Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
I'm not much for conspiracies. I'm not a black helicopter guy. I don't believe that a shadowy military-industrial complex controls the government. I don't think the North American Free Trade Agreement was cover to merge Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In fact, I like NAFTA. I think all the hubbub about President Barack Obama's birth certificate is hooey. I'm sure Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK.
So, believe me when I say there is nothing conspiratorial about Obama's obvious desire to be seen as a world leader by every ideological bloc spanning the globe.
Obama wants to lead the Muslim bloc; he's made that tremendously clear with his Cairo speech, his pressure on Israel, and his pathetically tepid response to the ongoing Iranian debacle.
He wants to lead the European bloc; he's made that clear, too, with his apologies on behalf of America and his insistence that European politicians follow his economic lead.
He wants to lead the Far Eastern bloc; he's ensured the support of China by begging them to buy U.S. securities and allowing North Korea to proceed apace with its nuclear program.
This week, he made clear that he wants to lead a revitalized leftist South American bloc. How else to explain his dead wrong decision to reinstall would-be tin-pot dictator Manuel Zelaya in Honduras?
Here's the basic story: Zelaya was elected president of Honduras in 2006. He quickly allied himself with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who in turn provided him with millions of dollars. Then Zelaya set about subverting the Honduran constitution, which allows presidents to serve only one term. When the Honduran Congress refused to authorize a referendum that would allow Zelaya to run for re-election, Zelaya attempted to force the referendum anyway. The Supreme Court ruled against Zelaya. So did the human rights ombudsman, as well as the attorney general. This ended his bid for re-election. Almost. Zelaya proceeded to order the military to distribute the referendum ballots anyway. When leaders of the military refused, Zelaya fired them, then led a mob to the ballot storage area and began handing them.
That's when the Honduran military, with the backing of both the Honduran Supreme Court and the Congress, heroically stepped in and exiled Zelaya.
Obama's reaction was to declare Honduras' Congress and Supreme Court out of line, and declare their actions a “coup.” Siding with renowned human rights violators Fidel Castro of Cuba, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Chavez, Obama called for Zelaya's reinstatement.
There's a reason for this: When Obama sees an enemy of American ideals, he immediately identifies them as a potential supporter. Obama views the world through the lens of his own leadership -- if he can simply co-opt the leadership of every ideological group on the map, then he can avoid all conflict.
How can he cultivate followers among America's enemies? By siding against America, of course. In his statement of support for Zelaya, Obama derided America's history in Central and South America: "The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies." It's the same tactic he's used with the Muslim world and with Europe -- throw America's history and past under the bus in order to gain the approval of those who hate us. Agree with everyone, no matter how anti-American, and no one will disagree with you.
It's a worldview cultivated since his days in law school, when he gained the presidency of the Harvard Law Review by seeming to agree with everyone. "The editors of the review were constantly at each other's throats. And Barack tended to treat those disputes with a certain air of detachment and amusement. The feeling was almost, come on kids, can't we just behave here?" said Bradford A. Berenson, who served with Obama on the Harvard Law Review. "He was leading the discussion but he wasn't trying to impose his own perspective on it," explained Thomas J. Perrelli, a former classmate.
That may work with the Harvard Law Review, but it doesn't work when you're president of the United States. You may be liked and admired around the world, but if you're unwilling to impose an American perspective on problems, you're not doing your job. America's national interests must be protected and defended; so must her values. Certainly Obama can buy peace with his self-led one-world government concept. The only problem is the price: America's liberties, her power, and her values.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Massachusetts Health Care: A Model Not to Copy
Phyllis Schlafly
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Obama-Kennedy health plan is modeled after the Massachusetts plan, which, when adopted, many applauded as innovative and destined for success. In fact, the Massachusetts plan has been a massive failure and is a model for what not to do.
It has increased costs. It has wasted taxpayer dollars. It has limited patients' choice. It has hurt small business. It has failed to achieve its goal of universal coverage. Most objectionable, it has created shortages and waiting lists.
Promoters predicted that the Massachusetts plan would lower health-care costs, but -- so far -- costs are moving in the opposite direction. State government spending on health-care programs in Massachusetts has increased by 42 percent since the plan was adopted in 2006 and currently is 33 percent above the national average.
Advocates promised that the Massachusetts plan would make health insurance more affordable, but according to a Cato study, insurance premiums have been increasing at nearly double the national average: 7.4 percent in 2007, 8 percent to 12 percent in 2008, and an expected 9 percent increase this year. Health insurance in Massachusetts costs an average of $16,897 for a family of four, compared to a national average of $12,700.
The Massachusetts plan incorporates a system of middle-class subsidies called Commonwealth Care to help pay for insurance for families with incomes up to 300 percent of poverty level ($66,150 for a family of four) and also expanded eligibility for Medicaid.
The Massachusetts Connector, a new bureaucracy that was supposed to increase patient choice, has become an overbearing regulatory arm of government that has decreased competition by prescribing benefits insurance must offer. The Connector is evidently unpopular with patients, since only 18,000 people have used the Connector to buy insurance during the past three years.
The Connector has imposed regulations that add to the cost of insurance and limit consumer choice, such as requiring prescription-drug coverage and preventive-care services, restricting high-deductible policies and putting limits on annual or per-sickness policies. Complying with the Connector's rules means changing from your current insurance that you like.
The costs to the taxpayers are rising, too, and one tax increase has not satisfied the appetite of the hungry plan. The prospect of huge deficits has elicited discussion of cuts in reimbursements to providers and the imposition of a "global budget," which is a euphemism for rationing.
Even though Massachusetts has more doctors per capita than any other state, the Boston Globe reports that waiting periods to see physicians have grown. The average wait is now 63 days to see a family doctor, 50 days to see a specialist and the second trimester of pregnancy to see an obstetrician-gynecologist.
If you want to see the busiest, most popular physicians, the wait can be up to a year. The longer waits are the result of thousands of newly insured residents coming into the health-care system.
Massachusetts has reduced the number of uninsured, but there are no reliable figures on how many are still uninsured since some statistics are based on telephone surveys that don't reach significant groups of people who lack landline telephones (such as young people and illegal aliens). Cato estimates that 200,000 are still uninsured.
If the number of uninsured had been measurably reduced, that should be reflected in the use of hospitals' emergency care facilities for uncompensated care. But hospitals don't confirm this effect.
Small business is hurting, too. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council ranks Massachusetts last of all the 50 states for business-friendly health-care policies.
A June 21 front-page article in The New York Times reported that one cancer unit in a Philadelphia Veterans Administration hospital bungled 92 of 116 prostate cancer treatments over six years (requiring these patients to undergo a second operation) before the errors were discovered. The real problem is that the government cannot run health care safely (or cheaper).
Canada is another model of what not to do. It's fortunate that Canada is so close to the United States because Canadians rely on American medicine for serious surgery.
De facto rationing in Canada is practiced by waiting lists rather than by using its realistic name. The Globe and Mail in Toronto reports that the physician shortage is so acute that some towns hold lotteries to win a ticket granting access to the local doctor and that Ontario sent 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery between 2006 and 2008.
Although President Obama told the American Medical Association that single-payer (government-controlled) health care works "pretty well" in some other countries, no government has ever been able to run a health-care system as well as private enterprise. Less regulation of health care, not more government control, is the way to healthier Americans and lower costs.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Obama-Kennedy health plan is modeled after the Massachusetts plan, which, when adopted, many applauded as innovative and destined for success. In fact, the Massachusetts plan has been a massive failure and is a model for what not to do.
It has increased costs. It has wasted taxpayer dollars. It has limited patients' choice. It has hurt small business. It has failed to achieve its goal of universal coverage. Most objectionable, it has created shortages and waiting lists.
Promoters predicted that the Massachusetts plan would lower health-care costs, but -- so far -- costs are moving in the opposite direction. State government spending on health-care programs in Massachusetts has increased by 42 percent since the plan was adopted in 2006 and currently is 33 percent above the national average.
Advocates promised that the Massachusetts plan would make health insurance more affordable, but according to a Cato study, insurance premiums have been increasing at nearly double the national average: 7.4 percent in 2007, 8 percent to 12 percent in 2008, and an expected 9 percent increase this year. Health insurance in Massachusetts costs an average of $16,897 for a family of four, compared to a national average of $12,700.
The Massachusetts plan incorporates a system of middle-class subsidies called Commonwealth Care to help pay for insurance for families with incomes up to 300 percent of poverty level ($66,150 for a family of four) and also expanded eligibility for Medicaid.
The Massachusetts Connector, a new bureaucracy that was supposed to increase patient choice, has become an overbearing regulatory arm of government that has decreased competition by prescribing benefits insurance must offer. The Connector is evidently unpopular with patients, since only 18,000 people have used the Connector to buy insurance during the past three years.
The Connector has imposed regulations that add to the cost of insurance and limit consumer choice, such as requiring prescription-drug coverage and preventive-care services, restricting high-deductible policies and putting limits on annual or per-sickness policies. Complying with the Connector's rules means changing from your current insurance that you like.
The costs to the taxpayers are rising, too, and one tax increase has not satisfied the appetite of the hungry plan. The prospect of huge deficits has elicited discussion of cuts in reimbursements to providers and the imposition of a "global budget," which is a euphemism for rationing.
Even though Massachusetts has more doctors per capita than any other state, the Boston Globe reports that waiting periods to see physicians have grown. The average wait is now 63 days to see a family doctor, 50 days to see a specialist and the second trimester of pregnancy to see an obstetrician-gynecologist.
If you want to see the busiest, most popular physicians, the wait can be up to a year. The longer waits are the result of thousands of newly insured residents coming into the health-care system.
Massachusetts has reduced the number of uninsured, but there are no reliable figures on how many are still uninsured since some statistics are based on telephone surveys that don't reach significant groups of people who lack landline telephones (such as young people and illegal aliens). Cato estimates that 200,000 are still uninsured.
If the number of uninsured had been measurably reduced, that should be reflected in the use of hospitals' emergency care facilities for uncompensated care. But hospitals don't confirm this effect.
Small business is hurting, too. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council ranks Massachusetts last of all the 50 states for business-friendly health-care policies.
A June 21 front-page article in The New York Times reported that one cancer unit in a Philadelphia Veterans Administration hospital bungled 92 of 116 prostate cancer treatments over six years (requiring these patients to undergo a second operation) before the errors were discovered. The real problem is that the government cannot run health care safely (or cheaper).
Canada is another model of what not to do. It's fortunate that Canada is so close to the United States because Canadians rely on American medicine for serious surgery.
De facto rationing in Canada is practiced by waiting lists rather than by using its realistic name. The Globe and Mail in Toronto reports that the physician shortage is so acute that some towns hold lotteries to win a ticket granting access to the local doctor and that Ontario sent 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery between 2006 and 2008.
Although President Obama told the American Medical Association that single-payer (government-controlled) health care works "pretty well" in some other countries, no government has ever been able to run a health-care system as well as private enterprise. Less regulation of health care, not more government control, is the way to healthier Americans and lower costs.
The Censorious Left's Global Warming Denier Deniers
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
There is so much misinformation on the subject of global warming and so little consensus -- as to what environmental changes are occurring, whether human behavior is contributing to them, whether they are causing significant environmental damage, and whether the proposed cap and trade legislation would do anything to alleviate any of this -- it is no wonder our freedom-hating majority in the House insisted on cramming it through before they could even read, much less digest, what it contained.
It would be bad enough if they passed innocuous legislation to address an alleged problem (man-caused global warming) without first verifying there is a problem and then analyzing and assessing the extent of it, but it's outrageous that they would pass a measure that could have crippling effects on our economy and American taxpayers.
Who do these people think they are -- that they can claim a mandate to do anything they want to, that they can grab as much power as they want, that they can transform our government overnight into an enemy of the people, with no fear of accountability? Oh, I know; the government has already behaved like the people's enemy all too often, but never on the scale we're witnessing today -- from a party that had the audacity to accuse President George W. Bush of abusing his authority.
Just where is the journalistic skepticism in today's dominant media culture or the professed open-mindedness of Democrats?
What is their response when people have the temerity to challenge their assertions on catastrophic global warming? It is ridicule and abuse. Not only are the doubters flat-earth Neanderthals; they are darn near treasonous, according to the dogmatic left.
You don't believe me? In a piece about the cap and trade bill, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "As I watched the (global warming) deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason -- treason against the planet."
Don't get me wrong. It's not really newsworthy when leftists incline toward criminalizing their political opponents. Both Krugman and his colleague Frank Rich wrote columns last month essentially blaming President Barack Obama's critics for the murders of abortion doctor George Tiller and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum security guard.
But I digress. While President Obama says that global warming "science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear" and Krugman says the "warming deniers" have "contempt for hard science," the record reveals a different story. If anyone has contempt for hard science, it is the Krugman leftists, who, either because of their political agenda or ideological predispositions, refuse to acknowledge -- let alone consider -- opposing opinions, even when they come from "hard scientists."
One way they deal with the very real fact that there is significant opposition to their dogmatic conclusions is to personally attack their opponents, usually saying evil corporations with vested interests in destroying the planet have bought them off. Just as often, they simply out-yell, ridicule, ignore or attempt to silence them. Remember when MIT's Richard Lindzen acknowledged that many scientists refuse to publicize their dissent to make "their lives easier"?
I would like to know how Krugman and Obama would explain away the fact that more than 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 with Ph.D.s, have signed a petition urging the United States government to reject the global warming agreement known as Kyoto -- "and any other similar proposals" -- because the "the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind." Another 100 scientists have endorsed a newspaper ad by the Cato Institute challenging the president's "facts" on global warming.
But these authoritarian leftists don't just scoff at the hard science contradicting their conclusions about global warming and the extent to which man is contributing to it. In their close-minded arrogance, they completely eschew any scientific inquiry into whether cap and trade legislation would have any appreciable impact on the alleged problems.
But if they are so sure of their scientific position, why are we reading reports -- from the CBS Political Hotsheet, no less -- that "the Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages"?
That's right; the Hotsheet reports that "less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty 'decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.'"
What say you, President Obama?
If you and your comrades are so sure of your science, why -- other than, perhaps, your mission to destroy capitalism -- are you silencing and/or ignoring dissenting science?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
There is so much misinformation on the subject of global warming and so little consensus -- as to what environmental changes are occurring, whether human behavior is contributing to them, whether they are causing significant environmental damage, and whether the proposed cap and trade legislation would do anything to alleviate any of this -- it is no wonder our freedom-hating majority in the House insisted on cramming it through before they could even read, much less digest, what it contained.
It would be bad enough if they passed innocuous legislation to address an alleged problem (man-caused global warming) without first verifying there is a problem and then analyzing and assessing the extent of it, but it's outrageous that they would pass a measure that could have crippling effects on our economy and American taxpayers.
Who do these people think they are -- that they can claim a mandate to do anything they want to, that they can grab as much power as they want, that they can transform our government overnight into an enemy of the people, with no fear of accountability? Oh, I know; the government has already behaved like the people's enemy all too often, but never on the scale we're witnessing today -- from a party that had the audacity to accuse President George W. Bush of abusing his authority.
Just where is the journalistic skepticism in today's dominant media culture or the professed open-mindedness of Democrats?
What is their response when people have the temerity to challenge their assertions on catastrophic global warming? It is ridicule and abuse. Not only are the doubters flat-earth Neanderthals; they are darn near treasonous, according to the dogmatic left.
You don't believe me? In a piece about the cap and trade bill, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "As I watched the (global warming) deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason -- treason against the planet."
Don't get me wrong. It's not really newsworthy when leftists incline toward criminalizing their political opponents. Both Krugman and his colleague Frank Rich wrote columns last month essentially blaming President Barack Obama's critics for the murders of abortion doctor George Tiller and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum security guard.
But I digress. While President Obama says that global warming "science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear" and Krugman says the "warming deniers" have "contempt for hard science," the record reveals a different story. If anyone has contempt for hard science, it is the Krugman leftists, who, either because of their political agenda or ideological predispositions, refuse to acknowledge -- let alone consider -- opposing opinions, even when they come from "hard scientists."
One way they deal with the very real fact that there is significant opposition to their dogmatic conclusions is to personally attack their opponents, usually saying evil corporations with vested interests in destroying the planet have bought them off. Just as often, they simply out-yell, ridicule, ignore or attempt to silence them. Remember when MIT's Richard Lindzen acknowledged that many scientists refuse to publicize their dissent to make "their lives easier"?
I would like to know how Krugman and Obama would explain away the fact that more than 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 with Ph.D.s, have signed a petition urging the United States government to reject the global warming agreement known as Kyoto -- "and any other similar proposals" -- because the "the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind." Another 100 scientists have endorsed a newspaper ad by the Cato Institute challenging the president's "facts" on global warming.
