything. Now, it is undeniable that what I thought on first report was the case...
Well, here is some MSM reporting:
Alleged Ft. Hood gunman may have 9/11 mosque link
FORT HOOD, Texas – A key U.S. senator said Sunday he would begin an investigation into whether the Army missed signs that the man accused of opening fire at Fort Hood had embraced an increasingly extremist view of Islamic ideology.
Sen. Joe Lieberman's call for the investigation came as word surfaced that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan apparently attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there. Whether Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, associated with the hijackers is something the FBI will probably look into, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master's program at a military college complained repeatedly to superiors about what they considered Hasan's anti-American views. Dr. Val Finnell said Hasan gave a presentation at the Uniformed Services University that justified suicide bombing and told classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091109/ap_on_re_us/us_fort_hood_shooting
More raw posting: "health" bill from WashEx
That 1,990-page Democratic health care bill? It's longer now; includes new government controls
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
11/05/09 9:17 AM EST
It's become common practice to refer to the House Democrats' national health care bill as being 1,990 pages long. That's true of the bill introduced last week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But now Democrats have added a 42-page "manager's amendment" to the bill. Some of the new language in the amendment replaces material already in the bill, but there are enough new provisions to ensure that the bill is now more than 2,000 pages long. And there will likely be even more additions to the bill before the final debate.
What's more important is what is in the new amendment. Much of it reflects Democrats' concerns that their bill would cause an increase in health insurance premiums. Remember when the House leadership, the White House, and sympathetic media commentators everywhere attacked the insurance industry for predicting that the Democratic bill would cause premiums to go up? The manager's amendment is, in effect, the House Democrats' admission that it would do just that. Their answer: more government control. The new language sets up a process for the government to monitor "unjustified premium increases" and threaten insurance companies with exclusion from the government-run Health Insurance Exchange if they exhibit a "pattern of excessive or unjustified premium increases." The government, of course, will determine what is "excessive" or "unjustified."
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
11/05/09 9:17 AM EST
It's become common practice to refer to the House Democrats' national health care bill as being 1,990 pages long. That's true of the bill introduced last week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But now Democrats have added a 42-page "manager's amendment" to the bill. Some of the new language in the amendment replaces material already in the bill, but there are enough new provisions to ensure that the bill is now more than 2,000 pages long. And there will likely be even more additions to the bill before the final debate.
What's more important is what is in the new amendment. Much of it reflects Democrats' concerns that their bill would cause an increase in health insurance premiums. Remember when the House leadership, the White House, and sympathetic media commentators everywhere attacked the insurance industry for predicting that the Democratic bill would cause premiums to go up? The manager's amendment is, in effect, the House Democrats' admission that it would do just that. Their answer: more government control. The new language sets up a process for the government to monitor "unjustified premium increases" and threaten insurance companies with exclusion from the government-run Health Insurance Exchange if they exhibit a "pattern of excessive or unjustified premium increases." The government, of course, will determine what is "excessive" or "unjustified."
Raw posting of NY-23 analysis from Redstate
"What Did NY-23 Mean?
ViewWhat links here.Submitted by Jon Henke on Wed, 11/04/2009 - 12:56
in ConservativesDoug HoffmanNY-23Republican PartyThe Right
[Disclosure: I worked with the Doug Hoffman campaign. However, the views here are my own. I have not discussed this at all with the Hoffman campaign.]
The bottom line on NY-23:
•Doug Hoffman just won the Republican Primary. The general election is next year.
•There are two broken, corrupt, arrogant political parties we need to defeat. We beat the Republican establishment in 2009. We'll beat the Democratic Party in 2010.
•NY-23 is not really about Conservatives VS Moderates. It is about the Establishment VS the Movement.
What happened in NY-23:
For years, the conventional wisdom has been that blue state Republicans had to nominate a "not too hot, not too cold" candidate - what my friend Max Borders called a Keynesian political strategy of tweaking the policy variables until you get a candidate whose positions seem most appealing to the most people. Like Keynesian economic tinkering, it all works very well....until some fundamental shift reveals the underlying artificiality, and it all falls apart.
Political parties gain power by standing for something appealing. But when a party gains power, it loses definition. Rather than standing for something appealing and well-defined, they try to stand for anything appealing enough to win. But you can only tinker so much before you destroy the brand that people had elected, and then you become the minority again.
The minority is where Parties and movements go to be reborn. There, they have to figure out who they are, and what their mission is. You can't storm the castle until you're all facing the same direction and focused on the same goals. Sometimes - as in NY-23 - that involves telling the establishment "Thank you, but our mission is in another castle" (If I might borrow political wisdom from Super Mario Bros).
The establishment GOP - the NY GOP, the NRCC, the RNC and a few prominent Republicans - got behind another establishment GOP type in Dede Scozzafava. In any other recent year, she would have sailed through. Not in 2009.
