I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.
I’m taking time to celebrate the Glorious Fourth with the Granddaughter, even if the Declaration was signed on the second. Not sure how regular posts will be. If you miss anything, I’ll extend your subscription at no charge.
Book Recommendation
My bride and I are almost through a CD version of Children of Jihad by Jared Cohen. Cohen was a gutsy Jewish grad student and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He traveled to Iran, Lebanon, Syria and other Muslim countries. There he befriends young Muslims. He reports on those meetings and their views. This is not a one-dimensional portrait or anti-Muslim book. The hope many of them have for a freer society and economic opportunity, and their at least passive resistance to the theocrats who rule them comes through. But so too does the fanaticism many have imbibed since children. Easy read, about $10 on Amazon, not hard to read.
The Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card
https://www.atr.org/card.html
Making under $250k? Get your exemption card today!
Six Months to go until the Largest Tax Hikes in History
http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#
The complete list of what is going to hit you. This will be a double whammy, as it will also wham the economy.
The 10 most common strategic blunders?
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/02/the_10_most_common_strategic_blunders
Excerpt: There is a whole book of military history to be written just finding good illustrations of each of those mistakes. I think the United States was guilty of No. 2 and No. 10 in Iraq from 2003 through 2006. I'd say the British tripped on No. 3 during the American Revolution. I think Hitler committed No. 4 when he tackled Russia. No. 10 is probably the most common error.
Administrator of $20 Billion Compensation Fund for Gulf Oil Spill Will Not Make Payments to Illegal Aliens
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=68797
What, follow the law about illegals? Unheard of! Excerpt: The man who will administer the claims process for individuals and businesses seeking compensation from the $20 billion fund established by BP in the wake of its oil rig explosion and ongoing spillage said he will follow federal immigration and tax laws when deciding the eligibility of claimants, meaning he will not make payments to people who are not legally authorized to work in the United States. When CNSNews.com asked if the claims process would include requiring proof of U.S. citizenship, Kenneth Feinberg said it would. “Of course,” Feinberg said. “Required by law. I can’t violate federal law." “Federal law says I’ve got to follow the law governing immigration,” Feinberg said. “I’ve got to follow the law governing the Internal Revenue Service – people who get a check for wage loss – 1099." “That’s the law of the land,” Feinberg said.
EPA rejects air permits of 122 Texas plants
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7087940.html
Energy costs are going up. Economy going down. Excerpt: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday invalidated the air quality permits of 122 plants across Texas, throwing out one of the state's key environmental permitting processes. The action sparked complaints from representatives of the petrochemical industry who called the move a "backdoor" attempt to bring the facilities under federal greenhouse gas regulation. EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz invalidated all 122 flexible air quality permits issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality since the 1990s, leaving the facilities to apply for new permits. Most were issued to oil and chemical refineries. "We're going to transition these facilities from these flexible permits to standard permits and, by doing so, lower emissions and improve public health," he said. Gov. Rick Perry blasted the move. "The EPA's irresponsible and heavy-handed action not only undermines Texas' successful clean air programs, but threatens thousands of Texas jobs, families, businesses and communities throughout our state," Perry said in a statement. "It will also likely curtail energy supplies and increase gasoline prices nationwide."
Obama Botches Lady Liberty Speech?
http://radio.foxnews.com/2010/07/01/obama-botches-lady-liberty-speech/#axzz0sS8dPyM1
Like saying his parents met because of Selma (when he was four!), he makes things up that sound good, secure that the Leftstream media won’t call him out. Excerpt: President Obama’s first major speech on immigration contained several factual errors. He concluded his remarks at American University with the moving story of Emma Lazarus, the woman who wrote the sonnet, “The New Colossus,” for the Statue of Liberty, in 1883. President Obama said Lazarus was “inspired by what she saw and heard, she wrote down her thoughts and donated a piece of work to help pay for the construction of a new statue – the Statue of Liberty which actually was funded in part by small donations from people across America.” There’s just one problem — the story is incorrect.
House Democrats pass 'budget enforcement resolution' by 215-210
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/106905-house-democrats-pass-budget-enforcement-resolution
Washing their hands of it. The Pontius Pilate School of governing. Excerpt: House Democrats passed a budget document Thursday that sets discretionary spending at levels below those proposed by President Barack Obama but doesn’t address how Congress should cut deficits. The “budget enforcement resolution” Democrats are substituting for a traditional budget resolution sets discretionary spending for 2011 at $1.12 trillion, about $7 billion less than Obama’s proposal and $3 billion less than a Senate Democratic plan. It also sets a goal of cutting deficits to the point where revenues equal all spending except for interest payments on the debt. But unlike traditional budget resolutions, this year’s version doesn’t detail how Congress should reach that goal, leaving those tough decisions to Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission.
House approves funding for war in Afghanistan
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/106907-house-approves-funding-for-war-in-afghanistan
Excerpt: The House late Thursday approved additional funding for the war in Afghanistan, beating back a series of Democratic amendments aimed at forcing the Obama administration to withdraw troops. The supplemental appropriations bill, containing billions of dollars in additional domestic spending sought by Democrats in the House, passed 239-182, with 15 Democrats and 167 of 177 Republicans voting against the measure. But President Barack Obama will not be able to sign the war funding bill — which the Pentagon had wanted to see signed into law by July 4 — until later this month because the House amended the Senate's already approved version of the legislation. And further changes seem likely. Just as the House was preparing to vote on the rule for the supplemental, the Obama administration released a statement strongly supporting the underlying war funding but threatening a presidential veto of any bill that includes "provisions that would undermine [the president’s] ability as commander in chief to conduct military operations in Afghanistan."
Military members hit Kagan on recruiter ban
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/07/military-members-hit-kagan-on.html?wprss=44
Excerpt: A trio of military veterans on Thursday laid into Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's record on military recruiters while she was dean of Harvard's law school. The veterans, testifying as witnesses for the minority at Kagan's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Kagan's decision to bar recruiters from the law school's career services center spoke to a flaw in her character. "How did we reach the point in this country where we're nominating someone who unapologetically impeded the military in this country?" asked Army National Guard Capt. Pete Hegseth, executive director of the veterans group Vets for Freedom. Hegseth said he didn't begrudge Kagan her personal views, but called her "intellectually dishonest" for labeling "don't ask, don't tell" a military policy, when it was instituted by Congress. Hegseth also fought back against a chief argument in defense of Kagan's military recruiter policy -- that the armed forces actually increased the number of recruits from Harvard Law School during her tenure. "It increased in spite of Ms. Kagan; not because of her," said Hegseth, who is also a graduate student at Harvard.
9 in 10 docs blame lawsuit fears for overtesting
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5js4_BkHmmxcniut6D1lhI_3GzHyAD9GKG3A82
Be sure to write to and thank the Democrat-Trial Lawyer Party for higher healthcare costs.
Hatch to vote against Kagan's nomination
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/106941-hatch-to-oppose-kagan
A candidate can lie and duck, knowing that once confirmed, it’s for life. A SC justice thus has more power than a US Senator, unchecked by the electorate. In my view, in every presidential election, the names of all nine SC Justices should be on the ballot. If more than 50% of the votes vote to remove a justice, he/she is out. This would be a high standard, as black votes would count for the justice, removal needing a solid majority of everyone who shows up. Groups on either side could work to remove justices they considered egregious. We could call it “democracy.” And I have a better shot at winning the lottery than this happening.
Health overhaul may mean longer ER waits, crowding
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100702/ap_on_bi_ge/us_med_er_crowding
Excerpt: Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can't find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation's new health law. That might come as a surprise to those who thought getting 32 million more people covered by health insurance would ease ER crowding. It would seem these patients would be able to get routine health care by visiting a doctor's office, as most of the insured do. But it's not that simple. Consider: There's already a shortage of front-line family physicians in some places and experts think that will get worse. People without insurance aren't the ones filling up the nation's emergency rooms. Far from it. The uninsured are no more likely to use ERs than people with private insurance, perhaps because they're wary of huge bills. The biggest users of emergency rooms by far are Medicaid recipients. And the new health insurance law will increase their ranks by about 16 million. Medicaid is the state and federal program for low-income families and the disabled. And many family doctors limit the number of Medicaid patients they take because of low government reimbursements.
Want to know secrets of hookers? You already pay for them ...
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=173601
They'll probably “discover” that HIV was caused by Agent Orange, and we owe them. Excerpt: Americans struggling to find jobs and pay income taxes take heart: More than a million dollars in U.S. federal funds will be used to examine homosexual male prostitutes in Vietnam. The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, has awarded $1.44 million for a "study of drug and sexual risk among young male sex workers Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam." "There are an estimated 8.3 million individuals with HIV infections in Asia, one-fifth the disease burden worldwide," the project abstract states. "Initially thought to be confined to circumspect populations of male IDUs [injection drug users] and female sex workers, it is now clear that men who have sex with men are also at high risk."
Phoenix police union wants to fight for Ariz. Law
http://www.kgun9.com/Global/story.asp?S=12744650
Excerpt: A union representing 2,400 Phoenix police officers wants to become a defendant in a lawsuit challenging Arizona's new immigration enforcement law in order to defend it. The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association on Thursday asked a federal judge for permission to intervene in the case. The union says police will be helped by the law by having the ability to identify and remove illegal immigrants. On the other hand, the union says blocking implementation would mean officers face "a heightened risk of death or serious injury caused by illegal aliens."
Mexico nabs gang leader in US consulate killings
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38050438
Coming soon, across an undefended border near you. Excerpt: A top drug gang enforcer says he ordered the killing of a U.S. consulate worker because she helped provide visas to a rival gang in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, federal police said Friday. Jesus Ernesto Chavez, whose arrest was announced on Friday, leads a band of hit men for a street gang tied to the Juarez cartel, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of anti-narcotics for the Federal Police.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele says Afghan War Unwinnable prompting calls for him to resign
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/02/rnc-chairman-michael-steele-says-afghan-war-unwinnable-prompting-calls-for-him-to-resign/
Okay, I’ve withheld judgment on Steele. But this is too much. Excerpt: In a speech caught on tape at a Connecticut fundraiser Thursday, National Republican Committee Chairman Michael Steele blamed the war in Afghanistan on President Obama and suggested it could not be won, leading to calls for his resignation.
Making the World More Dangerous
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2010/07/02/making_the_world_more_dangerous
Excerpt: The timing could hardly have been worse: Just days after President Obama shared a chummy hamburger with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev -- the better to dramatize our newly "reset" relations -- the FBI announced the arrest of 11 "deep cover" spies who have been paid and plied by Moscow Center for decades. The Obama administration seemed more embarrassed about it than the Russians, rushing to reassure the world that this will not affect our new relationship with Russia one bit. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon explained that "We would like to get to the point where there is just so much trust and cooperation between the United States and Russia that nobody would think of turning to intelligence means to find out things that they couldn't find out in other channels." It's not easy to divert the Obama administration from its pursuit of "engagement." Not even repeated slaps in the face will do the trick.
U.K.: Muslims withdrawing children from music classes because they're "un-Islamic"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/uk-muslims-withdrawing-children-from-music-classes-because-theyre-un-islamic.html
Excerpt: "Some Muslims believe that playing musical instruments and singing is forbidden according to Islam." And where would they have gotten that idea? What kind of repressed killjoy would spread that sort of thinking around? Why, Muhammad: "The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance" (Hadith Qudsi 19:5). As the hadith indicates, the ban on music, as distasteful as it is by itself, is part of a much broader agenda, and thus a symptom of a much broader problem regarding the widespread unwillingness of Muslim immigrants in Europe to assimilate as equals in society, rather than as a privileged class whose every whim and hangup must be accommodated -- or else. And as is the case with the general issue of Islamic supremacism (as well as jihad doctrine), few will want to acknowledge that this display of hostility toward music education has anything to do with Islam.
Deadly blasts hit Sufi shrine in Lahore
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10483453.stm
Just as the most frequent victims of black and Hispanic thugs in our cities are black or Hispanic, the most frequent victims of Islamist violence in the name of Allah are other Muslims. Excerpt: Two suicide bombers have carried out a deadly attack on a Sufi shrine in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. At least 42 people died in the blasts at the popular Data Darbar shrine late on Thursday evening, officials say. At least 175 other people were hurt in the attack, believed to be the first to target a shrine in Lahore. Thousands of people were visiting the shrine at the time, officials say. It holds the remains of a Persian Sufi saint, Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery.
Pakistan and Iran 'backing Afghan attacks on British troops'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7865973/Pakistan-and-Iran-backing-Afghan-attacks-on-British-troops.html
That would be the Pakistan we are giving millions of tax dollars to, and the Iran BO promised to meet with to reset our relations? Nice job. Excerpt: Bomb attacks that are killing British troops in Afghanistan are being funded and supplied from Iran and Pakistan, a senior officer has said.
Dad charged over threat to kill Harry Potter star
http://menmedia.co.uk/asiannews/news/s/1279714_dad_charged_over_threat_to_kill_harry_potter_star
Attempted honour killing. Apparently, even going to Hogwarts is forbidden for Muslim girls. Excerpt: The father and brother of an actress who starred in the Harry Potter films have been charged with threatening to kill her. Afshan Azad, 22, has appeared in four of the movies as Padma Patil, a classmate of the young wizard. She was allegedly attacked at her home in Longsight, Manchester, on May 21 this year. Now her father Abdul Azad, 54, and brother, Ashraf Azad, 28, both of Beresford Road, Longsight, have appeared in court. Abdul is accused of threatening to kill his daughter and Ashraf of threatening to kill and assault occasioning actual bodily harm against his sister.
Bangladesh: Islamic leaders accused of blasphemy, accuse accusers of "conspiracy against Islam and Muslims"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/bangladesh-islamic-leaders-accused-of-blasphemy-accuse-accusers-of-conspiracy-against-islam-and-musl.html
When I was in the Massachusetts senate, the crime of blasphemy, including taking the Lord’s name in vain or cursing “God’s government (presumably us) was still technically a crime, though not enforced. I voted to repeal, but we lost. “Thank God we beat that goddamned bill” one of the repeal opponents joked. I guess these folks in Bangladesh will just have to kill each other, let Allah sort it out. Excerpt: Vying with one another to out-Muhammad Muhammad. Note that because the leaders were accused of blasphemy, party members were arrested. But the main point is that in a Sharia environment, blasphemy laws are a live weapon in the hands of those in power. With the OIC trying its best to bring such laws Westward, free people should take careful note of stories like this one.
Schwarzenegger orders min wage for state workers
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Schwarzenegger-orders-min-apf-3417314170.html?x=0
Excerpt: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday ordered about 200,000 state workers to be paid the federal minimum wage this month because the state Legislature has not passed a budget, but the state controller is refusing to comply. Department of Personnel Administration Director Debbie Endsley sent the order in a letter to the state controller, who refused a similar order two years ago. The matter is tied up in the appellate courts, leading the controller to say he will abide by whatever final ruling emerges, which could be years down the road. He said he can't follow the order now due to technical and legal issues. Most state employees will be paid the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour for the July pay period. Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the change should be reflected in state employees' next paycheck. Workers will be paid in full retroactively once a budget is passed. "It's a sad day when the boss wants to make his employees collateral damage in a budget dispute," said Patty Velez, an environmental scientist and president of the California Association of Professional Scientists, a union that would be affected by the cuts. (The scientists are unionized? Dear God, no wonder we are going to hell.)
Defendant 'Lazaro' Allegedly Confesses in Spy Case
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/9-russian-spy-suspects-face-bail-hearings-1-fugitive-at-large-in-cyprus/19538069
Excerpt: A defendant known as "Juan Lazaro" has admitted that he worked for Russia's intelligence service and declared that his loyalty to "the Service" was greater even than his love for his son, federal prosecutors said today. The alleged confession was detailed in a court document released as nine of the 10 alleged spies arrested last week were due to appear for bail hearings. Several of the hearings were postponed and just one of the suspects -- Lazaro's wife -- was granted bail. Lazaro made a "lengthy post-arrest statement" on June 27 after waiving his Miranda rights, according to a bail letter provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Federal agents said the suspect told them he was not born in Uruguay, as had been claimed, and that "Juan Lazaro" is not his real name. He also said that his house in Yonkers, outside New York City, had been "paid for by the 'Service' and although he loved his son, he would not violate his loyalty to the 'Service' even for his son," according to the document.
