.
While U.S. immigration officials noted he wasn't formally held, fellow Indian film stars and political leaders condemned what they called "humiliating" treatment given to Khan, a Muslim who is well-loved in a largely Hindu country. One Cabinet minister suggested a "tit-for-tat" policy toward Americans traveling to India.
Khan said he was detained Friday by U.S. immigration officials at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey because his name came up on a computer alert list. In India the ability to avoid being frisked at airports is seen as a status symbol. Politicians, sports celebrities and film stars often claim VIP status to avoid security checks.
The actor is in the U.S. to promote a new film, "My Name is Khan," which is about racial profiling of Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
[Just an ironic coincidence I'm sure.]
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Actor's US 'detention' prompts outrage in India
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
No more letting the angry opposition control the agenda
On CBS’s Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner touted President Obama’s latest PR blitz to promote health care reform:
"For the third time in five days, Barack Obama used the presidential bully pulpit on behalf of what he’s now calling health insurance reform. No more letting the angry opposition control the agenda."
[That 'opposition' is American citizens - you know, government's employers...]
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Don't Fact Check Obama
Todd also tried to minimize the impact -- of what he derided as the “town hall madness” -- by attributing the view of them to partisan positions without mentioning how independents consider them beneficial: “And those town halls -- the country is evenly divided -- and by overwhelming majority, Democrats believe they're harmful. Republicans believe they're good.” On MSNBC.com, however, NBC News deputy political director Mark Murray pointed out: “Independents believe, by a 50-34 percent margin, that the protests have done more good.”
[Re: the illegal immigrant aspect of the poll, FactCheck.org claims this to be a false argument because ‘the House bill specifically says that no federal money would be spent on giving illegal immigrants health coverage'. But while the bill specifically states illegal immigrants are to be excluded, it also offers zero provisions to enforce such an exclusion, which in the real world means illegals will line up for the free services. The proof of this fact lies in the amendment to rectify have required immigration verification screening - but was shot down by Democrats in the House Ways and Means Committee in July. Why?]
Again, these bills have nothing to do with health care - they're about planting the seeds for governments eventual control of health care and by extension the populace.]
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Reality Check: Media Double-Standard on Anti-ObamaCare 'Mobs'
But when President George W. Bush faced left-wing protests, the media scrubbed their stories of radical voices and depicted demonstrators as mainstream, and even “prescient.”
In January 2003, all of the broadcast networks touted an anti-war march organized by the radical International ANSWER, an outgrowth of the communist Workers World Party. Signs at the rally read: “USA Is #1 Terrorist,” “Bush Is a Terrorist,” and “The NYPD Are Terrorists Too.” National Review Online quoted several protesters who claimed 9/11 was a Bush plot, “like when Hitler burned down the Reichstag,” and argued Bush would “build a worldwide planetary death machine.”
But reporters then bypassed all that hate and showcased the protesters as everyday Americans.
On ABC, Bill Blakemore stressed how the protest attracted “Democrats and Republicans, many middle-aged, from all walks of life,” while CBS’s Joie Chen saw “young, old, veterans and veteran activists — all united in the effort to stop the war before it starts.”
In Feburary 2003, CNN donated two hours of programming, “Voices of Dissent,” to another International ANSWER event. Correspondent Maria Hinojosa enthused: “It’s an extraordinarily diverse crowd." ['extraordinary' for a crowd to be diverse - in America?]
On March 22, 2003, CNN offered 38 separate reports on a demonstration that day, but managed to never show any of the radical rhetoric from the podium.
Over on ABC, Chris Cuomo saluted the leftists converging in New York City:
“While protesters like today are a statistical minority, in American history protests like this have been prescient indicators of the national mood. So the government may do well to listen to what’s said today.”
[ditto that last, but...]
In contrast, today’s protesters are being portrayed as crazy and even dangerous.
Ex-CNN reporter Bob Franken called the anti-Obama protesters “a crazed group” engaged in “organized intimidation.”
An August 10 graphic on MSNBC wondered: “Conservatives Coming Unhinged?”
Chris Matthews saw racism: “I think some of the people are upset because we have a black President.”
And ABC’s Bill Weir on Friday warned “the rising anger is now ramping up concerns over the President’s personal safety.”
The double-standard is obvious. How can professional journalists possibly justify it?
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MSNBC: ObamaCare Protesters ‘Racist,’ Including Black Gun-Owner
On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns."
Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
MSNBC pop culture analyst [?] Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued:
"...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president [?!?] ....we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that."
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black.
[Making the deceit intentional. To review: one (1) black man showed up with legal side arms and our professional journalists reported it as 'white people {plural} showing up with guns {plural}. Watch the video, these folks are drumming up racism.]