The public - including moderates, libertarians and alienated Republicans - has grown much more nervous about Democratic governance. The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of the sparks that are flying, but it goes far deeper than that, and the establishment GOP has been oblivious to, or dismissive of, these sparks. With Dede Scozzafava, the establishment Republican Party threw gasoline on top of the sparks and a brushfire erupted. The result was the quintessential "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" campaign of Doug Hoffman.
What NY-23 Is About
The story of NY-23 is not "conservatives beat moderates" or "conservative loses to Democrat".
The story of NY-23 is "the Right starts dismantling the Republican establishment." This is about how the Republican Party is defined and who defines it.
Right now, the movement wants the Republican Party to be defined by opposition to big government. Gradually, as new leaders arise, we will demand that the Republican Party be defined by its own solutions, as well, but rebuilding is an incremental process. We can hammer out the policy agenda and the boundaries of the coalition later.
For now, our job is to disrupt the establishment GOP. If we beat Democrats while we're at it, great. But the first priority is to fix the Drunk Party - the Living Dead establishment Republicans. They're history. They just don't know it yet.
NY-23 was the first shot in that war. It was a direct hit. Next year, we start storming the castle."
ViewWhat links here.Submitted by Jon Henke on Wed, 11/04/2009 - 12:56
in ConservativesDoug HoffmanNY-23Republican PartyThe Right
[Disclosure: I worked with the Doug Hoffman campaign. However, the views here are my own. I have not discussed this at all with the Hoffman campaign.]
The bottom line on NY-23:
•Doug Hoffman just won the Republican Primary. The general election is next year.
•There are two broken, corrupt, arrogant political parties we need to defeat. We beat the Republican establishment in 2009. We'll beat the Democratic Party in 2010.
•NY-23 is not really about Conservatives VS Moderates. It is about the Establishment VS the Movement.
What happened in NY-23:
For years, the conventional wisdom has been that blue state Republicans had to nominate a "not too hot, not too cold" candidate - what my friend Max Borders called a Keynesian political strategy of tweaking the policy variables until you get a candidate whose positions seem most appealing to the most people. Like Keynesian economic tinkering, it all works very well....until some fundamental shift reveals the underlying artificiality, and it all falls apart.
Political parties gain power by standing for something appealing. But when a party gains power, it loses definition. Rather than standing for something appealing and well-defined, they try to stand for anything appealing enough to win. But you can only tinker so much before you destroy the brand that people had elected, and then you become the minority again.
The minority is where Parties and movements go to be reborn. There, they have to figure out who they are, and what their mission is. You can't storm the castle until you're all facing the same direction and focused on the same goals. Sometimes - as in NY-23 - that involves telling the establishment "Thank you, but our mission is in another castle" (If I might borrow political wisdom from Super Mario Bros).
The establishment GOP - the NY GOP, the NRCC, the RNC and a few prominent Republicans - got behind another establishment GOP type in Dede Scozzafava. In any other recent year, she would have sailed through. Not in 2009.
The public - including moderates, libertarians and alienated Republicans - has grown much more nervous about Democratic governance. The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of the sparks that are flying, but it goes far deeper than that, and the establishment GOP has been oblivious to, or dismissive of, these sparks. With Dede Scozzafava, the establishment Republican Party threw gasoline on top of the sparks and a brushfire erupted. The result was the quintessential "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" campaign of Doug Hoffman.
What NY-23 Is About
The story of NY-23 is not "conservatives beat moderates" or "conservative loses to Democrat".
The story of NY-23 is "the Right starts dismantling the Republican establishment." This is about how the Republican Party is defined and who defines it.
Right now, the movement wants the Republican Party to be defined by opposition to big government. Gradually, as new leaders arise, we will demand that the Republican Party be defined by its own solutions, as well, but rebuilding is an incremental process. We can hammer out the policy agenda and the boundaries of the coalition later.
For now, our job is to disrupt the establishment GOP. If we beat Democrats while we're at it, great. But the first priority is to fix the Drunk Party - the Living Dead establishment Republicans. They're history. They just don't know it yet.
NY-23 was the first shot in that war. It was a direct hit. Next year, we start storming the castle."
Dont't forget...it started with CRA/sub-loans
(DP: Some could reasonably say they were surprised that trillions in loans backed by liar/borrowers, misleading/adjustable-rate-peddling lenders, supposedly ever-increasing values and the federal gov't--Fannie/Freddie...no one can make that claim now. And yet, as you read below, the same ideologues that brought us the housing/credit crisis and near-collapse of the entire financial system has not even a clue that we shouldn't do it all over.)
Posted from Commentary
A Poisonous Cocktail
Peter Schweizer, 10.05.09, 12:01 AM EDT
Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act.
