With tensions over the immigration law running high, Judge Susan Bolton has provided some much-needed comic relief.
Rich Lowry
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Judge Susan Bolton has to get credit for her cheekiness. She took a matter of profound national concern and injected an element of hilarity into it.
As gloriously ridiculous as a classic Monty Python skit, the federal judge’s decision blocking Arizona’s immigration law is an appropriate first volley in the legal war over the law. If our immigration system is to be defined by a judicially sanctioned lawlessness, we might as well dispense with the pretense.
Acting in keeping with federal law, court precedent, and a Department of Justice legal memorandum (not to mention common sense), Arizona said its law-enforcement officers would henceforth check the legal status of suspected illegal immigrants during the course of a lawful stop or arrest. To conclude that the law likely will be struck down for “preempting” federal regulations, Judge Bolton had to engage in complicated judicial gymnastics, which she nailed with all the skill of a Mary Lou Retton in robes.
Taking her cues from the Obama administration’s suit against the law, Judge Bolton worried that too many legal aliens would be caught up in Arizona’s dragnet. Of course, these aliens are already required by federal law to carry proof of their legal status. But let’s put that aside (as Judge Bolton does). She claims that too many legal aliens without ready access to documents proving their lawful entry into the U.S. will be put at risk, including visitors from visa-waiver countries.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that visitors from countries like Norway and Australia are flooding into the border areas of Arizona. And let’s assume they engage in recklessly illegal conduct, daring cops to stop and arrest them. And let’s assume they exhibit all the behaviors associated with illegal immigrants. How could such a visitor escape the dreaded fate awaiting him when an officer asks about his legal status? Perhaps by producing a passport stamped with the duration of his stay, possessed by every visitor from a visa-waiver country?
Judge Bolton piles speculation atop implausible readings of the law. Say a legal alien is arrested and his release is delayed by a check on his status. Let’s put aside (as Judge Bolton does) that on average it takes the staff manning the federal database set up for such checks 70 minutes to get to an inquiry and a mere 11 minutes to answer it. Judge Bolton declares that any delay amounts to exposing legal aliens to “the possibility of inquisitorial practices and police surveillance.”
This is a tautology dressed up with scare words. It’s impossible as a matter of definition to get arrested without experiencing “police surveillance.” As for “inquisitorial practices,” blogger William A. Jacobson notes that “states already routinely run searches for a variety of statuses, including outstanding warrants, child support orders and non-immigration identity checks. Each of these checks potentially could delay release of an innocent person.”
When states want to check on someone’s immigration status, they do it with the aforementioned federal database. As a matter of law, the outfit running it must respond to all inquiries “seeking to verify or ascertain citizenship or immigration status . . . for any purpose authorized by law.” In writing this sweeping requirement, Congress did not make an exception for requests emanating from Arizona.
Too bad, says Judge Bolton. If the state finds too many suspected illegal immigrants, it might overburden the system. Let’s put aside (as Judge Bolton does) that the system already gets 1 million inquiries a year, that it has a theoretical capacity to process 1.5 million and that, as of now, Arizona only makes 80,000 inquiries annually, meaning even a drastic increase could be accommodated. If the federal government fears a surge from Arizona, couldn’t it add some positions to the 153 staffers currently assigned to the database? Think of it as stimulus.
But never mind. With emotions running high over the Arizona law, some comic relief is always welcome. Judge Bolton has provided it.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Why Are We Beginning to Hate Congress?
Our self-absorbed Congress should start to reform, fast.
Victor Davis Hanson
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Recent polls show that more than 70 percent of the public holds an unfavorable view of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) wins about a 10 percent approval rating; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has similarly rock-bottom poll numbers.
Why this astounding — and growing — disdain for our lawmakers? After all, Congress has had plenty of scandals and corruption in the past, such as the House post-office and check-kiting messes, the Charles Keating payoffs, and the Abscam bribery.
But lately, Congress seems not merely corrupt, but — far more worrisome — without apparent concern that it has become so unethical.
A “culture of corruption” was the slogan of the Democratic Party to win back Congress in 2006. And indeed there was lots of sleaze then among incumbent Republicans.
Reps. Duke Cunningham (R., Calif.), Bob Ney (R., Ohio) and Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) all left Congress under a cloud. Rep. Mark Foley (R., Fla.) and Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho) saw their careers ruined over creepy sex allegations. Convicted felon Jack Abramoff ran a criminal-lobbying syndicate by which Big Money earned special attention from Republican lawmakers.
But when reform-minded Democrats took over, the mess got no better, and possibly worse — suggesting that the problem was not politics, but what Congress itself had become. Rep. William Jefferson (D., La.) was convicted on multiple counts, including bribery and racketeering. Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), who recently stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, for over a year has been under investigation for numerous transgressions — from rent-control violations and tax avoidance to improper lobbying and omissions from financial-disclosure forms. The late Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.) had seemed destined for an investigation into quid-pro-quo relationships between the money he received from boosters and the earmarks he earned them. Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) managed to get a cut-rate home loan from a tottering bank — and a great deal on a vacation home in Ireland from a seller with connections to someone for whom Dodd lobbied for a presidential pardon.
Presidents come and go, but Congress stays the same in its habit of borrowing money. In the latest nearly half-trillion-dollar spending bill, Congress included more than 5,000 special earmarks. Senators and representatives routinely dole out dubious grants to their own constituents, usually in some way connected with campaign contributions. They worry little about the rising federal debt or the value of such spending for the nation at large.
When questioned, our representatives — reminiscent of the old French court at Versailles — act like they live in a rarified, untouchable universe.
Rangel shrugged off his ethics problems as racially motivated. Would-be reformer Pelosi — who, along with other Democrats, has railed about corporate CEOs and their perks — asked that her taxpayer-provided plane travel be upgraded so that she would not have to refuel on her way home to California. Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia struck a Capitol Hill police officer who asked her to show identification upon entering a House office building. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) called an airline attendant a “bitch” last year after she repeatedly asked him to turn off his cell phone in accordance with federal law.
It is understandable, but not healthy, for a democracy to have little respect for legislators such as these. So, how could these self-absorbed grandees show voters a little contrition?
A good start would be to ban the egomaniac naming of monuments, parks, buildings, and roads after living senators and representatives. The rest of us don’t expect to have things named after us at work or school for simply doing our jobs. Congress should not either.
Members of Congress should employ pay-as-you-go lawmaking. It is easy to win friends by handing out someone else’s money, but harder to ask voters to pay the ensuing bill. Appropriate the money first; spend it second.
Can’t legislators go back home and get a life after their terms? Why don’t they quit lobbying their former colleagues for profit, and stop finagling for lifelong sinecures at some federal or state agency?
And why can’t members of Congress abide by the very laws they pass? If members wish to change health care, they should enroll in the same plans they mandate for others. Congressional offices should be subject to the same labor rules that private businesses work under — from sexual-harassment statutes to overtime compensation.
Our self-absorbed Congress should start to reform, fast. Right now, the American people seem to think that the main purpose of holding congressional office is to boost egos and get rich later on — and in the process make the rest of us poorer.
Victor Davis Hanson
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Recent polls show that more than 70 percent of the public holds an unfavorable view of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) wins about a 10 percent approval rating; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has similarly rock-bottom poll numbers.
Why this astounding — and growing — disdain for our lawmakers? After all, Congress has had plenty of scandals and corruption in the past, such as the House post-office and check-kiting messes, the Charles Keating payoffs, and the Abscam bribery.
But lately, Congress seems not merely corrupt, but — far more worrisome — without apparent concern that it has become so unethical.
A “culture of corruption” was the slogan of the Democratic Party to win back Congress in 2006. And indeed there was lots of sleaze then among incumbent Republicans.
Reps. Duke Cunningham (R., Calif.), Bob Ney (R., Ohio) and Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) all left Congress under a cloud. Rep. Mark Foley (R., Fla.) and Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho) saw their careers ruined over creepy sex allegations. Convicted felon Jack Abramoff ran a criminal-lobbying syndicate by which Big Money earned special attention from Republican lawmakers.
But when reform-minded Democrats took over, the mess got no better, and possibly worse — suggesting that the problem was not politics, but what Congress itself had become. Rep. William Jefferson (D., La.) was convicted on multiple counts, including bribery and racketeering. Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), who recently stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, for over a year has been under investigation for numerous transgressions — from rent-control violations and tax avoidance to improper lobbying and omissions from financial-disclosure forms. The late Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.) had seemed destined for an investigation into quid-pro-quo relationships between the money he received from boosters and the earmarks he earned them. Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) managed to get a cut-rate home loan from a tottering bank — and a great deal on a vacation home in Ireland from a seller with connections to someone for whom Dodd lobbied for a presidential pardon.
Presidents come and go, but Congress stays the same in its habit of borrowing money. In the latest nearly half-trillion-dollar spending bill, Congress included more than 5,000 special earmarks. Senators and representatives routinely dole out dubious grants to their own constituents, usually in some way connected with campaign contributions. They worry little about the rising federal debt or the value of such spending for the nation at large.
When questioned, our representatives — reminiscent of the old French court at Versailles — act like they live in a rarified, untouchable universe.
Rangel shrugged off his ethics problems as racially motivated. Would-be reformer Pelosi — who, along with other Democrats, has railed about corporate CEOs and their perks — asked that her taxpayer-provided plane travel be upgraded so that she would not have to refuel on her way home to California. Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia struck a Capitol Hill police officer who asked her to show identification upon entering a House office building. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) called an airline attendant a “bitch” last year after she repeatedly asked him to turn off his cell phone in accordance with federal law.
It is understandable, but not healthy, for a democracy to have little respect for legislators such as these. So, how could these self-absorbed grandees show voters a little contrition?
A good start would be to ban the egomaniac naming of monuments, parks, buildings, and roads after living senators and representatives. The rest of us don’t expect to have things named after us at work or school for simply doing our jobs. Congress should not either.
Members of Congress should employ pay-as-you-go lawmaking. It is easy to win friends by handing out someone else’s money, but harder to ask voters to pay the ensuing bill. Appropriate the money first; spend it second.
Can’t legislators go back home and get a life after their terms? Why don’t they quit lobbying their former colleagues for profit, and stop finagling for lifelong sinecures at some federal or state agency?
And why can’t members of Congress abide by the very laws they pass? If members wish to change health care, they should enroll in the same plans they mandate for others. Congressional offices should be subject to the same labor rules that private businesses work under — from sexual-harassment statutes to overtime compensation.
Our self-absorbed Congress should start to reform, fast. Right now, the American people seem to think that the main purpose of holding congressional office is to boost egos and get rich later on — and in the process make the rest of us poorer.
Climate Proposals Threaten the Pursuit of Happiness and Justice
Paul Driessen
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?
The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if manmade greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.
Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.
Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.
As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.
I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at www.CFACT.org)
Energy is the foundation for America’s jobs, living standards, and everything we make, grow, eat, wear, transport and do. Climate change bills, energy taxes and renewable energy mandates deliberately restrict supplies of reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy – sending shockwaves through the economy.
Fossil fuels generate three-fourths of Wisconsin’s electricity, keeping costs low and enabling its $45-billion-a-year manufacturing sector to compete in a tough global marketplace. Hydrocarbons sustain thousands of jobs in agriculture, tourism and other sectors of the state’s economy. They ensure that hospitals and clinics can offer high-tech diagnostic, surgical and treatment services.
They enable school districts, families, churches, shops and government offices to operate in the black. Soaring fuel and electricity prices would force schools to spend millions more for buses, heating and lighting. That would mean higher taxes – or reduced music, sports, language and special education programs. Poor and minority neighborhoods would be impacted worst.
Small and minority businesses are often young and undercapitalized. Increasing their operating costs, while decreasing the disposable income of their customers, puts them on the verge of bankruptcy.
“A single worker in our Rhinelander fabrication plant can do the work of ten who do not have access to cranes, welding machines, plasma burners and all other machinery that allows us to cut, bend and fabricate steel up to six inches thick, and make all kinds of heavy equipment,” says Oldenburg Group executive vice president Tim Nerenz. But the machinery and facilities are energy-intensive. If energy costs rise, the company would have to cut wages and benefits or lay off workers, as contract prices are fixed and overseas competition is fierce.
Indoor pools and other facilities make tourism a year-round industry, sustaining local economies during frigid Wisconsin winters, making resorts like the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells popular jumping-off points for cross country skiing, snowmobiling and dining. Rising energy costs would reduce family vacations, hammer bottom lines, force layoffs, and cause foreclosures throughout these communities.
In every case, it is blue-collar workers, low and moderate income families, minorities and the elderly that are affected most severely.
Nor are these impacts likely to be offset by “green” jobs. As Spain, Germany and other countries have discovered, wind and solar power require constant infusions of money from increasingly strapped taxpayers and energy consumers. When the economy sours, the subsidies disappear, and so do the jobs.
Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable – necessitating expensive gas-powered backup generators, and further damaging family and business budgets. Plus, most of the jobs will be in China and India, where low energy and labor costs, and access to rare earths and other raw materials that America refuses to mine, supply wind turbine and solar panel factories that easily under-price US firms.
The entire cap-tax-and-trade, renewable energy and green-jobs edifice is a house of cards, propped up by claims that humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. As EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson repeatedly assert, “Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor.”
However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether our use of fossil fuels is now the dominant factor in global warming and cooling, and whether future manmade climate change will be catastrophic. There is no replicable or credible evidence to support that proposition.
Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches. As my Wisconsin study explains, they are not supported by actual data and observations regarding historic and current global temperatures, ice caps, glaciers, sea levels, rainforests or cyclical weather patterns.
Energy taxes and subsidies, renewable energy mandates, soaring prices for everything we need – and severe impacts on families, businesses, jobs, opportunities, living standards and basic civil rights – might be justified if we did indeed face a manmade climate disaster. But even then we should carefully examine the costs and benefits of any proposed actions.
We should determine whether slashing fossil fuel use will stabilize our planet’s ever-turbulent climate, and whether our limited resources might be better spent on adapting to future changes, natural and manmade, just as our ancestors did.
If global warming science is inaccurate, dishonest, slanted or fraudulent, there is even less justification.
We cannot have justice without opportunity, or opportunity without energy. We cannot have justice by sharing scarcity, poverty and skyrocketing energy prices more equally – especially on the basis of erroneous, speculative or manipulated climate science.
We must therefore be forever vigilant, to ensure that Congress does not slip cap-tax-and-trade proposals through during a post-election lame-duck session – and EPA does not shackle our economy and civil rights progress with its job-killing “endangerment” rules.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?
The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if manmade greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.
Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.
Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.
As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.
I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at www.CFACT.org)
Energy is the foundation for America’s jobs, living standards, and everything we make, grow, eat, wear, transport and do. Climate change bills, energy taxes and renewable energy mandates deliberately restrict supplies of reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy – sending shockwaves through the economy.
Fossil fuels generate three-fourths of Wisconsin’s electricity, keeping costs low and enabling its $45-billion-a-year manufacturing sector to compete in a tough global marketplace. Hydrocarbons sustain thousands of jobs in agriculture, tourism and other sectors of the state’s economy. They ensure that hospitals and clinics can offer high-tech diagnostic, surgical and treatment services.
They enable school districts, families, churches, shops and government offices to operate in the black. Soaring fuel and electricity prices would force schools to spend millions more for buses, heating and lighting. That would mean higher taxes – or reduced music, sports, language and special education programs. Poor and minority neighborhoods would be impacted worst.
Small and minority businesses are often young and undercapitalized. Increasing their operating costs, while decreasing the disposable income of their customers, puts them on the verge of bankruptcy.
“A single worker in our Rhinelander fabrication plant can do the work of ten who do not have access to cranes, welding machines, plasma burners and all other machinery that allows us to cut, bend and fabricate steel up to six inches thick, and make all kinds of heavy equipment,” says Oldenburg Group executive vice president Tim Nerenz. But the machinery and facilities are energy-intensive. If energy costs rise, the company would have to cut wages and benefits or lay off workers, as contract prices are fixed and overseas competition is fierce.
Indoor pools and other facilities make tourism a year-round industry, sustaining local economies during frigid Wisconsin winters, making resorts like the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells popular jumping-off points for cross country skiing, snowmobiling and dining. Rising energy costs would reduce family vacations, hammer bottom lines, force layoffs, and cause foreclosures throughout these communities.
In every case, it is blue-collar workers, low and moderate income families, minorities and the elderly that are affected most severely.
Nor are these impacts likely to be offset by “green” jobs. As Spain, Germany and other countries have discovered, wind and solar power require constant infusions of money from increasingly strapped taxpayers and energy consumers. When the economy sours, the subsidies disappear, and so do the jobs.
Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable – necessitating expensive gas-powered backup generators, and further damaging family and business budgets. Plus, most of the jobs will be in China and India, where low energy and labor costs, and access to rare earths and other raw materials that America refuses to mine, supply wind turbine and solar panel factories that easily under-price US firms.
The entire cap-tax-and-trade, renewable energy and green-jobs edifice is a house of cards, propped up by claims that humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. As EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson repeatedly assert, “Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor.”
However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether our use of fossil fuels is now the dominant factor in global warming and cooling, and whether future manmade climate change will be catastrophic. There is no replicable or credible evidence to support that proposition.
Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches. As my Wisconsin study explains, they are not supported by actual data and observations regarding historic and current global temperatures, ice caps, glaciers, sea levels, rainforests or cyclical weather patterns.
Energy taxes and subsidies, renewable energy mandates, soaring prices for everything we need – and severe impacts on families, businesses, jobs, opportunities, living standards and basic civil rights – might be justified if we did indeed face a manmade climate disaster. But even then we should carefully examine the costs and benefits of any proposed actions.
We should determine whether slashing fossil fuel use will stabilize our planet’s ever-turbulent climate, and whether our limited resources might be better spent on adapting to future changes, natural and manmade, just as our ancestors did.
If global warming science is inaccurate, dishonest, slanted or fraudulent, there is even less justification.
We cannot have justice without opportunity, or opportunity without energy. We cannot have justice by sharing scarcity, poverty and skyrocketing energy prices more equally – especially on the basis of erroneous, speculative or manipulated climate science.
We must therefore be forever vigilant, to ensure that Congress does not slip cap-tax-and-trade proposals through during a post-election lame-duck session – and EPA does not shackle our economy and civil rights progress with its job-killing “endangerment” rules.
National Health Service: It’s Coming to America
Cal Thomas
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told a group of liberal activists meeting in Las Vegas they shouldn't worry about not getting the single-payer provision in the new health care law. "We're going to have a public option," Reid said. "It's just a question of when."
Remember the objections conservatives and many Republicans raised during the debate about government-run health care and the danger of eliminating private health insurance, despite its many flaws? Recall that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was frequently cited as an example of where the U.S. health system might be headed: coverage for all, but with lower quality, long waits for major surgery and denial of care when the government decides the procedure is not "cost effective".
Anyone who believes a U.S. health care system based on the NHS model can somehow fare better than Britain's had better consider this recent headline and story from London's Sunday Telegraph: "Axe Falls on NHS Services; Hip operations, cataract surgery and IVF rationed; Cancer care, maternity, pediatric services at risk."
Rationing? Oh yes, and it is something the unconfirmed, recess-appointed U.S. health care czar, Donald Berwick, strongly favors.
British government leaders had promised to protect frontline services. The Obama administration also made similar promises in order to win enough support from members of Congress, most of whom never read the bill before they voted for it.
Here's what America can look forward to if it follows the NHS model, according to an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph: "Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends." Never has "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" sounded more callous.
Nursing homes for the elderly would be closed, the number of hospital beds for the mentally ill reduced and general practitioners would be discouraged from sending patients to hospitals. Accident and emergency department services would also be cut.
Thousands of jobs would be lost at NHS hospitals, reports the Telegraph, "including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages." Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association called the cuts "astonishingly brutal." She expressed particular concern at attempts to ration (that word again) hip and knee operations. "These are not unusual procedures," she said. "This is a really blatant attempt to save money by leaving people in pain."
What do politicians care about that? In Britain, as in America, top officials (including Berwick who has lifetime health coverage given to him by the Institute for Health Care Improvement) will always have access to the best care, even while they decide the rest of us cannot.
This paragraph in the Telegraph story should send chills down the spine of every American: "Doctors across the country have already been told that their patients can have the operations only if they are given 'prior approval' by the Primary Care Trust, with each authorization made on a 'case by case' basis."
When cost, rather than the value of life becomes supreme, rationing will inevitably lead to other cost-cutting policies. And yes, despite protestations from those who favored Obamacare that "death panels" would not be part of the equation, you can count on them. They will, of course, be called something else. We wouldn't want to disturb any remaining moral sensibilities we might have.
It has taken the NHS 62 years to get to this point. America's journey should be a lot shorter given the declared goals of Harry Reid and Donald Berwick.
It is more than ironic that this is taking place in the year when Britain is observing the centenary of the revered nurse Florence Nightingale. Given the prevailing attitude toward the value of human life and its care, her replacement might be the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Hemlock, anyone?
Saturday, July 31, 2010
PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told a group of liberal activists meeting in Las Vegas they shouldn't worry about not getting the single-payer provision in the new health care law. "We're going to have a public option," Reid said. "It's just a question of when."
Remember the objections conservatives and many Republicans raised during the debate about government-run health care and the danger of eliminating private health insurance, despite its many flaws? Recall that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was frequently cited as an example of where the U.S. health system might be headed: coverage for all, but with lower quality, long waits for major surgery and denial of care when the government decides the procedure is not "cost effective".
Anyone who believes a U.S. health care system based on the NHS model can somehow fare better than Britain's had better consider this recent headline and story from London's Sunday Telegraph: "Axe Falls on NHS Services; Hip operations, cataract surgery and IVF rationed; Cancer care, maternity, pediatric services at risk."
Rationing? Oh yes, and it is something the unconfirmed, recess-appointed U.S. health care czar, Donald Berwick, strongly favors.
British government leaders had promised to protect frontline services. The Obama administration also made similar promises in order to win enough support from members of Congress, most of whom never read the bill before they voted for it.
Here's what America can look forward to if it follows the NHS model, according to an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph: "Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends." Never has "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" sounded more callous.
Nursing homes for the elderly would be closed, the number of hospital beds for the mentally ill reduced and general practitioners would be discouraged from sending patients to hospitals. Accident and emergency department services would also be cut.
Thousands of jobs would be lost at NHS hospitals, reports the Telegraph, "including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages." Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association called the cuts "astonishingly brutal." She expressed particular concern at attempts to ration (that word again) hip and knee operations. "These are not unusual procedures," she said. "This is a really blatant attempt to save money by leaving people in pain."
What do politicians care about that? In Britain, as in America, top officials (including Berwick who has lifetime health coverage given to him by the Institute for Health Care Improvement) will always have access to the best care, even while they decide the rest of us cannot.
This paragraph in the Telegraph story should send chills down the spine of every American: "Doctors across the country have already been told that their patients can have the operations only if they are given 'prior approval' by the Primary Care Trust, with each authorization made on a 'case by case' basis."
When cost, rather than the value of life becomes supreme, rationing will inevitably lead to other cost-cutting policies. And yes, despite protestations from those who favored Obamacare that "death panels" would not be part of the equation, you can count on them. They will, of course, be called something else. We wouldn't want to disturb any remaining moral sensibilities we might have.
It has taken the NHS 62 years to get to this point. America's journey should be a lot shorter given the declared goals of Harry Reid and Donald Berwick.
It is more than ironic that this is taking place in the year when Britain is observing the centenary of the revered nurse Florence Nightingale. Given the prevailing attitude toward the value of human life and its care, her replacement might be the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Hemlock, anyone?
Friday, July 30, 2010
JounoList Erodes Media Prestige
Brent Bozell
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tucker Carlson's website, the Daily Caller, has unearthed a treasure trove of liberal journalists talking (nastily) to themselves in a private e-mail list about how they should use their media power to remake the world in their image.
The funniest thing about this expose of JournoList was witnessing journalists say it was unfair to leak these e-mails when reporters had an "expectation of privacy." More than 90,000 pages of secret documents on Afghanistan have been leaked and journalists are tripping over one another in a mad stampede to cover the story. Everyone should laugh heartily at leak-devouring journalists getting a fistful of their own bitter pills.
The saddest thing about all this is the confirmation (as if it were necessary) that liberal journalists really aren't journalists first. They're political strategists. They pretend to be the Hollywood version of Woodward and Bernstein, the brave sleuths digging out government malfeasance and corruption. But in reality, they're the Woodward and Bernstein who plotted how to get Richard Nixon impeached and ready the way for pacifist and socialist "Watergate babies" like Chris Dodd and Henry Waxman to take seats of power. Ethics are only relevant if they're a weapon.
Jonathan Strong's first installment for the Daily Caller proved that with a wallop. Take former New York magazine political writer Michael Tomasky's plea to "kill ABC" for talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: "Listen folks -- in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn't about defending Obama. This is about how the (mainstream media) kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people."
Liberal journalists in this crowd favor only discourse that "serves the people" -- meaning, a "debate" that advances the ball for socialism. Any other uncooperative or unhelpful line of journalism, questioning, discussion, balance or objectivity is "idiocy" that should be "killed." At its heart, liberal bias isn't just about slanting the news against conservatives; it's about slanting the news to discredit and then ignore conservatives until they sit grumpily on the ash heap of history. If that includes censorship, like yanking the journalist credentials of Fox News, some on the JournoList eagerly have encouraged it.
The "mainstream" (ha!) media's first bucket of water on the Daily Caller's fire was to claim that the participants on the JournoList weren't primarily "objective" media types. It was heavily salted with The Nation, Mother Jones, The American Prospect and obscure magazines like Government Executive. But the rebuttal is obvious. The list's creator, Ezra Klein, rose from The American Prospect to being the 25-year-old blogging boy wonder of the Washington Post, whose opinions pop up all over the paper. It's not at all uncommon for "mainstream" journalists to be groomed at liberal opinion rags. Think of JournoList as part of a finishing school for "objective" journalists, and you can see where conservatives never trust the national media elite.
The second liberal self-defense of JournoList was that Klein claimed there was no plan for partisan "message coordination." But the Daily Caller showed how no one on the list was really paying attention to that alleged plan. After Sarah Palin was picked for the GOP ticket in 2008, Suzanne Nossel of Human Rights Watch insisted, "I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views."
Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones insisted the entire left should spread that spin: "That's excellent! If enough people -- people on this list? -- write that the pick is sexist, you'll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket," he wrote. No message coordination there.
Some of the exposed journalists have defended themselves by saying they never put their vicious messages in the media mainstream. Others suggested they were just as earnestly biased in public as they were in private. Anyone paying attention to the media during the 2008 campaign clearly didn't need the JournoList ravings to realize the media immediately despised Palin and hailed Barack Obama as the glowing receptacle of liberal hopes, dreams and fairy tales.
But these leaked messages are serious business. What they prove is that the "mainstream" media today are often just a shameless channel for leftist message coordination, and that anyone who assumes he's simply getting the "news" from the national media is a very callow and uninformed consumer.
What's most shocking is the silence. How many in the "mainstream" press are publicly denouncing those members of JournoList for their blatant disregard of journalistic ethics? Listen to the crickets.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tucker Carlson's website, the Daily Caller, has unearthed a treasure trove of liberal journalists talking (nastily) to themselves in a private e-mail list about how they should use their media power to remake the world in their image.
The funniest thing about this expose of JournoList was witnessing journalists say it was unfair to leak these e-mails when reporters had an "expectation of privacy." More than 90,000 pages of secret documents on Afghanistan have been leaked and journalists are tripping over one another in a mad stampede to cover the story. Everyone should laugh heartily at leak-devouring journalists getting a fistful of their own bitter pills.
The saddest thing about all this is the confirmation (as if it were necessary) that liberal journalists really aren't journalists first. They're political strategists. They pretend to be the Hollywood version of Woodward and Bernstein, the brave sleuths digging out government malfeasance and corruption. But in reality, they're the Woodward and Bernstein who plotted how to get Richard Nixon impeached and ready the way for pacifist and socialist "Watergate babies" like Chris Dodd and Henry Waxman to take seats of power. Ethics are only relevant if they're a weapon.
Jonathan Strong's first installment for the Daily Caller proved that with a wallop. Take former New York magazine political writer Michael Tomasky's plea to "kill ABC" for talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: "Listen folks -- in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn't about defending Obama. This is about how the (mainstream media) kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people."
Liberal journalists in this crowd favor only discourse that "serves the people" -- meaning, a "debate" that advances the ball for socialism. Any other uncooperative or unhelpful line of journalism, questioning, discussion, balance or objectivity is "idiocy" that should be "killed." At its heart, liberal bias isn't just about slanting the news against conservatives; it's about slanting the news to discredit and then ignore conservatives until they sit grumpily on the ash heap of history. If that includes censorship, like yanking the journalist credentials of Fox News, some on the JournoList eagerly have encouraged it.
The "mainstream" (ha!) media's first bucket of water on the Daily Caller's fire was to claim that the participants on the JournoList weren't primarily "objective" media types. It was heavily salted with The Nation, Mother Jones, The American Prospect and obscure magazines like Government Executive. But the rebuttal is obvious. The list's creator, Ezra Klein, rose from The American Prospect to being the 25-year-old blogging boy wonder of the Washington Post, whose opinions pop up all over the paper. It's not at all uncommon for "mainstream" journalists to be groomed at liberal opinion rags. Think of JournoList as part of a finishing school for "objective" journalists, and you can see where conservatives never trust the national media elite.
The second liberal self-defense of JournoList was that Klein claimed there was no plan for partisan "message coordination." But the Daily Caller showed how no one on the list was really paying attention to that alleged plan. After Sarah Palin was picked for the GOP ticket in 2008, Suzanne Nossel of Human Rights Watch insisted, "I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views."
Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones insisted the entire left should spread that spin: "That's excellent! If enough people -- people on this list? -- write that the pick is sexist, you'll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket," he wrote. No message coordination there.
Some of the exposed journalists have defended themselves by saying they never put their vicious messages in the media mainstream. Others suggested they were just as earnestly biased in public as they were in private. Anyone paying attention to the media during the 2008 campaign clearly didn't need the JournoList ravings to realize the media immediately despised Palin and hailed Barack Obama as the glowing receptacle of liberal hopes, dreams and fairy tales.
But these leaked messages are serious business. What they prove is that the "mainstream" media today are often just a shameless channel for leftist message coordination, and that anyone who assumes he's simply getting the "news" from the national media is a very callow and uninformed consumer.
What's most shocking is the silence. How many in the "mainstream" press are publicly denouncing those members of JournoList for their blatant disregard of journalistic ethics? Listen to the crickets.
Stone’s Foot In Mouth Disease
Brent Bozell
Friday, July 30, 2010
It never ceases to amaze that Oliver Stone thinks Ronald Reagan was a dunce. When it comes to judging iron-fisted dictators and anti-American despots, Stone is the intellectually incurious simpleton. He thinks Reagan was stupid because he clung to an all-encompassing ideology. But so does Stone. He thinks every evil in the world came from corporations, especially American corporations, including those he uses to make himself millions.
How else would you explain the (new) mess Stone (again) has made as he prepares a 10-part documentary for Showtime on "The Secret History of America," including evaluations of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, Stone declared Hitler was a monster, but he was apparently still America's fault: "Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein," Stone said. "German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support."
Stone unfortunately wasn't finished. He proceeded to denigrate the importance of the Holocaust: "Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than (to) the Jewish people, 25 or 30 (million killed)." The reason few people know this, according to Stone? "The Jewish domination of the media," he said. "There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f----d up United States foreign policy for years."
The major media thoroughly -- and for the most part, correctly -- punished Mel Gibson within hours for a drunken anti-Semitic rant in 2006. But Stone has drawn a pass since he's made a raft of leftist films, and never one glorifying Jesus.
Not everyone took the week off. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League proclaimed "Oliver Stone has once again shown his conspiratorial colors with his comments about 'Jewish domination of the media' and control over U.S. foreign policy. His words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence."
Stone then apologized for downplaying the Holocaust: "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret."
He's made clumsy associations before: In 1997, he was one of 34 celebrities to sign a letter comparing the treatment of Scientologists in Germany with persecution by the Nazis in the 1930s.
This man's affinity for dictators hasn't waned. He even came to the defense of Iranian president (and habitual Holocaust-denier) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He slammed the U.S. policy toward Iran as "horrible" and added, "Iran isn't necessarily the good guy, but we don't know the full story!"
That's the problem with Stone. He always purports to speak truth to power, but he's never met a truth he couldn't demolish.
What Stone always knows is that America is the bad guy. Anyone with the audacity to oppose this country, and better yet, slander it, is suddenly the sugary apple of Stone's eye. He has made documentaries about hate-filled killers like Fidel Castro, and Yasser Arafat, and just last month, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez (with a pathetic box-office gross of $166,000). But Ahmadinejad turned him down. "While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the U.S., the opposition is still part of the Great Satan," proclaimed his media adviser, Mehdi Kalhor.
Stone continues to see the gleam in many a dictator's eye. In January, Stone told The Hollywood Reporter that "Stalin has a complete other story ... Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply."
Apparently, these mass-murdering dictators are seen too narrowly by Americans: "I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view," Stone proclaimed. "We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them." Of course, that included blame for America. "Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."
Stone's apologies for his remarks downplaying the Holocaust will probably prevent Showtime from heeding some Hollywood calls for canceling his "Secret History" series. But it's amazing that Stone's political and historical buffoonery continues to be presented by some interviewers and media executives as something wise and wonderful.
Friday, July 30, 2010
It never ceases to amaze that Oliver Stone thinks Ronald Reagan was a dunce. When it comes to judging iron-fisted dictators and anti-American despots, Stone is the intellectually incurious simpleton. He thinks Reagan was stupid because he clung to an all-encompassing ideology. But so does Stone. He thinks every evil in the world came from corporations, especially American corporations, including those he uses to make himself millions.
How else would you explain the (new) mess Stone (again) has made as he prepares a 10-part documentary for Showtime on "The Secret History of America," including evaluations of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, Stone declared Hitler was a monster, but he was apparently still America's fault: "Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein," Stone said. "German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support."