But these authoritarian leftists don't just scoff at the hard science contradicting their conclusions about global warming and the extent to which man is contributing to it. In their close-minded arrogance, they completely eschew any scientific inquiry into whether cap and trade legislation would have any appreciable impact on the alleged problems.
But if they are so sure of their scientific position, why are we reading reports -- from the CBS Political Hotsheet, no less -- that "the Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages"?
That's right; the Hotsheet reports that "less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty 'decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.'"
What say you, President Obama?
If you and your comrades are so sure of your science, why -- other than, perhaps, your mission to destroy capitalism -- are you silencing and/or ignoring dissenting science?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Obama and the ‘Noble Lie’
Our philosopher-king prevaricates on behalf of us all.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Monday, June 29, 2009
For much of the Bush administration, the media splashed stories of neoconservative conspiracies and cabals. Exposés about mostly Jewish liberals-turned-conservatives charged that they were adherents of the philosopher Leo Strauss and embraced the Platonic notion of the “noble lie.”
In his Republic, Plato outlined an elaborate, ranked utopia, a good city (“Kallipolis”) run by a sort of benign natural selection. The philosopher-kings sat atop hierarchies in which occupations were assigned for the citizenry. To justify arbitrary selections, the rulers would make up “noble lies” about divine edicts, making clear that the occupations chosen for lesser folk were god-given.
Once the inferiors understood that there were divine sanctions behind their lot in life, they would feel happier. And society at large would benefit by each worker’s having the proper aptitude for his occupation. The larger point Plato was making was simply that sometimes an all-knowing elite must hedge on the truth to convince the ignorant public what is good for it.
Other Greek authors likewise were willing to give an educated elite wide latitude. Many aristocrats, such as the historian Thucydides, felt that religion was a sort of superstition of the ignorant masses. But he tolerated it as something deserving support by rational leaders, inasmuch as it provided a valuable bridle on the dangerous appetites of the mob. Some of our own Founding Fathers were deists — rationalists who may have believed in a creator, but believed even more that adherence to religious ritual among the more ignorant and potentially dangerous classes was critical for a good society.
The Left charged that President Bush was surrounded by wannabe Guardians who, via the work of Leo Strauss, bought into Plato’s argument. Therefore, according to their critics, they played fast and loose with the truth (Saddam’s ties with al-Qaeda, WMD in Iraq, etc.) in order to scare clueless Americans into accepting the invasion of Iraq and waging a war on terror. These “noble lies” were deemed necessary, since the authoritarian threats from the Middle East after 9/11 were, in fact, real, and the public otherwise would never have appreciated the mortal danger to our country.
No accuser, however, was ever able to demonstrate a pattern of sustained, premeditated prevarication on the part of neoconservatives. How, after all, had Platonic Straussians taken over the government from WASP or African-American realists like Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, and Rumsfeld? In most cases, “neo-con” ended up simply as an acceptable anti-Semitic slur to describe Jewish intellectuals who supposedly put Israel’s national security on a par with, or above, our own.
The irony is that during the Obama administration’s first six months, we have seen ample evidence of noble lies.
The first category is the historically inaccurate statement designed to bolster the spirits of the Islamic world. This type of lie offers proof of Obama’s noble intentions and conduces to the greater good. Obama, of course, seems to know little history. And to the degree he is interested in the past, history becomes largely a melodramatic, rather than tragic, story, in which we are to distinguish victims and oppressors based on modern moral standards, and allot sympathy and blame accordingly.
That said, I still cannot quite believe Obama thinks that chattel slavery in America was ended without violence. Or that Islam was responsible for unprecedented breakthroughs in advanced math, sophisticated medicine, and printing, let alone that it served as a catalyst for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Instead, Obama seems to believe that fudging on facts is not fudging, but simply offers a competing narrative that gains validity by its good intentions. Most Americans, Obama further believes, are either too dense or too uneducated to discern his misinformation. But they will at some future date appreciate the global good will that results from his feel-good mytho-history.
No one in the Arab street is going to object when Obama assures us all that Islamic felonies — religious intolerance, gender apartheid, coercive government — are equivalent to American religious and gender misdemeanors. Hitler made up stories about World War I and German minorities in Eastern Europe for murderous racist reasons. His ignoble lies are in no way similar to present-day noble lies that are offered for exactly the opposite goal of promoting religious tolerance and global brotherhood.
A second type of noble lie is more personal. Obama as a Platonic philosopher-king advocates all sorts of exalted aims that he himself will probably never fulfill. That he is hypocritical matters little, given the fact that his bromides are unquestionably for the public good. Obama apparently speaks no foreign language, yet he deplores the lack of foreign-language fluency on the part of less sophisticated Americans. He is unable to quit smoking entirely, but emphasizes the role of preventive medicine and healthy lifestyles in his radical health-care reform initiatives.
He wisely calls for racial transcendence and an end to racial identities — even as he excuses Judge Sotomayor’s clearly racialist belief that race and gender inherently make one a better or worse judge. Obama, the healer, jumpstarted his own political career through religiously listening to and subsidizing the racist hate-speech offered by the charlatan Reverend Wright.
Obama deplores Wall Street greed and CEOs who take junkets to the Super Bowl and Las Vegas, even as he serves $100-a-pound beef, flies in his favorite pizza maker from St. Louis, and goes on a lavish “date” with Michelle to New York. Philosopher-kings accept certain protocols for themselves, others for the less sophisticated — knowing that if most people tighten their belts in time of recession such parsimony is good for the country, but it is irrelevant to the occasional indulgences by an all-knowing elite.
We saw earlier examples of such elite personal exemptions with an array of Obama’s appointees. The most brazen called for higher taxes while, as gifted technocrats, they obviously felt that such taxation did not, and should not, apply to their own exalted 1040s.
The third sort of noble lie is the deliberately incomplete truth. Obama sincerely believes that “stimuli” and vast new budget-breaking programs are critical for the welfare of hoi polloi, but he also knows that the mob is suspicious of record-breaking deficits. So he signs the record-breaking deficits into law, while promising to be a deficit hawk — by cutting one half of one percent of the federal budget. In his Platonic mind, the mindless public is both pacified and shepherded in the right direction.
Obama knows that our country needs to be protected from radical Islam by renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Predator assassinations, and persistence in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he also knows the public feels bad when some (like an earlier Obama himself) demagogue the issue, alleging a war against constitutional rights.
So he offers the noble lie of denouncing these Bush protocols that his antiwar base abhors — even as he maintains or expands them. He is certain that the average Joe cannot quite figure out what is going on, and would never suspect that a charismatic, postracial Guardian would ever deceive the people.
Obama plants soft questions at news conferences, lies about earlier promises of posting pending legislation on government websites for public perusal, feigns populist unease with his radical government expansion, fires public auditors who uncover liberal transgressions, and in general adopts a hardball politics that the Left claimed was innate to George W. Bush. These again are lies that are noble, in that they facilitate progressive politics that help the people — and they are presumably indiscernible by a fawning media and an unaware electorate.
So why does President Obama so often get history wrong, so often call for utopian schemes he would hardly adopt for himself, and so often distort by misinformation and incomplete disclosure?
Partly the culprit is administrative inexperience, partly historical ignorance. But mostly the disconnect comes because Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means.
In other words, Obama is our first truly postmodern president. And the Guardians who form his elite circle — in the very manner that they once falsely accused neo-cons of doing — deliberately, but “nobly,” distort the truth on behalf of us all.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Monday, June 29, 2009
For much of the Bush administration, the media splashed stories of neoconservative conspiracies and cabals. Exposés about mostly Jewish liberals-turned-conservatives charged that they were adherents of the philosopher Leo Strauss and embraced the Platonic notion of the “noble lie.”
In his Republic, Plato outlined an elaborate, ranked utopia, a good city (“Kallipolis”) run by a sort of benign natural selection. The philosopher-kings sat atop hierarchies in which occupations were assigned for the citizenry. To justify arbitrary selections, the rulers would make up “noble lies” about divine edicts, making clear that the occupations chosen for lesser folk were god-given.
Once the inferiors understood that there were divine sanctions behind their lot in life, they would feel happier. And society at large would benefit by each worker’s having the proper aptitude for his occupation. The larger point Plato was making was simply that sometimes an all-knowing elite must hedge on the truth to convince the ignorant public what is good for it.
Other Greek authors likewise were willing to give an educated elite wide latitude. Many aristocrats, such as the historian Thucydides, felt that religion was a sort of superstition of the ignorant masses. But he tolerated it as something deserving support by rational leaders, inasmuch as it provided a valuable bridle on the dangerous appetites of the mob. Some of our own Founding Fathers were deists — rationalists who may have believed in a creator, but believed even more that adherence to religious ritual among the more ignorant and potentially dangerous classes was critical for a good society.
The Left charged that President Bush was surrounded by wannabe Guardians who, via the work of Leo Strauss, bought into Plato’s argument. Therefore, according to their critics, they played fast and loose with the truth (Saddam’s ties with al-Qaeda, WMD in Iraq, etc.) in order to scare clueless Americans into accepting the invasion of Iraq and waging a war on terror. These “noble lies” were deemed necessary, since the authoritarian threats from the Middle East after 9/11 were, in fact, real, and the public otherwise would never have appreciated the mortal danger to our country.
No accuser, however, was ever able to demonstrate a pattern of sustained, premeditated prevarication on the part of neoconservatives. How, after all, had Platonic Straussians taken over the government from WASP or African-American realists like Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, and Rumsfeld? In most cases, “neo-con” ended up simply as an acceptable anti-Semitic slur to describe Jewish intellectuals who supposedly put Israel’s national security on a par with, or above, our own.
The irony is that during the Obama administration’s first six months, we have seen ample evidence of noble lies.
The first category is the historically inaccurate statement designed to bolster the spirits of the Islamic world. This type of lie offers proof of Obama’s noble intentions and conduces to the greater good. Obama, of course, seems to know little history. And to the degree he is interested in the past, history becomes largely a melodramatic, rather than tragic, story, in which we are to distinguish victims and oppressors based on modern moral standards, and allot sympathy and blame accordingly.
That said, I still cannot quite believe Obama thinks that chattel slavery in America was ended without violence. Or that Islam was responsible for unprecedented breakthroughs in advanced math, sophisticated medicine, and printing, let alone that it served as a catalyst for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Instead, Obama seems to believe that fudging on facts is not fudging, but simply offers a competing narrative that gains validity by its good intentions. Most Americans, Obama further believes, are either too dense or too uneducated to discern his misinformation. But they will at some future date appreciate the global good will that results from his feel-good mytho-history.
No one in the Arab street is going to object when Obama assures us all that Islamic felonies — religious intolerance, gender apartheid, coercive government — are equivalent to American religious and gender misdemeanors. Hitler made up stories about World War I and German minorities in Eastern Europe for murderous racist reasons. His ignoble lies are in no way similar to present-day noble lies that are offered for exactly the opposite goal of promoting religious tolerance and global brotherhood.
A second type of noble lie is more personal. Obama as a Platonic philosopher-king advocates all sorts of exalted aims that he himself will probably never fulfill. That he is hypocritical matters little, given the fact that his bromides are unquestionably for the public good. Obama apparently speaks no foreign language, yet he deplores the lack of foreign-language fluency on the part of less sophisticated Americans. He is unable to quit smoking entirely, but emphasizes the role of preventive medicine and healthy lifestyles in his radical health-care reform initiatives.
He wisely calls for racial transcendence and an end to racial identities — even as he excuses Judge Sotomayor’s clearly racialist belief that race and gender inherently make one a better or worse judge. Obama, the healer, jumpstarted his own political career through religiously listening to and subsidizing the racist hate-speech offered by the charlatan Reverend Wright.
Obama deplores Wall Street greed and CEOs who take junkets to the Super Bowl and Las Vegas, even as he serves $100-a-pound beef, flies in his favorite pizza maker from St. Louis, and goes on a lavish “date” with Michelle to New York. Philosopher-kings accept certain protocols for themselves, others for the less sophisticated — knowing that if most people tighten their belts in time of recession such parsimony is good for the country, but it is irrelevant to the occasional indulgences by an all-knowing elite.
We saw earlier examples of such elite personal exemptions with an array of Obama’s appointees. The most brazen called for higher taxes while, as gifted technocrats, they obviously felt that such taxation did not, and should not, apply to their own exalted 1040s.
The third sort of noble lie is the deliberately incomplete truth. Obama sincerely believes that “stimuli” and vast new budget-breaking programs are critical for the welfare of hoi polloi, but he also knows that the mob is suspicious of record-breaking deficits. So he signs the record-breaking deficits into law, while promising to be a deficit hawk — by cutting one half of one percent of the federal budget. In his Platonic mind, the mindless public is both pacified and shepherded in the right direction.
Obama knows that our country needs to be protected from radical Islam by renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Predator assassinations, and persistence in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he also knows the public feels bad when some (like an earlier Obama himself) demagogue the issue, alleging a war against constitutional rights.
So he offers the noble lie of denouncing these Bush protocols that his antiwar base abhors — even as he maintains or expands them. He is certain that the average Joe cannot quite figure out what is going on, and would never suspect that a charismatic, postracial Guardian would ever deceive the people.
Obama plants soft questions at news conferences, lies about earlier promises of posting pending legislation on government websites for public perusal, feigns populist unease with his radical government expansion, fires public auditors who uncover liberal transgressions, and in general adopts a hardball politics that the Left claimed was innate to George W. Bush. These again are lies that are noble, in that they facilitate progressive politics that help the people — and they are presumably indiscernible by a fawning media and an unaware electorate.
So why does President Obama so often get history wrong, so often call for utopian schemes he would hardly adopt for himself, and so often distort by misinformation and incomplete disclosure?
Partly the culprit is administrative inexperience, partly historical ignorance. But mostly the disconnect comes because Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means.
In other words, Obama is our first truly postmodern president. And the Guardians who form his elite circle — in the very manner that they once falsely accused neo-cons of doing — deliberately, but “nobly,” distort the truth on behalf of us all.
Penalize America First
Rich Galen
Monday, June 29, 2009
The climate change legislation raced through the U.S. House on a seven-vote margin, 219-212. Eight Republicans voted for the bill, 44 Democrats voted against. Those numbers do not bode well for any quick action in the U.S. Senate where getting anything approaching 60 votes for this anti-carbon energy bill looks dimmer than the inside of a West Virginia coal mine at during a lunar eclipse at midnight in December.
According to Politico.com, the bill
"will raise electricity prices for consumers by $175 a year per household by 2020, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, significantly less than the $3,000 price hike predicted by Republicans who say the "energy tax" will increase energy bills and the cost of consumer goods."
I haven't seen either calculation, but if energy costs rise, then the cost of anything manufactured or grown that uses energy - which would be approximately everything - will rise, too. That increase will be passed along to consumers which has to be added to the $175 per year hike in everyone's electricity bill.
The ink hardly had time to dry on the 1,000+ page bill (which was finished at about three o'clock on Friday morning), when President Barack Obama made the astonishing pronouncement that he was opposed to one major provision. According to the New York Times, the provision in question was "inserted in the middle of the night before the vote Friday, that requires the president, starting in 2020, to impose a "border adjustment" - or tariff - on certain goods from countries that do not act to limit their global warming emissions."
Democrat Sander Levin of Michigan said of the tariff against countries which do not embrace the whole lower-carbon-footprint deal,
"We can and must ensure that the U.S. energy-intensive industries are not placed at a competitive disadvantage by nations that have not made a similar commitment to reduce greenhouse gases."
Sounds right to me. In fact, it sounded right to the entire United States Senate when it refused to take up the Kyoto treaty because it exempted countries like India and China from having to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Senate then believed it put U.S. businesses at a competitive disadvantage and my guess is the Senate now will come to the same conclusion.
Nevertheless, President Obama said in a Sunday interview which he deemed so important that, according to the NY Times, he "delayed the start of a Sunday golf game to speak to a small group of reporters in the Oval Office."
Whoa! Check please! This is bigger news than the results of Michael's tox-screen. The President delayed his golf game? I need a moment …
… Ok. I'm back.
Obama said, of that trade provision,
"At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we've seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there."
So, it's not only acceptable, but worthy of delaying a golf game, to celebrate the passage of a bill which will add costs to American companies trying to claw their way out of this recession, but we don't want to do anything which would level the playing field with our trading partners.
At the Republican National Convention in 1984, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick coined two phrases which should be dusted off today. One was to identify the Democratic Party - which was virulently anti-Reagan - as "San Francisco Democrats."
Given the home district of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this phrase has new currency.
The second was when she said that the hallmark of those San Francisco Democrats was their propensity to "Blame America first."
The provisions of this climate change bill will place great hardships on the very manufacturers we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prop up so they will begin rehiring American workers.