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Media upset by pistols, ignores AK-47s
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According to the mainstream media, carrying a gun to a protest is just plain crazy, even if perfectly legal. What’s more, it’s indicative of the toxic, hate-filled atmosphere filling conservative protests of President Obama and his plans for health care reform.
“Hardball” host Chris Matthews and his daytime colleagues at MSNBC, for example, have their used air time to marvel at what would possess an average American citizen to go to a rally near where President Obama is speaking with a gun.
But the media reaction was markedly different nine years ago when a group of Black Panthers marched on the Texas Republican Party’s state convention on June 2000 brandishing AK-47s.
A search of Nexis and the Media Research Center’s News Tracking System found no stories on that evening’s broadcast network newscasts about the Black Panthers brandishing “assault weapons” to protest then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee – and Secret Service protectee – Gov. George W. Bush’s refusal to intervene in the pending execution of convicted murderer Gary Graham.
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CO-OPS: A "PUBLIC OPTION" BY ANOTHER NAME
Establishing health insurance co-operatives is a poor alternative to the public option plan. Opponents of a government takeover of the health care system should not be fooled, says Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.
Government-run health care is government-run health care no matter what you call it:
- The health care "co-op" approach now embraced by the Obama administration will still give the federal government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, with a government-appointed board, taxpayer funding, and with bureaucrats setting premiums, benefits, and operating rules.
- Plus, it won't be a true co-op, like rural electrical co-ops or your local health-food store -- owned and controlled by its workers and the people who use its services.
- Under the government plan, the members wouldn't choose its officers -- the president would.
The [REAL] issue is whether the government will take over the U.S. health care system, controlling many of our most important, personal, and private decisions.
Even without a public option, the bills in Congress would make Americans pay higher taxes and higher premiums, while government bureaucrats determine what insurance benefits they must have and, ultimately, what care they'll be allowed to receive.
ObamaCare was a bad idea with an explicit "public option." It is still a bad idea without one.
[We're being fooled again by 'debating' what the government should do - vs. if it should be doing it. ANY 'health care 'reform'' bill that passes will only set a path to an eventual single payer, 100% government controlled system. Starting down such a path is the real agenda here - the rest is smoke, and we'll regret it if we're foolish enough to fall for it.]
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Taliban burns down schools
Taliban militants burnt down seven primary schools in northwest Pakistan, where children recently resumed their studies after the area was declared safe by the army, officials said on Tuesday. ''Three boys' and four girls' primary schools were set on fire by militants late Monday in Buner district,'' district police chief Abdul Rasheed told AFP.
[GWOT]
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Kuwait nabs al-Qaida cell over bomb plot
Kuwait City - Kuwaiti authorities said Tuesday they have arrested an al-Qaida-linked group allegedly planning to attack a US military base in the small oil-rich state.
The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that State Security has detained a ''terrorist network'' of six Kuwaitis who gave ''detailed confessions'' about plans to attack Camp Arifjan, the main US base in the country, as well as the headquarters of the country's security agency...
[GWOT]
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Hamas asserts power in Gaza after Qaeda clash
Hamas militiamen were out in strength in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, asserting their authority over the Palestinian enclave after a bloody showdown with a rival Islamist splinter group aligned with al Qaeda.
In the southern town of Rafah, by the border with Egypt, residents sifted through the rubble of apartment buildings blown up during hours of fighting on Friday and Saturday that left up to 28 dead and a mosque ravaged by bullets and grenades.
Many bemoaned the bloodiest violence among Palestinians since 2007. Some forecast reprisals by more young men, some of them former Hamas fighters now disillusioned by its attempts to reach out to the West and negotiate an end to Gaza's isolation.
In a statement on a Web site used by al Qaeda-allied groups from Gaza, a shadowy figure using the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Maqdessi made clear there was anger against Hamas: "The slaughterer in Gaza is Hamas. It is the one holding the knife."
[First we were forced to actually look upon Fatah as something less than a terrorist organization {which it is} so to serve as the lesser evil vs. Hamas. Now Hamas is the comparatively moderate faction? Terrific.]
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Obama's State Department Submits to Islam
Here is the latest act of submission to Islam by your State Department.
A State Department cable has just been sent out with this announcement:
The Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) has assembled a range of innovative and traditional tools to support Posts' outreach activities during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The State Department's Ramadan programs are wide-ranging. "On August 10," the cable continues, "America.gov will publish a ‘Multicultural Ramadan' feature. American Muslims trace their ancestry to more than 80 countries and the feature will highlight the richness of these various cultural traditions through the lens of Ramadan and Eid. Content will include essays by young Muslims who are part of Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Core (IYC). Contact: Alexandra Abboud (AbboudAM@state.gov)."