The Petraeus challenge
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_petraeus_challenge_yLnS52rZ4RkQsW7xJfPiXN#ixzz0sTHnbtsV
The man Obama’s supporters called “General Betray-Us” steps forward to try to save America’s position—and Obama’s Presidency. Excerpt: We're failing in Afghanistan. Confirmed yesterday as our new commander there, Gen. David Petraeus has the unenviable task of producing something President Obama can call a success. If Petraeus can salvage the situation so that our minimum needs are met, he'll confirm his reputation as the greatest American soldier of our time. Should he falter, he'll go down as the general who sold the Pentagon a disastrous doctrine. Petraeus did not want this job. But our president didn't know to whom else to turn in the wake of last week's debacle with Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Petraeus did his duty, saluted and said, "Yes, sir." Politically, Obama couldn't have made a shrewder choice. Petraeus enjoys cult status on both the right and the moderate left. The question is whether he's the right man militarily. Petraeus is a man of integrity. Now we'll see if he's also a man of character. Will he have the wherewithal to accept that our current approach -- based on the counterinsurgency doctrine he authored -- doesn't work in Afghanistan? Or will he continue trying to win unwinnable hearts and minds? His counterinsurgency doctrine assumes that doing good unto others will lead to us doing well. But we're lashed to a hated Kabul government, the enemy's strength is growing, our allies are bailing, our showpiece Kandahar operation's on hold, corruption runs into the billions, druglords prosper, the population's increasingly wary of us -- and our casualty rates are rising, as our troops are prevented from pre-empting or even pursuing the enemy. Other than that, things are fine.
Dems Include Union Bailout in War Funding Bill
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/07/dems-include-union-bailout-in-war-funding-bill/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rightwingnews%2FhGmL+%28Right+Wing+News%29
Excerpt: There is no other aspect of Washington D.C. that upsets voters more than government spending surreptitiously added on to spending bills and this week Congress indulged its inner drunken sailor once again by adding a $10 billion bailout for teachers unions in the bill that is supposed to fund the war effort. The teacher union bailout ups the $60 billion expenditure to a $70 billion tab and is causing even some Democrats to balk. Republicans have demanded that the war funding bill be clean of any tacked on spending and have threatened to withhold support of the bill if the teachers union bailouts and other unrelated spending additions are kept. Retiring Wisconsin Representative David Obey is insisting on the bailouts and pork spending but claims that he's fighting the administration over finding budget cuts to offset the spending spree. Who ever believes that Congress intends to actually find such offsets is seriously deluded. I have some Enron stock to sell them if they are that out of touch with reality. The bill includes $18 billion in energy loan guarantees, $500 million to hire new border patrol agents, along with the teacher union bailouts. Curiously, with all the wild-eyed spending, the Democrats stripped out the $200 million that was supposed to go to fund further building of the fence on our southern border. So, it's nothing for the fence but tall cash as a sop to unions. We can see where the Democrat's priorities are, can't we?
Welcome to Maywood, "Mexico"
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37671
Excerpt: Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America. The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government. How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for "brown power" politics. Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first "sanctuary" cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegals. Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.
Terror -- and candor in describing the Islamist ideology behind it
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/01/AR2010070104542.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Excerpt: The Fort Hood shooter, the Christmas Day bomber, the Times Square attacker. On May 13, the following exchange occurred at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.): Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam? Attorney General Eric Holder: There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions. . . . Smith: Okay, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons? Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people -- Smith: But was radical Islam one of them? Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious-based. Potentially, mind you. This went on until the questioner gave up in exasperation.
The Supreme Court Turns... Left!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-02/supreme-court-under-chief-justice-roberts-moves-left/?om_rid=Mqh-D0&om_mid=_BMLjswB8Ni3ztW&
Excerpt: Listening to Democratic senators in the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings, you’d think the Supreme Court shifted dramatically to the right this past term. But while the court’s conservatives scored several major victories—most notably the Citizens United case that loosened the restrictions on corporate spending in elections, earning the justices a rare State of the Union rebuke from the president—the liberals on the court won more than their fair share of cases this year. Ever since the 1960s, conservatives have decried the left’s embrace of broad protections for criminal defendants’ rights. In recent years, the court has drastically scaled back the ability of federal courts to second-guess state court convictions. This term, however, the court reversed course. In a case out of Florida, the court, in an opinion by Justice Breyer, expanded the time period for a criminal defendant to petition for federal court review of his state court trial in which his attorney was negligent. In another case, the justices ordered further federal court review of a state court judgment where the defendant claimed his lawyer had failed to investigate potentially mitigating evidence. In still another case, the court, over the dissent of Justices Thomas and Scalia, broadly endorsed the principle that all aspects of a criminal trial must be open to the public—again requiring the federal courts to second-guess state court decisions to close trials.
Steve Bridges as Obama
http://www.stevebridges.com/obamavideos-promo-jan2010-lg.html
I think this will be funny to everyone. Two parts, scroll down.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Political Digest July 2, 2010
I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.
Kagan’s Abortion Distortion
http://article.nationalreview.com/437296/kagans-abortion-distortion/shannen-w-coffin?page=1
This is very troubling. Excerpt: When President Obama promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” he never explained what that rightful place would be. Documents recently released in connection with the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan suggest an answer: wherever it can best be used to skew political debate and judicial outcomes. The documents involved date from the Clinton White House. They show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court….So Kagan set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG’s position. On a document [PDF] captioned “Suggested Options” — which she apparently faxed to the legislative director at ACOG — Kagan proposed that ACOG include the following language: “An intact D&X [the medical term for the procedure], however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.) The judicial battles that followed led to two Supreme Court opinions, several trials, and countless felled trees. Now we learn that language purporting to be the judgment of an independent body of medical experts devoted to the care and treatment of pregnant women and their children was, in the end, nothing more than the political scrawling of a White House appointee. Miss Kagan’s decision to override a scientific finding with her own calculated distortion in order to protect access to the most despicable of abortion procedures seriously twisted the judicial process. One must question whether her nomination to the Court would have the same effect.
Peer-Reviewed Science is Politically-Revised
http://townhall.com/columnists/JaniceShawCrouse/2010/06/30/peer-reviewed_science_is_politically-revised
Excerpt: Many of us have known for years that the scientific community is not as pristine pure as they’d like the public to think; politics has long been alive and well at American universities and among the peer-review networks. It is still shocking, however, to discover that the White House has tampered with scientific findings. The political official in charge of defending the partial-birth abortion act in federal court during the Bush administration, Shannen Coffin, described for National Review his discovery of documents released by the Clinton White House that show the apparent manipulation of a scientific report on partial-birth abortion by Elena Kagan, the nominee for the Supreme Court who is undergoing confirmation hearings this week. If the reports are true –– and there are hand-written notes that seem to indicate Kagan’s direct involvement in the deception –– Kagan’s name should immediately be withdrawn from consideration for the Supreme Court and she should be disbarred and disgraced. Here are the facts. A “select panel” of physician-members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a professional medical association that sponsors/conducts medical studies and publishes results, issued a report –– with the professional credibility of ACOG behind it –– that declared that the partial-birth abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” That statement was used in numerous court cases as “official” medical opinion regarding the partial-birth abortion procedure.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Both sides in the Kagan hearings refer to the “Military’s Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” policy. It makes me nuts. It was not the military’s policy. It was an order from the Commander in Chief, Bill Clinton, which the military was bound to obey. If it was the policy and not the military she opposed, she would have barred Bill Clinton from Campus.
Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America forbids Muslims to aid American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/assembly-of-muslim-jurists-of-america-forbids-muslims-to-aid-american-troops-in-afghanistan-and-iraq.html
Excerpt: For to do so would be "helping others in sin and transgression." The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America says on its website: "AMJA recognizes that human brotherhood is the basic principle that should govern the relations between all peoples and nations. Therefore, the pursuit of peace and goodwill between all nations should be a desirable objective for all members of the human family. In this light, AMJA rejects any ideology or effort that aims to put the United States of America and Islam in conflict." Apparently it intends to achieve this goal by making sure that U.S. troops cannot achieve anything in Islamic countries.
(Even a Few) Words Matter
http://townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/07/01/even_a_few_words_matter
Excerpt: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was ecstatic after the Munich Conference of 1938. He bragged that he had coaxed Adolf Hitler into stopping further aggression after the Nazis gobbled up much of Czechoslovakia. Arriving home, Chamberlain proudly displayed Hitler's signature on the Munich Agreement, exclaiming to adoring crowds, "I believe it is peace for our time. ... And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds." But after listening to Chamberlain's nice nonsense, Hitler remarked to his generals about a week later, "Our enemies are little worms, I saw them at Munich." War followed in about a year. Sometimes deterrence against aggression is lost with just a few unfortunate words or a relatively minor gesture.
Iran is Surrounded by US Troops in 10 Countries
http://planet-iran.com/index.php/news/18168
Excerpt: Iran literally is surrounded by American troops, notes an oil market analyst, Energy and Capital editor Christian A. DeHaemer. There is no evidence of an imminent attack, but he connects a number of recent events and the presence of American soldiers to warn that oil prices might soar — with or without a pre-emptive strike aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear power ambitions. Iran is bordered on the east by Pakistan and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been waging a costly war, in terms of money and lives, against Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorists. The Persian Gulf is on Iran’s southern border, and last week’s report, confirmed by the Pentagon, that 11 warships had sailed through the Suez Canal, raised alarm bells that the U.S. is ready to fight to keep the Persian Gulf open. Iran has threatened it could close the waterway, where 40 percent of the world’s oil flows in tankers, if the United Nations or the United States by itself carry out harsh energy sanctions against the Islamic Republic. An Israeli ship has also reportedly joined the U.S. armada. (Over the past three weeks or so, this is the 4th or 5th story about how Iran is "surrounded by US and/or Israeli troops." At first, I was very concerned, now, less so. I notice almost all these stories are sourced to Israeli news media, regardless of where I ran across the story (mostly European, US, or Iranian feeds). That doesn't mean war can't or won't break out tomorrow, but must now consider the possibility this is a psych-op against the Iranians. Ron P.)
Graph of the Day for June 30, 2010
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/06/graph_of_the_day_for_june_30_2.html
Interesting graph on jobs created and lost.
Is The Climate Around Global Warming Changing?
http://thegwpf.org/news/1169-bbc-panorama-is-the-climate-around-global-warming-changing.html
Excerpt: It didn’t start well. Monday night’s edition of Panorama, entitled ‘What’s Up With the Weather?’ aimed to examine British attitudes to climate change and the state of the science in the wake of both ‘Climategate’ and the failure of the Copenhagen conference on climate change last December. And that seemed to mean presenter Tom Heap sticking a carbon dioxide detector into a car exhaust to prove it was helping to warm the planet. The programme did, however, get better. What was striking about it was that the BBC, which has tended to be gung-ho in its presentation of the dangers of global warming, actually presented those who are sceptical of the orthodoxy in a reasonably fair way. In doing so, it accepted that there is a genuine debate – and not some Big Oil-funded attempt to pervert the course of environmental justice, as some earlier BBC programmes have suggested. That debate is about what has caused the moderate rise in temperature over the past 150 years, how much warmer things will get, and what the best policy is to deal with a changing world. In turn, this reflects (hopefully) a more rational turn in the politics of climate change. (...) What seems to have slowly dawned on those banging the drum for radical action on climate change is that the attempt to panic the population into accepting drastic cuts in living standards to counter rising temperatures has failed. Instead, this approach has merely confirmed for many people that the whole thing is a green conspiracy. In the programme, Heap talked to one ordinary couple about their attitudes to climate change. While the wife was convinced it was a major problem, the husband thought it was just a scare story. But this sharp difference of opinion soon collapsed when it came to the costs of switching to a low-carbon economy. While the orthodox approach to climate change would involve increasing the cost of energy (and therefore, pretty much everything else), this couple – like most others, one suspects – was concerned that energy prices were already too high.
Obama's Flimflam Plan to End Homelessness
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-president-obamas-arrogant-approach-to-ending-homelessness/19536637
Excerpt: In the midst of soaring deficits, a teetering world economy, a failing war in Afghanistan, a catastrophic oil spill, a surging Republican opposition and a chief executive with precipitously plummeting approval ratings, who could report with a straight face on a costly fresh effort that solemnly promises to "wipe out" all "chronic homelessness" by 2015? Could any sane observer above the age of 14 honestly believe that a new federal program would succeed in achieving that noble goal? Or, even more outlandishly, that the latest bureaucratic prescription would finally succeed in its broader purpose: to "end" homelessness of every sort within 10 years? In fact, the odd timing of Obama's "end homelessness" initiative raises an uncomfortable question: How is a federal government that has been utterly unable to seal off a single oil well in the Gulf of Mexico supposed to solve an intractable, nationwide, social and psychiatric problem that has foiled governmental authorities at the federal, state and local level for a half century? Defenders of the administration's arrogant approach would insist that there's no meaningful comparison between federal impotence in the face of the gulf oil slick and the painful predicament of the homeless hordes, since the undersea gusher was properly the responsibility of BP and its associates, not the feds. But this logic leads to another unanswerable challenge: Since when did the dilemma of homeless citizens in Hoboken and Honolulu become the responsibility of preening panjandrums in Washington, D.C., rather than the local leadership in Hoboken and Honolulu?
Cardinals Manager Tony LaRussa Defends Tea Party; Says He Supports “What Arizona is Doing”
http://weaselzippers.us/2010/06/30/cardinals-manager-tony-larussa-defends-tea-party-says-he-supports-%e2%80%9cwhat-arizona-is-doing%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-video/
Excerpt: Here is a video report on St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Manager Tony LaRussa speaking out in defense of Tea Party Activists that showed up at Busch Stadium. LaRussa said he is “in support” of a lot of what they are doing, and he went further by saying, “I’m actually in support of what Arizona is doing.”
Senate adjourns for July Fourth without passing unemployment benefits extension
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/106625-senate-adjourns-for-july-4-recess-without-passing-an-unemployment-extension
Most economists think that extending benefits extends unemployment, as people put off making compromises that may be necessary in the new economy. But it’s popular. Excerpt: The Senate adjourned Wednesday night after falling two votes short of passing an extension of unemployment benefits after a protracted battle about the nation's debt. The vote failed 58-38 on the two-pronged measure -- 60 were needed to end a Republican filibuster -- that included a $34 billion six-month extension of unemployment benefits.
Pentagon recommends Medal of Honor for a living soldier
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005346.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Good man. Please don’t let him talk to Rolling Stone. Excerpt: The Pentagon has recommended that the White House consider awarding the Medal of Honor to a living soldier for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to U.S. officials. The soldier, whose nomination must be reviewed by the White House, ran through a wall of enemy fire in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley in fall 2007 in an attempt to push back Taliban fighters who were close to overrunning his squad. U.S. military officials said his actions saved the lives of about half a dozen men. It is possible that the White House could honor the soldier's heroism with a decoration other than the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. Nominations for the Medal of Honor typically include detailed accounts from witnesses and can run hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. The review has been conducted so discreetly that the soldier's family does not know that it has reached the White House, according to U.S. officials who discussed the nomination on the condition of anonymity because a final decision is pending.
Oil spill visits get partisan
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39225.html
Excerpt: Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) wanted to fly 10 lawmakers down to the Gulf of Mexico to see the damage caused by BP’s gigantic oil spill first hand. House Democrats said no. Scalise’s trip was rejected for a variety of bureaucratic and logistical reasons, but it has also opened a new vein of partisan squabbling over who should be allowed to arrange a trip to view the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Republicans want to be able to take trips using their office spending allowance. But Democrats have heard from the Department of Homeland Security, which has asked that Congress organize trips through committees of jurisdiction, to avoid having to cater to a ton of individual lawmakers in a disaster zone, Democratic aides say. GOP leaders say they’ve heard nothing of this. The squabbling over who gets to travel to the Gulf on whose dime is the latest sign that congressional oversight of the oil spill oversight from Capitol Hill has been bogged down by partisanship. Congress has held upwards of 20 hearings on the disaster, often duplicative ones each week, as lawmakers struggle to grasp and fully realize the scope of BP’s giant oil spill.
Conservatives use Pelosi as face of liberalism in campaign ads
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005328.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
I don’t usually criticize conservatives, but using that face certainly qualifies as “scare tactics.”
Independents move toward Republicans, away from Obama
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/1-2-3-ohio-lt.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: New data from Gallup shows that independent voters now favor a generic Republican candidate for Congress over a generic Democratic candidate by 12 points, a trend that appears to be tied to their feelings about President Obama. In more than 6,000 interviews conducted in June, 46 percent of independents said they would support a Republican candidate while 34 percent said they would vote for a Democrat. In April and May, Gallup polls showed Republicans with a 10-point edge among independents on the generic ballot while in March it was an eight-point margin. The same gap does not appear in Gallup's generic ballot number among all registered voters, where 46 percent opt for a Democratic candidate and 45 percent choose a Republican. The Gallup numbers suggest that Obama himself is the prime motivator for independent movement toward Republicans on the generic ballot. More than half (51 percent) of independent registered voters -- a more useful demographic slice when analyzing election outcomes -- disapprove of the job the president is doing. Of that group, more than seven in 10 said they preferred a generic Republican candidate to a generic Democratic one. "Dissatisfaction with Obama appears to be a reason independents favor the Republican Party this year," writes Gallup's Jeffrey Jones.
House budget move kicks tough decisions down the road
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/106687-house-budget-document-leaves-tough-decisions-for-later
What Congress does best, and why the eventual resolutions of the fiscal, immigration, economic and Jihadist challenges will be very painful, probably disastrous, with no good options.