But President Obama seems to be more worried about hardships these same provisions would put on foreign manufactures. Wouldn't allowing them to ignore this cap-and-trade business lead to even more jobs moving off-shore?
Obama has taken the Kilpatrick criticism to a new level. He is the official leader of the "Penalize America First" crowd.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The climate change legislation raced through the U.S. House on a seven-vote margin, 219-212. Eight Republicans voted for the bill, 44 Democrats voted against. Those numbers do not bode well for any quick action in the U.S. Senate where getting anything approaching 60 votes for this anti-carbon energy bill looks dimmer than the inside of a West Virginia coal mine at during a lunar eclipse at midnight in December.
According to Politico.com, the bill
"will raise electricity prices for consumers by $175 a year per household by 2020, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, significantly less than the $3,000 price hike predicted by Republicans who say the "energy tax" will increase energy bills and the cost of consumer goods."
I haven't seen either calculation, but if energy costs rise, then the cost of anything manufactured or grown that uses energy - which would be approximately everything - will rise, too. That increase will be passed along to consumers which has to be added to the $175 per year hike in everyone's electricity bill.
The ink hardly had time to dry on the 1,000+ page bill (which was finished at about three o'clock on Friday morning), when President Barack Obama made the astonishing pronouncement that he was opposed to one major provision. According to the New York Times, the provision in question was "inserted in the middle of the night before the vote Friday, that requires the president, starting in 2020, to impose a "border adjustment" - or tariff - on certain goods from countries that do not act to limit their global warming emissions."
Democrat Sander Levin of Michigan said of the tariff against countries which do not embrace the whole lower-carbon-footprint deal,
"We can and must ensure that the U.S. energy-intensive industries are not placed at a competitive disadvantage by nations that have not made a similar commitment to reduce greenhouse gases."
Sounds right to me. In fact, it sounded right to the entire United States Senate when it refused to take up the Kyoto treaty because it exempted countries like India and China from having to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Senate then believed it put U.S. businesses at a competitive disadvantage and my guess is the Senate now will come to the same conclusion.
Nevertheless, President Obama said in a Sunday interview which he deemed so important that, according to the NY Times, he "delayed the start of a Sunday golf game to speak to a small group of reporters in the Oval Office."
Whoa! Check please! This is bigger news than the results of Michael's tox-screen. The President delayed his golf game? I need a moment …
… Ok. I'm back.
Obama said, of that trade provision,
"At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we've seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there."
So, it's not only acceptable, but worthy of delaying a golf game, to celebrate the passage of a bill which will add costs to American companies trying to claw their way out of this recession, but we don't want to do anything which would level the playing field with our trading partners.
At the Republican National Convention in 1984, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick coined two phrases which should be dusted off today. One was to identify the Democratic Party - which was virulently anti-Reagan - as "San Francisco Democrats."
Given the home district of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this phrase has new currency.
The second was when she said that the hallmark of those San Francisco Democrats was their propensity to "Blame America first."
The provisions of this climate change bill will place great hardships on the very manufacturers we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prop up so they will begin rehiring American workers.
But President Obama seems to be more worried about hardships these same provisions would put on foreign manufactures. Wouldn't allowing them to ignore this cap-and-trade business lead to even more jobs moving off-shore?
Obama has taken the Kilpatrick criticism to a new level. He is the official leader of the "Penalize America First" crowd.
Violence in Iran: What the West Needs to Know
W. Thomas Smith, Jr
Monday, June 29, 2009
The violent crackdown continues in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential elections in which – according to the Wall Street Journal – “hard-line clerics have rallied behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declared landslide poll victory.”
Hardly a “victory,” much less a “landslide,” so-say supporters of opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and and Mehdi Karroubi, who have “challenged the vote, alleging widespread vote-rigging.”
Despite restrictions on media, at least 20 people have reportedly been killed and hundreds wounded by Basij militia forces. Some sources suggest the death toll is much higher. And it doesn’t appear as if the mullahs, Ahmadinejad, and their cronies are going to let up until any hint of expressed opposition is crushed.
Additionally, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Alseyassah, the leadership of Lebanon-based Hizballah is appealing to the Iranian regime – literally the hand that feeds Hizballah – to use all means to quash the opposition movement in Iran. Alseyassah also reports “a number of troops of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] in Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria have been recalled to Tehran ... to join the Tha’r Allah [Vengeance of God] forces … These special forces are in charge of protecting the regime."
Saturday, I discussed Iran with Middle East expert Dr. Walid Phares – director of the Future of Terrorism Project for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – for the initial Q&A in what will be an ongoing series of interviews, Three Questions for Dr. Walid Phares, providing timely perspective on Middle East issues and international terrorism as events unfold.
W. THOMAS SMITH JR.: Considering the large pro-democracy turnouts in recent elections in Lebanon and Iran – and the now seeming desperation on the part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to quash all dissent – is the IRGC, its Quds force, Hizballah, etc., on the ropes? Does the West now have a strategic opportunity here?
DR. WALID PHARES: The Iranian people have a unique opportunity to liberate themselves from 30-years of oppression embodied by the Vilayet e-Faqih Jihadist regime with its Pasdaran and Basij militias. Such windows of opportunity come only once every one or two decades, and many young Iranians understand this. Hence we have this explosive uprising in the streets of Tehran, and we will continue to see urban opposition for a long time inside Iran.
Moreover, the Lebanese people, who have been under the yoke of Hizballah terror for a quarter century, also have an unexpected opening wherein regional support for Hizballah may be declining inasmuch as Iran's regime may well lose its ability to support Hizballah. Lebanon's Cedars Revolution, which has been under attack for the last four years may also derive tremendous benefit from the youth uprising in Tehran. But even though both civil societies in Iran and Lebanon are looking at a generational opportunity to defeat the terror system in the region, it is really in the hands of the free world and particularly in the hands of the United States to either hasten the advance of democracy or let go of the latter, allowing the Pasdaran to win.
There seems to be an amazing alignment of the planets in favor of pushing back against these terror forces in the region, but Washington will have to say “yes” or “no” to the international push. Iranians and Lebanese can only struggle, but America and other democracies can make it happen soon or in the far future. So, Pasdaran, Quds force and Hizballah aren't on the ropes as you say. But with a quick, serious international alignment of the international community coordinating with the uprising, these militias can be isolated and their terror power significantly reduced. If the West doesn't realize this huge change taking place now out of Tehran and take action, the so-called “Tha’r Allah” forces will become an extremely dangerous tool in the hands of a surviving angry regime.
SMITH: Is there not also an increased danger of an IRGC-inspired attack elsewhere in the world, to divert attention from Thar Allah operations in Iran?
PHARES: Obviously. Strategically, the Iranian regime is bleeding politically. Its credibility is gone, even if it crushes the opposition and pursues the youth across the country. And when such regimes see their political shields shattered, they begin acting irrationally and preemptively. Iran's billions of petrodollars invested in propaganda via satellite TV, as well as the infiltration and influence of Western media have built an unnatural image of the regime camouflaging the oppression. As a result, journalists and academics have described Iran's Khomeinist regime as “reasonable, stable, and with whom democracies can conduct business.” The young men and women on the streets of Tehran have come very close to destroying this expensive public-relations image. Hence, the IRGC could be tasked to strike at targets overseas and engage in terror regionally as a means of deflecting attention from the “Tha’r Allah” operations inside the so-called "republic." The international community in general, Western democracies in particular must be very attentive to the possibility of Pasdaran-guided, ordered and/or inspired terror operations worldwide as the crisis inside Iran persists. Therefore, it is crucial that the West in general and the United States in particular work on backing the democratic uprising in Iran now before the Pasdaran takes them by surprise. This is not an issue of luxurious choice, it is a matter of national security.
SMITH: What is the West failing to understand, that we must get our heads around regarding the IRGC – its subsidiaries like Hizballah – and the “Tha’r Allah” forces?
PHARES: As of the fall of 2006, early 2007, the pro-Iranian-regime lobby in the United States – and some other Western countries – has succeeded in imposing a new equation regarding Iran. Whether it is because of propositions of oil advantages or false promises of help in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a fact that the Iran policy in the United States has shifted during the last two years of the Bush Administration and throughout the current Obama administration from considering the Iranian regime as a strategic foe supporting terrorism to just a nuisance with which one might cut a deal. U.S. policy has reached a summit of contradictions as its intelligence and legal components consider the Pasdaran and Quds force, as well as Hizballah, as terrorists; yet our political decision-makers look at the Iran of Khamenei as a potential partner in regional political business. The West – particularly the U.S. and the UK – knows all too well that the IRGC and Hizballah are strategic threats but a political decision was made to disregard this reality hoping that it would – or could – end when the “engagement path” would bare fruit. This is a dangerous game, a bet that is irrational, which may cost democracies greater losses and the region's civil societies longer oppression. The Tehran uprising should be viewed as an event of destiny, and it should open Western eyes. Let’s see if Washington and London figure it out and change course or stubbornly continue toward the precipice.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The violent crackdown continues in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential elections in which – according to the Wall Street Journal – “hard-line clerics have rallied behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declared landslide poll victory.”
Hardly a “victory,” much less a “landslide,” so-say supporters of opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and and Mehdi Karroubi, who have “challenged the vote, alleging widespread vote-rigging.”
Despite restrictions on media, at least 20 people have reportedly been killed and hundreds wounded by Basij militia forces. Some sources suggest the death toll is much higher. And it doesn’t appear as if the mullahs, Ahmadinejad, and their cronies are going to let up until any hint of expressed opposition is crushed.
Additionally, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Alseyassah, the leadership of Lebanon-based Hizballah is appealing to the Iranian regime – literally the hand that feeds Hizballah – to use all means to quash the opposition movement in Iran. Alseyassah also reports “a number of troops of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] in Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria have been recalled to Tehran ... to join the Tha’r Allah [Vengeance of God] forces … These special forces are in charge of protecting the regime."
Saturday, I discussed Iran with Middle East expert Dr. Walid Phares – director of the Future of Terrorism Project for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – for the initial Q&A in what will be an ongoing series of interviews, Three Questions for Dr. Walid Phares, providing timely perspective on Middle East issues and international terrorism as events unfold.
W. THOMAS SMITH JR.: Considering the large pro-democracy turnouts in recent elections in Lebanon and Iran – and the now seeming desperation on the part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to quash all dissent – is the IRGC, its Quds force, Hizballah, etc., on the ropes? Does the West now have a strategic opportunity here?
DR. WALID PHARES: The Iranian people have a unique opportunity to liberate themselves from 30-years of oppression embodied by the Vilayet e-Faqih Jihadist regime with its Pasdaran and Basij militias. Such windows of opportunity come only once every one or two decades, and many young Iranians understand this. Hence we have this explosive uprising in the streets of Tehran, and we will continue to see urban opposition for a long time inside Iran.
Moreover, the Lebanese people, who have been under the yoke of Hizballah terror for a quarter century, also have an unexpected opening wherein regional support for Hizballah may be declining inasmuch as Iran's regime may well lose its ability to support Hizballah. Lebanon's Cedars Revolution, which has been under attack for the last four years may also derive tremendous benefit from the youth uprising in Tehran. But even though both civil societies in Iran and Lebanon are looking at a generational opportunity to defeat the terror system in the region, it is really in the hands of the free world and particularly in the hands of the United States to either hasten the advance of democracy or let go of the latter, allowing the Pasdaran to win.
There seems to be an amazing alignment of the planets in favor of pushing back against these terror forces in the region, but Washington will have to say “yes” or “no” to the international push. Iranians and Lebanese can only struggle, but America and other democracies can make it happen soon or in the far future. So, Pasdaran, Quds force and Hizballah aren't on the ropes as you say. But with a quick, serious international alignment of the international community coordinating with the uprising, these militias can be isolated and their terror power significantly reduced. If the West doesn't realize this huge change taking place now out of Tehran and take action, the so-called “Tha’r Allah” forces will become an extremely dangerous tool in the hands of a surviving angry regime.
SMITH: Is there not also an increased danger of an IRGC-inspired attack elsewhere in the world, to divert attention from Thar Allah operations in Iran?
PHARES: Obviously. Strategically, the Iranian regime is bleeding politically. Its credibility is gone, even if it crushes the opposition and pursues the youth across the country. And when such regimes see their political shields shattered, they begin acting irrationally and preemptively. Iran's billions of petrodollars invested in propaganda via satellite TV, as well as the infiltration and influence of Western media have built an unnatural image of the regime camouflaging the oppression. As a result, journalists and academics have described Iran's Khomeinist regime as “reasonable, stable, and with whom democracies can conduct business.” The young men and women on the streets of Tehran have come very close to destroying this expensive public-relations image. Hence, the IRGC could be tasked to strike at targets overseas and engage in terror regionally as a means of deflecting attention from the “Tha’r Allah” operations inside the so-called "republic." The international community in general, Western democracies in particular must be very attentive to the possibility of Pasdaran-guided, ordered and/or inspired terror operations worldwide as the crisis inside Iran persists. Therefore, it is crucial that the West in general and the United States in particular work on backing the democratic uprising in Iran now before the Pasdaran takes them by surprise. This is not an issue of luxurious choice, it is a matter of national security.
SMITH: What is the West failing to understand, that we must get our heads around regarding the IRGC – its subsidiaries like Hizballah – and the “Tha’r Allah” forces?
PHARES: As of the fall of 2006, early 2007, the pro-Iranian-regime lobby in the United States – and some other Western countries – has succeeded in imposing a new equation regarding Iran. Whether it is because of propositions of oil advantages or false promises of help in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a fact that the Iran policy in the United States has shifted during the last two years of the Bush Administration and throughout the current Obama administration from considering the Iranian regime as a strategic foe supporting terrorism to just a nuisance with which one might cut a deal. U.S. policy has reached a summit of contradictions as its intelligence and legal components consider the Pasdaran and Quds force, as well as Hizballah, as terrorists; yet our political decision-makers look at the Iran of Khamenei as a potential partner in regional political business. The West – particularly the U.S. and the UK – knows all too well that the IRGC and Hizballah are strategic threats but a political decision was made to disregard this reality hoping that it would – or could – end when the “engagement path” would bare fruit. This is a dangerous game, a bet that is irrational, which may cost democracies greater losses and the region's civil societies longer oppression. The Tehran uprising should be viewed as an event of destiny, and it should open Western eyes. Let’s see if Washington and London figure it out and change course or stubbornly continue toward the precipice.
Waxman-Markey Is Hilarious, but the Joke Is on Us
Myron Ebell
Monday, June 29, 2009
Of all the proposals in President Barack Obama's breathtakingly ambitious agenda to foster long-term economic decline, by far the biggest is the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, which the House of Representatives passed with the narrowest of majorities late Friday evening. This bill by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is more damaging than the $787 billion stimulus, the proposed huge increases in federal spending and corresponding increases in the national debt, the takeover of GM and Chrysler, and the proposed tax hikes on the wealthy - combined.
Enacting Waxman-Markey (H. R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act) would almost certainly make America a second-rate economic power. However, the bill is full of ironies and amusing touches. Were it not a looming disaster, the whole situation would be hilarious.
The bill is supposed to be about saving us from global warming. Yet its supporters have stopped talking about global warming. This might be because global temperatures stopped rising a decade ago. More likely it's because the pollsters have told Democrats to shut up about global warming and green jobs. The new slogan: get America running on “clean energy.”
The bill’s advocates view it as merely a first step, as former Vice President Al Gore told “super-activists” (all 11,500 of “us”) on a conference call Tuesday night. It’s the biggest tax increase in the history of the world, the largest government intrusion in people's lives since the Second World War (which was the last time gasoline was rationed) and, at 1,201 pages, a whopper of a bill. Requiring that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 is just the beginning.
The reason given for why it has taken years to pass major climate legislation is the bajillion dollars spent by fat cat corporate special interests--Big Oil, King Coal, etc. But a major push behind Waxman-Markey is the United States Climate Partnership (USCAP), whose members include two dozen or so major corporations (including Duke Energy, Dow, GE, Shell, BP, Ford, GM, Alcoa, PG&E, Exelon, DuPont, PepsiCo, even Caterpillar) and some of the same environmental pressure groups that blame big business for stymieing energy-rationing legislation.
Adding to the irony, the corporate CEOs who support cap-and-trade are fawned over for putting the good of the planet ahead of short-term profits. This is a shameful racket that is all about short-term windfall profits. When testifying before Congress, several CEOs of USCAP member companies said that passing Waxman-Markey was imperative but that they would have to oppose it if they had to buy the ration coupons at auction rather than be given them for free. Al Gore, too, could make hundreds of millions of dollars from his investments in alternative energy companies if Waxman-Markey makes them profitable.