Stone unfortunately wasn't finished. He proceeded to denigrate the importance of the Holocaust: "Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than (to) the Jewish people, 25 or 30 (million killed)." The reason few people know this, according to Stone? "The Jewish domination of the media," he said. "There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f----d up United States foreign policy for years."
The major media thoroughly -- and for the most part, correctly -- punished Mel Gibson within hours for a drunken anti-Semitic rant in 2006. But Stone has drawn a pass since he's made a raft of leftist films, and never one glorifying Jesus.
Not everyone took the week off. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League proclaimed "Oliver Stone has once again shown his conspiratorial colors with his comments about 'Jewish domination of the media' and control over U.S. foreign policy. His words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence."
Stone then apologized for downplaying the Holocaust: "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret."
He's made clumsy associations before: In 1997, he was one of 34 celebrities to sign a letter comparing the treatment of Scientologists in Germany with persecution by the Nazis in the 1930s.
This man's affinity for dictators hasn't waned. He even came to the defense of Iranian president (and habitual Holocaust-denier) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He slammed the U.S. policy toward Iran as "horrible" and added, "Iran isn't necessarily the good guy, but we don't know the full story!"
That's the problem with Stone. He always purports to speak truth to power, but he's never met a truth he couldn't demolish.
What Stone always knows is that America is the bad guy. Anyone with the audacity to oppose this country, and better yet, slander it, is suddenly the sugary apple of Stone's eye. He has made documentaries about hate-filled killers like Fidel Castro, and Yasser Arafat, and just last month, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez (with a pathetic box-office gross of $166,000). But Ahmadinejad turned him down. "While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the U.S., the opposition is still part of the Great Satan," proclaimed his media adviser, Mehdi Kalhor.
Stone continues to see the gleam in many a dictator's eye. In January, Stone told The Hollywood Reporter that "Stalin has a complete other story ... Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply."
Apparently, these mass-murdering dictators are seen too narrowly by Americans: "I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view," Stone proclaimed. "We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them." Of course, that included blame for America. "Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."
Stone's apologies for his remarks downplaying the Holocaust will probably prevent Showtime from heeding some Hollywood calls for canceling his "Secret History" series. But it's amazing that Stone's political and historical buffoonery continues to be presented by some interviewers and media executives as something wise and wonderful.
Another Day, Another Assault On Liberty
David Limbaugh
Friday, July 30, 2010
Yesterday's federal court decision to enjoin enforcement of the Arizona immigration law is the latest example of a virtually unchecked renegade federal government waging war against the states and against the liberties of its citizens.
We've seen that Obama will exercise any power he can get away with, from strong-arming secured creditors and favoring unions as he gobbled up automakers to making a mockery of due process with his Oval Office shakedown of BP. But he might have reached a new low with his assaults on the sovereignty of the people of Arizona.
Indeed, Judge Susan Bolton's disgraceful decision to grant an injunction against Arizona's new immigration law is, in the words of Mark Levin, "abominable," but let's not forget that this case wouldn't have been before Judge Bolton if Obama's Justice Department hadn't initiated it.
And let's not pretend that Obama's motives are anything other than political, the law and the rule of law be damned. He told Sen. Jon Kyl in a private meeting that he was unwilling to secure our borders because it would decrease his chances to pass "comprehensive immigration reform."
So when Arizona attempted to exercise a little self-help and work on securing its own border by passing a law carefully crafted to mirror the federal immigration law and encourage its enforcement, the all-powerful Obama feds came down on it like a furious king against his disobedient subjects.
In a saner world, freedom lovers could have rested easy, knowing that an impartial, Constitution-respecting judge would summarily reject the administration's unlawful scheme to thwart Arizona's sovereignty by superimposing its own nonenforcement policy.
But in her decision, Clinton appointee Bolton demonstrated how dangerous judicial activism can be to our individual liberties and democratic processes. It's one thing for a court to invalidate a law because it doesn't pass constitutional muster; it's quite another for it to misstate the facts, the legislation and the Constitution to reach a preordained decision.
Just consider three outrages of this decision highlighted by other commentators, any of which, individually, makes a mockery of justice. Andy McCarthy properly observes that Judge Bolton stretched the federal pre-emption doctrine to absurd limits. Under Bolton's specious reasoning, state law must be struck down not only if it is inconsistent with federal law, which the Arizona law is not, but also if it somehow contradicts federal law enforcement practices. Because the Obama feds refused, as a matter of policy, to enforce their own law against illegal immigration, the state could not be allowed to pass a law promoting enforcement. Note that nothing in the actual Constitution or case law justifies such an extrapolation of pre-emption doctrine. But such trifles don't impede an administration and court determined to keep the immigration floodgates open at any cost.
Mark Levin notes that Judge Bolton correctly enunciated the rigorous legal standard required for a plaintiff to succeed in a "facial challenge" to a law's constitutionality but then proceeded to ignore the rules she had just affirmed. She acknowledged that for the federal government to have prevailed, it would have had to show the law could never be applied in a constitutional fashion. That is, "a facial challenge must fail where a statute has a 'plainly legitimate sweep.'" But she ignored that limitation on her authority, just as she violated another principle she paid lip service to in her opinion: that the court was not to speculate about hypothetical cases.
Heather Mac Donald exposes Judge Bolton's acquiescence to the Obama administration's "carefully cultivated fiction" that the administration's primary motive with the lawsuit was to prevent the application of the law to legal aliens. The judge ignored uncontroverted testimony and legal briefs from Arizona officials stating that only people who were reasonably suspected to be illegally in the country would be required to prove their legal status. So to protect legal aliens from a law that doesn't apply to them, she refuses to apply the law to illegals.
Cynical observers of the political scene lazily dismiss each unfolding Obama outrage as merely Washington politics as usual. But with this administration, we're witnessing power grabs that are different in kind rather than degree.
Our liberties depend on our preserving the integrity of the Constitution and the mechanisms it established to deter tyranny. To the extent we dismantle those safeguards, we imperil our freedoms.
When the political class is filled with those who are ideologically committed to certain political ends irrespective of the legality of the means used to achieve them, our system of checks and balances breaks down, which is one reason John Adams warned, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
November's elections cannot come fast enough.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Yesterday's federal court decision to enjoin enforcement of the Arizona immigration law is the latest example of a virtually unchecked renegade federal government waging war against the states and against the liberties of its citizens.
We've seen that Obama will exercise any power he can get away with, from strong-arming secured creditors and favoring unions as he gobbled up automakers to making a mockery of due process with his Oval Office shakedown of BP. But he might have reached a new low with his assaults on the sovereignty of the people of Arizona.
Indeed, Judge Susan Bolton's disgraceful decision to grant an injunction against Arizona's new immigration law is, in the words of Mark Levin, "abominable," but let's not forget that this case wouldn't have been before Judge Bolton if Obama's Justice Department hadn't initiated it.
And let's not pretend that Obama's motives are anything other than political, the law and the rule of law be damned. He told Sen. Jon Kyl in a private meeting that he was unwilling to secure our borders because it would decrease his chances to pass "comprehensive immigration reform."
So when Arizona attempted to exercise a little self-help and work on securing its own border by passing a law carefully crafted to mirror the federal immigration law and encourage its enforcement, the all-powerful Obama feds came down on it like a furious king against his disobedient subjects.
In a saner world, freedom lovers could have rested easy, knowing that an impartial, Constitution-respecting judge would summarily reject the administration's unlawful scheme to thwart Arizona's sovereignty by superimposing its own nonenforcement policy.
But in her decision, Clinton appointee Bolton demonstrated how dangerous judicial activism can be to our individual liberties and democratic processes. It's one thing for a court to invalidate a law because it doesn't pass constitutional muster; it's quite another for it to misstate the facts, the legislation and the Constitution to reach a preordained decision.
Just consider three outrages of this decision highlighted by other commentators, any of which, individually, makes a mockery of justice. Andy McCarthy properly observes that Judge Bolton stretched the federal pre-emption doctrine to absurd limits. Under Bolton's specious reasoning, state law must be struck down not only if it is inconsistent with federal law, which the Arizona law is not, but also if it somehow contradicts federal law enforcement practices. Because the Obama feds refused, as a matter of policy, to enforce their own law against illegal immigration, the state could not be allowed to pass a law promoting enforcement. Note that nothing in the actual Constitution or case law justifies such an extrapolation of pre-emption doctrine. But such trifles don't impede an administration and court determined to keep the immigration floodgates open at any cost.
Mark Levin notes that Judge Bolton correctly enunciated the rigorous legal standard required for a plaintiff to succeed in a "facial challenge" to a law's constitutionality but then proceeded to ignore the rules she had just affirmed. She acknowledged that for the federal government to have prevailed, it would have had to show the law could never be applied in a constitutional fashion. That is, "a facial challenge must fail where a statute has a 'plainly legitimate sweep.'" But she ignored that limitation on her authority, just as she violated another principle she paid lip service to in her opinion: that the court was not to speculate about hypothetical cases.
Heather Mac Donald exposes Judge Bolton's acquiescence to the Obama administration's "carefully cultivated fiction" that the administration's primary motive with the lawsuit was to prevent the application of the law to legal aliens. The judge ignored uncontroverted testimony and legal briefs from Arizona officials stating that only people who were reasonably suspected to be illegally in the country would be required to prove their legal status. So to protect legal aliens from a law that doesn't apply to them, she refuses to apply the law to illegals.
Cynical observers of the political scene lazily dismiss each unfolding Obama outrage as merely Washington politics as usual. But with this administration, we're witnessing power grabs that are different in kind rather than degree.
Our liberties depend on our preserving the integrity of the Constitution and the mechanisms it established to deter tyranny. To the extent we dismantle those safeguards, we imperil our freedoms.
When the political class is filled with those who are ideologically committed to certain political ends irrespective of the legality of the means used to achieve them, our system of checks and balances breaks down, which is one reason John Adams warned, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
November's elections cannot come fast enough.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Left Hates Conservatives
Dennis Prager
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death -- and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.
Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs -- such things exist on the right as well -- but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the left's hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes to be present while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore dies slowly and painfully of a heart attack?
From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people on the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them.
The question is: why?
Here are three possible answers.
First, the left thinks the right is evil.
Granting for exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad, not merely wrong. Examples are innumerable. For example, Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic Party said, "In contradistinction to the Republicans ... (Democrats) don't believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night."
Or take Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who, among many similar comments, said, "I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It's very simple: We have a conscience."
Has any spokesman of the Republican Party ever said anything analogous about Democrats not caring about the suffering of children or not having a conscience?
Second, when you don't confront real evil, you hate those who do.
You can see this on almost any school playground. The kid who confronts the school bully is often resented more than the bully. Whether out of guilt over their own cowardice or fear that the one who confronted the bully would provoke the bully to lash out more, those who refuse to confront the bully often resent the one who does. During the 1980s, the left expressed far more hatred of Ronald Reagan than of Soviet Communist dictator Leonid Brezhnev. And, when Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire," the liberal world was enraged ... at Reagan.
Those (usually on the left) who refused to confront communism hated those (usually on the right) who did. They called the latter "war mongers," "cold warriors," charged them with having "missile envy" and with loving war.
Today, the left has similar contempt for those who take a hard line on Islamic terror. The liberal and leftist media routinely place quote marks around the words War on Terror. To the left, such a war is manufactured by rightists for nefarious reasons (oil, self-enrichment, imperialism, etc.). Indeed, the Obama administration has actually forbidden use of the term "Islamic terror." America is at war with a nameless enemy. The real enemies the Democratic administration is prepared to name are the Republican Party, tea parties, Fox News and talk radio.
Third, the left's utopian vision is prevented only by the right.
From its inception, leftism has been a secular utopian religion. As Ted Kennedy, famously quoting his brother Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Some (people) see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?" That exemplifies leftwing idealism -- imagining a utopian future. There will be no poor, no war, no conflict, no inequality. That future is only a few more government programs away from reality. And who stands in the way of such perfection? Conservatives. How could a utopian not hate a conservative?
To put in another way, the famous '60s left-wing motto "Make love, not war" embodies the problem as the left sees it: The left makes love in the world and the right makes war in the world. How could you not hate the right? The right, with its beliefs in a strong military; in individuals, not the state; taking care of themselves, their families and their neighbors; and in punishing criminals, is the anti-Love, a figure as reviled on the left as the antichrist is to Christians.
This hatred will only increase if the left feels its programs to greatly increase the size of the government are in any way threatened in the forthcoming elections. The problem is that this hatred does not decrease even when the left is in power.
Hatred of conservatives is so much part of the left that the day the left stops hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of the left as we know it.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death -- and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.
Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs -- such things exist on the right as well -- but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the left's hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes to be present while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore dies slowly and painfully of a heart attack?
From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people on the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them.
The question is: why?
Here are three possible answers.
First, the left thinks the right is evil.
Granting for exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad, not merely wrong. Examples are innumerable. For example, Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic Party said, "In contradistinction to the Republicans ... (Democrats) don't believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night."
Or take Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who, among many similar comments, said, "I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It's very simple: We have a conscience."
Has any spokesman of the Republican Party ever said anything analogous about Democrats not caring about the suffering of children or not having a conscience?
Second, when you don't confront real evil, you hate those who do.
You can see this on almost any school playground. The kid who confronts the school bully is often resented more than the bully. Whether out of guilt over their own cowardice or fear that the one who confronted the bully would provoke the bully to lash out more, those who refuse to confront the bully often resent the one who does. During the 1980s, the left expressed far more hatred of Ronald Reagan than of Soviet Communist dictator Leonid Brezhnev. And, when Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire," the liberal world was enraged ... at Reagan.
Those (usually on the left) who refused to confront communism hated those (usually on the right) who did. They called the latter "war mongers," "cold warriors," charged them with having "missile envy" and with loving war.
Today, the left has similar contempt for those who take a hard line on Islamic terror. The liberal and leftist media routinely place quote marks around the words War on Terror. To the left, such a war is manufactured by rightists for nefarious reasons (oil, self-enrichment, imperialism, etc.). Indeed, the Obama administration has actually forbidden use of the term "Islamic terror." America is at war with a nameless enemy. The real enemies the Democratic administration is prepared to name are the Republican Party, tea parties, Fox News and talk radio.
Third, the left's utopian vision is prevented only by the right.
From its inception, leftism has been a secular utopian religion. As Ted Kennedy, famously quoting his brother Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Some (people) see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?" That exemplifies leftwing idealism -- imagining a utopian future. There will be no poor, no war, no conflict, no inequality. That future is only a few more government programs away from reality. And who stands in the way of such perfection? Conservatives. How could a utopian not hate a conservative?
To put in another way, the famous '60s left-wing motto "Make love, not war" embodies the problem as the left sees it: The left makes love in the world and the right makes war in the world. How could you not hate the right? The right, with its beliefs in a strong military; in individuals, not the state; taking care of themselves, their families and their neighbors; and in punishing criminals, is the anti-Love, a figure as reviled on the left as the antichrist is to Christians.
This hatred will only increase if the left feels its programs to greatly increase the size of the government are in any way threatened in the forthcoming elections. The problem is that this hatred does not decrease even when the left is in power.
Hatred of conservatives is so much part of the left that the day the left stops hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of the left as we know it.
Nailing A Memo to the UN’s Door
Ami Horowitz
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
“Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible…Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing to yourself.”
While this may read like a transcript of a conversation between my high school principal and me, this was in fact a memo written by outgoing chief of the Office of Internal Oversight (OIOS) at the U.N., Inga-Britt Ahlenius, to current Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. OIOS’s job is to sniff out and expose corruption from within the United Nations.
This public and unprecedented rebuke of a sitting Secretary General and the organization as a whole, is stunning in its scope, ferocity and detail. It is testimony that at the U.N. today the “existing culture is one of secrecy” and contributes to “a process of decay.”
And that was just the cover letter.
She continues for fifty more pages, excoriating the lack of accountability, transparency and will to stamp out corruption.
For the past few years, I’ve had a chance to see firsthand the depths to which the U.N. has fallen away from its grand ideals. Through producing my documentary, U.N. Me (www.unmemovie.com), I’ve seen how corruption eats away at the core of the United Nations.
While the revelations of this memo are unsurprising to me or any ardent observer of the United Nations, it is still an extraordinary look into a high-ranking U.N. official’s long-simmering frustration with the world body and its inability to police itself. It shows that the United Nations has become so putrefied that even senior officials in the U.N. have been forced to recognize and publicly proclaim it.
I would like to see this as an inflection point. I wish it could be a moment of bright clarity for the institution, a chance to reevaluate and reset itself again, allowing it to begin the deep and necessary process of reform.
Unfortunately, recent history has shown us otherwise.
While I will not take the time to enumerate the copious examples that substantiate this point, I will mention one recent and wholly under-reported example that, to me, exposes the United Nations and its “process.” This example begins, as many United Nation’s initiatives do, with right-minded intentions that along the way become either laughingly ineffectual or dark and dangerous.
In January 2006, a task force was created by the United Nations to investigate corruption in peacekeeping procurement, an effort that should rightly be applauded. It was headed by former U.S. federal prosecutor Robert Appleton and staffed by 18 white-collar crime experts.