Where Best To Be Poor
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams063010.php3
Excerpt: According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty guideline was $22,000 for an urban four-person family. In 2009, having income less than that, 15 percent or 40 million Americans were classified as poor, but there's something unique about those "poor" people not seen anywhere else in the world. Robert Rector, researcher at the Heritage Foundation, presents data collected from several government sources in a report titled "How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the 'Plague' of Poverty in America" (8/27/2007): Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio. Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person. The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.) Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
Released on Bail in Cyprus, Spy Ring Suspect Vanishes
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/europe/01spy.html?_r=1
Excerpt: The eleventh suspected member of a Russian spy ring broken up by the F.B.I. this week has disappeared on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where he was arrested but released on bail Tuesday after surrendering his passport. Late Wednesday, a police spokesman told the Cyprus state news agency that the suspect, Christopher Metsos, 54, had failed to report as required to a precinct in the island’s southwest, where he had been apprehended. The police obtained a warrant for his arrest and a manhunt was under way. (Who could've suspected that a person charged with working for a foreign power might skip out on bail? –Ron P.)
After November
http://plumwoodroad.blogspot.com/
Excerpt: Why kid our selves? There is something seriously wrong with our government. Some of us may choose to ignore it, others may wish it would go away, but we all, at least on some subconscious level, know it. We see it in dozens of ways: persistent high unemployment, government spending through the roof, a health care system made worse by “reform”, two thousand miles of southern border left wide open, taxes set to explode next January 1, vote buying at the highest levels of the Administration, terrorist states building nuclear weapons, and an oil leak that has been a Charley-Foxtrot of mismanagement from Day One…on and on…Behind all of this, down in the pit of our stomachs, is the gnawing feeling that many, even a majority, of those we’ve sent to Washington have no interest in looking out for the country’s best interests. What ever particular star in the east they are following, it isn’t ours. But, a large segment of the population is not taking this bad situation quietly. An epidemic of November Fever has broken out. Brought back from near death by the infusion of energy from revved up Tea Party activists, Libertarians and political first timers, the Republican Party stands a real chance of getting control of at least some part of the government. We know it and the Left knows it. There is, however, a catch: Electoral victory will not be enough.
Independence Forever!
http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2010/07/01/independence-forever/
Excerpt: The principle author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, understood that, though Liberty is "endowed by our Creator," it is difficult to maintain among men. "The natural progress of things," he wrote, "is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Indeed it is. We boldly threw off a monarchy in the American Revolution, but today countless bureaucrats under the command of a pack of hardcore Socialists have assumed the throne. Jefferson also understood the consequences of Socialism: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." But 234 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence, Beltway politicos, most of the "Democrat" variety, insist that we must conduct ourselves, in matters large and small, according to their will -- and would have us believe they know better than we. Indeed, they have so effectively institutionalized this deceit that their electoral lemmings fall in behind them in lock step. That subservience is an affront to our hard-won heritage of Liberty, and an insult to those generations who have defended it.
The Limitless Power of the Obama-Kagan Congress
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/01/morning-bell-the-limitless-power-of-the-obama-kagan-congress/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: This Sunday, our nation will celebrate Independence Day, which commemorates the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration preamble reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The fact that we as a nation came together every year to celebrate this document might lead many Americans to believe that a Supreme Court Justice should take the Declaration of Independence into account when they are interpreting the Constitution. Elena Kagan is not one of those Americans. Under questioning from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) yesterday, Kagan admitted: “To be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution.” And Kagan’s disturbing indifference to the existence of natural rights is just one of the many frightening revelations her confirmation hearing has produced. On Tuesday, Sen. Coburn pressed Kagan about the limits the Constitution places on Congress’ power to control what Americans do:
The Dismantling of a Suspected Russian Intelligence Operation
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100630_dismantling_suspected_russian_intelligence_operation?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100701&utm_content=readmore&elq=198617d920b941109e44af035a6b82fe
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Justice announced June 28 that an FBI counterintelligence investigation had resulted in the arrest on June 27 of 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a foreign country, in this case, Russia. Eight of the individuals were also accused of money laundering. On June 28, five of the defendants appeared before a federal magistrate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan while three others went before a federal magistrate in Alexandria, Va., and two more went before a U.S. magistrate in Boston. An 11th person named in the criminal complaint was arrested in Cyprus on June 29, posted bail and is currently at large. The number of arrested suspects in this case makes this counterintelligence investigation one of the biggest in U.S. history. According to the criminal complaint, the FBI had been investigating some of these people for as long as 10 years, recording conversations in their homes, intercepting radio and electronic messages and conducting surveillance on them in and out of the United States. The case suggests that the classic tactics of intelligence gathering and counterintelligence are still being used by Russia and the United States.
CBO Budget outlook
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/SummaryforWeb_LTBO.pdf
Strain? How about Bust!: The federal debt will account for 62 percent of the nation’s economy by the end of 2010, the highest percentage since shortly after World War II, according to a long-term budget outlook prepared this week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The 40-year debt average is roughly 36 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and the debt equaled 40 percent of the economy at the end of 2008. CBO attributed the sharp rise in debt to lower tax revenues and higher federal spending related to the prolonged economic recession and turmoil in the financial markets. However, CBO also said that an imbalance between spending and revenues that predated the recent economic downturn has contributed to the growing debt as well. As the economy and financial markets recover, budget deficits will probably decline markedly in the next few years, but over the long term, the budget outlook is “daunting,” CBO said. The retirement of the baby-boom generation will strain entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and per capita spending for health care continues to trend upward.
States seek financial help as new fiscal year begins
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005355.html
Excerpt: States face a combined deficit of $89 billion in the fiscal year that begins Thursday, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And because every state but Vermont is required to balance its budget, the only recourse is cutting employees or vital programs, including education spending, medical services, programs for the disabled and elderly, and police and fire protection. All that cutting could mean the loss of 900,000 jobs -- in the public sector and in private companies that rely on state business, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.
How to Dismantle a Legislative Majority
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/how-dismantle-legislative-majority
Excerpt: That’s what legislators do, after all. New laws are like seed corn, intended to grow public support. But it’s not working. The congressional majority keeps passing initiatives they say respond to the public’s desire for “change.” Yet the combination of current liberal initiatives and uncertainty about future policies now seriously hampers economic growth and business risk-taking. It’s also taking a toll on congressional standing with voters. Gallup reinforced this point last week, reporting Congress’s job approval rate hovering near an all time low of 20 percent. Perceived liberalism in the lawmaking process may also impact Americans’ ideological self-identification. Gallup issued a separate study recently, demonstrating a significant rise in the number of Americans describing themselves as conservatives since the 2008 election. Near record numbers now also say that the Democratic Party is “too liberal.”
Alleged Russian agent Anna Chapman could have warmed up any Cold War night
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005074.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Damn it, Harry, of COURSE we take prisoners. I’ll interrogate her myself. Excerpt: There were 11 alleged Russian agents arrested this week, under accusations that they'd been living as Americans while reporting back to the mother country. Ever since photos of Anna Chapman began circulating online late Tuesday, the Internet at large has been foaming, frothing, fanatic for details about the reported 28-year-old secret agent/Maxim model look-alike who specialized in sultry-eyed, pouty-lipped, come-hither stares.
Weather vs. Climate
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/01/weather-vs-climate/#more-21256
Excerpt: Weather and climate models are at the core very similar, but climate models also consider additional parameters that vary over time, like atmospheric composition. Climate models iterate over very long time periods, and thus compound error. Weather modelers understand that 72 hours is about the limit which they can claim accuracy. Climate modelers on the other hand are happy to run simulations for decades (because they know that they will be retired and no one will remember what they said) and because it provides an excuse to sink money into really cool HPC (High Performance Computing) clusters.... 1. Weather modelers consider the realm of climate calculation to be “months to seasons.” Not the 30 year minimum we hear quoted all the time by AGW groupies. That is why NOAA’s “Climate Prediction Center” generates their seasonal forecasts, rather than the National Weather Service. 2. The two most important boundary conditions (inputs) to seasonal forecasts are sea surface temperatures and soil moisture. No one has shown any skill at modeling either of those, so no surprise that The Met Office Seasonal forecasts were consistently wrong.
The Gathering Storm
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/gathering-storm
Things are going to get nasty, in the very near future. Excerpt: The Obama administration’s policy of engagement with Syria has yielded yet more rewards. The Wall Street Journal reports: "Iran has sent Syria a sophisticated radar system that could threaten Israel's ability to launch a surprise attack against Iran's nuclear facilities, say Israeli and U.S. officials, extending an alliance aimed at undermining Israel's military dominance in the region. The radar could bolster Syria's defenses by providing early warning of Israeli air-force sorties. It could also benefit Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon and widely believed to receive arms from Syria." How much more evidence is required before a policy can be called failed or worse than failed – counterproductive?
Must read: Where ‘nice’ Obama has got us
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/07/01/where-nice-obama-has-got-us/
Excerpt: In 1939, Capt. Peter Sanders, serving with the Tochi scouts on the Afghan-Indian border, was blown up by a Waziri booby trap and lost his right arm. Shortly afterwards, he accepted an invitation to lunch from the tribesman who’d planted the bomb. Awfully decent of the chap, and not a bad spread, all things considered. Not everyone cares for the old stiff upper lip: “I spit on your British phlegm!” as the Khazi of Kalabar remarked in what remains the seminal work on Afghanistan, Carry on up the Khyber. But imperialism requires a certain dotty élan. Without it, it’s no fun. You’re just a guy holed up in a Third World dump occasionally venturing out in the full RoboCop to pretend to implement some half-assed multilateral “nation-building” strategy that NATO defence ministers all agreed to at some black-tie banquet in Brussels and then promptly forgot about. Instead of the Tochi scouts—Pathan irregulars commanded by British officers—we now have Afghan units “trained,” or at any rate funded, by Western governments. A headline in the Washington Post captures the general malaise: “Afghan forces’ apathy starts to wear on U.S. platoon in Kandahar.” On a recent patrol through the city, 1st Lieut. James Rathmann stopped at a police checkpoint and found them all asleep in a nearby field. It’s not just the natives who are dozing. In London recently, Robert Gates, the U.S. defence secretary, complained that the allies’ promised 450 “trainers” for the expanded Afghan National Army had failed to materialize. These are not combat roles, so in theory even the less gung-ho NATO members should have no objection. Supposedly, 46 nations are contributing to the allied effort in Afghanistan, so that would work out at 10 “trainers” per country. Yet even that modest commitment is too much. So the Afghan army will fill up with time-servers and Taliban sympathizers. Colonial administration was always a cynic’s field. In Lisbon last week, I was admiring the beauty of the jacarandas when David Pryce-Jones, the scholar and novelist, reminded me of the words of Lord Lloyd, British high commissioner in Egypt in the twenties: “The jacarandas are in bloom,” he observed. “We shall soon be sending for the gunboats.” When the weather heats up, so do the natives. In Lloyd’s day, we were cynical about the locals. Now we’re starry-eyed about the locals—marvellous chaps, few more trainers and they’ll do splendidly—while they’re utterly cynical about us. Hamid Karzai has just fired his two most pro-American cabinet ministers and is making more and more pro-Taliban noises. This is a man who for the last nine years has been kept alive only by U.S. military protection. A throne in Kabul may not be much, but, such as it is, he owes it entirely to his patrons in Washington. Why would Putin, Ahmadinejad or the ChiComs take Barack Obama seriously when even a footling client such as Hamid Karzai can flip him the finger? “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” said Osama bin Laden many years ago, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” The world does not see President Obama as the strong horse
The Southern Border Could Get Much Worse
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/the_southern_border_could_get.html
Excerpt: The southern border of the USA is no longer something that we can ignore or use as a political tool. Successive presidents have failed to control this border for one reason or another, but the escalation of drug cartel violence on the southern side of the border is making the issue of illegal immigration almost an afterthought. It seems that if something doesn't change, we could be looking at an all-out war with Mexican drug cartels. Police Chief Jeff Kirkham of the border town Nogales, Arizona, told Tucson Channel 9 (ABC) news that he has received threats that the Mexican drug cartels will start using snipers to target on- and off-duty police officers from across the border. Given the fact that Nogales sits right on the border with the town of Heroica Nogales on the other side, the threat is entirely credible and feasible. Heroica Nogales would provide ample places to hide within sniper range of many parts of Nogales. With an effective range of over one mile, modern rifles could easily target U.S. citizens and police in an eerie echo of the siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian war. If snipers start setting up shop in Heroica Nogales, we certainly won't be able to count on the Mexican military to take care of the problem. The cartels clearly don't fear the Mexican military, given the enormous intimidation and bribery that they are able to bring to the table. Leaked stories of massive Mexican military corruption and intimidation are commonplace in the border regions. Given that the Mexican military would be of dubious worth, what options are left for the Obama administration to deal with the problem? Would Obama fire predator missiles into Mexico from drones to take out snipers, or would the risk of a real military conflict with the regular Mexican army and civilian casualties make that option out of the question? Would counter-snipers be employed to take out drug cartel snipers? Given Obama's reluctance to deploy anything more than logistic personnel from the National Guard to the border, the answer is likely "no." If Obama will not authorize return fire, what is the game plan for the police and civilians being shot at from across the border? If Obama did authorize return fire across the border, how would Mexico react to military snipers from our side shooting drug cartel snipers from theirs? Finally, what would the rules of engagement be? Would American military snipers be authorized to take out anyone deemed a threat, or would the life of a police officer or civilian have to be taken before they can fire back? Even the military will admit that counter-sniper operations are complex and fraught with risk.
Kagan’s Abortion Distortion
http://article.nationalreview.com/437296/kagans-abortion-distortion/shannen-w-coffin?page=1
This is very troubling. Excerpt: When President Obama promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” he never explained what that rightful place would be. Documents recently released in connection with the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan suggest an answer: wherever it can best be used to skew political debate and judicial outcomes. The documents involved date from the Clinton White House. They show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court….So Kagan set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG’s position. On a document [PDF] captioned “Suggested Options” — which she apparently faxed to the legislative director at ACOG — Kagan proposed that ACOG include the following language: “An intact D&X [the medical term for the procedure], however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.) The judicial battles that followed led to two Supreme Court opinions, several trials, and countless felled trees. Now we learn that language purporting to be the judgment of an independent body of medical experts devoted to the care and treatment of pregnant women and their children was, in the end, nothing more than the political scrawling of a White House appointee. Miss Kagan’s decision to override a scientific finding with her own calculated distortion in order to protect access to the most despicable of abortion procedures seriously twisted the judicial process. One must question whether her nomination to the Court would have the same effect.
Peer-Reviewed Science is Politically-Revised
http://townhall.com/columnists/JaniceShawCrouse/2010/06/30/peer-reviewed_science_is_politically-revised
Excerpt: Many of us have known for years that the scientific community is not as pristine pure as they’d like the public to think; politics has long been alive and well at American universities and among the peer-review networks. It is still shocking, however, to discover that the White House has tampered with scientific findings. The political official in charge of defending the partial-birth abortion act in federal court during the Bush administration, Shannen Coffin, described for National Review his discovery of documents released by the Clinton White House that show the apparent manipulation of a scientific report on partial-birth abortion by Elena Kagan, the nominee for the Supreme Court who is undergoing confirmation hearings this week. If the reports are true –– and there are hand-written notes that seem to indicate Kagan’s direct involvement in the deception –– Kagan’s name should immediately be withdrawn from consideration for the Supreme Court and she should be disbarred and disgraced. Here are the facts. A “select panel” of physician-members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a professional medical association that sponsors/conducts medical studies and publishes results, issued a report –– with the professional credibility of ACOG behind it –– that declared that the partial-birth abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” That statement was used in numerous court cases as “official” medical opinion regarding the partial-birth abortion procedure.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Both sides in the Kagan hearings refer to the “Military’s Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” policy. It makes me nuts. It was not the military’s policy. It was an order from the Commander in Chief, Bill Clinton, which the military was bound to obey. If it was the policy and not the military she opposed, she would have barred Bill Clinton from Campus.
Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America forbids Muslims to aid American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/assembly-of-muslim-jurists-of-america-forbids-muslims-to-aid-american-troops-in-afghanistan-and-iraq.html
Excerpt: For to do so would be "helping others in sin and transgression." The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America says on its website: "AMJA recognizes that human brotherhood is the basic principle that should govern the relations between all peoples and nations. Therefore, the pursuit of peace and goodwill between all nations should be a desirable objective for all members of the human family. In this light, AMJA rejects any ideology or effort that aims to put the United States of America and Islam in conflict." Apparently it intends to achieve this goal by making sure that U.S. troops cannot achieve anything in Islamic countries.