The bill’s proponents talk about protecting consumers while intermittently acknowledging that cap-and-trade can only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by dramatically raising the price of energy derived from coal, oil and natural gas. President Obama said during the campaign last year that "under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Dr. Peter Orszag, now head of the White House Office and Management and Budget, testified last year when he was head of the Congressional Budget Office that "price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."
When Waxman announced that they had given away 85% of the ration coupons to the various powerful special interests, he added that the purpose was to protect consumers from price increases. If that were true, then consumers would have no reason to reduce their energy consumption, nor would they be forced to use more expensive alternative energy, which would mean that the entire purpose of the bill (the reduction of greenhouse gases) would be rendered moot.
The unacknowledged truth in this charade is that the real reason for giving the ration coupons away is to buy enough political support to pass the bill. Some people are going to become very wealthy from cap-and-trade, but it isn't going to be consumers.
Supporters of Waxman-Markey are now claiming it won't cost anything and have found official support for their claim. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Congressional Budget Office have estimated that it will cost each of us only pennies to reduce emissions drastically with Waxman-Markey. We can save the planet "for the cost of a postage stamp" a day--or even less.
If that were true, why did Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee defeat Republican amendments to suspend Waxman-Markey if gasoline reached five dollars a gallon or electric rates doubled or unemployment topped fifteen percent?
The debate on the bill is ongoing. Though it has passed the House, it must pass a few more steps before it is forcibly imposed on Americans. Of course, if it's ever enacted, the joke will be on all of us.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Of all the proposals in President Barack Obama's breathtakingly ambitious agenda to foster long-term economic decline, by far the biggest is the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, which the House of Representatives passed with the narrowest of majorities late Friday evening. This bill by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is more damaging than the $787 billion stimulus, the proposed huge increases in federal spending and corresponding increases in the national debt, the takeover of GM and Chrysler, and the proposed tax hikes on the wealthy - combined.
Enacting Waxman-Markey (H. R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act) would almost certainly make America a second-rate economic power. However, the bill is full of ironies and amusing touches. Were it not a looming disaster, the whole situation would be hilarious.
The bill is supposed to be about saving us from global warming. Yet its supporters have stopped talking about global warming. This might be because global temperatures stopped rising a decade ago. More likely it's because the pollsters have told Democrats to shut up about global warming and green jobs. The new slogan: get America running on “clean energy.”
The bill’s advocates view it as merely a first step, as former Vice President Al Gore told “super-activists” (all 11,500 of “us”) on a conference call Tuesday night. It’s the biggest tax increase in the history of the world, the largest government intrusion in people's lives since the Second World War (which was the last time gasoline was rationed) and, at 1,201 pages, a whopper of a bill. Requiring that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 is just the beginning.
The reason given for why it has taken years to pass major climate legislation is the bajillion dollars spent by fat cat corporate special interests--Big Oil, King Coal, etc. But a major push behind Waxman-Markey is the United States Climate Partnership (USCAP), whose members include two dozen or so major corporations (including Duke Energy, Dow, GE, Shell, BP, Ford, GM, Alcoa, PG&E, Exelon, DuPont, PepsiCo, even Caterpillar) and some of the same environmental pressure groups that blame big business for stymieing energy-rationing legislation.
Adding to the irony, the corporate CEOs who support cap-and-trade are fawned over for putting the good of the planet ahead of short-term profits. This is a shameful racket that is all about short-term windfall profits. When testifying before Congress, several CEOs of USCAP member companies said that passing Waxman-Markey was imperative but that they would have to oppose it if they had to buy the ration coupons at auction rather than be given them for free. Al Gore, too, could make hundreds of millions of dollars from his investments in alternative energy companies if Waxman-Markey makes them profitable.
The bill’s proponents talk about protecting consumers while intermittently acknowledging that cap-and-trade can only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by dramatically raising the price of energy derived from coal, oil and natural gas. President Obama said during the campaign last year that "under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Dr. Peter Orszag, now head of the White House Office and Management and Budget, testified last year when he was head of the Congressional Budget Office that "price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."
When Waxman announced that they had given away 85% of the ration coupons to the various powerful special interests, he added that the purpose was to protect consumers from price increases. If that were true, then consumers would have no reason to reduce their energy consumption, nor would they be forced to use more expensive alternative energy, which would mean that the entire purpose of the bill (the reduction of greenhouse gases) would be rendered moot.
The unacknowledged truth in this charade is that the real reason for giving the ration coupons away is to buy enough political support to pass the bill. Some people are going to become very wealthy from cap-and-trade, but it isn't going to be consumers.
Supporters of Waxman-Markey are now claiming it won't cost anything and have found official support for their claim. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Congressional Budget Office have estimated that it will cost each of us only pennies to reduce emissions drastically with Waxman-Markey. We can save the planet "for the cost of a postage stamp" a day--or even less.
If that were true, why did Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee defeat Republican amendments to suspend Waxman-Markey if gasoline reached five dollars a gallon or electric rates doubled or unemployment topped fifteen percent?
The debate on the bill is ongoing. Though it has passed the House, it must pass a few more steps before it is forcibly imposed on Americans. Of course, if it's ever enacted, the joke will be on all of us.
Kill the VAT Now and Forever
Bruce Bialosky
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The current rage amongst the intellectual elite is that we should join our European friends and put in place a national sales tax, commonly referred to as a Valued Added Tax (VAT). If we adopt this form of taxation, you might as well prepare for the death knell of both our economy and our freedom.
It should be noted that some smart people are in favor of this tax form and they have good arguments. A few years back, I saw Arthur Laffer give a speech to the California Republican Party where he whole-heartedly endorsed the VAT. If you are not familiar with him, Dr. Laffer is the creator of the Laffer curve and quite a brilliant man. He is also a wonderfully nice and personable man, especially noteworthy for an economist most of whom can be duller than the typical CPA.
When I went up to him, I told him he was dead wrong about the VAT. Instead of blowing me off, this internationally-known economist said he would love to hear my thoughts. What ensued was a series of correspondence between him and me. Laffer sent me these wonderful letters with charts and graphs explaining why the VAT made sense. There were arrows and square root symbols flying all over the place. I in turn sent him my thoughts. Despite the fact he is a lot smarter than I am, he was wrong and I was right.
The major issue is that the VAT is an invisible tax. You never see it. The rate can be adjusted and you would only blame retailers for the increased prices. Think of gasoline taxes. If you stand around the pump and asked people about the cost of gas, they would say things about oil companies which make their mothers want to get the nearest bar of soap. But if you state that the government is making a lot more on a gallon of gas than the oil company is, they are clueless. The oil company even posts signs on the pump delineating the taxes, but people ignore them.
Review your phone bill and see how you are getting raped. And this is not even a totally invisible tax. It sits in front of your face and most people don’t even see it. The VAT is totally invisible. You never see it directly in your cost unless you collect it. Therefore, it can be easily manipulated. For instance, the rate in Denmark has gradually been raised from 9% at its inception in 1962 until today where it is 25%.
Yet the Danes love it because when they go to restaurant, they pay the price on the menu for their meal. Included is the tax plus the service. In the U.S. the sales tax slaps you in the face and then you have the choice of what you may additionally leave for service (tip) based on the waiter’s performance. This is the difference between a socialist society where decisions are being made for you and a free society where you make your own decisions.
Every tax revolt in this society has been over transparent taxes. The two taxes most rebelled against are auto license fees and property taxes. The reason is simple: people write a check for these taxes and know how much they are paying. When they know how much they are paying, people realize they are not getting what they are paying for in taxes. Why don’t people revolt against income taxes more? The answer is also very simple. Most have their taxes withheld from their paycheck. The ones who really get upset are the ones who write quarterly checks. Unfortunately, when it comes to filing their taxes, even the smartest people don’t ask how much they are paying in taxes. They ask whether they have a refund coming. When that question is asked, you know that the taxman has them under his boot.
Dr. Laffer accepted this argument that in my mind is good enough to stick a knife through this evil incarnate. The biggest problem with Dr. Laffer’s arguments is that he wants to replace the income tax system with VAT. That will never happen. The crowd who wants to put this in place wants this to supplement the current income tax system with the VAT. They promise a reduction in other taxes, but do you trust Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi when they tell you that? Enough said there.
Lastly, you have to understand where this tax comes from to understand why it is so bad. First, it was invented by a Frenchman, Maurice Laure. Not everything the French have every done is bad. After all, there was Louis Pasteur and Lafayette. But do you see the French as a model for running a government? The Nordic states love it, but they are all on the edge of socialism and choice has gone out the window in those countries.
The big promoter of the VAT these days is Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of President Obama’s political henchman, Rahm Emanuel. Just what the world needs right now is another Emanuel fishing for our money. This Emanuel is a bioethicist who is advising Obama on nationalizing our health care system. He states he wants the VAT so they can have more revenue to pay for the health care system that needs all that new money that Obama will not be saving by nationalizing our health care.
The more taxes are transparent, the less people are willing to have their freedom taken away by having their money taken away. Politicians like invisible taxes which you don’t see or write a check for; thus they are not bothersome. The VAT would not replace our income tax system; it would just give more of our money to the power freaks in Washington. Kill this ugly tax before it gets off the ground and throws our economy into a tailspin.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The current rage amongst the intellectual elite is that we should join our European friends and put in place a national sales tax, commonly referred to as a Valued Added Tax (VAT). If we adopt this form of taxation, you might as well prepare for the death knell of both our economy and our freedom.
It should be noted that some smart people are in favor of this tax form and they have good arguments. A few years back, I saw Arthur Laffer give a speech to the California Republican Party where he whole-heartedly endorsed the VAT. If you are not familiar with him, Dr. Laffer is the creator of the Laffer curve and quite a brilliant man. He is also a wonderfully nice and personable man, especially noteworthy for an economist most of whom can be duller than the typical CPA.
When I went up to him, I told him he was dead wrong about the VAT. Instead of blowing me off, this internationally-known economist said he would love to hear my thoughts. What ensued was a series of correspondence between him and me. Laffer sent me these wonderful letters with charts and graphs explaining why the VAT made sense. There were arrows and square root symbols flying all over the place. I in turn sent him my thoughts. Despite the fact he is a lot smarter than I am, he was wrong and I was right.
The major issue is that the VAT is an invisible tax. You never see it. The rate can be adjusted and you would only blame retailers for the increased prices. Think of gasoline taxes. If you stand around the pump and asked people about the cost of gas, they would say things about oil companies which make their mothers want to get the nearest bar of soap. But if you state that the government is making a lot more on a gallon of gas than the oil company is, they are clueless. The oil company even posts signs on the pump delineating the taxes, but people ignore them.
Review your phone bill and see how you are getting raped. And this is not even a totally invisible tax. It sits in front of your face and most people don’t even see it. The VAT is totally invisible. You never see it directly in your cost unless you collect it. Therefore, it can be easily manipulated. For instance, the rate in Denmark has gradually been raised from 9% at its inception in 1962 until today where it is 25%.
Yet the Danes love it because when they go to restaurant, they pay the price on the menu for their meal. Included is the tax plus the service. In the U.S. the sales tax slaps you in the face and then you have the choice of what you may additionally leave for service (tip) based on the waiter’s performance. This is the difference between a socialist society where decisions are being made for you and a free society where you make your own decisions.
Every tax revolt in this society has been over transparent taxes. The two taxes most rebelled against are auto license fees and property taxes. The reason is simple: people write a check for these taxes and know how much they are paying. When they know how much they are paying, people realize they are not getting what they are paying for in taxes. Why don’t people revolt against income taxes more? The answer is also very simple. Most have their taxes withheld from their paycheck. The ones who really get upset are the ones who write quarterly checks. Unfortunately, when it comes to filing their taxes, even the smartest people don’t ask how much they are paying in taxes. They ask whether they have a refund coming. When that question is asked, you know that the taxman has them under his boot.
Dr. Laffer accepted this argument that in my mind is good enough to stick a knife through this evil incarnate. The biggest problem with Dr. Laffer’s arguments is that he wants to replace the income tax system with VAT. That will never happen. The crowd who wants to put this in place wants this to supplement the current income tax system with the VAT. They promise a reduction in other taxes, but do you trust Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi when they tell you that? Enough said there.
Lastly, you have to understand where this tax comes from to understand why it is so bad. First, it was invented by a Frenchman, Maurice Laure. Not everything the French have every done is bad. After all, there was Louis Pasteur and Lafayette. But do you see the French as a model for running a government? The Nordic states love it, but they are all on the edge of socialism and choice has gone out the window in those countries.
The big promoter of the VAT these days is Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of President Obama’s political henchman, Rahm Emanuel. Just what the world needs right now is another Emanuel fishing for our money. This Emanuel is a bioethicist who is advising Obama on nationalizing our health care system. He states he wants the VAT so they can have more revenue to pay for the health care system that needs all that new money that Obama will not be saving by nationalizing our health care.
The more taxes are transparent, the less people are willing to have their freedom taken away by having their money taken away. Politicians like invisible taxes which you don’t see or write a check for; thus they are not bothersome. The VAT would not replace our income tax system; it would just give more of our money to the power freaks in Washington. Kill this ugly tax before it gets off the ground and throws our economy into a tailspin.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Cap-and-trade: unread, undead
Paul Jacob
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The House just passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade carbon emissions control act. If it passes the Senate, expect the president — the bill’s pusher-in-chief — to sign it at first opportunity.
I have not read the bill, so I should not comment on it at length. But then, neither has any congressman read the now 1000-pages-and-plus wonder. So they should not have passed it.
We are supposed to believe it is a good bill because we must trust the congressional assistants who wrote it. If anything is a testament to “the power of belief” it's the enthusiasm for a bill that has not been read, much less understood.
One thing is certain: The cap-and-trade program will increase the cost of energy in the United States. It is essentially a big, fat tax increase on businesses and consumers . . . in the face of which, businesses and consumers will decrease activity, depressing the economy.
The White House and congressional leaders say the bill will create new “green” jobs. But increasing the cost of doing business does not spur employment in general. It will likely increase pressure to build plants and factories outside the U.S., and even the specific jobs created by such mandates tend to come at the expense of other jobs.
The most astute commentary on the bill, so far, rests on a comparison between today's darkening days and the darker days of the Great Depression, when that day's Congress and president rushed through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff . . . thereby digging the depression deeper, marching America into a scary, institution-threatening poverty that only ended in the aftermath of World War II.
Back in 1930, general political wisdom had it that protectionism protected the whole economy. There was scant evidence for this. From Adam Smith on, the studied understanding of protectionism was that it helped some (generally richer) people at the expense of other (generally poorer) folks.
But protectionism did make a plausible surface sense, like the minimum wage does to so many, today. And remember, in those days of yore, economists had not yet been bought off by the lure of state power and the allure of political prestige, so, almost to a man, they opposed the bill.
Then and now, politicians hate listening to economists when it comes to resisting the in-crowd wisdom. Skepticism about protectionism? How un-American! Lincoln was for trade restrictions and the protective tariff! How dare you oppose Lincoln?
Just so, Democrats, today, think it bad form to be skeptical of Al Gore’s trendy hysteria. Besides, he does have an awful lot of scientists on his side.
Indeed, the president and his new guard love to talk of “science” as if the pronouncements of scientists were utterly immune from political pressure and economic enticement. The fact that those scientists are generally paid for with tax-supported research grants doesn’t faze today's political leaders. And yet how many of the president's men — or the current Congress — would buy the science supported by tobacco companies? How many would hesitate to dismiss science paid for by oil companies?
The double standard regarding the misapplication of science still leans to favor those who like to do “great things” in government, leaning the other way from those who proceed cautiously regarding intrusive regulation, taxation, and prohibitions.
We witnessed this in the 20th century. Think of all those economists who pretended they could guide the economy. Now we may be witnessing it in scientists who have pushed the Waxman-Markey monstrosity.
The parallels here are striking. Today's leaders in economics and finance, until about nine months ago, confidently thought they could predict the future and manage the economy and banish risk with an elaborate mathematical and statistical arsenal.
Just so do today's climate scientists aim to model the long-term trends of the global ecosystem. They pretend they can predict where the “tipping points” are, and tell us why, with an air of bracing certainty, we must stop increasing CO2 atmospheric production immediately.
In a mere decade, we have witnessed two financial bubbles, the tech bubble and the housing finance collapse. What's the next bubble to expand only to burst? Columnist Steve Christ thinks that the Waxman-Markey regime would create a cap-and-trade bubble.
For that to happen, we would need a compliant Federal Reserve, hell-bent on pumping up the funds to feed it. Alas, Ben Bernanke, fearing a Greater Depression, will likely prove more than willing.
But the next bubble to burst may be far more salutary. In a few years enough data may build up, at long last, to prick the climate catastrophism bubble. By this I mean “the science” of panicky predictions. Yes, “global warming” may soon become an international embarrassment. And then we will witness a whole lot of experts skulking off to write their next research grant proposal in a well-deserved ignominy.