This task force did an admirable job and uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials and services used by U.N. peacekeeping operations. This corruption came with a price tag of more than $610 million. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
But instead of staffing up the task force to complete a more thorough investigation of U.N. efforts, Appleton and his experts were obstructed and attacked for their efforts at every turn. In the midst of their investigations, and with billions worth of contracts yet to be investigated, they were fired. The U.N. bureaucracy refused to follow up on their findings and ignored many of their recommendations.
Ahlenius, in her outgoing report, dealt with this culture of obstruction and obfuscation forthrightly and candidly and for that she should be applauded. But for it to have the effect that she intended, the reformation of the United Nations, it has to be taken seriously by the leadership at the U.N. Unfortunately, they have already begun the process of attacking both Ahlenius and her memo. To not heed her calls for reform is a slap in the face not only to us here in the United States that fund the U.N. to the tune of six billion dollars a year, but also to the vulnerable populations whose needs were not met due to the siphoning of money and aid in these corrupt dealings.
It is clear that something is rotten in Turtle Bay. The leadership of the United Nations should be ashamed.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
“Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible…Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing to yourself.”
While this may read like a transcript of a conversation between my high school principal and me, this was in fact a memo written by outgoing chief of the Office of Internal Oversight (OIOS) at the U.N., Inga-Britt Ahlenius, to current Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. OIOS’s job is to sniff out and expose corruption from within the United Nations.
This public and unprecedented rebuke of a sitting Secretary General and the organization as a whole, is stunning in its scope, ferocity and detail. It is testimony that at the U.N. today the “existing culture is one of secrecy” and contributes to “a process of decay.”
And that was just the cover letter.
She continues for fifty more pages, excoriating the lack of accountability, transparency and will to stamp out corruption.
For the past few years, I’ve had a chance to see firsthand the depths to which the U.N. has fallen away from its grand ideals. Through producing my documentary, U.N. Me (www.unmemovie.com), I’ve seen how corruption eats away at the core of the United Nations.
While the revelations of this memo are unsurprising to me or any ardent observer of the United Nations, it is still an extraordinary look into a high-ranking U.N. official’s long-simmering frustration with the world body and its inability to police itself. It shows that the United Nations has become so putrefied that even senior officials in the U.N. have been forced to recognize and publicly proclaim it.
I would like to see this as an inflection point. I wish it could be a moment of bright clarity for the institution, a chance to reevaluate and reset itself again, allowing it to begin the deep and necessary process of reform.
Unfortunately, recent history has shown us otherwise.
While I will not take the time to enumerate the copious examples that substantiate this point, I will mention one recent and wholly under-reported example that, to me, exposes the United Nations and its “process.” This example begins, as many United Nation’s initiatives do, with right-minded intentions that along the way become either laughingly ineffectual or dark and dangerous.
In January 2006, a task force was created by the United Nations to investigate corruption in peacekeeping procurement, an effort that should rightly be applauded. It was headed by former U.S. federal prosecutor Robert Appleton and staffed by 18 white-collar crime experts.
This task force did an admirable job and uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials and services used by U.N. peacekeeping operations. This corruption came with a price tag of more than $610 million. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
But instead of staffing up the task force to complete a more thorough investigation of U.N. efforts, Appleton and his experts were obstructed and attacked for their efforts at every turn. In the midst of their investigations, and with billions worth of contracts yet to be investigated, they were fired. The U.N. bureaucracy refused to follow up on their findings and ignored many of their recommendations.
Ahlenius, in her outgoing report, dealt with this culture of obstruction and obfuscation forthrightly and candidly and for that she should be applauded. But for it to have the effect that she intended, the reformation of the United Nations, it has to be taken seriously by the leadership at the U.N. Unfortunately, they have already begun the process of attacking both Ahlenius and her memo. To not heed her calls for reform is a slap in the face not only to us here in the United States that fund the U.N. to the tune of six billion dollars a year, but also to the vulnerable populations whose needs were not met due to the siphoning of money and aid in these corrupt dealings.
It is clear that something is rotten in Turtle Bay. The leadership of the United Nations should be ashamed.
The New Journalism
Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
"The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as a national immune system, zapping scandal mongers and quashing wild rumors," wrote former "green jobs czar" Van Jones in Sunday's New York Times.
This may be one of the most unintentionally hilarious lines in recent memory. Jones, you may recall, left the White House when his background -- not just as an alleged 9/11 truther but as a self-confessed "Communist" and "revolutionary" -- became grist for the Fox News mill. Mainstream publications mostly ignored the controversy until after he was fired, and then focused on the fact that he directed an expletive at Republicans in a YouTube video.
Now Jones, with billets at Princeton and the Center for American Progress, casts himself as yet another victim, just like Shirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture employee fired after Andrew Breitbart released a misleadingly edited video of her. (Breitbart, a friend of mine, insists to me that he did not edit the video himself.)
You've just got to love a former member of STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement), a Mao-influenced organization with a professed "commitment to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism," giving Walter Cronkite -- the dashboard saint of American bourgeois conformity -- his due as the bulwark of decency. Yes, yes, Jones says he's grown and is no longer the Red he was even a few years ago. But come on.
For generations, conservatives lamented the decline in standards. When Hollywood portrayed glandular instincts as the new moral compass of the secular age, conservatives waxed nostalgic over the lost decency of the "studio system." When the education industry shelved the great books in favor of hugs, conservatives lamented the demise of the three Rs and the "closing of the American mind." When the left became enamored with a "riot ideology" that mistook lawlessness for political protest, conservatives invoked "law and order." Name a front in the political and culture wars, and conservatives defended the authority of authority and the tradition of tradition, while liberals and leftists defended sticking it to the man.
But now that the legacy media is one of the last resources the left still has at its disposal, even Comrade Jones isn't immune to mossy nostalgia for Walter Cronkite (who, by the way, is easily one of the most overrated American icons).
And that's the irony: The left only believes in sticking it to the man when it isn't the man. Teachers unions and tenured professors, now that they control their guilds, are darn near reactionary in their white-knuckled grip on the status quo. Liberal legal scholars are a cargo cult to stare decisis, for the simple reason that the precedents are still on their side.
The essence of the culture war today is a battle over whose "gatekeepers" are legitimate and whose are not.
Nowhere is this more true than in the temples of journalism, where the high priests are barricading the doors with pews and candelabras to fend off the barbarians.
Among the liberal Brahmins of the legacy media, probity, standards and restraint are the order of the day for inconvenient news. Feeding frenzies are reserved for the fun news, i.e., the news that reinforces liberal assumptions.
So, when the Climategate e-mails were released, the New York Times' chief environmental correspondent refrained from posting private e-mails, a standard he would never have taken with internal e-mails from, say, BP. The leak of Valerie Plame's identity: a shocking scandal that tore at the heart of the Bush administration. The leaking of vital state secrets: great journalism.
The house Cronkite built did many fine and noble things. It also locked out competing points of view, buried inconvenient bodies, spun the news with centrifugal force and racked up a formidable list of Shirley Sherrods all its own. The New York Times whitewashed Stalin's genocide. Cronkite misreported the significance of the Tet Offensive to say the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Dan Rather, Cronkite's replacement, began his career falsely reporting that Dallas schoolchildren cheered JFK's murder and ended it falsely reporting on forged National Guard memos. The Rodney King video was misleadingly edited, the Tailwind story was not true. And that's only a snippet of the list.
The media environment today is dizzying not because of one revolution but two complimentary ones. First there's the churn of the Internet, from Wikileaks to wilding bloggers. But there's also a second revolution that amounts to consumer backlash against the House of Cronkite. It has fueled the rise of Fox News and the new alternative media.
This pincer movement can be scary. But it's progress.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
"The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as a national immune system, zapping scandal mongers and quashing wild rumors," wrote former "green jobs czar" Van Jones in Sunday's New York Times.
This may be one of the most unintentionally hilarious lines in recent memory. Jones, you may recall, left the White House when his background -- not just as an alleged 9/11 truther but as a self-confessed "Communist" and "revolutionary" -- became grist for the Fox News mill. Mainstream publications mostly ignored the controversy until after he was fired, and then focused on the fact that he directed an expletive at Republicans in a YouTube video.
Now Jones, with billets at Princeton and the Center for American Progress, casts himself as yet another victim, just like Shirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture employee fired after Andrew Breitbart released a misleadingly edited video of her. (Breitbart, a friend of mine, insists to me that he did not edit the video himself.)
You've just got to love a former member of STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement), a Mao-influenced organization with a professed "commitment to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism," giving Walter Cronkite -- the dashboard saint of American bourgeois conformity -- his due as the bulwark of decency. Yes, yes, Jones says he's grown and is no longer the Red he was even a few years ago. But come on.
For generations, conservatives lamented the decline in standards. When Hollywood portrayed glandular instincts as the new moral compass of the secular age, conservatives waxed nostalgic over the lost decency of the "studio system." When the education industry shelved the great books in favor of hugs, conservatives lamented the demise of the three Rs and the "closing of the American mind." When the left became enamored with a "riot ideology" that mistook lawlessness for political protest, conservatives invoked "law and order." Name a front in the political and culture wars, and conservatives defended the authority of authority and the tradition of tradition, while liberals and leftists defended sticking it to the man.
But now that the legacy media is one of the last resources the left still has at its disposal, even Comrade Jones isn't immune to mossy nostalgia for Walter Cronkite (who, by the way, is easily one of the most overrated American icons).
And that's the irony: The left only believes in sticking it to the man when it isn't the man. Teachers unions and tenured professors, now that they control their guilds, are darn near reactionary in their white-knuckled grip on the status quo. Liberal legal scholars are a cargo cult to stare decisis, for the simple reason that the precedents are still on their side.
The essence of the culture war today is a battle over whose "gatekeepers" are legitimate and whose are not.
Nowhere is this more true than in the temples of journalism, where the high priests are barricading the doors with pews and candelabras to fend off the barbarians.
Among the liberal Brahmins of the legacy media, probity, standards and restraint are the order of the day for inconvenient news. Feeding frenzies are reserved for the fun news, i.e., the news that reinforces liberal assumptions.
So, when the Climategate e-mails were released, the New York Times' chief environmental correspondent refrained from posting private e-mails, a standard he would never have taken with internal e-mails from, say, BP. The leak of Valerie Plame's identity: a shocking scandal that tore at the heart of the Bush administration. The leaking of vital state secrets: great journalism.
The house Cronkite built did many fine and noble things. It also locked out competing points of view, buried inconvenient bodies, spun the news with centrifugal force and racked up a formidable list of Shirley Sherrods all its own. The New York Times whitewashed Stalin's genocide. Cronkite misreported the significance of the Tet Offensive to say the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Dan Rather, Cronkite's replacement, began his career falsely reporting that Dallas schoolchildren cheered JFK's murder and ended it falsely reporting on forged National Guard memos. The Rodney King video was misleadingly edited, the Tailwind story was not true. And that's only a snippet of the list.
The media environment today is dizzying not because of one revolution but two complimentary ones. First there's the churn of the Internet, from Wikileaks to wilding bloggers. But there's also a second revolution that amounts to consumer backlash against the House of Cronkite. It has fueled the rise of Fox News and the new alternative media.
This pincer movement can be scary. But it's progress.
Newsflash: Stalin Liberates Normandy
Paul Kengor
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Call it another Twilight Zone moment; another ignominious contribution to the “you-can’t-make-this-up” category. First, Mao Tse-tung was honored by oblivious New Yorkers, with their Empire State Building aglow in red and yellow last October to commemorate the birth of Red China. Mao’s nearest rival for trophy of top mass murderer in history was Joseph Stalin. Perhaps other clueless Americans could find a way to honor Stalin, too—maybe closer to Washington, DC, the nation’s capital?
Hey, don’t laugh. The National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia has done just that, erecting a statue of Stalin. No, I’m not kidding.
Predictably, the mainstream press is not talking about this. The press is dominated by the same people who dominate our educational system; they are largely uninterested in the horrors of communism. It is Joe McCarthy, not Joe Stalin, who consumes their Cold War outrage.
The only reason I know about this travesty is the vigilant work of Lee Edwards’ Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has the heroic goal of trying—desperately—to educate Americans about the forgotten holocaust committed by communists in the 20th century, which exceeded 100 million deaths, double the combined death total of the two world wars. Likewise worthy endeavors, such as the National Holocaust Memorial, do crucial work reminding us of Hitler’s genocide. But aside from Edwards’ organization, no other has formally assumed the task of reminding the world of the unparalleled carnage caused by communist governments—where, incidentally, Joseph Stalin led the pack.
As for the Stalin statue, Edwards’ group has a website (www.StalinStatue.com) to call attention to this moral-historical slander. The site features a petition to remove the statue, with over 3,000 signatures from every state and over 40 countries, including some really upset folks from the former Soviet empire. Addressed to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and President Obama’s secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, the petition demands that the “true history of World War II must be protected from distortion and misinformation which threaten to erase or alter well-established and documented facts.”
Among those facts is a rather vital one, noted in the petition’s next line: “neither Joseph Stalin nor Soviet forces played any part in the D-Day landing at Normandy.”
Indeed, ironically, such disinformation was once the crass domain of Kremlin propagandists, cooked up to dupe gullible Westerners. Stalin himself had his in-house stooges retroactively invent him a gallant wartime role. Imagine that his arch-rival from the Cold War—the United States of America—would earnestly pick up that charge, under no threat of execution or imprisonment by the long-dead tyrant. Stalin is surely howling from his tomb.
Even then, the statue represents far graver distortion. Consider:
Stalin was morally complicit in the indescribable deaths of all those boys (non-Russian) who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Five years earlier, during the dark of night August 23-24, 1939, Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany signed a secret pact. One week later, in keeping with that pact, Hitler invaded Poland from the west. Two and a half weeks later, the Red Army, likewise in keeping with that pact, invaded Poland from the east. World War II was on. The catalyst for Europe’s ultimate liberation would come June 6, 1944, D-Day—no thanks whatsoever to Stalin.
Importantly, Russian soldiers (not Stalin) deserve commendation for Hitler’s defeat. In June 1941, Hitler betrayed Stalin, invading the USSR. It was a bloody rout. No country suffered as many dead as the USSR—40 times the combined death toll of America and Britain. A major reason for Russia’s staggering losses was Stalin’s Great Purge, where the tyrant murdered the nation’s high command, leaving novices in charge of opposing Hitler’s blitzkrieg. This was so irresponsibly, wickedly disastrous that Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rightly blamed Stalin for the millions of Russian boys killed by the Nazis.
If this history is new to you, then you, too, are a victim. You’re a casualty of America’s educational system, from public schools to our woefully biased, scandalously over-priced universities. That likewise applies to those responsible for honoring Stalin at the National D-Day Memorial, who are probably oblivious. Really, their monument to Stalin is a monument to American education.
It’s time to purge the architect of the Great Purge. The statue should be dismembered not peacefully but violently, befitting Stalin’s character. I suggest a sledgehammer, with survivors of the dictator’s savage campaigns, from Poland to the Ukraine to Siberia, each getting a whack.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Call it another Twilight Zone moment; another ignominious contribution to the “you-can’t-make-this-up” category. First, Mao Tse-tung was honored by oblivious New Yorkers, with their Empire State Building aglow in red and yellow last October to commemorate the birth of Red China. Mao’s nearest rival for trophy of top mass murderer in history was Joseph Stalin. Perhaps other clueless Americans could find a way to honor Stalin, too—maybe closer to Washington, DC, the nation’s capital?
Hey, don’t laugh. The National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia has done just that, erecting a statue of Stalin. No, I’m not kidding.
Predictably, the mainstream press is not talking about this. The press is dominated by the same people who dominate our educational system; they are largely uninterested in the horrors of communism. It is Joe McCarthy, not Joe Stalin, who consumes their Cold War outrage.
The only reason I know about this travesty is the vigilant work of Lee Edwards’ Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has the heroic goal of trying—desperately—to educate Americans about the forgotten holocaust committed by communists in the 20th century, which exceeded 100 million deaths, double the combined death total of the two world wars. Likewise worthy endeavors, such as the National Holocaust Memorial, do crucial work reminding us of Hitler’s genocide. But aside from Edwards’ organization, no other has formally assumed the task of reminding the world of the unparalleled carnage caused by communist governments—where, incidentally, Joseph Stalin led the pack.
As for the Stalin statue, Edwards’ group has a website (www.StalinStatue.com) to call attention to this moral-historical slander. The site features a petition to remove the statue, with over 3,000 signatures from every state and over 40 countries, including some really upset folks from the former Soviet empire. Addressed to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and President Obama’s secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, the petition demands that the “true history of World War II must be protected from distortion and misinformation which threaten to erase or alter well-established and documented facts.”
Among those facts is a rather vital one, noted in the petition’s next line: “neither Joseph Stalin nor Soviet forces played any part in the D-Day landing at Normandy.”
Indeed, ironically, such disinformation was once the crass domain of Kremlin propagandists, cooked up to dupe gullible Westerners. Stalin himself had his in-house stooges retroactively invent him a gallant wartime role. Imagine that his arch-rival from the Cold War—the United States of America—would earnestly pick up that charge, under no threat of execution or imprisonment by the long-dead tyrant. Stalin is surely howling from his tomb.