(Even a Few) Words Matter
http://townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/07/01/even_a_few_words_matter
Excerpt: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was ecstatic after the Munich Conference of 1938. He bragged that he had coaxed Adolf Hitler into stopping further aggression after the Nazis gobbled up much of Czechoslovakia. Arriving home, Chamberlain proudly displayed Hitler's signature on the Munich Agreement, exclaiming to adoring crowds, "I believe it is peace for our time. ... And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds." But after listening to Chamberlain's nice nonsense, Hitler remarked to his generals about a week later, "Our enemies are little worms, I saw them at Munich." War followed in about a year. Sometimes deterrence against aggression is lost with just a few unfortunate words or a relatively minor gesture.
Iran is Surrounded by US Troops in 10 Countries
http://planet-iran.com/index.php/news/18168
Excerpt: Iran literally is surrounded by American troops, notes an oil market analyst, Energy and Capital editor Christian A. DeHaemer. There is no evidence of an imminent attack, but he connects a number of recent events and the presence of American soldiers to warn that oil prices might soar — with or without a pre-emptive strike aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear power ambitions. Iran is bordered on the east by Pakistan and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been waging a costly war, in terms of money and lives, against Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorists. The Persian Gulf is on Iran’s southern border, and last week’s report, confirmed by the Pentagon, that 11 warships had sailed through the Suez Canal, raised alarm bells that the U.S. is ready to fight to keep the Persian Gulf open. Iran has threatened it could close the waterway, where 40 percent of the world’s oil flows in tankers, if the United Nations or the United States by itself carry out harsh energy sanctions against the Islamic Republic. An Israeli ship has also reportedly joined the U.S. armada. (Over the past three weeks or so, this is the 4th or 5th story about how Iran is "surrounded by US and/or Israeli troops." At first, I was very concerned, now, less so. I notice almost all these stories are sourced to Israeli news media, regardless of where I ran across the story (mostly European, US, or Iranian feeds). That doesn't mean war can't or won't break out tomorrow, but must now consider the possibility this is a psych-op against the Iranians. Ron P.)
Graph of the Day for June 30, 2010
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/06/graph_of_the_day_for_june_30_2.html
Interesting graph on jobs created and lost.
Is The Climate Around Global Warming Changing?
http://thegwpf.org/news/1169-bbc-panorama-is-the-climate-around-global-warming-changing.html
Excerpt: It didn’t start well. Monday night’s edition of Panorama, entitled ‘What’s Up With the Weather?’ aimed to examine British attitudes to climate change and the state of the science in the wake of both ‘Climategate’ and the failure of the Copenhagen conference on climate change last December. And that seemed to mean presenter Tom Heap sticking a carbon dioxide detector into a car exhaust to prove it was helping to warm the planet. The programme did, however, get better. What was striking about it was that the BBC, which has tended to be gung-ho in its presentation of the dangers of global warming, actually presented those who are sceptical of the orthodoxy in a reasonably fair way. In doing so, it accepted that there is a genuine debate – and not some Big Oil-funded attempt to pervert the course of environmental justice, as some earlier BBC programmes have suggested. That debate is about what has caused the moderate rise in temperature over the past 150 years, how much warmer things will get, and what the best policy is to deal with a changing world. In turn, this reflects (hopefully) a more rational turn in the politics of climate change. (...) What seems to have slowly dawned on those banging the drum for radical action on climate change is that the attempt to panic the population into accepting drastic cuts in living standards to counter rising temperatures has failed. Instead, this approach has merely confirmed for many people that the whole thing is a green conspiracy. In the programme, Heap talked to one ordinary couple about their attitudes to climate change. While the wife was convinced it was a major problem, the husband thought it was just a scare story. But this sharp difference of opinion soon collapsed when it came to the costs of switching to a low-carbon economy. While the orthodox approach to climate change would involve increasing the cost of energy (and therefore, pretty much everything else), this couple – like most others, one suspects – was concerned that energy prices were already too high.
Obama's Flimflam Plan to End Homelessness
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-president-obamas-arrogant-approach-to-ending-homelessness/19536637
Excerpt: In the midst of soaring deficits, a teetering world economy, a failing war in Afghanistan, a catastrophic oil spill, a surging Republican opposition and a chief executive with precipitously plummeting approval ratings, who could report with a straight face on a costly fresh effort that solemnly promises to "wipe out" all "chronic homelessness" by 2015? Could any sane observer above the age of 14 honestly believe that a new federal program would succeed in achieving that noble goal? Or, even more outlandishly, that the latest bureaucratic prescription would finally succeed in its broader purpose: to "end" homelessness of every sort within 10 years? In fact, the odd timing of Obama's "end homelessness" initiative raises an uncomfortable question: How is a federal government that has been utterly unable to seal off a single oil well in the Gulf of Mexico supposed to solve an intractable, nationwide, social and psychiatric problem that has foiled governmental authorities at the federal, state and local level for a half century? Defenders of the administration's arrogant approach would insist that there's no meaningful comparison between federal impotence in the face of the gulf oil slick and the painful predicament of the homeless hordes, since the undersea gusher was properly the responsibility of BP and its associates, not the feds. But this logic leads to another unanswerable challenge: Since when did the dilemma of homeless citizens in Hoboken and Honolulu become the responsibility of preening panjandrums in Washington, D.C., rather than the local leadership in Hoboken and Honolulu?
Cardinals Manager Tony LaRussa Defends Tea Party; Says He Supports “What Arizona is Doing”
http://weaselzippers.us/2010/06/30/cardinals-manager-tony-larussa-defends-tea-party-says-he-supports-%e2%80%9cwhat-arizona-is-doing%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-video/
Excerpt: Here is a video report on St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Manager Tony LaRussa speaking out in defense of Tea Party Activists that showed up at Busch Stadium. LaRussa said he is “in support” of a lot of what they are doing, and he went further by saying, “I’m actually in support of what Arizona is doing.”
Senate adjourns for July Fourth without passing unemployment benefits extension
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/106625-senate-adjourns-for-july-4-recess-without-passing-an-unemployment-extension
Most economists think that extending benefits extends unemployment, as people put off making compromises that may be necessary in the new economy. But it’s popular. Excerpt: The Senate adjourned Wednesday night after falling two votes short of passing an extension of unemployment benefits after a protracted battle about the nation's debt. The vote failed 58-38 on the two-pronged measure -- 60 were needed to end a Republican filibuster -- that included a $34 billion six-month extension of unemployment benefits.
Pentagon recommends Medal of Honor for a living soldier
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005346.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Good man. Please don’t let him talk to Rolling Stone. Excerpt: The Pentagon has recommended that the White House consider awarding the Medal of Honor to a living soldier for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to U.S. officials. The soldier, whose nomination must be reviewed by the White House, ran through a wall of enemy fire in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley in fall 2007 in an attempt to push back Taliban fighters who were close to overrunning his squad. U.S. military officials said his actions saved the lives of about half a dozen men. It is possible that the White House could honor the soldier's heroism with a decoration other than the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. Nominations for the Medal of Honor typically include detailed accounts from witnesses and can run hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. The review has been conducted so discreetly that the soldier's family does not know that it has reached the White House, according to U.S. officials who discussed the nomination on the condition of anonymity because a final decision is pending.
Oil spill visits get partisan
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39225.html
Excerpt: Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) wanted to fly 10 lawmakers down to the Gulf of Mexico to see the damage caused by BP’s gigantic oil spill first hand. House Democrats said no. Scalise’s trip was rejected for a variety of bureaucratic and logistical reasons, but it has also opened a new vein of partisan squabbling over who should be allowed to arrange a trip to view the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Republicans want to be able to take trips using their office spending allowance. But Democrats have heard from the Department of Homeland Security, which has asked that Congress organize trips through committees of jurisdiction, to avoid having to cater to a ton of individual lawmakers in a disaster zone, Democratic aides say. GOP leaders say they’ve heard nothing of this. The squabbling over who gets to travel to the Gulf on whose dime is the latest sign that congressional oversight of the oil spill oversight from Capitol Hill has been bogged down by partisanship. Congress has held upwards of 20 hearings on the disaster, often duplicative ones each week, as lawmakers struggle to grasp and fully realize the scope of BP’s giant oil spill.
Conservatives use Pelosi as face of liberalism in campaign ads
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005328.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
I don’t usually criticize conservatives, but using that face certainly qualifies as “scare tactics.”
Independents move toward Republicans, away from Obama
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/1-2-3-ohio-lt.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: New data from Gallup shows that independent voters now favor a generic Republican candidate for Congress over a generic Democratic candidate by 12 points, a trend that appears to be tied to their feelings about President Obama. In more than 6,000 interviews conducted in June, 46 percent of independents said they would support a Republican candidate while 34 percent said they would vote for a Democrat. In April and May, Gallup polls showed Republicans with a 10-point edge among independents on the generic ballot while in March it was an eight-point margin. The same gap does not appear in Gallup's generic ballot number among all registered voters, where 46 percent opt for a Democratic candidate and 45 percent choose a Republican. The Gallup numbers suggest that Obama himself is the prime motivator for independent movement toward Republicans on the generic ballot. More than half (51 percent) of independent registered voters -- a more useful demographic slice when analyzing election outcomes -- disapprove of the job the president is doing. Of that group, more than seven in 10 said they preferred a generic Republican candidate to a generic Democratic one. "Dissatisfaction with Obama appears to be a reason independents favor the Republican Party this year," writes Gallup's Jeffrey Jones.
House budget move kicks tough decisions down the road
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/106687-house-budget-document-leaves-tough-decisions-for-later
What Congress does best, and why the eventual resolutions of the fiscal, immigration, economic and Jihadist challenges will be very painful, probably disastrous, with no good options.
Where Best To Be Poor
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams063010.php3
Excerpt: According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty guideline was $22,000 for an urban four-person family. In 2009, having income less than that, 15 percent or 40 million Americans were classified as poor, but there's something unique about those "poor" people not seen anywhere else in the world. Robert Rector, researcher at the Heritage Foundation, presents data collected from several government sources in a report titled "How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the 'Plague' of Poverty in America" (8/27/2007): Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio. Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person. The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.) Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
Released on Bail in Cyprus, Spy Ring Suspect Vanishes
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/europe/01spy.html?_r=1
Excerpt: The eleventh suspected member of a Russian spy ring broken up by the F.B.I. this week has disappeared on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where he was arrested but released on bail Tuesday after surrendering his passport. Late Wednesday, a police spokesman told the Cyprus state news agency that the suspect, Christopher Metsos, 54, had failed to report as required to a precinct in the island’s southwest, where he had been apprehended. The police obtained a warrant for his arrest and a manhunt was under way. (Who could've suspected that a person charged with working for a foreign power might skip out on bail? –Ron P.)
After November
http://plumwoodroad.blogspot.com/
Excerpt: Why kid our selves? There is something seriously wrong with our government. Some of us may choose to ignore it, others may wish it would go away, but we all, at least on some subconscious level, know it. We see it in dozens of ways: persistent high unemployment, government spending through the roof, a health care system made worse by “reform”, two thousand miles of southern border left wide open, taxes set to explode next January 1, vote buying at the highest levels of the Administration, terrorist states building nuclear weapons, and an oil leak that has been a Charley-Foxtrot of mismanagement from Day One…on and on…Behind all of this, down in the pit of our stomachs, is the gnawing feeling that many, even a majority, of those we’ve sent to Washington have no interest in looking out for the country’s best interests. What ever particular star in the east they are following, it isn’t ours. But, a large segment of the population is not taking this bad situation quietly. An epidemic of November Fever has broken out. Brought back from near death by the infusion of energy from revved up Tea Party activists, Libertarians and political first timers, the Republican Party stands a real chance of getting control of at least some part of the government. We know it and the Left knows it. There is, however, a catch: Electoral victory will not be enough.
Independence Forever!
http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2010/07/01/independence-forever/
Excerpt: The principle author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, understood that, though Liberty is "endowed by our Creator," it is difficult to maintain among men. "The natural progress of things," he wrote, "is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Indeed it is. We boldly threw off a monarchy in the American Revolution, but today countless bureaucrats under the command of a pack of hardcore Socialists have assumed the throne. Jefferson also understood the consequences of Socialism: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." But 234 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence, Beltway politicos, most of the "Democrat" variety, insist that we must conduct ourselves, in matters large and small, according to their will -- and would have us believe they know better than we. Indeed, they have so effectively institutionalized this deceit that their electoral lemmings fall in behind them in lock step. That subservience is an affront to our hard-won heritage of Liberty, and an insult to those generations who have defended it.
The Limitless Power of the Obama-Kagan Congress
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/01/morning-bell-the-limitless-power-of-the-obama-kagan-congress/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: This Sunday, our nation will celebrate Independence Day, which commemorates the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration preamble reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The fact that we as a nation came together every year to celebrate this document might lead many Americans to believe that a Supreme Court Justice should take the Declaration of Independence into account when they are interpreting the Constitution. Elena Kagan is not one of those Americans. Under questioning from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) yesterday, Kagan admitted: “To be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution.” And Kagan’s disturbing indifference to the existence of natural rights is just one of the many frightening revelations her confirmation hearing has produced. On Tuesday, Sen. Coburn pressed Kagan about the limits the Constitution places on Congress’ power to control what Americans do:
The Dismantling of a Suspected Russian Intelligence Operation
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100630_dismantling_suspected_russian_intelligence_operation?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100701&utm_content=readmore&elq=198617d920b941109e44af035a6b82fe
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Justice announced June 28 that an FBI counterintelligence investigation had resulted in the arrest on June 27 of 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a foreign country, in this case, Russia. Eight of the individuals were also accused of money laundering. On June 28, five of the defendants appeared before a federal magistrate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan while three others went before a federal magistrate in Alexandria, Va., and two more went before a U.S. magistrate in Boston. An 11th person named in the criminal complaint was arrested in Cyprus on June 29, posted bail and is currently at large. The number of arrested suspects in this case makes this counterintelligence investigation one of the biggest in U.S. history. According to the criminal complaint, the FBI had been investigating some of these people for as long as 10 years, recording conversations in their homes, intercepting radio and electronic messages and conducting surveillance on them in and out of the United States. The case suggests that the classic tactics of intelligence gathering and counterintelligence are still being used by Russia and the United States.
CBO Budget outlook
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/SummaryforWeb_LTBO.pdf
Strain? How about Bust!: The federal debt will account for 62 percent of the nation’s economy by the end of 2010, the highest percentage since shortly after World War II, according to a long-term budget outlook prepared this week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The 40-year debt average is roughly 36 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and the debt equaled 40 percent of the economy at the end of 2008. CBO attributed the sharp rise in debt to lower tax revenues and higher federal spending related to the prolonged economic recession and turmoil in the financial markets. However, CBO also said that an imbalance between spending and revenues that predated the recent economic downturn has contributed to the growing debt as well. As the economy and financial markets recover, budget deficits will probably decline markedly in the next few years, but over the long term, the budget outlook is “daunting,” CBO said. The retirement of the baby-boom generation will strain entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and per capita spending for health care continues to trend upward.
States seek financial help as new fiscal year begins
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005355.html
Excerpt: States face a combined deficit of $89 billion in the fiscal year that begins Thursday, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And because every state but Vermont is required to balance its budget, the only recourse is cutting employees or vital programs, including education spending, medical services, programs for the disabled and elderly, and police and fire protection. All that cutting could mean the loss of 900,000 jobs -- in the public sector and in private companies that rely on state business, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.
How to Dismantle a Legislative Majority
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/how-dismantle-legislative-majority
Excerpt: That’s what legislators do, after all. New laws are like seed corn, intended to grow public support. But it’s not working. The congressional majority keeps passing initiatives they say respond to the public’s desire for “change.” Yet the combination of current liberal initiatives and uncertainty about future policies now seriously hampers economic growth and business risk-taking. It’s also taking a toll on congressional standing with voters. Gallup reinforced this point last week, reporting Congress’s job approval rate hovering near an all time low of 20 percent. Perceived liberalism in the lawmaking process may also impact Americans’ ideological self-identification. Gallup issued a separate study recently, demonstrating a significant rise in the number of Americans describing themselves as conservatives since the 2008 election. Near record numbers now also say that the Democratic Party is “too liberal.”
Alleged Russian agent Anna Chapman could have warmed up any Cold War night
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063005074.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Damn it, Harry, of COURSE we take prisoners. I’ll interrogate her myself. Excerpt: There were 11 alleged Russian agents arrested this week, under accusations that they'd been living as Americans while reporting back to the mother country. Ever since photos of Anna Chapman began circulating online late Tuesday, the Internet at large has been foaming, frothing, fanatic for details about the reported 28-year-old secret agent/Maxim model look-alike who specialized in sultry-eyed, pouty-lipped, come-hither stares.
Weather vs. Climate
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/01/weather-vs-climate/#more-21256
Excerpt: Weather and climate models are at the core very similar, but climate models also consider additional parameters that vary over time, like atmospheric composition. Climate models iterate over very long time periods, and thus compound error. Weather modelers understand that 72 hours is about the limit which they can claim accuracy. Climate modelers on the other hand are happy to run simulations for decades (because they know that they will be retired and no one will remember what they said) and because it provides an excuse to sink money into really cool HPC (High Performance Computing) clusters.... 1. Weather modelers consider the realm of climate calculation to be “months to seasons.” Not the 30 year minimum we hear quoted all the time by AGW groupies. That is why NOAA’s “Climate Prediction Center” generates their seasonal forecasts, rather than the National Weather Service. 2. The two most important boundary conditions (inputs) to seasonal forecasts are sea surface temperatures and soil moisture. No one has shown any skill at modeling either of those, so no surprise that The Met Office Seasonal forecasts were consistently wrong.