I just hope this happens in time for a new Congress to repeal Waxman-Markey -- before its most burdensome caps kick in, ensuring a long, ugly life to our deepening depression.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The House just passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade carbon emissions control act. If it passes the Senate, expect the president — the bill’s pusher-in-chief — to sign it at first opportunity.
I have not read the bill, so I should not comment on it at length. But then, neither has any congressman read the now 1000-pages-and-plus wonder. So they should not have passed it.
We are supposed to believe it is a good bill because we must trust the congressional assistants who wrote it. If anything is a testament to “the power of belief” it's the enthusiasm for a bill that has not been read, much less understood.
One thing is certain: The cap-and-trade program will increase the cost of energy in the United States. It is essentially a big, fat tax increase on businesses and consumers . . . in the face of which, businesses and consumers will decrease activity, depressing the economy.
The White House and congressional leaders say the bill will create new “green” jobs. But increasing the cost of doing business does not spur employment in general. It will likely increase pressure to build plants and factories outside the U.S., and even the specific jobs created by such mandates tend to come at the expense of other jobs.
The most astute commentary on the bill, so far, rests on a comparison between today's darkening days and the darker days of the Great Depression, when that day's Congress and president rushed through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff . . . thereby digging the depression deeper, marching America into a scary, institution-threatening poverty that only ended in the aftermath of World War II.
Back in 1930, general political wisdom had it that protectionism protected the whole economy. There was scant evidence for this. From Adam Smith on, the studied understanding of protectionism was that it helped some (generally richer) people at the expense of other (generally poorer) folks.
But protectionism did make a plausible surface sense, like the minimum wage does to so many, today. And remember, in those days of yore, economists had not yet been bought off by the lure of state power and the allure of political prestige, so, almost to a man, they opposed the bill.
Then and now, politicians hate listening to economists when it comes to resisting the in-crowd wisdom. Skepticism about protectionism? How un-American! Lincoln was for trade restrictions and the protective tariff! How dare you oppose Lincoln?
Just so, Democrats, today, think it bad form to be skeptical of Al Gore’s trendy hysteria. Besides, he does have an awful lot of scientists on his side.
Indeed, the president and his new guard love to talk of “science” as if the pronouncements of scientists were utterly immune from political pressure and economic enticement. The fact that those scientists are generally paid for with tax-supported research grants doesn’t faze today's political leaders. And yet how many of the president's men — or the current Congress — would buy the science supported by tobacco companies? How many would hesitate to dismiss science paid for by oil companies?
The double standard regarding the misapplication of science still leans to favor those who like to do “great things” in government, leaning the other way from those who proceed cautiously regarding intrusive regulation, taxation, and prohibitions.
We witnessed this in the 20th century. Think of all those economists who pretended they could guide the economy. Now we may be witnessing it in scientists who have pushed the Waxman-Markey monstrosity.
The parallels here are striking. Today's leaders in economics and finance, until about nine months ago, confidently thought they could predict the future and manage the economy and banish risk with an elaborate mathematical and statistical arsenal.
Just so do today's climate scientists aim to model the long-term trends of the global ecosystem. They pretend they can predict where the “tipping points” are, and tell us why, with an air of bracing certainty, we must stop increasing CO2 atmospheric production immediately.
In a mere decade, we have witnessed two financial bubbles, the tech bubble and the housing finance collapse. What's the next bubble to expand only to burst? Columnist Steve Christ thinks that the Waxman-Markey regime would create a cap-and-trade bubble.
For that to happen, we would need a compliant Federal Reserve, hell-bent on pumping up the funds to feed it. Alas, Ben Bernanke, fearing a Greater Depression, will likely prove more than willing.
But the next bubble to burst may be far more salutary. In a few years enough data may build up, at long last, to prick the climate catastrophism bubble. By this I mean “the science” of panicky predictions. Yes, “global warming” may soon become an international embarrassment. And then we will witness a whole lot of experts skulking off to write their next research grant proposal in a well-deserved ignominy.
I just hope this happens in time for a new Congress to repeal Waxman-Markey -- before its most burdensome caps kick in, ensuring a long, ugly life to our deepening depression.
Little Boy Blue Devil
Mike Adams
Sunday, June 28, 2009
It looks like Duke University has another rape case on its hands. This one may hurt the university nearly as much as the one that rocked its campus back in 2006. Unlike the previous case, this one appears to involve a credible confession of sexual abuse. Like the previous case, crucial facts are already being filtered through the prism of identity politics.
Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.
University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.
If Lombard is convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. His arrest comes about a year after the Court decided that child rapists cannot be executed because “society” has “evolved” to the point where such executions would be “indecent.”
If this case goes to trial, it could be an interesting one to watch. But it will be just as interesting to watch the Duke faculty respond to these allegations. It didn’t take them long to respond when several white Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. A whopping 88 professors signed a statement accusing the players of both racism and rape. Such was their regard for the presumption of innocence.
Perhaps even more stunning was the response of some professors after it became apparent that the white lacrosse players were innocent. After that became so obvious the school had to readmit the students, Professor Kate Holloway resigned her committee assignments in protest. By the way, the most common form of faculty protest these days is to refuse to work. Most people think this kind of protest is caused by arrogance. But the actual cause is a thing called “tenure.”
So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard. Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn’t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?
Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name “cooper2” or “cooperse” logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.
The user name “cooper2” has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University’s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that “cooper2” has confessed to being “into incest” and that he has adopted two African American children.
The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard’s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard’s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child – sometimes even by drugging the child – to make sure his partner did not find out.
Records also indicate that Frank Lombard made a contribution to the Genesis Home in 2003. The Genesis Home is an organization that assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, in part by maintaining a child care center. The organization’s website features numerous photographs of African-American children under the age of ten.
The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.
I wrote this column because I believe that certain coalitions must be broken. And certain movements must be harmed. Let the political fallout begin.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
It looks like Duke University has another rape case on its hands. This one may hurt the university nearly as much as the one that rocked its campus back in 2006. Unlike the previous case, this one appears to involve a credible confession of sexual abuse. Like the previous case, crucial facts are already being filtered through the prism of identity politics.
Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.
University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.
If Lombard is convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. His arrest comes about a year after the Court decided that child rapists cannot be executed because “society” has “evolved” to the point where such executions would be “indecent.”
If this case goes to trial, it could be an interesting one to watch. But it will be just as interesting to watch the Duke faculty respond to these allegations. It didn’t take them long to respond when several white Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. A whopping 88 professors signed a statement accusing the players of both racism and rape. Such was their regard for the presumption of innocence.
Perhaps even more stunning was the response of some professors after it became apparent that the white lacrosse players were innocent. After that became so obvious the school had to readmit the students, Professor Kate Holloway resigned her committee assignments in protest. By the way, the most common form of faculty protest these days is to refuse to work. Most people think this kind of protest is caused by arrogance. But the actual cause is a thing called “tenure.”
So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard. Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn’t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?
Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name “cooper2” or “cooperse” logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.
The user name “cooper2” has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University’s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that “cooper2” has confessed to being “into incest” and that he has adopted two African American children.
The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard’s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard’s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child – sometimes even by drugging the child – to make sure his partner did not find out.
Records also indicate that Frank Lombard made a contribution to the Genesis Home in 2003. The Genesis Home is an organization that assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, in part by maintaining a child care center. The organization’s website features numerous photographs of African-American children under the age of ten.
The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.
I wrote this column because I believe that certain coalitions must be broken. And certain movements must be harmed. Let the political fallout begin.
Press draws first blood on their turf
Salena Zito
Sunday, June 28, 2009
President Barack Obama made news at a press conference last week – by planting a question with a blogger, not by offering anything new in spite of taking his sharpest questions to date.
The sharper edge of reporters’ questions had much to do with the setting, one White House press corps member said afterward: “It was our turf, in our seats … no formality of the East Room or even (the) Rose Garden. So I think when we're comfortable, we're more likely to fire back at him for follow-ups.”
Obama coming unarmed with news led to more probing, analytical-style questions which can always tie up presidents.
The planted query (the White House denies it being planted) came from Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney; an administration official phoned him ahead of time to suggest that Obama would take a particular question from him.
“Planted questions undermine the integrity of the process,” says Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University.
If the president wanted to offer a response to a communication from an Iranian citizen, Rozell explains, that would have been fine. “But citizens are led to believe that the questions in the press conferences are not known in advance by the president and his staff and that the process has some degree of spontaneity.”
To be sure, presidents and their staffs spend serious time anticipating likely questions and preparing answers. They have a really good record of being able to anticipate most of what a president is asked by reporters; not a lot of surprises occur.
Every so often, in response to an unanticipated question, a president will give a candid answer – and then the press conference becomes especially newsworthy.
But if “the questions are planted, then what is the point, really?” Rozell asks.
Presidential historian Joel Goldstein says the press should play an independent role and its independence is compromised if reporters simply serve up questions provided to them.
“I think there are real concerns regarding the future of the media,” he says. “Bloggers provide access to many (readers), yet much of what then passes for journalism lacks the professionalism of the good political reporters and columnists, whose experience provides a context in which to present current events.”
Part of the problem, though, is with Americans. Just look at our obsession this news cycle regarding the Gov. Mark Sanford story.
“Surely the Sanford story has many tragic dimensions, but was it really the most important story last week to justify the sort of coverage it got on CNN and MSNBC?” Goldstein wonders.
“For my money, the Senate's cloture vote on Harold Koh's nomination, Iran, health care, Korean threats, etc., will have more impact on our lives than the fact that yet another ‘family values’ politician has acted in a manner which is inconsistent with what he preaches.”
Villanova University’s Lara Brown offers two reasons why this particular press conference is just the beginning of what we can expect between the press and the president: Obama’s slipping popularity numbers, and the roughing-up of his policies on Capitol Hill.
Obama and his staff, she says, may be increasingly concerned about too many substantive questions from reporters who may smell blood.
Perhaps it is not so surprising that Team Obama might create a diversion at a press conference, to get everyone talking about the diversion instead of reporting on substantive issues – health care, energy, the economy, the budget deficit, Iran, the president's lack of engagement on many of these issues – that do not reflect well on Obama.
It’s a political strategy that can be summed up as “Look at my right hand, so you don't watch what my left one is doing.”
Remember that old song, “Smooth Operator?” Obama is just that – the smoothest operator that Purdue’s Rockman says he has ever seen.
While such tricks may not jeopardize a free press, Rockman is “worried about the decline of traditional media and reporters without axes to bear.
“There is no doubt that the ‘new media’ is actually leading us back to a 19th-century party-press, where we read only what we agree with,” he says. And that “is a genuine concern.”
Since last week’s press conference, three things have emerged that will probably change how Obama approaches a microphone.
First, there definitely will be more scrutiny of blogger questions from Obama-friendly websites. Second, since first-blood has been drawn, the press will engage in a frenzied feeding.
And third, that probably was the last time Obama will step to the podium without real news to take queries about.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
President Barack Obama made news at a press conference last week – by planting a question with a blogger, not by offering anything new in spite of taking his sharpest questions to date.
The sharper edge of reporters’ questions had much to do with the setting, one White House press corps member said afterward: “It was our turf, in our seats … no formality of the East Room or even (the) Rose Garden. So I think when we're comfortable, we're more likely to fire back at him for follow-ups.”
Obama coming unarmed with news led to more probing, analytical-style questions which can always tie up presidents.
The planted query (the White House denies it being planted) came from Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney; an administration official phoned him ahead of time to suggest that Obama would take a particular question from him.
“Planted questions undermine the integrity of the process,” says Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University.
If the president wanted to offer a response to a communication from an Iranian citizen, Rozell explains, that would have been fine. “But citizens are led to believe that the questions in the press conferences are not known in advance by the president and his staff and that the process has some degree of spontaneity.”
To be sure, presidents and their staffs spend serious time anticipating likely questions and preparing answers. They have a really good record of being able to anticipate most of what a president is asked by reporters; not a lot of surprises occur.
Every so often, in response to an unanticipated question, a president will give a candid answer – and then the press conference becomes especially newsworthy.
But if “the questions are planted, then what is the point, really?” Rozell asks.
Presidential historian Joel Goldstein says the press should play an independent role and its independence is compromised if reporters simply serve up questions provided to them.
“I think there are real concerns regarding the future of the media,” he says. “Bloggers provide access to many (readers), yet much of what then passes for journalism lacks the professionalism of the good political reporters and columnists, whose experience provides a context in which to present current events.”
Part of the problem, though, is with Americans. Just look at our obsession this news cycle regarding the Gov. Mark Sanford story.
“Surely the Sanford story has many tragic dimensions, but was it really the most important story last week to justify the sort of coverage it got on CNN and MSNBC?” Goldstein wonders.
“For my money, the Senate's cloture vote on Harold Koh's nomination, Iran, health care, Korean threats, etc., will have more impact on our lives than the fact that yet another ‘family values’ politician has acted in a manner which is inconsistent with what he preaches.”
Villanova University’s Lara Brown offers two reasons why this particular press conference is just the beginning of what we can expect between the press and the president: Obama’s slipping popularity numbers, and the roughing-up of his policies on Capitol Hill.
Obama and his staff, she says, may be increasingly concerned about too many substantive questions from reporters who may smell blood.
Perhaps it is not so surprising that Team Obama might create a diversion at a press conference, to get everyone talking about the diversion instead of reporting on substantive issues – health care, energy, the economy, the budget deficit, Iran, the president's lack of engagement on many of these issues – that do not reflect well on Obama.
It’s a political strategy that can be summed up as “Look at my right hand, so you don't watch what my left one is doing.”
Remember that old song, “Smooth Operator?” Obama is just that – the smoothest operator that Purdue’s Rockman says he has ever seen.
While such tricks may not jeopardize a free press, Rockman is “worried about the decline of traditional media and reporters without axes to bear.
“There is no doubt that the ‘new media’ is actually leading us back to a 19th-century party-press, where we read only what we agree with,” he says. And that “is a genuine concern.”
Since last week’s press conference, three things have emerged that will probably change how Obama approaches a microphone.
First, there definitely will be more scrutiny of blogger questions from Obama-friendly websites. Second, since first-blood has been drawn, the press will engage in a frenzied feeding.
And third, that probably was the last time Obama will step to the podium without real news to take queries about.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Darkness in Tehran
A loyalist discovers the horror of the regime.
By Joshua Muravchik
Friday, June 26, 2009
Mohsen Sazegara was one of the youngest figures near the helm of Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. Serving first as a press attaché to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his exile command center outside of Paris, Sazegara went on to hold a series of high positions in the early revolutionary government — chief of national radio, commander of the Revolutionary Guard, cabinet aide, and head of the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization — all while still in his twenties. However, he got caught in the wheels of internal power jockeying and was accused falsely of being a secret agent of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an Islamo-Marxist group that lost out to Khomeini for control of the new regime. Trying to clear his name, he agreed to surrender for interrogation.
Mohsen arrived early at Evin Prison, where he was blindfolded, although not handcuffed, and . . . led by the hand down a long and wide corridor. He could see from under the blindfold, and what he saw was “a very sad scene.” As they passed various interrogation rooms he heard shouting, and the corridor was lined with young male and female prisoners awaiting their turns. The young women looked particularly pitiful.
These frightened prisoners reminded him of the baby chicks he had raised in boyhood “when they get cold or become ill and they don’t move.” He recalls the feeling that came over him:
That evening one of the interrogators told him that he was going to be released “because your friends have lied to Imam Khomeini, but rest assured you will be back here. We’ll be waiting for you.” He was turned over to a guard who led him outside the building, where he was allowed to remove the blindfold, and suddenly roles seemed to revert to normal. As they waited for a car to the prison gate, the guard said, “Mr. Sazegara, I know you are the head of the automotive industries. I’m trying to buy a van. Can you help me?” Mohsen declined.
The next morning, Mohsen went directly to the office of Minister Nabavi, his friend and patron, to review the previous day’s events. Nabavi told him that he had enlisted the help of Ardebili, the head of the Judicial Authority, and that the two of them had won over Ahmad Khomeini, the usually hard-line son of the Imam, who in turn went to his father and secured an order for Mohsen’s release.
Mohsen told Nabavi of the disturbing things he had seen and heard in Evin. “I have to tell Ayatollah Khomeini what is going on,” he said. Nabavi phoned Ahmad Khomeini and asked if they could come to see his father, and somewhat to their surprise, they were given an appointment for later that morning at the Ayatollah’s home in Jamaran, a northern suburb of Tehran (where he had moved from the holy city of Qom).