There's more. The Bureau of International Information Programs "will publish three articles for Ramadan 2009 addressing the concept of an Islam in America 'brand'; advocacy (civic and political) of the Muslim American community; and community innovation/community building. The writer will contact Muslim American experts in each of these fields. These articles will be available on America.gov in English, Arabic, and Persian." [snip]
Can you imagine if we had the Stations of the Cross put on the walls of all of our embassies, consulates, and other posts, as well as the many Department of State buildings across the country, including C Street?
Why aren't priests, pastors, etc. invited during Christmas to give blessings or talk about Christianity in the United States?
I mean, put it in reverse and see how crazy it is. Absolutely nuts.
Perhaps this is an initiative of President Barack Obama's newly created Office for Outreach to the Ummah at State. In June Obama had the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, at the White House. Ihsanoglu urged Obama to appoint a U.S. ambassador to the Islamic world - and Obama immediately created a new State Department Office for Muslim Outreach.
Why is this immense effort necessary?
We act as if we were a slave of the Muslim world. This sickness of licking the boots of an ideology that wants to destroy us is incomprehensible.
Burt Prelutsky said it best:
"What is wrong with our leaders? Are they worried that they won't be invited to those cool Ramadan parties? The Islamists have been actively at war with us for 30 years and generally at war with western civilization for well over a thousand years, and still we pay lip service to these people in a way we never did with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union.
Is it because the Muslims commit sadism and murder in the name of religion and not country? If anything, I would think that would make their evil acts all the more contemptible."
It does.
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A BETTER MODEL FOR MALPRACTICE SYSTEM
Health care reform is bogged down because none of the bills before Congress deals with the staggering waste of the current system, estimated to be $700 billion to $1 trillion annually.
The waste flows from a culture of health care in which every incentive is to do more; yet, congressional leadership has slammed the door on solutions to the one driver of waste that is relatively easy to fix: expensive and time-consuming malpractice system.
The answer is inescapable -- such expert courts might succeed and undercut the special interest of an influential lobby, the trial lawyers.
An expeditious and reliable new system would compensate patients more quickly and at a fraction of the overhead of the current medical justice system, which spends nearly 60 cents of every dollar on lawyers' fees and administrative costs.
Even more compelling, expert health courts would eliminate the need for "defensive medicine," thereby helping save enough money for America to afford universal health coverage:
- A 2005 survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association related that 93 percent of high-risk specialists in Pennsylvania admitted to the practice, and 83 percent of Massachusetts physicians did the same in a 2008.
- Defensive medicine is notoriously hard to quantify, but some estimates place the annual cost at $100 billion to $200 billion or more.
- But containing costs requires overhauling the culture of health care delivery; therefore, incentives need to be realigned and a legal framework that encourages doctors to focus on is needed.
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The Next Fannie Mae
If there was ever any proof needed that government is run by a bunch of idiots, this is it.
After bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of almost a trillion dollars, one might think that government had learned its lesson about loaning money to people for houses who either can't afford it or have proven to be bad risks in the past.
Enter Ginnie Mae - the Government National Mortgage Association - whose parent, the FHA, has quadrupled its loan portfolios since 2006. Ginnie has mostly been issuing the same kind of mortgage backed securities to guarantee loans made to bad risks that were made by Fannie Mae.
Very good explanation of this in a Wall Street Journal editorial:
On June 18, HUD's Inspector General issued a scathing report on the FHA's lax insurance practices. It found that the FHA's default rate has grown to 7%, which is about double the level considered safe and sound for lenders, and that 13% of these loans are delinquent by more than 30 days. The FHA's reserve fund was found to have fallen in half, to 3% from 6.4% in 2007-meaning it now has a 33 to 1 leverage ratio, which is into Bear Stearns territory. The IG says the FHA may need a "Congressional appropriation intervention to make up the shortfall."
Don't you just love government nomenclature? "Congressional appropriation intervention" - sounds almost harmless, eh? Except it's a bailout by any other name using our tax dollars to pull bureaucratic chestnuts out of the fire because they were too stupid to learn the lessons from Fannie Mae's downfall.
[Government: when no one pays a price for failure, you guarantee it. Health Care anyone?]
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AARP-- Where The Customer is Always Wrong
Last week, many of you saw the video of a Dallas AARP town hall meeting on health care that AARP officials ended early after the audience raised too many objections. The woman leading the meeting, for instance, tried to shut up audience members who said they disagreed with her when she made assumptions about what she thought they would agree with her on. At one point, a man summed it up by asking,
“Do you guys work for us, or do we work for you?”
As bad as the video made AARP look, on some level, you could write it off as an instance of a local AARP representative getting frustrated and simply not having the experience or temperament to deal with an audience that was pushing back against her talking points. That's why I found it much more damning when I saw AARP vice president and spokesman Drew Nannis appearing on Fox (clip below).