The Gathering Storm
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/gathering-storm
Things are going to get nasty, in the very near future. Excerpt: The Obama administration’s policy of engagement with Syria has yielded yet more rewards. The Wall Street Journal reports: "Iran has sent Syria a sophisticated radar system that could threaten Israel's ability to launch a surprise attack against Iran's nuclear facilities, say Israeli and U.S. officials, extending an alliance aimed at undermining Israel's military dominance in the region. The radar could bolster Syria's defenses by providing early warning of Israeli air-force sorties. It could also benefit Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon and widely believed to receive arms from Syria." How much more evidence is required before a policy can be called failed or worse than failed – counterproductive?
Must read: Where ‘nice’ Obama has got us
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/07/01/where-nice-obama-has-got-us/
Excerpt: In 1939, Capt. Peter Sanders, serving with the Tochi scouts on the Afghan-Indian border, was blown up by a Waziri booby trap and lost his right arm. Shortly afterwards, he accepted an invitation to lunch from the tribesman who’d planted the bomb. Awfully decent of the chap, and not a bad spread, all things considered. Not everyone cares for the old stiff upper lip: “I spit on your British phlegm!” as the Khazi of Kalabar remarked in what remains the seminal work on Afghanistan, Carry on up the Khyber. But imperialism requires a certain dotty élan. Without it, it’s no fun. You’re just a guy holed up in a Third World dump occasionally venturing out in the full RoboCop to pretend to implement some half-assed multilateral “nation-building” strategy that NATO defence ministers all agreed to at some black-tie banquet in Brussels and then promptly forgot about. Instead of the Tochi scouts—Pathan irregulars commanded by British officers—we now have Afghan units “trained,” or at any rate funded, by Western governments. A headline in the Washington Post captures the general malaise: “Afghan forces’ apathy starts to wear on U.S. platoon in Kandahar.” On a recent patrol through the city, 1st Lieut. James Rathmann stopped at a police checkpoint and found them all asleep in a nearby field. It’s not just the natives who are dozing. In London recently, Robert Gates, the U.S. defence secretary, complained that the allies’ promised 450 “trainers” for the expanded Afghan National Army had failed to materialize. These are not combat roles, so in theory even the less gung-ho NATO members should have no objection. Supposedly, 46 nations are contributing to the allied effort in Afghanistan, so that would work out at 10 “trainers” per country. Yet even that modest commitment is too much. So the Afghan army will fill up with time-servers and Taliban sympathizers. Colonial administration was always a cynic’s field. In Lisbon last week, I was admiring the beauty of the jacarandas when David Pryce-Jones, the scholar and novelist, reminded me of the words of Lord Lloyd, British high commissioner in Egypt in the twenties: “The jacarandas are in bloom,” he observed. “We shall soon be sending for the gunboats.” When the weather heats up, so do the natives. In Lloyd’s day, we were cynical about the locals. Now we’re starry-eyed about the locals—marvellous chaps, few more trainers and they’ll do splendidly—while they’re utterly cynical about us. Hamid Karzai has just fired his two most pro-American cabinet ministers and is making more and more pro-Taliban noises. This is a man who for the last nine years has been kept alive only by U.S. military protection. A throne in Kabul may not be much, but, such as it is, he owes it entirely to his patrons in Washington. Why would Putin, Ahmadinejad or the ChiComs take Barack Obama seriously when even a footling client such as Hamid Karzai can flip him the finger? “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” said Osama bin Laden many years ago, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” The world does not see President Obama as the strong horse
The Southern Border Could Get Much Worse
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/the_southern_border_could_get.html
Excerpt: The southern border of the USA is no longer something that we can ignore or use as a political tool. Successive presidents have failed to control this border for one reason or another, but the escalation of drug cartel violence on the southern side of the border is making the issue of illegal immigration almost an afterthought. It seems that if something doesn't change, we could be looking at an all-out war with Mexican drug cartels. Police Chief Jeff Kirkham of the border town Nogales, Arizona, told Tucson Channel 9 (ABC) news that he has received threats that the Mexican drug cartels will start using snipers to target on- and off-duty police officers from across the border. Given the fact that Nogales sits right on the border with the town of Heroica Nogales on the other side, the threat is entirely credible and feasible. Heroica Nogales would provide ample places to hide within sniper range of many parts of Nogales. With an effective range of over one mile, modern rifles could easily target U.S. citizens and police in an eerie echo of the siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian war. If snipers start setting up shop in Heroica Nogales, we certainly won't be able to count on the Mexican military to take care of the problem. The cartels clearly don't fear the Mexican military, given the enormous intimidation and bribery that they are able to bring to the table. Leaked stories of massive Mexican military corruption and intimidation are commonplace in the border regions. Given that the Mexican military would be of dubious worth, what options are left for the Obama administration to deal with the problem? Would Obama fire predator missiles into Mexico from drones to take out snipers, or would the risk of a real military conflict with the regular Mexican army and civilian casualties make that option out of the question? Would counter-snipers be employed to take out drug cartel snipers? Given Obama's reluctance to deploy anything more than logistic personnel from the National Guard to the border, the answer is likely "no." If Obama will not authorize return fire, what is the game plan for the police and civilians being shot at from across the border? If Obama did authorize return fire across the border, how would Mexico react to military snipers from our side shooting drug cartel snipers from theirs? Finally, what would the rules of engagement be? Would American military snipers be authorized to take out anyone deemed a threat, or would the life of a police officer or civilian have to be taken before they can fire back? Even the military will admit that counter-sniper operations are complex and fraught with risk.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Political Digest July 1, 2010
I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.
11 Reasons to vote for Democrats in November
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/06/11-reasons-to-vote-for-democrats-this-november-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rightwingnews%2FhGmL+%28Right+Wing+News%29
Great video of their own words. Pass it on.
Political Contributions
Here’s my plan. I’m going to invest $100 in the elections. I plan to send a $5 contribution to each of the twenty statists I’d most like to see defeated, who have a serious opponent—one with a fair chance. The way modern fundraising works, that will get me on the list, and each of them will spend at least $100 each in postage, printing and staff time sending me requests for more money. So my $100 will have the impact of $2,000 on these campaigns.
Why Israel Is Suspicious Of The United Nations?
http://christianactionforisrael.org/un/suspicious.html
I have not verified the “facts” on this list, but they sound correct. For what it’s worth.
“A Pattern of Socialist Associations” – Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan (the Early Years)
http://keywiki.org/blog/?p=775
BO was sold as a “moderate,” which to the Leftstream Media means anyone who shares their statist views. Excerpt: President Barack Obama’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme court, Elena Kagan, has been sold to the public as a “moderate” – yes, a little liberal leaning, but moderate none the less.
Obama: Promoting the Negative, Discouraging the Positive
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/06/30/obama_promoting_the_negative,_discouraging_the_positive
Excerpt: National anger at corruption and incompetence in Washington centers increasingly on a peculiar, profoundly maddening quirk of the Obama administration: its consistent, irrational impulse to reward bad behavior and to punish constructive conduct. The now powerful Tea Party movement began with an on-air rant in February, 2009 by Rick Santelli of CNBC, who complained of a costly new program to protect homeowners who had recklessly committed themselves to unaffordable mortgages; he suggested a “Chicago Tea Party” as a means of protest. Despite the indignation Santelli ignited, various Obama programs continue to tax Americans who’ve never missed a mortgage and send the money to rescue or subsidize their neighbors who made risky, irresponsible decisions at the height of the housing bubble. In a similar spirit, the Obamacare health reforms will provide subsidized insurance or Medicaid benefits for millions of families who previously declined to insure themselves, while bringing higher taxes and rising premiums to those who previously sacrificed to pay for their own protection. The immigration issue provokes explosive rage because of the same sense that government plans to reward those who entered the country illegally, giving them special advantages over law-abiding newcomers who patiently played by the rules. For most people, the underlying problem isn’t the immigrants themselves, but the fear that Washington’s misguided compassion will encourage more unauthorized new arrivals. A revealing CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll in May found overwhelming support for Arizona’s tough immigration law, with 71% of respondents who want “more crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.” At the same time, a startling 80% say they would back a program “to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to stay here and apply for legal residency if they had a job and paid back taxes.” In other words, the public objects to rewarding bad conduct but shows overwhelming support for policies that bestow benefits for a constructive course of action.
If You Believe America Has Lousy Health Care, Here's Why
http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/06/29/if_you_believe_america_has_lousy_health_care,_heres_why
Excerpt: If you believe that Americans have lousy health care, it is probably not because you have experienced inferior heath care. It is probably because you were told America has lousy health care. Last week, major news media featured these headlines: Reuters: "U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study" Los Angeles Times: "U.S. is No. 1 in a key area of healthcare. Guess which one ..." NPR: "US Spends The Most On Health Care, Yet Gets Least" The Week: "US health care system: Worst in the world?" Now let's delve into this widely reported headline as written by Reuters. For those readers who rely on a headline to get news -- and we all do that sometimes -- the issue is clear: America is rated as having the worst health care "again." For those who read the first sentence or two, an even more common practice, the Reuters report begins this way: "Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday. The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found." For those reading further, the claim of the headline and of the first two sentences is reinforced. The third sentence offers commentary on the study by the head of the group that conducted it: "'As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it,' Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters ..." Only later in the report does the discerning reader have a clue as to how agenda-driven this report and this study are. The otherwise unidentified Karen Davis, president of the never-identified Commonwealth Fund, is quoted as saying how important it was that America pass President Obama's health care bill. Could it be that Ms. Davis and the Commonwealth are leftwing? They sure are, though Reuters, which is also on the Left, never lets you know. Here's how the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 Report from the president begins: "The Commonwealth Fund marshaled its resources this year to produce timely and rigorous work that helped lay the groundwork for the historic Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in March 2010." As for Davis, she served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Jimmy Carter administration all four years of the Carter presidency. And in 1993, in speaking to new members of Congress, she advocated a single-payer approach to health care. I could not find any mainstream news report about this story that identified the politics of Karen Davis or the Commonwealth Fund. If they had, the headlines would have looked something like this: "Liberal think tank, headed by single-payer advocate, ObamaCare activist, and former Carter official, says America has worst health care" Conversely, imagine if a conservative think tank had released a study showing that, in general, Americans had the best health care in the world. Two questions: Would the media have reported it? And if they did, would they have neglected to report that the think tank was conservative? The answer is no to both.
Christian fashion show angers Muslims
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/652809/cs/1/
Shari’a Law, coming soon to a tolerant country near you. Excerpt: A fashion show held in the Christian village of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, has been condemned by Muslims in the area. The fashion parade, which was permitted by the Palestinian Authority has drawn strong opinions from Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Top Hamas political figures in the West Bank, have condemned the show as immoral and said it never should have happened in an area under Israeli occupation. Saying the parade had violated Islamic values and laws, local Hamas officials said that such events were considered by Islam to be a fahisha, or major sin. President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were strongly criticised "for supporting the fashion show, and spreading moral corruption in the West Bank." The Palestinian Authority was represented at the fashion show to honour fashion designers who were graduating. Late last year, the PA called off a Miss Palestine beauty contest following strong protests from Hamas and many Palestinians.
Innocent couple died 'after wrong house was fire-bombed in bungled honour killing'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1290504/Innocent-couple-killed-house-bombed-bungled-honour-killing.html
Sounds like the paper thinks the intended victims had it coming, that they were not “innocent.” Note that the victims were Muslims too. Just as black folks in the US are the most frequent victims of black thugs, so too are Muslims the most frequent victims of murderous Muslims. Excerpt: An innocent couple died in a house fire at the hands of assailants who got the wrong address in a botched honour killing, a court heard today. Abdullah Mohammed, 41, and his wife, Aysha Mohammed, 39, were overcome by smoke and fumes after an accelerant was poured through their letterbox and set alight. Their killers were ordered by another man to avenge his family's honour but instead of firebombing 135 London Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, they started the blaze at 175 London Road, the court heard. Mr Mohammed was found unconscious in his bedroom along with his wife and two of their three children in the early hours of October 21 last year. He died the same night while his wife died a week later. Their 14-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son survived.
US and UK failing to take Iraq's gay pogrom seriously
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/gay-people-iraq
While I think we should do everything possible to prevent Muslim violence against Gays (or Christian violence against Gays for that matter), seems to me that the blame here falls on the Muslims and their adherence to 7th century teachings and Shari’a Law that is mostly to blame. Excerpt: Last week, 12 Iraqi police officers burst into a house in Karbala, beat up and blindfolded the six occupants and bundled them off in three vans, taking the computers they found with them. The house was then burned down by unknown people. The house was a new "emergency shelter" run by the Iraqi LGBT organisation. Two days later, one of the men turned up in hospital with a throat wound saying he'd been tortured. Iraqi LGBT has ordered those in its other two safe houses to move immediately. The group says the police action is consistent with other state attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq. It has information that the other five – two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people – have been transported 100 miles north to the interior ministry in Baghdad, where they'll be interrogated (ie tortured) to find out more about the group. Then, going on past experience, they'll probably be handed to militias loyal to Shi'a clerics Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr (both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death) and their mutilated bodies will turn up later.
Why Obamacare scares this cardiologist
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/obamacare-scares-cardiologist.html#more-44601
Excerpt: I recently visited my cardiologist. It was a routine follow up after a heart attack a year ago. I enjoy our relationship. As a token of my regard, I came bearing a gift. It was a copy of my book Obama, Doctors, and Health Reform. I knew he had qualms about Obamacare. He expressed doubts about the health reform bill’s merits. The bill will roll out over the next ten years. The big budget items covering the uninsured will start in 2014. He did not think Obama is close enough to the doctor-patient relationship to grasp the bill’s implications. He feels the bill tampers with that relationship. It raises costs of care while discouraging bright young Americans from becoming doctors. One target of the bill, in his view, are specialists like himself. They care for sick Medicare recipients.
An Entourage Surpassing the Queen’s
http://www.polkcountyrepublicans.com/blog/?p=398
Excerpt: With the pending implosion of our economy, P BO isn’t feeling the effects, so how should we expect him to handle the problem correctly? On his recent trip to the G-20 summit, he got noticed for more than just his amazing speaking ability. It was the entourage that caught everyone’s attention. Obama arrived with 500 staff in tow and 4 speech writers and 12 teleprompters! That should make other countries like us better…way to go Mr. President!
Roberts led Supreme Court through assertive term
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062905209.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
But a bare majority of five justices believes that the constitution means what it says, while four believe it says whatever they want it to say. After all, once you declare that the preamble statement of “provide for the general welfare” is an enumerated power, then whatever you believe the general welfare is becomes constitutional. If BO is re-elected in 2012, the majority is likely to switch, and the last barrier to unlimited government coercive power will fall. Can he be re-elected? Certainly. Last year 47% of citizens paid no income taxes. Add to that government employees, and you have a majority that benefits from increased government and more spending. Excerpt: The Supreme Court began its decision-making this term with a groundbreaking campaign finance case and ended it with a landmark gun case. In between, it established itself as a confident group of justices willing to act boldly and speak independently. The court at times jumped without pause into ongoing controversies, sent blunt messages to Congress and the lower courts, and engaged in both bitter internal arguments and broad, big-picture agreements. The ideological differences that divide the court are unchanged -- new Justice Sonia Sotomayor fit comfortably into the liberal role vacated by Justice David H. Souter -- but took a back seat this year to more complicated picture of assertiveness.
CNN's Larry King says he'll retire as talk-show host
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062904751.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
And declining ratings would be caused by what? Perhaps, despite leftist control of the universities, schools and the “mainstream” Media, a large number of folks want news without statist pabulum, though the story tries, as usual, to present him as a centrist. Excerpt: King lost nearly half his audience over the past year but said that did not persuade him to call it quits.
Wall Street conferees adopt changes after Republicans raise objections
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/106165-brown-would-vote-no-on-wall-st-bill-with-19-b-in-fees
Shouldn’t the headline be, “Senators work to craft bi-partisan Wall Street bill”? Excerpt: Democrats were forced to rewrite part of the Wall Street overhaul bill on Tuesday after objections from Republicans threatened to scuttle the legislation. Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) announcement that he would vote against the bill because of a provision imposing up to $19 billion in fees on large financial firms led to lawmakers reconvening a House-Senate conference on the legislation. Brown’s objections and concerns from Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe cast doubt on whether Congress would be able to pass the bill and send it to President Barack Obama’s desk. The three Republicans had joined all but two Democrats to end debate on the Senate’s version of financial legislation in May. Without the support of Brown, Snowe and Collins, Democrats do not have the 60 votes necessary to clear the conference report through procedural hurdles in the Senate.