Even then, the statue represents far graver distortion. Consider:
Stalin was morally complicit in the indescribable deaths of all those boys (non-Russian) who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Five years earlier, during the dark of night August 23-24, 1939, Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany signed a secret pact. One week later, in keeping with that pact, Hitler invaded Poland from the west. Two and a half weeks later, the Red Army, likewise in keeping with that pact, invaded Poland from the east. World War II was on. The catalyst for Europe’s ultimate liberation would come June 6, 1944, D-Day—no thanks whatsoever to Stalin.
Importantly, Russian soldiers (not Stalin) deserve commendation for Hitler’s defeat. In June 1941, Hitler betrayed Stalin, invading the USSR. It was a bloody rout. No country suffered as many dead as the USSR—40 times the combined death toll of America and Britain. A major reason for Russia’s staggering losses was Stalin’s Great Purge, where the tyrant murdered the nation’s high command, leaving novices in charge of opposing Hitler’s blitzkrieg. This was so irresponsibly, wickedly disastrous that Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rightly blamed Stalin for the millions of Russian boys killed by the Nazis.
If this history is new to you, then you, too, are a victim. You’re a casualty of America’s educational system, from public schools to our woefully biased, scandalously over-priced universities. That likewise applies to those responsible for honoring Stalin at the National D-Day Memorial, who are probably oblivious. Really, their monument to Stalin is a monument to American education.
It’s time to purge the architect of the Great Purge. The statue should be dismembered not peacefully but violently, befitting Stalin’s character. I suggest a sledgehammer, with survivors of the dictator’s savage campaigns, from Poland to the Ukraine to Siberia, each getting a whack.
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Suffering of Guantanamo Prisoners
Humberto Fontova
Monday, July 26, 2010
``We lived surrounded by rats, cockroaches, scorpions –and I have to say it--with human excrement, yes, with excrement…dengue and tuberculosis ravaged the prisoners. Forty prisoners were crammed into cells measuring 32 square feet.”' Julio Galvez
"I lived in total darkness with my hands tied; with rats and cockroaches and excrement everywhere. That was all I could smell." Lester Gonzalez
"“Many prisoners attempted suicide. I saw prisoners stick needles in the dark part of their eye. I saw prisoners roll themselves in foam mattresses and set themselves alight, prisoners who inject excrement and urine into their eyes, prisoners who inject petrol into their private parts and other places just so they will be attended to." Normando Hernandez.
“I spent 17 months of solitary confinement in a four by four meter cell.” Jose Luis Paneque
Okay, okay, by now you’ve noticed the quotes are followed by Spanish surnames. So allow me to apologize for my deceptive article title. But it’s mostly accurate. Guantanamo, you see, is not only the name of a U.S. military base in Cuba; it’s also the name of a Cuban province that contains 94 (Castroite) jails. And some prisoners from nearby Cuban jails (Castro’s Cuba boasts form 200-300 prisons; Batista’s Cuba counted 12) were recently forcibly deported (NOT “released” as the current MSM/Castroite spin claims) to Spain, where they revealed the above horrors.
These Castro prisoners’ crimes?
Essentially saying things about Fidel Castro in Cuban public similar to what the Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore, the Congressional Black Caucus, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, etc. etc. etc. said about George Bush in U.S. public.
So I’m thinking: Hey! maybe—JUUUUSSSST maybe!-- while some intrepid MSM “investigative reporter,” pundit or show producer Googles around for his next Guantanamo prison Rocky-Horror article or TV piece -- he might come across this article’s trap-title and be alerted to the SHOCKER (within his profession) that Castro jails and murders people!
“Dream on!” you say. And of course you’re absolutely right. What was I THINKING?!
Prisoners, as we all know from the thirteen gazzillion MSM articles, also exist in the U.S. enclave of Guantanamo province. And as we learn from a Spanish reporter named Marc Bassets who recently visited the U.S base, many of these prisoners were horribly anguished of late. (No reporters, by the way, dare venture anywhere near Castro’s prisons. Their employers’ Havana press bureaus would be “seriously jeopardized” by such insolence.)
At any rate, the anguish among the prisoners on the U.S. side stemmed from their concerns about securing good front-row seats at the prison hall to watch the World Cup. The prison’s wide screen TV’s capture over twenty channels including Al Jazeera, so some observers felt the anguish was a bit overblown.
Among the other horrors uncovered by the Spanish reporter, Marc Bassets:
*To alleviate the prisoners’ suffering, the six Halal menus are revised –but only every two weeks!
*Though the prisoners receive 6000 calories daily-- only twice a week are they allowed Pepsi-Cola and ice-cream!
*Though a prison library exists--it only contains 17,000 books!
*Though the prisoners can attend English, Accounting and Art classes—these can be boring!
The worldwide MSM agonizes against the legal process that landed prisoners in the U.S. Guantanamo prison. If only they’d show a molecule of such indignation against the process that lands prisoners on the Castro side.
“We punish individuals who refuse to participate in collective effort and who lead an antisocial and parasitic life,” read Beria and Vishinky’s charges against millions of Stalin’s victims. “We punish individualists and antisocial miscreants."
"Individualism must disappear!" thundered Castro’s chief hangman, Che Guevara (this idol of "do-your-own-thing" Bohemians) in a 1961 speech in Havana. Interestingly, the cheeky Ernesto Guevara's signature on his early correspondence read: "Stalin II." “Judicial evidence is an archaic Bourgeois detail” declared Che Guevara. “We execute from revolutionary conviction… we send (to forced-labor camps) those who commit offenses against revolutionary morals.” Alas, Che Guevara’s definition of such “offenses” proved pretty sweeping.
In his book, Against All Hope, Armando Valladares who suffered 22 years in Castro’s dungeons, forced-labor camps and torture chambers, reveals how at one point in 1961 Castro’s Cuba held 350,000 political prisoners. That’s out of a Cuban population at the time of 6.4 million.
In her book Gulag, Anne Applebaum estimates that, at any one time, 2 million people were incarcerated in Stalin’s Gulag. That was out of a Soviet population of 220 million.
Now punch your calculator…See? Turns out that calling Castro a "Stalinist" actually low-balls his repression. Castro and Che Guevara jailed and tortured Cubans at a higher rate than (Che Guevara’s idol) Stalin jailed and tortured Russians.
Now, getting back to Mr Armando Valladares who became a U.S. citizen. Can you think of a better nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission?
Neither could President Reagan, who appointed Mr Valladares to the position in 1987, thus scandalizing “enlightened” opinion worldwide. The gaucherie was right up there with his “Evil Empire” and “tear down this wall” quips.
Monday, July 26, 2010
``We lived surrounded by rats, cockroaches, scorpions –and I have to say it--with human excrement, yes, with excrement…dengue and tuberculosis ravaged the prisoners. Forty prisoners were crammed into cells measuring 32 square feet.”' Julio Galvez
"I lived in total darkness with my hands tied; with rats and cockroaches and excrement everywhere. That was all I could smell." Lester Gonzalez
"“Many prisoners attempted suicide. I saw prisoners stick needles in the dark part of their eye. I saw prisoners roll themselves in foam mattresses and set themselves alight, prisoners who inject excrement and urine into their eyes, prisoners who inject petrol into their private parts and other places just so they will be attended to." Normando Hernandez.
“I spent 17 months of solitary confinement in a four by four meter cell.” Jose Luis Paneque
Okay, okay, by now you’ve noticed the quotes are followed by Spanish surnames. So allow me to apologize for my deceptive article title. But it’s mostly accurate. Guantanamo, you see, is not only the name of a U.S. military base in Cuba; it’s also the name of a Cuban province that contains 94 (Castroite) jails. And some prisoners from nearby Cuban jails (Castro’s Cuba boasts form 200-300 prisons; Batista’s Cuba counted 12) were recently forcibly deported (NOT “released” as the current MSM/Castroite spin claims) to Spain, where they revealed the above horrors.
These Castro prisoners’ crimes?
Essentially saying things about Fidel Castro in Cuban public similar to what the Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore, the Congressional Black Caucus, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, etc. etc. etc. said about George Bush in U.S. public.
So I’m thinking: Hey! maybe—JUUUUSSSST maybe!-- while some intrepid MSM “investigative reporter,” pundit or show producer Googles around for his next Guantanamo prison Rocky-Horror article or TV piece -- he might come across this article’s trap-title and be alerted to the SHOCKER (within his profession) that Castro jails and murders people!
“Dream on!” you say. And of course you’re absolutely right. What was I THINKING?!
Prisoners, as we all know from the thirteen gazzillion MSM articles, also exist in the U.S. enclave of Guantanamo province. And as we learn from a Spanish reporter named Marc Bassets who recently visited the U.S base, many of these prisoners were horribly anguished of late. (No reporters, by the way, dare venture anywhere near Castro’s prisons. Their employers’ Havana press bureaus would be “seriously jeopardized” by such insolence.)
At any rate, the anguish among the prisoners on the U.S. side stemmed from their concerns about securing good front-row seats at the prison hall to watch the World Cup. The prison’s wide screen TV’s capture over twenty channels including Al Jazeera, so some observers felt the anguish was a bit overblown.
Among the other horrors uncovered by the Spanish reporter, Marc Bassets:
*To alleviate the prisoners’ suffering, the six Halal menus are revised –but only every two weeks!
*Though the prisoners receive 6000 calories daily-- only twice a week are they allowed Pepsi-Cola and ice-cream!
*Though a prison library exists--it only contains 17,000 books!
*Though the prisoners can attend English, Accounting and Art classes—these can be boring!
The worldwide MSM agonizes against the legal process that landed prisoners in the U.S. Guantanamo prison. If only they’d show a molecule of such indignation against the process that lands prisoners on the Castro side.
“We punish individuals who refuse to participate in collective effort and who lead an antisocial and parasitic life,” read Beria and Vishinky’s charges against millions of Stalin’s victims. “We punish individualists and antisocial miscreants."
"Individualism must disappear!" thundered Castro’s chief hangman, Che Guevara (this idol of "do-your-own-thing" Bohemians) in a 1961 speech in Havana. Interestingly, the cheeky Ernesto Guevara's signature on his early correspondence read: "Stalin II." “Judicial evidence is an archaic Bourgeois detail” declared Che Guevara. “We execute from revolutionary conviction… we send (to forced-labor camps) those who commit offenses against revolutionary morals.” Alas, Che Guevara’s definition of such “offenses” proved pretty sweeping.
In his book, Against All Hope, Armando Valladares who suffered 22 years in Castro’s dungeons, forced-labor camps and torture chambers, reveals how at one point in 1961 Castro’s Cuba held 350,000 political prisoners. That’s out of a Cuban population at the time of 6.4 million.
In her book Gulag, Anne Applebaum estimates that, at any one time, 2 million people were incarcerated in Stalin’s Gulag. That was out of a Soviet population of 220 million.
Now punch your calculator…See? Turns out that calling Castro a "Stalinist" actually low-balls his repression. Castro and Che Guevara jailed and tortured Cubans at a higher rate than (Che Guevara’s idol) Stalin jailed and tortured Russians.
Now, getting back to Mr Armando Valladares who became a U.S. citizen. Can you think of a better nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission?
Neither could President Reagan, who appointed Mr Valladares to the position in 1987, thus scandalizing “enlightened” opinion worldwide. The gaucherie was right up there with his “Evil Empire” and “tear down this wall” quips.
Wagging Fingers
Rich Galen
Monday, July 26, 2010
Of all the dopey countries on the planet, none is dopier than North Korea.
North Korea is one of the poorest nations in the world with a per-capita GDP of about $1,900 per year. According to the CIA's World Factbook that ranks 188th behind such economic powerhouses as Laos, Western Sahara, and Kosovo.
South Korea's per-capita GDP, by comparison, is $28,000 (49th in the world). I won't make you look it up; the per-capita GDP of the United States is $46,400.
One of the reasons North Korea's populations hovers on the brink of starvation is because the central government, led by His Dopiness Kim Jong Il, spends every available won (the unit of currency) on its military: service members, arms, ships, planes, missiles and, of course, nukes.
As you may remember, on March 26, 2010, the South Korean warship "Cheonan" was attacked and sunk by what most of the world believes was a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine. Forty six sailors died in the attack.
A couple of weeks ago, the United Nations condemned the sinking, without (acceding to the demands of China) condemning the sinker.
The United States Navy in conjunction with naval forces of the Republic of South Korea decided to hold a joint combat exercise off the coast of the Korean peninsula to show the North Koreans that the U.S. and South Korea are taking that kind of provocation (diplomat-speak for "act of war") seriously.
We are, in a very real sense, wagging a finger under the nose of North Korea.
The South Koreans doing a little finger wagging of their own, under the protection of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington and its battle group, claimed that these exercises were "not defensive training" according to the Washington Post.
Times reporters John M. Glionna and Ju-min Park wrote yesterday that these were were no small-scale maneuvers. The exercises "feature about 20 vessels, including the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George Washington which left port just after dawn Sunday, shadowed by hundreds of U.S. and South Korean fighter jets." They report nearly 8,000 U.S. and South Korean military personnel are involved as are, for the first time, F-22 Raptors - the newest stealth fighters in the U.S. arsenal - which will operate in South Korean airspace.
Not to be outdone, the North Koreans announced that if the U.S. went through with these military exercises it would signal the need for a "retaliatory sacred war" which included, according to the LA Times, "putting its military and residents on high alert."
New York Times' reporter Choe Sang-Hun added North Korea had "vowed to counter these 'largest-ever nuclear war exercises' with its own 'powerful nuclear deterrence.'" Thus, wagging a nuclear finger under the joint noses of the U.S. and South Korea.
Originally the exercises were to take place near the site of the sinking - in international waters off the western coast of North Korea. That area of the Yellow Sea happens to also be off the eastern coast of China so, after some big-time grumbling by Beijing the exercises were switched to the east coast of the Korean peninsula (which is off the west coast of Japan, but Japan doesn't appear to care much).
That grumbling was codified into some Chinese finger wagging by the newspaper China Daily which described the Yellow sea as "a sea stripe between China and the Korean Peninsula" and quoted the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry saying,
"We sternly oppose activities that affect China's security by foreign military vessels or aircraft at the Yellow Sea or in China's offshore waters."
With all these fingers wagging, everyone's interests are being served:
-- South Korea will show North Korea it is under the protection of the United States;
-- The United States will show the world it is still the good guy when it comes to calling out rogue states like North Korea;
-- North Korea will show the world that it won't be cowed by the United States; and,
-- China gets to continue to demonstrate why it, and not Japan, is the country to be reckoned with in the region.
Let's just pray those fingers keep wagging and none get wrapped around a trigger.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Of all the dopey countries on the planet, none is dopier than North Korea.
North Korea is one of the poorest nations in the world with a per-capita GDP of about $1,900 per year. According to the CIA's World Factbook that ranks 188th behind such economic powerhouses as Laos, Western Sahara, and Kosovo.
South Korea's per-capita GDP, by comparison, is $28,000 (49th in the world). I won't make you look it up; the per-capita GDP of the United States is $46,400.
One of the reasons North Korea's populations hovers on the brink of starvation is because the central government, led by His Dopiness Kim Jong Il, spends every available won (the unit of currency) on its military: service members, arms, ships, planes, missiles and, of course, nukes.
As you may remember, on March 26, 2010, the South Korean warship "Cheonan" was attacked and sunk by what most of the world believes was a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine. Forty six sailors died in the attack.
A couple of weeks ago, the United Nations condemned the sinking, without (acceding to the demands of China) condemning the sinker.
The United States Navy in conjunction with naval forces of the Republic of South Korea decided to hold a joint combat exercise off the coast of the Korean peninsula to show the North Koreans that the U.S. and South Korea are taking that kind of provocation (diplomat-speak for "act of war") seriously.
We are, in a very real sense, wagging a finger under the nose of North Korea.
The South Koreans doing a little finger wagging of their own, under the protection of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington and its battle group, claimed that these exercises were "not defensive training" according to the Washington Post.
Times reporters John M. Glionna and Ju-min Park wrote yesterday that these were were no small-scale maneuvers. The exercises "feature about 20 vessels, including the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George Washington which left port just after dawn Sunday, shadowed by hundreds of U.S. and South Korean fighter jets." They report nearly 8,000 U.S. and South Korean military personnel are involved as are, for the first time, F-22 Raptors - the newest stealth fighters in the U.S. arsenal - which will operate in South Korean airspace.
Not to be outdone, the North Koreans announced that if the U.S. went through with these military exercises it would signal the need for a "retaliatory sacred war" which included, according to the LA Times, "putting its military and residents on high alert."
New York Times' reporter Choe Sang-Hun added North Korea had "vowed to counter these 'largest-ever nuclear war exercises' with its own 'powerful nuclear deterrence.'" Thus, wagging a nuclear finger under the joint noses of the U.S. and South Korea.
Originally the exercises were to take place near the site of the sinking - in international waters off the western coast of North Korea. That area of the Yellow Sea happens to also be off the eastern coast of China so, after some big-time grumbling by Beijing the exercises were switched to the east coast of the Korean peninsula (which is off the west coast of Japan, but Japan doesn't appear to care much).