Not only does he refuse to apologize for the woman's behavior, but he dismisses those dues-paying AARP members as "a bunch of people yelling..." [snip]
AARP is not an organization that represents its members, but a group that treats its members as dupes so it can suck up their money and use it to advocate a liberal policy agenda supported by its Washington leadership...
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AARP Members Defecting to Conservative ASA
The report recounted that Obama recently had to correct a claim that the AARP supports his plan, while some are suspicious that the group may support the President privately, but are unwilling to admit to doing so publicly.
[UPDATE: Heard on ABC radio last night that AARP itself reports that they've had >sixty-thousand members terminate their membership in the last two months.
Contrary to liberal dogma, most folks get wiser with age.]
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Shhh! Gallup Reports That Conservatives Outnumber Libs in All 50 States; Media Plays Dumb
You know this is important polling news, because the establishment media is pretending it doesn't exist.
It's hard not to wonder if someone at Gallup did what they did with the headline and subheadline to help ensure that establishment media outlets ignored this stunning news. I would suggest that they didn't have to work that hard; the media would have ignored it anyway.
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FLASHBACK:
Still the Biggest Missing Story in Politics
The answer is the same - just the same - America is still, in every way and from every vantage, a conservative nation.
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A Fundamental Disconnect
Hollywood and the media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government officials -- inept and comical idiots or sinister characters: bureaucrats are either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly enough, sometimes both at once.
However, the people who hold these convictions are the exact same people who want to turn over the operation of all the key components of the country to the government to manage. Health care, energy, education, the economy itself -- these and dozens of other critical features of American society should be directed, according to the Left, from the hallowed halls in which the bumblers and betrayers work.
Is there not a fundamental disconnect here? What could possibly explain this self-contradictory faith in the power of the government to successfully solve the nation's problems?
I will offer three explanations and then speculate as to which applies to the celebrity who now occupies the White House.
The first explanation is ignorance.
The people of our nation have been subjected to an intense liberal indoctrination for so long that there are a huge number of them for whom the tenets of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that they accept without question the proposition that the government must address any problem that arises anywhere in America.
Under a relentless assault from the liberal dominated media, educational establishment, legal profession, arts community, foundations, and even segments of the business and religious communities, many have succumbed to the brainwashing.
Consequently, they believe:
- FDR's New Deal saved us from the Depression rather than prolonged it;
- the Great Society helped to lift minorities out of poverty, rather than institutionalizing it;
- capitalism creates unjust, inequitable outcomes in the US, ignoring the fact that it has powered our economy to unimagined and unequaled heights of prosperity;
- government creates jobs by spending the tax payer's money, rather than preventing their creation because of the tax dollars pilfered from entrepreneurs;
- government regulations improve the functioning of our economy, revealing obliviousness to the enormous drag they impose;
- the rich don't pay their fair share, whereas in fact the "rich" pay the overwhelming majority of the income tax that Uncle Sam extracts, while the lowest 40% of income earners pay virtually nothing;
- the Constitution is a malleable document that serves as a guide to the making of law -- in fact, it is a binding document that can be changed only by a demanding Amendment process and the American republic has survived and prospered precisely because continuing generations have agreed to abide by the deal struck by our founders with the people;
- radical change not adherence to tradition, is the American way.
I venture that a large proportion, perhaps a substantial majority of the folks who voted for Obama fit into this category -- especially young people... [snip]
It is legitimate to ask how such people can accept the portrayal of the government as bumbling or sinister or both, while somehow avoiding the inescapable conclusion, if their first premise is true, that it is lunacy to entrust our welfare to these same bumblers and evil-doers?[Why I frequently use the word 'delusion' when attempting to describe 'liberal logic'. The first of 3 reasons explored/explained - Highly Recommended > ]
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WaPo Slams Obama/Joker as ’ ‘Racially Charged’
An article in Thursday’s Washington Post lashed out at the viral Obama-as-the-Joker posters, attacking them as promoting "coded," "racially charged" images. Art critic Philip Kennicott smeared the images, which have been showing up in Los Angeles, as flat-out bigoted:
"The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black."
[Right: and that big word across the bottom of the poster, that couldn't have been the 'basic' message.
No, it's obvious it was used to suggest race due to precedence - when used on this guy:
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Obama Joker artist unmasked as Liberal-Leaning Palestinian and fellow Chicagoan
Since NewsBusters and the Drudge Report first introduced America to the Obama Joker poster -- with help from talk radio host Tammy Bruce, of course -- most media outlets have speculated the artist was likely white, conservative and of course, racist.