Daily Kos renounces pollster, threatens fraud suit
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/06/daily-kos-renounces-pollster-t-1.html?wprss=44
Snort, chuckle. Excerpt: Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of the Daily Kos blog, disavowed the results of all polls conducted for his site by the firm Research 2000, alleging that they were unreliable and possibly fraudulent. His accusation, posted on Daily Kos Tuesday: "We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it," Moulitsas wrote. He made the accusation based on a statistical analysis of the Research 2000 results that raised questions about their validity. Its conclusion: "We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls." Given that outcome, Moulitsas declined to stand by any Daily Kos blog posts based on Research 2000 polls. "I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else," he wrote. "I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling."
Mark Kirk tries to push the "reset" button
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/mark-kirk-pushes-the-reset-but-1.html?wprss=thefix
Kirk has served honorably in the military. Stupid that he felt the need to burnish that a bit, especially given that he’s running against the “Banker to the Mob” who never served. Excerpt: A month to the day after the first allegations surfaced about embellishments in his military resume, Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk (R) held a press conference in Chicago designed to re-start a Senate campaign that has gone badly off track. "I was not thinking," said Kirk at the Chicago presser when asked about various misstatements in his military background including that he was once named the Navy's intelligence officer of the year. (He wasn't.) "This was a carelessness that did not reflect well upon me and this is a high office," said Kirk, according to the Chicago Sun Times. "Going forward, you have to speak with great precision and detail." Kirk's political motives in calling the press conference are fairly transparent: end the story once and for all and, in so doing, put the spotlight in the race back on state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic nominee. Whether the strategy will work or not is more difficult to analyze.
Bill Clinton backing Romanoff
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/bill-clinton-backing-romanoff.html?wprss=thefix
Better headline: “Hubby of Sec of State Disses BO!” Excerpt: Bill Clinton endorsed former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's (D) Colorado Senate candidacy, a move that puts him squarely at odds with the White House, which is backing appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D).
Why Friedrich Hayek Is Making a Comeback
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704911704575326500718166146.html
I recently read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and recommend it. But don’t take it on as light reading! Excerpt: He was born in the 19th century, wrote his most influential book more than 65 years ago, and he's not quite as well known or beloved as the sexy Mexican actress who shares his last name. Yet somehow, Friedrich Hayek is on the rise. When Glenn Beck recently explored Hayek's classic, "The Road to Serfdom," on his TV show, the book went to No. 1 on Amazon and remains in the top 10. Hayek's persona co-starred with his old sparring partner John Maynard Keynes in a rap video "Fear the Boom and Bust" that has been viewed over 1.4 million times on YouTube and subtitled in 10 languages. Why the sudden interest in the ideas of a Vienna-born, Nobel Prize-winning economist largely forgotten by mainstream economists?
"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Economic rap music!
As Europe laments welfare state, U.S. turns to it
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-26-tanner25_ST_N.htm
Looks like Europe, in Thatcher’s phrase, is “running out of other people’s money” to spend on socialism. Our turn is coming—soon. Excerpt: As President Obama meets this weekend with the leaders of the G-20 nations in Toronto, it is increasingly apparent that the United States and the European countries are headed in diametrically opposite directions. The Obama administration has been racing to transform the U.S. into a copy of the European social-welfare system, while at the same time those countries are being forced to come to grips with the failure of that welfare state. Greece, Hungry and Portugal have received the most news media attention as their growing debt has threatened the viability of the euro. But all across the European Union, countries are discovering that they can no longer afford the massive cost of providing cradle-to-grave government benefits. France: The poster-child for euro-socialism is facing a national debt of 1.49 trillion euro, about 77% of its GDP. That doesn't count the unfunded liabilities of the country's state pension system, which may exceed 200% of GDP by themselves. Reforming the French welfare system has long been seen as politically impossible, but the fiscal facts have forced the French government to finally propose an increase in the retirement age. The French government is also selling off government-owned land and other property. And the French health care system has gradually been increasing co-payments and other forms of consumer cost-sharing.
Op-Ed: Health Care For Profit
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2010/06/oped-health-care-for-profit.html
Excerpt: I’ve noticed at The Health Care Blog quite a few people are obsessed with the role of profit in the health care system. Many apparently believe that for-profit entities have no legitimate role in an ideal world and that all organizations should be nonprofit.
My own view, interestingly enough, is the exact opposite. Were I a Health Care Czar, I would remove the nonprofit status from almost all health care organizations and force them to be for-profit under tax law. I would be willing to consider some exceptions here and there, and in special cases allow for-profits to set up nonprofit subsidiaries. But the vast majority of all patients in my ideal world would be dealing with for-profits — in getting health insurance and in getting medical care. And in return they would get lower-cost, higher-quality care.
Senate confirms Gen. Petraeus as new Afghan war commander
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063002691.html
Let’s hope he creates the same disaster in Afghanistan all the Democrats now voting for him said he created in Iraq. Excerpt: Gen. David H. Petraeus was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate Wednesday as the new Afghan war commander, replacing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal after his ouster over controversial remarks in a Rolling Stone magazine article. The 99-0Senate vote followed a confirmation hearing Tuesday in which members of the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Petraeus's leadership of the war in Iraq and lauded him as the nation's premier warrior-diplomat. Petraeus told the committee members that the Afghan war, which he said is being waged against "an industrial-strength insurgency" is likely to get worse before it gets better. "My sense is that the tough fighting will continue," Petraeus said. "Indeed, it may get more intense." Petraeus said he would adhere to McChrystal's strategy of trying to avoid civilian deaths in Afghanistan, a keystone of the U.S. military's counterinsurgency approach. But in a nod to U.S. troops who have complained that McChrystal tied their hands by limiting tactics, Petraeus said he would "look very hard" at how directives issued by the former commander were being implemented. "I will continue the emphasis on reducing the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum in the course of military operations," Petraeus said, adding that the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are "fairly standard."
Obama: Our first female president
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062903997.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
No comment. Excerpt: If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president. Phew. That was fun. Now, if you'll just keep those hatchets holstered and hear me out.
Arizona congressional candidate fires guns in ad
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/2010/06/arizona_candidate_fires_guns_i.html
Note the obligatory Leftstream Media smear that anyone who likes guns is likely to be dangerous. Excerpt: Arizona voters who don't pull the lever for Republican congressional candidate Pamela Gorman have this to consider: She just might shoot them. Gorman, in a new ad, fires a machine gun and pistols scores of times as a goofy sounding announcer calls this year "our best shot at changing Congress. 'Course that all depends on the caliber of our candidates."
The ‘Elusive’ Truth About Elena Kagan
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68745
Excerpt: Kagan’s views are “elusive,” the media chant in unison. They all tried to evade Kagan’s vivid writing as a college student in the Daily Princetonian in 1980, about how she cried and got drunk when Ronald Reagan won and “ultraconservative” Al D’Amato defeated her candidate, ultraliberal Democrat Liz Holtzman. She wished that “our emotion-packed conclusion that the world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead and that there was no longer any place for the ideals we held or the beliefs we espoused” would be replaced by the hope that the Reagan era would be “marked by American disillusionment with conservative programs and solutions, and that a new, revitalized, perhaps more leftist left will once again come to the fore.” Unbelievably, our journalistic geniuses can read that and say Kagan’s political views are “elusive.” .... One TV reporter filed one story that broke the mold. On June 3, CBS legal reporter Jan Crawford said documents in Thurgood Marshall’s papers in the Library of Congress showed that, “Kagan stood shoulder to shoulder with the liberal left, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion.” The White House was furious that Crawford would dare tell the truth about such a thing. “Their reaction has been to push back so strongly on allegations, as they would put it, that she’s a liberal,” she revealed. “Like there’s something wrong with that, like it’s a smear to say their nominee is a liberal.”
The Obama Formula
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-formula
Excerpt: There is something strange going on in American politics. Call it the belated triumph of George McGovern’s “Come home, America” campaign. While the secretary of defense works on plans to reduce spending on the military, his boss concocts plan after plan to increase spending on social programs. Even overseas interventions deemed important to national security are grudging, time-limited affairs—we might drop in for a while, but we are soon homeward bound. The American government’s power to influence foreign events is assumed to be extraordinarily limited. While increasingly threatening and intransigent enemies strut across the world stage in defiance of sanctions and pleadings of international institutions, America has cast its lot with those multilateral institutions, eschewing unilateralism even when vital overseas interests are involved, pursuing the approval of adversaries from the Arab Middle East to Russia, Asia, and Africa. Fast forward to domestic policy. Here government power is considered almost without limit. Fossil fuels create environmental and security problems, so government will order the invention of alternatives. The health care system is flawed, but rather than repair it we will transform it into one run largely by government. If Americans cannot be wooed to support these transformations, they are to be ignored by an administration and Congress that is far to their left, deploying a variety of parliamentary tricks. No wooing of support from Americans, from whom approval for domestic interventions is seen as less necessary than is the approval of the “international community” for our foreign policy.
W.H. quiet on Obama-Blago link
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39195.html#ixzz0sMkt3Qag
Excerpt: The White House was mum Tuesday after a union leader testified that Barack Obama personally asked him to approach then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich about appointing confidant Valerie Jarrett to his Illinois Senate seat – testimony Republicans say clearly contradicts the Obama team’s version of events. In testimony at Blagojevich’s federal corruption trial, Tom Balanoff said Obama — speaking a day before his Nov. 4, 2008 triumph in the presidential election – said that Jarrett wanted the job and was qualified, although he wanted her to join him in the White House. Defense lawyers – and now the GOP – have claimed that Balanoff’s version of events conflicts with Obama transition team lawyer Greg Craig’s report on his investigation into contacts between Obama’s inner circle and Blagojevich’s team.
Obama Administration Plays Down Fallout From Spy Case
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68758
Excerpt: The administration sought to dampen tensions, while the Russian government offered the conciliatory hope Tuesday that U.S. authorities would "show proper understanding, taking into account the positive character of the current stage of development of Russian-American relations." The White House response was notably restrained following the dramatic announcement that 11 people assigned a decade or more to illegally infiltrate American society had been arrested. They are accused of using fake names and claims of U.S. citizenship to burrow into U.S. society and ferret out intelligence as Russian "illegals" -- spies operating without diplomatic cover.
VA patients get letter of warning on dental work
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/fitness/article_2729bf3f-d947-5708-9b89-a0d7a1bc5e32.html
Excerpt: The Department of Veterans Affairs is warning hundreds of veterans that they may have been exposed to viruses from dental work performed at the St. Louis VA Medical Center. The federal agency said it was mailing letters to 1,812 veterans treated during a 13-month period ending in March at the clinic at its John Cochran hospital. The letters say the risk of infection is low but offer free blood testing to screen for the hepatitis B virus, the hepatitis C virus and for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection. The VA letter said that dental equipment "may not have been cleaned correctly." "We deeply regret that this situation occurred and we assure you that we are taking all the necessary steps to make certain that testing is offered quickly and results communicated timely," the letter reads. The letter adds, "We want you to know that the staff at the St. Louis VA Medical Center is doing everything possible to address this situation and prevent it from occurring again." (Almost all veterans were vaccinated against Hep A while on active duty and/or in basic training. It is unclear what protection--if any--that gives against other variants of hepatitus. Risks would be higher for dependants, of course. If you're at risk, see your primary care doctor. Ron P.)
Short-term insurance buyers drive up cost in Mass.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/06/30/short_term_insurance_buyers_drive_up_cost_in_mass/
New costs coming soon to the other 49. Excerpt: The result is that insured residents of Massachusetts wind up paying more for health care, according to the report. “The active members subsidize some of the costs tied to those individuals who terminate within one year,’’ the report says. The report was released as state lawmakers consider proposals to make it harder for consumers to jump in and then dump their health insurance coverage. A bill sponsored by Senate President Therese Murray aims to close many of the loopholes by, among other things, allowing consumers buying their own insurance to do so during just one month per year, as is the case with many employer-sponsored health plans. The number of people engaging in this phenomenon — dumping their coverage within six months — jumped from 3,508 in 2006, when the law was passed, to 17,177 in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available. “We believe [Murray’s] fixes could effectively address the gaming in the system — which we believe is adding as much as $300 million dollars to the health care system in Massachusetts’’ each year, said Tara Murray, spokeswoman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest insurer.
U.S. Finally Accepts International Assistance for Gulf Oil Spill
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68767
Been on it from day One, huh, Bammy? Excerpt: The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the State Department said Tuesday. The State Department said in a news release that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that's been accepted. More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The U.S. hasn't made a final decision on most of the offers. The United States rarely faces a disaster of such magnitude that it requires international aid, but the government did accept assistance after Hurricane Katrina. Most of the countries and groups have offered skimmers, boom or dispersant chemicals, according to a chart on the State Department's website. The chart indicated offers have been accepted from six countries -- Canada, Mexico, Croatia, Holland, Norway and Japan. Offers also were accepted from two groups -- the International Maritime Organization and the Monitoring and Information Center, which is operated by the European Commission.
Gun-Rights Groups Ready for Battle Against ‘Restrictive’ Regulations
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=68735
Excerpt: Given the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on Monday that the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals in the states, gun rights advocates are maneuvering to legally challenge and remove what they view as burdensome regulations on gun ownership and use. "We are already preparing to challenge other highly restrictive anti-gun laws across the country,” said Alan Gottlieb, vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, in a statement. “Our objective is to win back our firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time.” The Second Amendment Foundation was one of the legal co-sponsors for the plaintiff in the case, McDonald v. Chicago, for which the Supreme Court ruled in favor on Monday. Dave Workman, with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said he expects the "battlefield" over gun regulations to "expand to the states now," and that there will be numerous challenges to gun laws and regulations across the country. (This will be a long, hard, expensive, and thankless battle with no quarter given on either side. The nannies will insist only they know what is good for us and will invent reasons why it should be so; those of us who refuse to be nannied will fight bitterly. No matter who wins each battle, the rift in our society will be enlarged. Yet, if the battle is not fought, we lose a freedom vital to protecting all the others. This should have been clarified 100 years ago. Ron P.)
Crime, punishment and Climategate
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/05/crime-punishment-and-climategate/#ixzz0sM5LkLR2
Excerpt: Al Gore and his Climategate colleagues in the academy and the press are like the North Carolina police officers and prosecutors who put an honest man behind bars. Almost all of them began with open minds and the best intentions. At some point they honestly concluded that the Earth was in great peril. They began viewing evidence through this lens, accentuating data that bolstered their view, discounting findings at odds with the “truth.” As their investment in the idea of global warming increased—their careers, good names and sense of themselves—their minds closed. Dissension, debate and doubt became too dangerous. Members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change trumpeted faulty data, climate scientists stifled legitimate inquiry and influential journalists likened those who questioned global warming to Holocaust deniers in the name of truth. In a recent column, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal found it “amusing” that the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert had rejected the seriousness of the Climategate scandal in a recent podcast. “She sounds extremely defensive,” Taranto wrote, “as if she feels personally threatened by questions about global-warmist doctrine.” Of course she does. Kolbert has written numerous articles and a celebrated book, “Field Notes On a Catastrophe,” detailing the threat of global warming. Her investment in it is immense. It cannot be easy for her to even entertain the possibility that she—so smart, so accomplished—might have been duped, even a little bit.
Debts, deficits and defense
http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/28/debts-deficits-and-defense/#ixzz0sHtTdthk
Buy a burka for your granddaughter. Excerpt: In the fight over defense spending, the first round has been fought between Congress and the Pentagon. Congress won by a knockout. In a grudging response to calls from Republicans to bring the White House defense budget cuts to a vote, the Democrat majority allowed a House vote in early June. But it was only on a single item in the long list. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dipped her toe in the water and allowed a vote to decide the fate of the “alternative engine” for the F-35 fighter. She assumed it was an obscure program with minimal support, and the easiest cut to pass. She was mistaken. As of now, Pratt & Whitney has a sole source contract that gives them a monopoly on building the engine for the aircraft that will be 95 percent of our jet fighter force. The F-35 is nothing less than the basis of future American air superiority. But, notwithstanding Pratt & Whitney’s sole source contract, General Electric and Rolls Royce were funded to develop a competitive engine the Government Accounting Office says will reduce costs by as much as 12 percent. Setting technical arguments aside, the issue came down to $485 million. The White House and Pentagon wanted to cancel the competition. When the smoke cleared, a solid majority of votes by both Democrats and Republicans insured the alternative engine program will continue. In the age of trillions, why was this vote over spending less than $500 million important? The Obama administration intends to slash the defense budget in order to pay for its riotous spending on bailouts, “stimulus bills,” their signature healthcare program, and massive pork bribes for votes from congressmen who hopefully will not survive this November’s balloting. To continue the spending spree, the White House plans to eliminate over a trillion defense dollars in the next ten years. Details of those proposed cuts were laid out by Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) Sustainable Defense Task Force in a 56 page report titled: Debt, Deficits, & Defense – A Way Forward. None of the service arms are spared.