As we try to shake off the financial crisis, here's a bright idea. Take a law that has led to the writing of an enormous amount of bad mortgages and expand it. Then take enforcement away from bank examiners and give it to housing activists.
Sound like a poisonous cocktail? Well, it is what the Obama administration and Democrats are currently stirring up on Capitol Hill.
The White House and Congress want to expand a 30-year-old law--the Community Reinvestment Act--that helped to fuel the mortgage meltdown. What the CRA does, in effect, is compel banks to seek the permission of community activists to get regulatory approval for bank expansions and mergers. Often this means striking a deal with activist groups such as ACORN or unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and agreeing to allocate credit to poor and minority areas that are underserved.
In short, the CRA encourages banks to make loans they would not ordinarily make. What's more, these agreements often require that banks offer no-money-down mortgages and remove caps on how much debt a borrower can take on. All of this is done in the name of "financial democracy."
Liberals pooh-pooh the idea that a 30-year-old law could have contributed to the current subprime crisis and credit crunch. But what they ignore is the massive expansion of CRA-commitments forced on banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, in the first 20 years of the act, up to 1997, commitments totaled approximately $200 billion. But from 1997 to 2007, commitments exploded to more than $4.2 trillion. (Keep in mind this is more than four times the size of the current health bill being debated in Congress.) The burdens on individual banks can be enormous. Washington Mutual, for example, pledged $1 trillion in mortgages to those with credit histories that "fall outside typical credit, income or debt constraints," and was awarded the 2003 CRA Community Impact Award for its Community Access program. Four years later it was taken over by the Office of Thrift Supervision. In 2004 Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ) agreed to provide $750 billion in CRA loans to applicants with poor credit who had previous difficulty obtaining a mortgage. By 2008 Bank of America was reporting that CRA loans represented only 7% of its portfolio but 29% of its losses. Numerous large banks are now in the middle of enormous CRA commitments. In 2004 J.P. Morgan Chase ( JPM - news - people ) agreed to provide $800 billion of such loans over the course of 10 years.
For all the talk of unsold condos in Miami and foreclosed McMansions in California, the epicenters of the mortgage crisis are inner-city urban areas--precisely those areas where the CRA was most applicable. As the Boston Federal Reserve put it in a massive 2008 study, "In the current housing crisis foreclosures are highly concentrated in [urban] minority neighborhoods." The study found that borrowers in these areas were seven times more likely to be foreclosed on than the general population. Analysis by the Pew Research Center and another by The New York Times found that mortgage holders in these areas had foreclosure rates four times higher than the national average.
In short, the CRA is compelling banks to make trillions in loans to individuals who have poor credit and who often can't or won't make their payments.
Now comes Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and 50 other co-sponsors (all Democrats) of H.R. 1479 the "Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009," who want to expand the CRA to include not just banks but also credit unions, insurance companies and mortgage lenders. Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has supported the idea in the past. The SEIU and ACORN, along with a host of other activist groups, are also behind the effort.
President Obama has been a staunch supporter of the CRA throughout his public life. And his recently announced financial reforms would make the law even more onerous and guarantee an explosion in irresponsible lending. Obama wants to take enforcement of the CRA away from the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and other financial regulators who at least try to weigh bank safety and soundness when enforcing the law, and turn it over to a newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). This agency's core concerns would not be safety and soundness but, in the words of the Obama administration, "promoting access to financial services," which is really code for forcing banks to lend to those who would not ordinarily qualify. Compliance would no longer be done by bank examiners but by what the administration calls "a group of examiners specially trained and certified in community development" (otherwise called community activists). The administration says, in its literature about the reforms, that "rigorous application of the Community Reinvestment should be a core function of the CFPA."
For good measure, Obama's plan also calls for the CFPA to work closely with the Department of Justice to combat perceived discrimination in lending.
Obama's battle against banks has a long history. In 1994, freshly out of Harvard Law School, he joined two other attorneys in filing a lawsuit against Citibank, the giant mortgage lender. In Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, the plaintiffs claimed that although they had ostensibly been denied home loans "because of delinquent credit obligations and adverse credit," the real culprit was institutional racism. The suit alleged that Citibank had violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act and, for good measure, the 13th Constitutional Amendment, which abolished slavery. The bank denied the charge, but after four years of legal wrangling and mounting legal bills, elected to settle. According to court documents, the three plaintiffs received a total of $60,000. Their lawyers received $950,000.
The CRA is not about community development; it is, essentially, affirmative action in lending. Trillions in loans are now to be made not on the basis of whether they can be paid back but to meet CRA goals. This is precisely what we need to get away from. Drinking this potent cocktail would be dangerous to our financial health.
Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy---And How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them (Harper, 2009).