Not exactly.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times moments ago, the up-until-now anonymous creator of the poster sweeping the nation is a 20-year-old college student of Palestinian descent with largely liberal political leanings.
Honestly, you can't make this stuff up:
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Right must learn to tell great stories
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“Give me the making of the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.”- Andrew Fletcher, 1703.
Communicators on the Left have mastered and now continually deploy narrative - a strategic weapon far more potent than the World Wide Web (which, however, is proving an extremely efficient delivery vehicle).
Wikipedia describes narrative as, "along with exposition, argumentation and description, narration, broadly defined,...one of four rhetorical modes of discourse.”
Typically, conservatives present our case in exposition, argumentation and description. By empirical observation, these are much less potent persuaders than narrative. Consider, for example, “global warming” (note, though, that, since it has become clear that global warming is unsubstantiated by the data, proponents now call it the vaguer “climate change.”)
The global warming narrative is based entirely on junk science, with the phenomenon, its cause (if it exists) and the corrective steps unsubstantiated by data. And yet we recently saw Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologizing to the government of India for America being the bad guy in this drama.
This apology came even though the government of India – and China - refuses to adopt the anti-growth and prosperity-throttling policies called for by proponents of this (ultimately preposterous) story.
Why is this happening? The power of narrative. A compelling narrative, artfully deployed, captures the imagination of the people...
[Recommended > ]
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Expelled From the New York Times
Then, two things happened to change and end my career at the Times. Well, maybe three.
But the two main things, as I see them, were that I started criticizing Mr. Obama quite sharply over his policies and practices. I had tried to do this before over the firing of Rick Wagoner from the Chairmanship of GM. My column had questioned whether there was a legal basis for the firing by the government, what law allowed or authorized the federal government to fire the head of what was then a private company, and just where the Obama administration thought their limits were, if anywhere.
This column was flat out nixed by my editors at the Times because in their opinion Mr. Obama inherently had such powers...
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Strong Grassroots Support For Palin’s SarahPAC
The political action committee associated with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin , SarahPAC, reported strong support from small donors in its mid-year report. SarahPAC reported $733,000 in total receipts through June 30, of which $420,000 was “unitemized” or from donors who contributed $200 or less...
[As predicted, the MSM's orchestrated opinion that Sarah's resignation was political suicide isn't selling with those who put their money where their mouths are.
Et Tu?]
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Tipping Smart cars the latest prank trend
Edmonton - Owners of pint-sized Smart cars aren't laughing about reports that vandals may be targeting the tiny vehicles in a 21st-century take on tipping cows over.
The Internet and blogosphere are abuzz with media reports that pranksters may have pushed several of the tiny vehicles into canals in Amsterdam...
[Stop laughing, it's not funny. Ok a little funny. Actually, go ahead - ]
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
I Don't Accept the Premise
I haven't read the health care bill, HR 3200. It's not because I don't care what's in it; rather, I oppose the bill because I don't accept the premise that it's needed or even constitutional. This debate is not about health care; it's about control. To let progressives frame the debate around a specific bill allows them to bypass the exposure and probable defeat of their larger agenda: government centralization and control. It's time we stop permitting progressive Trojan Horses through our nation's gates and start looking these gift horses in the mouth.
Our Constitution is very clear on a limited federal government. Providing health care and other social services on a federal level are not what our founders intended. In fact, they all spoke at great length about avoiding the tyranny of oppressively large government, emphasizing individual freedom & limitations on federal government.
This health care debate is the perfect place to make an ideological stand. We shouldn't invest ourselves entirely in a debate over the legislation, but should direct our efforts more broadly to question its intent. The health care bill must be defeated and not negotiated. Congress will offer us everything we want and more, so long as a bill for socialized health care gets signed into law. There are no sacred cows in HR 3200; the only thing that matters to progressive elites is the precedent of its passage. They will eventually, patronizingly capitulate to our demands to change the bill.
We will have been taken as fools who bought the snake oil because we won the haggle over price...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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GREAT BRITAIN: NHS IS PUTTING THE PATIENT LAST
While British health ministers have been quick to applaud the advantages of a "national" health system to fight the swine flu outbreak, the very centralized nature of the service cuts two ways, say researchers from Civitas, a British think tank.
They argue that the "customer" of the National Health Service (NHS) -- Great Britain's government-run health care model -- is the health secretary rather than the patient.
The report sees much in favor of attempting to introduce private provision within the state system and competition between NHS trusts to attract patients.
But this has been stymied by incessant interference from the Department of Health, says researchers:
- According to health service managers, a staggering total of 69 public bodies -- excluding the Department of Health and 10 regional strategic authorities -- currently regulate, inspect or demand information from NHS organizations.
- The nature of Great Britain's centrally funded system inevitably means that ministers are constantly intervening and setting targets because they see themselves as the taxpayers' guardian; thus, undermining the market mechanism.