They sat on the floor of a small drawing room. Mohsen was not on personal terms with him, but the Ayatollah remembered the devoted young man on his staff in Neauphle-le-Château. Mohsen recited his experience at Evin, stressing the words of the interrogator who acted as if he were God’s deputy. Mohsen felt tense and he thought that Khomeini, who listened carefully, seemed to grow tense, too. Then, as Mohsen reconstructs it, he concluded with a bold albeit respectful appeal: “Imam, I have followed you from Paris. If you agree with what Lajevardi is doing, please tell me. Then I will know that I made a mistake and I will resign my position and ask God to forgive me. And if you do not agree, why don’t you remove Lajevardi?” Khomeini did not respond. . . .
As they left, Mohsen and Nabavi shared their astonishment that Ahmad had gotten them the meeting with his father so promptly, since they believed Ahmad was Lajevardi’s sponsor. Apparently something was in the wind. Ardebili, the head of the Judicial Authority, had grown unhappy with Lajevardi. Ardebili was close to Khomeini, and Mohsen heard later that he had brought some other former prisoners to tell their tales to the Imam. A week or so later, Lajevardi was removed from his post.
This, however, was not enough to make Mohsen feel whole again. After what he had seen in Evin, Mohsen says:
By Joshua Muravchik
Friday, June 26, 2009
Mohsen Sazegara was one of the youngest figures near the helm of Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. Serving first as a press attaché to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his exile command center outside of Paris, Sazegara went on to hold a series of high positions in the early revolutionary government — chief of national radio, commander of the Revolutionary Guard, cabinet aide, and head of the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization — all while still in his twenties. However, he got caught in the wheels of internal power jockeying and was accused falsely of being a secret agent of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an Islamo-Marxist group that lost out to Khomeini for control of the new regime. Trying to clear his name, he agreed to surrender for interrogation.
Mohsen arrived early at Evin Prison, where he was blindfolded, although not handcuffed, and . . . led by the hand down a long and wide corridor. He could see from under the blindfold, and what he saw was “a very sad scene.” As they passed various interrogation rooms he heard shouting, and the corridor was lined with young male and female prisoners awaiting their turns. The young women looked particularly pitiful.
These frightened prisoners reminded him of the baby chicks he had raised in boyhood “when they get cold or become ill and they don’t move.” He recalls the feeling that came over him:
That was a turning point of my life. I said to myself, what is going on? Is this what we wanted to create — these prisoners, this atmosphere, that interrogator? I knew that I would be released because of pressure outside Evin. But what about these young people?Now he wondered if all the terrible things he had heard were indeed accurate. Then he witnessed something that chilled him to the bone:
I had heard several things about tortures, killings, executions. I had told myself that the opposition groups exaggerate. Lajevardi [the warden of Evin] is cruel but not that cruel.
While I was looking at that sad scene, an interrogator came out from one of the rooms and shouted, “Guard, come take this [bitch] to be beaten more; more lashes.” She was young and blindfolded, and she started to cry. I heard her say, “I cannot bear more lashes.” And the interrogator said . . . “Hah, you cannot tolerate a few lashes in this room? How can you tolerate the God’s eternal punishment? In the next life you will be in hell.” And they took her away.Mohsen recalls, “That really shocked me. I asked myself, ‘Who persuaded this interrogator that he is an agent of God?’ A person who believes he has a mission from God can easily torture, kill, or do anything.”
That evening one of the interrogators told him that he was going to be released “because your friends have lied to Imam Khomeini, but rest assured you will be back here. We’ll be waiting for you.” He was turned over to a guard who led him outside the building, where he was allowed to remove the blindfold, and suddenly roles seemed to revert to normal. As they waited for a car to the prison gate, the guard said, “Mr. Sazegara, I know you are the head of the automotive industries. I’m trying to buy a van. Can you help me?” Mohsen declined.
The next morning, Mohsen went directly to the office of Minister Nabavi, his friend and patron, to review the previous day’s events. Nabavi told him that he had enlisted the help of Ardebili, the head of the Judicial Authority, and that the two of them had won over Ahmad Khomeini, the usually hard-line son of the Imam, who in turn went to his father and secured an order for Mohsen’s release.
Mohsen told Nabavi of the disturbing things he had seen and heard in Evin. “I have to tell Ayatollah Khomeini what is going on,” he said. Nabavi phoned Ahmad Khomeini and asked if they could come to see his father, and somewhat to their surprise, they were given an appointment for later that morning at the Ayatollah’s home in Jamaran, a northern suburb of Tehran (where he had moved from the holy city of Qom).
They sat on the floor of a small drawing room. Mohsen was not on personal terms with him, but the Ayatollah remembered the devoted young man on his staff in Neauphle-le-Château. Mohsen recited his experience at Evin, stressing the words of the interrogator who acted as if he were God’s deputy. Mohsen felt tense and he thought that Khomeini, who listened carefully, seemed to grow tense, too. Then, as Mohsen reconstructs it, he concluded with a bold albeit respectful appeal: “Imam, I have followed you from Paris. If you agree with what Lajevardi is doing, please tell me. Then I will know that I made a mistake and I will resign my position and ask God to forgive me. And if you do not agree, why don’t you remove Lajevardi?” Khomeini did not respond. . . .
As they left, Mohsen and Nabavi shared their astonishment that Ahmad had gotten them the meeting with his father so promptly, since they believed Ahmad was Lajevardi’s sponsor. Apparently something was in the wind. Ardebili, the head of the Judicial Authority, had grown unhappy with Lajevardi. Ardebili was close to Khomeini, and Mohsen heard later that he had brought some other former prisoners to tell their tales to the Imam. A week or so later, Lajevardi was removed from his post.
This, however, was not enough to make Mohsen feel whole again. After what he had seen in Evin, Mohsen says:
Something was broken inside me, and I was not the same person. Put it this way: You have raised a child and you like him very much. But one day, you see that he is doing something very bad, a crime. Something will break inside you. Still, you love him; this is your son. But you do not like what he is doing. I had such a feeling. I still loved the revolution. I was about 30 years old. I had spent so far 13 years of my life from early morning until late at night on it. And I really loved the movement that we made, that great victory. But now, I did not like that face of the revolution, the face of this new child.Mohsen . . . submitted his resignation, . . . signing on as an adviser to a few companies. Altogether this work required about 25 hours a week, and most of the rest of his hours he spent reading, or rather rereading. He began with the works of Ayatollah Khomeini, at the center of which lay the theory of Velayat-e Faqih, the rule of the religious jurisprudent. Mohsen recalls:
Now, I began to believe many things that I had heard. Before that, I told myself, “No, they are exaggerating.” But now, I believed everything.
When I read that book the first time, I was 20. I did not notice the main idea of Ayatollah Khomeini. What was wonderful for me was his language against the U.S., the Shah, and Israel. This time, I did not care about the slogans. I was looking for the main ideas. And I said to myself, “Wow, what kind of political philosophy is this? So much authority for one person without any control, and a divine mission. This is despotism.”It was, moreover, a despotism whose scowl Mohsen realized he had seen with his own eyes on the face of the heartless interrogator who thought he was acting for God when he ordered more lashes.
Diplomacy: The Art of Saying "Nice Doggie" Until You Find a Rock
Nick Nichols
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Just when I thought that those in Congress responsible for the collapse of the housing market had diverted their attention to the destruction of other sectors of our free market economy (health care and energy), up pops Barney Frank and his trusty sidekick, Anthony Weiner. Turns out, they are once again pressuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards on loans for new condominiums.
That is right folks, socialist hot dogs, Frank and Weiner, are at it again. According to the Wall Street Journal (a publication that can still be called a newspaper), the two democrat lawmakers have sent a letter to Fannie and Freddie claiming that the government sponsored enterprises should “make appropriate adjustments,” because the new, tighter standards for condo loans “may be too onerous.”
Frank is chairman of the House Financial Service Committee, so when a lender, bank or government bureaucrat receives a Barney-gram, those folks pay attention. Apparently, Freddie and Fannie are preparing a response.
I am waiting for the second dog to bite. Specifically, I am concerned that private sector lenders (those who are still in business) might once again pose for “Corporate Social Responsibility” holy pictures and start making junk loans that will cause yet another housing market crash down the road.
Now this may shock the reader, however, my recommendation to Freddie, Fannie and the private sector moneylenders is that they respond to Frank and Weiner with diplomacy. My favorite definition of diplomacy is from Wynn Catlin who wrote that, “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ till you can find a rock.”
I am not suggesting that we start stoning the socialist dim-wits on Capitol Hill—yet. I am suggesting that any response that goes beyond a simple “nice doggie,” deserves the condemnation of everyone who has been harmed by the absolute disaster that Barney and his buddies in Congress perpetrated on those of us who pay our mortgages and our taxes, and don’t expect the government to bail us out.
The public opinion research firm, Rasmussen Reports, just released a new survey showing that 74% of Americans “trust their own judgment more than that of the average member of Congress when it comes to economic issues facing the nation.” According to the research, only 13% trust the likes of Weiner and Frank, and I can only assume that the other 13% were sleep walking during the interview.
Barney and Anthony, take a cue from Rasmussen Reports. Leave us alone. Fly off to Argentina, we might even pay for your one-way tickets.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Just when I thought that those in Congress responsible for the collapse of the housing market had diverted their attention to the destruction of other sectors of our free market economy (health care and energy), up pops Barney Frank and his trusty sidekick, Anthony Weiner. Turns out, they are once again pressuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards on loans for new condominiums.
That is right folks, socialist hot dogs, Frank and Weiner, are at it again. According to the Wall Street Journal (a publication that can still be called a newspaper), the two democrat lawmakers have sent a letter to Fannie and Freddie claiming that the government sponsored enterprises should “make appropriate adjustments,” because the new, tighter standards for condo loans “may be too onerous.”
Frank is chairman of the House Financial Service Committee, so when a lender, bank or government bureaucrat receives a Barney-gram, those folks pay attention. Apparently, Freddie and Fannie are preparing a response.
I am waiting for the second dog to bite. Specifically, I am concerned that private sector lenders (those who are still in business) might once again pose for “Corporate Social Responsibility” holy pictures and start making junk loans that will cause yet another housing market crash down the road.
Now this may shock the reader, however, my recommendation to Freddie, Fannie and the private sector moneylenders is that they respond to Frank and Weiner with diplomacy. My favorite definition of diplomacy is from Wynn Catlin who wrote that, “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ till you can find a rock.”
I am not suggesting that we start stoning the socialist dim-wits on Capitol Hill—yet. I am suggesting that any response that goes beyond a simple “nice doggie,” deserves the condemnation of everyone who has been harmed by the absolute disaster that Barney and his buddies in Congress perpetrated on those of us who pay our mortgages and our taxes, and don’t expect the government to bail us out.
The public opinion research firm, Rasmussen Reports, just released a new survey showing that 74% of Americans “trust their own judgment more than that of the average member of Congress when it comes to economic issues facing the nation.” According to the research, only 13% trust the likes of Weiner and Frank, and I can only assume that the other 13% were sleep walking during the interview.
Barney and Anthony, take a cue from Rasmussen Reports. Leave us alone. Fly off to Argentina, we might even pay for your one-way tickets.
Reading ObamaCare Bill Endangers Human Health
Fiscal responsibility be damned!
By Deroy Murdock
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Betsy McCaughey reads massive healthcare bills so you don’t have to.
New York’s former lieutenant governor, now chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, fired the torpedo that ultimately sank HillaryCare. While the sheer girth of that 1,431-page legislative juggernaut intimidated nearly everyone, McCaughey devoured it. Her resulting January 1994 New Republic article, “No Exit,” unmasked HillaryCare’s previously overlooked warts and sores. The horror that McCaughey revealed eventually spelled that initiative’s doom.
McCaughey has done it again. In a June 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed, she dissected the 615-page draft of Ted Kennedy’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill is, essentially, the Senate’s version of ObamaCare. McCaughey’s “light reading” is scarier than Stephen King.
- Congruent with the socialist zeitgeist of the Bush-Obama years, pages 10 and 11 empower the Health and Human Services secretary to compel insurers to pay their customers rebates on their premiums based on “a percentage that the Secretary shall by regulation determine . . . ” This amount would reflect aggregated expenses on non-claims costs exceeding industry averages. Thus, the HHS secretary may determine health-insurance companies’ profit margins.
- Rather than simply compensate physicians for delivering medically necessary or advisable services, page 58 creates a bureaucratic “payment structure” that provides “increased reimbursement or other incentives,” including “effective case management” and “medication and care compliance initiatives.”
- This bill establishes “Shared Responsibility Payments” — surely the greatest euphemism ever for a far uglier word: “Tax.” Pages 104 and 105 amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, such that anyone lacking “qualifying coverage” for any month in any tax year will face “tax liability” of “an amount equal to an amount” that the HHS secretary decrees is “the minimum practicable amount that can accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage.” Oddly enough, these new taxes would not apply to anyone “who is an enrolled member of a federally recognized Indian tribe (as defined in section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act).”
- While touting health-care reform as a vital measure to which every American has a God-given right, Kennedy’s elaborate new medical scheme includes a trap door through which members of Congress may slither away after dark. On page 114, it defines “qualified individuals” who must obey this law. Among them are those ineligible for the generous and choice-rich Federal Employee Health Benefits Program. This excludes current and retired members of Congress. How convenient!
Self-important Democrats handle Americans the way dog owners treat their pets — steak for Daddy and Alpo for Duke — only without the underlying love.
- Page 118 targets $33.95 billion to treat the “special medically underserved population,” including the homeless, public-housing residents, and “migratory and seasonal agricultural workers.” How much of this money will wind up treating illegal aliens?
- Page 353 calls for a new Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund budgeted at $10 billion per year through “fiscal year 2020, and each fiscal year thereafter.” Moreover, these sums “shall not be taken into account for purposes of any budget enforcement procedures including allocations under section 302(a) and (b) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act and budget resolutions for fiscal years during which appropriations are made from the Investment Fund.” In short, this creates yet another off-budget item that cannot be cut, and with no attendant revenue source. The proposed Retiree Reserve Trust Fund and CLASS Independence Fund also would sit “off budget” as brand-new, untouchable, unfunded liabilities. Fiscal responsibility be damned!
- While perusing this bill online, the names of brand-new commissions, councils, and other bureaucracies virtually cascaded from my computer screen. Among them:
— Affordable Health Benefit Gateways (one per state)
— American Health Benefit Gateway
— Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation
— CLASS Independence Advisory Council
— Commission on Key National Indicators
— Community Preventive Services Task Force
— Coordinating Committee on Women’s Health
— Federally Qualified Health Centers
— Health Care Program Integrity Coordinating Council
— Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality
— Medical Advisory Council
— National Center for Health Workforce Analysis
— National Clearinghouse for Long-Term Care Information
— National Committee for Quality Assurance
— National Coordinator for Health Technology
— National Health Care Workforce Commission
— National Health Service Corps
— National Oral Health Surveillance System
— National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council
— National Women’s Health Information Center
— Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
— Office of Women’s Health and Gender-Based Research
— Office on Women’s Health
— Patient Safety Research Center
— Personal Care Attendants Workforce Advisory Panel
— Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund
— Preventive Services Task Force
— Ready Reserve Corps
— Shared Decision Making Resource Centers
Before America steps an inch closer to nationalized medicine, lawmakers and citizens alike should follow Betsy McCaughey’s lead and read this bill. Meanwhile, about the best one can say for Ted Kennedy’s $1 trillion incarnation of ObamaCare is that House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $3.47 trillion version is even worse.
By Deroy Murdock
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Betsy McCaughey reads massive healthcare bills so you don’t have to.
New York’s former lieutenant governor, now chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, fired the torpedo that ultimately sank HillaryCare. While the sheer girth of that 1,431-page legislative juggernaut intimidated nearly everyone, McCaughey devoured it. Her resulting January 1994 New Republic article, “No Exit,” unmasked HillaryCare’s previously overlooked warts and sores. The horror that McCaughey revealed eventually spelled that initiative’s doom.
McCaughey has done it again. In a June 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed, she dissected the 615-page draft of Ted Kennedy’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill is, essentially, the Senate’s version of ObamaCare. McCaughey’s “light reading” is scarier than Stephen King.
- Congruent with the socialist zeitgeist of the Bush-Obama years, pages 10 and 11 empower the Health and Human Services secretary to compel insurers to pay their customers rebates on their premiums based on “a percentage that the Secretary shall by regulation determine . . . ” This amount would reflect aggregated expenses on non-claims costs exceeding industry averages. Thus, the HHS secretary may determine health-insurance companies’ profit margins.
- Rather than simply compensate physicians for delivering medically necessary or advisable services, page 58 creates a bureaucratic “payment structure” that provides “increased reimbursement or other incentives,” including “effective case management” and “medication and care compliance initiatives.”
- This bill establishes “Shared Responsibility Payments” — surely the greatest euphemism ever for a far uglier word: “Tax.” Pages 104 and 105 amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, such that anyone lacking “qualifying coverage” for any month in any tax year will face “tax liability” of “an amount equal to an amount” that the HHS secretary decrees is “the minimum practicable amount that can accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage.” Oddly enough, these new taxes would not apply to anyone “who is an enrolled member of a federally recognized Indian tribe (as defined in section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act).”