Posted from Commentary
A Poisonous Cocktail
Peter Schweizer, 10.05.09, 12:01 AM EDT
Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act.
As we try to shake off the financial crisis, here's a bright idea. Take a law that has led to the writing of an enormous amount of bad mortgages and expand it. Then take enforcement away from bank examiners and give it to housing activists.
Sound like a poisonous cocktail? Well, it is what the Obama administration and Democrats are currently stirring up on Capitol Hill.
The White House and Congress want to expand a 30-year-old law--the Community Reinvestment Act--that helped to fuel the mortgage meltdown. What the CRA does, in effect, is compel banks to seek the permission of community activists to get regulatory approval for bank expansions and mergers. Often this means striking a deal with activist groups such as ACORN or unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and agreeing to allocate credit to poor and minority areas that are underserved.
In short, the CRA encourages banks to make loans they would not ordinarily make. What's more, these agreements often require that banks offer no-money-down mortgages and remove caps on how much debt a borrower can take on. All of this is done in the name of "financial democracy."
Liberals pooh-pooh the idea that a 30-year-old law could have contributed to the current subprime crisis and credit crunch. But what they ignore is the massive expansion of CRA-commitments forced on banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, in the first 20 years of the act, up to 1997, commitments totaled approximately $200 billion. But from 1997 to 2007, commitments exploded to more than $4.2 trillion. (Keep in mind this is more than four times the size of the current health bill being debated in Congress.) The burdens on individual banks can be enormous. Washington Mutual, for example, pledged $1 trillion in mortgages to those with credit histories that "fall outside typical credit, income or debt constraints," and was awarded the 2003 CRA Community Impact Award for its Community Access program. Four years later it was taken over by the Office of Thrift Supervision. In 2004 Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ) agreed to provide $750 billion in CRA loans to applicants with poor credit who had previous difficulty obtaining a mortgage. By 2008 Bank of America was reporting that CRA loans represented only 7% of its portfolio but 29% of its losses. Numerous large banks are now in the middle of enormous CRA commitments. In 2004 J.P. Morgan Chase ( JPM - news - people ) agreed to provide $800 billion of such loans over the course of 10 years.
For all the talk of unsold condos in Miami and foreclosed McMansions in California, the epicenters of the mortgage crisis are inner-city urban areas--precisely those areas where the CRA was most applicable. As the Boston Federal Reserve put it in a massive 2008 study, "In the current housing crisis foreclosures are highly concentrated in [urban] minority neighborhoods." The study found that borrowers in these areas were seven times more likely to be foreclosed on than the general population. Analysis by the Pew Research Center and another by The New York Times found that mortgage holders in these areas had foreclosure rates four times higher than the national average.
In short, the CRA is compelling banks to make trillions in loans to individuals who have poor credit and who often can't or won't make their payments.
Now comes Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and 50 other co-sponsors (all Democrats) of H.R. 1479 the "Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009," who want to expand the CRA to include not just banks but also credit unions, insurance companies and mortgage lenders. Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has supported the idea in the past. The SEIU and ACORN, along with a host of other activist groups, are also behind the effort.
President Obama has been a staunch supporter of the CRA throughout his public life. And his recently announced financial reforms would make the law even more onerous and guarantee an explosion in irresponsible lending. Obama wants to take enforcement of the CRA away from the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and other financial regulators who at least try to weigh bank safety and soundness when enforcing the law, and turn it over to a newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). This agency's core concerns would not be safety and soundness but, in the words of the Obama administration, "promoting access to financial services," which is really code for forcing banks to lend to those who would not ordinarily qualify. Compliance would no longer be done by bank examiners but by what the administration calls "a group of examiners specially trained and certified in community development" (otherwise called community activists). The administration says, in its literature about the reforms, that "rigorous application of the Community Reinvestment should be a core function of the CFPA."
For good measure, Obama's plan also calls for the CFPA to work closely with the Department of Justice to combat perceived discrimination in lending.
Obama's battle against banks has a long history. In 1994, freshly out of Harvard Law School, he joined two other attorneys in filing a lawsuit against Citibank, the giant mortgage lender. In Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, the plaintiffs claimed that although they had ostensibly been denied home loans "because of delinquent credit obligations and adverse credit," the real culprit was institutional racism. The suit alleged that Citibank had violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act and, for good measure, the 13th Constitutional Amendment, which abolished slavery. The bank denied the charge, but after four years of legal wrangling and mounting legal bills, elected to settle. According to court documents, the three plaintiffs received a total of $60,000. Their lawyers received $950,000.
The CRA is not about community development; it is, essentially, affirmative action in lending. Trillions in loans are now to be made not on the basis of whether they can be paid back but to meet CRA goals. This is precisely what we need to get away from. Drinking this potent cocktail would be dangerous to our financial health.
Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy---And How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them (Harper, 2009).
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