- Among these commandments are "assume infallibility;" however its outcomes are worse than other universal health care systems and the NHS ranks low in international surveys.
- Another commandment is "isolate yourself" -- healthcare is conducted in separate "silos," particularly regarding communication between GPs and hospitals.
- A further commandment, "be inflexible," is met by hamstringing units with state control: staff pay is set centrally, capital expenditure is constrained, IT is a top-down program and availability of drugs, such as expensive cancer treatments, is centrally determined.
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Canada Considering Healthcare Overhaul With Private Insurance
[HT:SE]
Within hours of the Obama administration saying that it might consider a reform package without a government option, the Canadian Press inconveniently reported the following...
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Elite Meltdown
The face-off between the ruling party and the people continues to unfold...
The politicians continue to manufacture faux outrage at the American people for failing to 'understand' the nuances, the broad outline, of a 1,000 page plus bill that the politicians haven't even read.
The American people understand all too well, and the politicians false acting has been replaced by real outrage... [snip]
Peons from fly-over country are daring to challenge the carefully scripted and (deliberately?) misleading talking points. Talking points which, by the way, have been endorsed by the media. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are using the standard liberal tactic of diverting attention from the issue by demonizing the dissenter, in this case, the American people.
According to Pelosi and Reid, voicing objections to the federal government's take over of 17% of the formerly free market economy is 'un-American.' Harry Reid has gone a step further, tarring dissenter's as 'evil mongers'. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has blithely dismissed the burgeoning dissent by informing one and all that these 'townhalls are not representative of America.' Obama, meanwhile, is trying to divert the issue by blaming the 'headline hungry television networks', accusing them of 'enflaming an ugly backlash.', and have launched a new $12 million ad campaign [taxpayer paid] designed to soothe Americans into relying on the government instead of common sense... [snip]
The only problem is, Americans aren't buying it.
Americans have been deceived and beaten up by the government so many times lately, that, even thought they still love Obama, they're taking steps to distance themselves from what has become an increasingly dangerous relationship. Flowers, new cars, and soothing words are no longer effective. Even the race card isn't ringing their bells.
Liberals have finally succeeded in persuading Americans to look at the broad picture instead of inconvenient details.
The kicker is, as more Americans see the broad picture, they see the unprecedented devolution of power to the federal government. They see the loss of America's traditional reliance on individuals instead of government. They see the loss of personal liberty and freedom of choice.
And they don't like it...
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POLL:54% Say Passing No Healthcare Reform Better Than Passing Congressional Plan
However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.
Not surprisingly, there is a huge partisan divide on this issue. Sixty percent (60%) of Democrats say passing the legislation in Congress would be the best course of action. However, 80% of Republicans take the opposite view.
Among those not affiliated with either major party, 23% would like the Congressional reform to pass while 66% would rather the legislators take no action.
Voters who earn less than $20,000 a year are evenly divided but a majority of all other voters would prefer no action. Middle income voters, those who earn from $40,000 to $75,000 a year, are most strongly in favor of taking no action.
A plurality of voters under 30 say passage of the Congressional legislation is better. A majority of adults take the opposite view.
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Malley Stumbles Upon the Truth: Peace Isn’t Possible
At Camp David, Arafat turned down an astounding offer for a Palestinian state in nearly all the West Bank, Gaza, and part of Jerusalem that was put forward by then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak with the encouragement of President Clinton. Malley pioneered the practice of dismissing this offer as insignificant and rationalizing Arafat’s refusal to take yes for an answer, as well as his decision to answer that peace deal with a terrorist war of attrition, known as the second intifada.
Malley’s version of the Camp David debacle ran contrary to the facts, but it has gradually gained ground, especially on the Left. By discrediting the Israeli proposal and thereby absolving the Palestinians of blame for Arafat’s unwillingness to make peace, Malley helped set the stage for a decade of anti-Israel vituperation.
Malley, who was listed for a time as an unofficial adviser to the Obama presidential campaign, is at it again today in an op-ed in the New York Times... [snip]
But they do stumble upon a key truth about the entire peace process—they understand that what the Palestinians want isn’t merely sovereignty in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. Jews want a Jewish state and are willing to let the Palestinians have their own state too in order to live in peace. The problem is that the core of Palestinian national identity is a desire not for a Palestinian state but for eradicating the Jewish one, which they view as illegitimate no matter where the borders are drawn. Agha and Malley write:
Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of [a Jewish state], as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal.
Yet instead of urging Palestinians to give up goals incompatible with peace, the authors merely say that the next step for peace processors is to go back to 1948 and revisit the issues of that era—i.e., whether there should be a Jewish state at all...