Fake Marine Sentenced to Probation
http://www.military.com/news/article/fake-marine-sentenced-to-probation.html?ESRC=marine.nl
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.” –Samuel Johnson. Excerpt: A man who pretended to be a highly decorated Marine will serve three years of probation, including 120 hours of volunteer work, probably in the service of veterans. "I really admire the military," Angel Ocasio-Reyes, 49, said before he was sentenced today for three federal misdemeanor charges under the Stolen Valor Act. "I never meant to hurt anyone." Ocasio-Reyes, of Tampa, bought a beribboned Marine master gunnery sergeant uniform at an Army Navy surplus store in New York and paid a friend $25 for a DD Form 214, an official military discharge document, showing Navy service. He altered the form, typing in his address and a slew of medals and decorations, including the Navy Cross, making it appear as though he served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was injured in combat.
Stop Chicago Corruption - Joel Pollak for Congress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTghLkrDf7g
My candidate in my district.
UN starts $5M cleanup of Agent Orange contamination at former US base in Vietnam
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-as-vietnam-agent-orange,0,6856398.story
Excerpt: The United Nations has launched a $5 million project to clean up Agent Orange contamination at a former U.S military air base in Vietnam, the world body said Tuesday. The project will focus on dioxin contamination at Bien Hoa airport on the outskirts of southern Ho Chi Minh City. It is one of three former American air bases where U.S. forces mixed, stored and loaded the defoliant onto planes for spraying missions during the Vietnam War to destroy jungle hideouts of enemy Communist forces. (want to bet the Us Taxpayers are being ripped off for this? See: Agent Orange Fact Sheet
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/12/agent-orange.html)
Podesta clan's close ties to Obama pay off big
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Podesta-clan_s-close-ties-to-Obama-pay-off-big-97413374.html
Excerpt: John Podesta, chief executive officer of the liberal Center for American Progress, may be President Obama's closest confidant outside of the administration -- he ran the transition and has visited the White House at least 37 times according to visitor logs. Tony Podesta, John's brother, is a corporate lobbyist and a leading fundraiser for Democrats. On at least a handful of issues, John's CAP has advocated the same solutions Tony has lobbied for. On some of those issues, CAP has partnered with the companies that hire Tony as a lobbyist. Given Obama's anti-lobbyist rhetoric -- and the gaping holes in his lobbyist policies that have been repeatedly exposed -- it's worth examining where the work of the president's confidant, John, dovetails with the business of lobbyist and fundraiser, Tony.
Fannie-Freddie Bailout Could Cost Taxpayers $1 Trillion
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=16185
No new financial regulation proposed here. Excerpt: For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion. Two things are clear: Taxpayers don’t want to foot the bill, and Fannie and Freddie, taken over by the government in 2008 to stanch the financial bloodletting, need a major overhaul. “Some of us who don’t even own homes are paying to support others and their home ownership, and they ask ‘why?’ said Robert J. Shiller, a Yale University economics professor and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices…
11 Reasons to vote for Democrats in November
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/06/11-reasons-to-vote-for-democrats-this-november-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rightwingnews%2FhGmL+%28Right+Wing+News%29
Great video of their own words. Pass it on.
Political Contributions
Here’s my plan. I’m going to invest $100 in the elections. I plan to send a $5 contribution to each of the twenty statists I’d most like to see defeated, who have a serious opponent—one with a fair chance. The way modern fundraising works, that will get me on the list, and each of them will spend at least $100 each in postage, printing and staff time sending me requests for more money. So my $100 will have the impact of $2,000 on these campaigns.
Why Israel Is Suspicious Of The United Nations?
http://christianactionforisrael.org/un/suspicious.html
I have not verified the “facts” on this list, but they sound correct. For what it’s worth.
“A Pattern of Socialist Associations” – Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan (the Early Years)
http://keywiki.org/blog/?p=775
BO was sold as a “moderate,” which to the Leftstream Media means anyone who shares their statist views. Excerpt: President Barack Obama’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme court, Elena Kagan, has been sold to the public as a “moderate” – yes, a little liberal leaning, but moderate none the less.
Obama: Promoting the Negative, Discouraging the Positive
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/06/30/obama_promoting_the_negative,_discouraging_the_positive
Excerpt: National anger at corruption and incompetence in Washington centers increasingly on a peculiar, profoundly maddening quirk of the Obama administration: its consistent, irrational impulse to reward bad behavior and to punish constructive conduct. The now powerful Tea Party movement began with an on-air rant in February, 2009 by Rick Santelli of CNBC, who complained of a costly new program to protect homeowners who had recklessly committed themselves to unaffordable mortgages; he suggested a “Chicago Tea Party” as a means of protest. Despite the indignation Santelli ignited, various Obama programs continue to tax Americans who’ve never missed a mortgage and send the money to rescue or subsidize their neighbors who made risky, irresponsible decisions at the height of the housing bubble. In a similar spirit, the Obamacare health reforms will provide subsidized insurance or Medicaid benefits for millions of families who previously declined to insure themselves, while bringing higher taxes and rising premiums to those who previously sacrificed to pay for their own protection. The immigration issue provokes explosive rage because of the same sense that government plans to reward those who entered the country illegally, giving them special advantages over law-abiding newcomers who patiently played by the rules. For most people, the underlying problem isn’t the immigrants themselves, but the fear that Washington’s misguided compassion will encourage more unauthorized new arrivals. A revealing CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll in May found overwhelming support for Arizona’s tough immigration law, with 71% of respondents who want “more crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.” At the same time, a startling 80% say they would back a program “to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to stay here and apply for legal residency if they had a job and paid back taxes.” In other words, the public objects to rewarding bad conduct but shows overwhelming support for policies that bestow benefits for a constructive course of action.
If You Believe America Has Lousy Health Care, Here's Why
http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/06/29/if_you_believe_america_has_lousy_health_care,_heres_why
Excerpt: If you believe that Americans have lousy health care, it is probably not because you have experienced inferior heath care. It is probably because you were told America has lousy health care. Last week, major news media featured these headlines: Reuters: "U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study" Los Angeles Times: "U.S. is No. 1 in a key area of healthcare. Guess which one ..." NPR: "US Spends The Most On Health Care, Yet Gets Least" The Week: "US health care system: Worst in the world?" Now let's delve into this widely reported headline as written by Reuters. For those readers who rely on a headline to get news -- and we all do that sometimes -- the issue is clear: America is rated as having the worst health care "again." For those who read the first sentence or two, an even more common practice, the Reuters report begins this way: "Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday. The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found." For those reading further, the claim of the headline and of the first two sentences is reinforced. The third sentence offers commentary on the study by the head of the group that conducted it: "'As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it,' Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters ..." Only later in the report does the discerning reader have a clue as to how agenda-driven this report and this study are. The otherwise unidentified Karen Davis, president of the never-identified Commonwealth Fund, is quoted as saying how important it was that America pass President Obama's health care bill. Could it be that Ms. Davis and the Commonwealth are leftwing? They sure are, though Reuters, which is also on the Left, never lets you know. Here's how the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 Report from the president begins: "The Commonwealth Fund marshaled its resources this year to produce timely and rigorous work that helped lay the groundwork for the historic Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in March 2010." As for Davis, she served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Jimmy Carter administration all four years of the Carter presidency. And in 1993, in speaking to new members of Congress, she advocated a single-payer approach to health care. I could not find any mainstream news report about this story that identified the politics of Karen Davis or the Commonwealth Fund. If they had, the headlines would have looked something like this: "Liberal think tank, headed by single-payer advocate, ObamaCare activist, and former Carter official, says America has worst health care" Conversely, imagine if a conservative think tank had released a study showing that, in general, Americans had the best health care in the world. Two questions: Would the media have reported it? And if they did, would they have neglected to report that the think tank was conservative? The answer is no to both.
Christian fashion show angers Muslims
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/652809/cs/1/
Shari’a Law, coming soon to a tolerant country near you. Excerpt: A fashion show held in the Christian village of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, has been condemned by Muslims in the area. The fashion parade, which was permitted by the Palestinian Authority has drawn strong opinions from Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Top Hamas political figures in the West Bank, have condemned the show as immoral and said it never should have happened in an area under Israeli occupation. Saying the parade had violated Islamic values and laws, local Hamas officials said that such events were considered by Islam to be a fahisha, or major sin. President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were strongly criticised "for supporting the fashion show, and spreading moral corruption in the West Bank." The Palestinian Authority was represented at the fashion show to honour fashion designers who were graduating. Late last year, the PA called off a Miss Palestine beauty contest following strong protests from Hamas and many Palestinians.
Innocent couple died 'after wrong house was fire-bombed in bungled honour killing'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1290504/Innocent-couple-killed-house-bombed-bungled-honour-killing.html
Sounds like the paper thinks the intended victims had it coming, that they were not “innocent.” Note that the victims were Muslims too. Just as black folks in the US are the most frequent victims of black thugs, so too are Muslims the most frequent victims of murderous Muslims. Excerpt: An innocent couple died in a house fire at the hands of assailants who got the wrong address in a botched honour killing, a court heard today. Abdullah Mohammed, 41, and his wife, Aysha Mohammed, 39, were overcome by smoke and fumes after an accelerant was poured through their letterbox and set alight. Their killers were ordered by another man to avenge his family's honour but instead of firebombing 135 London Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, they started the blaze at 175 London Road, the court heard. Mr Mohammed was found unconscious in his bedroom along with his wife and two of their three children in the early hours of October 21 last year. He died the same night while his wife died a week later. Their 14-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son survived.
US and UK failing to take Iraq's gay pogrom seriously
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/gay-people-iraq
While I think we should do everything possible to prevent Muslim violence against Gays (or Christian violence against Gays for that matter), seems to me that the blame here falls on the Muslims and their adherence to 7th century teachings and Shari’a Law that is mostly to blame. Excerpt: Last week, 12 Iraqi police officers burst into a house in Karbala, beat up and blindfolded the six occupants and bundled them off in three vans, taking the computers they found with them. The house was then burned down by unknown people. The house was a new "emergency shelter" run by the Iraqi LGBT organisation. Two days later, one of the men turned up in hospital with a throat wound saying he'd been tortured. Iraqi LGBT has ordered those in its other two safe houses to move immediately. The group says the police action is consistent with other state attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq. It has information that the other five – two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people – have been transported 100 miles north to the interior ministry in Baghdad, where they'll be interrogated (ie tortured) to find out more about the group. Then, going on past experience, they'll probably be handed to militias loyal to Shi'a clerics Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr (both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death) and their mutilated bodies will turn up later.
Why Obamacare scares this cardiologist
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/obamacare-scares-cardiologist.html#more-44601
Excerpt: I recently visited my cardiologist. It was a routine follow up after a heart attack a year ago. I enjoy our relationship. As a token of my regard, I came bearing a gift. It was a copy of my book Obama, Doctors, and Health Reform. I knew he had qualms about Obamacare. He expressed doubts about the health reform bill’s merits. The bill will roll out over the next ten years. The big budget items covering the uninsured will start in 2014. He did not think Obama is close enough to the doctor-patient relationship to grasp the bill’s implications. He feels the bill tampers with that relationship. It raises costs of care while discouraging bright young Americans from becoming doctors. One target of the bill, in his view, are specialists like himself. They care for sick Medicare recipients.
An Entourage Surpassing the Queen’s
http://www.polkcountyrepublicans.com/blog/?p=398
Excerpt: With the pending implosion of our economy, P BO isn’t feeling the effects, so how should we expect him to handle the problem correctly? On his recent trip to the G-20 summit, he got noticed for more than just his amazing speaking ability. It was the entourage that caught everyone’s attention. Obama arrived with 500 staff in tow and 4 speech writers and 12 teleprompters! That should make other countries like us better…way to go Mr. President!
Roberts led Supreme Court through assertive term
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062905209.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
But a bare majority of five justices believes that the constitution means what it says, while four believe it says whatever they want it to say. After all, once you declare that the preamble statement of “provide for the general welfare” is an enumerated power, then whatever you believe the general welfare is becomes constitutional. If BO is re-elected in 2012, the majority is likely to switch, and the last barrier to unlimited government coercive power will fall. Can he be re-elected? Certainly. Last year 47% of citizens paid no income taxes. Add to that government employees, and you have a majority that benefits from increased government and more spending. Excerpt: The Supreme Court began its decision-making this term with a groundbreaking campaign finance case and ended it with a landmark gun case. In between, it established itself as a confident group of justices willing to act boldly and speak independently. The court at times jumped without pause into ongoing controversies, sent blunt messages to Congress and the lower courts, and engaged in both bitter internal arguments and broad, big-picture agreements. The ideological differences that divide the court are unchanged -- new Justice Sonia Sotomayor fit comfortably into the liberal role vacated by Justice David H. Souter -- but took a back seat this year to more complicated picture of assertiveness.
CNN's Larry King says he'll retire as talk-show host
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062904751.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
And declining ratings would be caused by what? Perhaps, despite leftist control of the universities, schools and the “mainstream” Media, a large number of folks want news without statist pabulum, though the story tries, as usual, to present him as a centrist. Excerpt: King lost nearly half his audience over the past year but said that did not persuade him to call it quits.
Wall Street conferees adopt changes after Republicans raise objections
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/106165-brown-would-vote-no-on-wall-st-bill-with-19-b-in-fees
Shouldn’t the headline be, “Senators work to craft bi-partisan Wall Street bill”? Excerpt: Democrats were forced to rewrite part of the Wall Street overhaul bill on Tuesday after objections from Republicans threatened to scuttle the legislation. Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) announcement that he would vote against the bill because of a provision imposing up to $19 billion in fees on large financial firms led to lawmakers reconvening a House-Senate conference on the legislation. Brown’s objections and concerns from Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe cast doubt on whether Congress would be able to pass the bill and send it to President Barack Obama’s desk. The three Republicans had joined all but two Democrats to end debate on the Senate’s version of financial legislation in May. Without the support of Brown, Snowe and Collins, Democrats do not have the 60 votes necessary to clear the conference report through procedural hurdles in the Senate.
Daily Kos renounces pollster, threatens fraud suit
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/06/daily-kos-renounces-pollster-t-1.html?wprss=44
Snort, chuckle. Excerpt: Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of the Daily Kos blog, disavowed the results of all polls conducted for his site by the firm Research 2000, alleging that they were unreliable and possibly fraudulent. His accusation, posted on Daily Kos Tuesday: "We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it," Moulitsas wrote. He made the accusation based on a statistical analysis of the Research 2000 results that raised questions about their validity. Its conclusion: "We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls." Given that outcome, Moulitsas declined to stand by any Daily Kos blog posts based on Research 2000 polls. "I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else," he wrote. "I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling."
Mark Kirk tries to push the "reset" button
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/mark-kirk-pushes-the-reset-but-1.html?wprss=thefix
Kirk has served honorably in the military. Stupid that he felt the need to burnish that a bit, especially given that he’s running against the “Banker to the Mob” who never served. Excerpt: A month to the day after the first allegations surfaced about embellishments in his military resume, Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk (R) held a press conference in Chicago designed to re-start a Senate campaign that has gone badly off track. "I was not thinking," said Kirk at the Chicago presser when asked about various misstatements in his military background including that he was once named the Navy's intelligence officer of the year. (He wasn't.) "This was a carelessness that did not reflect well upon me and this is a high office," said Kirk, according to the Chicago Sun Times. "Going forward, you have to speak with great precision and detail." Kirk's political motives in calling the press conference are fairly transparent: end the story once and for all and, in so doing, put the spotlight in the race back on state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic nominee. Whether the strategy will work or not is more difficult to analyze.
Bill Clinton backing Romanoff
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/bill-clinton-backing-romanoff.html?wprss=thefix
Better headline: “Hubby of Sec of State Disses BO!” Excerpt: Bill Clinton endorsed former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's (D) Colorado Senate candidacy, a move that puts him squarely at odds with the White House, which is backing appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D).
Why Friedrich Hayek Is Making a Comeback
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704911704575326500718166146.html
I recently read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and recommend it. But don’t take it on as light reading! Excerpt: He was born in the 19th century, wrote his most influential book more than 65 years ago, and he's not quite as well known or beloved as the sexy Mexican actress who shares his last name. Yet somehow, Friedrich Hayek is on the rise. When Glenn Beck recently explored Hayek's classic, "The Road to Serfdom," on his TV show, the book went to No. 1 on Amazon and remains in the top 10. Hayek's persona co-starred with his old sparring partner John Maynard Keynes in a rap video "Fear the Boom and Bust" that has been viewed over 1.4 million times on YouTube and subtitled in 10 languages. Why the sudden interest in the ideas of a Vienna-born, Nobel Prize-winning economist largely forgotten by mainstream economists?
"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Economic rap music!