- While touting health-care reform as a vital measure to which every American has a God-given right, Kennedy’s elaborate new medical scheme includes a trap door through which members of Congress may slither away after dark. On page 114, it defines “qualified individuals” who must obey this law. Among them are those ineligible for the generous and choice-rich Federal Employee Health Benefits Program. This excludes current and retired members of Congress. How convenient!
Self-important Democrats handle Americans the way dog owners treat their pets — steak for Daddy and Alpo for Duke — only without the underlying love.
- Page 118 targets $33.95 billion to treat the “special medically underserved population,” including the homeless, public-housing residents, and “migratory and seasonal agricultural workers.” How much of this money will wind up treating illegal aliens?
- Page 353 calls for a new Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund budgeted at $10 billion per year through “fiscal year 2020, and each fiscal year thereafter.” Moreover, these sums “shall not be taken into account for purposes of any budget enforcement procedures including allocations under section 302(a) and (b) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act and budget resolutions for fiscal years during which appropriations are made from the Investment Fund.” In short, this creates yet another off-budget item that cannot be cut, and with no attendant revenue source. The proposed Retiree Reserve Trust Fund and CLASS Independence Fund also would sit “off budget” as brand-new, untouchable, unfunded liabilities. Fiscal responsibility be damned!
- While perusing this bill online, the names of brand-new commissions, councils, and other bureaucracies virtually cascaded from my computer screen. Among them:
— Affordable Health Benefit Gateways (one per state)
— American Health Benefit Gateway
— Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation
— CLASS Independence Advisory Council
— Commission on Key National Indicators
— Community Preventive Services Task Force
— Coordinating Committee on Women’s Health
— Federally Qualified Health Centers
— Health Care Program Integrity Coordinating Council
— Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality
— Medical Advisory Council
— National Center for Health Workforce Analysis
— National Clearinghouse for Long-Term Care Information
— National Committee for Quality Assurance
— National Coordinator for Health Technology
— National Health Care Workforce Commission
— National Health Service Corps
— National Oral Health Surveillance System
— National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council
— National Women’s Health Information Center
— Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
— Office of Women’s Health and Gender-Based Research
— Office on Women’s Health
— Patient Safety Research Center
— Personal Care Attendants Workforce Advisory Panel
— Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund
— Preventive Services Task Force
— Ready Reserve Corps
— Shared Decision Making Resource Centers
Before America steps an inch closer to nationalized medicine, lawmakers and citizens alike should follow Betsy McCaughey’s lead and read this bill. Meanwhile, about the best one can say for Ted Kennedy’s $1 trillion incarnation of ObamaCare is that House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $3.47 trillion version is even worse.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Endless Love
Concubines who say they’re merely highly compensated conversationalists.
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, June 26, 2009
Huzzah! Thanks to a few pointed questions from the press corps at a White House news conference, the long Obama captivity of the media is at an end. The Hotline, an inside-the-Beltway tip sheet, proclaimed June 23 “The Day the Love Ended.”
The New York Daily News’s Michael Goodwin celebrates the press corps’s ability to channel the mood of the country: “By peppering the President with forceful questions . . . and by challenging some of his slippery answers, reporters captured the changing tone in the country. Like the end of a real honeymoon, blind infatuation is giving way to a more accurate view of reality.”
“The press corps gets it,” Goodwin writes. “For Obama, the hard part begins now.”
Swamis and carnival contortionists who can fit their bodies into Happy Meal boxes could learn something from the press about flexibility, given its ability to effortlessly pat its own back.
Silly me, I thought the main job of the press was to challenge slippery answers and ask tough questions, not to do that only when it helps “capture a tone.”
But what truly confuses me is how a few tough questions make up for months of forehead-scraping obeisance to The One. Suddenly these half-dozen reporters are media redeemers? “They Asked Tough Questions for Our Sins.”
Indeed, shouldn’t this be a moment for reflection on how bad the press has been until now? Instead of “The Honeymoon Is Over,” why isn’t the headline, “Handful of Reporters Make Colleagues Look Like Chumps”?
A week ago, CNN, the Washington Post, and other major news outlets covered Obama’s killing of a fly as if it was a major news event. (At least when the Russian press similarly gushes over Vladimir Putin, he’s karate-chopping cinderblocks in half.)
The good news: More photo-ops are coming, because the White House apparently has a major fly problem. I know that because I read the New York Times’s flood-the-zone coverage.
As Kool Aid–allergic columnist Robert Samuelson has noted, such sycophancy is a serious public-policy problem because the president is proposing a radical overhaul of pretty much everything, and for the most part the press hasn’t cared that his explanations are iffier than gas-station sushi and his assurances are more dubious than a North Korean press release. Obama’s ongoing promise that he’s “creating or saving” jobs is as plausible as the chess-team captain’s claim that his supermodel girlfriend can’t fly down from Canada for the prom.
Maybe the fly infestation at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has something to do with the fact that the White House is a central hub of bovine manure distribution?
I can’t remember: Was it Shirley Temple or Keyser Söze who said the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist? It doesn’t matter. But I do think of that line whenever I hear liberals claim the press isn’t biased.
For instance, Dan Rather famously insisted media bias was a “myth,” even after he paid blind Bulgarian orthodontists to officially verify those blockbuster National Guard memos written in fingerpaint. Okay, that’s not exactly how it went down. But as Dan might say, my version is fake but accurate.
Of course, the deniers never convinced anyone. Poll after poll reveals that four out of five dentists agree the press tilts to the Left, if by “four out of five dentists” you mean the majority of Americans, and by “tilts” you mean leans leftward like a one-legged ensign on the USS Enterprise after the port nacelle has been blown to bits by Klingons.
But denial still has its advantages. It allows concubines to say they’re merely highly compensated conversationalists. For the press, it allows them to act on their own prejudices and call it “news judgment.” Alas, were it not for the fact that Oprah already has a magazine called O, this same news judgment would have resulted in Newsweek changing its name to better reflect its status as the official tribute album of the Obama years (long may He reign). Subscribe now and get your free plate from the Franklin Mint.
Denial doesn’t need much to sustain itself. A little convenient corroboration goes a long way. A dieter drops a few pounds and then feels justified in eating a dumpster load of Cheetos. The press has a nice moment, suddenly all is forgiven and forgotten and they go back on their merry way.
If the honeymoon ended Tuesday, the vows were renewed Wednesday when ABC News staged an infomerical on socialized medicine from the White House. ABC was tough, though. It opted not to hand out commemorative plates.
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, June 26, 2009
Huzzah! Thanks to a few pointed questions from the press corps at a White House news conference, the long Obama captivity of the media is at an end. The Hotline, an inside-the-Beltway tip sheet, proclaimed June 23 “The Day the Love Ended.”
The New York Daily News’s Michael Goodwin celebrates the press corps’s ability to channel the mood of the country: “By peppering the President with forceful questions . . . and by challenging some of his slippery answers, reporters captured the changing tone in the country. Like the end of a real honeymoon, blind infatuation is giving way to a more accurate view of reality.”
“The press corps gets it,” Goodwin writes. “For Obama, the hard part begins now.”
Swamis and carnival contortionists who can fit their bodies into Happy Meal boxes could learn something from the press about flexibility, given its ability to effortlessly pat its own back.
Silly me, I thought the main job of the press was to challenge slippery answers and ask tough questions, not to do that only when it helps “capture a tone.”
But what truly confuses me is how a few tough questions make up for months of forehead-scraping obeisance to The One. Suddenly these half-dozen reporters are media redeemers? “They Asked Tough Questions for Our Sins.”
Indeed, shouldn’t this be a moment for reflection on how bad the press has been until now? Instead of “The Honeymoon Is Over,” why isn’t the headline, “Handful of Reporters Make Colleagues Look Like Chumps”?
A week ago, CNN, the Washington Post, and other major news outlets covered Obama’s killing of a fly as if it was a major news event. (At least when the Russian press similarly gushes over Vladimir Putin, he’s karate-chopping cinderblocks in half.)
The good news: More photo-ops are coming, because the White House apparently has a major fly problem. I know that because I read the New York Times’s flood-the-zone coverage.
As Kool Aid–allergic columnist Robert Samuelson has noted, such sycophancy is a serious public-policy problem because the president is proposing a radical overhaul of pretty much everything, and for the most part the press hasn’t cared that his explanations are iffier than gas-station sushi and his assurances are more dubious than a North Korean press release. Obama’s ongoing promise that he’s “creating or saving” jobs is as plausible as the chess-team captain’s claim that his supermodel girlfriend can’t fly down from Canada for the prom.
Maybe the fly infestation at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has something to do with the fact that the White House is a central hub of bovine manure distribution?
I can’t remember: Was it Shirley Temple or Keyser Söze who said the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist? It doesn’t matter. But I do think of that line whenever I hear liberals claim the press isn’t biased.
For instance, Dan Rather famously insisted media bias was a “myth,” even after he paid blind Bulgarian orthodontists to officially verify those blockbuster National Guard memos written in fingerpaint. Okay, that’s not exactly how it went down. But as Dan might say, my version is fake but accurate.
Of course, the deniers never convinced anyone. Poll after poll reveals that four out of five dentists agree the press tilts to the Left, if by “four out of five dentists” you mean the majority of Americans, and by “tilts” you mean leans leftward like a one-legged ensign on the USS Enterprise after the port nacelle has been blown to bits by Klingons.
But denial still has its advantages. It allows concubines to say they’re merely highly compensated conversationalists. For the press, it allows them to act on their own prejudices and call it “news judgment.” Alas, were it not for the fact that Oprah already has a magazine called O, this same news judgment would have resulted in Newsweek changing its name to better reflect its status as the official tribute album of the Obama years (long may He reign). Subscribe now and get your free plate from the Franklin Mint.
Denial doesn’t need much to sustain itself. A little convenient corroboration goes a long way. A dieter drops a few pounds and then feels justified in eating a dumpster load of Cheetos. The press has a nice moment, suddenly all is forgiven and forgotten and they go back on their merry way.
If the honeymoon ended Tuesday, the vows were renewed Wednesday when ABC News staged an infomerical on socialized medicine from the White House. ABC was tough, though. It opted not to hand out commemorative plates.
Pop Star, Pin Up... Moron
Rich Galen
Friday, June 26, 2009
I was never a big fan of Michael Jackson. I don't mean personally. Personally, I think he should have been institutionalized. I mean I was never a huge fan of his music. The last live concert I went to was a reunion of the Limeliters and the Kingston Trio which, I believe, was "Presented by Depends".
Which is another reason why I never get invited out much.
As for Farrah Fawcett, I never watched "Charlie's Angels" but any normally aspirated male couldn't help but take a second peek at that poster of her in that red one-piece swimsuit. She was an oddity in Hollywood: A pin-up girl, who worked on her art to become a real actor.
Ms. Fawcett was 62 when she died. Mr. Jackson was 50. In this day and age, both were too young.
We spend too much time and effort, and sacrifice way too many trees when celebrities die, or when celebrities split up. Or when … they run off to Argentina.
If he hasn't already done it by the time you read this, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford should resign. If not for infidelity, then for abject stupidity.
Here's a good rule: If you are elected Governor of a State within the United States of America, and you are married, you should take a personal vow of faithfulness during your term of office.
If you don't believe me, ask Elliot Spitzer.
I know MULLINGS readers think that Republicans are treated more harshly than Democrats when they get caught with women who are not related to them by marriage. But, Elliot Spitzer - a Democrat - lasted as Governor of New York for about 48 hours after he got caught with a hooker at the Mayflower Hotel in Your Nation's Capital.
Former Senator and Presidential hopeful John Edwards will never be elected to public office again.
South Carolina Govenor Mark Sanford disappeared last week. His staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail to clear his head after a grueling legislative session.
Yeah. Right.
Turns out he was clearing his head in Buenos Aires, Argentina with his honey of a number of years. Sanford's wife had already thrown him out of the house because she knew about the affair, and somehow or another Sanford's e-mails with the woman, who has been ID'd as Maria Belen Chapur, are now in the public domain.
Apparently "The State" newspaper in South Carolina has had these e-mails for about six months but the editors decided they couldn't decide whether they were legit or not until Sanford took his viaje secreto to Argentina.
The question you might be asking is: How do these morons think they are going to get away with this kind of behavior?
The answer is: We only know about the ones who get caught. We have no idea how many hundreds of Members of the House and Senate - of both genders - have strayed, as we like to say, outside the bounds of matrimony.
But, if you are an elected official and you do get caught you have to pay a penalty. Spitzer resigned. Sanford should. U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada lost his leadership position in the Senate Republican Conference after he admitted, earlier this week, to boinking a staffer.
If anything good comes out of the Mark Sanford business maybe it will be this: It is well past time that the Republican Party needs to hold itself out as the nation's scold.
While it is perfectly within the realm of politics in American to do the "shame-shame" sign when someone in public office of either party gets caught playing out their fantasies, it is not the job of a political party to act like elders in a Puritan church wielding a birch rod when they catch anyone misbehaving - like nodding off during the sermon.
Missourian Scott Charton, sent me a Facebook message last night which said: Sanford's staff misunderstood the Governor. They thought he said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He had said he was tracking some Argentinean tail.
Once an AP bureau chief, always and AP bureau chief.
Friday, June 26, 2009
I was never a big fan of Michael Jackson. I don't mean personally. Personally, I think he should have been institutionalized. I mean I was never a huge fan of his music. The last live concert I went to was a reunion of the Limeliters and the Kingston Trio which, I believe, was "Presented by Depends".
Which is another reason why I never get invited out much.
As for Farrah Fawcett, I never watched "Charlie's Angels" but any normally aspirated male couldn't help but take a second peek at that poster of her in that red one-piece swimsuit. She was an oddity in Hollywood: A pin-up girl, who worked on her art to become a real actor.
Ms. Fawcett was 62 when she died. Mr. Jackson was 50. In this day and age, both were too young.
We spend too much time and effort, and sacrifice way too many trees when celebrities die, or when celebrities split up. Or when … they run off to Argentina.
If he hasn't already done it by the time you read this, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford should resign. If not for infidelity, then for abject stupidity.
Here's a good rule: If you are elected Governor of a State within the United States of America, and you are married, you should take a personal vow of faithfulness during your term of office.
If you don't believe me, ask Elliot Spitzer.
I know MULLINGS readers think that Republicans are treated more harshly than Democrats when they get caught with women who are not related to them by marriage. But, Elliot Spitzer - a Democrat - lasted as Governor of New York for about 48 hours after he got caught with a hooker at the Mayflower Hotel in Your Nation's Capital.
Former Senator and Presidential hopeful John Edwards will never be elected to public office again.
South Carolina Govenor Mark Sanford disappeared last week. His staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail to clear his head after a grueling legislative session.
Yeah. Right.
Turns out he was clearing his head in Buenos Aires, Argentina with his honey of a number of years. Sanford's wife had already thrown him out of the house because she knew about the affair, and somehow or another Sanford's e-mails with the woman, who has been ID'd as Maria Belen Chapur, are now in the public domain.
Apparently "The State" newspaper in South Carolina has had these e-mails for about six months but the editors decided they couldn't decide whether they were legit or not until Sanford took his viaje secreto to Argentina.
The question you might be asking is: How do these morons think they are going to get away with this kind of behavior?
The answer is: We only know about the ones who get caught. We have no idea how many hundreds of Members of the House and Senate - of both genders - have strayed, as we like to say, outside the bounds of matrimony.
But, if you are an elected official and you do get caught you have to pay a penalty. Spitzer resigned. Sanford should. U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada lost his leadership position in the Senate Republican Conference after he admitted, earlier this week, to boinking a staffer.
If anything good comes out of the Mark Sanford business maybe it will be this: It is well past time that the Republican Party needs to hold itself out as the nation's scold.
While it is perfectly within the realm of politics in American to do the "shame-shame" sign when someone in public office of either party gets caught playing out their fantasies, it is not the job of a political party to act like elders in a Puritan church wielding a birch rod when they catch anyone misbehaving - like nodding off during the sermon.
Missourian Scott Charton, sent me a Facebook message last night which said: Sanford's staff misunderstood the Governor. They thought he said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He had said he was tracking some Argentinean tail.
Once an AP bureau chief, always and AP bureau chief.
Liberals Don't Need No Stinking Principles!
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, June 26, 2009
I often find myself thinking that if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
Consider the uproar from the left when Don Imus opened his silly yap about the black women on the Rutgers basketball team. Now compare that to their response when David Letterman made his smarmy cracks about Sarah Palin and the governor’s 14-year-old daughter. The liberals immediately sprang to his defense, pointing out that Letterman is nothing more than a TV personality and is therefore free to make offensive jokes without fear of censure. So what do they think Don Imus is? The Secretary of State?