[If you've no true 'partner in peace', you're only left an adversary to be defeated.]
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Those 'other refugees' in Arab-Muslim lands
While "moderate" Fatah ended its convention with business as usual -- "Constant war against Israel," "No peace with Israel," mimicking its most "extreme" rival Hamas, and both of them moaning about the "refugees" of 61 years, the real refugees, the Jews in Arab lands living under Muslim oppression, are forced once again to run for their lives.
The latest are the tiny remnant of Jews remaining in Yemen, fleeing after continuous oppression including forcible pressures to convert to Islam led to kidnappings and murders. After the latest murder, the remaining Jews are going to Israel the Yemeni new agency Sana admits.
What Yemini news reports don't mention is, that unlike Arabs in Lebanon and other Arab lands, the fleeing Jews won't be refugees but welcomed as citizens of Israel... [snip]
But 61 years after Arabs[*], heeding their leaders' call to leave as they would soon return to a land purged of Jews, left what is now Israel, the Arabs are still refugees; their Arab/Muslim brethren refusing them citizenship.
Even Jordan, that artificial country whose population is mainly Arab/Muslim, restricts citizenship: by law, Jews cannot be citizens of and/or live in Jordan.
And no UN or human rights outcry...
[*Note: While most Arabs in Israel left to make way for the looming genocide, roughly a third didn't. They stayed and flourished - an astounding demonstration of Jewish tolerance {given the risks involved at a time of war} never reciprocated by Arabs.
**Note too: the so-called 'right of return' demanded by Arabs includes "their descendants". This is a transparent ploy to import unidentifiable Arabs, who've never lived there, into Israel and destroy it from within. The idea should be laughed at outright, but of course the UN...]
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[HT:PK]:
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The Makeup of Human Rights Watch
Who Is Human Rights Watch’s Joe Stork?
He is, of course, the author of last week’s Human Rights Watch report, which claimed that IDF soldiers murdered white-flag-waving Palestinian civilians in cold blood. He is also the deputy director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa programs. We already knew from NGO Monitor that he has—to put it politely—a rather extremist history on all matters Israel.
But now there is a better accounting. Ben-Dror Yemini of the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv has a blockbuster article laying out the ugly truth of Stork’s history. The Hebrew is available here; below is a complete English translation.
That HRW would place in a senior position someone who has written in explicit support of terrorism against Israel, lauded the murder of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972 as providing “an important boost in morale among Palestinians,” and stated that “Zionism may be defeated only by fighting imperialism” should be the final verdict on a cretinous organization’s already tattered credibility...
[But it won't be. Recommended > ]
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WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM SIZE OF GOVERNMENT
The optimal size of the government is a problem that has attracted the attention of researchers for decades. Arthur Laffer illustrated that there is tax revenue maximizing tax rate, and in a similar way other authors try to identify the government share of gross domestic product which maximized the GDP growth.
The Institute of Market Economics (IME) is adding to the literature with their new study that estimates the optimum size of government, the share of government spending that maximizes economic growth.
Previous studies have tried to determine and quantify the optimum size of government, recognizing that not all governments and societies are the same, and most have shown that the optimum size is between 12 and 30 percent of GDP. However, IME finds that the government sector should be no larger than 25 percent (and perhaps considerably smaller) to maximize GDP growth:
- All major governments, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy greatly exceed the 25 percent level. The average government sector for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries now exceeds 41 percent of GDP.
- In addition, the evidence indicates that the optimum level of government consumption of final goods and services as a share of GDP is 10.4 percent based on a panel data of 81 countries.
- However, due to model and data limitations, it is probably that the results are biased upwards, and the "true" optimum government level is even smaller than the existing empirical study indicates.
- Optimal government size is also, of course, influenced by the quality of a government.
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Clunky Economics
When asked who his favorite economist was, Ronald Reagan used to say Fredric Bastiat. Bastiat was a 19th-century economic philosopher from France, and while his numerous books are full of countless insights, he's probably best known for introducing the notion of the "seen and the unseen."
To explain this in easy-to-understand terms, Bastiat referenced a broken window. In this case, the "seen" was a shopkeeper's broken window that would create economic growth for the shopkeeper hiring a glazier to replace the window, with the glazier spending the money earned elsewhere. Break enough windows and suddenly a great deal of economic activity occurs.
The unseen, however, is the investment that doesn't occur so that windows can be fixed. Wouldn't the cost of repairing broken windows reduce the funds available to expand one's shop, not to mention reduce the shopkeeper's demand for products from other suppliers? Broken windows would stimulate glaziers, but the shift from consumption to building repairs would necessarily depress others.
Bastiat wanted his readers to consider the unseen...