As Europe laments welfare state, U.S. turns to it
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-26-tanner25_ST_N.htm
Looks like Europe, in Thatcher’s phrase, is “running out of other people’s money” to spend on socialism. Our turn is coming—soon. Excerpt: As President Obama meets this weekend with the leaders of the G-20 nations in Toronto, it is increasingly apparent that the United States and the European countries are headed in diametrically opposite directions. The Obama administration has been racing to transform the U.S. into a copy of the European social-welfare system, while at the same time those countries are being forced to come to grips with the failure of that welfare state. Greece, Hungry and Portugal have received the most news media attention as their growing debt has threatened the viability of the euro. But all across the European Union, countries are discovering that they can no longer afford the massive cost of providing cradle-to-grave government benefits. France: The poster-child for euro-socialism is facing a national debt of 1.49 trillion euro, about 77% of its GDP. That doesn't count the unfunded liabilities of the country's state pension system, which may exceed 200% of GDP by themselves. Reforming the French welfare system has long been seen as politically impossible, but the fiscal facts have forced the French government to finally propose an increase in the retirement age. The French government is also selling off government-owned land and other property. And the French health care system has gradually been increasing co-payments and other forms of consumer cost-sharing.
Op-Ed: Health Care For Profit
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2010/06/oped-health-care-for-profit.html
Excerpt: I’ve noticed at The Health Care Blog quite a few people are obsessed with the role of profit in the health care system. Many apparently believe that for-profit entities have no legitimate role in an ideal world and that all organizations should be nonprofit.
My own view, interestingly enough, is the exact opposite. Were I a Health Care Czar, I would remove the nonprofit status from almost all health care organizations and force them to be for-profit under tax law. I would be willing to consider some exceptions here and there, and in special cases allow for-profits to set up nonprofit subsidiaries. But the vast majority of all patients in my ideal world would be dealing with for-profits — in getting health insurance and in getting medical care. And in return they would get lower-cost, higher-quality care.
Senate confirms Gen. Petraeus as new Afghan war commander
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063002691.html
Let’s hope he creates the same disaster in Afghanistan all the Democrats now voting for him said he created in Iraq. Excerpt: Gen. David H. Petraeus was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate Wednesday as the new Afghan war commander, replacing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal after his ouster over controversial remarks in a Rolling Stone magazine article. The 99-0Senate vote followed a confirmation hearing Tuesday in which members of the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Petraeus's leadership of the war in Iraq and lauded him as the nation's premier warrior-diplomat. Petraeus told the committee members that the Afghan war, which he said is being waged against "an industrial-strength insurgency" is likely to get worse before it gets better. "My sense is that the tough fighting will continue," Petraeus said. "Indeed, it may get more intense." Petraeus said he would adhere to McChrystal's strategy of trying to avoid civilian deaths in Afghanistan, a keystone of the U.S. military's counterinsurgency approach. But in a nod to U.S. troops who have complained that McChrystal tied their hands by limiting tactics, Petraeus said he would "look very hard" at how directives issued by the former commander were being implemented. "I will continue the emphasis on reducing the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum in the course of military operations," Petraeus said, adding that the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are "fairly standard."
Obama: Our first female president
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062903997.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
No comment. Excerpt: If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president. Phew. That was fun. Now, if you'll just keep those hatchets holstered and hear me out.
Arizona congressional candidate fires guns in ad
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/2010/06/arizona_candidate_fires_guns_i.html
Note the obligatory Leftstream Media smear that anyone who likes guns is likely to be dangerous. Excerpt: Arizona voters who don't pull the lever for Republican congressional candidate Pamela Gorman have this to consider: She just might shoot them. Gorman, in a new ad, fires a machine gun and pistols scores of times as a goofy sounding announcer calls this year "our best shot at changing Congress. 'Course that all depends on the caliber of our candidates."
The ‘Elusive’ Truth About Elena Kagan
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68745
Excerpt: Kagan’s views are “elusive,” the media chant in unison. They all tried to evade Kagan’s vivid writing as a college student in the Daily Princetonian in 1980, about how she cried and got drunk when Ronald Reagan won and “ultraconservative” Al D’Amato defeated her candidate, ultraliberal Democrat Liz Holtzman. She wished that “our emotion-packed conclusion that the world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead and that there was no longer any place for the ideals we held or the beliefs we espoused” would be replaced by the hope that the Reagan era would be “marked by American disillusionment with conservative programs and solutions, and that a new, revitalized, perhaps more leftist left will once again come to the fore.” Unbelievably, our journalistic geniuses can read that and say Kagan’s political views are “elusive.” .... One TV reporter filed one story that broke the mold. On June 3, CBS legal reporter Jan Crawford said documents in Thurgood Marshall’s papers in the Library of Congress showed that, “Kagan stood shoulder to shoulder with the liberal left, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion.” The White House was furious that Crawford would dare tell the truth about such a thing. “Their reaction has been to push back so strongly on allegations, as they would put it, that she’s a liberal,” she revealed. “Like there’s something wrong with that, like it’s a smear to say their nominee is a liberal.”
The Obama Formula
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-formula
Excerpt: There is something strange going on in American politics. Call it the belated triumph of George McGovern’s “Come home, America” campaign. While the secretary of defense works on plans to reduce spending on the military, his boss concocts plan after plan to increase spending on social programs. Even overseas interventions deemed important to national security are grudging, time-limited affairs—we might drop in for a while, but we are soon homeward bound. The American government’s power to influence foreign events is assumed to be extraordinarily limited. While increasingly threatening and intransigent enemies strut across the world stage in defiance of sanctions and pleadings of international institutions, America has cast its lot with those multilateral institutions, eschewing unilateralism even when vital overseas interests are involved, pursuing the approval of adversaries from the Arab Middle East to Russia, Asia, and Africa. Fast forward to domestic policy. Here government power is considered almost without limit. Fossil fuels create environmental and security problems, so government will order the invention of alternatives. The health care system is flawed, but rather than repair it we will transform it into one run largely by government. If Americans cannot be wooed to support these transformations, they are to be ignored by an administration and Congress that is far to their left, deploying a variety of parliamentary tricks. No wooing of support from Americans, from whom approval for domestic interventions is seen as less necessary than is the approval of the “international community” for our foreign policy.
W.H. quiet on Obama-Blago link
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39195.html#ixzz0sMkt3Qag
Excerpt: The White House was mum Tuesday after a union leader testified that Barack Obama personally asked him to approach then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich about appointing confidant Valerie Jarrett to his Illinois Senate seat – testimony Republicans say clearly contradicts the Obama team’s version of events. In testimony at Blagojevich’s federal corruption trial, Tom Balanoff said Obama — speaking a day before his Nov. 4, 2008 triumph in the presidential election – said that Jarrett wanted the job and was qualified, although he wanted her to join him in the White House. Defense lawyers – and now the GOP – have claimed that Balanoff’s version of events conflicts with Obama transition team lawyer Greg Craig’s report on his investigation into contacts between Obama’s inner circle and Blagojevich’s team.
Obama Administration Plays Down Fallout From Spy Case
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68758
Excerpt: The administration sought to dampen tensions, while the Russian government offered the conciliatory hope Tuesday that U.S. authorities would "show proper understanding, taking into account the positive character of the current stage of development of Russian-American relations." The White House response was notably restrained following the dramatic announcement that 11 people assigned a decade or more to illegally infiltrate American society had been arrested. They are accused of using fake names and claims of U.S. citizenship to burrow into U.S. society and ferret out intelligence as Russian "illegals" -- spies operating without diplomatic cover.
VA patients get letter of warning on dental work
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/fitness/article_2729bf3f-d947-5708-9b89-a0d7a1bc5e32.html
Excerpt: The Department of Veterans Affairs is warning hundreds of veterans that they may have been exposed to viruses from dental work performed at the St. Louis VA Medical Center. The federal agency said it was mailing letters to 1,812 veterans treated during a 13-month period ending in March at the clinic at its John Cochran hospital. The letters say the risk of infection is low but offer free blood testing to screen for the hepatitis B virus, the hepatitis C virus and for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection. The VA letter said that dental equipment "may not have been cleaned correctly." "We deeply regret that this situation occurred and we assure you that we are taking all the necessary steps to make certain that testing is offered quickly and results communicated timely," the letter reads. The letter adds, "We want you to know that the staff at the St. Louis VA Medical Center is doing everything possible to address this situation and prevent it from occurring again." (Almost all veterans were vaccinated against Hep A while on active duty and/or in basic training. It is unclear what protection--if any--that gives against other variants of hepatitus. Risks would be higher for dependants, of course. If you're at risk, see your primary care doctor. Ron P.)
Short-term insurance buyers drive up cost in Mass.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/06/30/short_term_insurance_buyers_drive_up_cost_in_mass/
New costs coming soon to the other 49. Excerpt: The result is that insured residents of Massachusetts wind up paying more for health care, according to the report. “The active members subsidize some of the costs tied to those individuals who terminate within one year,’’ the report says. The report was released as state lawmakers consider proposals to make it harder for consumers to jump in and then dump their health insurance coverage. A bill sponsored by Senate President Therese Murray aims to close many of the loopholes by, among other things, allowing consumers buying their own insurance to do so during just one month per year, as is the case with many employer-sponsored health plans. The number of people engaging in this phenomenon — dumping their coverage within six months — jumped from 3,508 in 2006, when the law was passed, to 17,177 in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available. “We believe [Murray’s] fixes could effectively address the gaming in the system — which we believe is adding as much as $300 million dollars to the health care system in Massachusetts’’ each year, said Tara Murray, spokeswoman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest insurer.
U.S. Finally Accepts International Assistance for Gulf Oil Spill
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68767
Been on it from day One, huh, Bammy? Excerpt: The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the State Department said Tuesday. The State Department said in a news release that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that's been accepted. More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The U.S. hasn't made a final decision on most of the offers. The United States rarely faces a disaster of such magnitude that it requires international aid, but the government did accept assistance after Hurricane Katrina. Most of the countries and groups have offered skimmers, boom or dispersant chemicals, according to a chart on the State Department's website. The chart indicated offers have been accepted from six countries -- Canada, Mexico, Croatia, Holland, Norway and Japan. Offers also were accepted from two groups -- the International Maritime Organization and the Monitoring and Information Center, which is operated by the European Commission.
Gun-Rights Groups Ready for Battle Against ‘Restrictive’ Regulations
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=68735
Excerpt: Given the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on Monday that the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals in the states, gun rights advocates are maneuvering to legally challenge and remove what they view as burdensome regulations on gun ownership and use. "We are already preparing to challenge other highly restrictive anti-gun laws across the country,” said Alan Gottlieb, vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, in a statement. “Our objective is to win back our firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time.” The Second Amendment Foundation was one of the legal co-sponsors for the plaintiff in the case, McDonald v. Chicago, for which the Supreme Court ruled in favor on Monday. Dave Workman, with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said he expects the "battlefield" over gun regulations to "expand to the states now," and that there will be numerous challenges to gun laws and regulations across the country. (This will be a long, hard, expensive, and thankless battle with no quarter given on either side. The nannies will insist only they know what is good for us and will invent reasons why it should be so; those of us who refuse to be nannied will fight bitterly. No matter who wins each battle, the rift in our society will be enlarged. Yet, if the battle is not fought, we lose a freedom vital to protecting all the others. This should have been clarified 100 years ago. Ron P.)
Crime, punishment and Climategate
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/05/crime-punishment-and-climategate/#ixzz0sM5LkLR2
Excerpt: Al Gore and his Climategate colleagues in the academy and the press are like the North Carolina police officers and prosecutors who put an honest man behind bars. Almost all of them began with open minds and the best intentions. At some point they honestly concluded that the Earth was in great peril. They began viewing evidence through this lens, accentuating data that bolstered their view, discounting findings at odds with the “truth.” As their investment in the idea of global warming increased—their careers, good names and sense of themselves—their minds closed. Dissension, debate and doubt became too dangerous. Members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change trumpeted faulty data, climate scientists stifled legitimate inquiry and influential journalists likened those who questioned global warming to Holocaust deniers in the name of truth. In a recent column, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal found it “amusing” that the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert had rejected the seriousness of the Climategate scandal in a recent podcast. “She sounds extremely defensive,” Taranto wrote, “as if she feels personally threatened by questions about global-warmist doctrine.” Of course she does. Kolbert has written numerous articles and a celebrated book, “Field Notes On a Catastrophe,” detailing the threat of global warming. Her investment in it is immense. It cannot be easy for her to even entertain the possibility that she—so smart, so accomplished—might have been duped, even a little bit.
Debts, deficits and defense
http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/28/debts-deficits-and-defense/#ixzz0sHtTdthk
Buy a burka for your granddaughter. Excerpt: In the fight over defense spending, the first round has been fought between Congress and the Pentagon. Congress won by a knockout. In a grudging response to calls from Republicans to bring the White House defense budget cuts to a vote, the Democrat majority allowed a House vote in early June. But it was only on a single item in the long list. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dipped her toe in the water and allowed a vote to decide the fate of the “alternative engine” for the F-35 fighter. She assumed it was an obscure program with minimal support, and the easiest cut to pass. She was mistaken. As of now, Pratt & Whitney has a sole source contract that gives them a monopoly on building the engine for the aircraft that will be 95 percent of our jet fighter force. The F-35 is nothing less than the basis of future American air superiority. But, notwithstanding Pratt & Whitney’s sole source contract, General Electric and Rolls Royce were funded to develop a competitive engine the Government Accounting Office says will reduce costs by as much as 12 percent. Setting technical arguments aside, the issue came down to $485 million. The White House and Pentagon wanted to cancel the competition. When the smoke cleared, a solid majority of votes by both Democrats and Republicans insured the alternative engine program will continue. In the age of trillions, why was this vote over spending less than $500 million important? The Obama administration intends to slash the defense budget in order to pay for its riotous spending on bailouts, “stimulus bills,” their signature healthcare program, and massive pork bribes for votes from congressmen who hopefully will not survive this November’s balloting. To continue the spending spree, the White House plans to eliminate over a trillion defense dollars in the next ten years. Details of those proposed cuts were laid out by Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) Sustainable Defense Task Force in a 56 page report titled: Debt, Deficits, & Defense – A Way Forward. None of the service arms are spared.
Fake Marine Sentenced to Probation
http://www.military.com/news/article/fake-marine-sentenced-to-probation.html?ESRC=marine.nl
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.” –Samuel Johnson. Excerpt: A man who pretended to be a highly decorated Marine will serve three years of probation, including 120 hours of volunteer work, probably in the service of veterans. "I really admire the military," Angel Ocasio-Reyes, 49, said before he was sentenced today for three federal misdemeanor charges under the Stolen Valor Act. "I never meant to hurt anyone." Ocasio-Reyes, of Tampa, bought a beribboned Marine master gunnery sergeant uniform at an Army Navy surplus store in New York and paid a friend $25 for a DD Form 214, an official military discharge document, showing Navy service. He altered the form, typing in his address and a slew of medals and decorations, including the Navy Cross, making it appear as though he served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was injured in combat.
Stop Chicago Corruption - Joel Pollak for Congress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTghLkrDf7g
My candidate in my district.
UN starts $5M cleanup of Agent Orange contamination at former US base in Vietnam
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-as-vietnam-agent-orange,0,6856398.story
Excerpt: The United Nations has launched a $5 million project to clean up Agent Orange contamination at a former U.S military air base in Vietnam, the world body said Tuesday. The project will focus on dioxin contamination at Bien Hoa airport on the outskirts of southern Ho Chi Minh City. It is one of three former American air bases where U.S. forces mixed, stored and loaded the defoliant onto planes for spraying missions during the Vietnam War to destroy jungle hideouts of enemy Communist forces. (want to bet the Us Taxpayers are being ripped off for this? See: Agent Orange Fact Sheet
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/12/agent-orange.html)
Podesta clan's close ties to Obama pay off big
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Podesta-clan_s-close-ties-to-Obama-pay-off-big-97413374.html
Excerpt: John Podesta, chief executive officer of the liberal Center for American Progress, may be President Obama's closest confidant outside of the administration -- he ran the transition and has visited the White House at least 37 times according to visitor logs. Tony Podesta, John's brother, is a corporate lobbyist and a leading fundraiser for Democrats. On at least a handful of issues, John's CAP has advocated the same solutions Tony has lobbied for. On some of those issues, CAP has partnered with the companies that hire Tony as a lobbyist. Given Obama's anti-lobbyist rhetoric -- and the gaping holes in his lobbyist policies that have been repeatedly exposed -- it's worth examining where the work of the president's confidant, John, dovetails with the business of lobbyist and fundraiser, Tony.
Fannie-Freddie Bailout Could Cost Taxpayers $1 Trillion
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=16185
No new financial regulation proposed here. Excerpt: For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion. Two things are clear: Taxpayers don’t want to foot the bill, and Fannie and Freddie, taken over by the government in 2008 to stanch the financial bloodletting, need a major overhaul. “Some of us who don’t even own homes are paying to support others and their home ownership, and they ask ‘why?’ said Robert J. Shiller, a Yale University economics professor and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices…
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