Or consider how choleric those on the left become any time that Dick Cheney defends the former administration. Well, if Obama and his cronies didn’t constantly attack Bush and Cheney and their policies, the chances are the ex-vice president wouldn’t feel compelled to set the record straight. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter never stopped bashing George Bush during the eight years he was the president, and yet nobody on the left ever suggested he shut up. On the contrary, he was hailed at the 2004 Democratic convention, and even had the honor of being seated next to the patron saint of left-wingers, Michael Moore. Speaking of Carter, how is it that he, who is always volunteering to monitor elections anywhere on earth, including the Westminster Dog Show, wasn’t in Iran, making sure that Ahmadinejad got 110% of the vote?
Liberals never got tired of telling us how much George Bush was despised by those in other countries, although, for the record, I kept asking the loons to name those countries, but could never prompt a response. I assume even they were too embarrassed to mention Iran, North Korea, China, Yemen and Russia. Instead, they kept insisting that America should be more like Europe. Inasmuch as conservative politicians are winning elections in England and all over the continent these days, the people finally waking up to the unmitigated disaster socialism is, I could now join in the chorus. But, of course, so far as leftists are concerned, I’d now be singing a solo.
I have to wonder, though, how much non-Muslim nations trust our current president. It’s one thing, after all, to travel to other countries and talk a lot of diplomatic flapdoodle, but when Barack Obama takes every opportunity to tell the world how awful we are -- or at least how awful we were until he got elected -- it has to make people wonder if, like his missus, he had never been proud of America prior to his canonization by the media.
It doesn’t make things a lot better when he makes obviously foolish remarks, such as insisting that the U.S. is one of the largest Muslim nations, and that Muslims played a major role in the creation of our republic.
That one really had me reeling, so I went back to my trusty old history book and looked it up and, sure enough, he was correct. Right there in black and white, I discovered that among the most influential of the Founding Fathers were Abdullah Washington, Mahmoud Adams and Osama bin Jefferson.
Friday, June 26, 2009
I often find myself thinking that if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
Consider the uproar from the left when Don Imus opened his silly yap about the black women on the Rutgers basketball team. Now compare that to their response when David Letterman made his smarmy cracks about Sarah Palin and the governor’s 14-year-old daughter. The liberals immediately sprang to his defense, pointing out that Letterman is nothing more than a TV personality and is therefore free to make offensive jokes without fear of censure. So what do they think Don Imus is? The Secretary of State?
Or consider how choleric those on the left become any time that Dick Cheney defends the former administration. Well, if Obama and his cronies didn’t constantly attack Bush and Cheney and their policies, the chances are the ex-vice president wouldn’t feel compelled to set the record straight. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter never stopped bashing George Bush during the eight years he was the president, and yet nobody on the left ever suggested he shut up. On the contrary, he was hailed at the 2004 Democratic convention, and even had the honor of being seated next to the patron saint of left-wingers, Michael Moore. Speaking of Carter, how is it that he, who is always volunteering to monitor elections anywhere on earth, including the Westminster Dog Show, wasn’t in Iran, making sure that Ahmadinejad got 110% of the vote?
Liberals never got tired of telling us how much George Bush was despised by those in other countries, although, for the record, I kept asking the loons to name those countries, but could never prompt a response. I assume even they were too embarrassed to mention Iran, North Korea, China, Yemen and Russia. Instead, they kept insisting that America should be more like Europe. Inasmuch as conservative politicians are winning elections in England and all over the continent these days, the people finally waking up to the unmitigated disaster socialism is, I could now join in the chorus. But, of course, so far as leftists are concerned, I’d now be singing a solo.
I have to wonder, though, how much non-Muslim nations trust our current president. It’s one thing, after all, to travel to other countries and talk a lot of diplomatic flapdoodle, but when Barack Obama takes every opportunity to tell the world how awful we are -- or at least how awful we were until he got elected -- it has to make people wonder if, like his missus, he had never been proud of America prior to his canonization by the media.
It doesn’t make things a lot better when he makes obviously foolish remarks, such as insisting that the U.S. is one of the largest Muslim nations, and that Muslims played a major role in the creation of our republic.
That one really had me reeling, so I went back to my trusty old history book and looked it up and, sure enough, he was correct. Right there in black and white, I discovered that among the most influential of the Founding Fathers were Abdullah Washington, Mahmoud Adams and Osama bin Jefferson.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
How George W. Bush And The American Taxpayer Helped Change Iran
Rachel Alexander
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Iran’s citizens, fed up with their oppressive theocratic government, are spilling into the streets and revolting at risk of death. Meanwhile the usual suspects – from the United Nations to leftists like President Barack Obama – are assuming the usual full-prone position of acute non-interventionism.
Iranians have written to me this week to ask why the United Nations isn’t doing anything. I replied that it’s because George W. Bush isn’t around anymore to file the necessary paperwork. What Bush did, however, was set up the framework for a cultural revolution in the Middle East. And most people probably aren’t even aware of how he did it. Leaving aside the significant fact that Iran has Bush to thank for the fact that Saddam Hussein isn’t around to interfere in this fight, Bush helped to lay the groundwork for a “soft power” cultural revolution.
Compare Obama’s wish for Iranians to more or less just sort it out nicely with the words of George W. Bush to the Iranian people in 2008: “My thought is that the reformers inside Iran are brave people, they've got no better friend than George W. Bush, and I ask for God's blessings on them on their very important work. And secondly, that I would do nothing to undermine their efforts.”
And how did Bush get his message into Iran? Via the main US government funded TV network: Voice of America’s Persian News Network (PNN). The satellite television network, broadcasting out of Washington, DC, in Iran’s own language, came into existence under Bush’s watch in July 2007. It now reaches 30% of Iranian adults.
I suppose one could argue that a US government funded network might consist of American government propaganda, but from the BBC and CBC to NPR, these publicly-funded outlets are almost always the exact opposite, and rife with leftist journalists who are attracted by the theory that that a lack of corporate and private funding ought to make them more objective and less beholden to outside interests (rather than just more leftist, as a result of the ideology of the journalists who gravitate towards them). The fact that the network is free of Iranian government propaganda makes it a powerhouse for cultural change in itself.
The American government also operates Radio Farda, featuring both music and news. Launched in December 2002, the network’s Persian language programming originates in Prague and is available on the internet and via radio transmission into Iran from various transmission towers in the Middle East.
A spokesperson for both of these media outlets confirmed their recent need to counteract increased signal jamming by the Iranian government censors since May by adding new uplinks, downlinks, and transmissions.
Iranians have also been able to sign up to receive email notifications about new downloadable software and internet proxies they can use to circumvent the Iranian government censors to access the websites for these networks. The networks claim a “200% growth in use of proxy servers and web censorship circumvention software from the day before the Friday election to three days later.”
Interventionism is a military policy, not a rhetorical one. Via these media outlets, America has already helped to fuel the revolution in Iran. Yet Obama himself seems intent on not adopting any strong, moral leadership position, settling instead on a few select lines expressing the basic idea that killing peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable. Because he wouldn’t want to do anything that might cause the Mullah’s creating all this havoc to become unreasonable, would he? Like maybe rig a Presidential election. The other idea floating about the media in defense of Obama’s silence was that any strong language on Obama’s part might incite the Iranian regime to blame the civil unrest on America. Within days, they did just that – despite any non-action on Obama’s part.
What we’re seeing in Iran is change being affected without a single bullet fired on the part of its leaders. And we’ve seen this before. The Cold War ended and the wall fell largely because oppressed people had enough of their government. This “wall” is a cultural one, between oppressive Islamists and the rest of the world, and every demonstrator in Iran is working at tearing it down.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy obviously understands the cultural nature of this battlefield: He used the Iranian situation to address French Parliament (notable because this hasn’t happened in 136 years) with a barnburner speech about the burka as an instrument for oppression of women, and asking that a parliamentary commission look into banning it altogether.
Meanwhile, Obama is voting “present”.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Iran’s citizens, fed up with their oppressive theocratic government, are spilling into the streets and revolting at risk of death. Meanwhile the usual suspects – from the United Nations to leftists like President Barack Obama – are assuming the usual full-prone position of acute non-interventionism.
Iranians have written to me this week to ask why the United Nations isn’t doing anything. I replied that it’s because George W. Bush isn’t around anymore to file the necessary paperwork. What Bush did, however, was set up the framework for a cultural revolution in the Middle East. And most people probably aren’t even aware of how he did it. Leaving aside the significant fact that Iran has Bush to thank for the fact that Saddam Hussein isn’t around to interfere in this fight, Bush helped to lay the groundwork for a “soft power” cultural revolution.
Compare Obama’s wish for Iranians to more or less just sort it out nicely with the words of George W. Bush to the Iranian people in 2008: “My thought is that the reformers inside Iran are brave people, they've got no better friend than George W. Bush, and I ask for God's blessings on them on their very important work. And secondly, that I would do nothing to undermine their efforts.”
And how did Bush get his message into Iran? Via the main US government funded TV network: Voice of America’s Persian News Network (PNN). The satellite television network, broadcasting out of Washington, DC, in Iran’s own language, came into existence under Bush’s watch in July 2007. It now reaches 30% of Iranian adults.
I suppose one could argue that a US government funded network might consist of American government propaganda, but from the BBC and CBC to NPR, these publicly-funded outlets are almost always the exact opposite, and rife with leftist journalists who are attracted by the theory that that a lack of corporate and private funding ought to make them more objective and less beholden to outside interests (rather than just more leftist, as a result of the ideology of the journalists who gravitate towards them). The fact that the network is free of Iranian government propaganda makes it a powerhouse for cultural change in itself.
The American government also operates Radio Farda, featuring both music and news. Launched in December 2002, the network’s Persian language programming originates in Prague and is available on the internet and via radio transmission into Iran from various transmission towers in the Middle East.
A spokesperson for both of these media outlets confirmed their recent need to counteract increased signal jamming by the Iranian government censors since May by adding new uplinks, downlinks, and transmissions.
Iranians have also been able to sign up to receive email notifications about new downloadable software and internet proxies they can use to circumvent the Iranian government censors to access the websites for these networks. The networks claim a “200% growth in use of proxy servers and web censorship circumvention software from the day before the Friday election to three days later.”
Interventionism is a military policy, not a rhetorical one. Via these media outlets, America has already helped to fuel the revolution in Iran. Yet Obama himself seems intent on not adopting any strong, moral leadership position, settling instead on a few select lines expressing the basic idea that killing peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable. Because he wouldn’t want to do anything that might cause the Mullah’s creating all this havoc to become unreasonable, would he? Like maybe rig a Presidential election. The other idea floating about the media in defense of Obama’s silence was that any strong language on Obama’s part might incite the Iranian regime to blame the civil unrest on America. Within days, they did just that – despite any non-action on Obama’s part.
What we’re seeing in Iran is change being affected without a single bullet fired on the part of its leaders. And we’ve seen this before. The Cold War ended and the wall fell largely because oppressed people had enough of their government. This “wall” is a cultural one, between oppressive Islamists and the rest of the world, and every demonstrator in Iran is working at tearing it down.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy obviously understands the cultural nature of this battlefield: He used the Iranian situation to address French Parliament (notable because this hasn’t happened in 136 years) with a barnburner speech about the burka as an instrument for oppression of women, and asking that a parliamentary commission look into banning it altogether.
Meanwhile, Obama is voting “present”.
Vicious Academic Liberals
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, has an article, "Study, Study, Study -- A Bad Career Move" in the June 2, 2009 edition of Minding the Campus (www.mindingthecampus.com) that should raise any decent American's level of disgust for what's routinely practiced at most of our universities. Mr. Connerly tells of a conversation he had with a high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that the administrator was developing to increase campus diversity. Connerly asked the administrator why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. His response was that that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, the University of California campuses would be dominated by Asians. When Connerly asked, "What would be wrong with that?", the UC administrator told him that Asians are "too dull -- they study, study, study." Then he said to Connerly, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it." Connerly did not reveal the administrator's name. It would not have done any good because it's part of a diversity vision shared by most college administrators.
With the enactment of California's Proposition 209 in 1996, outlawing racial discrimination in college admissions, Asian enrollment at UC campuses has skyrocketed. UC Berkeley student body is 42 percent Asian students; UC Irvine 55 percent; UC Riverside 43 percent; and UCLA 38 percent. Asian student enrollment on all nine UC campuses is over 40 percent. That's in a state where the Asian population is about 13 percent. When there are policies that emphasize and reward academic achievement, Asians excel. College officials and others who are proponents of "diversity" and equal representation find that outcome offensive.
To deal with the Asian "menace," the UC Regents have proposed, starting in 2010, that no longer will the top 12.5 percent of students based on statewide performance be automatically admitted. Students won't have to take SAT subject matter tests. Grades and test scores will no longer weigh so heavily in admission decisions. This is simply gross racial discrimination against those "dull" Asian students who "study, study, study" in favor of "interesting" black, white and Hispanic students who don't "study, study, study."
This is truly evil and would be readily condemned as such if applied to other areas lacking in diversity. With blacks making up about 80 percent of professional basketball players, there is little or no diversity in professional basketball. Even at college-level basketball, it is not at all unusual to watch two teams playing and there not being a single white player on the court, much less a Chinese or Japanese player. I can think of several rule changes that might increase racial diversity in professional and college basketball. How about eliminating slam dunks and disallowing three-point shots? Restrict dribbling? Lower the basket's height? These and other rule changes would take away the "unfair" advantage that black players appear to have and create greater basketball diversity. But wouldn't diversity so achieved be despicable? If you answer yes, why would it be any less so when it's used to fulfill somebody's vision of college diversity?
Ward Connerly ends his article saying, "There is one truth that is universally applicable in the era of 'diversity,' especially in American universities: an absolute unwillingness to accept the verdict of colorblind policies." Hypocrisy is part and parcel of the liberal academic elite. But the American people, who fund universities either as parents, donors or taxpayers, should not accept this evilness and there's a good way to stop it -- cut off the funding to racially discriminating colleges and universities.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, has an article, "Study, Study, Study -- A Bad Career Move" in the June 2, 2009 edition of Minding the Campus (www.mindingthecampus.com) that should raise any decent American's level of disgust for what's routinely practiced at most of our universities. Mr. Connerly tells of a conversation he had with a high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that the administrator was developing to increase campus diversity. Connerly asked the administrator why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. His response was that that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, the University of California campuses would be dominated by Asians. When Connerly asked, "What would be wrong with that?", the UC administrator told him that Asians are "too dull -- they study, study, study." Then he said to Connerly, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it." Connerly did not reveal the administrator's name. It would not have done any good because it's part of a diversity vision shared by most college administrators.
With the enactment of California's Proposition 209 in 1996, outlawing racial discrimination in college admissions, Asian enrollment at UC campuses has skyrocketed. UC Berkeley student body is 42 percent Asian students; UC Irvine 55 percent; UC Riverside 43 percent; and UCLA 38 percent. Asian student enrollment on all nine UC campuses is over 40 percent. That's in a state where the Asian population is about 13 percent. When there are policies that emphasize and reward academic achievement, Asians excel. College officials and others who are proponents of "diversity" and equal representation find that outcome offensive.
To deal with the Asian "menace," the UC Regents have proposed, starting in 2010, that no longer will the top 12.5 percent of students based on statewide performance be automatically admitted. Students won't have to take SAT subject matter tests. Grades and test scores will no longer weigh so heavily in admission decisions. This is simply gross racial discrimination against those "dull" Asian students who "study, study, study" in favor of "interesting" black, white and Hispanic students who don't "study, study, study."
This is truly evil and would be readily condemned as such if applied to other areas lacking in diversity. With blacks making up about 80 percent of professional basketball players, there is little or no diversity in professional basketball. Even at college-level basketball, it is not at all unusual to watch two teams playing and there not being a single white player on the court, much less a Chinese or Japanese player. I can think of several rule changes that might increase racial diversity in professional and college basketball. How about eliminating slam dunks and disallowing three-point shots? Restrict dribbling? Lower the basket's height? These and other rule changes would take away the "unfair" advantage that black players appear to have and create greater basketball diversity. But wouldn't diversity so achieved be despicable? If you answer yes, why would it be any less so when it's used to fulfill somebody's vision of college diversity?
Ward Connerly ends his article saying, "There is one truth that is universally applicable in the era of 'diversity,' especially in American universities: an absolute unwillingness to accept the verdict of colorblind policies." Hypocrisy is part and parcel of the liberal academic elite. But the American people, who fund universities either as parents, donors or taxpayers, should not accept this evilness and there's a good way to stop it -- cut off the funding to racially discriminating colleges and universities.
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