[Like, say, promoting the destruction of perfectly good cars to boost the auto unions {under the guise of saving the planet, natch}. How many other goods aren't being bought with the money now allocated for new-car payments?]
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UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon Goes Batty Over Climate Change, Upcoming Conference; Press Mostly Mum
The Sec-Gen's August 11 speech at the Global Economic Forum in Incheon, North Korea, was so over the top that it's likely the world's media kept its coverage of the event relatively muted to spare the poor man from worldwide embarrassment:
"If we fail to act, climate change will intensify droughts, floods and other natural disasters.
Water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people. Malnutrition will engulf large parts of the developing world. Tensions will worsen. Social unrest – even violence – could follow...
The damage to national economies will be enormous. The human suffering will be incalculable...
We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet."
Despite this coming from the Secretary General of the United Nations, there is nothing about the speech that I could find in searches on "Ban Ki-Moon United Nations" (not typed in quotes) at the New York Times or the Washington Post. A search on the same string at AP.org at 3:30 p.m. came up empty.
An identical Google News search came back with a very light total of 42 results.
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[A: yes; that's why the press is covering for him. The most pervasive spin: omission.]
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Bill Ayers and the real threat to education
[HT:JB]
Imagine your child's teacher telling you his days in jail and violent protesting were formative to his teaching philosophy.
Most parents would have a serious discussion with the principal, at the minimum. But the teacher who brags about such beginnings is now a "Distinguished Professor of Education."
Despite his specialty as "Professor of Curriculum and Instruction," he trains future teachers to dispense with curricula and discipline, as well as tests and grades...
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NBC Launches Liberal Site For 'The' African-American Perspective On News
"There is not a Black America and a White America and a Latino America and an Asian America -- there's the United States of America."
-- Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address.
"theGrio.com. The African-American perspective on news. Our lives, our world, our stories. theGrio.com. Part of NBC News."
-- promo for new NBC News website, August 9, 2009.
So much for post-racial America.
NBC News apparently believes that African-Americans can be pigeonholed. In NBC's view, there exists "the" African-American perspective on news.View video here.
[The grievance industry: "too big to fail".]
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SWEET LEMONADE KID $LAPPED WITH FINE
"It was such a hot day I figured people would want a cold drink,"
the aspiring juvenile juice mogul told The Post. But their day turned into the pits at 3 p.m. when a group of city workers iced their operation."They approached us nonchalantly but then surrounded us, ... They were very hostile as soon as they approached, saying 'Where's your permit? Where's your permit?' "
When her father they didn't have the right to sell on Parks property, the agents immediately slapped the dad and daughter with a summons for selling food without a license, which carries a maximum fine of $200.
Dozens of onlookers rallied to the pair's defense, shouting that the Parks officers were violating the Lees' civil rights, but the brokenhearted pair packed up and went home.
[Government is the problem - we need less of it.]
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We can't spare this woman: she fights
Moe Lane at Red State channels Abraham Lincoln in succinctly stating the value of Sarah Palin to the future of the Republic. His headline to a summary of Andy McCarthy's dissent to the NRO editorial slamming Palin's "death panel" comment is
Andrew McCarthy: I can't spare this woman. She fights.
I think McCarthy's dissent is excellent, too....Palin was right to argue her point aggressively. Largely because she did, a horrible provision is now out of this still horrible Obamacare proposal. To the contrary, if the argument had been made the way the editors counsel this morning, "end-of-life counseling" would still be in the bill. We might have impressed the Beltway with the high tone of our discourse and the suppleness of our reasoning, but we'd have lost the public.
The entire Republican establishment has lost a large section of the public for some time now. The elected officials did it by refusing to limit spending. The pundit class has done it by has largely showing themselves to be both obsessed with style over substance and forever ceding the shape of the debate to the Democrats and the mainstream media.
That's like playing Charlie Brown to Lucy, as it is proven that whenever it looks like conservatives have a winning argument, the Democrats and the media declare that attack off limits, unfair, racist, old news, etc., etc., etc.,
For an NRO editorial to dismiss the only politician who fights on despite taking hits because her highly effective arguments lack nuance is simply ridiculous.
To score a debate that has brought out thousands of demonstrators all around the nation like they were members of the Potomac High School debate club makes the NRO editorial board look every bit as jejune as Barack Obama.
[The largest grandees in that party all seem to belong to the fairer sex.]
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60 Minutes Chief: Dan Rather’s Work ‘Not Even Close to the Standards We Expect’
Sunday’s Los Angeles Times had an update on Dan Rather’s continuing lawsuit against CBS News over what Dan might call the “forged-memos-to-torpedo-Bush’s-re-election-in-2004 scandal.”
60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager described Rather’s work as deficient:“I hate to say it in public, but many of [his] stories were not even close to the standards we expect at 60 Minutes.”
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