That grumbling was codified into some Chinese finger wagging by the newspaper China Daily which described the Yellow sea as "a sea stripe between China and the Korean Peninsula" and quoted the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry saying,
"We sternly oppose activities that affect China's security by foreign military vessels or aircraft at the Yellow Sea or in China's offshore waters."
With all these fingers wagging, everyone's interests are being served:
-- South Korea will show North Korea it is under the protection of the United States;
-- The United States will show the world it is still the good guy when it comes to calling out rogue states like North Korea;
-- North Korea will show the world that it won't be cowed by the United States; and,
-- China gets to continue to demonstrate why it, and not Japan, is the country to be reckoned with in the region.
Let's just pray those fingers keep wagging and none get wrapped around a trigger.
But They Are So Smart
Bruce Bialosky
Monday, July 26, 2010
There are many people, smart and good people, who are deeply confused about the direction of the current administration. They are baffled as to why Barack Obama and his acolytes cannot see what is happening to our economy. I encountered one of these good people recently, and engaged in an eye-opening conversation.
I contacted a gentleman who holds some real estate investments, and with whom I’ve done some business in the past. We had met through Republican politics, but I sensed he was really uncommitted politically and certainly was no staunch Republican. It all started when he asked me how I was doing.
I replied that I was doing great, which is almost always true. Even when things are challenging – like they are today – I am thankful to be an American Jew living in this country, the greatest country in the history of mankind, with a beautiful wife, two wonderful children, and three terrific dogs. He said “You’re doing great? You are the only one I talk to who is doing great. All my tenants are struggling. These people in the Administration are so smart, why don’t they understand what is going on out here?”
What an opening – how could I pass on that one? So I told him what I thought he understood already. Yes, the folks in the Administration may be smart, but they have no experience. Virtually none of them has ever participated in the free enterprise system creating income and jobs, so how – and why – would you expect them to create policies that would help entrepreneurs and small-business owners move the economy forward. They may be smart, they may be great at writing papers and drawing charts with arrows and symbols, but they are fairly low on wisdom. Wisdom comes from suffering experiences in life – not just living arcane social and economic theories.
A perfect example of this wisdom deficiency is the newest member of the administration, Donald Berwick, the man chosen to administer the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These two behemoth bureaucracies consume 4% of our gross domestic product, and that’s even before Obamacare vastly increases the amount of money running through their bureaucratic fingers. So one might think Dr. Berwick would have had some experience running a major medical operation or a similar entity. It turns out that his most significant position was as President of the non-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). If you go to the IHI website, they self-describe the organization as “a small organization with a very big mission.” Not exactly the credentials most of us would consider when looking for someone to run an organization that dispenses hundreds of billions of dollars. The important thing is Dr. Berwick has studied health care organizations and written heady papers and pontificated in speeches about how the health care system should be run. That should be good enough. Since that is the background of our President and almost all of his advisors, Dr. Berwick seems to be a natural choice.
The problem is that the left-wing rabble that comprises the Obama administration – having never done it themselves – have no understanding of how money is created other than by encouraging the federal reserve to print some more. They have no appreciation of what makes this country great, as described by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. She wrote “To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money –and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes by conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.” The people running our country not only have never created a dollar’s worth of wealth, they appear to have a visceral disdain for those who do.
These government wonks repeatedly insist that federal intervention and control is the solution, but some of their own brethren have proven them wrong through an extensive study. Three Harvard Business School Professors, Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval and Chris Malloy, examined the effects of increased spending over 42 years when 232 Senators or Congressmen became committee chairs and funneled federal dollars to their states or districts. The study shows that the jump in federal funds significantly decreases private sector expenditures for capital items, research and development, and employment. The government money just squeezes out private funds. They found that this happens as long as the chairman stays in place, and begins to reverse itself only when the chairmanship is lost. The recently deceased Robert Byrd is a prime example. He was famous for funneling a hugely disproportionate amount of federal funds to West Virginia for 50 years, but when was the last time you heard people rushing to set up businesses in West Virginia. Maybe now that Byrd is gone, there is hope for free enterprise in West Virginia.
Our current Administration is stacked with book-smart and degree-laden people. Unfortunately, they have very little wisdom, no personal experience creating wealth, and don’t realize that efforts such as the Stimulus Bill just deter private enterprise from reviving the economy as it has in past downturns. The solution will come when they wise up – which, admittedly, is highly unlikely – or when change is forced upon them by Republican majorities after November 3rd.
Monday, July 26, 2010
There are many people, smart and good people, who are deeply confused about the direction of the current administration. They are baffled as to why Barack Obama and his acolytes cannot see what is happening to our economy. I encountered one of these good people recently, and engaged in an eye-opening conversation.
I contacted a gentleman who holds some real estate investments, and with whom I’ve done some business in the past. We had met through Republican politics, but I sensed he was really uncommitted politically and certainly was no staunch Republican. It all started when he asked me how I was doing.
I replied that I was doing great, which is almost always true. Even when things are challenging – like they are today – I am thankful to be an American Jew living in this country, the greatest country in the history of mankind, with a beautiful wife, two wonderful children, and three terrific dogs. He said “You’re doing great? You are the only one I talk to who is doing great. All my tenants are struggling. These people in the Administration are so smart, why don’t they understand what is going on out here?”
What an opening – how could I pass on that one? So I told him what I thought he understood already. Yes, the folks in the Administration may be smart, but they have no experience. Virtually none of them has ever participated in the free enterprise system creating income and jobs, so how – and why – would you expect them to create policies that would help entrepreneurs and small-business owners move the economy forward. They may be smart, they may be great at writing papers and drawing charts with arrows and symbols, but they are fairly low on wisdom. Wisdom comes from suffering experiences in life – not just living arcane social and economic theories.
A perfect example of this wisdom deficiency is the newest member of the administration, Donald Berwick, the man chosen to administer the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These two behemoth bureaucracies consume 4% of our gross domestic product, and that’s even before Obamacare vastly increases the amount of money running through their bureaucratic fingers. So one might think Dr. Berwick would have had some experience running a major medical operation or a similar entity. It turns out that his most significant position was as President of the non-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). If you go to the IHI website, they self-describe the organization as “a small organization with a very big mission.” Not exactly the credentials most of us would consider when looking for someone to run an organization that dispenses hundreds of billions of dollars. The important thing is Dr. Berwick has studied health care organizations and written heady papers and pontificated in speeches about how the health care system should be run. That should be good enough. Since that is the background of our President and almost all of his advisors, Dr. Berwick seems to be a natural choice.
The problem is that the left-wing rabble that comprises the Obama administration – having never done it themselves – have no understanding of how money is created other than by encouraging the federal reserve to print some more. They have no appreciation of what makes this country great, as described by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. She wrote “To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money –and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes by conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.” The people running our country not only have never created a dollar’s worth of wealth, they appear to have a visceral disdain for those who do.
These government wonks repeatedly insist that federal intervention and control is the solution, but some of their own brethren have proven them wrong through an extensive study. Three Harvard Business School Professors, Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval and Chris Malloy, examined the effects of increased spending over 42 years when 232 Senators or Congressmen became committee chairs and funneled federal dollars to their states or districts. The study shows that the jump in federal funds significantly decreases private sector expenditures for capital items, research and development, and employment. The government money just squeezes out private funds. They found that this happens as long as the chairman stays in place, and begins to reverse itself only when the chairmanship is lost. The recently deceased Robert Byrd is a prime example. He was famous for funneling a hugely disproportionate amount of federal funds to West Virginia for 50 years, but when was the last time you heard people rushing to set up businesses in West Virginia. Maybe now that Byrd is gone, there is hope for free enterprise in West Virginia.
Our current Administration is stacked with book-smart and degree-laden people. Unfortunately, they have very little wisdom, no personal experience creating wealth, and don’t realize that efforts such as the Stimulus Bill just deter private enterprise from reviving the economy as it has in past downturns. The solution will come when they wise up – which, admittedly, is highly unlikely – or when change is forced upon them by Republican majorities after November 3rd.
Change We Must Believe In
Caroline Glick
Monday, July 26, 2010
Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world's top weapons systems.
Syria is Iran's junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
Last September, as Turkey's Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.
"We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems," Davutoglu proclaimed.
And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.
On Wednesday, Al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of Kurds have been killed in recent weeks.
The Syrian government media claim that 11 Kurds have been killed.
There are conflicting reports as well about the number of Kurds who have been arrested since the onslaught began. Kurdish sources say 630 have been arrested. The Turkish media claims 400 Kurds have been arrested by Syrian security forces.
Al-Arabiya also claimed that the Syrian campaign is being supported by the Turkish military.
Turkish military advisers are reportedly using the same intelligence tool for tracking Kurds in Syria as they have used against the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq: Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.
Even if the Al-Arabiya report is untrue, and Turkey is not currently using Israeli-manufactured weapons in the service of Syria, the very fact that Syria has military cooperation of any kind with Turkey is dangerous for Israel. Over the past 20 years, as its alliance with Turkey expanded, Israel sold Turkey some of the most sensitive intelligence- gathering systems and other weapons platforms it has developed. With Turkey's rapid integration into the Iranian axis, Israel must now assume that if Turkey is not currently sharing those Israeli military and intelligence technologies and tools with its enemies, Ankara is likely to share them with Israel's enemies in the future.
OBVIOUSLY, THE least Israel could be expected to do in this situation is to cut off all military ties to Turkey. But amazingly and distressingly, Israel's leaders seem not to have recognized this. To the contrary, Israel is scheduled to deliver four additional Heron drones to Turkey next month.
Even more discouragingly, both the statements and actions of senior officials lead to the conclusion that our leaders still embrace the delusion that all is not lost with Turkey. Speaking to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee earlier this month, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told lawmakers, "What happens in Turkey is not always done with the agreement of the Turkish military. Relations with the Turkish army are important and they need to be preserved. I am personally in touch with the Turkish chief of staff."
As Turkish columnist Abdullah Bozkurt wrote last week in Today's Zaman, Ashkenazi's claim that there is a distinction between Turkish government policies and Turkish military policies is "simply wishful thinking and do[es] not correspond with the hard facts on the ground."
Bozkurt explained, "Ashkenazi may be misreading the signals based on a personal relationship he has built with outgoing Turkish military Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug. The force commanders are much more worried about the rise in terror in the southeastern part of the country, and pretty much occupied with the legal problems confronting them after some of their officers, including high-ranking ones, were accused of illegal activities. The last thing the top brass wants is to give an impression that they are cozying up with Israelis..."
As described by Michael Rubin in the current issue of Commentary, those "legal problems" Bozkurt referred to are part of a government campaign to crush Turkey's secular establishment.
As the constitutionally appointed guarantors of Turkey's secular republic, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist government has targeted the military high command for destruction.
Two years ago, a state prosecutor indicted 86 senior Turkish figures including retired generals, prominent journalists, professors and other pillars of Turkey's former secular leadership for supposedly plotting a coup against the Islamist regime.
By all accounts the 2,455-page indictment was frivolous. But its impact on Turkey's once allpowerful military has been dramatic.
As Rubin writes, "Bashed from the religious Right and the progressive Left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. The current generation of generals is out of touch with Turkish society and, perhaps, their own junior officers. Like frogs who fail to jump from a pot slowly brought to a boil, the Turkish General Staff lost its opportunity to exercise its constitutional duties."
And yet, rather than come to terms with this situation, and work to minimize the dangers that an Iranian- and Syrian-allied Turkey poses, Israel's government and our senior military leaders are still trying to bring the alliance with Turkey back from the dead. Last month's disastrous "top secret" meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Davutoglu is case in point.
Far from ameliorating the situation, these sorts of gambits only compound the damage. By denying the truth that Turkey has joined the enemy camp, Israel provides Turkey with credibility it patently does not deserve. Israel also fails to take diplomatic and other steps to minimize the threat posed by the NATO member in the Iranian axis.
OUR LEADERS' apparent aversion to accepting that our alliance with Turkey has ended is troubling not only for what it tells us about the government's ability to craft policies relevant to the challenges now facing us from Turkey. It bespeaks a general difficulty that plagues our top echelons in contending with harsh and unwanted change.
Take Egypt for example. Over the past week, a number of reports were published about the approaching end of the Mubarak era. The Washington Times reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is terminally ill and likely will die within the year. The Economist featured a 15- page retrospective on the Mubarak era in advance of its expected conclusion.
There are many differences between the situation in Egypt today and the situation that existed in Turkey before the Islamists took over in 2002.
For instance, unlike Turkey, Egypt has never been Israel's strategic ally. In recent years however, Egypt's interests have converged with Israel's regarding the threat posed by Iran and its terror proxies Hizbullah and Hamas - the Palestinian branch of the Mubarak regime's nemesis, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. These shared interests have paved the way for security cooperation between the two countries on several issues.
All of this is liable to change after Mubarak exits the stage. In all likelihood the Muslim Brotherhood will have greater influence and power than it enjoys today. And this means that a successor regime in Egypt will likely have closer ties to the Iranian axis. Despite the Sunni-Shi'ite split, joined by a common enmity toward the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood has strengthened its ties to Iran and Hizbullah of late.
Recognizing the shifting winds, presidential hopefuls are cultivating ties with the Brotherhood.
For instance, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief and current Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohamed El-Baradei has been wooing the Brotherhood for months. And in recent weeks, they have been getting on his bandwagon. Apparently, El-Baradei's support for Iran's nuclear program won him credibility with the jihadist group even though he is not an Islamic fanatic.
If and when the Brotherhood gains power and influence in Egypt, it is likely that Egypt will begin sponsoring the likes of Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. And the more powerful the Brotherhood becomes in Egypt, the more likely it is that Egypt will abrogate its peace treaty with Israel.
It is due to that peace treaty that today Egypt fields a conventional military force armed with sophisticated US weaponry. The Egyptian military that Israel fought in four wars was armed with inferior Soviet weapons. Were Egypt to abrogate the treaty, a conventional war between Egypt and Israel would become a tangible prospect for the first time since 1973.
Despite the flood of stories indicating that the end of the Mubarak era is upon us, publicly Israel's leaders behave as though nothing is the matter. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's routine fawning pilgrimage to Mubarak this week seemed to demonstrate that our leaders are not thinking about the storm that is brewing just over the horizon in Cairo.
TURKEY'S TRANSFORMATION from friend to foe and the looming change in Egypt demonstrate important lessons that Israel's leaders must take to heart. First, Israel has only a very limited capacity to influence events in neighboring countries.
What happened in Turkey has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the fact that Erdogan and his government are Islamist revolutionaries. So, too, the changes that Egypt will undergo after Mubarak dies will have everything to do with the pathologies of Egyptian society and politics, and nothing to do with Israel. Our leaders must recognize this and exercise humility when they assess Israel's options for contending with our neighbors.
Developments in both Turkey and Egypt are proof that in the Middle East there is no such thing as a permanent alliance. Everything is subject to change. Turkey once looked like a stable place. Its military was constitutionally empowered - and required - to safeguard the country as a secular democracy. But seven years into the AKP revolution the army cannot even defend itself.
So, too, for nearly 30 years Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist. But as Israel saw no distinction between Mubarak and Egypt, the hostile forces he repressed multiplied under his jackboot.
Once he is gone, they will rise to the surface once more.
Moving forward, Israel must learn to hedge its bets. Just because a government embraces Israel one day does not mean that its military should be given open access to Israeli military technology the next day. So, too, just because a regime is anti-Israel one day doesn't mean that Israel cannot develop ties with it that are based on shared interests.
Whether it is pleasant or harsh, change is a fact of our lives. The side that copes best with change will be the side that prospers from it.
Our leaders must recognize this truth and shape their policies accordingly.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world's top weapons systems.
Syria is Iran's junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
Last September, as Turkey's Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.
"We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems," Davutoglu proclaimed.
And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.
On Wednesday, Al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of Kurds have been killed in recent weeks.
The Syrian government media claim that 11 Kurds have been killed.
There are conflicting reports as well about the number of Kurds who have been arrested since the onslaught began. Kurdish sources say 630 have been arrested. The Turkish media claims 400 Kurds have been arrested by Syrian security forces.
Al-Arabiya also claimed that the Syrian campaign is being supported by the Turkish military.
Turkish military advisers are reportedly using the same intelligence tool for tracking Kurds in Syria as they have used against the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq: Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.
Even if the Al-Arabiya report is untrue, and Turkey is not currently using Israeli-manufactured weapons in the service of Syria, the very fact that Syria has military cooperation of any kind with Turkey is dangerous for Israel. Over the past 20 years, as its alliance with Turkey expanded, Israel sold Turkey some of the most sensitive intelligence- gathering systems and other weapons platforms it has developed. With Turkey's rapid integration into the Iranian axis, Israel must now assume that if Turkey is not currently sharing those Israeli military and intelligence technologies and tools with its enemies, Ankara is likely to share them with Israel's enemies in the future.
OBVIOUSLY, THE least Israel could be expected to do in this situation is to cut off all military ties to Turkey. But amazingly and distressingly, Israel's leaders seem not to have recognized this. To the contrary, Israel is scheduled to deliver four additional Heron drones to Turkey next month.
Even more discouragingly, both the statements and actions of senior officials lead to the conclusion that our leaders still embrace the delusion that all is not lost with Turkey. Speaking to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee earlier this month, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told lawmakers, "What happens in Turkey is not always done with the agreement of the Turkish military. Relations with the Turkish army are important and they need to be preserved. I am personally in touch with the Turkish chief of staff."
As Turkish columnist Abdullah Bozkurt wrote last week in Today's Zaman, Ashkenazi's claim that there is a distinction between Turkish government policies and Turkish military policies is "simply wishful thinking and do[es] not correspond with the hard facts on the ground."
Bozkurt explained, "Ashkenazi may be misreading the signals based on a personal relationship he has built with outgoing Turkish military Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug. The force commanders are much more worried about the rise in terror in the southeastern part of the country, and pretty much occupied with the legal problems confronting them after some of their officers, including high-ranking ones, were accused of illegal activities. The last thing the top brass wants is to give an impression that they are cozying up with Israelis..."
As described by Michael Rubin in the current issue of Commentary, those "legal problems" Bozkurt referred to are part of a government campaign to crush Turkey's secular establishment.
As the constitutionally appointed guarantors of Turkey's secular republic, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist government has targeted the military high command for destruction.
Two years ago, a state prosecutor indicted 86 senior Turkish figures including retired generals, prominent journalists, professors and other pillars of Turkey's former secular leadership for supposedly plotting a coup against the Islamist regime.
By all accounts the 2,455-page indictment was frivolous. But its impact on Turkey's once allpowerful military has been dramatic.
As Rubin writes, "Bashed from the religious Right and the progressive Left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. The current generation of generals is out of touch with Turkish society and, perhaps, their own junior officers. Like frogs who fail to jump from a pot slowly brought to a boil, the Turkish General Staff lost its opportunity to exercise its constitutional duties."
And yet, rather than come to terms with this situation, and work to minimize the dangers that an Iranian- and Syrian-allied Turkey poses, Israel's government and our senior military leaders are still trying to bring the alliance with Turkey back from the dead. Last month's disastrous "top secret" meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Davutoglu is case in point.
Far from ameliorating the situation, these sorts of gambits only compound the damage. By denying the truth that Turkey has joined the enemy camp, Israel provides Turkey with credibility it patently does not deserve. Israel also fails to take diplomatic and other steps to minimize the threat posed by the NATO member in the Iranian axis.
OUR LEADERS' apparent aversion to accepting that our alliance with Turkey has ended is troubling not only for what it tells us about the government's ability to craft policies relevant to the challenges now facing us from Turkey. It bespeaks a general difficulty that plagues our top echelons in contending with harsh and unwanted change.
Take Egypt for example. Over the past week, a number of reports were published about the approaching end of the Mubarak era. The Washington Times reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is terminally ill and likely will die within the year. The Economist featured a 15- page retrospective on the Mubarak era in advance of its expected conclusion.
There are many differences between the situation in Egypt today and the situation that existed in Turkey before the Islamists took over in 2002.
For instance, unlike Turkey, Egypt has never been Israel's strategic ally. In recent years however, Egypt's interests have converged with Israel's regarding the threat posed by Iran and its terror proxies Hizbullah and Hamas - the Palestinian branch of the Mubarak regime's nemesis, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. These shared interests have paved the way for security cooperation between the two countries on several issues.
All of this is liable to change after Mubarak exits the stage. In all likelihood the Muslim Brotherhood will have greater influence and power than it enjoys today. And this means that a successor regime in Egypt will likely have closer ties to the Iranian axis. Despite the Sunni-Shi'ite split, joined by a common enmity toward the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood has strengthened its ties to Iran and Hizbullah of late.
Recognizing the shifting winds, presidential hopefuls are cultivating ties with the Brotherhood.
For instance, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief and current Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohamed El-Baradei has been wooing the Brotherhood for months. And in recent weeks, they have been getting on his bandwagon. Apparently, El-Baradei's support for Iran's nuclear program won him credibility with the jihadist group even though he is not an Islamic fanatic.
If and when the Brotherhood gains power and influence in Egypt, it is likely that Egypt will begin sponsoring the likes of Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. And the more powerful the Brotherhood becomes in Egypt, the more likely it is that Egypt will abrogate its peace treaty with Israel.
It is due to that peace treaty that today Egypt fields a conventional military force armed with sophisticated US weaponry. The Egyptian military that Israel fought in four wars was armed with inferior Soviet weapons. Were Egypt to abrogate the treaty, a conventional war between Egypt and Israel would become a tangible prospect for the first time since 1973.
Despite the flood of stories indicating that the end of the Mubarak era is upon us, publicly Israel's leaders behave as though nothing is the matter. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's routine fawning pilgrimage to Mubarak this week seemed to demonstrate that our leaders are not thinking about the storm that is brewing just over the horizon in Cairo.
TURKEY'S TRANSFORMATION from friend to foe and the looming change in Egypt demonstrate important lessons that Israel's leaders must take to heart. First, Israel has only a very limited capacity to influence events in neighboring countries.
What happened in Turkey has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the fact that Erdogan and his government are Islamist revolutionaries. So, too, the changes that Egypt will undergo after Mubarak dies will have everything to do with the pathologies of Egyptian society and politics, and nothing to do with Israel. Our leaders must recognize this and exercise humility when they assess Israel's options for contending with our neighbors.
Developments in both Turkey and Egypt are proof that in the Middle East there is no such thing as a permanent alliance. Everything is subject to change. Turkey once looked like a stable place. Its military was constitutionally empowered - and required - to safeguard the country as a secular democracy. But seven years into the AKP revolution the army cannot even defend itself.
So, too, for nearly 30 years Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist. But as Israel saw no distinction between Mubarak and Egypt, the hostile forces he repressed multiplied under his jackboot.
Once he is gone, they will rise to the surface once more.
Moving forward, Israel must learn to hedge its bets. Just because a government embraces Israel one day does not mean that its military should be given open access to Israeli military technology the next day. So, too, just because a regime is anti-Israel one day doesn't mean that Israel cannot develop ties with it that are based on shared interests.
Whether it is pleasant or harsh, change is a fact of our lives. The side that copes best with change will be the side that prospers from it.
Our leaders must recognize this truth and shape their policies accordingly.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Note to Progressives: It’s Worse Than You Think
Austin Hill
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The era of the Obama Democrats should be a political progressive’s dream come true.
Yet, adherents to modern-day progressive political philosophy are anything but happy with the President right now. Worse yet, approval of the Congress – ruled with an iron fist by the Obama Democrats – has slumped to an disgracefully low 11% mark in a recent Gallup poll of Americans’ level of “confidence” among our nation’s various institutions.
So, why the unhappiness? What could possibly make progressives unhappy, with “progressiveness” breaking out all across the land?
The most obvious answer is a straightforward, political answer: because the economic consequences of Obamanomics have thus far been negative – or at the very least Obamanomics has yet to produce economic growth. This, in turn, has paved the way for a potential implosion of the Democratic Party this November.
But underlying the short-term political problem for progressives are serious philosophical flaws. Yet much of what we see and hear from progressives these days fails to address these flaws – and that’s bad for America.
Most of the progressive criticism of the Obama Democrats seems to take-on one of either a couple different themes. First, there’s the theme that “Obama should have focused more on job creation” during his first two years in office, rather than spending so much time and energy on healthcare legislation. Progressive pundit Arianna Huffington has been sounding this alarm for at least the last nine months, recognizing before many others that, yes, even Barack Obama needs to preside over a flourishing economy if he’s going to retain any political clout.
The other theme of criticism among progressives is that “Obama hasn’t gone far enough.” His approach to “reforming” healthcare should have been to completely shut-down any private sector involvement in the healthcare industry and the medical profession, and to place it all under the auspices of government-run enterprise. Similarly, he should have put “big oil” in its place by now, and should have already legislated a reduction in petroleum consumption while “creating” a “green energy industry.”
Both of these lines of reasoning are fraught with naivety, and false assumptions. And they are both grounded in a enormous misunderstanding of basic economics, and human nature.
Consider the assumptions about economics, and human nature, entailed in these remarks from Paul Waldman, writing in the July 20th edition of the American Prospect: “It wasn't supposed to be this way. Remember when Barack Obama's presidency was going to wash over the capital like a cleansing tide, renewing both the government's ability to accomplish great things and restoring the people's faith in that ability? It seems so much longer than a year and a half ago…The broader frustration is with a system whose dysfunction and corruption seem worse than ever -- one that seems like it's designed to stop progressive change…”
Indeed, the corruption and dysfunction of the Obama Democrats are bringing so-called “progressive change” to a halt. But why would Waldman – and the progressives, generally – ever think that concentrating more and more economic resources into the hands of fewer and fewer people (this is what happens when government takes-over huge chunks of the private sector economy, as Obama has been doing) would NOT lead to more corruption?
Progressives lament the harshness and corruption of the private sector, capitalistic economy – insurance companies denying coverage or charge too much for their product are common grievances – yet they naively assume that as long as politicians and government bureaucrats control things, greedy and self-serving behaviors will disappear, and the “collective good” will reign supreme.
But there is no historical basis for this assumption. Indeed, most of the world’s roughly five-thousand years of history paint a brutal picture of government “rulers” and “ruling classes” of people, abusively lording their power over the poorer classes. This is to say that there is no one individual (not even President Obama), nor any one select group of people (like Congressional Democrats) that are so “moral” and “virtuous” that they will consistently set aside their own personal self-interests ( self-interests like increasing their power and popularity), as a means of serving the collective good.
No, part of being human is to be self-interested, and the Obama Democrats have displayed in painful ways that they will do whatever they want with other people’s economic resources, so long as it makes them feel good.
This is why conservatives believe in the free-market economy. And not a free-market devoid of any and all forms of regulation (such economic systems only exist on paper). But rather, a free-market economy where market competition provides a check-and-balance to bad behavior.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The era of the Obama Democrats should be a political progressive’s dream come true.
Yet, adherents to modern-day progressive political philosophy are anything but happy with the President right now. Worse yet, approval of the Congress – ruled with an iron fist by the Obama Democrats – has slumped to an disgracefully low 11% mark in a recent Gallup poll of Americans’ level of “confidence” among our nation’s various institutions.
So, why the unhappiness? What could possibly make progressives unhappy, with “progressiveness” breaking out all across the land?
The most obvious answer is a straightforward, political answer: because the economic consequences of Obamanomics have thus far been negative – or at the very least Obamanomics has yet to produce economic growth. This, in turn, has paved the way for a potential implosion of the Democratic Party this November.
But underlying the short-term political problem for progressives are serious philosophical flaws. Yet much of what we see and hear from progressives these days fails to address these flaws – and that’s bad for America.
Most of the progressive criticism of the Obama Democrats seems to take-on one of either a couple different themes. First, there’s the theme that “Obama should have focused more on job creation” during his first two years in office, rather than spending so much time and energy on healthcare legislation. Progressive pundit Arianna Huffington has been sounding this alarm for at least the last nine months, recognizing before many others that, yes, even Barack Obama needs to preside over a flourishing economy if he’s going to retain any political clout.
The other theme of criticism among progressives is that “Obama hasn’t gone far enough.” His approach to “reforming” healthcare should have been to completely shut-down any private sector involvement in the healthcare industry and the medical profession, and to place it all under the auspices of government-run enterprise. Similarly, he should have put “big oil” in its place by now, and should have already legislated a reduction in petroleum consumption while “creating” a “green energy industry.”
Both of these lines of reasoning are fraught with naivety, and false assumptions. And they are both grounded in a enormous misunderstanding of basic economics, and human nature.
Consider the assumptions about economics, and human nature, entailed in these remarks from Paul Waldman, writing in the July 20th edition of the American Prospect: “It wasn't supposed to be this way. Remember when Barack Obama's presidency was going to wash over the capital like a cleansing tide, renewing both the government's ability to accomplish great things and restoring the people's faith in that ability? It seems so much longer than a year and a half ago…The broader frustration is with a system whose dysfunction and corruption seem worse than ever -- one that seems like it's designed to stop progressive change…”
Indeed, the corruption and dysfunction of the Obama Democrats are bringing so-called “progressive change” to a halt. But why would Waldman – and the progressives, generally – ever think that concentrating more and more economic resources into the hands of fewer and fewer people (this is what happens when government takes-over huge chunks of the private sector economy, as Obama has been doing) would NOT lead to more corruption?
Progressives lament the harshness and corruption of the private sector, capitalistic economy – insurance companies denying coverage or charge too much for their product are common grievances – yet they naively assume that as long as politicians and government bureaucrats control things, greedy and self-serving behaviors will disappear, and the “collective good” will reign supreme.
But there is no historical basis for this assumption. Indeed, most of the world’s roughly five-thousand years of history paint a brutal picture of government “rulers” and “ruling classes” of people, abusively lording their power over the poorer classes. This is to say that there is no one individual (not even President Obama), nor any one select group of people (like Congressional Democrats) that are so “moral” and “virtuous” that they will consistently set aside their own personal self-interests ( self-interests like increasing their power and popularity), as a means of serving the collective good.
No, part of being human is to be self-interested, and the Obama Democrats have displayed in painful ways that they will do whatever they want with other people’s economic resources, so long as it makes them feel good.
This is why conservatives believe in the free-market economy. And not a free-market devoid of any and all forms of regulation (such economic systems only exist on paper). But rather, a free-market economy where market competition provides a check-and-balance to bad behavior.
Why Eric Holder Will Not Last
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Kevin McCullough
There may be more incompetent Attorneys General who have served Presidential administrations in U.S. History, but few if any of them have had a worse record than the present head of the Justice Department. And should the miraculous happen, and President Obama do the unthinkable, and cut taxes for small businesses, and thereby win re-election in 2012, I wouldn't expect to see Mr Holder make it to term number two.
In blunder after blunder the President has already repeatedly been forced to back away from the decision making at the Justice Department. But the trail of disasters has left legal litter for the administration to clean up in even more ways than they could have predicted.
Holder has overreached so many times people have begun to wonder if his arms were attached backwards at the joint.
Yet no over-reach will have been more embarrassing than the shellacking he is taking in the DOJ vs. the State of Arizona. If the early signals are indicative of the judge's final outcome I personally don't know how he survives in the administration.
Since the administration announced it would be suing the state of Arizona of its own rights to enforce the law within it's boundaries, legal scholars I've spoken with have by the dozens scratched their heads, and issued muted puzzled responses on what the clear legal strategy was for Holder to win. Evidently the judge in the case, Susan Bolton - a democratic appointee - had some of the same strange curiosities. She is openly questioning the grounds on which the government brought its case against state law SB 1070 - the non-controversial state law that allows the local police and sheriffs to assist federal authorities in determining the legal status of those coming into contact with the state.
As most of America now knows, SB 1070 maintains the same guidelines as federal immigration law, but goes one step further in toughness--against those in law enforcement. It clearly penalizes abuse of the statute by an entity attempting to racially profile with enforcement of it.
The DOJ under Eric Holder's direction is attempting to argue that the state law preempts federal law. The judge has openly, almost mockingly, poked holes in the thinking behind such a claim. Bolton has also openly wondered why the government should concern itself in any regard with a state's desire to be seen as hospitable or not.
Since these two arguments seem to be the primary planks of Holder's case against Arizona, I expect this case to be dealt with quickly, and Holder to be again seen as the laughingstock or worse yet ruthless pragmatist he's come to be seen as in the legal community. I even have repeatedly told the students as much at the various Summit conferences I've been speaking to this summer.
Few reputable legal scholars believe Holder and the DOJ had a leg to stand on to begin with. Even Holder himself seemed to intimate that he might lose the case while being questioned on CBS two Sundays ago. Pledging that if he lost this first round he might find legal bearing to file a suit on the basis of racial profiling--an element the law itself strictly prohibits and prescribes penalties for in advance. Good luck there too genius.
It's been a rough go for the DOJ under Obama. Holder has on more than one occasion found himself back tracking, apologizing, and being left out in the cold to pay for everything from trying to bring the caged animals of Gitmo to New York City to stand trial, to (at the request of the NAACP) looking the other way when overt racism was used to intimidate and prevent voting--by members of the Black Panthers--an overtly racist group the equivalent of the KKK. He, according to multiple witnesses at the DOJ, has even gone so far as to implement a policy of non-pursuit of cases before the DOJ in which perpetrators are black and the victims are white.
Holder's public and repeated condemnation of the people of Arizona, the legal passing of law's in their state, and even the purposeful misrepresentation of those laws for the purposes of how they reflected upon the intents or lack thereof of the administration are deplorable.
But his ill-advised lawsuit against the statute in Arizona is now making him look incompetent or worse yet, incapable.
Repeatedly Holder presents viewpoints that are in keeping with his political aspirations but run contrary to the rule of existing law, and the position of Attorney General is not the spot for radicals with an agenda to implement best serve the country, or even the President himself. (Remember when Holder's crew took over custody of the Christmas day bomber, read Miranda rights, and watched the man with dangerous panties suddenly stop talking?)
Holder's overt racist policies at DOJ, his incompetence in actual legal matters, his sense of being completely out of touch with the people of his own nation add up to someone who needs an early retirement. For his racism, incompetence, and isolationist worldview begin to be attributed to his superiors if not kept in check. And thus far he has been anything but kept in check.
The ultimate failure of DOJ vs. Arizona will be yet another embarrassment for the Obama administration.
The question for the President will be, how many more of these laughingstock facials can be endured before he does what desperately needs to be done, put Holder to pasture?
My sense is, it won't be long.
Kevin McCullough
There may be more incompetent Attorneys General who have served Presidential administrations in U.S. History, but few if any of them have had a worse record than the present head of the Justice Department. And should the miraculous happen, and President Obama do the unthinkable, and cut taxes for small businesses, and thereby win re-election in 2012, I wouldn't expect to see Mr Holder make it to term number two.
In blunder after blunder the President has already repeatedly been forced to back away from the decision making at the Justice Department. But the trail of disasters has left legal litter for the administration to clean up in even more ways than they could have predicted.
Holder has overreached so many times people have begun to wonder if his arms were attached backwards at the joint.
Yet no over-reach will have been more embarrassing than the shellacking he is taking in the DOJ vs. the State of Arizona. If the early signals are indicative of the judge's final outcome I personally don't know how he survives in the administration.
Since the administration announced it would be suing the state of Arizona of its own rights to enforce the law within it's boundaries, legal scholars I've spoken with have by the dozens scratched their heads, and issued muted puzzled responses on what the clear legal strategy was for Holder to win. Evidently the judge in the case, Susan Bolton - a democratic appointee - had some of the same strange curiosities. She is openly questioning the grounds on which the government brought its case against state law SB 1070 - the non-controversial state law that allows the local police and sheriffs to assist federal authorities in determining the legal status of those coming into contact with the state.
As most of America now knows, SB 1070 maintains the same guidelines as federal immigration law, but goes one step further in toughness--against those in law enforcement. It clearly penalizes abuse of the statute by an entity attempting to racially profile with enforcement of it.
The DOJ under Eric Holder's direction is attempting to argue that the state law preempts federal law. The judge has openly, almost mockingly, poked holes in the thinking behind such a claim. Bolton has also openly wondered why the government should concern itself in any regard with a state's desire to be seen as hospitable or not.
Since these two arguments seem to be the primary planks of Holder's case against Arizona, I expect this case to be dealt with quickly, and Holder to be again seen as the laughingstock or worse yet ruthless pragmatist he's come to be seen as in the legal community. I even have repeatedly told the students as much at the various Summit conferences I've been speaking to this summer.
Few reputable legal scholars believe Holder and the DOJ had a leg to stand on to begin with. Even Holder himself seemed to intimate that he might lose the case while being questioned on CBS two Sundays ago. Pledging that if he lost this first round he might find legal bearing to file a suit on the basis of racial profiling--an element the law itself strictly prohibits and prescribes penalties for in advance. Good luck there too genius.
It's been a rough go for the DOJ under Obama. Holder has on more than one occasion found himself back tracking, apologizing, and being left out in the cold to pay for everything from trying to bring the caged animals of Gitmo to New York City to stand trial, to (at the request of the NAACP) looking the other way when overt racism was used to intimidate and prevent voting--by members of the Black Panthers--an overtly racist group the equivalent of the KKK. He, according to multiple witnesses at the DOJ, has even gone so far as to implement a policy of non-pursuit of cases before the DOJ in which perpetrators are black and the victims are white.
Holder's public and repeated condemnation of the people of Arizona, the legal passing of law's in their state, and even the purposeful misrepresentation of those laws for the purposes of how they reflected upon the intents or lack thereof of the administration are deplorable.
But his ill-advised lawsuit against the statute in Arizona is now making him look incompetent or worse yet, incapable.
Repeatedly Holder presents viewpoints that are in keeping with his political aspirations but run contrary to the rule of existing law, and the position of Attorney General is not the spot for radicals with an agenda to implement best serve the country, or even the President himself. (Remember when Holder's crew took over custody of the Christmas day bomber, read Miranda rights, and watched the man with dangerous panties suddenly stop talking?)
Holder's overt racist policies at DOJ, his incompetence in actual legal matters, his sense of being completely out of touch with the people of his own nation add up to someone who needs an early retirement. For his racism, incompetence, and isolationist worldview begin to be attributed to his superiors if not kept in check. And thus far he has been anything but kept in check.
The ultimate failure of DOJ vs. Arizona will be yet another embarrassment for the Obama administration.
The question for the President will be, how many more of these laughingstock facials can be endured before he does what desperately needs to be done, put Holder to pasture?
My sense is, it won't be long.
The Liberal Smear of Thatcher Stresses Need for Conservative Creative Balance
Douglas MacKinnon
Thursday, July 22, 2010
What a surprise. It seems that another far-left liberal actor has taken a role with the express intent being to smear a conservative icon. In this case, it’s Meryl Streep allegedly trying to dishonor and cheapen the accomplishments of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
How? By of all things, playing Thatcher in an upcoming film. According to The Daily Telegraph of London, the children of the former prime minister are “…appalled at what they have learnt about the film…they think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy.”
When I was at the Pentagon, I had the honor to meet and help brief then-Prime Minister Thatcher. The woman I met was the personification of honor, integrity, determination, and patriotism. Precisely because of their conservative beliefs, she and Ronald Reagan demonstrably helped to shape the world for the better and many on the Left still hate them for it.
Sadly, and quite dangerously, because so much of the entertainment industry is controlled by the left, they have the power to rewrite history, denigrate conservative leaders and policy, exaggerate their own accomplishments, or just outright lie. While they claim “artistic license,” it’s really all about ideology, fear, and loathing.
What’s a conservative to do? It’s rare that I can go to any mainstream Hollywood movie and not see a gratuitous shot being taken at Republicans, conservatives, or Christians. Those cheap shots hurt the bottom-line, as well as punish investors.
With regard to this far-left bias and disregard for investment, there is a parallel exhibited at most major daily newspapers. A senior editor at a well-known paper told me, “My bosses didn’t care about driving away conservative readers because it wasn’t their money. For them, liberal ideology trumps profit or even staying in business.”
That explanation also applies to the haters in Hollywood. Who cares if they drive down or eliminate profit by needlessly attacking conservatives or Christians. It’s not their money.
Conservatives need to step into this arena in a big way. There are a number of conservative billionaires or multi-millionaires in our nation, but only a handful at best who are willing to invest in film or newspapers. Why?
For conservatives like me who also write fiction, I feel an obligation to wave the red flag of warning when appropriate within my novels or short stories. Each and every time I have, I have been attacked by the left. Three quick examples:
In my novel “America’s Last Days” -- which takes place a number of years in the future and depicts a revolution from within -- my characters talk about the just-completed war with Mexico started because of Mexico’s militarization of our southwest border and the many incursions into sovereign U.S. territory by their military and drug cartels.
After the novel came out, I got numerous emails from those on the left accusing me of being a bigot, an alarmist and “anti-Latino.” My Hispanic-American wife was most amused by the last charge. Today, anarchy, chaos, and corruption reign in Mexico and the incursions into our sovereign territory by Mexican forces increase.
Next comes a short-story I was asked to write for Townhall Magazine for their September 2008 edition. I was asked to “fictionalize” what it might be like two years into an Obama administration. In the body of my short story, I imagined (among other things which have come to pass) a car-bomb being detonated in Times Square.
Again came the emails from the left attacking me for being a racist and an alarmist. Of course, when the real Jihadist Times Square bomber was stopped by luck three months ago, no emails from the far-left.
Last is my just-released novel entitled “Vengeance Is Mine.” In the body of the book, my traditional values private investigator weaves in a potentially very serious charge against a former liberal president and the fact that the current liberal president is actively trying to take our guns and ammo as he tries to swing our Republic hard left. Once again, the hate-filled emails have come my way.
On the creative front, conservatives must not shy away from defending our values and our vision for our nation. For the moment, Meryl Streep and the far-left control much of the message.
It’s up to conservatives, moderates and independents to change that destructive dynamic. Words do matter.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
What a surprise. It seems that another far-left liberal actor has taken a role with the express intent being to smear a conservative icon. In this case, it’s Meryl Streep allegedly trying to dishonor and cheapen the accomplishments of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
How? By of all things, playing Thatcher in an upcoming film. According to The Daily Telegraph of London, the children of the former prime minister are “…appalled at what they have learnt about the film…they think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy.”
When I was at the Pentagon, I had the honor to meet and help brief then-Prime Minister Thatcher. The woman I met was the personification of honor, integrity, determination, and patriotism. Precisely because of their conservative beliefs, she and Ronald Reagan demonstrably helped to shape the world for the better and many on the Left still hate them for it.
Sadly, and quite dangerously, because so much of the entertainment industry is controlled by the left, they have the power to rewrite history, denigrate conservative leaders and policy, exaggerate their own accomplishments, or just outright lie. While they claim “artistic license,” it’s really all about ideology, fear, and loathing.
What’s a conservative to do? It’s rare that I can go to any mainstream Hollywood movie and not see a gratuitous shot being taken at Republicans, conservatives, or Christians. Those cheap shots hurt the bottom-line, as well as punish investors.
With regard to this far-left bias and disregard for investment, there is a parallel exhibited at most major daily newspapers. A senior editor at a well-known paper told me, “My bosses didn’t care about driving away conservative readers because it wasn’t their money. For them, liberal ideology trumps profit or even staying in business.”
That explanation also applies to the haters in Hollywood. Who cares if they drive down or eliminate profit by needlessly attacking conservatives or Christians. It’s not their money.
Conservatives need to step into this arena in a big way. There are a number of conservative billionaires or multi-millionaires in our nation, but only a handful at best who are willing to invest in film or newspapers. Why?
For conservatives like me who also write fiction, I feel an obligation to wave the red flag of warning when appropriate within my novels or short stories. Each and every time I have, I have been attacked by the left. Three quick examples:
In my novel “America’s Last Days” -- which takes place a number of years in the future and depicts a revolution from within -- my characters talk about the just-completed war with Mexico started because of Mexico’s militarization of our southwest border and the many incursions into sovereign U.S. territory by their military and drug cartels.
After the novel came out, I got numerous emails from those on the left accusing me of being a bigot, an alarmist and “anti-Latino.” My Hispanic-American wife was most amused by the last charge. Today, anarchy, chaos, and corruption reign in Mexico and the incursions into our sovereign territory by Mexican forces increase.
Next comes a short-story I was asked to write for Townhall Magazine for their September 2008 edition. I was asked to “fictionalize” what it might be like two years into an Obama administration. In the body of my short story, I imagined (among other things which have come to pass) a car-bomb being detonated in Times Square.
Again came the emails from the left attacking me for being a racist and an alarmist. Of course, when the real Jihadist Times Square bomber was stopped by luck three months ago, no emails from the far-left.
Last is my just-released novel entitled “Vengeance Is Mine.” In the body of the book, my traditional values private investigator weaves in a potentially very serious charge against a former liberal president and the fact that the current liberal president is actively trying to take our guns and ammo as he tries to swing our Republic hard left. Once again, the hate-filled emails have come my way.
On the creative front, conservatives must not shy away from defending our values and our vision for our nation. For the moment, Meryl Streep and the far-left control much of the message.
It’s up to conservatives, moderates and independents to change that destructive dynamic. Words do matter.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Liberal Tax Revolt Game-Changer?
With Democrats getting badly paddled in various polls, you never know.
Larry Kudlow
Friday, July 23, 2010
The liberal tax revolt, as the Wall Street Journal is calling it, is a very important topic — especially for investors and small-business entrepreneurs. And for new jobs.
The so-called revolt is comprised of three Democratic senators: Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, and Ben Nelson. They want to extend all the Bush tax cuts. That includes taxes on the wealthy, or the top personal tax rate, the investment taxes on capital gains and dividends, and the estate tax.
So is this revolt a game-changer, or merely wishful thinking?
With a strong pushback against the revolt by President Obama, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right now it looks like wishful thinking. But with Democrats getting badly paddled in various polls, you never know.
When Tim Geithner told me in a CNBC interview a few weeks ago about his 20-20 rule for the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends, I blogged that this was a good thing — in particular the story for dividend taxes, which could go to 39.6 percent. But no increase at all on investment taxes would be even better.
Let’s say you’re an investor who went long stocks in March 2009 and now has a long-term capital gain. You could sell right now at a 15 percent tax rate before it goes up to 20 percent. In a nutshell, this is the tax-hike story that has hung over the stock market this year like the proverbial Sword of Damocles. Year-end tax-related selling could still be in front of us.
So the liberal tax revolt is a very important issue for investors. It could mean a potential stock market rally in the second half of the year.
It’s also important for job seekers. Just take a look at the new Investor’s Business Daily poll by the accurate surveyor Raghavan Mayur. He notes that the average length of joblessness has soared to over 35 weeks, nearly two-times greater than the previous high for any downturn. And his polling data show that nearly one-half of households can be categorized as “job-sensitive.” That’s a huge number. These are the people who are either looking for work or fear that they may be laid off — or both.
Regarding the direction of the country, confidence in the job market, the likelihood of a second recession, and satisfaction with federal economic policies, Mayur’s polling shows that the large job-worrying population is extremely pessimistic. Come November, that’s going to translate into votes against the Democratic Congress. And this pessimistic, jobs-sensitive group is undoubtedly thinking, along with the tax-hike-revolt Democratic senators: What sense does it make to raise taxes on anyone? Or on any business, large or small?
Then there’s the confidence-threatening war between business and the White House, which is also related to the liberal tax revolt. It’s still a battle royale between the nation’s business leaders and the administration over taxes, spending, regulation, and trade.
Treasury man Geithner made lite of this war at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week. A Daily Caller headline read: “Geithner Bored by Complaints from Business about Obama Policies.” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel also doesn’t seem that concerned. In a Wall Street Journal interview with Jerry Seib, Emanuel was a bit more conciliatory about reexamining regulatory issues, but he was still inconclusive.
There are two big things that businesses want right now: One is an across-the-board corporate tax cut, including cash expensing for investment. This is the single most powerful job-creator of all. The other is a senior business executive in one of the key economic policy slots in the White House. Neither of these requests seems to be on the table. But to conclude that the White House is burying the hatchet with business you’d have to see these conditions met.
So far it ain’t happening.
Larry Kudlow
Friday, July 23, 2010
The liberal tax revolt, as the Wall Street Journal is calling it, is a very important topic — especially for investors and small-business entrepreneurs. And for new jobs.
The so-called revolt is comprised of three Democratic senators: Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, and Ben Nelson. They want to extend all the Bush tax cuts. That includes taxes on the wealthy, or the top personal tax rate, the investment taxes on capital gains and dividends, and the estate tax.
So is this revolt a game-changer, or merely wishful thinking?
With a strong pushback against the revolt by President Obama, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right now it looks like wishful thinking. But with Democrats getting badly paddled in various polls, you never know.
When Tim Geithner told me in a CNBC interview a few weeks ago about his 20-20 rule for the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends, I blogged that this was a good thing — in particular the story for dividend taxes, which could go to 39.6 percent. But no increase at all on investment taxes would be even better.
Let’s say you’re an investor who went long stocks in March 2009 and now has a long-term capital gain. You could sell right now at a 15 percent tax rate before it goes up to 20 percent. In a nutshell, this is the tax-hike story that has hung over the stock market this year like the proverbial Sword of Damocles. Year-end tax-related selling could still be in front of us.
So the liberal tax revolt is a very important issue for investors. It could mean a potential stock market rally in the second half of the year.
It’s also important for job seekers. Just take a look at the new Investor’s Business Daily poll by the accurate surveyor Raghavan Mayur. He notes that the average length of joblessness has soared to over 35 weeks, nearly two-times greater than the previous high for any downturn. And his polling data show that nearly one-half of households can be categorized as “job-sensitive.” That’s a huge number. These are the people who are either looking for work or fear that they may be laid off — or both.
Regarding the direction of the country, confidence in the job market, the likelihood of a second recession, and satisfaction with federal economic policies, Mayur’s polling shows that the large job-worrying population is extremely pessimistic. Come November, that’s going to translate into votes against the Democratic Congress. And this pessimistic, jobs-sensitive group is undoubtedly thinking, along with the tax-hike-revolt Democratic senators: What sense does it make to raise taxes on anyone? Or on any business, large or small?
Then there’s the confidence-threatening war between business and the White House, which is also related to the liberal tax revolt. It’s still a battle royale between the nation’s business leaders and the administration over taxes, spending, regulation, and trade.
Treasury man Geithner made lite of this war at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week. A Daily Caller headline read: “Geithner Bored by Complaints from Business about Obama Policies.” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel also doesn’t seem that concerned. In a Wall Street Journal interview with Jerry Seib, Emanuel was a bit more conciliatory about reexamining regulatory issues, but he was still inconclusive.
There are two big things that businesses want right now: One is an across-the-board corporate tax cut, including cash expensing for investment. This is the single most powerful job-creator of all. The other is a senior business executive in one of the key economic policy slots in the White House. Neither of these requests seems to be on the table. But to conclude that the White House is burying the hatchet with business you’d have to see these conditions met.
So far it ain’t happening.
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